TOXIC TOOTHPASTE?

Cauliflower and Friends. Photograph                                                                 © by Ruth Zachary

This week on the News, (Television)  we were warned that some toothpastes contain micro beads of plastic, put into tooth paste to help clean teeth, with the disclaimer that the beads do not impact your health.  Tests done in the Denver area show the beads are made of the kind of toxic plastic that consumers have been trying to avoid, because they do harm the body. Not only do these plastics harm the user of these products, but then the consumer spits out the toothpaste and the micro beads are discharged into the waste water network.

Water that comes from rainwater and natural sources is filtered, city officials say. Filtering can remove a substantial amount of these plastic contaminants.

However, wastewater from treatment plants is mixed into the water supply of reservoirs and that water is not filtered for chemical problems. That source of water is the most likely place where the plastic micro beads end up. Many of us who live downstream, in the plains areas may be relying on drinking water that may include the micro beads and the chemicals leaching out of them, which end up in the water.

It is not necessary for the plastic micro beads to be in these dental products in the first place. As consumers we can look for products that do not contain the plastic beads, and we can lobby against companies that continue to use them. Some states have required Dental products to be free of these contaminants. 


Writing and images on this blog are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.

DO YOU WANT GMO LABELS ON YOUR FOOD? Part 2.

Valentine Summer Squash, Tomato and Pepper from My Backyard Garden.

Environmental Action volunteers demonstrated at the JM Smucker headquarters in Orville Ohio this month. Smucker’s apparently knew of the plan beforehand and met the team at the door, delivering their petition  signatures telling the food manufacturer to lable the GMOs in their products, and to stop blocking GMO labeling laws. At the same time, Environmental Action members showed up at their local supermarkets and told the managers to relay our demand to Smucker's that they label GMOs in their products. 

Within seconds of showing up at Smucker's headquarters, six security guards asked that volunteers hand over the petition signatures at the entrance and not enter the premises. But  the activists saw this as good news because, those security guards knew they were coming, which means they know about the campaign - and were worried enough about what we might say and do to send a detail of security to deal with us.

Protestors were too concerned about Smucker's concealing GMOs in their products to be thwarted. 

The following quotation was published by the Environmental Action Team, a group protesting GMOs.  “GMOs put our entire planet's future at risk and every single student at Wooster College (or anywhere) who eats Smucker's products is unwittingly supporting an enormous threat posed by GMO foods.” Rita Frost and the rest of the Environmental Action team were planning additional actions at Smucker’s in the coming weeks.

Reasons to genetically modify foods is to increase yields, to alter foods to taste more pleasant and to make some kinds of foods more resistant to cold or other weather conditions. Tomatoes for instance might be more immune to cold if genes from other organisms are put into the reproduction cells, such as genes from, a strain of fish that is cold resistant.

Dr.Oz also said on Thursday that crops are altered so they will be able to tolerate stronger insecticides. Then the spray volume can be increased. Pesticide use has escalated to millions of pounds per year, and the side effect is that pesticides may affect our food as well as the animals we also end up eating as meat. We just don’t know the full effects of insecticide use, of genetic modification on human or animal digestion. And ironically, a side effect of this practice has resulted in more resistant bugs and insects. 

© by Ruth Zachary

DO YOU WANT YOUR FOOD TO BE GENETICALLY MODIFIED?

Three months ago, I wouldn’t have had an answer. I wasn’t sure what effect genetic modifications might have on a person’s health, but now I know I want to know what I am eating. Like most of the people who are asked, I want to be able to choose. And there is a lot in the news recently about GMOs.

At present  the FDA says that foods labeled “Natural” are not to have any artificial or synthetic ingredients. One way to know a food does not have GMOs is if it is labeled as “Organic.”

Agriculture has taken an extra step to accelerate the changes in foods in order to increase productivity. It was not enough to simply cross-pollenate plants to modify them in a biological way, as people had done for hundreds of years.

According to Jo Robinson in Eating on the Wild Side, pg 81,Corn was one of the first genetically modified foods. Seeds that had been exposed to radiation in a nuclear bomb test were grown after 1946, and the corn produced was far more sweet than corn strains grown prior to the 1950s. Other mutant forms of corn were also added to the genetic pool to produce a corn that is ten times more sweet than that produced in the 1940s.

Almost all the corn in the US is descended from that and other strains of ultra sweet corn. Corn is a food that dozens of other products are made from, including corn syrup, corn starch, corn oil. It is found in nearly all pre-processed foods. Wheat, Soy, Dairy and other crops are widely genetically modified even in their simplest form.

Any crops grown for sale are likely to be genetically modified because the agricultural industry is motivated to produce more for greater profit. Often the nutritional benefit of foods we consume has been sacrificed in the process.

           

Meanwhile more information just today was reviewed on the Dr. Oz show about Genetically Modified Organisms. Dr. Oz claimed as much of 70 percent of our foods may be genetically modified. Some companies are willing to label ingredients that contain GMOs, but not many. The agricultural and Food industries have generally been opposed to labeling their products as having GMO ingredients. Since labels are changed about once a year anyway, cost is probably not the major reason for opposition of disclosure to customers. 

See More in the next blog about GMOs. 

©  by Ruth Zachary

SHOULD YOU BE TAKING HIS MEDICINE?

This morning on CBS - Dr. Larry Kato (Spelling?) announced that studies confirmed women need half the dosage of the sleeping medicine Ambien than that men are prescribed. Women's blood levels were  about 45 percent higher than is safe for them to drive several hours after taking the medicine.

Dr Kato said this discovery has far reaching implications. It means men and women do not metabolize medicines in the same ways. Pharmaceutical companies will need to do studies on each of the genders to determine what patients need. It is not yet known if all drugs will require different amounts for men and for women, but this cannot be accurately determined until there is more research for each medicine.

Interestingly, in the 1990's some Doctors were making the point about different dosages needed for each sex, and raised questions about studies that included only male subjects, or male animals. Some studies were adjusted to include both male and female subjects, but even still the dosages were based on the average, rather than on each of the genders researched separately.

Dr. Kato said this means that the actual metabolization processes on even a cellular level is most likely,  vastly different, between males and females.

A side point to this is that when you are discarding medicines, they should not be flushed down the toilet. Ultimately these chemicals get into the water supply, and many of us get small quantities of drugs that are not healthy for us to ingest. I am not sure if pharmacies take drug discards for safe disposal.

© by Ruth Zachary.