here in moscow top stories now on r.t. the italian senate approves its harshest new austerity nor yet hoping to stem a growing consensus that the euro zone's third largest economy is forming to the ravages of the euro crisis. palestine is still pushing for a vote on the un statehood despite the fact it knows it will likely lose and if it does fail it wants the its opponents to justify their decision which if unease will be dictated by the us. and western corporations the centerpoint oil rich libya seeking to export the riches left following nato bombing mission. a laser our top

stories for the moment this hour in r.t. more from in less than half an hour from now on the meantime we report on the claims that major pharmaceutical manufacturers who make cancer fighting drugs are also thought to be responsible for producing over the decades pollution that causes cancer. 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 and no one could say i kept wondering why.

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. develops most of the world's genetically modified crops. well only and then full of 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 the 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. it's. it's. it's.

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this is sarnia situated three hundred kilometers from toronto. you and i may not live in sarnia but we use the fruits of its labor. vinyl siding lastic audio furniture pesticides rechargeable batteries plastic food containers compact this cases paint. jet 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 limited during these chemical processes.

sitting in the middle of these over sixty chemical plants is the first nations reservation. where we're going. to. be. health issues we're reason our concerns with respect to. you know all the grecian that. experiencing. didn't want to use cancer if they just in my view is concerned so therefore be commuting not actually and that's how almost every one of our meeting with the government has been the no one had that they need for the industry workers out there we're trying to tell the industry that they have

to name all the technical to them and they said there were huge that n.p.r. i but the only report what is that over ten thousand pounds accountable for their belief and the industry has kind of second they don't want to give away the trade secrets in all this and they say things are good for it and you're talking about who's going to actually pull the phone. now you just let industry police them follow you and all your does that mean your butt in your office waiting for them to report to you can tell you what's going on shouldn't that be allowed at all. we actually sold them the land i don't know what here it was they they did hold a boat out here and ask. well that's i felt the land and i don't know how much land that they ended up selling to them but. i have asked our elders and they said

that they were told that there was going to be chemical for gold what did they tell you about chemicals that their chemical. abode it they didn't really tell the whole lot more. and then everybody at that time i guess they must have been looking at thinking of dollars on things that they're going to get some money. and might see anybody profited from it. when the kids ride their bikes in the town and that as they say it like if there is a mist sometimes there is that mr nick berg and then they have all these little walkways around here they have are coming from sarnia and they want to put it through a chemical valve for the radio to kill everybody. every single facility that does any any kind of pressure chemical refining and it turns

out i tell you what on benzene in particular there's no law limiting how much facilities can emit i mean the benefit the industry and house down there in having so many different facilities is nobody can point to my facility and say you're calling the cause of the problem so everybody had it all the industries down there have the ability to point or you know it's the same there are many more that we are an issue you know the mass we have all kinds of evidence that our emissions have been agreed to substantially done 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 at the can decide well this we can't do it this way the seeds are 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 eliminate 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. four or five you know 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 chemicals are in there and at what levels then we give a guard to global community monitoring and they look up the chemicals and how they can affect your body and what the standards are in the states where these chemicals . that we turn around and head to the people here are really strong old people justice and they love the standards in canada or terry or whatever.

but there are forty that there is a lot of there is no standards for a lot of these chemicals here so got someone with their shorelines there why. are showing all the chemicals that are produced and how they affect your body and i was i was looking at that and i was others a whole bunch of people on the reserve about how things go as. in two thousand and four compiled a health survey of the nine hundred residents in the adult she discovered severe chronic headaches chronic respiratory problems severe skin problems near logical problems infertility in miscarriages birth defects 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 also legacy issues and you know mesothelioma is an issue related to the use of a specialist in industry and you know that's well documented as well understood and we know that there is this legacy issue out there you know it's unfortunate we have empathy for those individuals who are suffer from as well feeling on but we do know there is a legacy issue there with respect to other health issues or you know i think there's been a lot of inference was made about the connection between health and potential

emissions coming from any coming from the petrochemical industry this is one of the reasons why we have many others in the in the community major major major players in the community are advocating for a copper has a health study a scientifically rigorous rigorous peer reviewed health study. in sorry it's not if you're going to get cancer it's when we found a cat and my mom's field and the calves and sprayed down at the end of the season and she was drenched with pus decides who brought her home to die because i can stand the thought of her dying and i feel. we managed to save her life but she had ongoing neurological problems she has seizures and tremors and if she's around any pesticides and or any type of a chemical she has seizures and i started thinking if it's happening to cats what is it doing to us so when i start looking at cosmetic plaster sites and the science behind i have a master's degree in science so reading this stuff you carry it over persecuted now and hear very interesting in my life to learn what actually happens to chemicals

from her body so and then with her husband working in chemical valley i was even more interesting learning the stuff that happened there and then my mom got there 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 good nothing to do with with with my job here or anything else your regrettably in our society there's all kinds of potential for different exposures the 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 and again but i don't have a concern that in the city of sarnia related to 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're 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 was in those laws 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 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 in 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. bear

monsanto and i.c.i. which is today owned by asco nobel are all responsible for releasing dioxins that 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 doubts information than any other manmade product on earth. because of these modern chemical processes by nine hundred eighty seven axes were present in everything from daters to coffee filters to tampons. in two thousand and three there released an open letter to millan residents stating that dioxins were naturally occurring substance the letter however forgot to clarify a few details while forest fires and volcanoes do produce dioxins 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. the letter also forgot to mention that the first help assessment of goats and completed by the american environmental protection agency estimated that more people will get more cancer from dioxins than any other chemical on earth . as it all signs up there are the doubt property of this all doubt property. dioxin is a molecule it's a byproduct of chemical processing it is a known carcinogen will dispute that tao has been able to manufacture so much uncertainty about this chemical that if you look around the west rest of the world nobody else is debating the toxicity of dioxin except your admission or. in fact one of the toxicologist in the one nine hundred seventy s.

said that this is perhaps one of the most toxic materials he's ever seen. why do you think the disputed now. you cuz is the financial of location i hear there's the 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 that not just i was responsible for that could be saddled or you know could have to have ramifications from the settlement or agreement 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 i agree. we came here it was like and ideals on 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 and 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 we don't have any cancer in my family and he actually got into a pilot's daily 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 . thought 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 a 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 of seventy that's a good life but if there were twenty more years. that i would have liked at that time. highlighting

a corporate jet for dow could be interesting and rewarding particularly when it's an evil. corporate angel network uses empty seats on company business trips to fly cancer patients who need specialized treatment the patients like christy this company does great things this is one. 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 the elected officials i don't know but again cancer is very ubiquitous in our area we have you know all these tremendous cancer rates here and it's dioxin responsible for all of it no part of it all 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 took off i generated change in its general ok it doesn't mean that hundred percent of cancers are. completely different story so even so hundred percent of cancer so generates country to turn into only five to ten percent of cancers are areas in turkey. the

importance of solo in this is that a lot of people they say oh my god nobody was canceling my funding and therefore i protect photos because ninety to ninety five percent of cancers per m m people without family 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 now that's because of age or 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 the romans any foundation is the only research facility in the world to perform full lifespan rodent studies on the carcinogenic potential of chemical

substances for the foundation is also unique in that it does tautological screens of every organ in every road in tested. the long term health studies of this kind which can cost about a million dollars are not required by companies wishing to license a new some very 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 have had twenty rodents per group or forty rodents per group and so when we came in and did one hundred fifty roads per sex per group it was very important results as a rule for us 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 experiments are lifespan and rather than interrupted

the experiment and sacrificing 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 their 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 and fortunately 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 study it does not mean that it is safe.

there tentative obviously is all there is to us to make. a job of regulation about chemical agent chemical components you know industry used to do the work and understandable but does not understand the boat it is a. shame this doesn't do the right work. and that is why most of the. independent they are sponsored by industry and most of it they don't claim the conflict of interest.

the. machine would be so much brighter if you knew all about sun from funds to pressure inside.