Below are a number of articles about the dangers that can lead to cancer that have appeared in CANCERactives icon magazine. Just click on the title to read the piece.
French Senate votes to ban mobile phone use in schools
Using the same logic as we use at CANCERactive, namely the Precautionary Principle, French Senators voted in early October 2009 to ban children under 15 from bringing a mobile phone into infant, junior and secondary schools. Since some parents feel it would make it more difficult for children to get help if they were in danger on the way to or from school an alternative of banning their use whilst on school premises was discussed.
Senators discussed the fact that nervous systems were not fully developed and nor were skulls in the young. Plus research concerns on the power of mobile phones.
Senators have also agreed to a ban on mobile phone advertising targeted at children under 14.
The proposals will now be examined by the National Assembly, which has previously considered an advertising age limit of 12.
The proposed ban in schools comes after a survey by TNS Sofres found that half of all 12 to 17-year-olds use their mobile phone in lessons.
They send texts, play games and 7 per cent of teens admitted that they had secretly filmed a teacher in mid-lesson.
About half of the 500 schoolchildren questioned said they had been caught at least once when their mobile phone started to ring in class.
The French Government is also in discussions to reduce the power of Phone Masts.
French health watchdogs, in a precautionary move, recommended on Thursday reducing exposure to mobile phones and other portable wireless devices. The guidelines are an interim step pending the outcome of wider research into any impacts from health from radio frequency fields.
"The time for inaction has passed," Martin Guespereau, director of the French Health and Security Agency (Afsset), said at a press conference.
"Lets not wait until the indications become pathologies before moving forward with limiting exposure," he said.
More than 1,000 studies were reviewed by Afsset, focussing on mobile phones, Wifi emitters, microwave ovens, cordless home phones and other gadgets that use frequencies of between 9 kilohertz (kHz) and 300 gigahertz (gHz).
Most of the studies did not show any negative impacts. Some research, however, did point to possible health problems, including cell damage, reduced male fertility and a lower blood flow to the brain. (Le Figaro)
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American Environmental Protection Agency concludes recycled drinking water contaminated
A new American law would force the Department of Environmental Protection in New York City to test the citys drinking water for pharmaceutical drugs and even toxic personal care product residues.
A large number of studies have already expressed concerns over recycled city water and toxic residues, in particular oestrogenic products (from HRT and the contraceptive pill) and drug residues from all manner of drugs including steroids, statins and antibiotics. At the moment water companies in the USA do not officially have to monitor or report such contaminants.
The American Environmental Working Group (EWG) wants a new law that forces water companies to monitor such toxic residues and report on them.
So what do you think the situation is with European water?? Check out the Re-mineraliser Reverse Osmosis System, and the Ioniser, both of which are available through the Natural Selection Shop (https://www.ournaturalselection.com/)
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Household pesticide link to child leukaemia and child brain cancer
A finger is firmly pointed at pesticides used inside the house in a research study in urban Washington and published by Lombardi and Childrens National Medical Center in the American magazine, Therapeutic Drug Monitoring.
41 pairs of children with a form of leukaemia termed ALL, and their mothers were matched with an identical group of healthy participants. The researchers analysed urine samples and found significantly higher levels of two common organophosphate metabolites, diethylthiophosphate (DETP) and diethyldithiophosphate (DEDTP) in the urine of the cancer patients than the healthy children. Not surprisingly in the questionnaires completed by the mothers, those households used significantly more pesticides in home.
Worryingly, even the healthy children had some evidence of pesticide organophosphates.
In a second study, reported in the American magazine Environmental Health Perspectives, children living with parents who use in-home pesticides are more likely to develop brain cancers. This time researchers matched 400 fathers and 250 mothers who all use fungicides, insecticides and herbicides around their homes (for example in garden or lawn care use), with identical non-users.They then looked at the level of exposure two years prior to birth!
The researchers found that children whose parents had been exposed to pesticides were significantly more likely to develop brain cancer. The risk of astrocytoma was especially increased by the use of herbicides.
Among the exposed fathers, those who wore protective clothing or who washed immediately after pesticide use were significantly less likely to have children who developed a brain tumour.
No explanation was given for the method of developing the cancer, but it is known that developing babies and foetuses are especially vulnerable to pesticides.
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515 chemicals used on a woman’s face every day
The typical UK woman uses approximately 13 ’beauty’ products a day; from soap to make up; and from creams to perfumes. Each of these can contain from a minimum of 10 up to several hundred different chemicals. Some are known toxins, even carcinogens. Others are hormone disrupters. Many have even been shown to have a damaging effect on the skin, whilst others are known to damage your health.
The latest research study, from Bionsen, a UK company promoting aluminium-free body care products concluded that the average UK woman uses 515 different chemical compounds a day on her face alone!
If readers are concerned, the Natural Selection shop are building a toxin-free product centre and over time they hope to be able to offer a number of toxin-free product ranges offering different benefits. (Click here for more information)
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Formaldehyde linked to cancer risk, again
In Cancer Watch we have covered the dangers of formaldehyde before specifically links to lung cancer and leukaemia.
This known carcinogen is banned in countries such as Sweden and Japan. But you can find it readily available in products in your local supermarket from shampoos to nail polishes. In your home it can be found in fungicides and disinfectants, in the glues used to affix carpet and ceiling tiles, or produced by wood chip board products. Its presence is so common that researchers following students with respirators for two weeks in New York and Los Angels showed that it was the number 1 pollutant in our daily lives, well ahead of benzene and outdoor contaminants.
Now a somewhat bazaar study on Morticians, who use formaldehyde for embalming, has shown that those who regularly use it have a much greater risk of myeloid leukaemia, than those who don’t. (Journal of National Cancer Institute)
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Friends of the Earth want Dark Knights in Hong Kong
Laws curbing night time illuminations have been demanded by environmentalists in Hong Kong. The Standard newspaper reported that retired physiology Professor Pang Shiu-fun was concerned that chronic exposure to night light disrupted humans’ biological clocks are restricted melatonin production. And melatonin regulates and balances a number of other hormones in the body, like oestrogen and IGF-1 which can stimulate cancer. For more on melatonin click here.
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California regulations on cement factories planned
Apparently up to 90 per cent of airborne mercury in California comes from kilns used to make cement. These kilns are not so small, and California is a major producer of cement in the USA.
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Drug ’claims’ are being questioned in the USA, shock!
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that researchers following the launch of a new drug in the USA noted that the media exaggerated the drug’s claims and benefits whilst ignoring its side effects. Apparently, this is quite typical and press coverage of drugs in general seems to over claim the benefits, whilst often not even mentioning the side effects!
Who would have thought this true?!
Well, actually, the editorial of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in America, no less. And several Doctors in the piece stated that press coverage of drugs was inaccurate. Statins, vaccines and anti-depressants are the worst offenders.
It’s nice to know we are not a lone voice at CANCERactive!
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Anybody want some unused flu vaccine which may not work anyway?
As much as we hate to say we told you so, European Governments are now trying to off-load stocks of anti-swine flu vaccine, that there is no need for. The Governments seemingly believed the media panic and the only people benefitting are the Pharma Companies who supplied the vaccines.
However, the smiles may soon go at Roche. The British Medical Journal has been investigating Roche’s claims that 10 research studies supported their Tamiflu. ’Not true’ says the BMJ. Apparently only two of these ten studies were ever published in medical science journals, and when asked to produce the original data behind those, Roche reported that it had been lost!
The BMJ involved the prestigious Cochrane Institute, but they got nowhere. The only study they found research results for showed that Tamiflu was no better than the placebo.
Want any unused, useless flu vaccine anyone?
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Fotolyn, a 20,000 per month wonder cancer treatment
Fotolyn, a new wonder drug shrinks tumours by 37 per cent says the press release. But does it cure cancer. Well, er, no.
So 600 pounds per day for a drug that doesn’t cure anyone, it just temporarily shrinks tumours. Of course you could try vitamin D, medicinal mushrooms and green tea. They could shrink a tumour too, at a lot less cost. But, did someone mention the word ’quackery?’
Fortunately, the British Tax-payer may well be spared. I, for one, can’t see NICE approving this drug. Unless, I suppose, the same people who passed Tamiflu get involved.
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Sunbeds banned for under 18’s in the UK
The UK Government has spoken. There is evidence that sunbeds increase the risk of skin cancer under 18’s will not be allowed to use them, and all other users will be supervised.
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Mammograms endanger women with a higher risk of breast cancer
There is much debate over the use of regular screening mammograms. (To read the whole truth on the subject you can click here.) Women with a higher risk of breast cancer, due to genetic factors for example, are often encouraged to go for annual screening mammograms.
Now research presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America warns that this can be dangerous and actually cause more cancers in this at risk group, especially amongst the under-40’s.
Women in the higher-risk group had a 150 per cent increased risk of developing breast cancer if they had even a low-dose annual mammogram. Some women were even recorded with a cancer rate two and a half times greater than the norm.
The Society recommended that these at-risk women looked at non-radiation alternatives such as Thermography and Ultrasound.
(Ed: This is actually not ’new’ news as we covered in Cancer Watch before: Women who are carriers of a gene mutation (that’s about 7 per cent of all women) may be well advised to be careful and go nowhere near a mammogram. In an article in the July 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers claimed the radiation dose from mammograms may actually cause breast cancer in women with a genetic predisposition for breast cancer. In the study which looked at 1,600 European women with known mutations in BRAC1 or BRAC2 genes (mutations that put women at a much higher risk for developing breast cancer), researchers said women in the study who had at least one chest X-ray were 54 percent more likely to develop breast cancer than those who never had one!
The 2006 study went on to say that these women might want to consider being screened with magnetic resonance imaging instead of X-rays.)
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