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The Health Hazards of Drinking Coca-Cola and other Soft Drinks

<www.NewsTarget.com>
Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Source: http://www.newstarget.com/004416.html

The health effects of drinking soda - quotes from the experts
This is a compilation of quotes about the destructive health effects of soft
drinks from some of the leading authors on health, nutrition and junk food.
This full list, and much more information, is included in The Five Soft
Drink Monsters downloadable ebook.

Michael Murray ND and Joseph Pizzorno ND
Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, Revised Second Edition

"The allergenicity of penicillin in the general population is thought to be
at least ten percent. Nearly 25 percent of these individuals will display
hives, angioedema, or anaphylaxis upon ingestion of penicillinS. hives and
anaphylactic symptoms have been traced to penicillin in milk, soft drinks,
and frozen dinners."

"Many general dietary factors have been suggested as a cause of
osteoporosis, including: low calcium-high phosphorus intake, high-protein
diet, high-acid-ash diet, high salt intake, and trace mineral deficiencies.
It appears that increased soft drink consumption is a major factor that
contributes to osteoporosis. A deficiency of vitamin K leads to impaired
mineralization of bone. Boron deficiency may contribute greatly to
osteoporosis as well as to menopausal symptoms."

"Soft drinks have long been suspected of leading to lower calcium levels
and higher phosphate levels in the blood. When phosphate levels are high and
calcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones. The phosphate
content of soft drinks like Coca -Cola and Pepsi is very high, and they
contain virtually no calcium."

"The United States ranks first among countries in soft drink consumption.
The per-capita consumption of soft drinks is in excess of 150 quarts per
year, or about three quarts per week."

"Soft drink consumption in children poses a significant risk factor for
impaired calcification of growing bones."

"Of the fifty-seven children who had low blood calcium levels, thirty-eight
(66.7 percent) drank more than four bottles (12 to 16 ounces per bottle) of
soft drinks per week, but only forty-eight (28 percent) of the 171 children
with normal serum calcium levels consumed as much soft drink S These results
more than support the contention that soft drink consumption leads to lower
calcium levels in children. This situation that ultimately leads to poor
bone mineralization, which explains the greater risk of broken bones in
children who consume soft drinks."

"Soft drink consumption may be a major factor for osteoporosis as they are
high in phosphates but contain virtually no calcium. This leads to lower
calcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood. The United States
ranks first among countries for soft drink consumption with a per capita
consumption of approximately 15 ounces a day."

James A Howenstine M.D.
A Physician's Guide to Natural Health Products That Work

"In an interesting experiment the sugar from one soft drink was able to
damage the white blood cells' ability to ingest and kill gonococcal bacteria
for seven hours."

"Soft drinks also contain large quantities of phosphorus, which when
excreted pulls calcium out of the bones. Heavy users of soft drinks will
have osteoporosis along with their damaged arteries."

James Duke PhD
The Green Pharmacy : The Ultimate Compendium Of Natural Remedies From The World's Foremost Authority On Healing Herbs

"And watch out for cola soft drinks, which are very high in bone-dissolving
phosphorus."

Marion Nestle
Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition (see related ebook
on nutrition) and Health (California Studies in Food and Culture)

"Soft drinks are the single greatest source of caffeine in children's
diets; a 12-ounce can of cola contains about 45 milligrams but the amounts
in more potent soft drinks can exceed 100 milligrams< a level approaching
that found in coffee."

"Soft drinks have replaced milk in the diets of many American children as
well as adults. School purchases reflect such trends. From 1985 to 1997,
school districts decreased the amounts of milk they bought by nearly 30% and
increased their purchases of carbonated sodas."

"The relationship between soft drink consumption and body weight is so
strong that researchers calculate that for each additional soda consumed,
the risk of obesity increases 1.6 times."

"Adolescents who consume soft drinks display a risk of bone fractures three
to four-fold higher than those who do not."

"Sugar and acid in soft drinks so easily dissolve tooth enamel."

"Americans drink 13.15 billion gallons of carbonated drinks every year."

William Duffy
The doctor speaking in these dialogs is, Dr. McCay, the nutritionist at the
Naval Medical Research Institute.

"I was amazed to learn," he testified, "that the beverage contained
substantial amounts of phosphoric acid. . . . At the Naval Medical Research
Institute, we put human teeth in a cola beverage and found they softened and
started to dissolve within a short periodS The acidity of cola beverages ...
is about the same as vinegar. The sugar content masks the acidity, and
children little realize they are drinking this strange mixture of phosphoric
acid, sugar, caffeine, coloring, and flavoring matter."

Carol Simontacchi
The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children

"One liter of an aspartame-sweetened beverage can produce about fifty-six
milligrams of methanol. When several of these beverages are consumed in a
short period of time (one day, perhaps), as much as two hundred fifty
milligrams of methanol are dumped into the bloodstream, or thirty-two times
the EPA limit."

"What may happen, in the face of day-to-day, continuously high levels of
sodium in the diet and the bloodstream, is that we experience a type of
acute hypernatremia its integrity, but enough to keep our sodium potassium pump slightly
dysregulated and throw off the electrical system of the brainS. Americans
drink soft drinks that are often loaded with more sodium and which further
unbalance the mineral stores."

Greg Critser
Fat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World

"A joint study by Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital
researchers in February 2001 concluded that such excess liquid calories
inhibited the ability of older children to compensate at mealtime, leading
to caloric imbalance and, in time, obesity."

"One extra soft drink a day gave a child a 60 percent greater chance of
becoming obese. One could even link specific amounts of soda to specific
amounts of weight gain. Each daily drink added .18 points to a child's body
mass index (BMI). This, the researchers noted, was regardless of what else
they ate or how much they exercised. "Consumption of sugar [high fructose
corn syrup]-sweetened drinks," they concluded, "is associated with obesity
in children."

Samuel S. Epstein MD
The Safe Shopper's Bible : A Consumer's Guide to Nontoxic Household Products

"Saccharin is a 100-year-old non-nutritive, non-caloric sweetening agentS
its use has exploded over the last twenty years as a staple of the diet food
and drink craze. Its major current consumption is in diet pop by teenagers,
and not by diabetics and the obese. The public now firmly believes that
foods containing saccharin are effective in weight control, and has been
persuaded by the soft drink industry (through the Calorie Control Council)
that these benefits outweigh any possible health risks."

"More than a dozen animal tests over the last thirty years have
demonstrated the carcinogenic effects of saccharin in the bladder and other
sites, particularly female reproductive organs, and in some instances at
doses as low as the equivalent of one to two bottles of diet pop daily."

"The public board of inquiry concluded that experimental data "¹Sdo not
rule out an oncogenic effect of aspartame, and that, to the contrary, they
appear to suggest the possibility that aspartame, at least when administered
in the 'huge' quantities employed in the studies, may contribute to the
development of brain tumors.¹" Until these controversial findings on brain
cancer in experimental animals have been resolved, use this product
sparingly, if at all."

"PET bottling and packaging: Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is used
extensively in soft drink containers. PET bottles can release small amounts
of dimethyl terephthalate into foods and beverages. Although the National
Cancer Institute claims that dimethyl terephthalate is noncarcinogenic,
these results have been questioned. Some experts believe this compound to be
carcinogenic."

Neal Barnard MD
Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight: : The Negative Calorie Effect

"Another advantage of avoiding sodas is that you will avoid the caffeine
that is in many of them. Caffeine is a weak diuretic that causes calcium
loss via the kidneys."

Dr. Earl Mindell
Earl Mindell's New Vitamin Bible

"Recent research has linked soft drinks with childhood obesity< and an
estimated 200 school districts nationwide have contracts with soft drink
companies that give them exclusive rights to sell their products in
schools."

"Saccharin is a noncaloric petroleum derivative estimated to be three
hundred to five hundred times sweeter than sugarS It's used in diet soft
drinksS Studies done in the 1970s linked saccharin ingestion to bladder
cancer in laboratory animals"

"Children who drink large quantities of diet sodas containing aspartame are
particularly vulnerable to its dangerous side effects."

"Aspartame contains methyl or wood alcohol, which can affect fetal brain
development."

"Twenty-one percent of the sugar in the American diet comes from soft
drinks! That's more than just an unhealthy consumption of empty calories. It
is a dangerous overload of caffeine and potentially hazardous,
nutrient-depleting additives."

"Soft drinks contain large amounts of phosphorus, which can throw off the
body's calcium/phosphorus ratio (twice as much calcium as phosphorus),
decreasing calcium as well as reducing your body's ability to use it."

"For anyone over age 40, soft drinks can be especially hazardous because
the kidneys are less able to excrete excess phosphorus, causing depletion of
vital calcium."

"Heavy soft drink consumption can interfere with your body's metabolization
of iron and diminish nerve impulse transmission."

"Cola drinks can interact adversely with antacids, possibly causing
constipation, calcium loss, hypertension, nausea, vomiting, headaches, and
kidney damage."

"Soft drinks can decrease the antibacterial action of penicillin and
ampicillin."

"Diet sodas that are low in calories are high in sodium. Too much salt in
the diet may cause more calcium to be excreted in the urine and increase the
risk of osteoporosis."

"Excessive consumption of soft drinks, which are high in phosphorus, can
also deplete you of calcium and increase your chances of osteoporosis."

Jean Carper
Food: Your Miracle Medicine : How Food Can Prevent and Cure over 100
Symptoms and Problems

"Tests at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine by Roland R.
Griffiths, MD, show caffeine withdrawal can strike people who drink a single
cup of strongly brewed coffee or drink caffeinated soft drinks everyday.
Further, Dr. Griffiths discovered that caffeine-withdrawal symptoms include
not only headache, but also fatigue, mild depression, muscle pain and
stiffness, flu-like feelings, nausea and vomiting."

"Those consuming at least one cup of a caffeine-containing beverage per
day, such as coffee, tea or soft drinks, were more prone to PMS. And the
more caffeine they consumed, the more severe their PMS symptoms."

Elson M Haas MD
The Detox Diet: A How-To & When-To Guide for Cleansing the Body

"Phosphorus is found in most foods but soda pops, diet popsS contain
especially high amounts. The ideal dietary phosphorus-calcium ratio is about
1:1. The ratio in the average American diet is often greater than 2:1 and
sometimes even 4:1 or 5:1. At those levels, excess calcium is removed from
bone and eliminated, blood levels are reduced, and there is bone
demineralization. A diet high in phosphorus and low in calcium has been
shown to cause bone loss and increase tissue calcification."

"Tooth loss, periodontal disease, and gingivitis can be problems,
especially with a high phosphorus intake, particularly from soft drinks. All
kinds of bone problems can occur with prolonged calcium deficiency, which
causes a decrease in bone mass. Rickets in children, osteomalacia (decreased
bone calcium) in adults, and osteoporosis (porous and fragile bones) can
occur when calcium is withdrawn from bones faster than it is deposited.
Fractures are more common with osteoporosis the United States are related to this prevalent nutritional deficiency
disease"

"High dietary phosphorus, as is found in a diet with meats, soft drinks,
and other convenience foods, can readily affect calcium metabolism.
Potential calcium deficiency symptoms may be more likely when the phosphorus
intake is very high. A low calcium-to-phosphorus ratio in the diet increases
the incidence of hypertension and the risk of colon-rectal cancer."

Barnet Meltzer MD
Food Swings: Make the Life-Changing Connection Between the Foods You Eat and Your Emotional Health and Well-Being

"But soft drinks are far from soft. High in phosphorous and phosphoric
acid, they infiltrate bodily fluids and corrode stomach linings, upset the
alkaline-acid balance of the kidneys, and eat away at your liver like
Hannibal Lecter. Soft drinks also contain hidden caffeine, refined sugar,
and artificial chemicals."

Ralph T Golan ND
Optimal Wellness

"Avoid processed foods and cola soft drinks; their phosphates can also
cause calcium loss and excretion."

Dr. Gary Null
"Natural Living" radio show
Gary Null's Power Aging

"A study on the relationship between caffeine and fertility found thatS
just one caffeinated soft drink per day was associated with a reduced
monthly chance of conception of 50 percent."

"It should be noted here that soft drinks are the number one source of
phosphorus in the American diet todayS According to Dr. Steenblock, excess
phosphorus is one of the major contributing factors to the development of
osteoarthritis."

James A May
United American Industries Inc.

"Absorption in primates is hastened considerably if the methanol is
ingested as free methanol as it occurs in soft drinks after the
decomposition of aspartame during storage or in other foods after being
heated. Regardless of whether the aspartame-derived methanol exists in food
in its free form or still esterified to phenylalanine, 10 percent of the
weight of aspartame intake of an individual will be absorbed by the
bloodstream as methanol within hours after consumption."

Marcia Zimmerman CN
The A.D.D. Nutrition Solution : A Drug-Free 30 Day Plan

"Sodium benzoate Sodium benzoate is used as a preservative (microbial
control) in foods, including soft drinks, fruit juices, margarine,
confections, pickles, and jams. Sodium preservatives add sodium to the diet
and reduce the availability of potassium. Some reported reactions to sodium
benzoate include recurring urticaria (rash), asthma, and eczema."

Overview:

The health effects of soft drinks - quotes from the experts

Source: http://www.newstarget.com/004416.html

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Learn How Hospitals Systematically Harm People
Use of toxic chemicals, very unhealthy food, supervirus, bad air, contaminations, etc.

Visiting the hospital is supposed to heal people, but it's hard to get better in a place that uses toxic chemicals and serves processed food. Is change on the way?

By Kim Ridley, Ode The minute you're admitted into the hospital, you confront a disturbing paradox: Most hospitals aren't particularly healthy places. As a patient, you're likely to encounter toxic chemicals, eat lousy food, breathe unhealthy air and suffer stress triggered by an often-dismal and alienating environment. Even worse, you may find yourself at the mercy of drug-resistant "super bugs" or overworked staff members who make mistakes -- all in a place that's supposed to help you heal. It's enough to make you sick. And sometimes it does. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 2 million people a year contract infections in hospitals, and nearly 100,000 are expected to die from them this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although such statistics are deeply troubling, hospitals around the world also contribute to a subtler but equally insidious threat: They expose patients and staff to a host of substances and practises that can harm their health. For example, hospitals use cleaners and disinfectants containing chemicals that can trigger asthma and other problems. A major study by Spanish researchers published in The Lancet last July hints at the extent of the problem. The study found nurses twice as likely as workers in other fields to develop asthma on the job, due to chemical exposure. Needless to say, patients breathe the same air as the nurses. Fumes from disinfectants and other cleaners as well as pesticides contribute to indoor air pollution, a particular threat to patients with weakened immune and respiratory systems. These chemicals can also irritate the eyes, nose and throat, and trigger symptoms ranging from headaches to nausea to loss of coordination. Another problem, perhaps the most obvious, is hospital food. Not only unappetizing, it was probably produced with pesticides, artificial preservatives, hormones and unnecessary antibiotics. To make matters worse, the usual alternative to a bland hospital meal comes from the fast-food joints encouraged to operate in many hospital lobbies. These sorts of things send people like Gary Cohen through the roof. "About 30 hospitals have McDonald's restaurants in their lobbies," says Cohen, co-founder of Health Care Without Harm, an international organization that pushes hospitals to make changes that support the health of their patients, workers and communities. "Here we are with 60 million Americans who are obese and 120 million who are overweight and we're feeding people in hospitals food that contributes to obesity. Stuff like that just amazes me." Many hospitals fail to recognize how their everyday choices, involving everything from food to chemicals to their physical and emotional environments, affect the health of their patients. Until recently, that is. Change is afoot in some of the most unlikely places. Little more than a decade ago, most hospital administrators thought burning medical waste was the safest way to protect patients and communities from infectious disease. In 1995, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a wake-up call: Medical waste incineration had been found to be a leading source of dioxins, arguably the deadliest carcinogen. "It was incredible that the very institutions devoted to healing people were actually poisoning them," says Gary Cohen. In the years since the report was published, more than 5,000 medical-waste incinerators have been closed in the U.S., as have scores more in Europe and elsewhere. Although the problem hasn't gone away (dioxins are found in everyone, including newborns), closing medical-waste incinerators was the first step for many hospitals toward beginning to examine healthier ways of caring for their patients and communities. When Kathy Gerwig, vice-president for workplace safety at the Kaiser Permanente health-care network in the U.S., learned that burning the vast amounts of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) used in hospitals produces dioxins, she and her colleagues promptly started looking for alternatives. They first reduced hospital waste and switched from vinyl to nitrile exam gloves. "That was a success because we learned something very important," Gerwig says. "Changes we initiated for environmental reasons often had other advantages." It turns out that PVC intravenous bags and tubing also contain the phthalate DEHP, which can leach out of the devices and directly into the bodies of patients receiving medications and blood transfusions. Animal studies have linked this industrial chemical to birth defects, cancer and reproductive disorders, and the European Union has banned it from children's toys, cosmetics and personal-care products. "We've known for more than 30 years that DEHP leaks out of the PVC devices in hospitals," says Gavin ten Tusscher, consulting pediatrician at the Westfriesgasthuis in the Netherlands and a researcher who has done groundbreaking work on dioxins in children. "We know that DEHP goes directly into newborn babies who have IV lines and receive blood transfusions -- and we can also measure exposure." Until a few years ago, no alternatives existed, but that's no longer the case. Several manufacturers including Baxter and Hospira make PVC-free intravenous supplies, which are becoming more available. The Westfriesgasthuis and Kaiser Permanente -- the largest non-profit health-maintenance organization (HMO) in the U.S. -- are among scores of hospitals that are replacing supplies made with PVC with safer alternatives. "There is a steady stream of safer products becoming available for almost everything in the hospital setting," says Ten Tusscher. "Now, it's a matter of mindset. It's up to hospitals to make the choices." So why don't they? Besides the oft-cited element of cost, hospitals frequently lack current information or the facts may simply not be available. "One of the most difficult tasks is to identify toxic components of products and materials," says Kathy Gerwig of Kaiser Permanente. "Without labelling or complete disclosure about product content, it's hard to determine the potential for exposure." In April 2007, the European Parliament approved new regulations that require manufacturers to label medical devices containing phthalates and other materials suspected of being carcinogenic, mutagenic or harmful to reproduction. No restrictions like this exist in the U.S. The lack of effective laws, education and awareness may help explain why many hospitals still use a troubling number of toxic chemicals even though alternatives are widely available. In a national survey of 22 U.S. hospitals published in 2003, Health Care Without Harm found that every hospital used chemical pesticides and 36 percent used products no longer registered for use by the EPA. Pesticides can worsen allergies, chemical sensitivities and asthma, affect the nervous, reproductive and immune systems and cause cancer. In hospitals, a majority of the patient population is at particular risk from the possible health effects of pesticides: the elderly, chronically ill and chemically sensitive, along with children and pregnant women. Perhaps the most outrageous missed opportunity for healing in the typical hospital turns up on patients' food trays. It has long been known that good nutrition speeds healing, yet many hospitals serve industrially grown processed foods -- typically lower in nutrients and higher in chemicals than sustainably produced meats, fruits and vegetables. Numerous studies suggest industrial agriculture's reliance on artificial fertilizer is dramatically depleting soil minerals, and the results are showing up in our produce. Researchers have found, for example, that since 1985, mineral and vitamin levels in potatoes have plummeted 70 percent, beans 60 percent and apples 80 percent, according to studies cited in the UK newsletter What Doctors Don't Tell You. How hospital food is handled can further reduce its nutritional value. According to a study published in the Journal of Food Service in October 2006, the common practise of overheating hospital food served to patients can reduce levels of Vitamin C, an important marker of nutritional content, by up to 86 percent. So what does a healing hospital look and feel like? Hospitals in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere are pursuing answers, sometimes from the ground up. Among them is Clinique Champeau, a 116-bed private hospital in Béziers, France. One of the first things Director Olivier Toma noticed when he joined the hospital after a career as an hotelier was the condition of his employees' hands. "I was scandalized to see the hands of some of the nurses and people who clean in such a pitiful state," Toma says. Toma replaced toxic cleaners with safer alternatives, a move that also reduced patients' exposure to chemicals. That was an easy step: Options are plentiful, such as the less-toxic cleaning products listed in the EU eco-label catalog or certified by the non-profit Green Seal program in the U.S. But he didn't stop there. Toma has gone on to create an internationally recognized hospital that uses natural non-toxic materials. The paint on the walls is free of harmful volatile organic compounds. Thanks to a pioneering purchasing policy, everything the staff buys is screened for toxins. Besides that, the hospital serves patients meals mostly prepared from scratch, while generous windows let in abundant daylight, which has been shown to help reduce patients' use of painkillers and shorten the time some people spend in the hospital. On a larger scale, Kaiser Permanente is wielding its $6 billion annual purchasing budget to push for safer products and materials for patients at its 32 medical centres in the U.S. -- and to make these products more affordable and available for smaller health-care facilities. The HMO has also developed a new policy that calls for avoiding carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins as well as persistent chemicals that accumulate in our bodies in everything it purchases, from cleaning supplies to medical devices. "We're targeting riskier products and doing everything we can to encourage suppliers to switch to environmentally preferable products," says Dean Edwards, vice-president and chief procurement officer. The inroads being made at Clinique Champeau, Kaiser Permanente and other hospitals suggest administrators can no longer avoid making changes to clean up environmental problems. Signs indicating how this can be done are everywhere. Looking back on the last decade, Gary Cohen of Health Care Without Harm says elimination of mercury is a prime example. Thousands of hospitals around the world have replaced mercury thermometers with safer alternatives and are working to eradicate mercury from health-care settings. "We've shown that you can phase out toxic materials on a global scale," Cohen says. "If we can do that with mercury, we can do it with a whole set of chemicals and technologies that are destroying our planet and weakening our health." Scores of hospital managers around the world have recently signed resolutions committing to implementing healthy changes on many fronts, from serving safe and sustainably raised food to reducing waste and ditching PVC. Still, signing a resolution or passing a law is one thing, and implementing it consistently is another. And that, says Dutch pediatrician Gavin ten Tusscher, is where everyone comes in. "Consumers need to know that they're the ones who have the power," he says. "They're the ones who can influence change in their choices in health care. They can say, 'I don't want my child to receive an intravenous line with PVC,' and demand other healthy changes. The more people who do, the more governments and hospitals will listen." Are Your Cell Phone and Laptop Bad for Your Health? For years, opponents of cell towers and wireless technology have voiced concerns about potential health effects of electromagnetic fields. Once ridiculed as crackpots and Luddites, they're starting to get backup from the scientific community. In the wee hours of July 14, a 45-year-old Australian named John Patterson climbed into a tank and drove it through the streets of Sydney, knocking down six cell-phone towers and an electrical substation along the way. Patterson, a former telecommunications worker, reportedly had mapped out the locations of the towers, which he claimed were harming his health. In recent years, protesters in England and Northern Ireland have brought down cell towers by sawing, removing bolts, and pulling with tow trucks and ropes. In one such case, locals bought the structure and sold off pieces of it as souvenirs to help with funding of future protests. In attempts to fend off objections to towers in Germany, some churches have taken to disguising them as giant crucifixes. Opposition to towers usually finds more socially acceptable outlets, and protests are being heard more often than ever in meetings of city councils, planning commissions, and other government bodies. This summer alone, citizen efforts to block cell towers have sprouted in, among a host of other places, including California, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, North Dakota and north of the border in Ontario and British Columbia. Transmitters are already banned from the roofs of schools in many districts. For years, towers have been even less welcome in the United Kingdom, where this summer has seen disputes across the country. Most opponents cite not only aesthetics but also concerns over potential health effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields generated by the towers. Once ridiculed as crackpots and Luddites, they're starting to get backup from the scientific community. It's not just cell phones they're worried about. The Tottenham area of London is considering the suspension of all wireless technology in its schools. Last year, Fred Gilbert, a respected scientist and president of Lakehead University in Ontario, banned wireless internet on his campus. And resident groups in San Francisco are currently battling Earthlink and Google over a proposed city-wide Wi-Fi system. Picking up some interference? For decades, concerns have been raised about the health effects of "extremely low frequency" fields that are produced by electrical equipment or power lines. People living close to large power lines or working next to heavy electrical equipment are spending a lot of time in electromagnetic fields generated by those sources. Others of us can be exposed briefly to very strong fields each day. But in the past decade, suspicion has spread to cell phones and other wireless technologies, which operate at frequencies that are millions to tens of millions higher but at low power and "pulsed." Then there's your cell phone, laptop, or other wireless device, which not only receives but also sends pulsed signals at high frequencies. Because it's usually very close to your head (or lap) when in use, the fields experienced by your body are stronger than those from a cell tower down the street. A growing number of scientists, along with a diverse collection of technology critics, are pointing out that our bodies constantly generate electrical pulses as part of their normal functioning. They maintain that incoming radiation from modern technology may be fouling those signals. But with hundreds of billions in sales at stake, the communications industry (and more than a few scientists) insist that radio-frequency radiation can't have biological effects unless it's intense enough to heat your flesh or organs, in the way a microwave oven cooks meat. It's also turning out that when scientific studies are funded by industry, the results a lot less likely to show that EM fields are a health hazard. Low frequency, more frequent disease? Before the digital revolution, a long line of epidemiological studies compared people who were exposed to strong low-frequency fields -- people living in the shadow of power lines, for example, or long-time military radar operators -- to similar but unexposed groups. One solid outcome of that research was to show that rates of childhood leukemia are associated with low-frequency EM exposure; as a result, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has labeled that type of energy as a possible carcinogen, just as they might label a chemical compound. Other studies have found increased incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly called ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), higher rates of breast cancer among both men and women, and immune-system dysfunction in occupations with high exposure. Five years ago, the California Public Utilities Commission asked three epidemiologists in the state Department of Health Services to review and evaluate the scientific literature on health effects of low-frequency EM fields. The epidemiologists, who had expertise in physics, medicine, and genetics, agreed in their report that they were "inclined to believe that EMFs can cause some degree of increased risk of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, and miscarriage" and were open to the possibility that they raise the risks of adult leukemia and suicide. They did not see associations with other cancer types, heart disease, or Alzheimer's disease. Epidemiological and animal studies have not been unanimous in finding negative health effects from low-frequency EM fields, so the electric-utility industry continues to emphasize that no cause-and-effect link has been proven. High resistance Now the most intense debate is focused on radio-frequency fields. As soon as cell phones came into common usage, there was widespread concern that holding an electronic device against the side of your head many hours a month for the rest of your life might be harmful, and researchers went to work looking for links to health problems, often zeroing in on the possibility of brain tumors. Until recently, cell phones had not been widely used over enough years to evaluate effects on cancers that take a long time to develop. A number of researchers failed to find an effect during those years, but now that the phones have been widely available for more than a decade, some studies are relating brain-tumor rates to long-term phone use. Some lab studies have found short-term harm as well. Treatment with cell-phone frequencies has disrupted thyroid-gland functioning in lab rats, for example. And at Lund University in Sweden, rats were exposed to cell-phone EM fields of varying strengths for two hours; 50 days later, exposed rats showed significant brain damage relative to non-exposed controls. The authors were blunt in their assessment: "We chose 12-26-week-old rats because they are comparable with human teenagers -- notably frequent users of mobile phones -- with respect to age. The situation of the growing brain might deserve special concern from society because biologic and maturational processes are particularly vulnerable during the growth process." Even more recently, health concerns have been raised about the antenna masts that serve cell phones and other wireless devices. EM fields at, say, a couple of blocks from a tower are not as strong as those from a wireless device held close to the body; nevertheless many city-dwellers are now continuously bathed in emissions that will only grow in their coverage and intensity. Last year, the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia closed off the top two floors of its 17-story business school for a time because five employees working on its upper floors had been diagnosed with brain tumors in a single month, and seven since 1999. Cell phone towers had been placed on the building's roof a decade earlier and, although there was no proven link between them and the tumors, university officials were taking no chances. Data on the health effects of cell or W-Fi towers are still sparse and inconsistent. Their opponents point to statistically rigorous studies like one in Austria finding that headaches and difficulty with concentration were more common among people exposed to stronger fields from cell towers. All sides seem to agree on the need for more research with solid data and robust statistical design. San Francisco, one of the world's most technology-happy cities, is home to more than 2400 cell-phone antennas, and many of those transmitters are due to be replaced with more powerful models that can better handle text messaging and photographs, and possibly a new generation of even higher-frequency phones. Now there's hot-and-heavy debate over plans to add 2200 more towers for a city-wide Earthlink/Google Wi-Fi network. On July 31, the city's Board of Supervisors considered an appeal by the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union (SNAFU) that the network proposal be put through an environmental review -- a step that up to now has not been required for such telecommunications projects. In support of the appeal, Magda Havas, professor of environmental and resource studies at Trent University in Ontario submitted an analysis of radio-frequency effects found in more than 50 human, animal, and cellular-level studies published in scientific journals. Havas has specialized in investigating the effects of both low- and high-frequency EM radiation. She says most of the research in the field is properly done, but that alone won't guarantee that all studies will give similar results. "Natural variability in biological populations is the norm," she said. And, she says, informative research takes time and focus: "For example, studies that consider all kinds of brain tumors in people who've only used cell phones for, say, five years don't show an association. But those studies that consider only tumors on the same side of the head where the phone is held and include only people who've used a phone for ten years or more give the same answer very consistently: there's an increased risk of tumors." In other research, wireless frequencies have been associated with higher rates of miscarriage, testicular cancer, and low sperm counts. Direct current from a battery can be used to encourage healing of broken bones. EM fields of various frequencies have also been shown to reduce tissue damage from heart attacks, help heal wounds, reduce pain, improve sleep, and relieve depression and anxiety. If they are biologically active enough to promote health, are they also active enough to degrade it? At the 2006 meeting of the International Commission for Electromagnetic Safety in Benevento, Italy, 42 scientists from 16 countries signed a resolution arguing for much stricter regulation of EM fields from wireless communication. Four years earlier, in Freiburger, Germany, a group of physicians had signed a statement also calling for tighter regulation of wireless communication and a prohibition on use of wireless devices by children. In the years since, more than 3000 doctors have signed the so-called "Freiburger Appeal" and documents modeled on it. But in this country, industry has pushed for and gotten exemption from strict regulation, most notably through the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Libby Kelley, director of the Council on Wireless Technology Impacts in Novato, California says, "The technology always comes first, the scientific and environmental questions later. EM trails chemicals by about 10 years, but I hope we'll catch up." Kelley says a major problem is that the Telecommunications Act does not permit state or local governments to block the siting of towers based on health concerns: "We'll go to hearings and try to bring up health issues, and officials will tell us, 'We can't talk about that. We could get sued in federal court!'" High-voltage influence? Industry officials are correct when they say the scientific literature contains many studies that did not find power lines or telecommunication devices to have significant health effects. But when, as often happens, a range of studies give some positive and some negative results, industry people usually make statements like, "Technology A has not been proven to cause disease B." Michael Kundi, professor at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria and an EM researcher, has issued a warning about distortions of the concept of cause-and-effect, particularly when a scientific study concludes that "there is no evidence for a causal relationship" between environmental factors and human health. Noting that science is rarely able to prove that A did or did not "cause" B, he wrote that such statements can be "readily misused by interested parties to claim that exposure is not associated with adverse health effects." Scientists and groups concerned about current standards for EM fields have criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) and other for downplaying the risks. And some emphasize the risk of financial influence when such intense interest is being shown by huge utilities and a global communications industry that's expected to sell $250 billion worth of wireless handsets per year by 2011 (that's just for the instruments, not counting monthly bills). Microwave News cited Belgian reports in late 2006 that two industry groups -- the GSM Association and Mobile Manufacturers Forum -- accounted for more than 40 percent of the budget for WHO's EM fields project in 2005-06. When a US National Academy of Sciences committee was formed earlier this year to look into health effects of wireless communication devices, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Sage Associates wrote a letter to the Academy charging that the appointment of two of the committee's six members was improper under federal conflict-of-interest laws. One of the committee members, Leeka Kheifets, a professor of epidemiology in UCLA's School of Public Health, has, says the letter, "spent the majority of the past 20 years working in various capacities with the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the electric power industry." The other, Bernard Veyret, senior scientist at the University of Bordeaux in France, "is on the consulting board of Bouygues Telecom (one of 3 French mobile phone providers), has contracts with Alcatel and other providers, and has received research funding from Electricite de France, the operator of the French electricity grid." The NAS committee will be holding a workshop this month and will issue a report sometime after that. A paper published in January in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that when studies of cell phone use and health problems were funded by industry, they were much less likely to find a statistically significant relationship than were publicly funded studies. The authors categorized the titles of the papers they surveyed as either negative (as in "Cellular phones have no effect on sleep patterns"), or neutral (e.g., "Sleep patterns of adolescents using cellular phones"), or positive, (e.g., "Cellular phones disrupt sleep"). Fully 42 percent of the privately funded studies had negative titles and none had positive ones. In public or nonprofit studies, titles were 18 percent negative and 46 percent positive. Alluding to previous studies in the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, the authors concluded, "Our findings add to the existing evidence that single-source sponsorship is associated with outcomes that favor the sponsors' products." By email, I asked Dr. John Moulder, a senior editor of the journal Radiation Research, for his reaction to the study. Moulder, who is Professor and Director of Radiation Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Wisconsin, did not think the analysis was adequate to conclusively demonstrate industry influence and told me that in his capacity as an editor, "I have not noted such an effect, but I have not systematically looked for one either. I am certainly aware that an industry bias exists in other areas of medicine, such as reporting of clinical trails." Moulder was lead author on a 2005 paper concluding that the scientific literature to that point showed "a lack of convincing evidence for a causal association between cancer and exposure to the RF [radio-frequency] energy used for mobile telecommunications." The Center for Science in the Public Interest has questioned Moulder's objectivity because he has served as a consultant to electric-power and telecommunications firms and groups. Moulder told me, "I have not done any consulting for the electric power and telecommunications industry in years, and when I was doing consulting for these industries, the journals for which I served as an editor or reviewer were made aware of it." A year ago, Microwave News also reported that approximately one-half of all studies looking into possible damage to DNA by communication-frequency EM fields found no effect. But three-fourths of those negative studies were industry- or military-funded; indeed, only 3 of 35 industry or military papers found an effect, whereas 32 of 37 publicly funded studies found effects. Magda Havas sees a shortage of public money in the US for research on EM health effects as one of the chief factors leading to lack of a rigorous public policy, telling me, "Much of the research here ends up being funded directly or indirectly by industry. That affects both the design and the interpretation of studies." As for research done directly by company scientists, "It's the same as in any industry. They can decide what information to make public. They are free to downplay harmful effects and release information that's beneficial to their product." Meanwhile, at Trent University where Havas works, students using laptops are exposed to radio-frequency levels that exceed international guidelines. Of that, she says, "For people who've been fully informed and decide to take the risk, that's their choice. But what about those who have no choice, who have a cell-phone tower outside their bedroom window? "It's the equivalent of secondhand smoke. We took a long time to get the political will to establish smoke-free environments, and we now know we should have done it sooner. How long will it take to react to secondhand radiation?"Permaculture-design] URGENT - Action Alert: European vote on Genetic Engineering - GMOs represent a serious dangerDocumentaries - Learn more about the serious dangers of GMOs: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=%22future+of+food%22 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x5ftpGK1UI http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5370933931102213811&hl=en http://youtube.com/results?search_query=gmo+dangersINDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH PROVES THAT GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS (GMOs)ARE VERY DANGEROUS TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTHHELP PROTECT SOCIETY AND NATURE, SAY NO TO GMOs ACTION ALERT 2 November 2007 Can you write to the EC and forward this message?Send a message Hi friends, Europe's top environment politician, EU-Commissioner Stavros Dimas, enraged agro-chemical companies last week when he refused to allow the cultivation of two varieties of genetically modified maize (Bt 11 and 1507). He said GM crops should not be approved until new methods have been developed for assessing long-term risks and the effects on birds and butterflies. This is wonderful news! Other European Commissioners are siding with the industry though, and want to vote on the matter within the next few weeks in Brussels. We have only days to show our support for the Environment Commissioner's brave stand -- and to let the other politicians know that he speaks for us all. Can you send a message to Stavros Dimas, to Manuel Barroso (the President of the European Commission) and the Commissioners taking the industry's side Kyprianou (Health and Consumer Protection) and Fischer-Boel (Agriculture). TAKE ACTION NOW Thanks,Greenpeace Health Hazards of Drinking Coca-Cola and other Soft DrinksFeb 12, '08 10:19 AM by Roi for group earthissuesThe Health Hazards of Drinking Coca-Cola and other Soft DrinksWednesday, February 16, 2005Source: http://www.newstarget.com/004416.html The health effects of drinking soda - quotes from the expertsThis is a compilation of quotes about the destructive health effects of softdrinks from some of the leading authors on health, nutrition and junk food.This full list, and much more information, is included in The Five SoftDrink Monsters downloadable ebook.Michael Murray ND and Joseph Pizzorno NDEncyclopedia of Natural Medicine, Revised Second Edition "The allergenicity of penicillin in the general population is thought to beat least ten percent. Nearly 25 percent of these individuals will displayhives, angioedema, or anaphylaxis upon ingestion of penicillinS. hives andanaphylactic symptoms have been traced to penicillin in milk, soft drinks,and frozen dinners." "Many general dietary factors have been suggested as a cause ofosteoporosis, including: low calcium-high phosphorus intake, high-proteindiet, high-acid-ash diet, high salt intake, and trace mineral deficiencies.It appears that increased soft drink consumption is a major factor thatcontributes to osteoporosis. A deficiency of vitamin K leads to impairedmineralization of bone. Boron deficiency may contribute greatly toosteoporosis as well as to menopausal symptoms." "Soft drinks have long been suspected of leading to lower calcium levelsand higher phosphate levels in the blood. When phosphate levels are high andcalcium levels are low, calcium is pulled out of the bones. The phosphatecontent of soft drinks like Coca -Cola and Pepsi is very high, and theycontain virtually no calcium." "The United States ranks first among countries in soft drink consumption.The per-capita consumption of soft drinks is in excess of 150 quarts peryear, or about three quarts per week." "Soft drink consumption in children poses a significant risk factor forimpaired calcification of growing bones." "Of the fifty-seven children who had low blood calcium levels, thirty-eight(66.7 percent) drank more than four bottles (12 to 16 ounces per bottle) ofsoft drinks per week, but only forty-eight (28 percent) of the 171 childrenwith normal serum calcium levels consumed as much soft drink S These resultsmore than support the contention that soft drink consumption leads to lowercalcium levels in children. This situation that ultimately leads to poorbone mineralization, which explains the greater risk of broken bones inchildren who consume soft drinks." "Soft drink consumption may be a major factor for osteoporosis as they arehigh in phosphates but contain virtually no calcium. This leads to lowercalcium levels and higher phosphate levels in the blood. The United Statesranks first among countries for soft drink consumption with a per capitaconsumption of approximately 15 ounces a day." James A Howenstine M.D.A Physician's Guide to Natural Health Products That Work "In an interesting experiment the sugar from one soft drink was able todamage the white blood cells' ability to ingest and kill gonococcal bacteriafor seven hours." "Soft drinks also contain large quantities of phosphorus, which whenexcreted pulls calcium out of the bones. Heavy users of soft drinks willhave osteoporosis along with their damaged arteries." James Duke PhDThe Green Pharmacy : The Ultimate Compendium Of Natural Remedies From The World's Foremost Authority On Healing Herbs "And watch out for cola soft drinks, which are very high in bone-dissolvingphosphorus." Marion NestleFood Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition (see related ebookon nutrition) and Health (California Studies in Food and Culture) "Soft drinks are the single greatest source of caffeine in children'sdiets; a 12-ounce can of cola contains about 45 milligrams but the amountsin more potent soft drinks can exceed 100 milligrams< a level approachingthat found in coffee." "Soft drinks have replaced milk in the diets of many American children aswell as adults. School purchases reflect such trends. From 1985 to 1997,school districts decreased the amounts of milk they bought by nearly 30% andincreased their purchases of carbonated sodas." "The relationship between soft drink consumption and body weight is sostrong that researchers calculate that for each additional soda consumed,the risk of obesity increases 1.6 times." "Adolescents who consume soft drinks display a risk of bone fractures threeto four-fold higher than those who do not." "Sugar and acid in soft drinks so easily dissolve tooth enamel." "Americans drink 13.15 billion gallons of carbonated drinks every year." William DuffyThe doctor speaking in these dialogs is, Dr. McCay, the nutritionist at theNaval Medical Research Institute."I was amazed to learn," he testified, "that the beverage containedsubstantial amounts of phosphoric acid. . . . At the Naval Medical ResearchInstitute, we put human teeth in a cola beverage and found they softened andstarted to dissolve within a short periodS The acidity of cola beverages ...is about the same as vinegar. The sugar content masks the acidity, andchildren little realize they are drinking this strange mixture of phosphoricacid, sugar, caffeine, coloring, and flavoring matter." Carol SimontacchiThe Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children "One liter of an aspartame-sweetened beverage can produce about fifty-sixmilligrams of methanol. When several of these beverages are consumed in ashort period of time (one day, perhaps), as much as two hundred fiftymilligrams of methanol are dumped into the bloodstream, or thirty-two timesthe EPA limit." "What may happen, in the face of day-to-day, continuously high levels ofsodium in the diet and the bloodstream, is that we experience a type ofacute hypernatremia its integrity, but enough to keep our sodium potassium pump slightlydysregulated and throw off the electrical system of the brainS. Americansdrink soft drinks that are often loaded with more sodium and which furtherunbalance the mineral stores." Greg CritserFat Land : How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World "A joint study by Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospitalresearchers in February 2001 concluded that such excess liquid caloriesinhibited the ability of older children to compensate at mealtime, leadingto caloric imbalance and, in time, obesity." "One extra soft drink a day gave a child a 60 percent greater chance ofbecoming obese. One could even link specific amounts of soda to specificamounts of weight gain. Each daily drink added .18 points to a child's bodymass index (BMI). This, the researchers noted, was regardless of what elsethey ate or how much they exercised. "Consumption of sugar [high fructosecorn syrup]-sweetened drinks," they concluded, "is associated with obesityin children." Samuel S. Epstein MDThe Safe Shopper's Bible : A Consumer's Guide to Nontoxic Household Products "Saccharin is a 100-year-old non-nutritive, non-caloric sweetening agentSits use has exploded over the last twenty years as a staple of the diet foodand drink craze. Its major current consumption is in diet pop by teenagers,and not by diabetics and the obese. The public now firmly believes thatfoods containing saccharin are effective in weight control, and has beenpersuaded by the soft drink industry (through the Calorie Control Council)that these benefits outweigh any possible health risks." "More than a dozen animal tests over the last thirty years havedemonstrated the carcinogenic effects of saccharin in the bladder and othersites, particularly female reproductive organs, and in some instances atdoses as low as the equivalent of one to two bottles of diet pop daily." "The public board of inquiry concluded that experimental data "¹Sdo notrule out an oncogenic effect of aspartame, and that, to the contrary, theyappear to suggest the possibility that aspartame, at least when administeredin the 'huge' quantities employed in the studies, may contribute to thedevelopment of brain tumors.¹" Until these controversial findings on braincancer in experimental animals have been resolved, use this productsparingly, if at all." "PET bottling and packaging: Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is usedextensively in soft drink containers. PET bottles can release small amountsof dimethyl terephthalate into foods and beverages. Although the NationalCancer Institute claims that dimethyl terephthalate is noncarcinogenic,these results have been questioned. Some experts believe this compound to becarcinogenic." Neal Barnard MDFoods That Cause You to Lose Weight: : The Negative Calorie Effect "Another advantage of avoiding sodas is that you will avoid the caffeinethat is in many of them. Caffeine is a weak diuretic that causes calciumloss via the kidneys." Dr. Earl MindellEarl Mindell's New Vitamin Bible "Recent research has linked soft drinks with childhood obesity< and anestimated 200 school districts nationwide have contracts with soft drinkcompanies that give them exclusive rights to sell their products inschools." "Saccharin is a noncaloric petroleum derivative estimated to be threehundred to five hundred times sweeter than sugarS It's used in diet softdrinksS Studies done in the 1970s linked saccharin ingestion to bladdercancer in laboratory animals" "Children who drink large quantities of diet sodas containing aspartame areparticularly vulnerable to its dangerous side effects." "Aspartame contains methyl or wood alcohol, which can affect fetal braindevelopment." "Twenty-one percent of the sugar in the American diet comes from softdrinks! That's more than just an unhealthy consumption of empty calories. Itis a dangerous overload of caffeine and potentially hazardous,nutrient-depleting additives." "Soft drinks contain large amounts of phosphorus, which can throw off thebody's calcium/phosphorus ratio (twice as much calcium as phosphorus),decreasing calcium as well as reducing your body's ability to use it." "For anyone over age 40, soft drinks can be especially hazardous becausethe kidneys are less able to excrete excess phosphorus, causing depletion ofvital calcium." "Heavy soft drink consumption can interfere with your body's metabolizationof iron and diminish nerve impulse transmission." "Cola drinks can interact adversely with antacids, possibly causingconstipation, calcium loss, hypertension, nausea, vomiting, headaches, andkidney damage." "Soft drinks can decrease the antibacterial action of penicillin andampicillin." "Diet sodas that are low in calories are high in sodium. Too much salt inthe diet may cause more calcium to be excreted in the urine and increase therisk of osteoporosis." "Excessive consumption of soft drinks, which are high in phosphorus, canalso deplete you of calcium and increase your chances of osteoporosis." Jean CarperFood: Your Miracle Medicine : How Food Can Prevent and Cure over 100Symptoms and Problems "Tests at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine by Roland R.Griffiths, MD, show caffeine withdrawal can strike people who drink a singlecup of strongly brewed coffee or drink caffeinated soft drinks everyday.Further, Dr. Griffiths discovered that caffeine-withdrawal symptoms includenot only headache, but also fatigue, mild depression, muscle pain andstiffness, flu-like feelings, nausea and vomiting." "Those consuming at least one cup of a caffeine-containing beverage perday, such as coffee, tea or soft drinks, were more prone to PMS. And themore caffeine they consumed, the more severe their PMS symptoms." Elson M Haas MDThe Detox Diet: A How-To & When-To Guide for Cleansing the Body "Phosphorus is found in most foods but soda pops, diet popsS containespecially high amounts. The ideal dietary phosphorus-calcium ratio is about1:1. The ratio in the average American diet is often greater than 2:1 andsometimes even 4:1 or 5:1. At those levels, excess calcium is removed frombone and eliminated, blood levels are reduced, and there is bonedemineralization. A diet high in phosphorus and low in calcium has beenshown to cause bone loss and increase tissue calcification." "Tooth loss, periodontal disease, and gingivitis can be problems,especially with a high phosphorus intake, particularly from soft drinks. Allkinds of bone problems can occur with prolonged calcium deficiency, whichcauses a decrease in bone mass. Rickets in children, osteomalacia (decreasedbone calcium) in adults, and osteoporosis (porous and fragile bones) canoccur when calcium is withdrawn from bones faster than it is deposited.Fractures are more common with osteoporosis the United States are related to this prevalent nutritional deficiencydisease" "High dietary phosphorus, as is found in a diet with meats, soft drinks,and other convenience foods, can readily affect calcium metabolism.Potential calcium deficiency symptoms may be more likely when the phosphorusintake is very high. A low calcium-to-phosphorus ratio in the diet increasesthe incidence of hypertension and the risk of colon-rectal cancer." Barnet Meltzer MDFood Swings: Make the Life-Changing Connection Between the Foods You Eat and Your Emotional Health and Well-Being "But soft drinks are far from soft. High in phosphorous and phosphoricacid, they infiltrate bodily fluids and corrode stomach linings, upset thealkaline-acid balance of the kidneys, and eat away at your liver likeHannibal Lecter. Soft drinks also contain hidden caffeine, refined sugar,and artificial chemicals." Ralph T Golan NDOptimal Wellness "Avoid processed foods and cola soft drinks; their phosphates can alsocause calcium loss and excretion." Dr. Gary Null"Natural Living" radio showGary Null's Power Aging "A study on the relationship between caffeine and fertility found thatSjust one caffeinated soft drink per day was associated with a reducedmonthly chance of conception of 50 percent." "It should be noted here that soft drinks are the number one source ofphosphorus in the American diet todayS According to Dr. Steenblock, excessphosphorus is one of the major contributing factors to the development ofosteoarthritis." James A MayUnited American Industries Inc. "Absorption in primates is hastened considerably if the methanol isingested as free methanol as it occurs in soft drinks after thedecomposition of aspartame during storage or in other foods after beingheated. Regardless of whether the aspartame-derived methanol exists in foodin its free form or still esterified to phenylalanine, 10 percent of theweight of aspartame intake of an individual will be absorbed by thebloodstream as methanol within hours after consumption." Marcia Zimmerman CNThe A.D.D. Nutrition Solution : A Drug-Free 30 Day Plan "Sodium benzoate Sodium benzoate is used as a preservative (microbialcontrol) in foods, including soft drinks, fruit juices, margarine,confections, pickles, and jams. Sodium preservatives add sodium to the dietand reduce the availability of potassium. Some reported reactions to sodiumbenzoate include recurring urticaria (rash), asthma, and eczema."Overview:The health effects of soft drinks - quotes from the expertsSource: http://www.newstarget.com/004416.htmlAll content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protectedunder Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for allcontent. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from therecommendation of products. Newstarget.com is presented for educational andcommentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advicefrom any licensed practitioner. It is not intended as a substitute for thediagnosis, treatment or advice of a qualified professional. Truth Publishingassumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material.San Francisco ChronicleThe oil in your oatmealA lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfastChad HeeterSunday, March 26, 2006Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.Coming from another hemisphere, my raspberries take an even longer fossil-fueled journey to my neighborhood. Though packaged in a plastic bag labeled Cascadian Farms (which perhaps suggests birthplace in the good old Cascade mountains of northwest Washington), the small print on the back, stamped "A Product of Chile," tells all -- and what it speaks of is a 5,800-mile journey to Northern California.If you've been adding up percentages along the way, perhaps you've noticed that a few tablespoons of crude oil in my bowl have not been accounted for. That final 40 percent of the fossil fuel in my breakfast is used up by the simple acts of keeping food fresh and then preparing it. In home kitchens and restaurants, chilling in refrigerators and cooking on stoves using electricity or natural gas gobbles up more energy than you might imagine.For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output.What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)But this is only an average. My cup of coffee gives me just a few calories of energy, but to process 1 pound of coffee requires more than 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.So how do you gauge how much oil went into your food?First check out how far it traveled. The farther it went, the more oil it required. Next, gauge how much processing went into the food. A fresh apple is not processed, but Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal requires enormous amounts of energy to process. The more processed the food, the more oil it requires. Then consider how much packaging is wrapped around your food. Buy fresh vegetables instead of canned, and buy bulk beans, grains, and flour if you want to reduce that packaging.You may think you're in the clear because you eat strictly organically grown foods. When it comes to fossil-fuel calculations though, that isn't relevant. However it is grown, a raspberry is shipped, packed and chilled the same way.There is some energy savings in growing organically, but it's probably slight. According to a study by David Pimentel at Cornell University, 30 percent of fossil-fuel expenditure on farms growing conventional (nonorganic) crops is found in chemical fertilizer.This 30 percent is not consumed on organic farms, but only if the manure used as fertilizer is produced very close to the farm. Manure is a heavy, bulky product.If farms have to truck bulk manure more than a few miles, the savings is eaten up in diesel-fuel consumption, according to Pimentel.One source of manure for organic farmers in California is chicken producer Foster Farms. Organic farmers in Monterey County, for example, will truck tons of Foster's manure from their main plant in Livingston (Merced County) to fields more than 100 miles away.So the next time we're at the grocer, do we now have to ask not only where and how a product was grown, but how far its manure was shipped?Well, if you're in New York City picking out a California-grown tomato that was fertilized with organic compost made from kelp shipped from Nova Scotia, maybe it's not such a bad question.But should we give up on organic? If you're buying organic raspberries from Chile each week, then yes. The fuel cost is too great, as is the resulting production of the greenhouse gases.But if there was truth in packaging, where my oatmeal box now tells me how many calories I get from each serving, it would also tell me how many calories of fossil fuels went into the product.On a scale from one to five -- with one being nonprocessed, locally grown products and five being processed, packaged imports -- we could quickly average the numbers in our shopping cart to get a sense of the ecological footprint of our diet.What appeared to be my simple, healthy meal of oatmeal, berries and coffee looks different now. I thought I was essentially driving a Toyota Prius hybrid by having a very fuel-efficient breakfast, but by the end of the week, I've eaten the equivalent of more than two quarts of Valvoline.From the perspective of fossil-fuel consumption, I now look at my breakfast as a waste of precious resources. What I eat for breakfast connects me to the planet, deep into its past with the fossilized remains of plants and animals which are now fuel, and into the future, when these nonrenewable resources will probably be in scant supply.Maybe these thoughts are too grand to be having over breakfast, but I'm not the only one on the planet eating this morning. My meal traveled thousands of miles to reach my plate.Then there's the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese, already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and foreign flavors.What happens when middle-class families in India or China decide they want their Irish oats for breakfast and topped by organic raspberries from Chile? They'll dip more and more into the planet's communal oil well. And someday soon, we'll all suck it dry.A crude menuA lot of fossil-fuel energy goes into the production of food:-- Bowl of oatmeal porridge: 4 ounces of crude oil.-- Serving of red raspberries: 1 ounce of crude oil.-- Butter, milk and salt: 1 ounce of crude oil.-- That cup of java: 2 ounces of crude oil.-- Energy required to produce 1 pound of coffee: a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas, or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.-- Energy required to produce one week's worth of breakfast for one person: More than 2 quarts of crude oil.Chad Heeter grew up eating fossil fuels in Lee's Summit, Mo. He's a freelance writer, a documentary filmmaker and a former high school science teacher. Evidences that GMOs seriously damage the health of Animals/HumansWatch the excelent documentary "future of food" about GMO food:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6775597541955404580* * * Major incidents involving GM maize with Bt toxins: Earth Issues (earthissues.multiply.com) HomeNotesBlogPhotosVideoCalendarReviewsMarketLinks BBC NEWS | Health | Pollution 'alters brain function'Mar 11, '08 4:47 PM by Frouke for group earthissuesLink: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7288176.stmBBC NEWS | Health | Pollution 'alters brain function'An hour sniffing exhaust fumes may not just give you a headache - it could even alter the way the brain functions, Dutch researchers have suggested.Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information.Researchers sought to replicate the environment experienced by those who work in a garage or by the roadside.Their findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands persuaded 10 volunteers to spend an hour in a room filled either with clean air or exhaust from a diesel engine.They were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that records the electrical signals of the brain. They were monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room. After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex.This effect continued after they were no longer in the room."We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm."It is conceivable that the long-term effects of exposure to traffic nanoparticles may interfere with normal brain function and information processing. Further studies are necessary to explore this effect." BBC NEWS | Health | Pollution 'alters brain function'Mar 11, '08 4:47 PM by Frouke for group earthissuesLink: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7288176.stmBBC NEWS | Health | Pollution 'alters brain function'An hour sniffing exhaust fumes may not just give you a headache - it could even alter the way the brain functions, Dutch researchers have suggested.Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information.Researchers sought to replicate the environment experienced by those who work in a garage or by the roadside.Their findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands persuaded 10 volunteers to spend an hour in a room filled either with clean air or exhaust from a diesel engine.They were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that records the electrical signals of the brain. They were monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room. After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex.This effect continued after they were no longer in the room."We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm."It is conceivable that the long-term effects of exposure to traffic nanoparticles may interfere with normal brain function and information processing. Further studies are necessary to explore this effect."

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