It’s no secret that many of the everyday conveniences we take for granted contain chemicals linked to cancer: Household products ranging from plastic containers to shampoo and soap have been implicated. And that’s not even including contaminants in drinking water or pesticide exposure from simply walking through your local park.
Yet somehow, despite the mounting research showing that Americans are being exposed to suspected or known carcinogens from numerous sources throughout the day, no one has ever done a study to determine just how many of these chemicals can be detected in the average human body. Until now.
A new study from the Environmental Working Group has exhaustively reviewed the existing scientific literature and found that Americans may have up to 420 different carcinogenic chemicals present in their bodies in amounts that exceed EPA safety standards. This held true across a diverse array of populations. Research has even measured carcinogens in human umbilical cord blood, showing that infants are exposed to them before they’ve ever left the womb.
What’s truly frightening about this research is that it’s not looking at people who might be exposed to these chemicals through occupational exposure — instead, it examined the presence of these chemicals in average people, whose only exposure to these chemicals was through normal, everyday life. In some cases, these chemicals were present in household products, but in others, the exposure likely came from the water, soil or air itself, making it essentially unavoidable.
Before you panic, it’s important to realize that this doesn’t mean that cancer is inevitable for everyone exposed to these carcinogens. While it raises the risk of cancer development, for many of these substances, that risk is often still marginal — perhaps as low as 1 in 10,000, in the case of acrylamide or low doses of arsenic.
However, scientists still don’t entirely understand what happens when the body is overloaded with multiple carcinogens that may multiply one another’s effects, and this could be especially pronounced in someone who has been exposed to hundreds of dangerous chemicals.
So what can you do to protect yourself? While you can make an effort to shop for safe cosmetics, avoid plastics where possible (even those without BPA), eat organic and cut red meat and fried foods from your diet, the truth is that isn’t enough. Not when our food, water and air is often filled with other carcinogens.
What the researchers from EWG recommend is a change to federal laws, with much stricter regulations on suspected and known carcinogens. The authors of the study point out that the EPA and FDA simply don’t have the ability to ban or limit carcinogens in many everyday products, and in many cases don’t have the resources to research the safety of potential carcinogens to begin with.
If there’s one thing this study underscores, it’s this: Billions of dollars go to cancer research each and every year. However, unless we do more to study the root environmental causes and limit our exposure to these toxic chemicals, we are never going to make real progress on reducing the number of people who develop cancer in the first place.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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