Who needs the mystery of communion when the bigger question is so obviously: how has the Religious Right in the United States missed the influence of unregulated chemicals on fetuses and instead made abortion its issue of our generation?
This week's news is the alarming rise in autism spectrum disorders in the United States. As an activist and environmentalist on the front line trenches in the 40 Year War against the Environment, I hoped for better.
I hoped: if you couldn't get people to pay attention to the backyard wonders of nature -- because some people just don't care, period -- and if all sensible logic and reason fails, then at least you could build a constituency for tighter environmental regulations when toxics in the atmosphere or in drinking water are demonstrated to profoundly affect pregnant women and children and reproduction in men.
But if the Great Destroyers don't have facts that support their case against regulation, they invent their own facts. Big Tobacco. Big Sugar. And they successfully demonized regulations, too.
The human body is so intricate and complex that the introduction of toxics in parts per million can make what is otherwise healthy go haywire. Environmental regulation of chemicals in the United States is based on risk assessments premised on "sacrifice" necessary in order to provide consumers with cheap, affordable amenities. But the risk assessments are always weighted to what industry wants, not what is best for public health.
The 40 Year War on the Environment -- by the GOP and weak-kneed Democrats, too -- includes cutting funding for science and enforcement whose net result is that today we live in a man-made chemical soup. We turned Creation into a randomized experiment. It is just plain hypocritical that elected leaders who pray on Sunday, do the business of the Great Destroyers the rest of the week unchallenged by the congregations.
This week, an economics report shows that the wealthiest recipients of corporate welfare in America -- Big Sugar in Florida, despite a constitutional requirement that the industry pay 100 percent of the costs of its pollution, pays less than 1/3, leaving taxpayers with the rest of the bill. So even if you don't love the Everglades or care that Big Sugar uses the Everglades as its dump, you might want legislators to fulfill their oaths under the Florida constitution: force industry to pay up and save yourself significant taxes.
But the Tea Party has missed this issue the same way the Religious Right missed the issue of environmental influences that severely threaten the fetus.
One reason might be mercury. Mercury in water that forms as a result of agricultural operations, including Big Sugar, has proliferated throughout Florida. Our state has hotspots of methylized mercury -- that can cause cognitive disfunction and other deformities in fetuses and development damage in children -- that are among the highest ever recorded. Who is bearing the costs? Taxpayers. Devout Christians. Jews. Muslims. People of all faiths, creeds, and persuasions.
I am not a neuroscientist, but I do have a nephew with Aspergers. My heart goes out to any parent with a child with autism or any of its spectrum disorders. I think to myself: if I were in that parent's shoes, how much would I be willing to pay to change the chemical imbalance or genetic tipping point to reverse the affliction? I am certain I would pay anything. Yet when it comes to precaution, we don't ask our business leaders or politicians for even an ounce of faith in regulation and enforcement of pollution laws compared to the embrace of belief in the miracle to come.
This week's news is the alarming rise in autism spectrum disorders in the United States. As an activist and environmentalist on the front line trenches in the 40 Year War against the Environment, I hoped for better.
I hoped: if you couldn't get people to pay attention to the backyard wonders of nature -- because some people just don't care, period -- and if all sensible logic and reason fails, then at least you could build a constituency for tighter environmental regulations when toxics in the atmosphere or in drinking water are demonstrated to profoundly affect pregnant women and children and reproduction in men.
But if the Great Destroyers don't have facts that support their case against regulation, they invent their own facts. Big Tobacco. Big Sugar. And they successfully demonized regulations, too.
The human body is so intricate and complex that the introduction of toxics in parts per million can make what is otherwise healthy go haywire. Environmental regulation of chemicals in the United States is based on risk assessments premised on "sacrifice" necessary in order to provide consumers with cheap, affordable amenities. But the risk assessments are always weighted to what industry wants, not what is best for public health.
The 40 Year War on the Environment -- by the GOP and weak-kneed Democrats, too -- includes cutting funding for science and enforcement whose net result is that today we live in a man-made chemical soup. We turned Creation into a randomized experiment. It is just plain hypocritical that elected leaders who pray on Sunday, do the business of the Great Destroyers the rest of the week unchallenged by the congregations.
This week, an economics report shows that the wealthiest recipients of corporate welfare in America -- Big Sugar in Florida, despite a constitutional requirement that the industry pay 100 percent of the costs of its pollution, pays less than 1/3, leaving taxpayers with the rest of the bill. So even if you don't love the Everglades or care that Big Sugar uses the Everglades as its dump, you might want legislators to fulfill their oaths under the Florida constitution: force industry to pay up and save yourself significant taxes.
But the Tea Party has missed this issue the same way the Religious Right missed the issue of environmental influences that severely threaten the fetus.
One reason might be mercury. Mercury in water that forms as a result of agricultural operations, including Big Sugar, has proliferated throughout Florida. Our state has hotspots of methylized mercury -- that can cause cognitive disfunction and other deformities in fetuses and development damage in children -- that are among the highest ever recorded. Who is bearing the costs? Taxpayers. Devout Christians. Jews. Muslims. People of all faiths, creeds, and persuasions.
I am not a neuroscientist, but I do have a nephew with Aspergers. My heart goes out to any parent with a child with autism or any of its spectrum disorders. I think to myself: if I were in that parent's shoes, how much would I be willing to pay to change the chemical imbalance or genetic tipping point to reverse the affliction? I am certain I would pay anything. Yet when it comes to precaution, we don't ask our business leaders or politicians for even an ounce of faith in regulation and enforcement of pollution laws compared to the embrace of belief in the miracle to come.
9 comments:
It is obviously that unregulated chemicals on fetuses created the Tea Party members. Now they want to replace us with more of their kind. Invasion of the Body Snatchers has more truth to it than you are willing to believe.
You have a better explanation?
The mercury concentrations in a woman's body is highest in the umbilical cord. So that woman eating healthy is harming her baby. The bio available mercury in the Everglades is at the highest level in the world. I took a course at the South Florida Water Management offices when the were manned by Scientists. Wetlands are the kidneys of our ecosystem. It makes sense that pollutants concentrate there. I wish the tribe would release reports on chemical concentrations in their members.
1 in 47 children in Utah has autism according to the CDC. Maybe because:
According to a United States Department of Energy Nevada Operations Office (DOE-NV) publication "A Perspective on Atmospheric Nuclear Tests in Nevada," areas in Southwestern Utah were in the fallout patterns of nuclear weapons tests from one to six times. (St. George: 6, Cedar City: 5, Parowan and Paragonah: 4, and Kanab: 1)
You are now blaming autism on Big Sugar? Seriously? Now you know why Jeb Bush found it “troubling” that the 2012 presidential candidates are “appealing to people’s fears and emotion” on the campaign trail.
Isn't it ironic that one week after you blamed the Republicans for playing the fear card, you play the fear card?
Mis-read all you want reader above: but Gimleteye said--
People who seem to care about fetal rights should be the ones to strive "for tighter environmental regulations when toxics in the atmosphere or in drinking water are demonstrated to profoundly affect pregnant women and children and reproduction in men."
He mentions sugar as ONE entity adding toxic chemicals and working actively against regulation of toxins.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the "Alarmist" with the autism figures not Gimleteye.
Dear Reader, ask Big Sugar what it is doing to curb methylized mercury in the Everglades. Ask Jeb Bush, what HE did to allow Big Sugar to continue polluting the Everglades in violation of federal law while he was governor.
Blame everything on the Republicans!!!!! Go ahead!!!!!
All we have to is consider the sourse of the blame to know these are people with one-track minds. Republicans are always wrong and Democrats are always right.
So what happened to Obama? Where did he drink the water that made him so intent on taking our country to the level he has?
Obama Rocks!
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