Category: Uncategorized

How Poverty Affects Behavior and Academic Performance and Financial Success

There is no shortage of theories explaining behavior differences among children. The prevailing  theory among psychologists and child development specialists is that behavior stems from a combination of genes and environment. Genes begin the process: behavioral geneticists commonly claim that DNA accounts for 30–50 percent of our behaviors (Saudino, 2005), an estimate that leaves 50–70 percent explained by environment. This tidy division of influencing factors may be somewhat misleading, however. First, the effects  of the nine months a child spends in utero are far from negligible, especially on IQ (Devlin, Daniels, & Roeder, 1997). Factors such as quality of prenatal care, exposure to toxins, and stress have a strong influence on the developing child. In addition, the relatively new field of epigenetics—the study of heritable changes in gene function that occur without a… Read more »

Slow Death by your sofa (Part 1)

When many people think about toxic pollution, they think about smog, polluted rivers, or landfills. But today, the worst toxins aren’t found “out there” in toxic waste dumps and polluted rivers… Today the worst toxins are found right here in our own homes, in the ordinary objects we use every day — like sofas, skillets, shower curtains and even rubber ducks! That’s because we are all soaking in a toxic marinade of chemicals. Every day a  whopping 42 billion pounds of chemicals are manufactured or brought into the U.S. That’s enough toxins to fill 623,000 tanker trucks in a line that could straddle the globe three times. And every day more and more of these chemicals slowly seep into our bodies. Scientists have been studying the health effects of toxins for years. But until now, no one had ever studied the cumulative effects of the thousands of low-level toxins we come into contact every day. So two scientists and entrepreneurs decided to turn themselves into Guinea pigs. First, they took samples of their blood and sent them to a lab to be tested for toxins. Then they shut themselves up in a condo for two days surrounded by everyday things. Everyday things that are manufactured in our modern world with modern day chemicals that are supposedly safe for us… Things like couches, carpets, shower curtains, skillets, and shampoo. These scientists-turned-Guinea-pigs didn’t do anything extreme. They didn’t eat massive… Read more »

How Fluoride was transformed from a toxic waste to a “National Saviour” (Part 2)

Following years of observation and study, McKay determined that it was high levels of naturally occurring fluoride in the drinking water that was causing the mottled enamel. McKay’s deductions were researched by Dr. H. Trendley Dean, a dental officer of the U.S. Public Health Service. Dean designed the first fluoride studies in the United States. These early studies were aimed at evaluating how high the fluoride levels in water could be before visible, severe dental fluorosis occurred.