Atrazine was banned by the European Union in 2003 — just shy of 15 years ago — due to the “ubiquitous and unpreventable” water contamination. In 2006, members of the Natural Resources Defense Council authored a paper that presented evidence of Syngenta’s heavy-handed involvement with US atrazine assessments, and their apparently successful attempts at influencing the approval process. The authors note that Syngenta not only submitted flawed data as evidence that their product didn’t cause harm, but the corporate giant also repeatedly held private meetings with the EPA to “negotiate the government’s regulatory approach.” Unsurprisingly, the details of these meetings were withheld from the public. (Related: Keep up with what the EPA is up to at EPA.news)

The harmful effects of atrazine

Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a scientist from the University of California at Berkeley, has studied the effects of atrazine at length, and has come to some very disturbing conclusions about what this toxic pesticide is capable of.

In 2010, research led by Dr. Hayes showed that in amphibians, atrazine is a substantial endocrine diruptor that can even cause chemical castration in males. Forty male tadpoles were exposed to water with atrazine at 2.5 parts per billion, an amount that was well within the EPA’s established drinking water standards. Approximately  one-tenth of the tadpoles that grew in the atrazine-tainted water became “functionally female,” according to Hayes. Those frogs, which were born male, reportedly produced eggs. After being exposed to atrazine, many of the 36 male-presenting frogs reportedly showed decreased testosterone, reduced breeding gland size, poor laryngeal development, suppressed mating behavior, and reduced fertility. Similar effects have been seen in other amphibious creatures.

On his own website, Atrazinelovers.com, Dr. Hayes presents evidence of other ill effects of atrazine. In rodents, for example, the chemical has been shown to cause a myriad of cancers and immune system failure. He also notes that similar effects have been observed in other species such as fish, reptiles and mammals — including humans. According to Hayes, some research has already linked atrazine exposure to reduced sperm count and decreased fertility in humans.

Dr. Hayes is not the only one to provide evidence that atrazine is harmful. A 2013 study, published by the journal Toxicology and Industrial Health, also indicated that atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor. To conduct their research, the team utilized snails that were divided into three groups: exposed to atrazine, exposed to glyphosate, and a control group. The study found that atrazine substantially affected hormone levels, and that it caused degenerative changes to the snails’ reproductive organs. Glyphosate was also found to be harmful. The researchers concluded, “It can be concluded that both herbicides are endocrine disruptors and cause cellular toxicity…” (Related: Learn more about the harmful effects of glyphosate and other pesticides at Glyphosate.news)

Another study, published by a team from Purdue University, found that atrazine caused alterations to reproductive and neuroendocrine genes in fish. Jennifer Freeman, an assistant professor of toxicology in the School of Health Sciences commented, “The exact connection to health outcomes is not defined, but we found gene alterations in our animal model when exposed to the level of atrazine that is deemed safe for drinking water.”

The federally-approved amount of atrazine is a mere 3 parts per billion, but even that amount appears to be problematic. Notably, the research team of this study specifically chose zebra fish to conduct their experiment on because their embryonic development time mirrors human prenatal development. So, there is a strong potential for atrazine to be harmful to humans, even at levels which are currently regarded as “safe.”

Why is atrazine still in use?

There is an abundance of evidence from a variety of researchers that indicates atrazine is harmful to wildlife, and probably humans. It is widely known that atrazine contaminates the water supply — in fact, it is the most commonly detected crop chemical in drinking water. And yet, the EPA approved the chemical for continued use over ten years ago.

The EPA reportedly launched another review of atrazine regulations in the spring of 2016. It is expected that the agency will release its newest report some time during 2017, but will anything actually change? It’s hard to say. One can only hope that the EPA will do what is right once they are under new leadership.

Follow more news about chemicals and the environment at ENVIRO.news.

Sources:

AtrazineLovers.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

EcoWatch.com

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

But it turns out Alex Jones is correct. As the lab science director of CWC Labs, I not only conduct mass spec analyses of pesticides and herbicides in foods, but I also have access to a massive library of published books describing the toxic effects of hundreds of different pesticides. Atrazine is widely documented as a “powerful chemical castrator” that transforms males into hermaphrodites, the animal kingdom version of a “metrosexual.” It’s also widely present in the U.S. water supply. It is undoubtedly one of the chemicals currently responsible for the mass feminization of men in modern society.

To explain the science, I’m republishing an excerpt from the book Our Daily Poison – From Pesticides to Packaging How Chemicals Have Contaminated the Food Chain and Are Making Us Sick by Marie-Monique Robin, published in 2014. Click here to pick up the book at BN.com (don’t shop at Amazon.com, as its profits fund the fake news propaganda rag known as the Washington Post).

(Note to InfoWars and other indy media outlets: We can run research on any topic across over 1,000 printed reference books, using an automated system I built. So if you need supporting documentation on atrazine, glyphosate, BPA, medicinal herbs, vitamins or other molecules of interest, just ask me for a research compilation. In addition, my lab can easily detect atrazine in water, so if you want to grab water from Austin and have my lab test it, that’s a cinch. Imagine being able to publish a story, “Austin water supply found contaminated with feminization chemicals that turn men into metrosexuals…” We can literally run that research in just a few hours on various water samples from across the city.)

“The males became homosexuals and coupled with other males, adopting a feminized behavior… atrazine acted as a very powerful chemical castrator”

The most astonishing and relevant passage from this book is as follows, relating the findings from a brilliant scientist (Tyrone Hayes) who studied the effects of atrazine on males and the endocrine system:

“We observed that atrazine reduced the size of the larynx, which is the voice box in the males. Since they sing to seduce the females, this meant they were sexually handicapped. We also observed very low levels of testosterone among the adult males; some of them were hermaphrodites, which means they had both ovaries and testes. In certain cases, the males became homosexuals and coupled with other males, adopting a feminized behavior; sometimes they had eggs in their testes instead of sperm. Ultimately, atrazine acted as a very powerful chemical castrator that is biologically active at 1 ppb, and even 0.1 ppb.”

Tyrone Hayes maintains a very informative website called AtrazineLovers.com. (RELATED: We will soon be launching two news websites covering all this: Atrazine.news and Pesticide.news. Be sure to watch for them soon. We already run Glyphosate.news as well.) Not surprisingly, the pro-GMO, pro-pesticide industry has gone to great lengths to try to discredit and destroy Hayes, just like they do anyone who dares conduct actual science on agricultural chemicals or GMOs.

Atrazine: A “Powerful Chemical Castrator”

Excerpted from the book, bolding added for emphasis

During the New Orleans symposium, Tyrone Hayes evoked one of his latest studies showing that atrazine, an agricultural poison, provoked mechanisms characteristic of breast and prostate cancers in human cells exposed to doses similar to those found in the environment.* “You’ve all heard the good news,” he exclaimed. “The Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] has announced that it will reexamine atrazine’s scientific file! Let’s hope it will end up banning it just like Europe did five years ago!” Though the herbicide was banned by the European Union in 2004, it is still massively used throughout the United States, where approximately forty thousand tons are spread on countless farms growing crops such as corn, sorghum, sugar cane, and wheat every year.’’ Lauded as the “DDT for weeds” when it was put on the market in 1958, today atrazine is the principal contaminant of American surface and ground waters, much like in the majority of European countries (with France in the lead), despite the ban.

Two weeks before the New Orleans symposium, Lisa Jackson, the EPA director nominated by President Barack Obama in January 2009, had effectively announced that the agency would “conduct a new evaluation of the pesticide to assess any possible links between atrazine and cancer, as well as other health problems, such as premature births.” “This is a dramatic change,” said Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) (see Chapter 18). “There is growing evidence that atrazine could be a hazard to human health. This is a strong signal that the world is changing in regards to some of the most widely used chemicals.”

If there is one scientist who battled for atrazine’s ban in the United States, it is inarguably Tyrone Hayes, even if (as he explained to me during our meeting in his Berkeley laboratory on December 12, 2009) “this battle wasn’t a personal decision, but was imposed by events.” In 1998, he was contacted by Novartis (the company became Syngenta two years later after its merger with AstraZeneca), which offered him a “handsomely paid” contract to “verify if atrazine [was] an endocrine disruptor,” as Theo Colborn and her co-authors note in Our Stolen Future (see Chapter 16). For the industry, the matter was quite serious as, seven years earlier, a U.S. Geological Survey report had revealed that “atrazine exceeded drinking water standards in 27 percent of the samples” taken from the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio Bivers and tributaries. What’s more, in the 1980s, two studies conducted on mice and rats had indicated that exposure to the herbicide brought on breast and uterine cancers, lymphomas, and leukemia. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) judged the results sufficiently convincing and decided to classify atrazine as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (group 2B) in 1991. As a result, the EPA, leaning on the Safe Drinking Water Act, decreased the atrazine standard to a maximum of 3 ug/l of water, or 3 ppb (parts per billion). In 1994, three studies established a link between rodents’ exposure to atrazine and mammary tumors. Then in 1997, one year after the publication of Our Stolen Future, an epidemiological study carried out in several rural Kentucky counties found a significant excess of breast cancer among the most exposed women (in correlation with the level of water contamination and proximity of the home to corn cultivations).

Thus began Novartis’ great strategic era. Its first tactic was tremendously effective, and brought about IARC’s downgrade of atrazine from group 2B to group 3 (not classifiable) in 1999. To justify the surprising decision, the UN agency experts relied on a line of reasoning I described in Chapter 10: “the mechanism by which atrazine increases the incidence of mammary gland tumors in rats is not relevant to humans.”

Novartis’ second effort revolved around Tyrone Hayes, a brilliant biologist (and the youngest tenured professor at Berkeley) and an amphibian enthusiast who named his daughter Kassina, after an African frog species. “Frogs are my entire life,” he explained to me in his laboratory, surrounded by thousands of jars filled with amphibians. “I grew up in the country, in South Carolina, and I was always fascinated by their ability to metamorphose—from an egg to a tadpole, and then to an adult frog.”

“Why do frogs provide an interesting model from which to study the effects of endocrine disruptors?” I asked.

“They’re a perfect model!” responded the biologist. “First of all, because they’re very sensitive to hormones that enable the activation of genes necessary for their various metamorphoses; and then, because they possess exactly the same hormones as humans, such as testosterone, estrogen, or the thyroid hormone.”

“How did you go about your study?”

“I should clarify that this process was closely monitored by Novartis, and then Syngenta. Initially, we raised frogs from the Xenopus laevis family in water reservoirs to which we had added different doses of atrazine, similar to what’s found in field drainage ditches and up to thirty times lower than the existing U.S. standard (3ppb)—meaning levels that a human being might find in tap water. To give you an idea, that’s the equivalent of a grain of salt in a reservoir of water. We observed that atrazine reduced the size of the larynx, which is the voice box in the males. Since they sing to seduce the females, this meant they were sexually handicapped. We also observed very low levels of testosterone among the adult males; some of them were hermaphrodites, which means they had both ovaries and testes. In certain cases, the males became homosexuals and coupled with other males, adopting a feminized behavior; sometimes they had eggs in their testes instead of sperm. Ultimately, atrazine acted as a very powerful chemical castrator that is biologically active at 1 ppb, and even 0.1 ppb.”

“Do you know if wild frogs were presenting the same problems?”

“That was actually the second stage of our study: we set out with a refrigerated truck across Utah and Iowa where we collected eight hundred young leopard frogs (Rana pipiens) in ditches alongside fields, near golf courses or riverbanks. We dissected them and observed exactly the same dysfunctions that we had seen in the laboratory frogs. It was very upsetting, and that’s when I understood that the decline in North American and European frog populations was due to pesticide contamination that affected their reproduction systems.”

“How do you explain this phenomenon?”

“Atrazine stimulates an enzyme called ‘aromatase,’ which transforms the masculine hormone, testosterone, into the female hormone, estrogen. As a result, the estrogen produced by the aromatase leads to the development of female organs, like ovaries or ovules in the testes. However, the levels of aromatase are also linked to the development of breast or prostate cancers. An epidemiological study conducted in a Syngenta atrazine factory in Louisiana, published in 2002, actually indicated a significant excess of prostate cancer among workers.”

“How did Syngenta react?”

“Ah!” sighed Tyrone Hayes. “I was very naive at the time! At first, the company asked me to repeat my study to verify that I would obtain the same results. They offered me 2 million dollars for it and, initially, I accepted . . . Then, I understood their strategy—they wanted to drag things out to gain some time and stop me from publishing. I finally terminated the contract and I published my results in 2002.18,19 After that, it was war! And I have to say that I never could have imagined that it would be so violent: Syngenta wrote to the dean of UC Berkeley, used the press to discredit me, added a link on its website to junkscience.com, Steven Milloy’s site, where I ended up on the list of ‘junk scientists’ [see Chapter 8]. Today, it makes me laugh because I know that appearing on that list is proof that I was doing good work! They then paid scientists to conduct new studies that, of course, were unable to reproduce my results. Their goal was to create doubt, and it worked, at least in the United States where the EPA ultimately renewed its approval of atrazine in 2007.”

In fact, in October 2007, the EPA produced a report that concluded: “Atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development: no additional studies are required.” Meaning that the unstoppable machine created to destroy any and all uncomfortable truths had, once again, worked marvelously.

At the height of the drama, Tyrone Hayes published an article in BioScience in which he deciphered the immutable cogs that 1 have described throughout this book: manipulations of science, the funding effect, defamation campaigns, the public authorities’ complacency, media brainwashing, etc.

Pesticide Mixtures Enhance Individual Effects

“Industry has increased efforts to discredit my work, but my laboratory continues to examine the impacts of atrazine and other pesticides on environmental and public health,” writes Tyrone Hayes on his website, ironically named atrazinelovers.com. “My decision to stand up and face the industry giant was not a heroic one. My parents taught me, ‘Do not do the right thing because you seek reward . . . and do not avoid the wrong thing because you fear punishment. Do the right thing, because it is the right thing.’”

“My quarrels with Syngenta marked a turning point in my career,” explained the Berkeley researcher, “because that’s when I began to specialize in a little-explored field: the effects of pesticide mixtures. The leopard frogs that I collected from fields in the Midwest weren’t exposed uniquely to atrazine, but rather to a combination of several substances. However, scientific literature is generally only interested in the toxicological effects of pesticides at relatively high doses (in the realm of parts per million), but rarely in low doses and even less so in mixtures of low doses, like those that exist in our everyday environment, namely in tap water and the fruits and vegetables we eat.”

This “omission”—on the whole quite surprising, and which also characterizes the regulatory system of chemical products—was similarly highlighted by the U.S. Geological Survey in a 2006 report that is all the more remarkable because it openly describes the pollution of America’s surface and ground waters: “Because of the widespread and common occurrence of pesticide mixtures, particularly in streams, the total combined toxicity of pesticides in water or other media often may be greater than that of any single pesticide compound that is present,” writes Robert Gilliom, the principal author. He adds that their findings indicate that the study of mixtures should be an absolute priority.

And so Tyrone Hayes once again hopped aboard his refrigerated truck to cross Nebraska and collect thousands of liters of “chemical brew” flowing through industrial cornfields. Once he returned to Berkeley, he identified nine recurring molecules: four herbicides, including atrazine and alachlor (or

Lasso, which caused Paul Frangois’s poisoning; see Chapter 1), three insecticides, and two fungicides. When I met him, he was working on another mixture composed of five pesticides, including Roundup and chlorpyrifos. The scientist conducted each study in two ways: he raised frogs in reservoirs filled with the “brew” from the fields, as well as in the mixture he reconstituted in his laboratory in order to compare the results. And in both cases, the results were very troubling.

“When we mixed the substances, we noticed effects we hadn’t seen with products taken separately,” he explained. “First off, we observed weakened immune systems in the frogs due to thymus disorders, which meant they were more susceptible to, for example, meningitis, and that they died of diseases more often than frogs in the control group. That immune weakness can explain, in part, the population declines. But added to it is the disruption to reproductive systems, similar to what I observed with atrazine on its own. Finally, the mixtures had an effect on metamorphosis time and larva size. And yet, the doses we were using were up to a hundred times lower than the residue level authorized in water.”

“What can we conclude about humans from that?”

“We have no idea!” responded Tyrone Hayes. “But what’s incredible is that the pesticide evaluation system has never taken into account the fact that substances can interact or accumulate, or even create new molecules. It’s even more surprising given that pharmacists have known for centuries that it’s imperative to avoid mixing certain medications, at the risk of exposing oneself to serious side effects. For that matter, when the FDA authorizes a new drug, it always insists that the medicinal contraindications be detailed in the user instructions. Clearly, this kind of precaution is difficult to implement for pesticides. Imagine the EPA explaining to farmers: you can use pesticide A, as long as your neighbor at the farm next door doesn’t use pesticide B or C! It’s impossible! And, if it’s impossible, it means that these products have no business in the fields. In the meantime, knowing the ‘chemical body burden’ that characterizes every citizen in industrialized countries, we can effectively fear the worst.”

Get the book to read more

The book you want to get on this is called: Our Daily Poison – From Pesticides to Packaging How Chemicals Have Contaminated the Food Chain and Are Making Us Sick by Marie-Monique Robin, published in 2014. Click here to pick up the book at BN.com.

1. Pink Slime – This is not finely textured beef. It’s to the bone meat scraps mixed with ammonia to bulk up cheap burgers and hot dogs. Not allowed in E.U.

2.Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) – For twenty years, Americans and their animals have been guinea pigs eating food with pesticides or herbicides embedded in the DNA. You’ll find GMOs in 80% of all processed food and feed. Animals experience birth defects, intestinal problems and sterility. 38 nations, including Russia, Italy, Venezuela, Scotland and Austria have banned them.

3. Carrageenan – Just cause it’s made from seaweed doesn’t mean it’s healthy. It thickens up U.S.food – yogurt, milk, infant formula – and is a culprit in gastrointestinal disorders. The E.U. bans this in their baby food.

4. Atrazine – This herbicide is an endocrine disrupter and most likely in your drinking water. Exposed male frogs are “chemically castrated” by atrazine and it’s banned in the E.U.

5. Artificial Hormones – We feed these to the cattle to fatten ’em up. Humans may get cancer as a result of eating the meat or milk laden with these synthetic hormones, which are banned in Japan, E.U., China and Australia.

6. Chickens in Arsenic – You know arsenic is a poison, but it makes your raw chicken purchase look pinker. Cows eat arsenic laced chicken manure. You might too, if you eat conventional meat. This process is banned in the E.U.

7. Ractopamine Pork – No, it’s not a dinosaur, Ractopamine is an asthma medication for pigs. It increases their muscle and the money they bring. You might get headaches, insomnia or gain weight or worse. Ractopamine additives are banned in Russia, China and the E.U.

8. Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVM) – if you drink energy/sport drinks, this poisonous flame retardant keeps your drink from separating. And may cause cancer, birth defects, schizophrenia and worse in rats. It’s so bad, 100 countries have banned it.

9. Artificial Coloring – You’re ingesting petroleum and coal tar when eating Red 40 or Yellow 5. It’s in candy and many other brightly colored foods. Read the label, because hyperactivity and brain cancer are risks. Banned in many parts of the E.U.

10. Bromine Bread -This increases the bulk and revs up the speed in bread production. Rats have bulked up with cancer, nervous system and kidney problems, among others. Canada. China. Brazil and the E.U. have banned it.

11. Azodicarbonamide – A chemical for whiter flour, yoga mats and rubber soles. Check your bread products. Asthma is a risk. It’s banned in Singapore.

12. Butylated Hydroxyanisole and Butylated Hydroxytoluene – This stops food spoilage. And may cause cancer. In butter, meat and gum. Japan, the UK say No!

13. Antibiotics – Given to animals to keep ’em healthy and fatter in CAFOs. Linked to antibiotic resistance and banned in New Zealand, E.U. and Australia.

14. Irradiation – Fukashima for food! Radiation is used to extend shelf life and killing bacteria. Used on meats, fruits and vegetables. Banned in the E.U.

15. Phosphate Additives – Added to meats for “flavor enhancement” and less shrinkage. Also sodas. Distractify.com calls it an  “arterial toxin and increases heart disease risk.”

Support your local farmer and grow your own food.

Sources:

Distractify.com

Sustainablepulse.com

Panna.org

Huffingtonpost.com

Science.naturalnews.com

Care2.com

“Anyone who cares about wildlife, people and the environment should be deeply troubled by this finding,” said Nathan Donley, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “When the government’s own scientists say there’s enough atrazine in streams and rivers right now to kill frogs and other imperiled wildlife, we should be worried. How many animals have to die before we do what Europe did 12 years ago and ban atrazine?”

Atrazine exposed

This isn’t the first time the EPA has reviewed atrazine but it is the first time the agency deemed the herbicide as a risk to birds, mammals, frogs and plants it was not intended to destroy. Since the chemical was first reviewed in 2003, a body of evidence has surfaced demonstrating that atrazine is now widespread in the environment and could endanger plants and wildlife.

At the forefront of this research is Tyron Hayse, who has been publishing studies on the adverse effects of atrazine for years. He has argued the chemical acts as an endocrine disruptor, which hinders the sexual development of amphibians, such as frogs. After his first study of atrazine was published, which was originally funded by Syngenta, Hayes said the company launched a campaign against him, trying to destroy his professional reputation.

“I’ve known all along that atrazine posed a risk to wildlife,” Hayes told Take Part. “I worked with these guys, I sat in a room with these guys, and they acknowledged that atrazine is bad. My science, my students—the work that we did was so solid that they had to go after me with personal attacks.”

The report, published Thursday by the EPA concluded, “This risk assessment concludes that aquatic plant communities are impacted in many areas where atrazine use is heaviest, and there is potential chronic risk to fish, amphibians, and aquatic invertebrates in these same locations.” What is ironic is that the EPA cited the work of Hayes, along with other researchers, about the impact atrazine can have on the sexual development of amphibians, including producing “gonadal malformations” that Hayes documented.

The demise of herbicides

It is not known what will be done in the wake of the assessment. Atrazine was first approved in 1958 but has has provoked concerns about its environmental impact for years. As a result, the herbicide has been banned from Europe. The long-term adverse health effects of the herbicide includes reproductive, developmental and hormonal problems.

In response to a draft of the report, Timothy Pastoor, a toxicologist and former principal scientist at Syngenta, said in an email to Take Part that Syngenta, “continues to support and defend the use of this important herbicide. Atrazine has been the backbone of corn weed control in the U.S. for more than 50 years. Extensive scientific research and numerous regulatory reviews have continuously proven the benefits and safety of this active ingredient.”

Sources:

WakingTimes
TakePart
CivilEats
ThinkProgress
BiologicalDiversity

The study was led by Jean Brender, professor emeritus of public health at Texas A&M University, and at the request of the journal Current Environmental Health. Brender has studied the health effects of contaminated drinking water for more than 20 years, making her the ideal candidate to complete the research review.

Upon reviewing the studies, scientists were able to link nitrates, atrazine, and arsenic to birth defects, some of which include severe injury to the brain and spinal cord. Researchers focused on agricultural areas, where farming chemicals routinely make their way into the water supply.

Farming chemicals linked to severe birth defects

The chemicals can be dangerous if the levels are high enough, said Brender.

Produced by the Swiss agrochemical company Syngenta, atrazine is an herbicide widely used to control broad leaf weeds and grasses that can affect crops like corn and sugar cane. The European Union banned the chemical in 2004 due to the harm it causes humans and wildlife, specifically amphibians.

A known endocrine disruptor, atrazine is capable of reversing the sex of male frogs, changing them into females. This property can affect humans similarly as it interferes with naturally occurring hormones in the body, affecting the ability to reproduce and sexual development. Endocrine disruptors may also affect neurological development and the immune system, posing the greatest risk to pregnant mothers, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Nitrates in the water supply

Plants love nitrogen, which is why farmers use nitrogen fertilizers on crops; however, nitrates can be problematic when they’re washed into drinking water. The Maximum Contaminant Level of nitrate in drinking water is 10 mg/L, established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nitrate levels at or above 10 mg/L are known to cause methemoglobinemia (“blue baby syndrome”), a potentially fatal blood disorder affecting infants six months old and younger.

Like atrazine, nitrates pose the most risk to women who are pregnant.

An incomplete brain, protruding spinal cord, cleft palates, abdominal wall defects and limb reduction defects may be caused by these chemicals. Women who gave birth to babies with the aforementioned health problems were more likely to drink water with high nitrate levels than mothers who birthed healthy babies, scientists found.

Water testing

The best way to avoid harmful contaminates in drinking water is to not drink the water. Use bottled water for drinking and cooking any foods that absorb water, such as vegetables, pasta, and rice – particularly if you’re an expecting mother.

If you’re still concerned about contaminates in the tap, you can contact your water supplier to learn what the nitrate and atrazine levels are. Water supplies are required to test for those chemicals periodically.

If you’re on a private well, the water is most likely not monitored by city or state regulatory agencies. In this case, you should be sure to have your water independently tested every few years.

Sources:

BFHD.wa.gov

NIEHS.nih.gov

FoodForensics.com

TexasStandard.org

Science.NaturalNews.com

Of course, commercial farmers have used dangerous chemical pesticides for all kinds of crops for decades, to the detriment of human health. Even where pesticide use is regulated, there are no executive orders addressing problems such as the bio-accumulative effects of pesticides like Atrazine, found in foods fed to children, for example, and in far higher levels legally allowed. Pesticides such as this are known as endocrine disruptors and cause hermaphroditism in males and cancers for everyone. Atrazine is banned in the European Union.

Natural products for marijuana plant pests

If growing marijuana yourself, there are some simple steps that can be taken to reduce the chance of pest infestation:

At least 20 different damaging pests can infect the marijuana plants. Controlling the climate significantly decreases the risks, especially for indoor growth. Grow small amounts of marijuana in fertile soil, outdoors if possible. With a small crop you have lots of non- toxic options. Small plants you can be sprayed with a soapy solution once a week for a month. Larger plants need to be separated and carefully treated. If it seems like there is a bad pest infestation, especially if growing inside, generally it’s best to scrap the crop, clean the area thoroughly, wait for a few weeks and start again.

Try organic repellents to keep pests away from both indoor an outdoor plants. Cinnamon oil, clove oil and coriander oil have a measure of success against pests, without damaging the plant. These types of natural repellents can be sprayed directly onto cannabis leaves without a detrimental effect.

Consider purchasing a non-toxic pest repellent, from a reliable source. Also, if one has been exposed to or unwittingly consumed pesticides, taking a good toxin eliminator such as organic spirulina can help the body to recover.

Natural predators such as ladybugs are beneficial to have around outdoor marijuana plants as they will prey on pest larvae. Encourage birds to next in the area but be aware that birds will go for marijuana seeds.

Growing plants such as geraniums and marigolds that are strong-smelling may help to repel insect pests nearby the marijuana crop.

Cayenne pepper or hot pepper used black and red pepper on and around the plants is said to be very useful in to keeping bugs off marijuana plants.

Sources:

Growweedeasy.com

NaturalNews.com

Theweedblog.com

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) bills itself as an independent, non-profit gatekeeper of science that works to ensure that “peer-reviewed mainstream science reaches the public.” And this statement is technically true, if you can wade through its grandiloquence and understand what is actually meant by “peer-reviewed mainstream science.”

Leaked financial documents from ACSH reveal that the organization suffers deficits year after year, and continually has to beg for funding from its corporate donors just to get by (after the shills running it get their slice, of course). And just who are these corporate donors? They include natural gas “fracking” companies, e-cigarette manufacturers, drug companies, junk food corporations, pharmaceutical and vaccine companies, and chemical industries.

The following list outlines ACSH donors for fiscal year 2013, and the respective donations made:

• Achelis Bodman Foundation (fracking): $40,000
• American Petroleum (fracking): $37,500
• Personal Care Products Council: $10,000
• Amvac: $5,000
• Texmark Chemicals: $5,000
• Triad Foundation (fracking): $35,000
• The Safe Cig (e-cigarettes): $4,100
• Chevron: $18,500
• Coca-Cola: $50,000
• The Safe Cig (again): $4,100
• Stare Fund/Irene Stare: $7,500
• Bristol Myers (pharmaceuticals): $15,000
• Dr. Pepper/Snapple: $5,000
• Bayer CropScience (biotechnology): $30,000
• Ethox Chemicals LLC: $2,000
• Procter & Gamble: $6,000
• Syngenta (biotechnology): $22,500
• 3M: $30,000
• McDonald’s: $30,000
• Altria Client Services: $25,000
• International Formula Council: $10,000

“Science” for sell: ACSH donors include Anheuser-Busch, Burger King, Dow Chemical, Exxon, Frito-Lay and Monsanto

Further in the leaked financial documents from ACSH, which are available in a PDF here, is an outline of potential donors needed to get the organization out of the red. These donors include Croplife America (Big Ag), Pepsi (Big Food) and Monsanto (Big Biotech).

Why is all of this important? Because ACSH claims to be an unbiased working group that promotes factual science rather than “hyperbole, emotion or ideology.” But the truth is that ACSH is, to quote the words of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Director Michael Jacobson, “a receptacle for payments from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, food and other companies who appreciate the convenience of having their grantees and former employees serve on government science panels.”

In case you weren’t aware, ACSH was founded by two individuals, Elizabeth Whelan and Dr. Frederick J. Stare, who were heavily invested in promoting food, tobacco and chemical interests. Whelan and Stare even authored a book together entitled Panic in the Pantry that promoted chemicals, food additives and processed sugar as healthy forms of nutrition.

Panic in the Pantry was such a pathetic flop, however, that it is currently selling used on Amazon.com for $0.01 (and people still aren’t buying it).

Today, the position of executive director at ACSH is held by Gilbert Ross, who previously had his medical license revoked for professional misconduct. The official record indicates that Ross served 46 months in prison for his crimes and was ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars for defrauding New York’s Medicaid program. He is now complicit in promoting deadly substances like DDT, glyphosate (Roundup), BPA, rBGH, phthalates, Agent Orange, atrazine (crop chemical) and mercury (in vaccines).

ACSH has also received significant funding from the various Koch family foundations, which actively promote pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

A full list of ACSH’s financial supporters, and the companies whose products ACSH supports through industry-funded “science,” is available here:
TruthWiki.org.

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com^[PDF]

http://truthwiki.org

Diet and exercise are a great way to maintain a healthy weight, but they aren’t the whole story. Many people fail to consider the chemicals in their food that promote weight gain. To make matters worse, these chemicals are often found in foods and sodas that are touted as natural or healthy.

Major food companies add synthetic chemicals to their products in order to improve taste and cut down production costs. Synthetic chemicals that can make you fat are known as “obesogens.” They are added to food to enhance flavor, but obesogens have various side effects, including weight gain. They can be found in nearly everything, including sodas, pretzels, yogurt, faucets, cans and water bottles. In order to stay fit, avoid these top 10 food chemicals that are making you fat.

Monosodium glutamate

Monosodium glutamate, or MSG, is a chemical commonly added to processed food in order to improve taste. It serves as a cheaper alternative to natural sources of flavor in food. MSG is also a dangerous excitotoxin, which overexcites brain cells to the brink of damage or death. Excitotoxins make unhealthy food appealing and even addictive, which can promote weight gain. MSG is used in recipes of almost all families, which can make various weight loss methods futile.

Aspartame

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used to replace natural sugar. Products that claim to have less or no sugar usually rely on aspartame to provide their sweetness. Aspartame affects the activity of the bacteria in the stomach, which can instigate weight gain. Two major components of aspartame, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, also stimulate two hormones, insulin and leptins, which tell the body to store energy, either as glycogen or fat.

Sucralose

Sucralose is three times sweeter than aspartame. When ingested, sucralose cannot be broken down simply by catalysts found in the body, making it a noncaloric product. Despite being devoid of calories, a study pointed out that a significant intake of sucralose can increase pH level within the intestines, as well as increase body weight.

Bisphenol-A

Bisphenol-A, or BPA, is a compound found in plastic and canned food containers. Because food is usually kept in containers for long periods of time, the BPA from the container walls can seep into the products. When ingested, BPA catalyses the growth of fat cells in the body. A research study showed that women with relatively high levels of BPA gained a pound or more in a year in comparison to women with low levels of BPA. Although BPA exits the body quickly, consuming the chemical regularly can increase the risk of low metabolism.

Perfluorooctanoic acid

Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, is a synthetic compound often found in non-stick cooking pans, and even in microwavable popcorn. PFOA is already known to be associated with thyroid disorders, low birth weight and kidney disorders. In the United States, a strong correlation has been shown between PFOA and obesity as well.

Atrazine

Atrazine is an herbicide primarily used on corn and sugarcane crops. It was banned in Europe for over a decade because of groundwater contamination. Atrazine can disrupt the proper functioning of mitochondria, which are organelles inside cells that convert energy into a usable form. This can lead to insulin resistance, which inhibits the hormone from converting sugar (glucose) into energy, and thus promotes weight gain.

Mercury

Mercury is most often found in farmed fish, and high-fructose corn syrup. It is a highly toxic metal that is lethal if consumed by itself. When consumed regularly, mercury can cause numerous physiological complications, including a slower metabolism. The human body cannot burn as many calories with a slow metabolism, leading to an excess of fat storage.

Polychlorinated biphenyls

Polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, is a toxic chemical with many industrial uses. Although it was banned in 1979, it still persists in the environment and contaminates fish and animals later eaten by humans. Consumption of PCB has been linked to cancers of the gastrointestinal tract as well as estrogenic effects that can lead to weight gain.

Tributyltin

Tributyltin, or TBT, is a form of bioicide applied to the undersides of boats in order to inhibit the growth of marine organisms. The continued use of TBT has contaminated many bodies of water and, subsequently, marine life. TBT is an endocrine disruptor that interferes with the proper functioning of hormones. It can potentially increase the amount of fat cells produced by the body and lower metabolism as well. One study shows that TBT was found to induce the proliferation of fat cells and reduce their production of leptin, a hormone that regulates energy balance by preventing hunger. Leptin resistance is one of the main causes underlying obesity.

Triclosan

Triclosan is a chemical added to hand sanitizers, soaps, toys and surgical cleaning treatments for its antibacterial properties. When not rinsed thoroughly, hands and cooking pans can still contain traces of triclosan, which may contaminate food when in contact. Its antibacterial properties can destroy beneficial bacteria thriving in the stomach and colon. Furthermore, large doses of triclosan can interfere with thyroid hormones which control metabolism and in turn, promote weight gain.

It’s easier to be fat than fit. You can ease the struggle by familiarizing yourself with these counterproductive chemicals and avoiding them. As an informed consumer, can you stop eating synthetic chemicals that make you fat and start eating unprocessed foods that make you fit.