Question everything at every opportunity, no matter who or where the audience is.
Thoughts on Toxicity and the Power Steer
Michael Pollan's NY Times article "The Power Steer" is about raising steer. It's main theme is the over-use of antibiotics. (follow link in box) It does indeed make eating beef seem quite nasty. The use of antibiotics for nonmedical uses in the USA is the status quo. But that's not the only toxic threat from eating beef or drinking cow's milk.
Organic beef is an alternative, and I know a farmer in MI that has an organic beef farm. I have been on his farm many times and used to buy from him when I lived in the Midwest. After learning more about how they raise the animals on inhumane mega-farms and feedlots, my taste for it has tapered off. The only time I eat it now is that rare occasion when I am faced with travel food . . . aka road-kill, as I call it.
According to Dr. Arnold Schecter at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, Americans are getting 22 times the maximum dioxin exposure suggested by the U.S. EPA. And nursing infants are getting 35 to 65 times the recommended dosage, as if any dioxin at all can be recommended. The main causes are meat and dairy products. Beef is a major source of dioxin in the diets of humans. (see table 2 below)
Because steer and cows live a relatively long life, in comparison to, say, chickens, they accumulate a substantial amount of dioxin in their fat. Dioxin is lipophilic, meaning it seeks fat. It accumulates faster than it is ridded from the animal's body. The same is true for humans. Because humans are at the top of the food chain, we get the full benefit, if one can use that term, of dioxin through bioaccumulation. The embryo and suckling infant receive an even larger dose because of the accumulation of a lifetime of dioxin by the mother and father.
Dioxin gets into the beef by way of grass and/or livestock feeds. Looking at feeds, a lot of contamination occurs through a variety of sources, both intentional and accidental. It falls on the grass from the sky after chlorine-containing products are burned in incinerators, back-yard ash burning in barrels, accidental fires, and chemical processes such as the production of PVC plastic. Dioxin is the by-product of burning chlorine in the presence of oxygen with a catalyst. The process is known as oxychlorination.
A chief source of dioxin in the air and water is the production and disposal of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastic. Note the chloride in PVC. Other chloride-containing products include the typical paper used by most people--paper used for writing, copying, wiping your bum, bleaching clothes, swimming pools. The list is quite large. It could also be created when bleached clothes are dried using heat, as is typically done in the US because energy is still extremely cheap.
Dr. Hillary Carpenter, a toxicologist with the Minnesota Department of Health is studying recently discovered dioxin in livestock feed ingredients from Quali Tech, a Minnesota company. When I spoke to him in March, he told me that the source was kelp. We already know that dioxin exists in low levels in the ocean, and that it accumulates on various surfaces. Dr. Carpenter has only begun to study the problem. In an AP interview , Carpenter incorrectly stated that "[t]he dioxin levels found in the feed supplements made at Chaska-based were so low, especially after they were diluted in feed, that they wouldn't pose a health hazard to people. Comments such as his are a good reason why the public is clueless with regards to dioxin. But this is a typical comment by a toxicologist. I once had lunch with a group of prominent toxicologists in Chicago at an EPA workshop on dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD). I was appalled at the datedness of their knowledge.
As a side note, if clothes are dried naturally on a wooden rack, the use of dryer softener sheets is also avoided. The chemicals that impart the anti-static quality in the dryer sheets is highly toxic. The scents used in them are also toxic. When combined with the scents of the typical detergent, the effect for some can be the cause of severe physical reactions. I am one of those people who reacts strongly to scents. Any and almost all scents cause an allergic reaction that can last a day. My breathing becomes heavy because my larynx becomes constricted.
Back to chlorine for a moment. Chlorine production in the US is also quite large, and it requires a substantial amount of energy. It is made by send an electrical charge through brine, aka salt water, sodium chloride plus H2O. Take a look at the 1953 Life magazine article "The Reign of Chemistry" in Life 5jan53. In it there is a photo of chlorine production by Monsanto, noted as the WORLD'S LARGEST single chlorine plant is operated by Monsanto for US at Muscle Shoals, AL. Electrodes extract chlorine from brine. It is a highly toxic and energy intensive industry.
Most of the chlorine goes into making PVC. In 1998, the world production capacity of PVC equaled 27,000,000 tons. It is impossible to make PVC without creating dioxin. The industry has known this for decades, as well as the fact that it is a potent carcinogen and endocrine disruptor, meaning it mimics the hormones of our bodies. In fact, it mimics ever hormone in the human body, and it is active in the single-digit parts/per/trillion range. One ppt can be represented by one drop of water in 660 rail tank cars, or a train six miles long! I know one researcher, mentioned in Our Stolen Future, that has told me that it is active down to 1/10 ppt. The 6-mile train just grew to 60 miles with one drop in it. He has not published this yet, but the interesting thing about his study is that this level of 1/10 ppt is not the threshold (the lowest level at which it is hormonally active).
Think of all the PVC in our lives. The 27 million tons of it produced each year makes lots of stuff. Building materials such as roofing, flooring, windows, piping, wall coverings, electrical wiring, swimming pool liners, and lots of the furniture that goes inside those buildings as well; Children's toys and clothing; Hospitals use a significant amount of PVC as IV bags, tubing, sheeting, kidney dialysis machine parts and tubing, disposable eating utensils, plates, cups, and on and on, ad infinitum.
PVC is NOT recycled. Less than .002% is recycled. The industry definition of recycling includes incineration, so this figure is next to meaningless. Waste PVC products are incinerated, landfilled, and/or shipped off to less developed nations such as India. This exporting of our toxic waste is called environmental discrimination, and it is an exceedingly common practice.
But how are we to know about this when the media white-washes and censors the news, and our children's classrooms receive materials fro such industries claiming the miracles of plastic? While in a dentist's waiting room, I read an advertisement in a popular magazine claiming that plastic is "The Sixth Basic Food Group," and "Plastics. One part of your diet you may never break." I wrote a page in honour of that advertisement.
Most of what we learned in school was either mis- or disinformation. The misinformation comes from teachers who, through no fault of their own, are either ill informed or disinformed. Then there are the teachers "on a mission." It may be for the Messiah or it may be for Monsanto. But all of this adds up to an ignorant public. When I write, many times I get to the end of an article on a new subject and I am floored by what has appeared in words. It goes against most of what I learned and assumed until about eleven years ago, when I began questioning.
Dioxin Levels in U.S. Foods
Total
TEQ(pg/gram food)
Food Type (ppt)
Ground beef 1.5
Soft blue cheese 0.7
Beef rib steak 0.65
Lamb sirloin 0.4
Heavy cream 0.4
Soft cream cheese 0.3
American cheese sticks 0.3
Pork chops 0.3
Bologna 0.12
Cottage cheese 0.04
Beef rib/sirloin tip 0.04
Chicken drumstick 0.03
Haddock 0.03
Cooked ham 0.03
Perch 0.023
Cod 0.023
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