The Health Crisis

In October, 2006 National Geographic magazine published an article entitled “The Chemicals Within Us”. This article provides a startling, in depth portrait of just how toxic our bodies have become as a result of modern day pollution. Heavy metals like lead and mercury as well as a myriad of chemical toxins embedded in tissue and bone, or traveling as free radicals in the blood stream do untold amounts of physiological damage leading to degenerative disease and premature aging.

In a study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, researchers found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants and chemicals in the blood and urine of volunteers. None of the participants in the study worked with chemicals or lived adjacent to an industrial facility. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancers in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected that 1.7 million patients nationwide would get an infection during a hospital stay this year, and that of those, 99,000 (about 270 per day) would die. The centers estimate the cost of treating such infections at more than $30 billion a year. Infection rates worldwide are soaring as pathogens of all types and kinds are becoming more pervasive and deadlier than ever.

Industrial chemicals, dangerous metals and pollutants, fungus, virus, and bacteria are here to stay and getting worse. Combine current levels of toxicity with modern infections and you have a worldwide health crisis.