Food-based zinc and selenium from MegaFood now available at NaturalNews Store

(NaturalNews) I first met the MegaFood company at a natural products expo two years ago. We sat down and had a conversation about “food-based nutrients” versus isolated or synthetic nutrients, and it turned into a fascinating hour that left me thinking we should be doing something with the MegaFood company at some point. They really impressed me as a company that knew what they were doing with food-based nutritional supplements. Fast forward two years: Today virtually everyone in the natural health community recognizes that synthetic vitamins are all but useless , which is why conventional medical researchers always choose them to run their bogus clinical trials. That’s how they come up with those whopper headlines like “Vitamin E might kill you!” Sure it will if you’re using the synthetic, chemically-produced form that you find in many of the conventional name-brand multivitamins (which are mostly made by pharmaceutical companies anyway). Synthetic vitamins are a scam. They don’t work, and in fact, there’s evidence that they may harm you. Food-based nutrients, on the other hand, can be lifesaving! That’s why people get such amazing results from a raw food diet , which is an extremely powerful cleansing and disease reversing diet. People now get it: Nutrients should come from food , not from a synthetic chemical laboratory. And ideally, we would get all our nutrients from food. But that’s where things have gone wrong in our modern system of agriculture… Why your food is nutrient deficient Trace minerals like zinc and selenium are absolutely crucial to the proper functioning of your body. And yet, nearly all trace minerals are widely depleted in the soils that grow our food. That’s because conventional agriculture extracts these minerals from the soils, year after year, while replenishing none of them. Conventional fertilizers contain virtually no trace minerals, so after just one decade of growing crops through conventional methods, the soils are depleted of crucial trace minerals that your body needs to function. Conventional agriculture, it turns out, is almost like a strip mining operation that pulls valuable minerals out of the soil and carries them away in the food, ultimately leaving the soils depleted. Most of the carrots, cabbage, zucchini, celery and even the fresh fruits you buy in grocery stores today are but pale shadows of real food because they lacks the micronutrient nutrition that real food used to have when it was grown in natural soil. Organic agriculture is much better because trace minerals are often put back into the soils. But even then, they’re often still not present in the densities necessary to replenish the missing trace minerals in the bodies of most consumers. The very best soil to grow food in, it turns out, is soil that was recently flooded . When rivers flood, they bring fresh nutrients to the surrounding farmlands, resulting in a burst of plant growth and nutrition. The very best food you can ever eat is wildcrafted food that was grown on soils that flooded last year . But in its shortsightedness and nutritional ignorance, modern man has dammed up the rivers to “prevent flooding.” So farmlands don’t flood anymore, and nutrients are never replenished. The fields become more and more nutrient depleted, year after year, until they reach the point of chemical subsistence where they are barely scratching out a poor crop yield grown with chemicals: Pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and GMO seeds. That’s what most people are eating these days: Death crops grown in dead soils that lack virtually all trace minerals. And so people are dying of cancer, and strokes, and diabetes and heart disease, all while remaining clueless that the food they’re eating each day isn’t really food at all. That corn on your plate is just the illusion of corn . From the point of view of nutrition, it might as well be just “candy corn.” Getting real nutrients from food Getting real nutrition requires growing your food in the presence of trace minerals . If you can find a local organic farmer who grows food organically — while adding trace minerals back into the soil — then you have a shot at lasting health. Minerals can be put back into the soils through the use of seaweed extracts or even ocean water concentrates! In fact, it was the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 that resulted in record crop production the following year. All that ocean water replenished the soils, causing crops to grow back with such strength and vitality that many didn’t even need pesticides to ward off insects. When plants have their own inner vitality, they automatically resists pests and disease and need no chemical applications whatsoever. (How do you think plants survive in the wild, outside the farms?) Unfortunately, finding trace minerals like selenium and zinc at high levels in real food is virtually impossible today. You almost have to grow your own food and feed your soil selenium and zinc in order to accomplish this. But who has time to grow all their own food? MegaFood grows real food with selenium and zinc MegaFood has done this work for you. They grow large batches of nutritional yeast (which, by itself, is a favorite superfood of raw food vegans) and then feed it key trace minerals such as selenium and zinc. (Nutritional yeast, by the way, is non-Candida yeast. It’s actually a superfood. I blend it into my smoothies on a daily basis. Raw foodies use it in salads and other foods.) This mineral-rich superfood is then dried and packaged for consumption in a plant-based tablet base. The result is a high-selenium superfood matrix that delivers bioavailable selenium to your body the way nature intended. Now, due to FDA regulations, we can’t talk about the health benefits of selenium without risking the wrath of armed FDA agents showing up at our doors. So you’ll have to search Google or NaturalNews yourself to learn more about selenium. But it’s one of the most important trace mineral nutrients of all for those who want to maintain healthy cellular function. Zinc is widely known to be a necessary nutrient for healthy immune function. Its many roles throughout the human body make it one of the most important trace minerals of all. But much like selenium, zinc is widely depleted in the soils that grow our food , too, leaving consumers depleted. The MegaFood company has solved this dilemma with a unique food-based supplement solution: They offer 100% whole food , soy-free, gluten-free, vegetarian dietary supplements that deliver zinc, selenium and other nutrients through real foods , not inorganic minerals. The base of these supplements is a blend of nutritional yeast, organic broccoli, organic spinach, organic ginger root, organic turmeric root and other organic ingredients. But the most important part is that the living nutritional yeast is fed the trace minerals selenium or zinc , and the living yeast incorporates those minerals and alters them into a “food format” that your body recognizes as immediately bioavailable. Starting today, we now carry MegaFood Selenium and MegaFood Zinc at the NaturalNews Store. Once again, the very large size of the NaturalNews reader base has allowed us to acquire a one-time shipment of these MegaFood supplements at an extraordinary price that you absolutely will not find anywhere else on the ‘net. Click here to see the special discount pricing for NaturalNews readers . Ingredients in MegaFood Selenium Selenium: 50 mcg Immune Health Blend; S. cerevisiae (source of naturally occurring beta glucans and glutathione), Organic Broccoli (natural source of sulforaphane): 121 mg Nourishing Whole Food Blend: Organic Spinach, Organic Ginger Root, Organic Tumeric Root, Organic Rosemary Leaf, Organic Oregano Leaf, Organic Parsley Leaf, Organic Rice Bran, Organic Carrot, Organic Beet Root Other Ingredients: Plant Cellulose, Vegetable Lubricant Ingredients for MegaFood Zinc Zinc: 22.5 mg Immune Health Blend: S. cerevisiae (source of naturally occurring beta glucans and glutathione), Organic Broccoli (natural source of sulforaphane) 21 mg Nourishing Whole Food Blend: Organic Spinach, Organic Beet Root, Organic Parsley, Organic Carrot, Organic Rice Bran 26 mg Other Ingredients: Plant Cellulose, Vegetable Lubricant Both of these MegaFood formulas are available at an incredible discount at the NaturalNews Store . For the record: Food versus supplements For the record, I’ll repeat what I’ve always said here on NaturalNews: Food is always the best source for your nutrition , and supplements are second. So if you can get zinc-rich food, or selenium-rich food from your own back yard, or from a local grower, get your trace minerals through those foods first! But if you’re eating food from the grocery stores or restaurants, then there’s little question that it’s deficient food and it almost certainly lacks the trace minerals your body craves. That’s where supplements come in. MegaFood is a unique solution because it provides nutrients in a food form , so it’s probably the closest you can get to a food source while still being available in a bottle. There are a couple of other food-based mineral tablets on the market, and I know of at least one other brand that’s also really good, but it’s also quite a bit more expensive than MegaFood. Perhaps we’ll review some of those other food-based nutrients in a future article here on NaturalNews. My only real complaint about MegaFood is that the bottles are much larger than they need to be in order to hold the number of food tablets they contain. The bottle could be half its current size and still hold all 60 tablets. (The bottle is glass, not plastic, which is good for protecting the quality of the tablets.) I’ll be mentioning this to the MegaFood company in the hope that they might reconsider either shrinking the bottle or increasing the number of tablets contained in each bottle. In the mean time, please enjoy our truly remarkable NaturalNews discount on their selenium and zinc formulas. We have these in stock right now and the prices are good while this supply lasts at the NaturalNews Store . And don’t forget to buy organic produce, too, in order to regularly get more trace minerals through your food!

GM cotton has not improved yields, but it has ruined sustainable agriculture

(NaturalNews) Remember the promises made by Monsanto that genetically-modified (GM) crops would bring higher yields and a better quality of life to the world? A recent study put forth by anthropologists from Washington University (WU) in St. Louis has revealed that Bt cotton, a type of GM cotton that produces its own insecticide, is causing significant problems for sustainable farm management, while offering little to no actual increases in yield. First introduced in India in 2002, Bt cotton has been the source of much controversy because it simply has not lived up to its promises. A recent report in the U.K. Independent , for instance, explains that at least 200,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the past decade because of losing everything to Bt cotton failures (http://www.naturalnews.com/030913_Monsanto_suicides.html). And now, further research is showing that the “frankencrops” are exacerbating other problems on farms, including the rise of damaging pests not warded off by the cotton’s built-in insecticide. “[W]e are seeing erosion of benefits (with Bt cotton) as non-target pest populations are booming,” says Glenn Stone, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences at WU, and author of a paper on the issue that appears in the journal World Development . “It has also brought a quickening of technological change and undecipherability, which is the real underlying problem.” Though Bt cotton appears to have brought about a slight increase in yields, based on certain statistics, Stone explains that yields were already on the rise prior to the introduction of Bt cotton. And the same problems that plagued agriculture prior to Bt cotton — many of which were caused by other unsustainable farming practices — have only become worse now that Bt cotton is the norm in many Indian villages. “I would love to see Bt seeds as a real solution to these farmers’ insect problems, as many have claimed, but this may be a bit naive,” he writes. “Each new technology — hybrids, then pesticide after pesticide — brought about short-term gains but further eroded farm management.” At least with conventional cotton varieties, farmers were able to save and reuse seeds, and operate independently from the control of powerful biotechnology giants like Monsanto. Now, those who have adopted Bt cotton are stuck in Monsanto’s clutches with little to no remedy. Sources for this story include: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/wuis-nfi020711.php

Monsanto connected to at least 200,000 suicides in India throughout past decade

(NaturalNews) When India’s seed economy was forced by the World Bank to become globalized in the late 1990s, economic conditions within the nation’s agricultural sector almost immediately took a nosedive for the worst. Much of the common Indian seed stock turned from saveable heirloom varieties to patented, genetically-modified (GM) varieties that expire after a single use and require the application of expensive and cumbersome pesticides in order to grow, which plunged many Indian farmers into abject poverty. And nearly 25 years later, the devastating effects of this corporate takeover of Indian agriculture has resulted in countless suicides, 200,000 of which have occurred just in the past ten years. According to a recent report in the U.K. Independent , many Indian farmers have lost their farms and land over the past several decades. One of the primary causes is failed investments by farmers that banked heavily on the success of newly-introduced GM crops. Multinational biotechnology giants like Monsanto and Syngenta promised farmers that GM crops would bring incredible yields at lower costs, and save the country from poverty. But in reality, many of the crops ended up failing, leaving millions of Indian farmers with absolutely nothing. “One farmer every 30 minutes (commits suicide) in India now, and sometimes three in one family,” explained Palagummi Sainath, an Indian journalist, to the U.K. Independent . Left with nowhere to turn and a complete loss of their livelihoods, many farmers are literally drinking their crop pesticides. And since many of these suicides go unreported or unnoticed, actual rates could be even higher than those reported. Years of drought and poor agricultural policy are also to blame for the widespread failure of agriculture in many Indian regions, but it all appears directly connected to the introduction of GMs in the 1990s. The U.K. Independent report states that the Indian government removed cotton subsidies in 1997, which resulted in a significant profit loss for many cotton farmers. But during that same year, GM varieties of cotton were also introduced, which many attribute directly to the crop failures that left the agriculture sector largely in ruin. “Every suicide can be linked to Monsanto,” explained scientist Vandana Shiva to the U.K. Independent . After subsidies were lifted, the cost of cotton production rose dramatically, especially when GM cotton was introduced because it required the application of expensive pesticides and herbicides. Natural varieties of cotton, on the other hand, do not necessarily require chemical applications to grow and flourish. And since farmers can save and reuse natural seeds every year, all is not lost during years of poorer yields because farmers can often try again the next year. But in the GM crop paradigm, the stakes are far higher. Farmers must borrow large sums of money to invest in GM technology. They do so based on promises that yields will increase and profits will soar. But when the promises fail to pan out and farmers are unable to keep paying for the expensive pesticides, they typically end up losing everything, including access to reusable heirloom seeds. So, many end up killing themselves because they literally have nothing left. The introduction of GM agriculture in India shifted the agricultural economy from one of biodiversity to monoculture, which is hugely significant in India’s agricultural failures. Rather than grow a variety of different heirloom crops that each respond differently to periodic changes in climate — which Indian farmers have always done prior to the introduction of GM crops — many farmers began to grow only one single GM variety. And when conditions turned out not to be favorable for that crop, both economically and in terms of climate conditions, disaster ensued. In fact, one statistic from a government report in India states that more than 90 percent of known suicide victims were in debt, which was largely brought about when farmers took the plunge into GM crops from their former methods. The globalization of agriculture in general has dramatically increased poverty in India, as crop subsidies in other nations began to affect Indian agriculture, driving down crop profits. Indian farmers have lost billions of dollars over the years from having to compete in the global agricultural marketplace rather than grow their own biodiverse crops to feed their own people. Global powers have literally robbed India of its self-reliance and self-sustenance in the name of “ending poverty” by thrusting upon them a system of monopolized agriculture controlled and operated by companies like Monsanto. And unless India somehow secedes from the global system of corruption, conditions will only become increasingly worse for its people. Sources for this story include: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/indias-hidden-climate-change-catastrophe-2173995.html

Obama’s Evergreen Revolution a ploy to push GMOs

(NaturalNews) The Obama Administration is working towards a second “Green Revolution” in agriculture known as the “Evergreen Revolution”. This sequel to prior agriculture industrialization efforts in India in the mid-20th century is being heralded by some as the next step in sustainable food production for the populations of the world. But a closer look reveals that one of the primary thrusts of the initiative is to push GMOs both in India and around the world. In a recent Joint Session of the Indian Parliament, President Obama briefly explained his plans in the new Evergreen Revolution, which include exporting India’s “hard-earned expertise” in agriculture, much of which was wrought during the first Green Revolution. But now, the goal is to allegedly improve upon these efforts and bring them to other developing areas like Africa that seem to be on the verge of an agricultural revolution. But the main problem with the efforts is that they include exporting the same genetic modification technology that was thrust on India, but this time to the nations of Africa. In fact, a series of leaked reports from Wikileaks recently revealed that Africa is on the U.S. radar for GMO expansion efforts, which highlights the real agenda (http://www.naturalnews.com/030683_GMOs_Africa.html). A recent Scientific American report on the subject explains that a former chief scientist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is pushing the Obama Administration to focus heavily on GMOs in its efforts with the program. Gale Buchanan is a huge supporter of GMOs and is quoted as saying that the only way the Evergreen Revolution is going to have a “real, revolutionary” impact is if it makes GMOs its top priority. And since Buchanan has already expressed support for the initiative as it is, it is likely that GMOs are already part of the plan. Sources for this story include: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/11/08/remarks-president-joint-session-indian-parliament-new-delhi-india http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=farming-the-future-gm-crops

Indian protestors take it to the streets in defiance of GM crops

(NaturalNews) Many Indian farmers and concerned citizens are taking the offensive against the attempted takeover of their agriculture system by multinational biotechnology giants like Monsanto. A group known as Kisan Swaraj Yatra (KSY) has been mobilizing and gathering support from farmers, and touring the country in protest of genetically-modified (GM) crops that are destroying the nation’s agriculture. Recently, more than 50 farmers from KSY stormed Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) to demand that it stop being “the agent of multinational corporation Monsanto” with its trial of Bt cotton, brinjal and corn. According to the group, these crops significantly disrupt the domestic seed market and cause a massive reduction in income levels for farmers. And the group is making several other stops across the nation to raise awareness and create further alliances. “The overwhelming message from farmers and non-farmers, rural and urban areas, is that such a large mobilization to save Indian agriculture is the crying need today,” explained KSY. “The Yatra is raising issues like support systems for farmers, remunerative prices, control over seeds, land and other resources, forced displacement and the vicious cycle of high-cost chemical agriculture.” One of the major problems with GM crop cultivation is that it puts farmers at the mercy of corporations like Monsanto. Instead of being self-sufficient and able to save domestic and heirloom seeds every year for subsequent plantings, farmers have to purchase GM seeds from the manufacturer every year. And GM crops also require heavy pesticide and herbicide applications that destroy the environment, among other things, even though their producers often claim otherwise. KSY has put together an online petition (http://www.kisanswaraj.in/petition2/) to demand that the Indian government put its people first and stand up against the GM takeover of Indian agriculture. Be sure to check out the petition and lend your support. http://www.kisanswaraj.in/petition2/ Sources for this story include: http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12618-farmers-marching-across-india-to-save-agriculture

Ginger effectively relieves even severe muscle pain, new research shows

(NaturalNews) Forget the aspirin and Big Pharma pills for your muscle pain. According to a new study just reported in the Journal of Pain , published by the American Pain Society, daily doses of raw or heat-treated ginger effectively relieve muscle aches and discomfort — and that includes even severe pain following strenuous exercise. For centuries, ginger has been used by practitioners of Chinese medicine and by traditional Indian and Japanese healers to treat a host of conditions including vomiting and nausea, chronic coughs, morning sickness, gastrointestinal complaints and migraine headaches. It has also been used to treat both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. However, Western medicine has only recently started to seriously study the medicinal qualities of ginger. So far, several studies have shown that ginger appears to have anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties similar to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, but without the side effects (which can include gastrointestinal bleeding and ulcers). In one study, taking a daily dose of ginger (30 to 500 mg.) for four to 36 weeks successfully reduced knee pain in people suffering from osteoarthritis. Now, in new research from the University of Georgia and Georgia College and State University (GCSU), scientists have found even more evidence that ginger is a potent muscle pain reliever. The scientists worked with seventy-four student volunteers who were divided into three groups. One group was given raw ginger, one group received heated ginger and the third group received a fake ginger placebo. Muscle pain was induced in the volunteers by having them perform 18 eccentric muscle exercises. Then the research subjects were tested on 11 consecutive days to see if those taking the ginger had reduced muscle aches and pains. And they did — dramatically. The results showed that both raw and heat-treated ginger lowered muscle pain intensity by 25 and 23 percent, respectively. More breaking ginger news: in a study just reported in the journal Pediatric Blood and Cancer , researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi have documented that ginger significantly reduced nausea and vomiting in children subjected to chemotherapy for cancer. In addition, new research published this month in the journal Molecular Vision suggests ginger may prevent or delay the development of cataracts in diabetics. For more information: http://ampainsoc.org/press/2010_jop/0915_b.htm http://www.naturalnews.com/025930_herbal_medicines_medicine.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20842754 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20806076 http://www.naturalnews.com/ginger.html

Scientists astounded: 83-year-old man lives without food, water

(NaturalNews) Scientists with India’s Defense Research and Development Organization claim they have observed 83-year-old yogi Prahlad Jani go without food or water for two weeks. Even more shockingly, Jani claims he has not eaten or drunk anything since some time during World War II. “I can’t recall exactly what it was,” he said. “It was such a long time ago.” In a 15-day study, Jani was kept under isolation in an Ahmedabad hospital while doctors monitored the function of his organs, brain, blood vessels, heart, lungs and memory. “[Jani's] only contact with any kind of fluid was during gargling and bathing periodically during the period,” said G. Ilavazahagan, director of India’s Defense Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences. ‘What is truly astonishing, and something we have no explanation for, is that he has not passed stools or urine. To my knowledge, that is medically unprecedented.’ Although results from more intensive DNA, hormone, enzyme and energy metabolism tests have yet to come back, all scans performed during the study came back normal. “The reports were all in the pre-determined safety range through the observation period,” said neurologist Sudhir Shah. “We still do not know how he survives.” Jani says he was blessed by a goddess at the age of 15. “Although I walk 100 or 200 kilometers in the jungle, I never sweat and don’t feel tired or sleepy,” he said. “I can meditate for three, eight or 12 hours — or even months.” Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association questioned the study’s findings, noting that his request to independently monitor the experiment was denied. “Dr Shah has been in charge of three similar investigations over the past ten years, and he has never allowed independent verification,” Edamaruku said. “This particular hospital, led by this particular doctor, keeps on making these claims without ever producing evidence or publishing research.” Starvation diets are known to produce dangerous and even fatal effects within days and should not be tried at home. Sources for this story include: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ce6e076d355a498ef621bad2bbef1a32.f1&show_article=1 ; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1274779/The-man-says-eaten-drunk-70-years-Why-eminent-doctors-taking-seriously.html?ito=feeds-newsxml.

Music benefits the brain, research reveals

(NaturalNews) Northwestern University scientists have pulled together a review of research into what music — specifically, learning to play music — does to humans. The result shows music training does far more than allow us to entertain ourselves and others by playing an instrument or singing. Instead, it actually changes our brains. The paper, just published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience , is a compilation of research findings from scientists all over the world who used all kinds of research methods. The bottom line to all these studies: musical training has a profound impact on other skills including speech and language, memory and attention, and even the ability to convey emotions vocally. So what is it that musical training does? According to the Northwestern scientists, the findings strongly indicate it adds new neural connections — and that primes the brain for other forms of human communication. In fact, actively working with musical sounds enhances neuroplasticity , the brain’s ability to adapt and change. “A musician’s brain selectively enhances information-bearing elements in sound. In a beautiful interrelationship between sensory and cognitive processes, the nervous system makes associations between complex sounds and what they mean,” Nina Kraus, lead author of the Nature paper and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, explained in a statement to the media. “The efficient sound-to-meaning connections are important not only for music but for other aspects of communication.” For example, researchers have found that musicians are better than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for a new language into words. Their brains also appear to be primed to comprehend speech in a noisy background. What’s more, children who have had music lessons tend to have a larger vocabulary and better reading ability than youngsters who haven’t had any musical training. And children with learning disabilities, who often have a hard time focusing when there’s a lot of background noise, may be especially helped by music lessons. “Music training seems to strengthen the same neural processes that often are deficient in individuals with developmental dyslexia or who have difficulty hearing speech in noise,” Dr. Kraus stated. The Northwestern researchers concluded their findings make a case for including music in school curriculums. “The effect of music training suggests that, akin to physical exercise and its impact on body fitness, music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness and thus requires society to re-examine the role of music in shaping individual development,” they wrote. In addition to musical training, listening to music has also been shown to have some remarkable beneficial effects on the body. For example, as NaturalNews has previously reported, Tel Aviv University scientists found that premature infants exposed to thirty minutes of Mozart’s music daily grew far more rapidly than premature babies not exposed to classical music (http://www.naturalnews.com/028011_music_premature_babies.html) and researchers at the University of Florence in Italy documented that listening to classical, Celtic or Indian (raga) music once a day for four weeks significantly reduced the blood pressure in people suffering from hypertension (http://www.naturalnews.com/023479_blood_pressure_hypertension.html). For more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20648064 http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/brainvolts/

Pharmaceutical drug contamination of waterways threatens life on our planet

(NaturalNews) The President’s Cancer Panel (PCP) recently released its yearly report to the President outlining the status of cancer in America. This year’s report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country (and the world). Many reports have recently appeared about pharmaceutical contamination of water supplies, rivers, lakes and other waterways, but spokespersons from the drug and chemical industries have denied that this pollution poses any risk whatsoever to the environment. But this report, issued directly from PCP, provides a stunning indictment of the dangers associated with pharmaceutical pollution. The executive summary of the PCP report includes the following statements: “[P]harmaceuticals have become a considerable source of environmental contamination. Drugs of all types enter the water supply when they are excreted or improperly disposed of; the health impact of long-term exposure to varying mixtures of these compounds is unknown.” It’s important to note that PCP is required by law to assess the National Cancer Program and offer a truthful evaluation of the various things it finds to be responsible for causing cancer. The panel is a division of the National Cancer Institute itself, so its findings hold fairly considerable weight in the scientific world (or they should, if the reaction wasn’t so politicized). The report itself is quite extensive, evaluating everything from the environmental and health impacts of drug and pesticide pollution to cell phone radiation and nuclear testing residue. But the section on pharmaceutical drugs is especially interesting when considering the fact that numerous reports have shown that drugs and drug residue that ends up in water supplies typically isn’t filtered out by municipal treatment plants. No laws exist to protect the public from pharmaceuticals Many chemicals are highly regulated because they are known to negatively affect human and environmental health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tasked with regulating exposure to these chemicals, but pharmaceuticals are not included in its regulatory scheme . Despite years of prodding by environmental scientists, the EPA has given very little attention to the dangers posed by widespread pharmaceutical contamination. According to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study conducted back in 2002 , antidepressants, blood pressure and diabetes medications, anticonvulsants, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy drugs, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, heart medications and even codeine are all showing up in the water supplies of American cities. This study was the first national-scale evaluation of pharmaceutical drug contamination in streams, and roughly 80 percent of the streams tested were found to be contaminated as well. In 2008, an AP investigation found that at least 46 million Americans are drinking water contaminated with trace amounts of pharmaceuticals. Even though every city tested has its water treated and “purified” prior to being delivered to the public, trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs are making their way through to the tap. (Since not all major metropolitan areas were tested, the number of people affected is likely far higher than what was reported by AP.) In spite of all this, water quality reports don’t disclose the levels of pharmaceuticals found in tap water. Since the EPA and FDA have failed to establish any proper guidelines for drug contamination in water, most people have no idea that their water contains a dangerous cocktail of prescription medications. Hospitals, consumers and drug companies are all responsible None of this is surprising if you consider that unused and expired drugs cannot be legally returned to the pharmacies where they were purchased. Many people just flush them down the toilet because the drug labels actually encourage patients to dispose of them this way (and they probably don’t know what else to do with them). People who take prescription and over-the-counter drugs will excrete them as well, contributing to the drug overload being found at wastewater treatment plants. (Drugs are not necessarily “broken down” by your digestive system.) It is also regular protocol for hospitals to flush millions of pounds of unused medications every year , a practice that contributes significantly to water contamination. And let’s not forget the drug companies that dump large amounts of their own pharmaceuticals into water supplies. The same AP investigation found that more than 270 million pounds of pharmaceutical compound residue is dumped every year into waterways nationwide, many of which serve as drinking water for millions of people. The U.S. isn’t the only place where Big Pharma is dumping its waste, either. In 2009, researchers found that India’s rivers are full of dangerous pharmaceuticals, too. One Indian river where 90 different pharmaceutical companies dump their waste tested positive for over 21 active drug ingredients. In one river alone, there was enough ciprofloxacin (a strong antibiotic) being dumped every day by drug companies to treat 90,000 people! (And scientists detected this in water that was supposedly purified by the drug companies before being released into the environment). The drug contamination levels found in India’s rivers were 150 times the detected levels found in the U.S. These findings prove that drug companies couldn’t care less how much drug residue they dump in water as long as they can get away with it. They don’t even believe that pharmaceutical contamination is a threat to the environment. “Based on what we now know, I would say we find there’s little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health,” explained microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, in a Dallas Morning News article about the AP investigation. This is similar to BP’s CEO saying, after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, that the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico was “tiny” compared to how big the ocean is. Studies show drug residue cocktails actually do cause harm Though the chemical and drug industries deny any danger from exposure to drug residue in the water, science (and common sense) says otherwise. A 2006 study conducted by researchers from the University of Insubria in Italy simulated drug-tainted water by creating a low-level mixture of various drug residues and testing it on embryonic cells. They discovered that, even at low doses, the drug residues actually stopped cells from reproducing. Even though current water contamination levels are measured in parts per million or parts per billion, there is no way to know just how much exposure people are actually experiencing. People drink contaminated water, shower in contaminated water and cook with contaminated water, so it’s illogical to suggest that there’s no harm being caused by widespread exposure, even at “low” doses, especially when the exposure is a combination of dozens of different drugs that have never been tested in combination. People are not the only beings that are affected by pharmaceutical contamination, either. The world’s aquatic ecosystems (and the plants and animals that belong to them) are all being negatively impacted. Drugs are being found in fish According to an MSNBC report back in 2009 , all kinds of drugs are being found in the bodies of fish near major U.S. cities. Researchers found drugs for high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression in the livers and tissue of fish. Researchers are in agreement that aquatic species of all types are being harmed by continuous exposure to water contaminated with pharmaceuticals. Even though wastewater is treated in the U.S. before entering waterways, most treatment facilities do not have the proper filtering technology to remove dangerous drug residues from wastewater before it gets dumped. Many fish are experiencing reproductive problems as a result of exposure, as is explained in the following report: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23504633/) Beyond having their sperm damaged, some fish are actually changing sexes. Males are becoming females and females are becoming males as a result of drug exposure in the water. Other water creatures are experiencing things like organ failure and the inability to grow. It makes a reasonable person ask “How long until these effects start to hit humans?” Or have they already? “We have no reason to think that this is a unique situation. We find pretty much anywhere we look, these compounds are ubiquitous,” explained Erik Orsak, an environmental contaminants specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in response to the findings. And it’s not just near American cities where fish are turning up with all kinds of drugs in their bodies. As of 2008, more than 100 different pharmaceutical compounds have been detected around the world, affecting fish and wildlife everywhere. These are chemicals that simply do not belong in our environment. And yet they are there, dumped into our waters by the pharmaceutical industry and its hospitals, pharmacies and consumers. Why we need more research on the toxicity of pharmaceutical contaminants Many animal studies have been or are being conducted on pharmaceutical exposure, and they are indicating that these drugs are causing widespread harm. But very few official human trials have been conducted, prompting many to push for increased efforts. If drug residue is building up in animals and wildlife, then of course it’s building up in humans as well, posing the risk of significant harm. Reproductive failure, thyroid dysfunction, cancer, osteoporosis — all of these diseases and more may be caused, at least in part, by prolonged exposure to low levels of all sorts of drugs in the water supply. Many states pushing for drug waste legislation Because the truth about drug contamination in water is no longer a secret, many states have begun enacting legislation to regulate drug disposal. Last August, Illinois passed the Safe Pharmaceuticals Disposal Act , which restricts hospitals from flushing drugs down the drain. California has a similar law in place, and New York is working on one as well, according to a recent report: (http://www.westfaironline.com/hudson-valley-biz/article/7668-drugs-down-the-drain.html) The same report indicates that there have been five bills introduced to regulate drugs at the federal level. While this addresses the hospital waste problem, there’s still the human and drug company waste problems. No matter how you look at it, pharmaceutical drugs are going to continue making their way into the water supplies because they will pass through the bodies of consumers first! Drug companies must be held responsible for their wastewater Since it’s already been revealed that drug companies are failing to properly treat their wastewater before dumping it into rivers (even though they claim to be treating it), U.S. regulatory agencies need to step up and correct the problem. Regular monitoring of wastewater contaminant levels is the only way to halt the chemical contamination of waterways. And if U.S. companies are polluting water supplies in other countries (such as India), they should be held accountable for their actions. There’s no excuse for U.S. companies to pollute anywhere in the world just because they’re operating outside domestic borders. Wastewater treatment plants should be retrofitted State and local legislators would do well to put forth their own legislation to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities so they can properly filter out pharmaceuticals (and dispose of them safely). Since there’s no way to stop human elimination of pharmaceuticals (apart from slowly educating the masses to stop swallowing dangerous pharmaceuticals), municipalities need to do their part to prevent these dangerous toxins from getting into water supplies in the first place. Together, these measures would help to drastically reduce the amount of pharmaceutical waste entering our environment. It’s the environment, stupid! The careless disposal of toxic pharmaceuticals is proving to be highly destructive, despite reassurances by some that it’s not that big of a deal. The health of the planet and all of its amazing biodiversity is now threatened by the steady poisoning of toxic chemical pharmaceuticals. And it’s not just pharmaceuticals, either. Chemical byproducts and waste from many different industries are polluting our environment at unprecedented rates. Mercury (from dental fillings), fluoride (dripped into the public water supply on purpose , if you can believe that!), and all sorts of other chemicals and heavy metals are showing up in food, water and the global environment. Haven’t we poisoned our planet enough already? Plants, animals and even humans can only take so much of this. That’s why we need to keep fighting against the corporations that are causing this harm and force them to stop destroying the world in which we hope to raise our children. After all, if we keep poisoning the planet at this rate, there won’t be much left to offer future generations except a toxic stew of patent-protected chemicals that all the corporations pretend pose no problem at all.

17 big questions about the handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

(NaturalNews) What’s clear about the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is that the independent journalists are doing a better job of asking the really tough questions than the mainstream media. Sure, CNN, Fox and others are bringing some attention to the matter, and they’ve done some solid reporting on it, but they haven’t yet found a way to ask the deeper questions like why the U.S. government seems to be colluding with BP to cover up the truth about the spill. Just the other day, I found an article entitled, “16 Burning Questions About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill” on the TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com site (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/16-burning-questions-about-the-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-that-we-deserve-some-answers-to). It was a really insightful collection of important questions, so I’ve repeated them below. The author of these questions wasn’t mentioned on the page, so I regret I cannot properly attribute the list, but I do think they’re worth reviewing, so I’ve included my own commentary and an extra question below. Here are the 16 questions: #1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used “as needed” by state governors. So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly? Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public? Mike’s comment: Good question. Much of the response activity to the spill seems to be about controlling the public’s perception and limiting media access to the spill site rather than actually cleaning up the mess. #2) Barack Obama has also announced the creation of a “Gulf recovery czar” who will be in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico region following the oil spill. So is appointing a “czar” Obama’s idea of taking charge of a situation? #3) Because it is so incredibly toxic, the UK’s Marine Management Organization has completely banned Corexit 9500, so if there was a major oil spill in the UK’s North Sea, BP would not be able to use it. So why is BP being allowed to use Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico? Mike’s answer: Because Corexit kills sea animals and makes them sink and disappear rather than allowing them to wash up on shore where the emotional outcry would be even worse than it is already. #4) It is being reported that 2.61 parts per million of Corexit 9500 (mixed with oil at a ratio of 1:1o) is lethal to 50% of fish exposed to it within 96 hours. That means that 1 gallon of Corexit 9500/oil mixture is capable of rendering 383,141 gallons of water highly toxic to fish. So why was BP allowed to dump 1,021,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 into the Gulf of Mexico, and why aren’t they being stopped from dumping another 805,000 gallons of these dispersants that they have on order into the Gulf? Mike’s answer: Sadly, BP is running the show in the Gulf, not the government! The U.S. government has sold out to private corporations who now think they own the gulf and can run operations there however they see fit. #5) If these dispersants are so incredibly toxic to fish, what are they going to do to crops? What are they going to do to people? Mike’s answer: They’re obviously going to poison the entire Gulf Coast region if hurricanes whip up these chemicals and deposit them on land. We could be looking at a complete wipeout of the Florida citrus industry, for example, if all the worst conditions converge. #6) If the smell of the oil on some Gulf beaches is already so strong that it burns your nostrils, then what in the world is this oil doing to wildlife that encounter it? #7) Is it a bad sign that birds from the Gulf region are flocking north by the thousands? Mike answer: Remember the Tsunami in the Indian ocean a few years back? The animals fled first, while the clueless people stayed behind and got clobbered by the deadly wave. I think a similar thing could be happening in the Gulf. All it takes is one hurricane to turn the entire region into a toxic stew of chemical poison. #8) Why is BP being allowed to use private security contractors to keep the American people away from the oil cleanup sites? Mike’s answer: Yes, this is the real question. BP is running security in the Gulf the same way Halliburton runs security in the Middle East. The corporate contractors are now the police force in the area, and they’re running the Gulf as if they owned it! This is a clear indication that the corporations have taken over our government. #9) Why is BP openly attempting to manipulate the search results on sites like Google and Yahoo? #10) Why has the FAA shut down the airspace above the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? What don’t they want the American people to see? Mike’s answer: There are lots of answer to this one: The feds probably don’t want people in small airplanes taking aerial photos and posting them online (because the Obama administration is working overtime to cover up the truth here, much like the Bush administration did with the flag-draped coffins coming home from war in the Middle East). It could also be that they are planning something really crazy like a deep ocean nuke to collapse the well, and they don’t want civilians falling out of the sky when the mushroom cloud appears. #11) Senator Bill Nelson of Florida says there are reports that there are additional ruptures in the sea floor from which oil is leaking. If there are quite a few of these additional ruptures, then how in the world does BP expect to completely stop this oil leak? Mike’s answer: BP actually doesn’t expect to stop this leak anytime soon. They are clearly in full-on spin mode, just trying to deny the truth and spin the words to buy themselves more time to offload stock shares before the whole thing comes tumbling down. #12) Why are scientists finding concentrations of methane at up to 10,000 times normal background levels in Gulf waters? Mike’s answer: Because BP broke the ocean floor, and now huge volumes of gas hydrates (which contain methane) are bubbling up from places that were previously trapped safely underground. #13) At some testing stations in the Gulf of Mexico, levels of benzene have been detected at over 3000 parts per billion, and levels of hydrogen sulfide have been detected as high as 1192 parts per billion. Considering that these levels would be highly toxic to humans, why hasn’t the general public been warned? #14) Why are so many Gulf oil spill disaster workers showing up at local hospitals complaining of a “mysterious illness”? Mike’s answer: This is going to be the Gulf War Syndrome of the Gulf Coast. Or the 9/11 asbestos question affecting firefighters. There will be a wave of toxic side effects from the use of chemicals in the Gulf, and both BP and the federal government will predictably deny any link between the chemicals and the health effects for years to come. #15) If “70% or 80%” of the protective booms are doing absolutely nothing at all to stop the oil, then what is going to stop the millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf from eventually reaching shore? Mike’s answer: Nothing, of course. The oil is going to reach the shore, and there’s nothing BP or the feds can do to stop in. In fact, it seems as if they are trying to interfere with the cleanup by halting the barges that were supposed to be vacuuming oil just off the beaches. #16) It is being reported that the deep sea oil plumes are creating huge “dead zones” where all creatures are dying as they are deprived of oxygen. If this oil spill continues to grow could the vast majority of the Gulf of Mexico become one gigantic “dead zone”? Mike’s answer: Indeed, that is precisely what looks likely to happen. The Gulf of Mexico could become a massive dead zone, adding to the long list of humanity’s crimes against the planet. See my related CounterThink cartoon at: http://www.naturalnews.com/029015_atrocities_nature.html I’ve also added one more question of my own: #17) Why is our government colluding with BP to cover up the truth about the spill? Remember the BP press conferences on cable news? A U.S. Coast Guard representative was standing right there beside the BP spokesperson, almost as if she were a subordinate of BP. This is insane! If anything, the US Coast Guard should be telling BP what to do, not the other way around. And why is the US Coast Guard restricting reporters’ access to the spill areas, threatening them with arrest if they “trespass.” Trespass into PUBLIC waters? Doesn’t anybody realize that BP does not own the Gulf of Mexico and if we want to take our boats out into the Gulf to get some video of what’s really happening there, that’s our right! But the U.S. government is now working for BP, it seems, and they’re trying to protect BP’s image by restricting the freedoms of ordinary Americans. Sound familiar? That’s why I think this Gulf of Mexico disaster is another 9/11 reactionary freedom squasher in the works. Just wait… you’ll see what kind of freedom-destroying ideas are put forth by our lawmakers in response to this catastrophe. When it’s all said and done, it won’t only be British Petroleum that loses; it will be all of us. The Corporatocracy and government collusion What we’re really witnessing here with the BP disaster is our own government colluding with the powerful corporatocracy to cover up the truth all while making it worse by interfering with legitimate cleanup efforts. It’s almost as if the federal government were actively working to worsen the problem and expand the impact of the disaster. But that brings up the question: Why? Why would our own government worsen a catastrophe? The answer, of course, is right in front of you. Just visit ground zero in New York City and remind yourself of all the various ways the U.S. government expanded its power following the collapse of the twin towers. “Never waste a good crisis” is the mantra of Big Government today, and the easiest way to steal even more power away from the people is to turn a small disaster into a big disaster, then leap in with a “government solution” that enacts some large, oppressive new act that never would have been possible before the disaster. So what kind of oppressive new laws does the Obama administration want to put in place in response to this disaster? Perhaps government control over all oceans, or government control over all seafood. Maybe they want to outlaw oil over the next 25 years and force everybody to transition to some other form of energy (which may not actually be a bad idea from an ecological perspective, but at what price to freedom?). There are a thousand other conspiracy theories that try to guess at what the government’s true agenda might be in this moment. While it’s hard to say which of them (if any) might be true, one thing is crystal clear: The government does not seem interested in solving the problem in the Gulf of Mexico. It is covering up the truth, threatening mainstream journalists who try to photograph the region, restricting air travel over the well site, restricting boat travel anywhere near the spill, and basically lying to the public on a daily basis about what’s really happening there. That alone should make any thinking person suspicious. If the situation were really under control, why would they have to lie about it? US government poisons its own citizens There is precedent for believing that the U.S. government might try to poison its own citizens in order to achieve a political goal. During Prohibition, the U.S. government actually released poisoned alcohol in order to harm (or kill) those who were defying the law and drinking liquor. That story is published today here on NaturalNews.com. Read it to learn more about what our own government may be capable of doing when it wishes to exercise power of the People.

« Previous Page — Next Page »