A friend
of mine loves to complain about how the free market allows bad players and
profit-seeking outfits to do whatever they please with regard to their product
or service and hide much of the truth about these through clever advertisement
or outright omission. This is a fact of life, and one reason why online
journalists are a source of valuable facts and information. I try.
But the free market also makes us smarter. We learn pretty quick what is
good, bad, and absolutely ugly. And once we know, we can abstain from a
product or a service or even a person. This is the virtue of a free
market--it makes consumers smarter.
Take
water, for example. We drink bottled water to avoid excess copper or rust
or chlorine. Or so we think. Until we learn that municipal water
supplies in one city are bottled and shipped for sale in other cities without
batting an eye at the contaminants in the water. People learn. We
adjust. Sometimes too late, after we get sick, not Montezuma's Revenge sick, but a low-grade health sick, like fatigue. And only to find out later that some other chemical
has found its nefarious way into our water supply. Find ways of
shortening that learning curve. But we need water as toxic as it might be. There are remedies, however, that I point to below, ones that comes from the premiere nutritional compound guy, Bill Sardi. But first, this report by Matt Agorist from Natural
Blaze.
We've known about the deliberate and legal poisoning of the water supply by cities and counties with flouride, but radioactive isotopes? That's new. Government agencies cooking the books? That's not new. But it seems that all reports about heavy chemicals in the water are problematic since the reports tend to focus on a single chemical and fail to look at the accumulative effect from decades of a combination of metals. However, this fact is not overlooked by Bill Sardi.
We've known about the deliberate and legal poisoning of the water supply by cities and counties with flouride, but radioactive isotopes? That's new. Government agencies cooking the books? That's not new. But it seems that all reports about heavy chemicals in the water are problematic since the reports tend to focus on a single chemical and fail to look at the accumulative effect from decades of a combination of metals. However, this fact is not overlooked by Bill Sardi.
ACCUMULATED/COMBINED HAZARD OVER TIME
However, one of the problems with assessment of toxins in drinking water supplies is that they are considered individually, not in total, and not over a lifetime.
Metallic mineral accumulation can produce adverse effects in biology. For example, the accumulation of chromium VI in plants has been shown to inhibit the production of chlorophyll. [Chemosphere Oct 2000]
The accumulated heavy metals burden (chromium, cadmium, lead and arsenic) in drinking water in Bangladesh exceeds safe limits. [Environmental Nanotechnology, Monitoring & Management May 2016] One study in Pakistan reveals chromium VI sample of 1.313 milligrams per liter of water but total of all minerals tested (cadmium, lead, nickel, zinc, iron, copper and chromium VI) amounted to 4.214 milligrams per liter. [Journal Pharmaceutical Sciences & Research 2015]
Some heavy metals can be stored in organs like the liver and brain where they accumulate and wreak havoc later in life. Chromium VI accumulates in all organs in laboratory mice. [Toxicological Profile for Chromium]
The combined accumulation of heavy metals (antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, cerium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, gold, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, platinum, silver, tellurium, thallium, tin, uranium, vanadium, and zinc, 23 total) in the human body over time is a cause for concern. [Interdisciplinary Toxicology June 2014; International Journal Physical Sciences 2007]
Fish consumption is the greatest contributor to total heavy metal accumulation in the human body. [International Research Journal Public Environmental Health July 2014]
Most heavy metals accumulate in the liver, kidney and gills of fish where they can cause functional disturbances. [Soil & Water Pollution Monitoring 2006]
In fact, the gradual lifetime accumulation of metallic minerals after full growth is achieved in males and with the cessation of menstruation in females is postulated the chief accelerator of aging itself. [Knowledge of Health; Longevinex.com; Resveratrol News]
Bottom line, the potential health hazard posed by chromium VI in drinking water is overstated. The total accumulated metallic mineral load over a lifetime needs to be considered in the maintenance of human health. It is best for adults to include mineral controlling molecules in their diets and food supplements to slow or reverse aging. Some food supplements provide an array of these metal chelators. [Longevinex]
It is
funny how most of us believe that much of what we take to be the free market in
groceries and food is literally killing us, and government is the faithful
handmaiden in seeing this result brought to its fruition.
Matt
Agorist alerts us to a damning report that effects 170 million Americans.
A
damning report from the Environmental Working
Group has just revealed that drinking water for more than 170 million Americans
in all 50 states contains radioactive elements that are shown to cause cancer.
Not only does the report expose the deadly levels of radiation but it also
shows that officials have been actively covering it up.
The
investigations looked at tests from 22,000 utilities in all 50 states between
2010 to 2015. He points out that only a small percentage of water
supplies exceeded toxic levels, but that their standards or legal radiation
limits are "more than 40 years old." So, what, he's calling for
government upgrades? Good luck. The tests, however, when measurd by
the more stringent standards set in Caliornia back in 2006 that "nearly
100 percent of tested water supplies failed," making places like "Flint, Michigan look like child’s play."
Omitting what the percentage is, Matt Agorist acknowledges that “Most
radioactive elements in tap water come from natural sources, but that doesn’t
take away the need to protect people through stronger standards and better
water treatment,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s senior science advisor for
children’s environmental health." I am not saying that this is not
serious, but maybe there are bigger fish to fry, particularly when I read in
the very next paragraph that "The problem is only getting worse,
too." How can it get worse than radiation? When it comes to political appointees, which regrettably is what his article to turns to. Politics, which is so fashionable these days, effectively discredits his message.
EWG reports, the government has long kown about this problem and has covered it up by fudging the numbers. Now, one of the people who admitted to fudging the numbers has just been nominated to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ.
The nominee, Kathleen Hartnett White, admitted in a 2011 investigation by Houston’s KHOU-TV that if utility tests found radiation levels over the EPA limit, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would subtract the test’s margin of error to make it appear the water met federal standards. In some cases, this meant that Texans whose tap water posed the extraordinarily elevated lifetime cancer risk of 1 in 400 were not informed of the danger.
So, what,
Argonist's article is about government incompetence? Okay, then what is
the solution? You got it: a different government appointment.
AGORIST CHASES POLITICS; DROPS HEALTH CONCERNS Matt Agorist's concern is less about radiation or water contaminants than it is about partisan appointees. And that all we need to do is rely on a more effective federal government agent, and certainly not one who seems to have political connections, to fix the problem for us 170 million Americans. But has government ever been a solution to any of our problems? There was Erin Brokovich who found poisonous contaminants in Hinkley, California's water supply. There is the ongoing, rarely-to-be-challenged fluoride medicated water in municipal supplies across the country. There is an issue with lead, with Chromium VI, and others. Perhaps if we were to grade government protection or monitoring of our water supply, it would earn an epic fail. But which chemical is the most toxic and the one we should look to avoid against all others? Chlorine, according to Bill Sardi.
Is tap water safe to drink? Well, yes, kinda. Tap water has measured levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, nickel, other heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, and other industrial chemicals including perchlorate (rocket fuel). In fact, analysis of 59 small streams in the U.S. found the anti-diabetic drug metformin in almost all of them even though only trace amounts were found. [Daily Mail UK Oct 3, 2016]
One of the most toxic chemicals known, chlorine, is added to water to kill off pathogenic bacteria, fungi and amoeba. Without chlorinated water, diseases like dysentery, cholera and typhoid ran rampant in populations. Water chlorination is one of the great advances in public hygiene. However, chlorinated water does increase the lifetime risk of developing bladder and rectal cancer, where it pools into greater concentrations. [Scientific American]
And there is this, "Long-term exposure
to chlorinated drinking water (30-40 years)
increases the risk of colon cancer."
Water is important, no doubt. In fact, when it comes to colon cancer, water is decisive in fending off that disease.
Drinking water reduces the risk of colon cancer in men. Men who consume the most water have a 92% lower risk of rectal cancer compared to men who drink less water.
Drink water, but avoid chlorine, long-term consumption of chlorine. As to Chromium VI and chlorine, there are nutritional remedies--vitamin C, N-acetyl cysteine, reserveratrol, and garlic. Include these in your diet.
The major dietary antioxidant that counters chromium VI toxicity is vitamin C. Vitamin C reduces 90% of the oxidative threat posed by chromium VI. [Carcinogenesis 1992] The published reports validating the effectiveness of vitamin C in reduction of abolishment of DNA damage caused by chromium VI is abundant. [Environmental Health PerspectivesSept 1994; Journal Applied Toxicology Nov 2005;Molecular Medicine Reports July 2013]
N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), available as a dietary supplement, is well established as an antidote to chromium VI poisoning. [Journal Pharmaceutical Biomedical Analysis Jan 2016; PLoS One Sept 2014; Free Radical Medicine Biology Dec 2013]
The red wine molecule resveratrol is also cited as a molecule that protects against chromium VI toxicity by activation of internal enzymatic antioxidants in the body (glutathione, catalase, superoxide dismutase). [Toxicology Applied Pharmacology 2016]
Garlic ingestion is an well-documented approach to negating the toxic effects of chromium VI. [Journal Basic Clinical Physiology & Pharmacology 2009; Journal Applied Toxicology Oct 2008] The key molecule in garlic is allicin [International Journal Environmental Research Public Health Sept 2008], which is easily destroyed by stomach acid unless a garlic clove is crushed prior to ingestion allowing an enzyme (alliinase) to yield allicin, or by consumption of a unique alkalinized garlic pill that assuredly produces allicin. [Garlinex]
