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market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser reports on r t. my mother was diagnosed with cancer at the age of forty nine she did not smoke she ate five fruits and vegetables a day exercised regularly and her parents never had cancer yet she was diagnosed with the disease what caused her cancer no one could say i kept wondering why.

a. every day about three new synthetic chemicals enter the consumer market of the one hundred thousand synthetic chemicals in heavy commercial use only about two percent have talked to the logical profiles in other words every day without our consent or exposed to about ninety five thousand untested chemicals.

who exactly are the world's leading chemical producers. now a new product is on grocery store shelves genetically modified foods. who develops most of the world's genetically modified crops. well only and then hold independent studies have been conducted health problems ranging from infertility to proliferate of changes have been detected to these foods cause cancer we have no idea because no long term health studies have been conducted anywhere but rest easy because if someone in your family is diagnosed with cancer a number of treatments are available and here are the companies that provide them.

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this is sonia. situated three hundred kilometers from toronto. you and i may not live in sarnia but we use the fruits of its labor. final siding lastic patio furniture pesticides rechargeable batteries plastic food containers compact disk cases paints inject fuel and gasoline. to make these products over five and a half million kilograms of suspected and known human carcinogens which are so.

senses that cause cancer are emitted each year. dioxins one of the most toxic carcinogens known to science is also emitted during these chemical processes. sitting in the middle of these over sixty chemical plants is the first nations reservation. we're going to do. with health issues we're reason our concerns with respect to. you know the whole occlusion metheny. experiencing then they don't want to use concern. they just get my view concerned so if we're going to be not actually in that hell almost every one of our meeting with the government has been there no one at that stage

meeting for the industry workers out there were trying to tell the industry that they have to name all the chemicals to them and they said they are really cute that n.p.r. but they only report what is it wouldn't and open kinds of chemicals that are opening and the industry has kind of step because they don't want to give away their trade secrets to notice and they say they do felt important you're talking about who's going to actually pull the phone if you're free now you just let industry police themself and all these are just that when you put in your office waiting for them to report to you can tell you what's going on shouldn't that be allowed at home. we actually sold them the land i don't know what here it was they they did hold a boat out here and ask. people that just sell the land and i don't know how much

land that they ended up selling to them play a town. i have asked our elders and they said that they were told that there was going to be chemical it's over did they tell you about chemicals that their chemical. abode in it they didn't really tell me a whole lot more. and then everybody had a bad time i guess they must have been looking at thinking of dollars knowing that they're going to get some money. i don't know how much anybody profited from it. when the kids ride their bikes in the town and that they say it like if there is something missed something there is that mr burton i mean they have all these little walkways around here they haven't come in from sarnia and they want to put it through chemical valves or the radio to kill everybody.

every single facility that just any any kind of picture coming to find and expensive to tell you about on benzene in particular there's no law limiting how much facilities can emit i mean the benefit that the industry has down there in having so many different facilities is nobody can point to one facility and say you're caught because of the problem so everybody had it only industries down or have you going to point to the rebels and say there are many more that we are an issue they should clean up the mess we have all kinds of evidence that our emissions have been reduced substantially one by measuring them. by working collectively as a as a group of companies to keep improving our performance there have been examples over the years in our reports where a companies have. looked at the responsible care ethic and decided well this we can't do it this way the seed are too risky to the community or transporting something that's in a way that's not you can't defend it or

a product looks too risky i'm not sure i can manage it so let's just limit made it so there are countless examples i think where people have continually challenge themselves and prove their performance and ended up in their view a better company for. what we're finding in the bucket sampling because what we do is we take a sample. and we ship it off to california and then they tested to see what chemicals are in there and at what levels then we give a bark to global community monitoring and they love the chemicals and how they can affect your body and what the standards are in the states for these chemicals. that

we turned around and headed to the people here are strong old people just us and they love the standards in canada or terrio or whatever yeah but they're finding that there is a lot of there is no standards for a lot of these chemicals here sold out so when they when they were shown as their slides. are showing all the chemicals that are produced and how they affect your body yeah i was i was looking at that i was oh my god there's a whole bunch of people on the reserve that have these don't listen. in two thousand and four a to compile the health survey of the nine hundred residents in the adult she discovered severe chronic headaches chronic respiratory problems severe skin problems. near logical problems in fertility in miscarriages birth effects cancers and loss of children tillman. in the children she found severe chronic headaches

chronic respiratory problems neurological problems. developmental problems severe skin problems arthritis birth defects. kidney and bladder diseases and cancer. what are you thoughts on the relationship between health and the petrochemical industry i'm not so sure what the relationship is we do know again we are still a go see issues and you know mesothelioma is an issue related to the use of asbestos in industry and you know that's well documented as well understood and we know there is this legacy history out there you know it's unfortunate we have empathy for those individuals who are suffer from as i feel you know and but we do know there is a legacy issue there with respect to other health issues and you know i think

there's been a lot of inference was made of both the connection between health and potential emissions coming from the coming from the petrochemical industry this is one of the reasons why we and many others in the in the community and major major major players in the community are advocating for a copper has a health study a scientifically rigorous rigorous peer reviewed health study. inserting it's not if you're going to get cancer it's when we found a cat in my mom's field on the calves and that's very down at the end of the season and she was transferred past the science we brought her home to died so i can stand the thought of her dying in the field. we managed to save her life but she has ongoing neurological problems she has seizures and timers and she's around any pesticides they are any type of a chemical she has seizures and i started thinking if it's happening to cats what does it even cost so when i start looking at cosmetic plaster sites and the science

behind the master's degree in science so reading this stuff you carry it over there thinking you know you hear very interesting in my life to learn what actually happens to chemicals when they hear body soul and i'm with my husband working in chemical and i was even more interesting learning the stuff that happened there and then my mom got the first of her three cancers and then she got the second and then i got cancer and then she got the third. my concern about cancers in this community on a personal level you know and you know that's got nothing to do with with with my job here or anything else you know regrettably in our society there's all kinds of potential for different exposures and lifestyle issues and genetics all have to be factored in i mean clearly i have had relatives who have you know curable diseases what their relationship is i couldn't tell you you know what i mean and again but i don't have a concern living in the city so are you related to do the kinds of things that

you're talking about you know that the levels of contamination there are among the highest ever recorded for as best as for benzine for the dioxins so why are we doing this and what we really it's supposed to be illegal to experiment on people without their permission. that's the nuremberg protocols sarnia is violating the nuremberg laws we passed a number of laws that were basic environmental laws to clean up the air the water soil and provide for protection for consumers and workers the fundamental tenet of those laws was it's better to be safe than sorry the basic precautionary principle was in those laws in the one nine hundred seventy s. but in the one nine hundred eighty s. we moved away from that approach and we took a position in the government that we have proof in terms of human harm and dead bodies and we've now got to come back to the precautionary approach in europe they've passed legislation like the rich program to require evaluation of chemical

hazards but over the past eight years the bush administration has hammered away as has the canadian government at the european union saying that's a restraint of trade it's going to interfere with our ability to have commerce so the european principles have become a slightly weaker because of that but they're still better than what we have in canada the us today and canada and the us today it is legal for you to use a bubble bath on your baby that contains a known carcinogen something that causes cancer in animals but not in europe it's not legal so why should european babies bottoms be safer than my grandchildren.

milind michigan is home to dow chemicals world headquarters well dupont p.s. the bear monsanto and i.c.i. which is today owned by asco nobel are all responsible for releasing dioxins chemicals thought to be the world's largest root source of dioxin. it was also thought to be the world's largest producer of chlorine one of the root causes of dioxins and the largest producer of chemical feedstocks to make p.v.c. plastics whose life cycle is associated with more doubts information than any other manmade product on earth. because of these modern chemical processes by nine hundred eighty seven dioxins were present in everything from gators to coffee filters to tampons. in two thousand and three dar released an open letter to midland residents stating that douses were naturally occurring substance the letter however forgot to clarify a few important details while forest fires and volcanoes do produce dioxins they

are not the same taxes created or in chemical processes many doubts and also a number the natural variety by a hundred to one. the letter also forgot to mention that the first health assessment of dioxin completed by the american environmental protection agency estimated that more people will get more cancer from dioxins than any other chemical on earth. all signs up there are the doubt property again this all doubt property. got axin is a molecule it's a byproduct of chemical processing it is a known carcinogen although da will dispute that tao has been able to manufacture so much uncertainty about this chemical that if you look around the world rest of the world nobody else is debating the toxicity of dioxin except here and michigan.

in fact one of paul's toxicologist in the lane change some of these said that this is perhaps one of the most toxic materials he's ever seen. why do you think be disputed now. you cuz there's the financial implications are you know there's a pending class action lawsuit against of chemical from residents on the river. and i think the implications or. denying the toxicity of the chemical now has bigger broader implications worldwide i mean there are a lot of dioxin contaminations around the country that you know not that not just the ones responsible for it could be so bold or you know could have to have ramifications from the subtle knitter agreement on the toxicity of dioxin or on the suburb of a class action lawsuit here i think the ramifications are huge for the chemical industry.

by a very. we came here it was like an ideal spot the only thing we didn't realize in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven when we bought it that we were three miles downriver from the chemical plant . i can five children in three of them have immune disorders. and my husband when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. my sister in law when i called her to tell her she said oh no i i would expect diabetes or heart disease not cancer we don't have any cancer in the family and he actually in there i mean to a pilot's early that the. health department in michigan was doing.

and they came out and took his dioxin levels and the thursday before he died and he . and he was really pretty weak but he said that he would do anything if it would help prove that you know there were problems with. living here and the chemical contamination in the area he had a high level of different dioxin contaminants and it's part of. a high for his age level like in the ninety five percentile my husband guided seventy his uncles lived to be in their ninety's and as i said he wasn't sick so you know you say well of the seventy that's a good life but if there were twenty more years. that i would have liked if i had

twenty. i would in the corporate jet for a gal can be interesting and rewarding one particularly when it's an evil. corporate angel network uses empty seats on company business trips to fly cancer patients which i feel i should treat the patients like christy this company does great things this is one. dow declined to be interviewed for this film if given the opportunity we would have been curious to know what that little girl dioxin levels were.

you know we've heard people say i don't see dead bodies floating down the river is that what it takes to get a response from the public health officials from the luck to their souls i don't know but again cancer is very difficult a center area we have you know these tremendous cancer rates and it's dioxin responsible for all of it no part of it all probably but we have p.c. bees we have many many other contaminants out there in our environment that could be responsible for this the dioxin is just a part of it one hundred percent of cancers are genetically determined which means that for this cell to become cancerous need to have a genetic change in its general ok it doesn't mean that hundred percent of cancers are retired completely different story so even so hundred percent of cancer sucks

and it's going to be determined. only five to ten percent of cancers are air at the time. the importance of so knowing this is that a lot of people say oh my god nobody with cancer in my five therefore i protect foot because ninety to ninety five percent of cancers occur among people with a funny history of cancer childhood cancer has increased thirty percent in the past two decades testicular cancer cancer of young men has increased fifty percent in every industrial country and that's not because of aging and we are seeing an increase in cancer in the elderly adjusted for the fact that there are more of that yes we have more cancer because we are living longer and there are more older people but that does not explain all of the increase in cancer that we're seeing today. ruben's

a new foundation is the only research facility in the world to perform fool around rodent studies on the carcinogenic potential of chemical substances for the foundation is also unique in that it does come from logical screenings of every organ in every road and tested for long term health studies of this kind which in cost about a million dollars are not required by companies wishing to license a new synthetic chemical drug or genetically modified crops. or two thousand and five study on aspartame the artificial sweetener involved one thousand eight hundred rodents previous experiments on aspartame had had twenty rodents or group or forty rodents per group and so when we came in and did one hundred fifty rhoda's per sex per group it was very important results as a rule the u.s. in t.p. sacrifices their rodents after two years of life so their

experiments are usually take one hundred in ten weeks that's considered the gold standard. whereas our screens are lifespan and rather than interrupt the experiment and sacrifice in the animals one hundred ten weeks are our rodents live out their natural lifespan about fifty percent of what they have studied has proven to be carcinogenic and about fifty percent of what we have study there is data that shows that we actually only have scientific information hard data on about two percent of all chemical known chemical substances so it is a huge discrepancy between what we know and what we don't know unfortunately we as citizens tend to confuse the absence of evidence with the absence of risk that is in agent has not been adequately studied adequately and

i would add independently studied it does not mean that it is safe. tentative obviously is always to pull costing me. a job in mental health. about chemical agent chemical compounds you know industry if you will do the work and understand what is not understand the boat. when the shank just doesn't do the right work and that is why most of the shank is not indifferent they are sponsored by industry and most of the they don't cling to conflict of interest.

charge in here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. will. bring you the latest in science. from. the future.