IT'S NOT EASY SURVIVING ALL THE TOXINS WE'VE INTRODUCED INTO OUR WORLD

I'm primarily referring to man made toxins as in chemical toxins versus bacterial or viral pathogens not to mention others. In both my March 23/20 and March 25/20 posts I added comments to those posts advising readers that contaminated drinking water was rarely contaminated with but one single parameter. We can get all hung up on E.Coli bacteria for example and completely miss the significance of Roundup herbicide (glyphosate) in our tap water. Or we can focus on glyphosate combined with trichloroethylene (TCE) found in various drinking water wells in Cambridge, Waterloo, and Kitchener and not even think about lead or, heaven help us, microscopic asbestos fibres in our tap water. Keep in mind that the slogan "Better Living Through Chemistry" is exactly that: a slogan. It is a slogan used on behalf of and for the benefit of the bottom line of chemical companies.

The fact is that we don't categorically and mathematically know exactly how toxic our drinking water is because we as yet have not figured out a way to measure and determine the health effects of multiple contaminants in our drinking water. Simply assigning a safe number, no matter how well calculated or determined, to a single contaminant in water and then pretending/assuming that each and every additional contaminant's effects do not increase the overall negative health effects on humans provided that each additional contaminant is not individually more toxic than the first contaminant is irresponsible at the least and potentially criminally negligent at the worst. Synergistic health effects based upon multiple contaminants are well known and understood. Simply because as yet we can not accurately measure those effects does not mean that they do not exist.

But it gets worse, folks. Much worse. What if we have a contaminant in our tap water and a contaminant in the air in our homes? The contaminant in our homes could be from our furniture or simply obnoxious odours from a neighbourhood business. Say a dry cleaner or from a local factory. Despite denials from the Region of Waterloo the evidence in the Bishop St. community in Cambridge points to both indoor air contamination from TCE as well as from the now closed water well known as P6. In that case the contaminant could be solely TCE but of course it isn't. Trichloroethane (TCA) not to mention Chromium VI were also mishandled and released to the natural environment courtesy of Northstar Aerospace and Rozell/ Borg-Warner. That natural environment is both the air and the ground and hence groundwater.

So would you believe that just as dozens out of thousands of potential water contaminants have criteria, for example the Ontario Drinking Water Standards (ODWS), so do dozens out of tens of thousands of air contaminants all have separate standards in air. The air standards are usually measured in either parts per million (ppm) or in micrograms per cubic metre of air (ug/m3). Yes these standards also measure many of the same solvents, herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals as are measured in water as well as others. So now besides multiple contaminants in our water supply we also have multiple contaminants in the air we breathe at the same time. Do you think that there is any number or criteria for example that can tell you if your health is at risk from low level TCE in your drinking water at the same time as you also have low level TCE in the air you breathe? There is not. How about 3 parts per billion (ppb) TCE in your water and 1.0 ug/m3 of TCA (trichloroethane) in your household air. Absolutely no way that our authorities can tell us what the effects of that will be upon us.

Think about the reality of the hundreds of chemicals that we are exposed to every day of our lives. Water, indoor and outdoor air and lest we forget: food. Do you think that we don't have chemicals throughout our food supply? Of course we do from dioxins in our milk to mercury and PCBs in our fish. Pesticides and herbicides are also on our fruits and vegetables. Talk about better living through chemistry. Doesn't it give you a warm feeling knowing that our exposure to these chemicals is making billions of dollars for chemical companies and others? We are the guinea pig generation with little protection offered to us, other than lip service, from our own governments.