Daily chemical exposures at low doses can affect our health

ROME – On September 24, 2010, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., the congress “New Environmental Diseases” was held at the Chamber of Deputees Congress Hall in Rome. The event was organized by A.M.I.C.A. (Association for Environmental and Chronic Toxic Injury), the Italian organization that works for the rights of people with MCS and EHS, and it was supported by Mep Domenico Scilipoti, an oncologist, holistic doctor, and rapporteur of a draft to become law on environmental diseases and disabilities and also for the phasing out of dental amalgam.

“More and more scientific evidence shows how daily chemical exposures at low doses can affect our health. With this event we would like to create a bridge between science and politics in order to have a new legislation, particularly for the protection of those affected by Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Electromagnetic Hyper Sensitivity, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. These diseases seem to be correlated one to another,” Francesca Romana Orlando, Vice President of A.M.I.C.A., commented. She has just published the book Il Cerchio Perfetto (The Perfect Circle) about the link between industry, politics, academics, and media and its role in the hiding of toxic dangers to the public.

“Just a few weeks ago, at the Senate Commission for Health, the debate about the draft to become law for the recognition of MCS as an epidemic disease started. The prevalence of this illness is about 10% of the population and in Italy the patients still don’t have any hospital to receive any medical treatment in a proper environment,” Silvia Bigeschi, Vice President of A.M.I.C.A., adds.

There are ten projects to become law for the recognition of MCS as an epidemic disease at the Italian Parliament and, just the day before of the congress, A.M.I.C.A. presented a petition with more than 10,000 signature asking for the approval of a law for MCS and also a petition to the Ministry of Health for the total phase out of dental mercury (amalgam), since many cases of MCS, CFS and EHS seem to be triggered by amalgam fillings.

The congress was divided in four sessions. The first one was about “Diagnostic approaches” for MCS, CFS and FM. Prof. Giuseppe Genovesi of the University of Rome La Sapienza and Dr. Chiara De Luca, Head of the Laboratory BILARA at the Dermatological Institute Immacolata of Rome, presented the results of a study on oxidative stress and genetics in MCS patients, that was recently published on Toxicology Applied Pharmacology (Apr. 26, 2010).

While Dr. De Luca focused on the clear evidence of oxidative stress in these patients, such as the lack of enzyme catalysis and GST, Prof. Genovesi stressed the fact that the results don’t show the prevalence of one specific genetic polymorphism, but most of the patients had one or more genetic factors inducing a lower detoxification. He also announced that they are going to test the genetic predisposition of the enzyme catalysis, since this is so typically low in MCS patients.

Dr. Alberto Migliore, the chief of Rheumatology Department at the S. Pietro Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Rome, published a study about the comorbidity of MCS and Sjogren Syndrome. Dr. Lorenzo Bettoni presented a lecture about the environmental causes of CFS and FM, with an hypothesis about the role of chemicals, EMF pollution, and physical/mental stress on the triggering of these illnesses.

Dr. Giacomo Rao, who works for the Italian National Insurance of Workers (INAIL, the public institute that gives compensation and pension to the workers injured at workplace), talked about the legal aspects of the recognition of these illnesses as a disability. He showed that there are several impact life factors to consider and that in Italy there are now many MCS disability certificates, even if it is always very difficult to convince the commissions about the severity of this illness. He added that the final judgment depends only on the good will of the commissioners to study a new issue.

In the second session entitled “New Paradigms of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine,” Martin L. Pall, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University, presented his theory about the biochemical vicious cycle ON/ONOO – induced by the combination of high NOS activity and Tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) depletion – and how it is able to explain not only MCS, CFS or FM, but also other emerging neuro-degenerative illnesses such AD, Parkinson or ALS. He commented that the De Luca – Genovesi study about oxidative stress represents a full confirmation of his theory.

Dr. Peter Ohnsorge, President of the European Academy for Environmental Medicine (EUROPAEM), has already applied Pall’s theory to his clinical approach in order to reduce NMDA in the cerebral metabolism. He proceeds in treating inflammation first, by supplementing enzymes, antioxidants, minerals and Vitamins. Then, he offers a chelation therapy, when possible, and also hemapheresis (Membrane Differential Filtration), gut therapy and detoxification. He also uses sauna therapy since the heat helps to increase BH4 and to oppose the vicious NO/ONOO cycle.

Recently, Dr. Ohnsorge was commissioned by the German Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, to do a controlled randomized study about the efficacy of therapies for MCS patients with the double aim of detoxification of lipophilic toxins and improving the complaints. He found out that using a complex therapeutic regime usually allows the patients to recover slowly, but surely.

The MCS people in the audience asked him several questions, for example about the bad secondary effects of supplementation of glutathione (GSH) and about the tests of compatibility of drugs and dental materials. He explained that supplementation has to be given always with very low doses at the beginning in order to avoid violent breaks in the detoxification mechanisms. Moreover, he suggested using the Lymphocyte Transformation Test (LTT) to find out reactions to drugs, metals, plastics and environmental toxins, while the basophil degranulation test is suggested when inflammation is suspected induced by metals, like in the case of titanium implants.

In the same second session, Dr. Ernesto Burgio, Coordinator of the Scientific Committee of ISDE Italia (Doctors for the Environment), gave a lecture about the epigenetic damages caused by environmental toxins and EMFs. The epigenome represents the interface between the information from the environment and the genome, and even in the absence of chromosomal or gene mutations, there still can be a change in the expression of the gene (DNA Methylation) because of an epigenetic injury. “With a few exceptions, cellular differentiation almost never involves a change in the DNA sequence itself,” commented Dr. Burgio.

Since the environment changed too quickly in the latest decades, the capacity of adaptation of the (epi) genome is not enough to compensate it. Thus, a toxic exposure from the parents, in the womb, or during the early childhood can induce a chronic disabling illness later in life.

New studies are being explored on how a lead exposure in infants can be associated to Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like symptoms years later or how the mother’s exposure to high levels of folic acid, vitamin B12 or to cigarette smoke can induce epigenetic changes that can repress gene transcription and, then, induce phenotypes of asthma (i.e. allergic airway inflammation) in the offspring. These findings could lead to the conclusion that our society is on the edge of a “disevolution.”

In the third section on “Heavy Metals Toxicity,” Dr. Raimondo Pische, President of the International Academy of Bio-Dentistry (AIOB) talked about the risks associated with the exposure to the metals of dental amalgam. In particular, he presented a video of an amalgam fillings showing how mercury vapors are easily released by the amalgam. He underlined the fact that the dentists are the first ones at risk when they pose and remove amalgam fillings and that dental mercury represents the main source of exposure to mercury vapors in not occupational environments. This is no longer acceptable since mercury is the most toxic element in nature after the radioactive elements.

Dr. Antonello Maria Pasciuto, Italian member of the European Academy for Environmental Medicine (EUROPAEM), talked about the LTT-MELISA, the Lymphocyte Transformation Test for the proof of late allergy to metals (type IV). This kind of allergy was observed in patients with MCS, CFS, MS, FM, ALS and autoimmune diseases and it usually improves, as well as the symptoms, after the safe removal of dental metals.

Dr. Gianpaolo Guzzi of the Italian Organization for the Research on Metals and Biocompatibility (A.I.R.M.E.B.) talked about the side effects of chelation therapies. His group studied hundreds of patients with amalgam toxic load and they reviewed the effects of EDTA, DMPS, DMSA and Glutathione. EDTA seems to redistribute metals without really getting rid of them, while DMPS seems more effective on treating elemental mercury, but with severe side effects in some cases. DMSA works to detoxify from methyl mercury and it can also get rid of elemental mercury stocked in the kidneys. Recently Dr. Guzzi’s research group is testing the efficacy of Glutathione in metal detoxification since there aren’t studies about it.

In the last session about “EMF and Health”, Dr. Fiorenzo Marinelli, researcher of the Institute of Molecular Genetics (IGM) in Bologna talked about wireless technologies such as mobile phones, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max. He pointed out the fact that thermal effects are only a part of the biological effects of EMFs, but still these are the only ones considered by international safety standard limits. There are also other effects induced by the signal information in itself. This explains why, even though UMTS has usually a lower intensity of the signal compared to GSM, it uses a wider band of frequencies, then involving a greater risk of damage in the DNA, as the recent European Reflex study showed. His research group has recently studied the effects of radars and Wi-Fi and the preliminary findings show that both these kind of EMFs promote cell proliferation (2010).

Since scientific literature clearly demonstrates that EMF in our everyday life can induce DNA breakage, genetic deregulation as well as chromosomal breakage, increase of free radicals, alteration of neurotransmitters, memory loss, hypersensitivity-allergy, aging and possibly cancer, Dr. Marinelli supports the reduction of the safety limit of exposure to 0,6 V/m, as requested by the International Commission for the Electromagnetic Safety (ICEMS) since 2002.

Finally, Prof. Olle Johansson, associate professor at The Experimental Dermatology Unit – Department of Neuroscience of the Karolinska Institute, and Professor at The Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, also member of the famous Bioinitiative Working group, presented a lecture about Electro-Hyper-Sensitivity, which is fully recognized as a functional impairment in Sweden. He explained not only the bioeffects of EMF on EHS people, but also the social problem of disability in our modern societies. “Disability is everywhere and it can happen to anyone: I myself have a disability when I am in Italy because I can not speak Italian,” Prof. Johansson commented. He reminded that all modern democracies signed international equal rights UN treaties, but still they leave these principles un-realized when it comes to environmental disability.

Reference:

A.M.I.C.A. congress shows how environmental and chemical pollution cause health injuries and disabilities, Rome, September 25th, 2010

Photo: AMICA

Contact:

Francesca Romana Orlando
Vice President of AMICA
Associazione Malattie da Intossicazione Cronica e/o Ambientale
(Association for Environmental and Chronic Toxic Injury)
P.O. Box 3131, 00121 Rome – Italy
www.infoamica.it amica(at)infoamica.it

Related articles:

• Predictions of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Mechanism confirmed by Roman Study
• Martin Pall about genetic evidence and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
• Italian Parties united under the MCS cause
• An Italian law proposal for Environmental Illness and Disability

Professor Servando Pérez, President of Mercuriados (Spain) and Vice President of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, has put an end to his hunger strike for health reasons. He was carrying out his strike in the Hospital Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in order to demand treatment for chronic mercury intoxication. Spain, which is one of the countries in the world which has produced the most mercury, but does not have, in its public health services, doctors nor the facilities to do chelation (the treatment to take toxic metals out of the body) for chronic mercury intoxication. It does however, have chelation for acute mercury intoxication, but that is an easier treatment to do. The lack of proper health services for damage done by toxic metals in Spain is experienced by thousands of people in the country. This was the reason why Servando, had the bravery to strike and show the entire world of this lack of treatment for those compromised by heavy metals.

After Professor Pérez refused to leave the hospital for a month and was on a hunger strike for a week demanding to be treated (as was ordered by a judge when he was diagnosed), the hospital finally came to an agreement to refer him to a toxicologist in Valencia. Yet, this toxicologist has already stated that in Spain there are not any hospitals which can treat chronic mercury intoxication, so the solution to Servando’s situation and for thousands of other people in his situation in Spain is still up in the air. We are now entering into a second phase of this fight which involves meeting with the Spanish Ministry of Health.

We, the Spanish associations of patients with environmental illnesses (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalitis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Intoxication by Toxic Metals), continue to fight for appropriate treatments by the public health care system. We want to thank Servando Pérez for his bravery, his coherence, and for being an example for all of us. We know that during his stay in the hospital he was pressured and harassed by doctors and administration, including very aggressive behavior on the part of the psychiatrists who wanted to diagnose him as having a psychiatric disorder.

We also want to thank all the scientists, doctors, associations and individuals who, all over the world, have, during Servando’s lock-in and hunger strike, have contacted the Spanish and the Galician authorities to protest for Servando’s situation and who have shown support for our fight. We hope to continue to count on your support.

We are all Servando!

Viva Servando!

Clara Valverde, President Liga SFC, Spain, August 1, 2010

(on behalf of Servando who is too ill to write)

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Related articles:

• ALERT: SPANISH PROFESSOR WITH CHRONIC MERCURY INTOXICATION GOES ON HUNGER STRIKE
• Meeting between Ministry of Health and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity associations in Spain
• Cry for help young woman in danger
• MCS – Multiple Chemical Sensitivity recognized as physical disease at ICD-10 in Japan

As of yesterday, July 26, 2010, Professor Servando Perez, President of Mercuriados Spain (people affected by chronic mercury intoxication), has began a hunger strike. Prof Perez was diagnosed two years ago as having Chronic Mercury Intoxication and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS). His case went to the highest court in Spain and a judge ruled that Prof. Perez had chronic mercury intoxicaton due to dental fillings and that the Spanish public health care system (Social Security) should treat his condition with chelation or refer him to a private clinic to do so and pay the costs. This was an incredible legal precendent.

Needless to say, Professor Perez has not been treated yet and the Social Security has been doing everything possible to make sure that he, as with other MCS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephylitis and Fibromyalgia patients in Spain, do not receive proper medical services from the public health care system.

Because of this, Mercuriados Spain and many other associations, have been carrying out campaigns, popular initiatives, lobbying, legal suits, and many other strategies to change this situation, but with no positive results.

Professor Perez’s health has deteriorated and a month ago he went to emergency at the Santiago de Compostela University Hospital. They refused to attend him and he said he would not leave the hospital until the judge’s order for a chelation was carried out.

In the past month, at the hospital, Prof Perez has endured all kinds of harassment and pressures to leave. He has even been “diagnosed” as having a psychiatric illness despite the fact that his illness is organic.

We, the Spanish MCS, CFS/ME and FMS associations have mounted a campaign to support Prof Perez with emails, phone calls to the hospital, press, etc.

And now, the latest harassing strategy by the hospital is to refuse to give him food without additives. Faced with all of this, Servando Perez has started a hunger strike. Yes, he could try to get a bank loan and pay for a private chelation, but this would not help the rest of us ill people in Spain waiting to get treatment in the public health care system. The hospital says that they refuse to refer him to a private clinic (and pick up the tab) because it would set a precedent, and soon all the people with chronic heavy metal intoxication in Spain would have to be treated. And they don’t want to do that with tax money.

Servando Perez has opted for the brave and hard road to try to change the desperate situation we live with in Spain, those of us with these illnesses, and we are proud of Servando’s action.

We write you to inform you and to ask you for your support.

Please write or phone the Vice director of the Hospital Santiago de Compostela, Dr Jose-Ramón Gómez at jose.ramon.gomez.fernandez@sergas.es

or phone him at (34) 98.1950970.

We all are Servando Perez!

Thank you,

Clara Valverde

President

Liga SFC (CFS/ME League, Spain)

www.ligasfc.org

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• Article on Spanish
• Article on German
• Article on Japanese

Gardasil – Is there any risk?

As soon as a teenage girl walks into her pediatrician’s office, he will suggest another vaccination, to be delivered through a series of shots spaced out over six months. This time the vaccine is Gardasil, intended to protect her from being infected by the human papilloma virus, HPV, which might cause cervical cancer later in life.

On balance, is this series of vaccinations a good idea? Is it safe; is it worth the possible side effects?

Gardasil is manufactured by Merck Vaccines. It was fast-tracked for approval in June 2006 by the Food & Drug Administration after only two years and limited studies of only 1,200 girls for only two years. Like all pharmaceutical products, as well as the chemicals used in all manufactured products, from skin cream to formaldehyde, the manufacturer is in charge of the studies.

When, after the two-year study, the CDC recommended that Gardasil routinely be given to all 11- to 12-year-old girls, the head of the CDC was Julie Gerberding. With the change of administrations, she left for a job as president of Merck Vaccines. (Just one more typical example of the revolving door between industry and the folks who are supposed to protect our health.)

Merck is the company that had known for nearly a decade before it became public knowledge that infants getting the federally-mandated multiple vaccinations were thus getting an elevated dose of mercury from the preservative in those vaccines (a dose up to 87 times higher than guidelines for the maximum daily consumption of mercury from fish), but did not disclose this information. Gardasil is preserved with aluminum, like mercury, a toxin.

It is not clear that Gardasil is truly effective nor worth the risk.

Now that tens of thousands of girls have gotten this series of vaccinations, records kept by the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) show a high level of adverse reactions. The reactions generally double after the second injection and quadruple after the third. They range from headache, hair loss, dizziness and nausea, to an anaphylactic shock, seizures and even death. Read their stories at www.truthaboutgardasil.org, a website founded by Marion Greene whose own daughter was injured. In fact, there are twice as many adverse side effects from Gardasil as from flu shots (which contain mercury). Merck, of course, reports virtually no risk.

Gardasil is approved to protect girls and women, ages 9 through 26, from the two types of HPV that are responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases (and against two other types that cause 90 percent of all cases of genital warts). There are more than 120 types of HPV, as many as 40 of them spread through sexual contact; of these 40, 15 types have the potential to cause cancers in females and males. The vaccine’s effectiveness is very limited against these other types of HPV. Furthermore, about 90 percent of genital HPV cases clear up on their own within two years.

Even worse, news has leaked out that Gardasil increases the risk of precancerous lesions, or worse, by 44.6 percent among people (most likely those who are sexually active) who have already been exposed to two types of the HPV virus. This time, Merck actually told FDA about this risk, yet the agency approved the vaccine and did not even demand a warning insert in the package.

Nor is anyone sure about how long the protection will last. As you read, above, the Merck study followed vaccinated girls and women for only two years, and in some cases even gave them booster shots. Other clinical trials followed women ages 16 to 23 for up to four-and-a-half years after their three doses of the vaccine. But compare that to the fact that cervical cancer takes decades to develop. Then there’s the fact that HPV exposure occurs in 10 percent of children in the first 10 years of life, before any vaccination.

The risk of adverse effects from the vaccine seems higher than the risk of getting cervical cancer in the U.S. That’s because women and teenage girls in our country, when they become sexually active, are likely to get regular pap smears which detect cell abnormalities before they turn into cancer, and so treatment can start long before the cancer develops. Cervical cancer rates have dropped 74% since regular pap smear testing began. It’s among the women who have not had a pap test for five years or more that most cervical cancer is found these days. And pap smears are still required even for a girl who has been vaccinated.

Gardasil is the most expensive vaccine ever recommended for school-age children. Merck charges $120 for each dose, and the cost for the three-shot regimen adds up to $400 to $1,000 per patient. Merck is now pushing to extend its market, to boys and men, to prevent genital warts, and to women up to the age of 45. It advertises widely, and is also pushing a campaign at least 20 states to convince legislators to require the HPV vaccinations as a prerequisite for girls to attend school. My state of Massachusetts actually considered such a mandate, but so far that has not succeeded.

Another HPV vaccine, Cervarix, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, was approved in May of this year. It protects against only two strains of HPV virus, contains almost twice the aluminum content as well as a second adjuvant (a chemical agent added to boost the effectiveness of the active ingredient). Higher rates of anaphylactic shock reactions have been reported after Cervarix than Gardasil in Europe, where both have been used.

Author: Alice Shabecoff for CSN – Chemical Sensitivity Network, June 16, 2010

German Translation: Impfen lassen gegen Papillomvirus? Oder besser nicht?

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For more information:

• Truth about Gardasil
• National Vaccine Information Center
• Generation Rescue
• Urgent Warning about Gardasil (YouTube Video)

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Alice Shabecoff is the co-author with her husband Philip of the book Poisoned for Profits: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill, just released in paperback.

More CSN-Articles written by Alice Sabecoff:

• Oil Spill: Kids in the Gulf
• Anti Bacterials = Anti Health
• A new pediatrics to heal sick children and keep well children healthy
• My mother made me fat
• Our planet, our children – How are our children doing?

Study shows need for action to promote ecological recycling

More than 155,000 tonnes of what is sometimes hazardous electronic waste are exported annually from Germany to non-European destinations, a volume which includes some 50,000 tonnes of PC and television monitors alone. The latter often contain metals as well as flame-retardant bromide compounds such as hazardous polybrominated diphenyl ether (PentaBDE). Even defective appliances are often re-classified as “functional”, then usually shipped to Asia and Africa where they are only rarely recycled ecologically. These are the findings of a new study commissioned by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), which was presented at CEBIT in Hannover.

Federal Minister for Environment Dr. Norbert Röttgen said, “The study illustrates the scale of illegal export of WEEE while also pointing out that further measures to solve the problem are necessary. The Federal government is calling for a decisive regulation at the European level by which exporters must provide proof that exported devices are in working order and not in fact waste, and for exporters to bear the costs of periodic checks”. The appropriate authorities in Germany must step up monitoring of collection points and exports so as to curb the detrimental impact on environment and health of criminal trade.

“Not only do many hazardous materials leave the country in used electronic equipment, but valuable raw materials such as gold, copper, platinum or indium are also exiting the raw materials cycle here at home”, said UBA President Jochen Flasbarth. “As long as ecological recycling is technically and satisfactorily possible in Europe or similar regions only, equipment and its components should be reused here. It makes economic sense to recycle valuable raw materials appropriately, especially many metals, considering the rise in global market prices”, continued Flasbarth.

UBA’s President also made an appeal to continue improvement of recycling standards in Asia and Africa through technology transfer. Producers of new equipment are also called upon to design products more ecologically.

In their one-and-a-half-year-long study experts from the Hamburg Institute for Environmental Strategies (Ökopol) compiled the most solid information as yet on the origin and volume of exported devices. The equipment came from flea markets, second hand shops or were retrieved from junk yards. From there it is often transported via collection points for export, usually by sea. Besides harmless metallic raw materials, WEEE also houses a host of hazardous materials which must be recycled properly to avoid harming human health and the environment. An old computer contains more than 100 different materials, and conventional monitors contain lamps which must also be disposed of professionally.

The study findings are to be forwarded to affected stakeholders, in particular the concerned federal ministries, municipal umbrella organisations, environmental and economic associations, and the European Commission.

The “Optimierung der Steuerung und Kontrolle grenzüberschreitender Stoffströme bei Elektroaltgeräten/Elektroschrott” study (in German with English-language summary) is available as a free download at www.umweltbundesamt.de. A background paper is available at www.bmu.de (in German).

Literature: Umweltbundesamt, BMU – German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Export of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE): plenty of gold, and poison, too, Press release No. 029/10, Berlin, 04.03.2010