it's having with this is a live from moscow. here top stories italy prepares for the fall of a post berlusconi era as it's part of the prison new austerity package intended as a last line of defense against collapsing confidence in its economy. the occupy movement blossoms in germany as thousands of protesters flood the political and financial capitals of the country demanding the government rein in corporate and banking greed. the arab league decides to suspend and sanction syria in an

effort to force assad to stop bloodshed in the country but the move sparks fears of western backed repeat of the libyan scenario. of wonder i wonder land for travelers turns into a hub for high profile discussions as the heads of the asia pacific nations gather in hawaii hoping to isolate themselves from the spreading eurozone crisis. so those are our main stories in a moment here on t.v. news coming at you at the top of the hour and next our special report reveals how toxic the american pharmaceutical industry can get in its pursuit of profit stay with us for that and the savvy about with more news and that's in health enough and . 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 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. but 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 it's it's it's it's. just so it's just so.

the so. this is sarnia situated three hundred kilometers from toronto. you and i may not live in sarnia though we use the fruits of its labor. lasted patio furniture pesticides rechargeable batteries plastic food containers compact disc cases

paints and jet fuel and gasoline. to make these products over five and a half million kilograms of suspected and known human carcinogens which are so. sensors that cause cancer are emitted each year. dioxins one of the most toxic personages known to science is also emitted during these chemical processes. sitting in the middle of these over sixty chemical plants is the origin us first nations reservation. were you. asked. if health issues we were raising our concerns with respect. you know we should nephew

been. experiencing he didn't want to use certain he just in my view is considered so if we're going to be tough actually that's how almost every one of our meetings with the government has been. had no meat for the industry that was they were trying to tell the industry that they have to name all chemicals to them and they said there were that n.p.r. i but the only report which is it over ten thousand pounds examples of openings and the industry was kind of sad because they didn't want people with their trade secrets in the world and they fit into self-important you're talking about who's going to actually please. now you just let industry police themselves you just sit in your butts in your office and wait for them to report to you to tell you what's going on should that you let you know.

we actually sold them the land i don't know what year it was they they did hold a vote down here and ask people to sell the land and i don't know how much land that they ended up selling to them but town. had asked our elders and they said that they were told that there was going to be technical gold what did they tell you about chemicals that their chemical. the boat it they didn't really tell the whole lot more. and. and everybody at that time i guess they must have been looking at thinking of dollars i know that they're going to get some money. but it's anybody profited from it. when the kids ride their bikes into town and that they say it like if there is

a mist sometimes there is a mystery bird and then they have all these little walkways around here they have a come in from sarnia and they want to put it through a chemical vault to the radio to kill everybody. every single facility that just any any kind of pressure chemical refining and it's nancy i tell you what on benzene a trigger 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 predict in one facility so you're caught because of the problem so everybody had it all the industries down there if you're going to dip into everybody else 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 at 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 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

chemicals are in there and that was a level that we give a guard 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 that they love the standards in canada or terry or whatever and they're finding that there is a lot of there is no standards for a lot of these chemicals here so that's what they were there are sort of the slides . are showing all the chemicals that are produced and how they affect your body and as i was looking at battles oh my god there's a whole bunch of people on the reserve that have these notices. in two thousand and four ada compiler 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 infertility in miscarriages birth defects cancers and loss of children tilman. 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 believe has the issues and you know mesothelioma is an issue related to the use of

us just as an industry and you know that's well documented as well understood and we know that there's a legacy issue out there you know it's unfortunate we have empathy for those individuals who are suffer from as i think you know much 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 was made about the connection between health and potential emissions coming from the 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 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 when we found a cat in my mom's field and the cat have since been sprayed down at the end of the season and she was drenched with pus decides we brought her home to died so i can stand the thought of her dying and the feel of. the mattress to save her life but

she has 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 in class so i start looking at post made it past the sites and the science behind i don't know much just great science so reading this stuff again over the couldn't have been very interesting in my life to learn what actually happens to chemicals when they hear it right so and i met my husband working in chemical 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 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 know regrettably in our society there's all kinds of potential for different exposures to lifestyle issues and genetics all have to be

fair i can be and i mean clearly i have had relatives who have you know terrible 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 of 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 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 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 the 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 they 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 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 dioxin information than any other manmade product on earth. because of these modern chemical processes by nine hundred eighty seven sins were present in everything from doctors to coffee

filters to tampons. in two thousand and three dare released an open letter to midland residents stating the douses were naturally occurring substance the letter however forgot to clarify a few details. forest fires and volcanoes do produce dioxins they're not the same to oxen's 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 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. as it all signs out there are the dow property again this all doubt property. got axin is a molecule it's a byproduct of public or 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 here an admission or. in fact one of paul's toxicologist the nineteen seventies said that this is perhaps one of the most toxic materials he's ever seen. why do you think disputed now. you cuz there's the financial implications are you know there's a pending class action lawsuit against of chemical from residents around the river . and i think the implications for the dow 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 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 subject of a class action lawsuit here i think the ramifications are huge for the chemical industry. but. margaret. we came here it was like an ideal spot the only thing we didn't realise the one nine hundred sixty seven when we bought it 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 the family and he actually died into a pilot's study 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 are problems with. a living here and the chemical contamination in the area he had a high level of different dioxin contaminants in his blood of. high for his age or level like in the ninety five percent my husband died at seventy eight

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. that i would have liked if i had twenty. i would in a corporate jet for gal could be interesting and rewarding particularly when it's an evil. corporate angel network uses empty seats on company business trips to fight cancer patients which i feel i should treat the patients like christy this company does great things this is one. of the. dow declined to be interviewed for this film if given the opportunity we would have been curious to know what that little girl doutzen 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 public health officials from a lot of the missiles i don't know but 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. 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 the general ok it doesn't mean that hundred percent of cancers are written terry completely different story so even if the hundred percent of cancer sucks and it's going to turn into only five to ten percent of cancers are heretics. the importance of so knowing this is that a lot of people they say oh my god nobody with cancer in my five years therefore i protect focus because ninety to ninety five percent of cancers occur among people without funding 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 that's not because of aging and we are seeing

an increase in cancer in the elderly a just a for the fact that there are more of that yes we have more cancer because we're 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 a new foundation is the only research facility in the world to perform full i spend wrote in studies on the carcinogenic potential of chemical substances for the foundation is also unique in that it does have a logical screenings 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 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 have 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 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 sprints are lifespan and rather than interrupt the experiment and sacrifice 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 studies 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 an agent has not been adequately studies adequately and i would add independently study if it does not mean that it is safe. zip tentative of the industry is all there is to procrastinate zip i told him end of regulation not about chemical agent chemical components you know industry he used to do be on board and understand what is not understandable these. shanties doesn't do that i work and that is why most of the shine design i put in different they are sponsored by

the industry and most of it they don't that clearly conflict of interest.