This first-person account from National Geographic details the reporter David Ewing Duncan’s quest to identify the chemicals his body has absorbed over his lifetime.
His story began a year ago, shortly after a battery of 14 blood tests to find levels of 320 chemicals residing in his body, acquired “by merely living.” Like, for example, chemicals absorbed from the dump near his boyhood Kansas home that’s now an EPA superfund site.
Recently, Duncan was told, among other alarming news, that his test for the presence of flame-retarding compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE’s), which can interfere with thyroid function, cause reproductive and neurological problems, and hamper neurological development, showed alarmingly high levels — 10 times the average found in U.S. residents and more than 200 times the average for Swedes.
The probable cause was extensive air travel (some 200,000 miles annually) leading to exposure to airplane interiors sprayed with flame retardants.
Other chemicals that were found in his body include PFOA’s, PCB’s, mercury, and phthalates.
Duncan decided to test his body for mercury after eating swordfish, one of the most toxic fish around, and halibut.
After taking a blood test 24 hours after eating the fish, his levels of mercury had more than doubled to 12 micrograms per liter, a huge increase, since children have experienced measurable losses in IQ with mercury levels in their blood at 5.8 micrograms.
Duncan notes that several illnesses have been rising mysteriously, such as autism, leukemia, male birth defects, and childhood brain cancer, and notes that some experts suspect a link to the many man-made chemicals in our food, water, and air.
-National Geographic
Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on toxic living
This was a fascinating article from a reporter of the National Geographic, where he decided to analyze his own health and he did that by doing a series of blood tests. And in these blood tests he found 320 chemicals residing in his body, that he says, were acquired by mere living. Just living you are going to absorb these chemicals because we live in a toxic environment and this is why this generation is the most unhealthy of all generations and your children will be more unhealthy than you are and your grandchildren will be more unhealthy than your children, because they are being exposed to more and more chemicals, and their level of diet and nutrition is becoming less and less. So interesting in this study is that some of the chemicals like polybrominiated diphenyl ethers, or abbreviated PBDE. It said the PBDE’s interfered with thyroid function, cause reproductions and neurological problems and hamper neurological development. These are found very commonly, it’s a chemical that’s found in as a flame retardant, that is put in mattresses in the past and also is found in airplanes, as he found out with his extensive air travel. Other things to note was after he tested his body for mercury after eating fish, and the interesting thing was that 24 hours after eating the fish, his mercury level had doubled to 12 micrograms. This is so huge to understand that at 5.8 micrograms you start to have a measurable loss I.Q. in children. His levels went up to 12 micrograms after eating fish. So, when people say fish is healthy, we disagree, as this study showed it has toxic levels of mercury and with the rise in the chemicals in the environment that are going into the body, it’s so important that we lead a Total Health lifestyle to detoxify our body. Because when we lead the lifestyle that God designed us to lead, we will minimize the chemicals coming into our body, we will maximize the chemical and toxins going out of our body. We will also minimize the harmful effects of these chemicals and toxins once they are in our body. Another side note is you try to decrease your chemical exposure as much as possible. You would be doing this by eating more organic plant based food, because as you eat up the food chain, you concentrate the toxins that are stored in the fat tissue of animals. This includes all animal products, including fish, as the study showed, it also includes dairy products, any type of animal product can store these toxins. Animal products as opposed to organic plant products, there’s up to a thousand time increase of toxins in the food.
