Subject: chemical addiction

From: "John A. Keslick, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 16:42:52 -0500

ARE CHEMICALS PUTTING OUR BRAINS IN A TAILSPIN?

Just about every week brings more bad news.  Another male friend has
prostate cancer or bone- marrow cancer.  Another female friend has
breast or cervical cancer.  

Meanwhile, my sister, who works for a local veterinary oncologist,
reports that she's chagrined by all the animals - including puppies and
kittens only a few months old - being carried in sick and ding from
cancer.  Something awful is going on, she says.  The word she uses to
describe it is "epidemic."

I'm not an alarmist.  I tend to be skeptical of apocalyptic prophets,
tree-hugging doomsayers and environmental Jeremiahs.  But lately, I've
been wondering whether our love affair with technology is backfiring
like a Faustian deal.  Are we now paying the piper for polluting the
land, water and air with industrial poisons and toxic chemicals?

No question about it, says Steve Saul.

Weekdays, Saul is director of the drug and alcohol program at the
Northeast Community Center for Mental Health/Mental Retardation.  On the
side, he's a self-styled "environmental activist."  He describes his
modus operandi as "creative pestering," which is a pleasant way of
saying he's a nudnik who'll keep coming at you with the persistence of a
bloodthirsty mosquito to get his message across.

The last time we visited Saul, a Wayne resident, he was pestering Radnor
Township to go natural, to quit using poisonous fertilizers, pesticides
and herbicides on its parklands playing fields.  To its credit, the
township was already headed in that direction, figuring it's better to
live with a few more weeds than to endanger the health and welfare of
kids and pets.

Now Saul is cranking his siren to warn us about "neurotoxins."  These
are chemicals in everyday household products that, he says, are
poisoning our brains, making us, among other things, moody, depressed,
irritable, restless, jumpy, flighty, sleepless, hostile, neurotic and
stupid.

The crowd in a newspaper office is probably not the best sample, but
based on my own observations, neurosis is plainly on the upswing.  As
for stupidity, that's something that especially concerns me.  Scanning
the headlines, I'm daily confirmed in my opinion that human beings -
what with their incessant strutting and rutting, bickering and warring,
fearing and hating - can ill afford any further loss of intelligence.

On a more personal level, I was curious about why, after a long and
glorious day playing with my jeeps in the garage, sucking in gas fumes
and carbon monoxide and savoring the bouquet of WD- 40, Liquid Wrench,
and Gunk parts cleaner and degreaser, I routinely come into the house
with a throbbing headache and the keen urge to smash the TV set with a
sledgehammer, bench press the sofa, and tackle the Russian Princess -
not to mention being utterly unable later in the evening to pay
attention for more than 20 seconds to Il Postino or Howards End or
whatever other pretentious Ritz Five-type movie she's decided to subject
me to.
As a drug and alcohol counselor, Saul, 50, knows a thing or two about
how chemicals can mess with your brain.  More and more, it's becoming
clear that the hunk of cabbage between our ears is a complex chemistry
set, and that how we think and feel about ourselves, others and life in
general may have less to do with Jung than with genes, less to do with
Freud than with food.  In other words, it's more a matter of wiring and
what we eat, breathe and touch than of how we were raised or treated in
childhood.

"Many common products actually contain chemicals that can affect us
mentally," says Saul.  "Research has shown that lead, mercury and
cadmium can cause violent behavior and lower intelligence in children. 
But there are many other chemicals that have a profound impact on the
neurological system."

These chemicals - in products such as cleaners, paints, polishes,
solvents, insect killers, air fresheners, nail polish and perfume - can
impair the way the brain develops and operates, interfere with the
body's hormones, reduce fertility and the ability to reproduce, and
diminish concentration and the ability to stay on task, says Saul.

"We used to think if a kid was moody, aggressive or had a short
attention span, it was because he had a dysfunctional childhood or
inadequate parenting, and so you'd spend hours and hours in a
psychiatrist's office.  In fact, the problem could be triggered by
environmental toxins."

Case in point: The child of one of his clients was hyperactive and
flighty, says Saul.  The father was an exterminator who'd come home
covered with pesticide residue.  At Saul's suggestion, he became more
careful about keeping his work clothes out of the house.  Result: The
child's attention disorder improved, says Saul.

Children are especially sensitive to what Saul calls "this chemical
bombardment."  Their bodies and immune systems are not fully developed,
they absorb a greater proportion of many substances, they engage in more
hand-to-mouth activity, and they take in more food, air and water
relative to body weight.

For all of us, the noxious effect of neurotoxins is amplified by living
or working in a poorly ventilated house or "sick" office building, where
stale, dirty, poisonous  air is recirculated through filthy ducts.  "We
live in a spray society," says Saul.  "It's like Love Canal in some
offices.  They come in and spray pesticides every three weeks.  We're
not killing cockroaches - they're going to survive - we're killing
ourselves."

When we're not killing ourselves, we're getting high - off the fumes
>from  ink markers, highlighter, white-out and copy-machine toner.  "We've
inadvertently become a nation of huffers," says Saul.  "People go to
beauty parlors and nail salons to experience the lift from the
solvents.  Painters will work weekends because of they crave the
intoxication of the chemicals...Woodworkers and furniture makers are
hooked on fumes from glue.  Many of us have become addicted, and we
don't even know it."

But the body knows, and eventually reacts, succumbing to physical and
mental illness.  "We're bombarded on a daily basis by so much chemical
junk," says Saul, "that it's amazing more ordinary people don't go over
the edge."

Carey, A., Philadelphia Inquirer.  11/96
-- 

Thank You:
John A. Keslick Jr.  610-696-5353                           
organic tree treatment web site: 
http://www.ccil.org/~treeman/  OR  http://www.ccil.org/~kenm/env/