By Jim G. Hendrick, MD, Jackson
September 21, 1999
Is air pollution new? In 1700 physicians wrote about diseases in workers due to silica, cotton, tobacco and more. The burning of coal for heat in the 14th century was recognized as causing respiratory tract diseases. An epidemic of air stagnation and smog in London around 1952 caused 4000 deaths.
Now into the industrial age we are learning the specific causes and dangers of air pollution.
Sulfur and nitrogen oxides are the main causes of air-borne diseases. Both arise from the burning of fossil fuel in automobiles, trucks and electric generating plants. These chemicals, coupled with smog and exercise, cause asthma attacks and aggravate other respiratory diseases. Asthma has increased 50% in the last 50 years, especially among children.
The above chemicals, along with others from motor vehicles and dust particles, can cause potentially fatal smog.
Pesticides (including insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) are another dangerous threat around homes, gardens and farms. There are two main groups, organophosphates and organochlorines.
Organophosphates cause around 40% of the poisoning treated at our nation's poison centers. Mostly, they are short acting and their toxicity deteriorates in time. They affect farmers, sprayers and gardeners. When released by crop dusters they can affect any person or family downwind from the falling spray.
They damage human health in a strange fashion, blocking the nerve impulses to muscles. When you want a muscle to do something a message goes down a nerve fiber to the junction of the nerve and muscle causing a chemical to appear which makes the muscle contract.
As soon as that is done another chemical is secreted to neutralize the chemical that caused the contraction. If the agricultural organochlorine pesticide is present the neutralization can't occur, and the afflicted person suffers muscle weakness, stiffness, spasms and tremors. This necessitates cleaning all the pesticides from the body in a hospital where atropine and other chemicals will give relief.
Organophosphates are used extensively on fruits and vegetables, organically grown produce being the exception. Children eat seven times, per body weight, the amounts of these foods than adults. With their developing tissues, children are much more sensitive to the toxic effects of the many chemicals loose in our air, water and soil.
The solution to this health hazard includes the Precautionary Principle, which would require chemical companies to prove the safety of their pesticides before sale. The companies should be required to post bonds to help victims of the toxicity of their products. (If this had been done before thalidomide and DDT were released on the market, the enormous suffering and costs they generated could have been avoided.)
Organically grown foods are safer for children. The national food labeling law should be expanded to authenticate genuinely chemical-free fruits and vegetables. Our federal agencies should protect the public from imported foods containing toxic residues. The Environmental Protection Agency's plan to withdraw approval of many organophosphates has spawned heavy opposition from big farming states and from agribusiness circles.
Organochlorines, furans and related compounds are a different problem as they cause much more serious effects. Our Creator made no organochlorine compounds, therefore they do not deteriorate in nature. They are permanent.
The sources are paper mills using chlorine to bleach wood fibers, some pesticides, the waste from chemical factories, and the burning of waste containing plastics, especially polyvinylchloride (PVC). Chlorine compounds in the air settle to the ground and streams; being non-soluble they settle to the bottom of water channels.
All humans store organochlorines in their fat. Our sources of this toxic substance are foods, milk, meat, fish, some vegetables, and by inhalation. Breast milk is also an important source for babies. The most serious effects of dioxin and organochlorines occur in fetuses and newborns. A mothers passes her chemicals with her fat in nourishment and especially through breast milk.
Any body system of the baby can be damaged. The reproductive system can suffer abnormalities such as undescended testes, changed sexual behavior and reduced fertility in later life. The central nervous system can be damaged with lowering of I.Q and behavior problems. The immune system may have lowered resistance to bacterial, viral and fungal infections.
In adults these chemicals are carcinogenic, showing up as cancers in later life. A future article will discuss what can be done to limit and hopefully eradicate these dangers.