Toxin Nation: The Poisoning of Our Air, Water, Food, and Bodies

INTRODUCTION:

CONSPIRACY AND TRUTH IN A TOXIC WORLD

We live in a toxic world. Whether it be the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, or the ideas and opinions of the mass media we fill our minds with, toxicity is everywhere. In our quest to make life easier, we seem to be killing ourselves to live, ingesting and injecting poisons into our bodies through the water we drink, the food we eat, and the medicines we take. We wear clothing riddled with toxic chemicals and use products that leach things into our foodstuffs we probably never intended to consume, had we known they were there.

In many cases, we know full well how we are being poisoned, and we embrace it anyway with processed foods, preservatives, water barely fit for drinking, and air that seems invisible yet teems with danger beyond our vision. It’s like a bad habit we just can’t seem to break.

Not a day can go by without our being exposed to a variety of toxins that wreak havoc on our physiology, our minds, and our well-being and derail our conscious attempts to achieve good health and a long life. It’s gotten to the point in modern society where our toothpaste is filled with chemicals like aluminum and fluoride, both heavily linked to a number of diseases. Our clothing is treated with flame retardants that can keep us from burning up quicker in a fire but are filled with toxic substances that are getting into our lungs and causing allergies. We go outside and breathe in the pesticides just sprayed on the garden next door, never realizing the invisible damage it’s causing until much, much later, when we get a cancer prognosis.

No, this book isn’t intended to cripple the reader with anxiety. Yes, this book is intended to scare the living $*%t out of the reader, to get the reader to start asking questions and taking positive actions to eliminate toxins and demand our government protect us from it, rather than allow us to be poisoned for the sake of some pharmaceutical company or big agribusiness profit margin.

Everyone enjoys reading about conspiracies perpetrated by the government or secret societies, and you will find some of that in this book, but most of what you will read here is not about conspiracy theories. Oh, no. There will be a lot of facts, statistics, and scientific research and data presented here, alongside some good, old-fashioned conspiracy theory because sometimes where there is smoke, there is the presence of a former fire, or the beginning of a new one.

In this case, the word is used more to describe things that are being done to humans without their direct knowledge. Things decided on and passed in laws that we often don’t hear a peep about unless it’s from some activist group on the internet trying to wake us out of our slumber of my government and corporations care about me and would never hurt me denial. Things conspired in shadows in the high halls of government, academia, and corporate conference rooms that take so much time to ever trickle down to the little people (us), if they ever do, and often when they do, people are in so much denial they refuse to acknowledge these conspirings against them.

In order to determine whether or not a conspiracy holds up to the light of truth, one must be retrained to step away from believing everything they see and hear that aligns with their own political or religious identity. People need to know how to stand back and use great discernment, enough to stop proclaiming that every word they hear on Fox News or CNN is true because both are nothing more than corporate machines that serve a political agenda. They need to learn to follow the sources to the money and to follow the money to the sources. Sadly, so few people care enough to do this. It’s way too easy to just buy the party line and tow it to shore. Yet conspiracies leave clues and often turn into facts and truths. For example, there are rocket fuel compounds found in certain diabetes medications. Sound like conspiracy theory to you? Nope. As you will see later, there is ample proof.

Do you use sunscreen? Did you know that the FDA itself listed four specific ingredients found in most sunscreens that are not just toxic but are absorbed into the blood at levels high enough to pose real risks to your health? It’s true. Yet many will refuse to believe it or research it on their own, deciding instead to take the easy way out and listen to everything they are told that aligns with their existing beliefs that sunscreen good, sunshine bad. More on that later.

Conspiracies occur everywhere, in business and industry, in politics and media, even in our own lives. We are always being lied to, manipulated, harassed, persuaded, gaslighted, overwhelmed with propaganda and bias, cajoled, and even in many cases threatened (doctors shaming patients to force them to accept certain procedures, workplaces telling employees they will fire those who don’t do this or that…) to keep up a particular status quo of belief. We allow the corporations and their political mouthpieces to control and govern every aspect of our lives, refusing to go against whichever political (or religious) affiliation we have signed up for, even when the evidence to the contrary is right in our faces. It’s cognitive dissonance, denial, and identity/ego issues all rolled up into one big ball that makes us perfect sheeple for the wolves that want to exploit us and make money off of our hard-working backs.

We’re told that we need to use sunscreen to block damaging radiation, but many sunscreens contain toxic chemicals.

Ever watch a room full of diehard Democrats tearing apart Republicans but refusing to accept the corruption of their own party? Ditto for the Republicans. Ditto for the major religious traditions of the world. Ditto for everyone and anyone who loves to point fingers at the other guy without first examining their own sins. That’s what those who cry conspiracy theory! would love us to keep doing, and believing, so they can continue to pour toxins into our air, water, and food without much resistance.

Now, this author is the first to admit some conspiracy theories are way out there, but even in those cases, the power of belief is strong among those who believe them and try to convince others. We mock them and make fun of them on social media, and yet, we are all victims of actual, REAL conspiracies that have truth behind them that we continue to push the agendas of. We are all complicit until we begin to wake up, do our own research, and stop blindly trusting the authority figures that seek to keep us in the dark for their own power and profits.

This book looks at all the ways that we are being poisoned and who is behind it. The why is pretty easy to figure out. It’s usually always money. Greed. Profits. Stockholders anxious to make more money. Corporate CEOs in bed with congressmen and women, with a lot of you stroke my back, I’ll stroke yours. The powerful and elite working overtime to protect their power and their elite status. A mass media beholden to the advertising money that keeps them in business, usually from Big Pharma, today’s most powerful lobby group in the nation’s political arena.

It is also a book about things that are in no way, shape, or form conspiracies. Things like the amount of plastics we are poisoning our planet with. Things like indoor air pollutants and their links to respiratory illnesses. Things like drugs and pills that have been recalled because of toxins that cause cancer or have killed innocent people. Things like what’s in the food you buy that causes cancer, or why the soil most food is grown in contains toxins beyond pesticides, or how known carcinogens are found in popular breakfast cereals and so very much more. It is not fun stuff to read about, think about, or even write about, but it is necessary and important.

But we will also explore some of the more interesting conspiracy theories that may or may not be true, may be true in part, or may be total disinformation and propaganda. Yes, we will look at those, too, because this book seeks to present all sides whenever possible. It also seeks to show how the mind is poisoned by social engineering, mass media manipulation, narrative control, and the control of social media by major corporations. Freedom isn’t free. In fact, we pay for it with our bodies, our minds, and our growing lack of well-being and increased rates of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, autism, and the like. We pay for it with news channels that spin our information to the bidding of their corporate backers, which we then spread on social media, calling fake anything that goes against it. We pay for it with the destructive power of identity politics and the trolling and hostility to opposing points of view. We pay for our freedom with mandated vaccines filled with toxins, air that is killing us even as we need it to live, water that is so thick with pathogens and microbes, and food so riddled with chemicals and preservatives, it’s a wonder we are still standing.

Most of all, we pay for freedom with censorship of any information, debate, and dialog that is not a part of the status quo or accepted by the big corporate brothers watching over us all. Did you know that Google and Amazon have links to the CIA? Were you aware that Facebook has performed social engineering experiments on its users? Why should you be aware, considering these are things done outside of the public eye—kind of like … conspiracies?

One of the biggest problems and setbacks of exposing toxicity in our culture, society, and lifestyles is the backlash. Many people who write, speak, and teach about toxins in our air, water, food, media, and medicine end up threatened, banned, blocked, removed, harassed, targeted, publicly shamed—you name it. Books like this get censored and suppressed. Whistleblowers are thrown in jail to rot while the mainstream media they attacked and exposed calls them terrorists and villains. Documentaries get banned from Amazon and Netflix. Often, social media is the last resort, other than word of mouth, for spreading information to help those find the truth, except social media is being censored heavily today by those beholden to the corporations that buy the most advertising from them, again usually Big Pharma, Wall Street, and banks.

You want the truth? The question is, can you handle the truth? Sometimes, conspiracies end up being the truth, but they first must be dragged out into the light of day and exposed so that we can see all sides and examine each angle. You will hear those who seek to fool you say that the science is settled or don’t confuse your Google searches with my college education or something of that sort, not realizing that much of the damning evidence against their claims comes straight from the very corporations they are shilling for. You will hear news stories that present one side of a subject, and not another, because they can’t, or they will lose millions in advertising dollars. You will see ads and stories on your social media pages picked just for you to sway you toward your political identity and away from questioning any gaps you might sense in your gut exist when the words and actions of your beloved leaders don’t add up. You will be told by your chosen political party that they are your saviors when they are in bed with the enemies. You will be riddled and bombarded with lies, false flags, misinformation, disinformation, rhetoric, propaganda, and manipulation from all sides.

Where can you find the truth? This book doesn’t profess to be the end-all of that question because the truth is, truth shifts as new facts and information are presented. Do you know that it was once believed sugar was good for you? Nowadays, just about every disease known to humanity is linked to inflammatory responses caused by too much sugar intake. We were once told it was safe to take certain pharmaceuticals, only to have thousands die from the side effects and consequences of settled science. We get vaccines shot into us and our babies by the dozens today without ever asking once what is in them (you’ll be shocked to find out). We buy into diets and fads and the latest research, never bothering to identify the origins of said research, which is often funded directly or indirectly by the very entities pushing that particular product, fad, or medical necessity.

Do you really know what is in that drink you’re sipping or that snack you’re chewing? Unfortunately, we can’t trust companies to be entirely honest with us. The good news is that researching our food has never been simpler.

And here is the thing: you can search for much, if not all, the information you need to make better choices from a more balanced vantage point yourself, without a medical degree or surgical license. You can outresearch many of your own doctors and professionals, who often do not keep up on the latest publications in their own fields, let alone other fields. You can google your way to knowledge of what you are injecting, ingesting, and taking into your own body and the bodies of your children, although don’t use Google, as it is a propaganda machine in and of itself. It’s all there, often right on the websites of the companies and government agencies themselves. Truth is often hidden in plain sight. Follow the sources to the money and the money to the sources.

It’s not all a big conspiracy, folks. Which is really too bad because we’d all be a lot better off if it were. We’d be a lot better off if the government bodies that are supposed to protect us weren’t bedfellows with the corporations who only see us as a way to make money and who care little or nothing at all about us as human beings. We’d be a lot better off if we had companies and powerful elites who wanted to protect us, our children, and the planet instead of finding the easiest, quickest ways of keeping us sick, suppressed, and stupid with junk foods, bad air, dirty water, and chemical soups in our medications.

Chemicals and toxins that make their way into our bodies cause all kinds of harm. They dysregulate the body and alter the speed at which many functions occur. Some examples are: decreasing or increasing heart rate and blood pressure, interrupting neuron activity in the brain, decreasing or increasing hormones in the body, blocking insulin-receptor sites so sugar cannot get into the cell to produce energy, poisoning enzymes so they no longer do the work they are intended to do, displacing or destroying minerals and weakening bones, damaging vital organs, damaging and altering DNA, modifying gene expression, damaging cell membranes, and increasing toxicity in the body so that detoxing becomes next to impossible. We may not be aware of this cumulative assault on our health until it’s too late, and we are suffering some major health setbacks.

But we know it’s happening on a less obvious level, don’t we? Look around you. Everyone is sick and tired and sick and tired of being sick and tired. Shouldn’t we, with all the newest technologies and discoveries, be getting healthier and stronger? Yet, the United States is a miserable seventeenth in health, and our infant mortality rates are one of the worst in the world. We have more people in this country with cancer, heart disease, autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, allergies, asthma, mental disorders, and suicides. We are one hell of a miserable country for all our supposed medical advances, access to water, genetically modified organism (GMO) farms that claim to make foods healthier, and clean air (or so we think). The hidden toxins we live with are killing us slowly in some cases, quicker in others. Yet we still stay in denial and refuse to question our government leaders, our medical doctors, our academics, the news media, and the talking heads they employ. We don’t even have the courage to question ourselves when our guts tell us we shouldn’t have this procedure or eat that processed food. We’ve been so manipulated that we don’t trust ourselves anymore, and that puts us in the incredibly dangerous position of being taken advantage of by anyone who sees us as a lifelong patient or profit machine.

If we all want to be able to make the best choices about what we put into our bodies and what we put into our minds, it is imperative that we first learn about what others are doing to us and take responsibility for letting them up until now. Then and only then can we fight back and demand we alone get to choose and that our choice must include natural medicine, homeopathy, whole organic foods free of pesticides, clean air and water, truth in advertising, transparency in food packaging, political reps who are not beholden to any industry, and the right to decide what is put into our bodies and when. What you don’t know can not only hurt you but also kill you. It’s time to get educated and wake up to the presence of the diverse toxin conspiracies and realities we all live with on a daily basis and see how we can end, avoid, or counteract them to preserve our health and well-being of body, mind, and spirit.

We have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those things are not possible when we are filled with toxins and feeling weak, sick, and hopeless. There is no life, liberty, or happiness until we take back control of our bodies, our food and water and air, our medical decisions, our ability to access information, and our minds and thoughts. Otherwise, we become slaves to a system designed to make us sick and weak and keep us there. Time to rise up and learn; at the very least, it’s time to question what you’ve been told, hold it up to the light, and examine all sides, even the ones you’ve been afraid to look at because they will force you to admit you may have been wrong, misled, or unaware. Remember the old saying, there are three sides to every story: yours, theirs, and the truth?

You won’t ever find the truth if you don’t examine all sides of an issue. It’s like someone handing you a block that is blue on all the sides you can see but purple on the opposite side you cannot. Until you examine all sides, you won’t know that one side is purple. You might even find that the bottom of the block is green. Sometimes, the entire block will be blue. You just have to be willing to step out of the bubble you’ve chosen to live in as your beliefs, perceptions, and identity and turn the block.

THE AIR THAT WE BREATHE

In 1974, a band called the Hollies released a song called The Air That I Breathe, the chorus of which expounded on how the singer only needed the air he breathed and to love a particular girl. Truth is, he could have lived without the girl, no matter how his heart felt at the time. But the air? Humans can generally survive for about three weeks without food (although recent research into long-term fasting has proven that factoid a bit shaky) and three days without drinkable water but only three minutes without air. So had our singer had a choice between the air he breathed and the girl, hopefully he would have chosen the air.

Air Pollution

Yet the invisible air we need for our survival is often filled with harmful and equally invisible toxins and pollutants that we inhale on a daily basis, whether inside our homes and businesses or outside in the fresh air of nature. They come in the form of solid particles, liquid droplets, or invisible gases. Don’t think this is just a modern issue because our ancestors once breathed in their own brand of toxins, mainly those emanating from ongoing volcanic activity. Today, many of the invisible things we breathe in by the lungful are man-made, along with particulates of both organic and nonorganic origins. We also have biological molecules that are introduced into our planet’s atmosphere via space sources.

The most pressing pollutants and toxins we deal with, which are no doubt causing a plethora of negative health effects, are ammonia, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, chlorofluorocarbons, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, gas emissions from motor vehicles, radioactive pollutants, and even odors from sewage plants and wastewater. Mmmm, breathe it all in. The obvious results are respiratory issues such as allergies, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and the like, but pollution kills and contributes to everything from heart disease to cancer. In a 2014 report by the World Health Organization (WHO), outdoor air pollution caused up to 4,000,000 premature deaths annually and, in 2012 alone, over 7,000,000 people died globally from pollution.

In recent years, indoor air pollution complications have caused illness and possible deaths. In addition, more people have flocked to urban areas, which have a higher prevalence of air pollution. However, anyone living within walking distance of a chemical, biological, or manufacturing facility, major freeways, highway systems, or near a slaughterhouse or factory farm runs the risk of breathing in more than the usual quota of toxins in the air.

China has one of the worst smog problems in the world, and this is primarily because they burn so much coal for fuel. People wear masks most of the time in cities like Beijing. While not quite as bad as China, the United States also has a serious smog problem.

Three Types

There are three types of pollutants in our air. Primary pollutants are produced by processes in nature such as volcanic ash after an eruption, gas fumes from automobile exhaust, and sulfur dioxide released from a variety of factories and manufacturing plants. Secondary pollutants are not emitted into the air via direct means. They are the result of the interactions between a primary pollutant and the air itself. Then there are those that are both primary and secondary. Human activity is, again, the culprit behind most pollutants. The leading pollutant is carbon dioxide, which is considered one of the primary greenhouse gases behind the growing problem of climate change.

Gases, chemical compounds, and particulate matter all get sent into the air, harming humans and animals, who breathe the air, and plants, trees, and flowers, which utilize the air.

Whether the source is a city full of smokestacks, factories, waste incinerators, and streets filled with vehicles, a rural coal mine, or fertilized farmland, there is bound to be environmental degradation to the surrounding land, water, and air via hazardous toxins and pollutants in varying concentrations. Even the burning of biomass, such as wood, and the use of dung and crop waste by poor and developing nations add to the pollution levels of a land mass, so we cannot just blame more urban, highly developed nations. Nature itself offers up dust from vegetation-free swaths of land, methane courtesy of cattle’s digestive systems, radon gas from the radioactive decay within Earth’s crust, and volatile organic compounds from vegetation exposed to extreme heat, ash, and smoke from wildfires and volcanic activity.

Air pollution was big news during the 1970s, when movies and commercials proclaimed gloom and doom from dark smoke spewing from smokestacks into the skies. In the following few decades, major concern surrounded urban smog and the ozone layer. The latter became fodder for news headlines and efforts in state and federal governments to focus on emissions and controlling the damage of a growing manufacturing and technological society, one that loved its automobiles. Everyone knew what smog was, and everyone worried about using too many fluorocarbons and making the ozone hole bigger.

What most people didn’t realize, and still don’t, is that there are hundreds of pollutants, with approximately 200 regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Act and other measures. Yet even in small amounts, those left unregulated can cause disease and death. This includes minute amounts of commonly found mercury, which affects the central nervous system; lead, which damages children’s brains and kidneys; dioxins, which cause short-term liver, immune system, and endocrinal damage; and benzene, which is an EPA-classified carcinogen that irritates the eyes, skin, and lungs and causes blood disorders. Regulations that have been put in place may not be enough. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), stronger standards are needed to replace coal and fossil fuel–burning industries before the levels of polluting chemicals being released into the air threaten public health. They already have unless we can offset the damage with more green energy sources.

Smog

Smog is a mixture of smoke and fog. The term has become interchangeable with any air pollution. Coal-burning plants can create a mixture of smoke and sulfur dioxide to create a type of smog. Photochemical smog was first described in the 1950s. The worst smog occurs in larger urban areas and in basins and valleys where bad-quality air is trapped. Think Los Angeles and its San Fernando Valley, both known areas with high smog levels.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for measuring air quality indexes and reporting them to the government and public. Because smog contains ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and other gases that can do great damage to human health, it is measured along this index to keep track of pollution levels and how much concentrated particulate matter and gases are too much. Some of the side effects of high smog levels include asthma, allergies, respiratory failure, lung diseases, and chronic bronchitis, striking children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised the hardest. Even birds, insects, and wildlife are affected by smog levels, along with trees and plant life.

Air pollution in the Los Angeles area has been a particular challenge. Not only are there a lot of cars and other sources of pollution, but the metro area is also surrounded by mountains that prevent the smog from drifting away, allowing it to build up for weeks or months unless washed away by a rare rainstorm.

Smog is worse during warmer summer months when the upper air inhibits vertical circulation, which is amplified again in basins and valleys surrounded by hills and mountains. Some of the planet’s smoggiest cities include Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, London, Toronto, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Athens, and Mexico City. Wildfire smoke can create high smog levels in more forested and rural areas, too, creating a blanket of dirty, brown air that hangs over the environment for weeks or months.

Sadly, the United States creates a lot of its own smog and air pollution, but it also must deal with air pollution that travels from Asian nations. When combined with a warming world, that air pollution becomes more of a health threat as land/sea warming contributes to rising concentrations of aerosols in the atmosphere. China is one of the worst offenders, yet its battle to halt particulate air pollution has created more severe ozone pollution, mainly due to a pollutant called PM 2.5, which has dramatically altered the atmospheric chemistry and increased levels of harmful ground ozone pollution. Cleaning up the air is not an easy task, and it is an ongoing challenge as more people flock to urban areas, buy cars, and contribute to the rising levels of pollutants entering the atmosphere.

Between the production of coal, the proliferation of automobiles