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 amounts of mercury-loaded fish. They didn’t inhale bottles of perfume. They lived an ordinary life for two days in a modern condo surrounded by the everyday things we all use.
Then at the end of the two days, the two men again sent their blood samples to the lab to be tested for chemical toxins in their blood. And what they found scared the living daylights out of them.
In just two days surrounded by these ordinary everyday objects, one of the men increased his urine levels of monoethyl phthalate (MEP) 22 times, his levels of bisphenol A 7.5 times and his levels of triclosan a mind-blowing 2,900 times.
In fact, he was so disturbed by the test results that he put the clothes he had worn for the two days into a plastic bag and took them home and washed them over and over again. Until his wife asked him what the heck he was doing. He cringed when he realized how absurd it was to think he could wash away the contamination in his body by washing his clothes!
Be well
Dr Sunardas D. Annamalay