Healing Our Bodies,
Healing the Earth
by PAMELA SPARR
Imagine waking up to a sunny day and feeling disappointed because your doctor has warned you to minimize your exposure to sunlight. You are living with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. The sun is no longer a symbol of warmth, happiness, good times and spiritual energy.
This scenario is not hypothetical.It has been my life for the last three years. I am just one person in a mounting statistic. Skin cancer is just one of many types of cancer on the rise in the United States. Each form has its own psychological, spiritual, economic and physical toll. Many have their roots in environmental damage.
Take a moment to think about your family, neighborhood, church or workplace. How many reports have you heard about:
Cancer is the Number 2 cause of death in the United States after heart disease. It is the leading cause for people ages 35-64 and is the fourth leading cause of death in children after accidents, birth defects, and diseases of infancy.
Cancer with the most alarming trends--increasing incidence and mortality-- include brain, liver, breast, kidney, prostate, esophagus, melanoma, bone marrow, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The rates of increase in these forms of cancer are tremendous. For example, the number of people in the U.S. with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has tripled since 1950.
Cancer rates are increasing in both ndustrialized countries and poorer countries. Of 6 million people worldwide diagnosed with cancer in 1996, 3.8 million were living in "developing countries."
The environmental connection
Why this tremendous increase in cancer? It cannot be attributed to genetic changes because the increases are too rapid between generations. For example, genetic-risk factors account for only about 10 percent of breast-cancer cases in the United States.
So why the increase in cancer? Scientific evidence is pointing to environmental contamination as a major factor. We as a society may be poisoning ourselves to death.
Environmental contamination is also being linked to the rise of other chronic and serious medical conditions, such as asthma, immune system dysfunction, abnormal sexual development including premature puberty in girls, thyroid malfunctioning, unsafe blood glucose levels and endometriosis.
Women: Aay Attention
Many toxic chemicals are fat-soluble so are stored in body fat. This means women and girls are at special risk because their bodies have a greater percentage of body fat. Many women and girls are becoming walking toxic dumps.
To compound the problem, toxins like dioxin are long-lived and do not break down in the body. Women who breast-feed transmit dioxin to infants through their milk.
Environmental-health threats pose another problem for women. Many toxins act as endocrine-disrupters, which interfere with the proper function of the hormone system. This can affect women's ability to reproduce and can affect the genetic make-up of offspring. Some toxins pass from the mother’s placenta into the developing fetus, hurting the fetus because of its delicate status.
While some gender-based health concerns stem from women’s biological differences from men, such concerns also stem from environmental-health risks of the roles women play in society. For example, in many countries, women and girls are expected to do certain household tasks that expose them to environmental pollution not experienced by men and boys. If a household's source of water is a contaminated river, stream or lake, women and girls will be explosed to biological and chemical pollutants when they collect water or wash dishes or clothes.
Approximately 1.4 billion people live without access to clean water while nearly 3 billion do not have proper sanitation. This results in diseases such as diarrhea, which kills about 2.5 million people annually, most of them children under age 5.
Women and children often spend more time indoors than do men. In many countries, women use wood or dung for heating and cooking. Such fuels create soot and smoke that are linked to pneumonia, bronchitis, and other acute respiratory infections. More than 4 million people a year, mostly children under 5 years, die from these diseases. The World Bank estimates that between 400-700 million women and children are exposed to severe air pollution, in most instances, from cooking fires.
The disproportionate amount of time women spend at home and the associated health risks are not limited to women in poorer countries. Studies are beginning to show higher cancer rates of some cancer for women who are full-time homemakers compared to those who work outside of the home.
Special risk to children
Environmental health trends among children are serious. A National Academy of Sciences report calls them "ominous". Here are a few facts:
* Nearly 1 million pre-school children in the United States have blood levels of lead above what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say need medical intervention.
* As of 1995, 18 million U.S. children under age 10 lived in areas where the air quality did not meet federal standards.
* The number of children with asthma has increased 40 percent since 1980. It is now the leading reason for hospitalizing children and the leading cause for children missing school.
* Acute leukemia has risen 10 percent in children under 14 and brain tumors have increased 30%.
* An estimated 4 million children live within one mile of "Superfund" hazardous-waste sites.
* The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 85 percent of US households store at least 1 pesticide and almost half of all homes with children under 5 store at least one pesticide within reach of children. Children develop leukemia three to nine times more often when pesticides are used around their homes.
* Some 40 percent of children under 11 live in a home with at least one smoker.
The leading environmental health threats for children are lead, pesticides, second-hand tobacco smoke, and air and drinking water pollution.
Risks to children of color
Children from African-America, Latina/Latino, Native American and Asian-pacific Islander families in the United Statesoften are at special risk from these threats. Racial discrimination and economic inequalities often affect where they live, go to school, if they have access to medical care, and what industry or types of job a parent has.
Air pollution is an example. National studies have shown that racial-ethnic communities experience greater exposure to substandard outdoor air quality because residents tend to live in greater concentrations in areas with above average numbers of air polluting facilities and in areas where the air does not meed federal standards. African American and Latina/Latino children then to have higher incidence of asthma than other children. African-American children, ages 5-14, are more likely than Anglo-American children to die from asthma.
Young children from urban racial-ethnic families face greater threats from lead poisoning than Anglo-American children. African-American children have about five times the rate of lead poisoning of white children while Mexican-American children have about two times the rate.
Children of farm workers face additional risks. They have higher rates of respiratory problems, skin rashes and cancers because of direct and indirect exposure to pesticides.
Indigenous children who live on reservations where mining and/or storage of toxic/hazardous waste, including nuclear waste, experience higher rates of illnesses related to these kinds of activities than children without such exposure.
Children are at greater risk from toxins than adults because:
*their internal organs are still developing and can be effected in ways fully formed organs are not;
* their crawling, exploratory play puts them closer to contaminants, which they ingest unknowingly,
* they take in more contaminants because proportionate to their weight, they breathe more air and drink more water than adults
* they have different rates of excretion, metabolism, absorption than adults
The price we are paying
Dr. Phillip Landigran, a pediatrician who is helping to lead the children’s health initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), warns that we are using children like canaries in the mine. Only a small percentage of the more than 75,000 chemicals in use in the United States have been tested for their potential to cause cancer.
This year, the EPA began to put in place a process to determine which chemicals are endocrine-disrupters. This work has not been fully funded by Congress and is being fought by large companies worried about consumers’ reactions to the results.
In calling the medical profession, governmental officials and parents to attention about environmental health risks, Landrigan warns that since World War II, with the advent and widespread use of untested petroleum-based chemicals, we have been conducting a medical experiment on this and future generations.
How much longer are we willing to pay the price in terms of women and children’s lives?