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RawMahdiyah Woman Warrior
Joined: 02 Feb 2006 Posts: 100 Location: MD, USA...TorontoIsHomebase
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:31 pm Post subject: Nuclear Radiation |
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~The consequences of a nuclear accident or toxic outbreak can affect several generations and disrupt the lives of people thousands of miles from the source of contamination. For ten days, radioactivity spewed into the atmosphere from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukranian portion of the Soviet Union. On Saturday, April 26th, 1986, Soviet planes dropped lead, sand, and boron onto the fire created by a meltdown in the reactor core. Meanwhile, 50,000 people were evacuated from the area. Two days later, levels of radioactivity in Sweden were measured as high as 100 times normal. The long list of these harmful substancs included isotopes of krypton, xenon, iodine, cesium, and cobalt. The first Soviet news release about casualties came the next day, acknowledging 2 people dead and 197 hospitalized. Western scientists estimated that every unprotected human being within eighteen miles of the explosion would die within a few hours, while those as far as sixty miles downwind from the accident would die eventually as a direct result of radiation exposure. No one would be able to enter the immediate area for three to five years.
The governments of France, Finland, and Great Britain ordered evacuation of their citizens from the Kiev area. When they had returned to their countries, tests on these people revealed small amounts of radioactivity in their thyroid glands. None was found in their lungs or digestive systems. This is because the body treats the mutant radioactive idodine like the nutrient iodine. The thyroid uses nutrient iodine to make the hormone thyroxin, which prevents goiter. Polish children were given iodine solutions to drink, so their thyroids would not assimilate the radioactive iodine from Chernobyl. People of Tokyo, Japan were advised not to drink rainwater until further notice.
Experts predicted that the radioactive iodine would be nearly gone a month after the accident, but that the radioactive cesium and strontium would be dangerous for hundreds of years. Medical advisors have warned that for the next thirty years, the incidence of cancer in all the areas of Russia and other countries that recieved dangerous levels of exposure to radioactivity would skyrocket. This had begun to occur even faster than the rate first predicted.
Common sense tells us that we would not be facing such death-dealing accidents if we were not playing with such deadly substances as radioative materials. Most people are aware that these are dangerous substances, but most may not understand why.
What Radiation Is And What It Does
Radioactive substances such as a cobalt-60, idodine-131, and cesium-137 emit radiation in a manner something like X-rays, which pass through the body unnoticed and unfelt. However, this radiation is of such energy that it is able to knock off electrons from the chemical elements that make up our body cells. This process is called free-radical degeneration. The removal of electrons damages the protein of the body and the genes. The worst damage is to cells that reproduce most rapidly - the cells of the ovaries, testes, bone marrow, bowel, and skin.
The standard unit of measurement for radiation is the rem, standing for "roentgen equivalent in man." This is the dose of radiation it takes to produce the same amount of biological damage as one roentgen of x-ray or gamma radiation. The dose of radiation to which a person is exposed has differing effects. For example, a blast of 5,000 rem kills right away. While not so fatal at first, anything over 1,000 rem will cause death sooner or later.
Rem are measured per hour (similar to miles per hour) so that exposure to 200 rem for five hours would add up to 1,000 rem, a lethal level that causes death within days. The normal background level for radiation on the Earth's surface varies from place to place and depends on climate, altitude, and latitude; but the range is generally from as low as 10 millirem (thousandths of a rem) to more than 200 millirem. This is due to natural radiation from the Earth and from fallout accumulated on the Earth's surface since the first atomic bomb tests in the 1940s, including nuclear power plant accidents that have occasionally released radioactivity.
Radioactivity is, by and large, a long-term and very dangerous pollutant. It settles in water, soil, and plant life. It is found in the flesh of birds, wildlife, and domestic animals, and it travels up the food chain through air, water, animals (meat and milk), fish, vegetables, and fruit. It is both carcinogenic and mutagenic, able to cause genetic damage that results in deformed or otherwise abnormal offspring.
Radiation damage to individuals varies so widely that one person can die from a dose that leaves another person unharmed. From the same dose of radiation, one person may develop cancer in two years while another develops cancer in seventeen years. Different kinds of radioactive chemicals may concentrate in diferent parts of the body after ingestion.
Specific Effects Of Radioactive Elements
Iodine-131 gathers in the thyroid gland, where its radiation can trigger genetic damage that gives rise to cancer decades after exposure, even though it has a half-life of eight days and is mostly gone from the body in two months. (The half-life of a radioactive chemical is the time it takes for the amount of radioactivity to drop to half of its original level. Radioactive elements, like clocks, tend to "wind down" over a period of time.)
The whole body is affected by krypton-85, with a half-life of nearly eleven years. Cancers such as leukemia may appear in as little as two years after exposure to krypton-85. Cesium-137 also affects the whole body, but especially the liver and spleen. Its half-life is thirty years. Barium-140, with a half-life of 12.8 days, collects in the bones. Tumors may develop in twenty to thirty years.
Radiation sickness develops in those exposed to radiation levels of, for example, 150 rem in one week's time. That would be the accumulated radiation form a little less than one rem per hour. Radiation sickness starts with loss of appetite, nausea, and diarrhea the first week, and may disappear the second week. Then high fever, weight loss, and fatigue develop. Damage to the radiation-sensitive cells of the small intestine block assimilation of nutrients, and the white blood cell count drops quickly (immune system degeneration).
British physician Alice Stewart has spent much of her life investigating the connection between low-level radiation and high cancer risks. Most doctors have stopped using fetal X-rays since Stewart's work showed that a significant increase on leukemia was found in the children of mothers who had prenatal X-rays taken. She has said she believes that the effects of background radiation coupled with exposure to X-rays may cause most childhood cancers.
Risk OF Food Irradiation
What about food irradiation as an alternative to chemical preservatives? Let's take a look. Food irradiation is done with gamma rays of cobalt, which are capable of causing genetic change and mutation just like radioactive elements. Some scientists say that irradiation can cause chemical changes in food that could destroy nutrients and create carcinogens.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried to get irradiated foods approved and sold throughout the United States in 1989. However, due to overwhelming public rejection, grocery chains, afraid of alienating their customers, are refusing to sell irradiated produce. (Imported foods may still be irradiated, such as spices and herbs.) This public support has, for now, succeeded in blocking the use of irradiation as a food preservative technique in America. Our vigilance will keep it that way.
Empty Harvest _________________ "Cast down what is in your right hand. It will swallow up what they have wrought. Verily they have wrought only a sorcerer's stratagem; and a sorcerer does not succeed (no matter) from whatsoever (skilled group) he may come." (Quran-20:69) |
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MessiahMews Woman Warrior
Joined: 02 Feb 2006 Posts: 525 Location: Vaccination Liberation
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RawMahdiyah Woman Warrior
Joined: 02 Feb 2006 Posts: 100 Location: MD, USA...TorontoIsHomebase
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Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:23 am Post subject: WHAT DOCTORS DON'T TELL YOU |
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WHAT DOCTORS DON'T TELL YOU E-news broadcast, 3 February 2006
HALF OF ALL HEALTH SUPPLEMENTS HAVE BEEN IRRADIATED
New study highlights the importance of a safe source for your vitamins
Half of all health vitamins and supplements contain irradiated ingredients, the UK's Food Standards Agency has announced this week. It's illegal to sell irradiated foods in the UK as the process changes the composition of products - and may present a health risk.
Tests on 48 well-known vitamins found that half were wholly or partly irradiated. Irradiation is used to kill bugs and also to extend the shelf life of products, and is allowed only on a few herbs and spices, which have to be clearly labelled.
But there was no warning on any of the labels of some big-name brands the FSA tested, including products sold at Superdrug and Boots.
An FSA spokesman said that people were being 'duped', as they believed they were buying products that were good for their health.
The latest findings come as no surprise to What Doctors Don't Tell You, whose own investigators discovered that the vast majority of health supplements contained little or none of the active ingredient claimed on the label.
As a result, it has launched its own vitamin service, which sources the very best products available at competitive prices. To see the range, log on to: http://www.myhealthbuilder.net
The irradiated supplements included ginseng and aloe vera. Siberian ginseng, sold at Holland & Barrett, a product claimed to boost energy and vitality, two Superdrug products, a Boots' brand of garlic, and Solgar's aloe vera tablets were all found to be wholly or partly irradiated.
"This has been a gray area for far too long," said WDDTY editor Lynne McTaggart. "People pay a lot of money for their health supplements, and they at least deserve to know that what they are buying is helping their health."
WDDTY first highlighted the supplements scam several years ago in its sister publication, PROOF, which discovered in laboratory analysis that far too many vitamins sold in the High Street and by mail order contained little or no active ingredient. "In one review of vitamin C our laboratory researchers discovered that several products contained less than 10 per cent of the vitamin," said Lynne.
WDDTY decided to do something about it. The result is a new web service called My HealthBuilder, which sources health products of the highest quality. Visit the website today on: http://www.myhealthbuilder.net
My HealthBuilder is an exciting new venture for WDDTY, which is able to call on its vast resources and contacts to source the best products around. Initially the product range is restricted to just vitamins and supplements — all personally selected by Lynne as vital building blocks for health - but it's planned to add to the range very shortly.
Waiting in the wings is a range of 'quantu'’ vitamins, based on light energy, which are already being used by some of the more forward-thinking hospitals in the USA. But My Health Builder will go far beyond vitamins and supplements. It's also shortly to announce the launch of hi-fi speakers that produce such a natural sound that they have been used by therapists, and it will also be representing an astonishing water filtration system for the home.
"We want to provide everything that can touch on everyone's health and well-being," said Lynne.
To take a look at the range, visit: http://www.myhealthbuilder.net
WDDTY is well placed to provide the very best in health products for its many customers and supporters. It hopes soon to offer a range of CDs that are claimed to offer genuine therapeutic benefit - in fact, doctors in Germany prescribe them! The World Health Organization also carried out a trial on the CDs and concluded that they were every bit as beneficial as stress-relievers as powerful drugs.
"We're lucky to know so many great people around the world who truly are at the cutting edge of health care. They're having enormous success with a wide range of drug-free approaches, and it's our privilege to be able to offer them to our own readers," said Lynne.
In time, My HealthBuilder will also be a catalogue, full of amazing products as well as plenty of good health advice.
You can leave your details on the website now, and we'll send out the catalogue just as soon as the first one is ready. To visit the site, go to: http://www.myhealthbuilder.net _________________ "Cast down what is in your right hand. It will swallow up what they have wrought. Verily they have wrought only a sorcerer's stratagem; and a sorcerer does not succeed (no matter) from whatsoever (skilled group) he may come." (Quran-20:69) |
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