Repost From the Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:22 AM on 3rd January 2011
Technology created 50 rainstorms in Abu Dhabi’s Al Ain region last year
For centuries people living in the Middle East have dreamed of turning the sandy desert into land fit for growing crops with fresh water on tap.
Now that holy grail is a step closer after scientists employed by the ruler of Abu Dhabi claim to have generated a series of downpours.
Fifty rainstorms were created last year in the state’s eastern Al Ain region using technology designed to control the weather.
Dry as dust: The sand dunes of the United Arab Emirates, which sees no rain at all for months. Now a secret project has brought storms to Abu Dhabi
Plan: Scientists are attempting to make clouds in the desert to give man control over the weather
Most of the storms were at the height of the summer in July and August when there is no rain at all.
People living in Abu Dhabi were baffled by the rainfall which sometimes turned into hail and included gales and lightening.
The scientists have been working secretly for United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
They have been using giant ionizers, shaped like stripped down lampshades on steel poles, to generate fields of negatively charged particles.
These promote cloud formation and researchers hoped they could then produce rain.
In a confidential company video, the founder of the Swiss company in charge of the project, Metro Systems International, boasted of success.
Helmut Fluhrer said: ‘We have achieved a number of rainfalls.’
It is believed to be the first time the system has produced rain from clear skies, according to the Sunday Times.
In the past, China and other countries have used chemicals for cloud-seeding to both induce and prevent rain falling.
Last June Metro Systems built five ionizing sites each with 20 emitters which can send trillions of cloud-forming ions into the atmosphere.
Over four summer months the emitters were switched on when the required atmospheric level of humidity reached 30 per cent or more.
While the country’s weather experts predicted no clouds or rain in the Al Ain region, rain fell on FIFTY-TWO occasions.
The project was monitored by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world’s major centers for atmospheric physics.
Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, said: There are many applications. One is getting water into a dry area.
‘Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.’
State visit: Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the United Arab Emirates, accompanies the Queen at the Mushrif Palace in Abu Dhabi last year
Desert: Scientists created 50 rainstorms in Abu Dhabi's Al Ain region last year
The savings using the Weathertec technology are huge with the system costing £6 million a year while desalination is £45 million.
Building an ionising system is about £7 million while a desalination plant would be £850 million and costs a lot more to run.
Some scientists are treating the results in Al Ain with caution because Abu Dhabi is a coastal state and can experience natural summer rainfall triggered by air picking up moisture from the warm ocean before dropping it on land.
But the number of times it rained in the region so soon after the ionizers were switched on has encouraged researchers.
Professor Peter Wilderer witnessed the experiments first hand and is backing the breakthrough.
The director of advanced studies on sustainability at the Technical University of Munich, said: ‘We came a big step closer to the point where we can increase the availability of fresh water to all in times of dramatic global changes.’
NEW YORK, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Exposure to fluoride may lower children’s intelligence says a study pre-published in Environmental Health Perspectives , a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (online December 17, 2010).
Fluoride is added to 70% of U.S. public drinking water supplies.
According to Paul Connett, Ph.D., director of the Fluoride Action Network, “This is the 24th study that has found this association, but this study is stronger than the rest because the authors have controlled for key confounding variables and in addition to correlating lowered IQ with levels of fluoride in the water, the authors found a correlation between lowered IQ and fluoride levels in children’s blood. This brings us closer to a cause and effect relationship between fluoride exposure and brain damage in children.”
“What is also striking is that the levels of the fluoride in the community where the lowered IQs were recorded were lower than the EPA’s so-called ‘safe’ drinking water standard for fluoride of 4 ppm and far too close for comfort to the levels used in artificial fluoridation programs (0.7 – 1.2 ppm),” says Connett.
Fluoride is Poison - Source: infowars.com
In this study, 512 children aged 8-13 years in two Chinese villages were studied and tested – Wamaio with an average of 2.47 mg/L water fluoride (range 0.57-4.50 mg/L) and Xinhuai averaging 0.36 mg/L (range 0.18-0.76 mg/L).
The authors eliminated both lead exposure and iodine deficiency as possible causes for the lowered IQs. They also excluded any children who had a history of brain disease or head injury and none drank brick tea, known to contain high fluoride levels. Neither village is exposed to fluoride pollution from burning coal or other industrial sources.
About 28% of the children in the low-fluoride area scored as bright, normal or higher intelligence compared to only 8% in the “high” fluoride area of Wamaio
In the high-fluoride city, 15% had scores indicating mental retardation and only 6% in the low-fluoride city.
The study authors write: “In this study we found a significant dose-response relation between fluoride level in serum and children’s IQ.”
In addition to this study, and the 23 other IQ studies, there have been over 100 animal studies linking fluoride to brain damage (all the IQ and animal brain studies are listed in Appendix 1 in The Case Against Fluoride available online at http://fluoridealert.org/caseagainstfluoride.appendices.html ).
One of the earliest animal studies of fluoride’s impact on the brain was published in the U.S. This study by Mullenix et. al (1995) led to the firing of the lead author by the Forsyth Dental Center. “This sent a clear message to other researchers in the U.S. that it was not good for their careers to look into the health effects of fluoride – particularly on the brain,” says Connett.
Connett adds, “The result is that while the issue of fluoride’s impact on IQ is being aggressively pursued around the world, practically no work has been done in the U.S. or other fluoridating countries to repeat their findings. Sadly, health agencies in fluoridated countries seem to be more intent on protecting the fluoridation program than protecting children’s brains.”
When the National Research Council of the National Academies reviewed this topic in their 507-page report “Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Review of EPA’s Standards” published in 2006, only 5 of the 24 IQ studies were available in English. Even so the panel found the link between fluoride exposure and lowered IQ both consistent and “plausible.”
According to Tara Blank, Ph.D., the Science and Health Officer for the Fluoride Action Network, “This should be the study that finally ends water fluoridation. Millions of American children are being exposed unnecessarily to this neurotoxin on a daily basis. Who in their right minds would risk lowering their child’s intelligence in order to reduce a small amount of tooth decay, for which the evidence is very weak.” (see The Case Against Fluoride, Chelsea Green, October 2010 )
Dr. Paul Connett, a professor of environmental chemistry at St. Lawrence University in New York and director of the Fluoride Action Network—America’s largest organization opposing water fluoridation—kicked off his six-day Austin tour at the Nov. 4 Austin City Council meeting where he pressed the council to consider re-evaluation of the city’s water fluoridation practices.
Dr. Connett is touring Austin Nov. 4–9 in support of his new book The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep it There . He has given more than 2,000 presentations on issues of waste management in 49 states and 52 countries. He chose Austin as a stop on his book tour because of what he views as the city’s importance in the fight against water fluoridation.
“We are here because we think Austin has a good chance of stopping water fluoridation and, secondly, if Austin—a major city and the capital of Texas—stopped fluoridating its water supply, it would have enormous national ramifications.”
Austin is among three key areas in the fluoridation fight and has a strong base of highly qualified people who are getting organized, he said. The other key areas are San Diego, CA—which does not have fluoridated water and is in the midst of currently deciding whether or not to add fluoride— and Denver, CO and surrounding areas, which have fluoridated water supplies.
The City of Austin’s environmental board was concerned enough by the citizens’ objection to water fluoridation in August 2009 to request an independent study, which would initiate the process that would lead to a re-evaluation of water fluoridation practices. Instead the board received a report Dec. 2009 by representatives from the Human and Health Services Department, Austin Water Utility, Assistant City Manager Rudy Garza, and the Watershed Protection Development Review Department.
It was a three-page report, which contained no apparent research, yet concluded that fluoride levels were within safe limits, according to CDC guidelines, said Mary Gay Maxwell, chairwoman of the environmental board. “We had enough concern about it and enough interest in it to forward it to the council, but it wasn’t taken seriously,” Maxwell said.
A group of experts and concerned citizens, including Ted Norris, who has an MD and a PhD in neuro-endocrinology from the University of Texas, and Bill Kiel, who was a former councilman in Alamo Heights, Texas, when they overturned the decision to fluoridate the city’s water supply, decided to pursue the issue independently.
The group met with council staffers and Councilman Chris Riley in May 2010 in an attempt to garner the two council sponsors necessary to go forward with the issue, assemble an independent task force, and ultimately get the votes of four council members that would be necessary to reverse the decision. Other experts in attendance included Griffin Cole, an Austin dentist with a fluoride-free practice, and Neil Carman, Sierra Club Clean Air Program Director who has a PhD in plant chemistry.
Councilman Riley and the staffers said that moving forward without the support of the mainstream medical community would be difficult, though all were receptive and sympathetic to the cause, said Keil.
“Any two council members can put an item on the agenda and when that happens, we will see, but so far nobody has approached me about putting it on the agenda,” Mayor Lee Leffingwell said following the Nov. 4 City Council meeting.
Austin residents interested in more information on water fluoridation can attend the fluoride debate at the Thompson Conference Center at the University of Texas, Austin Nov. 4 from 7 to 9 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. For more information and a full schedule of Dr. Connett’s Austin events visit
Advocates of fluoridated water insist that the chemical additive is good for teeth, but actual science routinely shows otherwise, including a new study published in the Journal of the American Dental Association confirming fluoride as a toxic substance that actually destroys teeth, particularly those of developing young children and babies.
When people are exposed to excessive levels of fluoride through sources like drinking water, foods and beverages and even swallowed toothpaste, it often results in a condition known as dental fluorosis. The internal uptake of fluoride into teeth over time causes their enamel to become mottled and discolored, the end result being damaged teeth that have essentially rotted from the inside out.
Copyright: NaturalNews
Dr. Steven Levy, D.D.S., and his team found during their study that “fluoride intakes during each of the first four years (of a child’s life) were individually significantly related to fluorosis on maxillary central incisors, with the first year more important.” They went on to warn that “infant formulas reconstituted with higher fluoride water can provide 100 to 200 times more fluoride than breast milk, or cow’s milk.”
In other words, young children have the highest risk of severe tooth damage from fluoride, especially those that are six months of age or younger, a time during which children’s blood-brain barriers have not fully formed. Even low ingestion levels cause the direct depositing of fluoride into the teeth, brain and other bodily tissues and organs which, besides causing fluorosis, also causes disorders of the brain and nervous system, kidneys and bones.
And the American Dental Association (ADA) has known that fluoride exposure causes dental fluorosis since at least 2006, but the group has done nothing to warn the 200 million Americans that live in communities with fluoridated water to avoid its use in babies and infants. Many dentists still recommend that children and adults not only drink fluoridated water, but even advise parents to add fluoride drops to their children’s drinking water if the family lives in unfluoridated areas or drinks private well water.
Fluoride causes serious health problems
In 2006, a study published in The Lancet identified fluoride as “an emerging neurotoxic substance” that causes severe brain damage. The National Research Council (NRC) wrote that “it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means.”
About a month later, another study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found a definitive link between fluoride intake and reduce IQ levels, indicating once again that fluoride intake causes cognitive damage.
At Harvard University, researchers identified a link between fluoride and bone cancer. Published 14 years after it began, the study found that the highest rates of osteosarcoma, a fatal form of bone cancer, were occurring most in populations drinking fluoridated water. The findings confirmed those of a prior government study back in 1990 that involved fluoride-treated rats.
Kidney disease is another hallmark of fluoride poisoning. Multiple animal studies have found that fluoride levels as low as 1 part per million (ppm) — which is the amount added to most fluoridated water systems — cause kidney damage. And a Chinese study found that children exposed to slightly higher fluoride levels had biological markers in their blood indicative of kidney damage.
The NRC has also found that fluoride impairs proper thyroid function and debilitates the endocrine system. Up until the 1970s, fluoride was used in Europe as a thyroid-suppressing medication because it lowers thyroid function. Many experts believe that widespread hypothyroidism today is a result of overexposure to fluoride.
Since fluoride is present in most municipal water supplies in North America, it is absurd to even suggest that parents avoid giving it to their young children. How are parents supposed to avoid it unless they install a whole-house reverse osmosis water filtration system? And even if families install such a system, fluoride is found in all sorts of food and beverages, not to mention that it is absorbed through the skin every time people wash their hands with or take a shower in fluoridated water. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why the ADA has said nothing about the issue despite the findings.
There simply is no legitimate reason to fluoridate water. Doing so forcibly medicates an entire population with a carcinogenic, chemical drug. There really is no effective way to avoid it entirely, and nobody really knows how much is ingested or absorbed on a daily basis because exposure is too widespread to calculate. But political pressure and bad science have continued to justify water fluoridation in most major cities, despite growing mountains of evidence showing its dangers.
Ending water fluoridation is a difficult task, but concerted efforts by citizens, local authorities, and even dentists, have resulted in some significant victories. To learn more about fluoride, check out the Fluoride Action Network (FAN): http://www.fluoridealert.org
“Workers at a US water treatment plant were amazed and disgusted at the toxic sodium fluoride they were expected to mix in to the domestic tap water supply in their region. So much so they refused to add it and released footage of it.”
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The establishment media will have to find a new tactic with which to ridicule those who oppose the fluoridation of water after a major new Scientific American report concluded that “Scientific attitudes toward fluoridation may be starting to shift” as new evidence emerges of the poison’s link to disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland, as well as lowering IQ.
Fluoride is TOXIC
“Today almost 60 percent of the U.S. population drinks fluoridated water, including residents of 46 of the nation’s 50 largest cities,” reports Scientific American’s Dan Fagin.
Fagin is an award-wining environmental reporter and Director of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.
“Outside the U.S., fluoridation has spread to Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and a few other countries. Critics of the practice have generally been dismissed as gadflies or zealots by mainstream researchers and public health agencies in those countries as well as the U.S. (In other nations, however, water fluoridation is rare and controversial.)”
Indeed, the zeitgeist for scoffing at those who spoke of the dangers of mass medicating the public against their will with fluoride was the deranged and paranoid character of General Ripper in the hit 1964 Peter Selllers movie Dr. Strangelove.
But that stereotype is quickly fading as serious scientific research uncovers proof that all the horror stories about sodium fluoride told down the decades are essentially true.
The Scientific American study “Concluded that fluoride can subtly alter endocrine function, especially in the thyroid — the gland that produces hormones regulating growth and metabolism.”
The report also notes that “a series of epidemiological studies in China have associated high fluoride exposures with lower IQ.”
“Epidemiological studies and tests on lab animals suggest that high fluoride exposure increases the risk of bone fracture, especially in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and diabetics,” writes Fagin.
Fagin interviewed Steven Levy, director of the Iowa Fluoride Study which tracked about 700 Iowa children for sixteen years. Nine-year-old “Iowa children who lived in communities where the water was fluoridated were 50 percent more likely to have mild fluorosis… than [nine-year-old] children living in nonfluoridated areas of the state,” writes Fagin.
The study adds to a growing literature of shocking scientific studies proving fluoride’s link with all manner of health defects, even as governments in the west, including recently the UK, make plans to mass medicate the population against their will with this deadly toxin.
In 2005, a study conducted at the Harvard School of Dental Health found that fluoride in tap water directly contributes to causing bone cancer in young boys.
“New American research suggests that boys exposed to fluoride between the ages of five and 10 will suffer an increased rate of osteosarcoma – bone cancer – between the ages of 10 and 19,” according to a London Observer article about the study.
Based on the findings of the study, the respected Environmental Working Group lobbied to have fluoride in tap water be added to the US government’s classified list of substances known or anticipated to cause cancer in humans.
Cancer rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed with one in three people now contracting the disease at some stage in their life.
The link to bone cancer has also been discovered by other scientists, but a controversy ensued after it emerged that Harvard Professor Chester Douglass, who downplayed the connection in his final report, was in fact editor-in-chief of The Colgate Oral Health Report, a quarterly newsletter funded by Colgate-Palmolive Co., which makes fluoridated toothpaste.
An August 2006 Chinese study found that fluoride in drinking water damages children’s liver and kidney functions.
FACTS ABOUT FLUORIDE
- Fluoride is a waste by-product of the fertilizer and aluminum industry and it’s also a Part II Poison under the UK Poisons Act 1972.
- Fluoride is one of the basic ingredients in both PROZAC (FLUoxetene Hydrochloride) and Sarin nerve gas (Isopropyl-Methyl-Phosphoryl FLUoride).
- USAF Major George R. Jordan testified before Un-American Activity committees of Congress in the 1950′s that in his post as U.S.-Soviet liaison officer, the Soviets openly admitted to “Using the fluoride in the water supplies in their concentration camps, to make the prisoners stupid, docile, and subservient.”
- The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany’s Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride’s supposed effect on children’s teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people in their concentration camps into calm submission. (Ref. book: “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben” by Joseph Borkin.)
- 97% of western Europe has rejected fluoridated water due to the known health risks, however 10% of Britons drink it and the UK government is trying to fast track the fluoridation of the entire country’s water supply.
- In Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg fluoridation of water was rejected because it was classified as compulsive medication against the subject’s will and therefore violated fundamental human rights.
- In November of 2006, the American Dental Association (ADA) advised that parents should avoid giving babies fluoridated water.
- Sources of fluoride include: fluoride dental products, fluoride pesticides, fluoridated pharmaceuticals, processed foods made with fluoridated water, and tea.
Click here to find out if your water supply is poisoned with deadly fluoride
The water in the canals and irrigation channels in the L’Albufera Natural Park in Valencia, Spain contain cocaine, ecstasy and a further six drugs. This has been confirmed by a study carried out by researchers from the University of Valencia (UV), who have issued a warning about the continued presence of these substances on wildlife and human health.
“The results confirm the presence of drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines, codeine, morphine and cannabis in the surface waters of the L’Albufera National Park at levels ranging between 0.06 and 78.78 nanograms/litre”, Yolanda Picó, lead author of the study and a senior professor in the Department of Nutrition and Bromatology at the UV, tells SINC.
Cocaine and ecstasy have been detected in the waters of the L’Albufera in Valencia.
Credit: Yolanda Picó et al
Scientists from this university and the Desertification Research Centre (CSIC-UV-GV) analysed the presence of 14 kinds of illegal drugs – including heroin, cocaine and ecstasy – in 16 canals and irrigation channels in the natural park. The study looked for the residue these drugs leave behind in human urine after they have been taken, and which end up in the water.
The results, published in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, positively showed the presence of eight kinds of drugs, particularly cocaine and ecstasy. “Cocaine and its metabolites (such as benzoylecgonine) were ubiquitous in all the samples taken, while ecstasy (3.4-methylendioximetamphetamine, or MDMA) was also found very frequently”, Picó explains.
The greatest drug concentration and frequency was found in the north of the park, above all in the area of the Poyo ravine. Waste water is regularly discharged in this area, and it also has the highest population density (almost 70% of the total population), as well as industry and nightclubs.
The researcher points out that this “indicates, with increasing likelihood, that drugs are reaching the sewer and channel systems, and that in many cases they could be affecting the irrigation channels and waters of the L’Albufera lake”.
The team also found very high levels in some particular samples taken in the area of Benifaió and Almusaffes, which can only be explained by the presence of untreated waste water.
A risk for the wetlands
Exhaustive eco-toxocological studies into the risk the presence of these substances in the water could pose to people and the environment have not yet been carried out. However, the scientists have issued a warning about the possible consequences.
“The health problems potentially caused by consuming these, added to the fact that these residues are still strongly pharmacologically active, may have consequences for land organisms and aquatic fauna”, said Picó.
The L’Albufera Natural Park is one of the most important wetlands in Europe because of its biodiversity of flora and fauna, and because it is a key area for migratory birds. The area is a SPAB (Special Protection Area for Birds), is on the List of Sites of Community Importance for the Mediterranean Biogeographical Region, and is covered by the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands.
Paradoxically, the park is surrounded by cities, industries, farms, shopping malls and leisure centres. The wetland is bordered by the Mediterranean highway and the V-31 motorway, and crossed by the Saler motorway and other roads. The L’Albufera is also affected by pressure from the 12 urban centres – including the city of Valencia – and the 14 municipal districts that surround it.
Pablo Vázquez-Roig, Vicente Andreu, Cristina Blasco y Yolanda Picó. “SPE and LC-MS/MS determination of 14 illicit drugs in surface waters from the Natural Park of L’Albufera (València, Spain)”. Analytical and Bioanayitical Chemistry 397 (7): 2851-2864, agosto de 2010. DOI 10.1007/s00216-010-3720-x.
Fluoride has been added to our water supply for the last 60 years, supposedly for the benefit of our teeth. It is widely believed that adding fluoride to the drinking water will help to prevent dental caries (cavities). However, the 1999 Centers For Disease Control study widely cited as justification for the fluoridation of the water supply only looked at topical applications of fluoride in the form of toothpastes and dental fluoride treatments, not ingested fluoride.
The Green Party’s reasons for banning fluoride in tap water are mainly environmental, citing the fact that the fluoride chemicals put into our drinking water are actually toxic by-products scrubbed from the smokestacks of the phosphate mining industry. Also, 99% of this fluoridated water ends up being discharged back into the environment, because none of the processes used to treat sewage water can remove fluoride.
The environmental impact is extremely important, for sure, but I come at the issue from the perspective of how fluoridation immediately affects our health. In 2006, a distinguished panel appointed by the National Research Council of the National Academies published a 500 page report about the effects of excessive fluoride ingestion. Their conclusion was that the standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of 0.4 parts per million is unsafe and causing “increased risk of bone fractures, decreased thyroid function, lowered IQ, arthritic-like conditions, dental fluorosis and, possibly, osteosarcoma.” Toronto, as an example, currently fortifies their water to 0.6 ppm.
Ethically speaking, even if fluoridation of the water supply worked the way we’re told it does (preventing tooth decay), we’re being delivered unregulated, unapproved medication via the water supply without our consent. This is completely unethical. Never mind that the daily dose of medications delivered in this way can’t be regulated and the effects of fluoridation on the population are not being monitored — even more importantly, our rights are being infringed upon by our inability to opt out. Fluoride is actually quite difficult to remove from water, requiring expensive reverse osmosis filter systems or distillation. Yet the cost of these systems is not subsidized for those who don’t wish to ingest excessive fluoride.
Lets face it, the fluoridation of our water supply has always been a sneaky means for industry to get rid of a toxic by-product. It has never been about the health of the public’s teeth. Keep in mind that the effectiveness of fluoride in drinking water for preventing cavities has *never* been demonstrated, it has only been assumed effective given the effectiveness of topical fluoride treatments. Fluoride works to reduce tooth decay from the exterior of the tooth, not systemically from inside the body. It simply makes no sense to drink it. Fluoride toothpastes are cheap and widely available. This is a viable strategy for getting fluoride for dental health, if one chooses, not by exposing the rest of the body to the risks involved in fluoride ingestion.
Ironically, epidemiological evidence largely indicates water fluoridation to be detrimental to the health of the teeth. Excess fluoride in the diet can actually lead to a condition known as dental fluorosis, where brown discolouration of the teeth with white spotting occurs. A 2007 report by the CDC stated that 41 percent of children aged 12-15 now have some form of fluorosis, whereas 36 percent of children 16-19 have fluorosis. While this effect is largely cosmetic, it still brings the wisdom of fluoride supplementation into question.
Fluoride isn’t even an essential nutrient, according to the National Academy of Sciences, meaning no human disease, including tooth decay, can ever result from a fluoride deficiency. The human body needs no fluoride in order to function at its optimum. The same cannot be said for true nutrients like calcium or magnesium, for instance.
Take a look at the ample information on the Fluoride Action Network’s site to see the multiple, well-reasoned arguments against water fluoridation. We’ve been scammed on this from the very beginning. Hopefully the Green Party can make water fluoridation in Canada a thing of the past.
The Healthy Foodie is Doug DiPasquale, Holistic Nutritionist and trained chef, living in Toronto. You can email him with questions at dougthehealthyfoodie@gmail.com.
Source: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer for NaturalNews.com
Emerging research increasingly indicates that the U.S. water supply is widely contaminated with the endocrine disrupting chemical atrazine, but that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking almost no action on the threat.
Atrazine is an herbicide widely sprayed on corn fields in the Midwest, and one of the most widely detected groundwater contaminants in the country. According to an analysis of state and federal records by the Chicago Tribune, atrazine has been detected in the drinking water of a million people in 60 Illinois communities over the past four years. Yet the EPA requires testing for the chemical only four times a year, meaning that short-term spikes of the toxin go undetected — and unregulated.
Atrazine is an herbicide widely sprayed on corn fields in the Midwest, and one of the most widely detected groundwater contaminants in the country. Photo: Stephen & Claire Farnsworth
Special agreements between the EPA and Syngenta, the top manufacturer of the atrazine used in the U.S., have led to limited weekly or biweekly testing for the chemical by 130 water utilities in 10 different states. In 2008, nearly half of these communities in the Midwest alone experienced atrazine levels in their water above the federally imposed limit of 3 ppb (parts per billion) at least once. In Flora, Illinois, levels spiked as high as 30 ppb at one point.
In nine Midwestern communities, atrazine levels averaged higher than 3 ppb for the full year. Yet unless levels higher than 3 ppb are detected during one of the EPA’s four official yearly tests, the agency is helpless to take action. Likewise, contamination detected at other times need not, under the Safe Water Drinking Act, be reported to the public. This has led to a situation where citizens are not only unaware that their water is contaminated, they are never told that an inexpensive home filter could remove the toxin from their water.
Even the EPA’s “safe” level of 3 ppb, however, may be far too high; studies suggest that atrazine is biologically active in levels as low as 0.1 ppb, mimicking the action of hormones in the body. A recent meta-analysis of 125 studies by researchers from the University of South Florida found that the chemical causes developmental and reproductive defects in amphibians and fish. Another study, conducted by University of California-Berkeley researchers and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that small amounts of atrazine lowered testosterone levels and fertility in male frogs. Many of the frogs were chemically castrated or even turned into females.
Prenatal exposure to low levels of atrazine has also been shown to predispose rats to cancer as adults. And according to a 2009 study by researchers from Indiana University, human children conceived between the months of April and July, when atrazine levels in water are highest, were more likely to suffer from nine different kinds of birth defects than children conceived in other months.
“Atrazine … appears to have effects during critical stages of fetal development,” said Suzanne Fenton of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a former EPA researcher.
Atrazine has been banned in Europe for its contaminating effects on groundwater, and a handful of U.S. states prohibit spraying in certain contamination-prone areas. Yet the EPA’s most recent ruling on the chemical, issued in 2006, endorses its use. The Bush-era ruling was based on a 2003 review heavily funded by Syngenta. Bush administration officials are known to have met with officials from the company at least 50 times before issuing their ruling, including at two industry-dominated panels.
The EPA’s position has drawn the ire of states that have been stuck with regulating the atrazine problem on their own. In 2009, 44 water utilities in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi and Ohio sued the federal government to reimburse them for the costs of atrazine cleanup.
Since the 2003 EPA review, a further 100 studies have been published showing health risks from atrazine exposure. The Obama administration is now conducting a review of the EPA’s stance on the chemical.
Contamination of drinking water by a common herbicide poses a greater health threat than previously believed, according to a report issued by the nonprofit environmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Toxic Chemicals in Water. Image Watermarked with source
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitors average yearly levels of the popular herbicide atrazine in drinking water supplies, based on four tests per year. But the NRDC notes that levels of the toxin in drinking water regularly spike after heavy rains or during the spring when it is being widely applied, and that the four yearly testings may miss these events. The organization’s researchers found several such spikes in its own testing of water supplies in towns in agricultural regions of the South and Midwest.
“Our biggest concern is early-life-stage development,” said Jennifer Sass of the NRDC. “If there’s a disruption during that time, it becomes hard-wired into the system. These endocrine disrupters act in the body at extremely low levels. These spikes matter.”
Because atrazine is compatible with no-till farming, it is popular among farmers seeking to acquire a “green” label by reducing their carbon footprint. It is known to disrupt the hormonal system, and may cause cancers and menstrual problems in adults. It is considered especially dangerous to the developing reproductive systems of fetuses and children. The chemical has been shown to kill aquatic microorganisms and suppress the immune systems of larger animals, and it can cause limb or reproductive deformities in amphibians at levels as low as 0.1 parts per billion.
The EPA has set a threshold of 3 billion parts per billion for permissible atrazine levels, which the NRDC says would be too high even without periodic spikes. The NRDC analysis of 139 different municipal water systems found that 54 of them had a one-time spike higher than 3 parts per billion at some point in 2003 or 2004.
Home or municipal carbon filters can remove atrazine from water, but many municipal treatment plants do not use such procedures.
