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)

Deadly catch: Contaminated seafood, anyone?

In case you needed one more reason to tout healthy supplemental sources of omega-3s such as krill and fish oil, check out this disturbing ABC News report. Most of our seafood (80 percent) in the U.S. is being imported from developing nations, along with filth, banned chemicals, antibiotics and cheap prices.

Much of the problem resides with farmed fish, apparently. Foreign producers are using things like U.S. banned fungicides (malachite green was the one mentioned in the report) to keep the number of parasites down. Fish in Vietnam are being farmed in sewage water. Loads of antibiotics are being used to stave off the infections that would otherwise kill the fish being farmed in crowded pens.

America’s food-supply chain is a mess. Movies like Food, Inc., King Corn, and The World According to Monsanto have begun to awaken some Americans, but until a lot more of us begin demanding better controls on our food … and stop buying stuff just because it is cheap (in the short run), we’re going to slowly poison ourselves.

Is it time for a food revolution yet?

You can read more food and health-related news at WellWise.org