Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net / adamr

Chemicals and Cancer

One of the things I try to achieve with this website is to teach about how toxic chemicals are present in our everyday products and things we encounter and how they can be increasing our cancer risk and acting as hormone disruptors.

Last May, the New York Times ran an op-ed article written by Nicholas D Kristof (an American journalist and winner of two Pulitzer prizes) titled “How Chemicals Change Us” and in the article Mr Kristof discusses how chemicals that act as hormone disruptors are increasingly causing havoc both in our environment and our health.  It’s a must-read article.

Beware Thermal Receipts

I learned a couple of new things in the article, for instance, I wasn’t aware that those thermal receipts that come out of gas pumps and ATM machines have endocrine disruptors in them!  For more info on this, check out this article: BPA Is Found In Paper Receipts which ran in the New York Times Green Blog in November 2011.  According to this article, “In the thermal receipts now routinely given out by stores, BPA is often used as a color developer for the printing dye.  Such receipts have a thermal-sensitive layer that, when heated, produces color. Beyond cash register receipts, high levels of BPA are also often present in the thermal paper used to make baggage destination tags, cigarette filters, and bus, train and lottery tickets.“

Disturbing, to say the least!

We Are Rapidly Becoming Paranoid Label Readers

Are we going to have to wear rubber gloves at the gas pump and ATM?  Or when we buy a lottery ticket?  I know a couple of people who keep disposable gloves in their car so that when they are pumping fuel they don’t absorb any petrochemicals.  I don’t even think they know about the thermal receipts. 

The whole idea of having to be so paranoid about every little thing we encounter bothers me greatly.  Why can’t we get our (so-called) regulatory agencies to ban bisphenol-A (aka BPA) from being used by industries which create our food packaging, our body products and, well, basically anything that comes into contact with human bodies?  That would be the most practical thing to do.  Rather than that, however, we are becoming paranoid label-readers and Internet researchers, having to inspect absolutely everything we come into contact with and hoping that somewhere down the road that bottle of ketchup or face powder isn’t going to kill us.

I recently wrote an article titled Toxic Chemicals Found in Babies – 8 Ways to Protect Them (And You) about the prevalence of BPA in our lives.  My main aim is to raise awareness and get you to take action and not only stop using the products made by companies that just don’t care about our health but to speak out and get our various governments to make them stop using chemicals that act as endocrine disruptors.

If you’re not an activist, don’t worry.  You don’t have to march around with a sign, just vote with your money.  Don’t buy the products from companies who don’t care about our health, and support the companies who do care.  If you want to know who the good guys and bad guys are, contact me.

If you would like my help with getting through breast cancer in an inspiring and ultra-healthy way, please sign up for my free e-newsletters and e-book on the right, or “like” me on Facebook (MarnieClark.com).  It is my honor and my goal to help you through this so that you emerge from breast cancer feeling better than before, thriving!