Those unions which are now monitoring the causes of ill-health amongst their members are to be commended

Tony Burke, the president of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, which involves Unite, GMB, Community and Prospect, reports that welding fumes are shown to cause cancers — and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), along with the Alex Ferry Foundation, a charity linked to the CSEU, has launched the Breathe Safe campaign to raise awareness.

CSEU general secretary Ian Waddell said: “We believe that the numbers of welders diagnosed with these conditions is the tip of the iceberg. We want welders, retired workers and also their families to understand what the symptoms look like so they can take immediate action.”

Four years ago, the Health and Safety Executive issued a safety alert about the link between mild steel welding fume and cancer: “Many studies report increased risk of lung cancer in welders or other workers exposed to welding fumes. The International Association for Research on Cancer concludes that all welding fume can cause lung cancer and may cause kidney cancer, classifying all welding fume as Group 1 carcinogenic substances.”

A welder at work in Bosch Thermotechnology in Chesterfield

The Breathe Safe campaign — funded by the CSEU and the Alex Ferry Foundation, named after a former CSEU general secretary — is working with the all-party parliamentary group on respiratory disease.

It recommends anyone exposed to welding fume in transport repair, construction and machinery manufacturing see their doctor for regular check-ups and employers to offer annual health checks and provide proper ventilation equipment.

Those unions which now monitor the causes of ill-health amongst their members are to be commended. 20 years ago a power engineer died of the most serious form of brain tumour but when his widow asked his union (now amalgamated with Prospect) if they recorded the causes of death amongst their members, they said that they did not. With hindsight she wishes she had taken this apparent negligence further, to help others in the profession.

 

 

 

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Richard Bruce stresses the need to prevent exposure to carcinogens and other toxic emissions and substances

In the FT, Deborah Arnott Chief Executive, Action on Smoking & Health and her counterparts working to reduce obesity and alcohol consumption have drawn attention to the Health Foundation’s estimate that public health interventions cost three to four times less than that of NHS interventions for each additional year of good health achieved in the population.

Responding to the recent news about an award for creating a chip which can detect cancer biomarkers in an easy and non-invasive way, Richard Bruce points out that though people who find ways to identify and treat cancers are rewarded, those who try to stop the use of cancer-causing chemicals are ignored and sometimes maligned or attacked by those with vested interests.

Electrical engineer performs high-rise electrical work

When an electrical engineer developed the most serious form of brain tumour in later life and died, his widow asked his union (now Prospect) if they recorded their members’ causes of death. They replied that they did not – and showed no interest in doing so.

Such evidence would be of value to researchers who note that moderate-to-high-dose ionizing radiation (IR) is the only established environmental risk factor for brain tumours and the evidence published in a paper delivered at the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2017 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC / I&CPS Europe)

Though not included in the list of 116 carcinogens compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer – a body that collects and publishes cancer figures worldwide and listed in the Guardian, in 1990 research published in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine Vol. 47, No. 9 (Sep., 1990) found that brain cancer odds ratios were larger for electrical engineers and technicians. telephone workers. electric power workers and electrical workers in manufacturing industries. The excess of deaths from brain cancer was concentrated among men aged 65 or older. (Mortality from Brain Cancer and Leukaemia among Electrical Workers Dana P. Loomis and D. A. Savitz, pp. 633-638, published by the BMJ)

Earlier this week, the writer received a pre-Christmas appeal from a World Cancer Research charity. Thinking along the same lines as Richard Bruce, she then noted that it said it focussed on prevention and read on eagerly. Sadly its ‘prevention work’ appears to be limited to truisms. Its list of recommendations:

Not a word about working to prevent the use of known carcinogens. No contribution will be sent.

As the FT correspondents said: “The evidence is clear about how to achieve the greatest impact in reducing disease, disability and premature death: prevent illness in the first place. Investment in treatment is necessary but not sufficient. It needs to be accompanied by prevention and public health”.

As Richard Bruce stresses that by the time cancers are detected the damage is done. It is often too late. Remove the cause and there are no cancers and costs are reduced – but there is no profit in that and no awards to gain.

 

 

 

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Monsanto update

A Moseley reader draws attention to this Guardian article:

Opens:  

Monsanto has long worked to “bully scientists” and suppress evidence of the cancer risks of its popular weedkiller, a lawyer argued on Monday in a landmark lawsuit against the global chemical corporation.

“Monsanto has specifically gone out of its way to bully … and to fight independent researchers,” said the attorney Brent Wisner, who presented internal Monsanto emails that he said showed how the agrochemical company rejected critical research and expert warnings over the years while pursuing and helping to write favorable analyses of their products. “They fought science.”

Wisner, who spoke inside a crowded San Francisco courtroom, is representing DeWayne Johnson, known also as Lee, a California man whose cancer has spread through his body. The father of three and former school groundskeeper, who doctors say may have just months to live, is the first person to take Monsanto to trial over allegations that the chemical sold under the Roundup brand is linked to cancer. Thousands have made similar legal claims across the US  . . .

 

 

 

 

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GM news escalates: ‘whitewashing’ glyphosate, Monsanto papers, Michael Gove persuadable?

Der Spiegel reports that a court in San Francisco ordered U.S. agrochemical giant Monsanto to provide internal emails as evidence after about 2,000 plaintiffs demanded compensation from Monsanto in class-action suits. They claim that Roundup has caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of lymph node cancer, in them or members of their family.

More than 100 documents have revealed that Monsanto’s strategies for ‘whitewashing glyphosate’ have been revealed in internal e-mails, presentations and memos. They suggest the company concealed risks, making their publication a disaster for the company. The matter is also likely to be a topic of discussion at Bayer, the German chemical company in the process of acquiring Monsanto.

“The Monsanto Papers tell an alarming story of ghostwriting, scientific manipulation and the withholding of information,” says Michael Baum, a partner in the law firm of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, which is bringing one of the US class actions. According to Baum, Monsanto used the same strategies as the tobacco industry: “creating doubt, attacking people, doing ghostwriting.”

On October 11th, the European Parliament’s Environment and Agriculture committee held a public hearing on The Monsanto Papers. 

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Despite this, the BBC reports that an EU vote has failed to resolve a controversy over the use of glyphosate, the world’s biggest-selling weedkiller. Glyphosate was introduced by US agrochemical giant Monsanto in 1974, but its patent expired in 2000, and now the chemical is sold by various manufacturers.

The European Commission said the vote fell short of the majority needed to renew the license for five years when it expires December 15, as only half of the 28 member states voted for its proposal. “Given that a qualified majority could not be reached … the result of the vote is ‘no opinion,'” said the commission, the EU’s executive and regulatory arm. An EU appeal committee will now try to rule on the issue. A qualified majority requires that 55% of EU countries vote in favour, and that the proposal is supported by countries representing at least 65% of the total EU population.

The UK was among the 14 states backing the Commission position on glyphosate. Nine voted against – including France and Italy. Germany was among the five who abstained.

But a reader sends the information that the environment secretary, Michael Gove, now says the UK will back a total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe . . . Perhaps he can be persuaded to ban human-harming, resistance-forming glyphosate as well.

The toxic avalanche

“Humans emit more than 250 billion tonnes of chemical substances a year, in a toxic avalanche that is harming people and life everywhere on the planet”, says Julian Cribb, author of ‘Surviving the 21st Century’ (Springer International 2017).  

He is quoted in an article published by Phys.org™, a web-based science, research and technology news service whose readership includes 1.75 million scientists, researchers, and engineers every month:

“Every moment of our lives we are exposed to thousands of these substances. They enter our bodies with each breath, meal or drink we take, the clothes and cosmetics we wear, the things we encounter every day in our homes, workplaces and travel . . . “

The European Chemicals Agency estimates there are more than 144,000 man-made chemicals in existence.

The US Department of Health estimates 2000 new chemicals are being released every year. The UN Environment Program warns most of these have never been screened for human health safety.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 12 million people – one in 4 – die every year from diseases caused by ‘air water and soil pollution, chemical exposures, climate change and ultraviolet radiation’, all of which result from human activity . . .

Medical science is increasingly linking issues such as obesity, cancers, heart disease and brain disorders such as autism, ADHD and depression to the growing volume of toxic substances to which humans are exposed daily.

Cribb says that the poisoning of the planet through man-made chemical emissions is probably the largest human impact – and the one that is least understood or regulated. It is one of ten major existential risks now confronting humanity:

Examples of the toxic avalanche include:

• Manufactured chemicals – 30 million tonnes a year
• Plastic pollution of oceans – 8mt/yr
• Hazardous waste – 400 mt/yr
• Coal, oil, gas etc – 15 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) a year
• Lost soil – 75 Gt/yr
• Metals and materials – 75 Gt/yr
• Mining and mineral wastes – <200 Gt/yr
• Water (mostly contaminated with above wastes) – 9 trillion tonnes a year.

“Industrial toxins are now routinely found in new-born babies, in mother’s milk, in the food chain, in domestic drinking water worldwide. They have been detected from the peak of Mt Everest (where the snow is so polluted it doesn’t meet drinking water standards) to the depths of the oceans, from the hearts of our cities to the remotest islands. The mercury found in the fish we eat, and in polar bears in the Arctic, is fallout from the burning of coal and increases every year. There is global concern at the death of honeybees from agricultural pesticides and the potential impact on the world food supply, as well as all insect life – and on the birds, frogs and fish which in turn depend on insects.”

Cribb says an issue of chemical contamination largely ignored by governments and corporations is that chemicals act in combination, occur in mixtures and undergo constant change. “A given chemical may not occur in toxic amounts in one place – but combined with thousands of other chemicals it may contribute a much larger risk to the health and safety of the whole population and the environment.” 

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In the same vein, Isle of Wight reader Richard Bruce reminds us that way back in 1997 US scientists called for a ban on all OP pesticides used on food crops because of the cumulative risk to children. Read more here. The UK regulators referred to the paper as “a challenging document” but nothing was done. Some 1000 scientists wrote a letter of complaint when George W Bush refused to take action on their advice to ban all OPs.

He points out that the 2016 UK Pesticide Guide clearly states that the chemical is dangerous to the environment. For the similar chlorpyrifos methyl it states that the chemical must NOT be used on grain for seed. But both are add-mixed with the grain at harvest and there is no requirement to declare this poisonous addition on food labels “because it is a pesticide”. Often unsupervised, untrained, farm and grain store workers use methods that inevitably create “hotspots” of massive overdose. Some of those methods are no longer recommended but there is still no control over application, or the methods used. the Health and Safety Executive which is supposed to enforce the regulations all too often fails in its duty.

Prensa Latina, the official state news agency of Cuba. reports that the UN Council on Human Rights, the organization’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Food, Hilal Elve (left), warned in its yearly report that most of the population around the world is exposed to pesticides through food, water, air or direct contact with the chemicals and toxic waste. The problem is worse in poor and developing nations, but no country is immune to these harmful substances. pregnant women run the risk of abortion, premature birth and congenital malformations. There are irreversible consequences to health, such as cancer, Alzheimer, Parkinson, hormone disorders, sterility and growth disorders.

Richard Bruce also points out that we are exposed to cumulative poisons every day, adding, “and no one cares”.

 

 

 

Causes of diseases are already well-known – but nothing is done to remove those causes

Richard Bruce recently sent an email reflecting on the Queen’s opening of the £700 million Francis Crick Institute (below), which will have some £130 million in annual funding. Its aim is to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat conditions such as cancer, heart disease and stroke, infections and neurodegenerative conditions like motor neurone disease. It is the biggest research building under one roof in the entire European Union employing some 1500 scientists and staff.

 

He asks: “Do they need all that money to re-discover what they already know?”

The Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, University College London, Imperial College London and King’s College London are involved.  Richard comments: “Some interesting names there with staff who must know what is really going on” and summarises his post examining what the MRC actually knew and what it has reported over the decades.

The Francis Crick Institute in London is said to be “a world-leading centre of biomedical research and innovation, it has scale, vision and expertise to tackle the most challenging scientific questions underpinning health and disease.

The aim is to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat conditions such as cancer, heart disease and stroke, infections and neurodegenerative conditions like motor neurone disease.”

Richard’s post states that the cause of these illnesses is already well-known and has been known for a very long time but nothing is done to remove those causes. He says that protecting the poisons industry seems to be the real aim: “Poisoned people earn the industry £millions in drug sales and research”.

He asks, “Why is the Medical Research Council now implying that it does not understand the ever present danger not only to the occupationally exposed but to everyone, adult, child and unborn, exposed as we are in our food, clothes, furniture, fuels, paints, oils and our environment?”

And comments: “Shocking really”.

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Richard Bruce who has an extensive knowledge on the effects of organophosphates which are used far more widely in agriculture than just sheep dip. He personally was badly affected by Actellic used in grain stores documented at: Trouble in Store 

 

 

 

Professor McGlade: current political systems have become ‘silted up by vested interests and a determination to protect assets’

Richard Bruce has drawn our attention to an article in the Telegraph with the headline ‘Modern life is killing our children’.

Sarah Knapton, Science Editor of the Telegraph, reported that new analysis of government statistics by researchers at the charity Children with Cancer UK found that there are now 1,300 more cancer cases a year compared with 1998, the first time all data sets were published – a 40% rise.

Dr Denis Henshaw (above left), Professor of Human Radiation Effects at Bristol University, the scientific adviser for Children with Cancer UK, said many elements of modern lifestyles are to blame:

• air pollution was by far the biggest culprit
• obesity,
• pesticides
• solvents inhaled during pregnancy,
• circadian rhythm disruption through too much bright light at night,
• radiation from x-rays and CT scans,
• smoking during and after pregnancy,
• magnetic fields from power lines,
• magnetic fields from gadgets in homes,
• and potentially, radiation from mobile phones.

Diagnoses of colon cancer among children and young people has risen 200% since 1998, while thyroid cancer has doubled. Ovarian and cervical cancers have also risen by 70% and 50% respectively. The charity estimates that the rise in cases now costs the NHS an extra £130 million a year compared with 16 years ago.

Children with Cancer UK is not calling – as Mr Bruce observes – for any of these carcinogens to be removed; it has decided to launch a five-point plan calling on the Government and the science and medical community to ensure that all children diagnosed with cancer in the UK have access to precision medicine by 2020.

Professor Jacqueline McGlade is Chief Scientist and Director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme. She said in her preface to Late lessons from early warnings: science, precaution, innovation that well-informed individuals and communities would ‘more properly’ set ‘the power to act’, than current political systems which have become ‘silted up by vested interests and a determination to protect assets’ – and, we would add, to accumulate profits. She calls for “a more ethical form of public decision-making based on a language in which our moral instincts and concerns can be better expressed . . .”

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Note on a sister site: https://chssachetan.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/sjm-protecting-the-interests-of-food-producers-the-indian-environment-and-people/

SJM: protecting the interests of food producers, the Indian environment and people

The latest in the GM food saga: a correspondent sends news from Hyderabad about the discovery of imported American GE sweets confirmed by State Food Laboratory’s Ravindra, who states that “The sale of GE foods is prohibited under Section 22 of the Food Safety and Standards Act.

Today the focus is on the role of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, who – like many others – are advocates of the swadeshi approach, described by Satish Kumar as a program for long term survival – read more here.

 

 

 

 

Questions arising from PHE’s ‘community water fluoridation toolkit for local authorities’

Is it authoritative? Hardly:

“This toolkit has no legal status and does not represent legal advice. A local authority involved with or considering water fluoridation should familiarise itself with the relevant legislation and secure its own legal advice on the interpretation and implementation of that legislation.

Who profits? American manufacturers?

In this report, published by Public Health England, local authorities were said to be the driving force behind the introduction of water fluoridation schemes in England in the 1960s. Were they? Or was it the manufacturers of sodium fluoride, used to fluoridate water – see 25 American companies.

A well accepted process? No only 10% of British people have artificially fluoridated drinking water (see blurred but readable map at the foot of the article)

Fluoridation has been banned by Germany, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark.

“At 1 January 2016, 26 local authorities had Community Water Fluoridation (CWF) schemes covering the whole or parts of their area with some six million people in England receiving a fluoridated water supply, principally in the North-East and in the West and East Midlands”.

But there are 433 principal authorities in the UK: 27 county councils, 55 unitary authorities, 32 London boroughs, 36 Metropolitan boroughs, 201 districts, 32 Scottish unitary authorities, 22 Welsh unitary authorities, and 26 Northern Ireland districts (the City of London and the Isles of Scilly are non-party based).

There is no credible scientific evidence of harm to the health of people supplied with fluoridated water was found: accurate?

Here are a few of the examples recorded in our database:

• The Irish Examiner ( 09 Jan 2002) reported that research carried out at Boston University of School of Public Health, using data from the Irish National Cancer Registry and its northern equivalent, found 40% more people suffer from the rare bone cancer osteosarcoma in the Republic than the North, where water is not fluoridated. The Washington Post reported in 2005 that federal investigators and Harvard University officials were exploring an allegation that Professor Chester Douglass had tried to suppress research suggesting a link between fluoridated tap water and bone cancer in adolescent American boys.

• In the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 10 Number 2 Summer 2005, Page 42: “After 20 years, the ten fluoridated cities had 10% more cancer deaths than the non-fluoridated cities. The cancers were found in the tongue, mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, pancreas, larynx, bronchi, and lungs”.

• In 2006 a 500-page review of fluoride’s toxicology was undertaken by a distinguished panel appointed by the National Research Council of the National Academies (NRC, 2006). It concluded that the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) safe drinking water standard for fluoride (i.e. maximum contaminant level goal or MCLG) of 4 parts per million (ppm) is unsafe and should be lowered. The report listed many basic research questions that have not been addressed over 60 years of fluoridation. The panel reviewed a large body of literature in which fluoride has a statistically significant association with a wide range of adverse effects. These include an increased risk of bone fractures, decreased thyroid function, lowered IQ, arthritic-like conditions, dental fluorosis and, possibly, osteosarcoma.

• Lead author of a report published in the British Medical Journal, Professor Stephen Peckham, from the Centre for Health Service Studies, said: “I think it is concerning for people living in those areas. The difference between the West Midlands, which fluoridates, and Manchester, which doesn’t was particularly striking. There were nearly double the number of (thyroid) cases in Manchester. Underactive thyroid is a particularly nasty thing to have and it can lead to other long-term health problems. I do think councils need to think again about putting fluoride in the water. There are far safer ways to improve dental health.”

A blank cheque? PHE will keep this arrangement under continuous review. One factor will be changes in unit cost of materials, particularly the fluoridation chemicals

“The secretary of state is required to meet the reasonable capital and operating costs incurred by water undertakers operating water fluoridation schemes in England. The secretary of state has the power to require local authorities whose populations are serves by those schemes to make payments to the secretary of state to meet these costs. At present PHE meets the capital cost of schemes and recovers the operating costs from local authorities. Local authorities also pay for the cost of feasibility studies . . . At present PHE meets the capital costs of schemes and recovers only the operating costs from local authorities . . .

A reversible decision? Only at a cost

A Page 35 link describes how requirements are imposed on how local authorities must exercise their powers to propose, vary or terminate fluoridation schemes: they must (c) consider—

(i) the capital and operating costs which are likely to be incurred in giving effect to such variation of the arrangements as is specified in a variation proposal, or

(ii) the decommissioning and associated costs which are likely to be incurred in giving effect to the termination of the arrangements specified in a termination proposal; and

(d) consider any other available scientific evidence in relation to the variation or termination proposal, including any evidence of benefit to the health and well-being of individuals who would be affected by the proposal.

Can a determined, well–informed public can stop the process? See Hampshire’s example:

• Despite consultation showing the majority of people who responded did not want it to be implemented, plans to put fluoride into water in parts of Hampshire were approved in 2009 by the South Central Strategic Health Authority.

• The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman then ‘threw out’ a judicial challenge by New Forest East MP Julian Lewis and Hampshire county councillor David Harrison to stop fluoridation.

• And in 2013 it was announced that Public Health England would carry out fluoridation affecting about 200,000 people.
  

But a year later the plans to add fluoride to the public water supply in Southampton and parts of Hampshire were scrapped. Public Health England said it still endorsed water fluoridisation but would not proceed without backing from Southampton City Council.

The government ‘toolkit’ may be read in full here.