Comments vissermel has made

POPs in our foods

The section on persistent organic pollutants, POPs, implies that by not signing the UN Environmental Program treaty that the U.S. is still using POPs. Nothing could be further from the truth. These compounds have been babbed in the U.S. since the 1980s. They are not in the environment because they are eternally persistent, they are there because India, China, Russia, Pakistan and other developing countries still use them in tens of thousands of tons per year quantities.

Since toxaphene was banned in 1982, its concentration in Lake Superior, a lake who's volume of water would cover the U.S. to a depth of 6 feet, went up 50%. Lake Superior trout contain ten times as much toxaphene toxicity as PCB toxicity, yet, since 2004, fish consumption advisories are issued for PCBs, but not toxaphene.

In the Arctic, Inuit women consume 4 times the tolerable daily intake of toxaphene and 15 times a TDI of a coctail of other pesticides and PCBs in their seal based diet. They suffer infertility, stillbirths, birth defects and their children have severe immune system depression. A quarter of them suffer hearing damage from near constant colds and flus. See coldclearanddeadly.com  for more.On A primer on chemicals, fertility, and reproduction posted 2 years, 2 months ago 8 Responses