Canada may fly the flag of "a peaceful nation" or relatively better than its Anglo-Saxon counterparts in US & UK, around the world, but Canadian companies are famous in developing countries, in South America & Africa, for unethical business practices.
Be it Kinross, or Goldcorp, or SNC-Lavalin; they have all been exposed or sued in the past decade for unethical practices, ranging from bribery scandals in Africa to destroying the environment, of the surroundings where their operations are based, in South America.
Ironically, these Canadian companies are also considered some of the best companies in Canada, because of their management team, environmental stewardship, & overall business management. They return good money to their shareholders & investors love them.
It is one thing to be actively destroying your own backyard (Canadian companies being involved in Canadian oilsands in Alberta & destroying the environment there), but it is very wrong to be destroying the environment of a developing country, & then digging your heels that we are not destroying the environment in the face of clear evidence.
Most of the companies from the Western developed countries, in one way or another, exploit & destroy the developing countries. They all have long ethical codes of conducts, but they are written in such a way, that they support unethical business practices. So, besides the mining & energy companies, other companies, for example, Nestle is famous for robbing small villages & communities of their precious clean water resources to sell that water to the millions around the world.
Honesty & fairness in the developed world are only for their own citizens, & only rich business & political elites among them; not for everyone else around them. Talking about spreading democracy, freedom, free speech etc. are all smoke & mirrors for the ignorant billions of people around the world.
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... Paracatu is the epicentre of Brazil’s mining production, in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, which generates almost one-third of Brazil’s total mining production.
The exploitation of gold started in Paracatu as early as 1722. ... Since the 1990s the hunt has moved from the river banks to underground deposits. ...
Booming gold prices
In 2005, Canadian company Kinross – which is listed in the New York Stock Exchange & owns gold mines in Chile, US, Russia & Ghana, among other countries – took over the mining concession in Paracatu. During a period in which gold prices rose to historical new heights in global markets, Kinross invested $1.86bn in the site, tripling annual production to the current 15 tonnes & making Paracatu the most productive gold mine in Brazil. As the gold in Paracatu takes the form of a powder & not grain or nuggets, the company had to greatly intensify mining activities to keep production up. Today as many as 160 dynamite explosions are carried out daily to dig the Morro do Ouro, the Golden Hill, as locals refer to the area where the main deposits are found.
As a consequence, the local geography has been profoundly transformed. As you approach the mining area we witness an immense crater that covers 615 hectares, half the size of Heathrow’s airport, & resembles a lunar landscape. The only signs of life are the imposing bulldozers & the high-wheeled vehicles that transport the rocks to the plant. There, toxic chemicals, including cyanide, are employed to separate out the gold powder, which is later molten in ingots & transported by helicopter to São Paulo for export around the globe.
Arsenic health risks
While the visual impact seems hard to deny – in addition to the mining area, two large dams the size of an extra Heathrow airport are used for toxic waste disposal – many argue that the mine poses a threat to the local environment & to the health of the 90,000 Paracatu residents. Not only is dynamite used to access the gold reserves as close as 200 metres from the urban area, the precious metal is mixed in the rock with arsenic, a carcinogenic.
Arsenic is commonly found in gold mines, but in Paracatu it is of particular concern. For each tonne of rock removed only 0.4 grams of gold is recovered & 1kg of arsenic is released into the air & groundwater, according to Márcio José dos Santos, a geologist & local activist.
“Nobody knows how much arsenic is going to the city. The northeasterly wind here means that the arsenic travels in the air from the mine to the urban area. People are inhaling the toxic dust & consequently are inhaling arsenic,” explains José. Sergio Ulhoa Dani, a local physician & also an opponent of the mine, argued in a recent scientific article that “the potential damage of arsenic in a gold mine like the one in Paracatu could impact 7 trillion people”.
Many in the city wonder if their life is at risk, while the word “cancer” has become a taboo. Data from Paracatu’s city council shows that the cancer mortality rate in the town is similar to the rest of the country. Critics argue that statistics from the local government are unreliable. As Paracatu lacks medical institutions, patients must go to hospitals located hundreds of kilometres away to receive treatment & so are not counted in the city’s official data.
Opponents face harassment & threats
The attitude of the company is also under scrutiny. According to documents seen by The Guardian & interviews with former employees, several Kinross’ employees worked as an intelligence unit to track any potential activity against the mine or the company’s reputation.
In an interview with the Guardian, Gilberto Azevedo, general manager of the mine, denied any risk to the health or the environment. “We monitor everything. People have nothing to fear, because we have everything under control. We regularly make environmental & biological tests, & we have hired external sources to carry studies. They all show there is no risk.”
He also underlined the economic importance of the company’s activity for the region. In 2014, Kinross paid about $10m in taxes & currently employs 3,300 people in the mine, about 8% of the active population in the city.
However, tension is perceptible. As we drive through the public roads bordering the concession, an armed guard who had been following the car for an hour brings us to a halt & questions us.
Dozens of documents & internal emails seen by The Guardian show that in 2012 & 2013 Kinross had a policy in Paracatu of regularly monitoring potential opponents, including the former mayor Almir Paraca – known for being outspoken against the mine – & several union leaders.
“They monitor social movements, politicians, neighbourhood associations & their representatives, environmental activists, union leaders... They even monitor what some Kinross’s employees do at their free time. The main goal is to hide or repress any action, demonstration or reference against the mining company or their interests”, said one of the sources, knowledgeable of Kinross’ policies because of his/her former post at the company.
And at least 2 local activists – Rafaela Xavier Luiz & Evane Lopes - have had to leave the city in recent months after they received death threats, which they argue were linked to their opposition to the mine.
“We have nothing to do with this. Kinross is a company that dialogues with the community,” says Azevedo, when asked if the enterprise was in any way involved in the threats to activists. Kinross also denied it monitored activists or opponents.
An extra long feature from NYTimes, but a good one. Bringing into light the problems with cosmetics & makeup women slather on themselves all around the world & then complain of several health problems. Plus, all the workers who are working in these cosmetics industry, like nail salon workers, who breath the toxic fumes of nail-related products on a daily basis.
When I used to work for the accounting department of Revlon Canada, & being the only guy in a group of about 10 women, the talk of manicures & pedicures was a daily routine (no, I wasn't involved in those deep discussions but I used to overhear them). Women feel good, or at least try to feel good, with a visit to a spa or a nail salon. What they don't realize that they are putting the workers who are beautifying their nails in very serious health risk.
Those women customers also don't realize that by colouring their nails & using all these other nail-related products, they are also putting themselves & their families at great danger, since, their nails, with those carcinogenic & other chemicals slathered on them, are going into food (if they are preparing meals for their families). So these cosmetics act like second-hand smoke for their families.
Keep in mind that these harmful chemicals are in the nail products, being used & sold, in North America, Europe, & Australia. These developed countries, except North America, took steps to ban or warn users, of these products, from their harmful qualities.
What happens to nail / cosmetics products being sold & used in all the developing countries in South America, Asia & Africa?
Those users have no idea what poison they are inhaling or ingesting themselves & by their families. Heck, as the article points out, that European Union & Australia have banned harmful chemicals being used in the production of these cosmetics. Companies like Estee Lauder, Revlon, Mary Kay etc. can continue making nail products with the harmful chemicals but they can sell them in developing countries. The adverse consequences of using nail products must be happening in all these developing countries, but, without any research, nobody can say how much worse the situation is there.
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Each time a customer pulled open the glass door at the nail shop in Ridgewood, Queens, where Nancy Otavalo worked, a cheerful chorus would ring out from where she sat with her fellow manicurists against the wall: “Pick a color!”
Ms. Otavalo, a 39-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, was usually stationed at the first table. She trimmed & buffed & chatted about her quick-witted toddler, or her strapping 9-year-old boy. But she never spoke of another dreamed-for child, the one lost last year in a miscarriage that began while she was giving a customer a shoulder massage.
At the second table was Monica A. Rocano, 30, who sometimes brought a daughter to visit. But clients had never met her 3-year-old son, Matthew Ramon. People thought Matthew was shy, but in fact he has barely learned how to speak & can walk only with great difficulty.
A chair down from Ms. Rocano was another, quieter manicurist. In her idle moments, she surfed the Internet on her phone, seeking something that might explain the miscarriage she had last year. Or the four others that came before.
Similar stories of illness & tragedy abound at nail salons across the country, of children born slow or “special,” of miscarriages & cancers, of coughs that will not go away & painful skin afflictions. The stories have become so common that older manicurists warn women of child-bearing age away from the business, with its potent brew of polishes, solvents, hardeners & glues that nail workers handle daily.
A growing body of medical research shows a link between the chemicals that make nail & beauty products useful — the ingredients that make them chip-resistant & pliable, quick to dry & brightly colored, for example — & serious health problems.
Whatever the threat the typical customer enjoying her weekly French tips might face, it is a different order of magnitude, advocates say, for manicurists who handle the chemicals & breathe their fumes for hours on end, day after day.
The prevalence of respiratory & skin ailments among nail salon workers is widely acknowledged. More uncertain, however, is their risk for direr medical issues. Some of the chemicals in nail products are known to cause cancer; others have been linked to abnormal fetal development, miscarriages & other harm to reproductive health.
A number of studies have also found that cosmetologists — a group that includes manicurists, as well as hairdressers & makeup artists — have elevated rates of death from Hodgkin’s disease, of low birth-weight babies & of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.
But firm conclusions are elusive, partly because the research is so limited. Very few studies have focused on nail salon workers specifically. Little is known about the true extent to which they are exposed to hazardous chemicals, what the accumulated effect is over time & whether a connection can actually be drawn to their health.
The federal law that regulates cosmetics safety, which is more than 75 years old, does not require companies to share safety information with the Food & Drug Administration. The law bans ingredients harmful to users, but it contains no provisions for the agency to evaluate the effects of the chemicals before they are put on shelves. Industry lobbyists have fought tougher monitoring requirements.
Industry officials say their products contain minuscule amounts of the chemicals identified as potentially hazardous & pose no threat.
“What I hear are insinuations based on ‘linked to,’” said Doug Schoon, co-chairman of the Professional Beauty Association’s Nail Manufacturers Council on Safety. “When we talk about nail polish, there’s no evidence of harm.”
Health advocates & officials disagree, pointing to the accumulated evidence.
“We know that a lot of the chemicals are very dangerous,” said David Michaels, the assistant labor secretary who heads the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration, which oversees workplace safety. “We don’t need to see the effect in nail salon workers to know that they are dangerous to the workers.”
So many health complaints were cropping up among the mostly Vietnamese manicurists in Oakland, Calif., that workers at Asian Health Services, a community organization there, decided on their own to investigate about a decade ago.
“It was like, ‘Oh wow, what’s happening in this community?’” said Julia Liou, who is now the health center’s director of program planning & development & a co-founder of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. “We are seeing this epidemic of people who are sick.”
The organization helped form a coalition in California that pushed for restrictions on chemicals used in nail salons, but the cosmetics industry succeeded in blocking a ban.
In recent years, in the face of growing health concerns, some polish companies have said that they have removed certain controversial chemicals from their products. But random testing of some of these products by government agencies showed the chemicals were still present.
Some states & municipalities recommend workers wear gloves & other protection, but salon owners usually discourage them from donning such unsightly gear. And even though officials overseeing workplace safety concede that federal standards on levels of chemicals that these workers can be exposed to need revision, nothing has been done.
So manicurists continue to paint fingertips, swipe off polish and file down false nails, while absorbing chemicals that are potentially hazardous to their health.
“There are so many stories but no one that dares to tell them; no one dares to tell them because they have no one to tell,” Ms. Otavalo said in an interview ... . “There are thousands of women who are working in this, but no one asking: ‘What’s happening to you? How do you feel?’ We just work & work.”
‘They Cannot Breathe’
The walls of Dr. Charles Hwu’s second-story office in Flushing, Queens, are decorated with Chinese calligraphy, gifts from patients he has cared for from cradle to adulthood. Over his decades as an internist in this predominantly Asian enclave, Dr. Hwu has repeatedly encountered a particular set of conditions affecting otherwise healthy women.
“They come in usually with breathing problems, some symptoms similar to an allergy, & also asthma symptoms — they cannot breathe,” he said during a break between patients this winter. “Judging from the symptoms with these women, it seems that they are either smokers, secondhand smokers or asthma patients, but they are none of the above. They work for nail salons.”
In interviews with over 125 nail salon workers, airway ailments like those in Dr. Hwu’s office were ubiquitous. Many have learned to simply laugh them off — the nose that constantly bleeds, the throat that has ached every day since the manicurist started working.
In the nail salon she owned in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, Eugenia Colon spent years molding sometimes 30 sets of talonlike nails a day in a haze of acrylic powder, ignoring a persistent cough that grew more pronounced over time. She was found to have sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, in her lungs. In scans, they appeared as if covered with granules of sand, streaked by tiny scars.
The doctor who diagnosed her condition asked Ms. Colon what she did for a living. When she told him, he was frank: As she beautified other women, she inhaled clouds of acrylic & other dust, tiny particles that gouged the soft tissue of her lungs.
“We made money off it, but was it worth it?” Ms. Colon, 52, now an aesthetician in a Manhattan spa. “It came with a price.”
Of the 20 common nail product ingredients listed as causing health problems in the appendix of a safety brochure put out by the Environmental Protection Agency, 17 are hazardous to the respiratory tract, according to the agency. Overexposure to each of them induces symptoms such as burning throat or lungs, labored breathing or shortness of breath.
A 2006 study published in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine that included more than 500 Colorado manicurists found about 20% of them had a cough most days & nights. The same examination showed those who worked with artificial nails were about three times as likely to get asthma on the job as someone not in the industry.
Skin disorders are also omnipresent among nail salon workers. Many of the chemicals in nail salon products are classified by government agencies as skin sensitizers, capable of provoking painful reactions.
Some veteran manicurists say they can recognize one another on the street: They have the same coffee-colored stains on their cheeks. Certain cosmetic color additives — particularly a type of brilliant red — have been shown by researchers to cause such skin discoloration.
When Ki Ok Chung, a manicurist who worked in salons for almost two decades, had her fingerprints taken in the early 2000s for her US citizenship, she made an upsetting discovery: Her prints were almost nonexistent. They had to be taken 7 times. She says constant work with files, solvents & emollients is responsible.
“I realized my fingerprints had been disappearing,” she said.
Today, she cannot touch hot or cold dishes without searing pain.
Even as the weather warmed into spring last year, Zoila Calle, a manicurist, then 22, who worked in Harlem, wore wool gloves indoors & out. Underneath were black pustules so painful she could not grasp a polish bottle or text on her phone. It was the second time her hands had erupted in the warts, a common occurrence for nail salon workers. While customers often fret about salon hygiene, it is manicurists who appear truly at risk, suffering through endless fungal infections & other skin diseases from the blur of hands & feet they touch every day.
“It’s a beautiful industry, it makes people feel better,” Ms. Colon, who owned the salon in Mill Basin, said in an interview ... . “But if a lot of people knew the truth behind it, it wouldn’t happen. They wouldn’t go.”
Miscarriages & Warnings
In a way, Ms. Rocano, one of the manicurists in the Ridgewood salon, felt herself lucky. Her colleagues seated on either side of her had each lost a pregnancy last year ... .
She, however, has her toddler, Matthew.
A dark-haired bundle with amber skin when he was born, Matthew was an infant laden with his mother’s hopes. Holding him in her arms, she was reminded of the daughter she had left behind in Ecuador & still has not seen in more than 6 years. This time, she felt, she could do right by her child.
Yet as he grew, something seemed off. His legs were weak; they buckled when he tried to stand. By age 3 he still could not say his name. In visits to her pediatrician, she learned that Matthew was delayed on almost every measure, both physically & cognitively.
At one point, his doctor asked her what she did for a living. When she told him, he asked how long she had worked in the nail salon while pregnant. Six months, she responded.
The doctor told her, “When babies are forming in your womb, they absorb everything, & if they are exposed to anything, it can cause them harm,” she recalled.
On a day 5 years ago, a doctor gave a similar warning to the manicurist who works at the table to Ms. Rocano’s right, as she sat in the obstetrics unit at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn. There she learned she had miscarried a third time.
“I went to the hospital, & I told him, ‘I’m a manicurist,’” said the woman, who declined to give her name because she wanted her medical history to remain private. Her doctor urged her to change jobs. “The chemicals are not healthy for your lungs, your liver, & sometimes they begin cancer,” she recalled. “I was laughing. I said, ‘Who is going to pay my bills?’” She has since miscarried twice more.
In scientific circles, the three chemicals in nail products that are associated with the most serious health issues are dibutyl phthalate, toluene & formaldehyde. They are known as the “toxic trio” among worker advocates.
Dibutyl phthalate, called DBP for short, makes nail polish & other products pliable. In Australia, it is listed as a reproductive toxicant & must be labeled with the phrases “may cause harm to the unborn child” & “possible risk of impaired fertility.” Starting in June, the chemical will be prohibited from cosmetics in that country. It is one of over 1,300 chemicals banned from use in cosmetics in the European Union. But in the US, where fewer than a dozen chemicals are prohibited in such products, there are no restrictions on DBP.
Toluene, a type of solvent, helps polish glide on smoothly. But the E.P.A. says in a fact sheet that it can impair cognitive & kidney function. In addition, repeated exposure during pregnancy can “adversely affect the developing fetus,” according to the agency.
Formaldehyde, best known for its use in embalming, is a hardening agent in nail products. In 2011, the National Toxicology Program, part of the US Department of Health & Human Services, labeled it a human carcinogen. By 2016, it will be banned from cosmetics in the European Union.
Cosmetics industry officials say linking the chemicals to manicurists’ health complaints amounts to faulty science.
Dibutyl phthalate, toluene & formaldehyde “have been found to be safe under current conditions of use in the US,” said Lisa Powers, a spokeswoman for the Personal Care Products Council, the main trade association & lobbying group for the cosmetics industry.
“The safe & historical use of these ingredients is not questioned by F.D.A.,” she continued.
In reality, the responsibility for evaluating the safety of the chemicals as they are used in cosmetics is left with the companies themselves.
Even while insisting they are safe, some polish companies have voluntarily begun to remove certain chemicals from formulations. By 2006, several prominent brands had announced their products would no longer contain any of the three. The new products were labeled “3-free” or “5-free,” referring to the number of chemicals that are ostensibly no longer in them.
But a 2010 study by the F.D.A. & another in 2012 by the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Department of Toxic Substance Control found in random tests that some products, even ones labeled “3-free” or “5-free,” in fact contained those very chemicals.
It was from routine community outreach trips to local nail salons in Oakland that Ms. Liou & her colleagues from Asian Health Services, as well as Thu Quach, a research scientist, became alarmed: Almost all of the manicurists interviewed had health complaints; some were terribly ill.
Dr. Quach, with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, set out to conduct a health survey of nail salon workers in Alameda County, which includes Oakland.
The stories poured in.
Le Thi Lam, a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the US in 1988 ... was among the first. She had started out in a Sacramento nail salon, becoming proficient in acrylic nails, sculpting them all day long from a slurry of solvent & plastic polymers.
In 1991, she learned she had a thyroid condition. She had also developed asthma. She quit, too sickened to work & concerned about the chemicals she was handling. But she soon returned, unable to find another job with her limited English. 10 years later, she had breast cancer.
“I know that manicurists like me are also going through the same things & having major health problems,” she said, seated in a conference room at Asian Health Services last summer ... . “But they still hang on to their jobs to earn their living.”
Dr. Quach kept going with her research, undertaking several other studies. One found manicurists had an increased risk for gestational diabetes & for having undersize babies. Another, looking at cancer, found no correlation. Both studies were hampered by data limitations. Mostly, they point to the need for further study.
“What we know is what’s reported by the women again & again: that there is something here,” Dr. Quach said. “Those chemicals they are dealing with are chemicals that we know people react to, & we are hearing the stories from these workers that they are reacting to them. It’s all there.”
‘Fox Guarding the Henhouse’
The regulation of chemicals in nail products is dictated by the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act of 1938. The part of the law that deals with cosmetics totals just 591 words.
The Food & Drug Administration explains the limitations it faces under the law on its website: “Cosmetic products & ingredients do not need F.D.A. premarket approval, with the exception of color additives.” It continues, “Neither the law nor F.D.A. regulations require specific tests to demonstrate the safety of individual products or ingredients.” In addition, “The law also does not require cosmetic companies to share their safety information with F.D.A.”
In 1976, the cosmetics industry itself established the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a panel that is supposed to “review & assess the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics in an open, unbiased & expert manner,” according to its website. But the panel is financed entirely by the Personal Care Products Council, the industry lobbying group. The panel’s offices are also in the same building in Washington as the products council.
Even so, Ms. Powers said the panel was independent. She is the official spokeswoman for the industry lobby, but all questions to the review panel were handled by her.
Since its founding, the panel has reviewed only a small fraction of the substances in use in cosmetics today. Among them were dibutyl phthalate & toluene; the panel determined that they are safe the way they are used in nail products — on nails, not skin.
“It’s a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse,” says Janet Nudelman, the director of program & policy at the Breast Cancer Fund, which has argued for more stringent regulation. “You’ve got an industry-funded review panel that’s assessing the safety for the very industry that’s funding the review panel.”
There have been efforts in recent years to overhaul the 1938 law & more strictly regulate cosmetic chemicals, but none made headway in the face of industry resistance. Since 2013, the products council, just one of several industry trade groups, has poured nearly $2 million on its own into lobbying Congress.
After talks between the cosmetics industry & the F.D.A. broke down last year, Michael R. Taylor, the agency’s deputy commissioner for foods & veterinary medicine, rebuked the industry in an unusual open letter for pushing a measure that would have declared a wide range of potentially dangerous chemicals safe “without a credible scientific basis” & others safe that are known to pose “real & substantial risks to consumers.”
Ms. Powers said the letter mischaracterized the industry’s stance. “The law was created or passed in 1938,” she said. “Nobody is saying that we shouldn’t look at that now & say: ‘Is it a contemporary approach? Does it need to bring us into the 21st century?’ We all agree to that. But that doesn’t make for a sexy headline.”
The council, in fact, said it supported a bipartisan bill introduced in April by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, & Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, that would broaden F.D.A. oversight of cosmetics, including giving the agency recall ability. But some health advocates said the bill would continue to permit the industry to largely regulate itself; it would also pre-empt states’ abilities to create stronger rules.
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration is the federal agency that sets chemical exposure limits in workplaces. The studies that have examined the chemical exposure levels for manicurists have found them to be well below these standards. Health advocates say the safety administration’s standards are badly out of date & flawed.
Even Dr. Michaels, the head of the safety administration, said his agency’s standards needed revision. Currently, he said, workers “can be exposed to levels that are legal according to OSHA but are still dangerous.”
The agency makes illustrated pamphlets warning manicurists about the chemical hazards they face & urges them to wear gloves & ventilate their shops. These steps & others become mandatory when exposure limits are exceeded. But in practical terms, with the standards set so high, salons are free to do nothing. Dr. Michaels said the agency was hamstrung by its own cumbersome rule-making process.
“Every worker has the right to come home safely at the end of every day,” Dr. Michaels said. “They shouldn’t be coming home & getting sick.”
The debate over the chemicals has also unfolded at the state level. In 2005, lawmakers in California proposed banning DBP from cosmetic products sold or manufactured in the state. Industry lobbyists flooded the State Capitol (some bearing gift baskets of lipstick & nail polish), spending over a half-million dollars fighting the ban, according to state records. Some of the country’s best-known cosmetics companies — Estée Lauder, Mary Kay & OPI, among others — weighed in against it. The bill ultimately failed. A much more limited measure passed — over the industry’s objections — that required cosmetics companies to disclose certain hazardous chemicals to the California Department of Public Health.
Blocked by an industry with deep pockets, the California advocates say they had to scale back their goals. They introduced a grass-roots program that officially recognizes “healthy nail salons,” those that carry “greener” products & that ventilate. The New York City Council held a hearing this month on a measure that would establish a similar voluntary program.
Today, out of several thousand salons in California, however, there are just 55 salons in the program.
One of them is Lulu Nail Spa, a tiny salon ... in Burlingame, Calif. The shop earned the designation in May by switching certain products, using gloves & opening the doors to sweep out fumes. The owner, Hai Thi Le, a Vietnamese immigrant, said she hoped the new decal she placed on her window would draw green-minded customers.
But she did not make the changes just for business. As a young woman working in her brother’s nail shop, Ms. Le said she breathed in so much acrylic powder that when she kissed her husband after work, he complained her breath smelled of solvent & plastic dust.
Now, imagine what will or, perhaps, currently happening to public's health when they are directly or indirectly drinking this chemical-laden water or food grown through the use of this water.
If you are thinking that municipalities all over North America have very efficient & effective filtration systems & water agencies to clean all this water for drinking purposes, then you are sorely mistaken. Those water agencies / filtration plants were never built to clean thousands of new chemicals ground water is currently filled with.
Coupling this article with the BBC article about chemicals in our food & consumer products adversely affecting our hormones, you can imagine how many chemicals we are constantly ingesting on a daily basis. In a 2012 documentary, "Last Call at the Oasis," it was told that about 80,000 different kinds of chemicals go into our water system, through ground water, aquifers, pesticides, fertilizers, drugs & pills flushed in our toilets, industrial & domestic chemical products flushed from our industries & homes etc.
Now, if you say that well, let's all start drinking bottled water, then it raises 1 very important question:
What will happen to the poor of our society?
As clean, drinking water keep increasing in demand, its price will also increase. Rich won't have any problem buying those clean spring water but what will happen to the poor of our society.
I put up a picture with the Andy Garcia's line from the movie, "A Dark Truth," a few weeks back on this blog that today we are selling water & tomorrow we will be selling air. Where will poor go? Eventually, they will rebel against the society. Right now, their health is deteriorating much faster than rich folks, due to both their food & water being contaminated, & it's costing billions to our healthcare systems, besides the unnecessary strain it puts on the system. Eventually, governments will give up, since their coffers are empty, & hand it over to private healthcare systems to take care of all these people. They obviously won't, since it's not their mandate or objective. End result: a very serious social upheaval.
Another revelation was made in the documentary I mentioned above that almost 50% of bottled water being sold in the market is actually mere tap water.
On top of that, bottled water causes a lot of environmental damage with plastic bottles in our environment & making that plastic bottle itself requires a lot of water, too.
Further to all these problems, another 2011 documentary, "Pink Ribbons, Inc." explored the marketing of breast cancer. Experts & doctors continuously said in the documentary that we are still "slashing & burning" (surgery & chemotherapy) the breast cancer, like we used to do decades ago. Billions have been donated to this cause over the decades, but still no "eureka" moment where we'd know why breast cancer, or, in fact, any type of cancer, happen. Documentary did point out one research about one pesticide but I'd say all these cancers (there are so many of them) are happening because of all these contaminants in our food & water.
It seems like that the developed world is slowly, but surely, regressing back to that "uncivilized" & "barbaric" developing world. Bottled water is a big thing in Pakistan & India, for instance. I have seen in Pakistan, with my own eyes, how poor is drinking the dirty water, whereas, the rich is buying Nestle's water bottles by the gallons.
One last point to make here is that which is more dangerous to an American; a terrorist threatening to kill a few hundred Americans, at most, or millions of Americans, all over US, slowly killing themselves by ingesting harmful, cancerous chemicals, on a daily basis? Which death is more painful & agonizing, not only for the individual but also for the whole family & the community; getting killed by a terrorist in an instant or suffering from cancers for years?
So, why spend billions on wars, on foreign lands, which also has its own long-term, adverse consequences, when millions of American lives are in grave danger from their food & water? Wouldn't those billion $$$ help tremendously, at home, by reducing the effects of poverty or subsidizing organic foods for the poor? Billions in healthcare costs will be saved, too. As an added bonus, it will also greatly help in reducing radicalization of the populace of those foreign lands & them threatening to kill Americans.
It's like resolving multiple problems, instantly. Heck, it may even make US a utopian society where people have jobs in a thriving green economy, where, everyone is healthy & government is saving billions, too. Ironically, this dream is not so far-fetched or even figment of an active imagination. It is definitely achievable.
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Disclosures in California revealed this week that a bevy of toxic, cancer-linked chemicals in fracking wastewater are routinely injected back into the ground. State regulators of the oil & gas industry, meanwhile, admitted to substandard oversight.
More than a year after California’s unprecedented law requiring transparency over contents of hydraulic fracturing -- or fracking -- wastewater, a new report by the Environmental Working Group showed that the state has allowed a variety of carcinogenic chemicals to be pumped back into the ground after use, thereby freeing oil & gas deposits.
The group said that “more than a dozen hazardous chemicals & metals as well as radiation were detected in the wastewater, some at average levels that are hundreds or thousands of times higher than the state’s drinking water standards or public health goals.”
The report – ‘Toxic Stew: What’s in Fracking Wastewater’ – stemmed from the state’s 2013 disclosure law which mandates the comprehensive testing & public release of the chemicals in drilling wastewater. The oil & gas industry has fought hard – with cover from government regulators like the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) & California’s own Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources – to obfuscate & conceal what it injects into the Earth.
“Petroleum chemicals, heavy metals & radioactive elements, plus high levels of dissolved solids, are among the pollutants found in fracking wastewater samples tested under the new disclosure program,” the Environmental Working Group wrote.
“They include benzene, chromium-6, lead & arsenic – all listed under California’s Proposition 65 as causes of cancer or reproductive harm. Nearly every one of the 293 samples tested contained benzene at levels ranging from twice to more than 7,000 times the state drinking water standard. The wastewater also carried, on average, thousands of times more radioactive radium than the state’s public health goals consider safe, as well as elevated levels of potentially harmful ions such as nitrate & chloride.”
State officials have said there is “no evidence to date that California aquifers currently used for drinking water have been contaminated by fracking chemicals,” the Environmental Working Group wrote.
Yet, in October, the state found that the oil & gas industry had illegally injected about 3 billion gallons of fracking wastewater into central California drinking water & farm irrigation aquifers.
Last week, the state ordered a halt to drilling at 12 wastewater injection wells in California’s Central Valley "out of an abundance of caution for public health,” said Steve Bohlen, head of the state Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources. The state has shut down 23 of the hundreds of injection wells located in aquifers that are not approved for wastewater, the Los Angeles Times reported.
To unleash oil or natural gas from shale or other areas, the fracking process requires blasting large volumes of highly pressurized water, sand, & other chemicals into layers of rock.
Once used, toxic fracking wastewater is then either stored in deep underground wells, disposed of in open pits for evaporation, sprayed into waste fields, or used over again.
Fracking has been linked to groundwater contamination, heightened earthquake activity, exacerbation of drought conditions, & a variety of health concerns for humans & the local environment.
Oil & gas companies are under increasingly intense pressure nationwide to respond over increased transparency of chemicals used in the fracking process. As RT has reported, industry has avoided divulging -- often under the cover of official regulatory agencies -- just what chemicals are involved in their toxic injection fluids. Yet drillers insist the chemicals do not endanger human health, contradicting findings by scientists & environmentalists.
Critics -- including the US Government Accountability Office -- have long contended that the EPA has been soft on the industry because they believe the agency is reluctant to stand in the way of what has quickly become a very profitable business model amid the oil & gas boom in North America.
"There has been a serious imbalance between the role regulating the oil & gas industry & the role of protecting the public," said Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Officials from the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) admitted that the agency had for years allowed for the breaking of federal law when companies injected fracking & other wastewater into hundreds of disposal wells within protected aquifers.
The DOGGR officials blamed past errors on inconsistent record-keeping & outdated data collection.
In its new report, the Environmental Working Group noted that “the mandated [fracking chemical] disclosure data on the state’s website is still incomplete & confusing,” & that “California allows drillers to request permission to keep the exact recipe of their fracking fluid off the publicly accessible website.”
Last month, it was reported that California officials permitted oil & gas companies to dispose of waste & other fluids into aquifers containing drinking & irrigation water more than 2,500 times. Significantly, 46% of these permits were authorized within the last 4 years – the same timeframe during which the EPA warned California that regulators were not sufficiently protecting underground water reserves in the drought-stricken state.
State regulators subsequently offered the EPA a new plan that detailed how California would change its permit approval process. The plan also addresses how the state would confront contamination risks. Steve Bohlen, the head of DOGGR, said last month that 140 of the affected injection sites were actively pumping waste into aquifers holding good quality water.
Despite popular support, a moratorium on fracking in the state was killed in the California Senate last May. The oil industry spent nearly US $1.5 million in 3 months fighting the bill.
California is the third-largest oil producing state in the US, but it’s also in its fourth year of a severe drought, highlighting the need to keep its water reserves safe.
Funny thing, my parents used to (& still do) tell me about these kinds of things; pharma companies like Merck, Pfizer, GSK etc doing human drug testing in developing countries, & I used to think that doesn't happen & filed it under "old folks talking conspiracy". Well, I accept that I was wrong.
It's ironic that Western-based NGOs, companies in every industry you can think of, & sports organizations (from NFL to NBA to FIFA to ICC) all pledge & are supposedly working towards ending racism & discrimination.
How would you characterize these drugs testing then? Discrimination against poor? Racism (making "coloured" kids human guinea pigs, just so a large number of kids of a certain skin colour are safe in developed countries)? Exploitation of a poor & uneducated class in a developing country just so people in developed countries remain oblivious to this abhorrent practice?
Now, these multi-billion $$$ international biopharma companies will fight these lawsuits, stating that laws in developing countries let them do these drugs testing. So, in essence, what they did is legal in that respective country. But remember what Edward Snowden says: "What is right is not always the same as what is legal."
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Children as young as nine suffered side-effects after being used as unwitting human guinea pigs for a new multi-billion pound anti-cervical cancer drug, it has been claimed.
The new anti-cancer drug has just been approved for use in the US & is due to be released in Britain this year.
But MailOnline has learned that several of the children used as 'guinea pigs' for the drug trial in India reported suffering problems including weight loss, fatigue, dizziness & menstrual problems.
They & their parents claim they had no idea they were being used to test out Gardasil 9, which was then an untried drug.
Drug firms are already facing claims that they exploited children in the developing world to develop the vaccine.
Merck, which makes Gardasil 9, faces a hearing in India's Supreme Court over the alleged use of young girls from poor tribal communities in trials of an earlier anti-cervical cancer drug.
It also involves the Cervarix vaccine produced by GlaxoSmithKline, along with US-based health non-profit organisation PATH, which organised the trials with the backing of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
7 girls died before the trials were halted, although those involved deny the deaths were linked to the vaccines.
... trials conducted on children in the Indian city of Indore that, according to an affidavit lodged with the Supreme Court, were both illegal & unethical.
The affidavit, submitted to the court as part of the public interest litigation over the earlier drug trials, claimed that:
• None of those involved were told that they were taking part in a drug trial
• Middlemen acted as touts to recruit patients
• Parents were lied to & told their children would be getting a successful foreign medicine
• Those involved targeted the poor & vulnerable
• Children who suffered health problems received no health care or compensation
Whether by accident or design, many of those who agreed to let their children take part in the trial were poor & illiterate.
Some, like the Dhawans, also noticed changes in their children - late periods, dizziness & weakness. They had something else in common too: they say they had no idea they were taking part in a trial of a new anti-cervical cancer vaccine.
Muskan & Akash Hansari both had the injections, but their father told researchers working for the group behind the Supreme Court case that he was led to believe that it would prevent all sicknesses & illness in general.
'[He has] no idea as to what cervical cancer is. Doesn't know what a uterus is let alone where it is located,' the researchers noted in a report compiled to support the Supreme Court affidavit.
Shaurya Mishra's father told the researchers the family felt 'short changed & cheated' by the doctors after the 14-year-old was signed up for the trials. He was told the vaccine would prevent cervical cancer but confessed he did not know what this was.
'He felt bad that American companies try their vaccines out on Indians & then those same vaccines are given to the Americans to benefit them while the Indians are just used as guinea pigs.'
The activists behind the court challenge include veteran women's campaigner Kalpanna Mehta & Dr. Anand Rai, a doctor who has campaigned for years against drug trials.
'Even when they [Indians] know it is wrong they don't want to fight. We still live in a country where they think doctors are gods. There are no risks [for the drug companies] here.'
'Some people are unhappy with me,' he [Dr. Rai] says. 'They chose poor groups, weaker groups, illiterate groups, those who needed medicine at any cost. They are poor. They have to rely on these doctors, they have to rely on government hospitals because they don't have any option.
'International companies use Indians as guinea pigs.'
Over the past decade, drug trials have become a £300 million a year business in India. In 2003, there were fewer than 50 clinical trials running in India, but the number increased rapidly as pharmaceutical firms realised that costs were up to 60% lower in India than in the US. By 2011, there were 1,852 trials registered with the government, involving an estimated 150,000 patients.
In March 2013 India's health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad revealed that 2,868 people had died since 2005 in government-approved drug trials.
