Time Well Spent

I just spent the last 2 hours reading over 100 pages of the Presidents Cancer Panel Report Avoiding Environmental Toxins on environmental toxins link to cancer. I highly recommend taking some time out of your day to read it. I know everyone's time is limited so I want to touch on a few things. Today I will focus on children.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the new generation is the first in history to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. This is due to obesity, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. Childhood cancer is now the number one killer of children under the age of 15.

Children are now being born "pre-polluted" due to the build-up of chemicals in placental tissue, amniotic fluid, breast milk, and genetics of the mother. Women tend to store chemicals more than men due to mammary glands and other reasons. These chemicals children are being born with is disrupting their abilities to develop properly. Some children show the effects straight from the womb and others it doesn't appear until after puberty. Some have learning disorders, others have physical disorders, some have emotional disorders, some have reduced immune systems, and some have reproductive disorders. Unfortunately as hard as we try, the chemicals we are exposed to have a long residence cycle in our bodies with no way to rid them quicker. Children are at highest risk of developing cancer cells in-utero and in the first few years of life due to their rapid development during this time. As parents it is our responsibility to protect our children since they are unable to choose their environment and their circumstances. I want to mention however, that germ proofing and limiting exposure to germs can also severely weaken immune systems. The Panel recommends avoiding all Endocrine Disrupting Compounds before conception, during pregnancy, and during the first few years of life. A great website that lists these chemicals is Our Stolen Future. 

Pesticides and other chemicals will be tomorrows post. If you have the opportunity to read some of the Panels report, please let me know which part is important to you and as I do more research and reading I will try to touch on some of those topics. The next few days I plan to focus on specific chemicals and what they are doing to us and our future.