largest country. just to. try. to teach began the journey. where did it take. to maggie to join us here watching our t.v. these are today's top stories and a review of the week political and economic how the weights of the pacific rim baldrick were banned europe's debt crisis from spreading the presidents of russia and the u.s. meet on the sidelines of a pack summit to discuss missile defense syria and russia's future and the w.t.r. . too easy you countries watch their governments fall at the height of a debt crisis with italy's prime minister silvio berlusconi resigning angry

swearing in a new hat of cabinet. the u.n. atomic watchdog releases satellite images and letters which allegedly prove iran could be building a bomb iran says the accusations are fabricated and politicized. and police investigate fresh clashes in northern ca so after nato peacekeepers fired tear gas at ethnic serbs at a disputed border crossing. special report reveals how toxic the american pharmaceutical industry can get in its pursuit of profit 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 how toxic alogical profiles in other words every day without our consent were 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. or develops most of the world's genetically modified crops. but only a handful of independent studies have been conducted health problems ranging from infertility to proliferative changes have been detected through 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. six so since. it's. it's.

this is sarnia situated three hundred kilometers from toronto. you and i may not live in sardinia though we use the fruits of its labor. vinyl siding lastic audio furniture pesticides rechargeable batteries plastic food containers compact this cases paint. jet fuel 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 admitted 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. eating. fish health issues reason our concerns with respect to. you know a whole region that had been. experiencing the didn't want to hear was concerned

if they just didn't want to use concert so therefore he committed not actually that fell almost every one of our meeting with the government had been the no one had that a need for the industry both of those out there were trying to tell the industry that they have to name all the chemicals tell them that they are really cute that n.p.r. i but they only report which is that old infant often times the chemicals that are police and the industry was kind of second because they didn't want to give away their trade secrets to notice and they failed in two thousand and four and you're talking about who's going to actually fully fund your bridge now you just let industry listen follow him or her does that mean but in your office waiting for them to report you can tell you was the one on the should not that lucky 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. both of them felt the land and i don't know how much land that they ended up selling to them by a town. about their elders and they said that they were told that there was going to be chemical or gold what did they tell you about chemicals that their chemical. boat did they didn't really tell them a whole lot more. and then everybody at that time i guess they must have been looking and i think that a dollar sign that they're going to get some money. i don't know much anybody profited from it. when the kids ride their bikes into town and that they say it like if there is a mist sometime there is that mr nick berg and then they have all these little walkways around here they have come in from sardinia and they want to put it

through chemical valves on the way through to kill everybody. every single facility that has any any kind of picture coming in the final and it's going to tell you what on benzene into your there's no law limiting how much facilities going to men 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 called the cause of the problem so everybody had it all the industries down there have you going to prepare for you know this scene there in the morning we're an issue they should clean up the mess we have all kinds of evidence that our emissions have been there can you do 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 for companies have looked at the responsible care ethic and decided well this we can't do it this way to see her too risky to the

community or transporting something that's you know 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. for finding help in the pocket 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 back 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 drawn all equal justice and then they looked up the standards in canada or kerio or whatever and there were 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 there slides. are showing all the chemicals that are produced and how they affect your body as i was looking at oh my god there's a whole bunch of people on the reserve that have these notices. 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 infertility in miscarriages

birth defects cancers and loss of children. in the children she found severe chronic headaches. chronic respiratory problems your logical problems developmental problems severe skin problems arthritis first effects kidney in 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 specialist in industry and you know that's well documented as well understood and we know that there is this legacy as you hope there you know it's unfortunate we

have empathy for those individuals who are suffer from as well feeling unwell and but we do know there is a legacy issue here 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 emissions coming from the coming from the petrochemical industry this is one of the reasons why we and many others 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 calves and it's very down at the end of the season and she was drenched across decides we brought her home to died so can stand the thought of her dying and the field. we managed to save her life but she has ongoing neurological problems she has seizures and timers and if she's around any pesticides now or any type of harsh 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 must just brain science so reading the stuff i have no other person getting out of here very interesting in my life to my own what actually happens to chemicals when they hit our body so and then with my husband working in chemical darling 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 my concern about cancers in this community on a personal level. 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 lifestyle issues and genetics i'll have to be factored in i mean clearly i have had relatives who have you know terrible diseases what their

relationship is i couldn't tell you you know with me 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 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 had 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 reeker 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.

midland 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 dioxin us now 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 were present in everything from daters to coffee filters to tampons. in two thousand and three darryl east an open letter to

midland residents douses were naturally occurring substance the letter however forgot to clarify a few more details. forest fires and volcanoes do produced eriksson's they're not the same dioxins created during chemical processes man made out since also a number of the natural variety by a hundred to one. the letter also forgot to mention that the first health assessment of derrickson completed by the american environmental protection agency estimated that more people will get more cancer from dioxins than any other chemical on earth. clinical signs up there are the dow property again this all doubt property. the accident is a molecule it's a byproduct of chemical processing it is a known carcinogen will dispute that dow has been able to manufacture so much

uncertainty of all discount a call that if you look around the west rest of the world nobody else is debating the toxicity of dioxin except here and michigan. in fact one of those types of khalid just in the nine hundred seventy s. 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 you know there's a pending class action lawsuit against outcome a call for residents on the river. and i think the implications for. 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 subtlety of being on the toxicity of dioxin or on the subject of a class action lawsuit here i think the ramifications are huge with chemical

industry. but. i agree. we came out here it was like an ideal sponge the only thing we didn't realize in one nine hundred sixty seven when we bought it that we were three miles down river from a chemical plant. i had 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 would expect diabetes or heart disease not cancer we don't have any cancer in

my family and he actually got into rape pilots daily that the. health department in michigan was doing. and they came out and took his dioxin levels and 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. 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 eight his uncles lived to be in their ninety's and as i said he wasn't

sick so you know you say well that's seventy that's a good life but if there were twenty more years. that i would have liked if i had twenty years i lived in a corporate jet for jale could be interesting and rewarding for a ticket when it's an evil. corporate angel network uses empty seats on company business trips to flight 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 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 all probably but we have please see these 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 the cell to become cancerous you need to have a genetic change in the its agenda ok it doesn't mean that hundred percent of

cancers are returning completely different story so even so hundred percent of cancers are jeanette's probably determined only five to ten percent of cancers are carried the tare the importance of so knowing this is that a lot of people they say oh my god i'm a nobody with cancer in my fiber and therefore i protect focus because ninety to ninety five percent of cancers occur among people without family history of cancer child or 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 danger. 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 remains any foundation is the only research facility in the world to perform full lifespan rodent studies on the carcinogenic potential of chemical substances or the foundation is also unique in that it does cause a logical screenings of every organ in every road and tested for. long term health studies of this kind which in comes to boat 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 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 usually take one hundred ten weeks that's considered the gold standard . whereas our spare minutes are lifespan and rather than interrupting 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 steady 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 studied adequately and i would add independently study it does not mean that it is safe. the tentative obviously is always to procrastinate their job and many of regulation about chemical agent chemical compounds you know industry used to do the long walk and understand what is not understandable it is a. shame that is doesn't do the right work. that is why most of the charities are independent they are sponsored by industry and most of the they don't claim the conflict of interest.

it.

is today violence has once again flared up.