watching r.t. here's a look at the top stories it was sad rushes to vote through in a sturdy plan to clear the way for a new government one cylinder was going down but many say the devil adoption measures are too late to keep one of the e.u.'s largest economies from following in the food stamps of greece and portugal. falling for billions companies from countries that it's to carve the union down being a look to cash in on reconstruction lucrative contracts in the pipeline have sparked new questions over the real motives for military strikes.

russian space experts are struggling to fix difficult problems aboard a probe launched martian moon a few days ago the ambitious interplanetary mission was aimed at getting a soil sample from the moon a. better knowledge of how the universe evolved. cancer caused by corporations next we investigate how chemical companies responsible for deadly pollutants are also developing treatments and medicine 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 if 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 both 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 fold 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 of these have been conducted anywhere in the rest easy because if someone in your family is diagnosed with cancer a number of treatments are available and you're the companies that provide on.

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this is sarnia situated three hundred kilometers from toronto. you and i may not live in sardinia but we use the fruits of its labor. vinyl siding. your furniture pesticides chargeable batteries plastic food containers compact this cases paint and jet fuel and gasoline. to make these products over five and

a half million kilograms of suspected and known human carcinogens with yourself. 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 owners first nations reservation. were you. eating. issues reason our concerns. you know that we've been. experiencing. didn't want to use concern. just in my view considered so therefore

you should be because i actually almost every one of our meeting with the government has been. that the meat industry works because they were trying to tell the industry that they have to name all companies to them and they said there were huge that and. the only report which is that over ten thousand pounds chemicals that are police and the industry was kind of set because they didn't want to give away their trade secrets in all this and they think and you thought you were talking about who's going to actually believe. now you just let industry do some follow you and the leader just in your butt in your office mate for them to report you can tell you is what i should know that my feeling going on . we actually sold them the land i don't know what year it was they they did hold

a boat out here and ask people to sell the land and i don't know how much land that they ended up selling to them but. we're talking about a story all there is and they said that they were told that there was going to be chemical explorer what did they tell you about chemicals that their. vote did they didn't really tell the whole lot more. and. then everybody at that time i guess they must've been all of that i think of dollars i know that they're going to get some money. i don't know much anybody profited from it. when the kids ride their bikes in the town and that they say it like if there is a mist sometime there is that mr byrd and then they have all these little walkways around here they have come in from sarnia and they want to put it through chemical valves or the radio to kill everybody.

every single facility that does any any kind of culture chemical refining and it's going to tell you what on benzene in particular there's no law limiting how much facilities can emit i mean the benefit that the industry and house down are 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 all the industries down there have you going to point everybody else and say there are many more and we're in this vision to clean up the mess we have all kinds of evidence that our emissions have been agreed to 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 companies have looked at the responsible care ethic and decided well this we can't do it this way this is either too risky to the

community or transporting something that's in a way that's not. we can't defend or a product looks too risky i'm not sure i can manage it so let's just limit 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 out from 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 the michael's are in there and at what levels then we give a bar 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 turn around and headed to the people we're drawn all equal justice and they looked up the standards in canada or kerry or whatever. but there are forty that there is a lot of there is no standards for a lot of these chemicals here so that's what they were they were short as the slides. are showing all the chemicals that are produced and how they affect your body and as i was looking at all there's a whole bunch of people on the reserve that have these bonuses. and she doesn't for ada compiled a health survey of the nine hundred residents in the adults she discovered severe chronic headaches chronic respiratory problems severe skin problems near logical problems infertility in miscarriages birth effects

cancers and loss of children. 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 just really go see issues and you know mesothelioma is an issue related to the use of specialists in industry and you know that's well documented that's well understood and we know what the resist legacy is you know out there you know it's unfortunate we have empathy for those individuals who are suffer from as well feeling over but

we do know there is a legacy issue there with respect to other health issues that you know i think there's been a lot of inference is made of both the connection between health and potential missions coming from the coming from the petrochemical industry this is one of the reasons why we and many others in the in the community major major major players in the community are advocating for a comprehensive health study a scientifically rigorous rigorous peer reviewed health study. in sorry it's not if you're going to get cancer it's one refund a cat in my mom's field and the calves and spray down at the end of the season and she was drenched in pasta sides we brought her home to died so 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 tremors and if she's around any pesticides now or any type of a harsh chemical she has seizures and i started thinking if it's happening to cats

what is it doing to us so then i started looking at home plus made it past the sights and the science behind i must just grand science so reading this stuff again and other person could now be here very interesting in my life to learn what actually happens to chemicals on her body so and then with my husband working in chemical i was even more interesting learning the stuff that happened there and then my mom got her first of her three cancers and then she got second and then i got cancer and then she got the third and my concern about cancer is 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're 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 you know curable diseases what their relationship is i couldn't tell you you know and again but i don't have

a concern that in the city of sarnia related to the kinds of things which are talking about we know that the levels of contamination there are among the highest ever recorded for as best as for benzene for the dioxins so why are we doing this 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 protocols 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 it was in those laws the one nine hundred seventy s. but in the one nine hundred eighty s. removed the way 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 cautionary 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. they are monsanto and i.c.i. which is today owned by asco nobel are all responsible for releasing dioxins dow chemical is 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 droughts information than any other manmade product on earth. because of these modern chemical processes one thousand nine hundred eighty seven axes were present in everything from diapers to coffee filters to tampons. in two thousand and three dare released an open letter to million residents city meant out sins were naturally occurring substance

the letter however forgot to clarify a few important details while forest fires and volcanoes do produce doubts and they are not the same toxins created during chemical processes many doubts and also a number of the natural variety by a hundred to one. a 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. classical signs up there are the dow property again this all doubt property. dioxin 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 of all this chemical that if you look around the west rest of

the world nobody else is debating the toxicity of dioxin except here in michigan. and fact one of the toxicologist in the nineteen seventies said that this is perhaps one of the most toxic materials he's ever seen. why do you think be disputed now. because there's the financial implications i know there's the pending class action lawsuit against al chemical for residents on the river. and i think the implications or not 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 dollars there's also a bill for that could be saddled or you know could have to have ramifications from the subtle matter of being on the toxicity of dioxin or on the subtle but of a class action lawsuit here i think the ramifications are huge for the chemical industry.

but why. we came here it was like an ideal spot and 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 have five children in three of them have immune disorders. 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 read i don't have any cancer in the family and he actually died in two eight

pilots they're really there the. health department in michigan was doing it and they came out and took his dioxin levels and the thursday before he died and he. got up 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 died at seventy his uncles lived to be in their ninety's and as i said he wasn't

sick so you know you say well seventy that's a good life but if there were twenty more years. i would have liked if i had twenty. i would in the corporate jet for dow could be interesting and rewarding particularly when it's a. 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. of the. now 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 a lot to fear so i don't know what again cancer is very ubiquitous in our area we have you know these tremendous cancer rates and it's dioxin responsible for all of it no part of it oh probably but we have p c b's 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 we need to have a genetic change in the its general ok it doesn't mean that hundred percent of

cancers are richer completely different story so even so hundred percent of cancer genetics going to determine it's only five to ten percent of cancers are ever the time. the importance of so knowing this is that a lot of people they see oh my god nobody with cancer and my father therefore i protect falls because ninety to ninety five percent of cancers occur among people with health family history of cancer child or cancer has increased thirty percent in the past two decades testicular cancer a 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 them 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 the romans any foundation is the only research facility in the world to perform full lifespan rodin studies on the course and a genetic potential of chemical substances for the foundation is also unique in that it does cause a logical screens of every organ in every road in tested. long term health studies of this kind which in cost about a million dollars are not required by companies wishing to license a new some very chemical drug or genetically modified crops. her two thousand and five study on aspartame the artificial sweetener involved one thousand eight hundred rodents previous experiments on aspartame that had twenty rodents per group or forty rodents per group and so when we came in and did one hundred fifty rodents per sex per group it was very important results as a rule the u.s. in t.p. sacrifices their rodents aster two years of life so their

experiments are usually take one hundred in ten weeks that's considered the gold standard. whereas our spare moments 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 studied there is data that shows that we actually only have scientific information hard data about two percent of all the 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 but if an agent has not been adequately studies adequately and i would add independently study it does not mean that it is safe. the tentative of the industry is all there is to call christ in a zip a job too many of regulation about chemical agent chemical compounds you know industry used to do the work and understandable but does not understand the boat. doesn't do the right work and that is why most of the. independent they are sponsored by industry and most of the they don't claim the conflict of interest.

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