GRIST– Chemicals and additives found in the food supply and other consumer products are making headlines regularly as more and more groups raise concern over the safety of these substances. In a statement released this week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked for reform to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. The group is particularly concerned about the effects these substances have on children and babies.

Last month, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) held hearings on the safety of food dyes but failed to make a definitive ruling. The most recent study on Bisphenol-A (BPA) added to growing doubts about its safety; but the FDA’s stance on it remains ambiguous. Meanwhile, in 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported [PDF] that the FDA is not ensuring the safety of many chemicals.

Yet while the FDA stalls and hedges on the safety of these substances, Americans are exposed to untested combinations of food additives, dyes, preservatives, and chemicals on a daily basis. Indeed, for the vast majority of Americans consuming industrial foods, a veritable chemical cocktail enters their bodies every day and according to the GAO report, “FDA is not systematically ensuring the continued safety of current GRAS substances.”

The term GRAS refers to “generally regarded as safe,” the moniker the FDA uses to regulate food additives, dyes, and preservatives. The trouble is, this system is not effective. Dr. Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union, said in an interview that many additives in our food supply are never even tested. That’s because the GRAS designation is a voluntary process – instead of being required to register food additives, companies can notify the FDA about their product, but only if they so choose. Hansen added that even for those additives considered GRAS, he didn’t have much faith in the designation.

Read more about Are You Enjoying Your Daily Chemical Cocktail?

© 2011 GRIST

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LIFE SITE NEWS– The world’s top herbicide for decades has come under criticism after evidence surfaced suggesting that the chemical may be linked to infertility and miscarriage in animals, raising serious concerns about the possible effect on human consumers.

Glyphosate is the weed-killing ingredient introduced over 30 years ago by the multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto under the brand name Roundup. Monsanto also produces “Roundup Ready” corn, soybeans and cotton genetically engineered to withstand large doses of Roundup that would be deadly to normal plants.

But Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue University and a well-known plant pathologist, wrote to both American and European officials earlier this year to express his concern over a newly-discovered, extremely small organism that has appeared in higher concentrations in conjunction with Roundup and Roundup Ready crops.

The “electron microscopic pathogen,” Huber wrote in a Jan 16 letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, “appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings,” noting that preliminary experiments have been able to reproduce the pathogen’s effect of causing miscarriages.

Huber urged the Secretary to delay deregulation of Roundup Ready crops, saying that “such approval could be a calamity.” “I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency,” he wrote.

Read more about World’s Top Weed Killer Linked To Infertility

© 2011 Life Site News

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TRUTH OUT– For the first time, a scientific study has linked natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire.

The peer-reviewed study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, stands to shape the contentious debate over whether drilling is safe and begins to fill an information gap that has made it difficult for lawmakers and the public to understand the risks.

The research was conducted by four scientists at Duke University. They found that levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself.

“Our results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale gas exploration worldwide,” the article states.

The group tested 68 drinking water wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale drilling areas in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York State. Sixty of those wells were tested for dissolved gas. While most of the wells had some methane, the water samples taken closest to the gas wells had on average 17 times the levels detected in wells further from active drilling. The group defined an active drilling area as within one kilometer, or about six tenths of a mile, from a gas well.

Read more about Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Fracking

© 2011 Truth Out

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Trailer for Gasland

THE INSTITUTE FOR RESPONSIBLE TECHNOLOGY– Something doesn’t quite add up about genetically modified (GM) foods.

Big biotech claims that genetic engineering is a necessary step towards feeding the world’s growing population. And yet debate still rages as to whether GM crops actually increase yields at all. Furthermore, the UN recently stated that 30,000 people a day were starving to death, but not because of underproduction of crops. It’s simply through lack of access.

Independent scientific studies raised serious alarm bells over the safety of GM foods over a decade ago. But while this made front-page headlines in European newspapers, the North American mainstream media were conspiratorially silent.

Biotech companies stand to make billions from their seed patents. Governments and supreme courts have sanctioned the patenting of life itself. The planet’s food supply is becoming increasingly dominated by fewer and fewer players.

If the biotech industry’s stated intention of feeding the world is misguided or even misdirecting, is there another political agenda behind GM food? Have we been mis-sold? Were we even given a choice in the first place?

Jeffrey M. Smith, international bestselling author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, reveals the shocking truth behind GM foods and the huge effort by governments and Biotech corporations to keep it out of the mainstream media and outside of your awareness.

WORDS: Jeffrey M. Smith

It looks the same—the bread, pies, sodas, even corn on the cob. So much of what we eat every day looks just like it did 20 years ago. But something profoundly different has happened without our knowledge or consent. And according to leading doctors, what we don’t know may already be hurting us big time.

In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) publicly condemned genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food supply, saying they posed “a serious health risk.” They called on the US government to implement an immediate moratorium on all genetically modified (GM) foods, and urged physicians to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients.

GM-What?

Genetic engineering is quite distinct from selective breeding because it involves taking genes from a completely different species and inserting them into the DNA of a plant or animal. The long term effects of this for our health and our planet’s biodiversity are unknown.

AAEM, an “Academy of Firsts,” was the first US medical organization to describe or acknowledge Gulf War Syndrome, chemical sensitivity, food allergy/addiction, and a host of other medical issues. But the potential for harm from GMOs dwarfs anything they have identified thus far. It can impact everyone who eats.

More than 70% of the foods on supermarket shelves contain derivatives of the eight GM foods on the market—soy, corn, oil from canola and cottonseed, sugar from sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya, and a small amount of zucchini and crook neck squash. The biotech industry hopes to genetically engineer virtually all remaining vegetables, fruits, grains, and beans (not to mention animals).

The two primary reasons why plants are engineered are to allow them to either drink poison, or produce poison. The poison drinkers are called herbicide tolerant. They’re inserted with bacterial genes that allow them to survive otherwise deadly doses of toxic herbicide. Biotech companies sell the seed and herbicide as a package deal, and US farmers use hundreds of millions of pounds more herbicide because of these types of GM crops. The poison producers are called Bt crops. Inserted genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus Thuringiensis produce an insect-killing pesticide called Bt-toxin in every cell of the plant. Both classes of GM crops are linked to dangerous side effects.

Read more about The Big GMO Cover-Up

© 2011 The Institute for Responsible Technology

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GRIST– “Coca-Cola goes green,” announced a 2010 Forbes article. Indeed, the beverages giant maintains partnerships with Big Green groups like Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund. It recently even completed its takeover of Honest Tea, an organic bottled-tea company. It would clearly like to be seen as a paragon of “green capitalism” — the idea that doing good and doing well go hand in hand.

Let’s put aside questions over what can possibly be “green” about a business model geared to sucking in huge amounts of drinking water, blasting it with what are probably toxic sweeteners and other dodgy substances, and then packaging it in little aluminum cans and plastic bottles and sending them far and wide, to be chilled (using fossil energy) before consumption.

OK, so within those tight constraints, Coca-Cola says it wants to be a “green company.” So … WTF? Last week, Coca-Cola shareholders voted by a 3-to-1 margin to continue using BPA, a toxic industrial chemical, in the lining of its soft-drink cans.

According to an account in Food Production Daily, a company executive assured shareholders that “if we had any sliver of doubt about the safety of our packaging, we would not continue to use [BPA].” So, we’re supposed to believe that Coke execs have weighed the evidence and found BPA to be safe — and that they will immediately banish it if they decide otherwise.

Sorry, but that’s bullsh*t.

Read more about Coke, BPA, and the Limits of ‘Green Capitalism’

© 2011 Grist

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