Chemicals within us, and is there a balance?

Just read an article on National Geographic’s web site (http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0610/feature4/index.html) by David Ewing Duncan who had himself tested for 320 chemicals that may be lurking in his body. There are not too many places that will do this type of testing, so he had the tests done in Canada. Turns out he had quite a few chemicals in him. Some he attributed to playing near a landfill when he was kid. But, the landfill was just upstream from a municipal water supply, so the likelihood that some chemicals leeched into the water is pretty high. We seem to pick up chemicals from just about everywhere and from everything. The most striking piece of data was the amount of a chemical used as a flame retardant, PBDE, found in his body. The doctor working with him was trying to figure out what Duncan might be exposed to on a regular basis that may be the source for this. Their best guess was frequently flying on commercial airlines. Flame retardant is used on the plastics and fabrics in planes. It also seems that this chemical has turned up in literally every place on Earth. It ends up in animals hundreds or thousands of miles from anything that may have been treated with it. What this story does not mention is the potential synergistic effects that chemicals can have on the body. This is talked about quite a bit in a book called “The Hundred-Year Lie” by Randall Fitzgerald. No one really knows what happens when several of these chemicals accumulate in your body and decide to have a big party. Think the government or some food or drug agency is testing this stuff? Not a chance. They don’t even test most of the chemicals as it is, much less for how they may interact with each other.

Today there was also a news story (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=52253) that the World Health Organization was going to begin spraying DDT indoors in areas of constant and high malaria infestation. It is not classified as an epidemic, but there does seem to be a high number of cases. Here we have a situation where we have a known toxic chemical that can cause health problems for humans, but, it seems to be about the only option to rid the area of malaria. Malaria can wreak quite a bit of havoc itself, so is treating the area with DDT a good compromise? Many people feel that if DDT is applied correctly it will rid the mosquitoes, thus stopping the spread of malaria while not causing any health problems in humans or other animals. Hopefully they are correct. Is the potential for health risks down the road worth the benefit of ridding an area of a killing disease like malaria? What about the use of the flame retardant? How many lives are saved each year because something didn’t go up in flames? Is that worth the price of potentially numerous health related issues later on?