A Wakeup Call About Our Toxic Environment?

Here’s a statistic that should make you stop and think: Some 80,000 chemicals are in commercial use in the United States, but federal regulators have assessed only about 200 for safety.

This information is from a story in the Washington Post last week about the President’s Cancer Panel report, which warned that Americans are facing “grievous harm” from chemicals in the air, food and water that have largely gone unregulated and ignored.

While in the past the government and investigative agencies have somehow managed to skirt the issue of environmental toxins, blaming the epidemic of cancer in the U.S. mostly on smoking and bad diets, this panel’s pronouncement is a real departure from that position. Let’s hope we can take this as a positive sign that the truth about the chemical assault on our bodies that is part of life in a consumerist society is finally beginning to find its way over the wall of denial erected by lobbyists, congresspersons and PR agencies.

Here is the link to the story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/06/AR2010050603813.html)