Happy & Healthy in a Chemical World

- "Natural" vs. "Synthetic" is meaningless.

$ "Alcohol made in a huge factory...is the same compound as the alcohol in your wine or beer.

- You can’t simply outlaw "toxics" because "the dose makes the poison." The question of cancer coming from man-made chemicals is no longer the worry it once was.

$ "...everything we eat, breath and touch could make us sick if we get too much of it."

$ "Carcinogens are not rare and unusual. They cannot be outlawed...The world is full of carcinogens and it doesn’t matter very much."

- The long list, while including some grievous failures, was overall not as bad as we thought at the time.

$ "Most people know about DDT, CFC and PCB. Very few know about aflatoxin."

$ "...chloro-organic compounds...cannot be banned any more than gravity or photosynthesis."

$ "...when farmers use pesticides, they are not doing something contrary to Nature. They are following Nature’s way."

- They are less of a threat and more of a blessing than we thought just 10 or 20 years ago. They are safe.

$ "...the amount of pesticide residue the average person consumes in a year is less than the amount of similar natural compounds in a single cup of coffee or a single serving of peanuts, mushrooms, basil or wheat flour!"

- "Pollutants gradually and completely disappear by natural processes."

$ "Something added to the environment which doesn’t have a bad effect is not a pollutant. It simply came from the Earth and returned to the Earth."

- Industrial pollution is now a serious problem only in developing countries. If current trends continue, we will see "the end of pollution" and have better lives for all.

$ "The chemical industry has matured just as the dangerous electrical industry matured 50 years ago."

$ "...priority for having a clean environment...comes after having a full belly and a warm place to sleep."

- We live in an uncertain, risky world. Scarce money should not be spent reducing tiny chemical risks when much worse risks go unheeded.

$ "Observations or experiments usually just give us correlations and we guess at cause and effect...we take in all the information available and make a best judgment--"

- Most of the popular ideas on natural foods, vegetarian diets, organic foods and pesticide residues are misguided and not useful.

$ "...the human body can handle modest levels of toxic chemicals, like caffeine..."

$ "...plants of the nightshade group--potato, tomato, etc.--contain a known poison, solanine."

$ "...we ought to rejoice in the agricultural bounty that pesticides help to produce. Our health greatly benefits--"

$ "The main contact we all have with chemicals is the food we eat. It is not in the food; it is the food itself."

- It is a myth that everything from the natural world is wholesome and good and to be preferred over "synthetics."

$ "...the vast majority of allergies are to natural materials: animal hair, pollens, foreign proteins, bacteria, fungal spores, and common dust mite feces!"

$ "When food spoils, the bacteria, molds and fungi that grow in it often produce quite toxic compounds."

$ "Plants use chemical warfare, natural pesticides, all the time to protect themselves from predators, mainly microbes and insects."

- Many environmental groups, mainstream media and politicians are not reliable. Train yourself to see the difference.

$ "We should be looking for truth and reasonableness from any and all sources."

$ "--don’t think that these *chemical) changes would cause the biosphere *living world) to somehow come crashing down...The eco-systems are robust."

$ "Be skeptical about any ideas that seem extreme. Be cautious about accepting messages coming from those motivated by greed, fear, hate or politics. Try to control your own fear--"

- The precautions are easy to follow.

$ ..."truthfully...you personally don’t have much to worry about from living in a sea of chemicals."

- A true understanding of chemical risks would lead to many changes in our nation’s environmental laws and regulations.

$ "New laws protecting our air, water and food supply should require regulators to...look for real health risks...reassess man-made chemicals in comparison with natural...establish a scale of relative risks...use more expert panels *in place of inflexible laws)."

- A true understanding of chemicals supports new attitudes toward food, nature, technology, our neighbors and ourselves.

$ "Will you...*show) anger, antagonism, antipathy...*or be) calm, confident, can-do?

$ "It feels better to be optimistic and you will probably live longer if you are.