Sisyphus Shrugged - any undecided wimmens out there?

06:35 am October 21st, 2004




			Sisyphus Shrugged - any undecided wimmens out there? Lasciate ogni speranza and put your feet up.

jmhm


	any undecided wimmens out there?
	Why? One-fifth of women of childbearing age have mercury levels in their hair that exceed federal health standards, according to interim results of a nationwide survey being conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The study, which was commissioned by the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, offers the latest evidence of how much mercury Americans are absorbing by eating fish. Coal-fired power plants and other sources release mercury into the air, which ends up in water and is absorbed by fish. The pollutant, which is a neurotoxin that can cause developmental problems in fetuses and young children, makes its way into the bloodstream when people eat contaminated fish. Researchers at UNC's Environmental Quality Institute based their findings on hair samples from nearly 1,500 people, many of whom learned of the study through the Internet. Participants either paid $25 to submit hair samples with a home testing kit or got free tests at 27 hair salons across the country sponsored by Greenpeace, Aveda salons and state and local environmental groups. Study participants were not randomly chosen, but the report's author, Richard Maas, said they were evenly distributed geographically and that he believes the results reflect overall mercury contamination levels among Americans. He said the tests showed a correlation between how much fish people ate and their mercury levels: One-third of people who ate canned tuna four or more times a week, for example, had mercury levels above Environmental Protection Agency recommendations. "There is no other pollutant out there that has anywhere near this high a percentage of the U.S. population with exposure levels above the government's health advisory levels," said Maas, co-director of the Environmental Quality Institute. "Not lead, not arsenic, nothing." The last major national study of Americans' mercury exposure, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1999 and 2000, concluded that about 12 percent of women of childbearing age had mercury levels that exceeded EPA's safety standard. The new study found excess mercury levels in 21 percent of the 597 women of childbearing age who were tested. The UNC researchers said they could not explain why their subjects had higher mercury levels, as 80 percent of study participants said they had no reason to think they had high concentrations of mercury in their blood. Men and women in the study had similar mercury levels. As you may recall, Mr. Clinton had a plan in place to reduce mercury levels, but Our Fearless Leader is fighting to replace it with a plan where mercury-emitting plants can, basically, pay off and keep polluting. The government-recommended guidelines for eating mercury-tainted fish are pretty much screwed too. So, ladies, even given that (according to the Washington Times) we can't manage time nearly as well as men and thus do not follow the news, it might be worth following up on this. A child with mercury poisoning takes a lot of quantity time to raise.

ahhhs. -- hmmm?


	Comments

	From: tlachtga	Date: October 21st, 2004 05:27 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)

That's very depressing--and scary. I eat a lot of fish, and now I'm going to have to reconsider this.

Can't eat fish, can't eat beef. I just hope nothing happens to the chicken and soy.

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	From: bellatrys	Date: October 21st, 2004 08:02 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	chicken's already bad

that's where a lot of the antibiotics resistance comes from - they've been keeping them in unsanitary overcrowded conditions just like cattle and packing them full of antibiotics to prevent them dying from the diseases that are the natural consequences of unsanitary overcrowding...

I try to only eat organic meat, when I eat meat at all, which isn't much, not because I'm really a vegetarian but because I can't afford it. Same with eggs and milk - I don't want inadvertent growth hormones.

Which means I pretty much live like a third-world peasant, on legumes and rice, in the midst of "plenty." It reminds me of all those stories of people entering the Otherworld and being warned not to eat of the feasts they'll see there...

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	From: tlachtga	Date: October 21st, 2004 08:14 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: chicken's already bad

Ugh. The sad thing is that organic meat/beans/dairy/etc. are so expensive that I can't afford it all the time. I can see why you live on legumes and rice, but I was watching a program in class last night about how even those can be genetically modified in ways we don't even understand yet. If you can afford organic beans, that'd be the way to go.

I just wish I could afford it.

I like the Otherworld reference--there are times when this world seems just as dangerous and strange as any fairy tale.

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	From: jmhm	Date: October 21st, 2004 09:53 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: chicken's already bad

We try to get free-range if we can (and make a lot of soup when we do) but mostly I just stick to breast meat, which has the least fat and the least fat-stored yick. We very, very rarely have red meat, and when we do it has to be grass or grainfed.

Considering that I married a midwestern carnivore, I think I'm doing pretty well.

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	From: damiana_swan	Date: October 21st, 2004 07:51 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)

Dunno if they took this into account, but a friend of mine who has done extensive research on this tells me that while drug companies have removed thimerosol (main ingredient: mercury) as a preservative from vaccines intended for children, they still include it in most vaccines intended for adults.

Like, say, flu vaccines.

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	From: jmhm	Date: October 21st, 2004 09:50 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)

I don't think that adults are vaccinated often enough to produce this kind of result, but it's still a very scary concept.

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	From: damiana_swan	Date: October 21st, 2004 10:01 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)

Possibly. (Probably?) At any rate, each individual dose of vaccine containing thimerosol is significantly above the EPA's "safe" limit for a short time period, and only qualifies as safe when it's averaged over a lifetime. Of course, mercury is stored in the body--it doesn't go away--so if someone gets a flu shot every year, it could well be contributing to their having a mercury level over what the EPA considers to be "safe".

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	From: alsafi	Date: October 22nd, 2004 12:02 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

Not that I in any way defend the (mis)administration's allowing more mercury into our environment--and even without that, they've done so much ill to our environment they ought to be... well, I'll keep that to myself.

But. A study done in the Seychelles shows (so far) very little correlation between a high-fish diet (and high maternal mercury levels caused thereby) and child developmental problems. It seems to indicate that the fatty acid in fatty fishes has a protective effect against mercury poisoning. Here's one of the abstracts--others are available from this site.

I only note it because it's something I was freaking about as my partner and I were overhauling our diet. I wanted to eat more fish, but worried about the mercury levels, when she brought this info home. We still don't eat as much as the Seychelles' Islanders (10-12 meals per week), but I don't feel quite so paranoid about having fish 2-4 times per week.

So. Don't vote for W--he sucks. But do eat fish, if you want to.

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