Slow Death By Rubber Duck – How The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health, by Rick Smith & Bruce Lourie, Knopf, 2009
By Helke Ferrie
After having read Shawn Buckley’s analysis of Ottawa’s bill C-6 in this issue, go to the next book store and pick up a copy of this book. Buckley’s deconstruction of C-6 shows it to be a low-brow legislative crowd-control measure, aimed at intelligent citizens, which buys plenty more time for the toxic chemical industry to continue making a killing in more than one sense. Written by the executive director of Environmental Defence (Bruce Smith) and the president of the Ivey Foundation (Bruce Laurie), it will show you how we can wake up to and escape from our government’s betrayal of their mandate to act in the public interest.
Observes author Bruce Laurie in a recent interview with Colleen Kimmett: “… over the last few years, we’ve evolved to a regulatory system … that doesn’t protect us from these kinds of chemicals that are subtle and sometimes inter-generational.” He was talking about all those 60,000 plus chemicals the EU started to ban a decade ago. George Bush, no less, outlawed phthalates (makes plastic and vinyl soft, such a rubber ducks) which are extremely toxic to children. Meanwhile, Health Canada merely advises manufacturers (not the public – that would presumably be too radical) of the potential health risks to babies. Bill 6 doesn’t even mention the stuff.
In 2007, the authors began to Toxic Nation Campaign (www.toxicnation.ca) which resulted in this book. It does more for public health and education than Canada’s federal government has done in the past 25 years. The authors tested the blood and urine of many Canadians, including prominent politicians like Jack Layton and Tony Clement. Even “unborn babies were found to have hundreds of these chemicals in their tiny bodies.” All were loaded with toxic chemicals, soaked up daily by our “sponge-like” bodies from lotions (e.g. “fragrance” actually phthalates), shampoos, toilet cleaners, air fresheners, cosmetics, deodorants, canned food, plastic-wrapped foods, the meats from animals exposed to the same chemicals while alive, the plastic containers used in microwave ovens (which themselves kill whatever nutrients may have remained in those dead/processed foods), intravenous tubing in hospitals, stain-repellant clothing, bed sheets, your living room couch and TV screen, non-stick cook-ware, and more.
In the past couple of years, they report, toys have revealed to be among the worst sources; they were found to be leaching the hallucigentic date rape drug GBH, Barbie and Sesame Street dolls were painted with lead, asbestos was in a best-selling board game, and vinyl toys are sources of gender-benders and carcinogens. The authors observe, that learning that toy companies knowingly expose kids to such poisons is “a bit like realizing that Santa’s elves long ago started consorting with Darth Vader and were ‘turned to the dark side’ without anyone noticing.”
The stories they tell of how these chemicals arrived in our lives, and are maintained there through the manufacturers’ dogged determination, are truly jaw-dropping. I have reported on the politics of environment and health for 15 years, and these guys shocked even me, page after page.
To see exactly what enters our bodies, from where, and how fast these carcinogenic and gender-bender chemicals do it, the authors decided to expose themselves deliberately to all that everyday stuff our regulators allow to be sold. Abandoning their customary organic diets and use of environmentally friendly household and bathroom products for a week, they measured their blood and urine before, during, and after these exposures. The results are appalling!
This book is based on their own research as well as the 27 comprehensive body burden studies currently in the scientific literature. These often nation-wide studies tested for 500 chemicals and usually found up to 413 in people. Unlike the pollution of the previous centuries, we now have a situation where pollution is global, has moved from highly visible events to the invisible realm of the body, and its effects are chronic and long-term, rather than acute.
While Ottawa postures and dithers and supports the chemical industry, our scientists are getting mad and focused. The university of Montreal’s Dr. William Fraser initiated this year a study entitled “Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals” which will test for low-level exposure to 400 chemicals (all discussed this book) in hundreds of pregnant women and follow their kids after birth. While the fetus grows, it is now known, toxic chemicals mess up the DNA-controlling switches called hormones and signal errors that later emerge as chronic disease and cancer. These chemically mediated pattern derailments can also be inherited and passed on over several generations. When this is published, Ottawa might finally have to take note.
Every Canadian should read this book and follow its authors’ clearly explained roadmap to show you how to avoid all this stuff. It can most certainly be avoided. Your choices will force the industry into decency through consumer demand. The only thing this book does not do (not its primary aim anyway), is to teach how to detoxify through all the various forms of chelation and how to test yourself for environmental toxins, so see suggested sources below.
However, no book I have seen so far explains with such clarity (and so entertainingly) just what’s out there, what it does, and how to stop it. The research and source material is exemplary and the authors name names, brand-names, and manufacturers. This is the most BS-free book I have yet seen on this topic for the general public. I am buying a dozen copies for Christmas. Please do the same.
J. Krop MD. Healing The Planet One Patient At A Time, 3ed edition, Kos, 2008
S. Rogers MD. Detoxify or Die! Prestige, 2002 (www/prestigepublishing.com)
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