...and the total is up to 140 adverse events (including paralysis). When will people learn to either keep their pants on or use condoms? You can't be vaccinated against every STD, so getting the shot for HPV is just deceiving yourself.

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Is HPV Vaccine to Blame for a Teen's Paralysis? - On Women (usnews.com)

Is HPV Vaccine to Blame for a Teen's Paralysis?

July 02, 2008 04:41 PM ET | Deborah Kotz | Permanent Link

 

About a month after being vaccinated against the cervical cancer-causing HPV virus, 13-year-old Jenny Tetlock missed the lowest hurdle in gym class, the first hint of the degenerative muscle disease that, 15 months later, has left the previously healthy teenager nearly completely paralyzed. Did the vaccine, Gardasil, cause her condition? Her father, Philip Tetlock, a psychology professor at UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business, has embarked on an odyssey to find out whether the vaccine or random coincidence is to blame.

As father and scientist, Tetlock has contacted top medical experts, posted pleas on discussion boards looking for other teens who've experienced neurological problems post-vaccination and has been desperately trying to get the government to open an investigation into his daughter's case. "The weakening process is gradual so it may take months for parents to notice what is going on," he writes me in an E-mail. He started a blog a few weeks ago that shows photos of his sweet-faced teen and reveals his anger and frustration in the form of a box counting the days that he has yet to get a response from the government's Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment Network. As of today, it's 28.

He's not the only one to raise an alarm. The conservative public watchdog group Judicial Watch has been periodically obtaining adverse event reports on Gardasil from the Food and Drug Administration. I received the group's latest warning this week: of 10 deaths linked to Gardasil since September 2007 and 140 reports so far this year of serious effects such as miscarriage and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a nervous system disease that causes weakness and tingling in the arms and legs. (But these reports filed by patients or doctors with the government's vaccine adverse event reporting system may or may not reflect true vaccine risks. Some problems may be missed or underreported, while others, including sudden deaths, may have nothing to do with the vaccine itself.)

Judicial Watch opposes efforts in many states to make the vaccine mandatory for all girls ages 11 and 12. Those efforts have raised concerns among religious groups that protecting against the sexually transmitted virus will encourage promiscuity among teen girls. The FDA insists there's no medical reason to be worried. "We're monitoring the safety of the HPV vaccine very carefully, and the only adverse event that causes some concern is syncope or fainting after the vaccine," says Robert Ball, director of the FDA's office of biostatistics and division of epidemiology at the center for biologics evaluation and research. Higher rates of Guillain-Barré have been associated with the swine flu vaccine and possibly with the meningitis vaccine Menactra, but it is no more common in those who get Gardasil than in those who don't, says Ball. The same goes for other side effects like spontaneous miscarriage.

What's more, the FDA has not documented any other cases of vaccine-related peripheral motor neuropathy—what Jenny has—either in the adverse event reports filed by doctors and patients or in the manufacturer's clinical trial data. Merck, the vaccine's manufacturer, has dismissed the possibility that Jenny's condition was caused by Gardasil. "We're aware of this case and based on the facts that we've received, the information doesn't suggest that this event was causally associated with vaccination," says Merck spokesperson Kelley Dougherty.

Tetlock, though, wonders if Jenny carries genes that predisposed her to problems with the Gardasil vaccine. At age 10, Jenny developed a rare skin disease called pityriasis lichenoides that's thought to be triggered by an overactive immune system, and her grandmother died of a nervous system disease. Could it be that certain genetic tendencies make some people more likely to develop severe reactions from vaccines? I ask Ball. "That's an important question," he responds. "We just don't know." It's certainly going to be a topic of future research, he adds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is starting to look at whether those who developed Guillain-Barré after being vaccinated share a common set of genes. So Tetlock could find out someday if his hunches are correct.

At this moment, he and his wife, Barbara Mellers, also a professor at Berkeley, are focused on being with their daughter as she struggles to breathe on her own. "Jenny endures terrible suffering each day," Tetlock tells me via E-mail. "She must watch her capacity to control her own body gradually ebb away—and each day her hopes of ever having a normal human life recede ever further into memory. The disease is cruel beyond belief."

As a parent, I've wrestled with whether or when to get my 12-year-old daughter vaccinated against HPV. As much as vaccines are vital in protecting against life-threatening infectious diseases, they do, indeed, have the potential to cause harm—however rare that may be. Evidence is mounting that the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal could trigger autism in certain susceptible kids, as my colleague Bernadine Healy previously reported. We don't know yet whether Jenny's illness is linked to Gardasil, though it's certainly plausible given the timing of symptoms several weeks after vaccination, which is when vaccine-related neurological problems typically occur. I'm not sure whether Jenny's case has changed my opinion about the value of Gardasil. But it certainly has given me pause.

Perfluorinated chemicals are in non-stick finishes on cookware, as well as stain-resistant fabrics and furniture. They're persistent (stay in your body for a REALLY long time), toxic (bad for you and for other living things), and bioaccumulative (build up in organisms that eat other organisms). Click through the link below to read the EWG's whole report on these really scary chemicals--and DuPont's plan to replace PFOA with something virtually untested and probably just as bad (or worse). Then write to your Congressman and tell him that DuPont's voluntary phaseout is not good enough.

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Credibility Gap: Toxic Chemicals in Food Packaging and DuPont's Greenwashing | Environmental Working

How Green is DuPont's Replacement for Teflon Chemical?

By Olga V. Naidenko, PhD, and Renee Sharp, EWG Analysts, June 2008

 

In 2006, under pressure from the U.S. EPA, DuPont and 7 other companies promised to phase out by 2015 a cancer-causing chemical called PFOA, used to make Teflon and also found in grease-resistant coatings for food packaging. In its place, the chemical industry is pushing new, supposedly “green” food package coatings.

But an investigation by Environmental Working Group (EWG) finds no evidence that the industry-touted replacement chemicals being rushed to market are safer -- and plenty of evidence that DuPont and other manufacturers are continuing a decades-long pattern of deception about the health risks of PFOA and related chemicals.

 

Like PFOA-based coatings, the new compounds are also made from, contaminated with, or break down into perfluorochemicals (PFCs), including new coatings for household products like stain-resistant fabrics and carpet, waterproof clothing, and food packaging. Like PFOA, they persist in the environment and can cross the placenta to contaminate babies before birth. But unlike PFOA – for which there are dozens of peer-reviewed studies showing links to cancer, reproductive problems and immune disorders – for the replacement chemicals there are almost no publicly available data on their health risks, leaving in question whether food packaging and other PFC-containing products are any safer.

EWG’s investigation is the first review of health data and industry greenwashing since the phaseout agreement was announced. We examined federal reports on food packaging toxicity; industry-funded health studies in Environmental Protection Agency files; and company e-mails unearthed in a lawsuit over PFOA pollution of drinking water near a DuPont facility in West Virginia, and found:

• Despite agreeing to phase out PFOA, DuPont and other makers of perfluorinated chemicals continue to maintain that it is safe. A DuPont press release from March 2008 said “. . . PFOA exposure does not pose a health risk to the general public. To date, there are no human health effects known to be caused by PFOA.” This is not only contradicted by the EPA Science Advisory Board’s 2005 finding that PFOA is a likely human carcinogen, but by DuPont’s own scientific advisors. In 2005, in response to a similar statement by the company, an ethics advisor on DuPont's Epidemiology Review Board wrote: “The claim of no health effects is not supported by available facts (factual inappropriateness) … Such a statement is misleading, whether intentionally or not, and it is unacceptable to mislead in this way (moral inappropriateness).” In fact, to date at least 10 studies of people show significant health risks of PFOA, including elevated risk for obesity, heart disease, endocrine disorders, and infectious diseases in a study of 4538 children younger than 10 years of age living near a DuPont plant in West Virginia.
  
• From January 2007 to April 2008, chemical manufacturers reported to the EPA 19 studies on PFC chemicals that showed “substantial risk” to human health or the environment under section 8(e) of the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA). The health effects reported in these studies of anonymous PFCs include the deaths of laboratory animals as well as damage to the liver, thyroid and prostate. Yet under EPA regulations shielding confidential business information, in 17 of 19 cases the exact name of the chemical is not identified and in 13 of 19 cases the manufacturer is not identified. This information is secret not only from the public, but from health officials in states, like California, that are considering laws to ban PFCs in food packaging. These reports are doubly troubling: Not only is information being hidden that is important to public health, but by their own admission companies are finding substantial health risks for chemicals they may well be using as PFOA replacements.
  
• From 2005 through November 2007 FDA approved 8 new food packaging fluorochemicals that may replace older, PFOA-contaminated or C8-based PFCs. These approvals were granted with no public record of any health risk assessment from exposures to the contaminant residues and breakdown products of greatest concern, according to documents EWG obtained from the Food and Drug Administration. Since that time FDA has approved 2 additional substitute chemicals, and DuPont has announced that its new PFOA replacement, the Capstone^TM grease-proofing chemicals, will be available for packaging products beginning in 2009. This dramatic shift in the market and in human exposures has occurred with no public assessment of the safety of the replacements.
  
• A similar pattern of unproven claims and secrecy is found in reports filed by chemical makers on the progress of the PFOA phaseout. Since the phaseout is voluntary, EPA has no authority to verify claims of reduced PFOA use or releases. Some companies report little or no progress. Others claim significant reductions, but again hide the details as confidential business information. Worse, the industry’s claims that the phaseout will eliminate PFOA by 2015 are shattered by the fact that no company from China, the third-largest producer of packaging in the world, is a party to the agreement.
  

The industry’s contention that its PFOA replacements are safer rests on two atoms of carbon. PFOA is sometimes called C8 because it has 8 carbon atoms. A key replacement chemical, perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), contains 6 carbon atoms and is often called C6. The chemical industry would have us believe that the removal of two carbon atoms removes human health risks.

On April 23, 2008, a scientist representing the Telomer Research Program, a chemical industry group that includes DuPont and other PFC makers, testified before the Health Committee of the California State Senate against a bill to ban both PFOA/C8 and PFHxA/C6 in food packaging. He repeated the claim that PFOA is not harmful to humans, and that a ban is is not needed because of the voluntary phaseout program. He also repeatedly described C6 as an example of the “green chemistry” approach the state is developing to encourage the production of safer alternative chemicals:

[The bill] would derail a promising example of green chemistry at work . . . [B]y targeting perflourinated compounds with chain links of 6 or higher in this legislation, the bill would frustrate the conversion from the C8 based products, that are the source of the PFOA, to a set of effective C6 based compounds whose breakdown products are much, much less toxic and don’t have the same persistence issues that PFOA and some of the C8s have. . . . [O]ur companies are addressing the concerns about PFOA; we’re aggressively doing so. And we believe the proposed legislation would actually do harm to an effective green chemistry strategy for reducing the concerns about this chemical. (Lawyer 2008)

 

This is greenwashing – claiming environmental benefits for a product that's little better than its replacement – at its worst. PFOA is so remarkably persistent in the environment and broadly toxic to living organisms that using it as a bar against which to judge "green chemistry" is like calling anything under 200 miles per hour a safe speed limit. For C6 replacements, the full extent of the public record on their safety consists of a PowerPoint presentation delivered by Asahi Glass Company to the Environmental Protection Agency. Public records show that DuPont, Asahi, and Clariant are all shifting from PFOA to C6 chemistries despite an absolute dearth of public safety data, and despite the fact that on 3 critical counts, C6 may be as great a concern as PFOA:

• C6, like all the other PFCs, is extraordinarily persistent in the environment (NAS 1972).
• C6 is potentially 3 to 5 times more toxic than C8 to aquatic organisms (Asahi 2006).
• C6 crosses the placenta to contaminate children before birth, according to an EWG study of umbilical cord blood from 10 newborn babies (EWG 2005). While many studies of thousands of people by CDC, industry, and academic university researchers show that PFOA contaminates nearly the entire U.S. population, industry has failed to publish even a single study of C6 in people. EWG's tests of cord blood show it to be potentially as great a concern as PFOA.

Truly green chemistry is sustainable chemistry with products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. Much remains unknown about C6, but what is known – that it is bioaccumulative, persistent and crosses the placenta to pollute human blood – is enough to disqualify it as green chemistry. Promoting a PFOA replacement that raises such serious safety concerns while simultaneously withholding critical toxicity data violates the spirit of the PFOA phaseout agreement and undermines the credibility of the entire industry.

Read the labels before you put the food in your shopping cart. Dried fruit that looks as if it would be a great nutritious snack is most likely contaminated with sulfites, which keep the fruit from getting discolored, but can cause adverse reactions in people with asthma. You're better off buying fresh or frozen organic fruit, like these (http://www.cascadianfarm.com/products/product_detail.aspx?cat=9) from Cascadian Farm.

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ExToxNet - Food Preservatives

What is the evidence for a link between preservatives and cancer and other toxic effects?

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Back to Specific Concerns Page

• The functions of preservatives:

  • Antimicrobials

    ...prevent the growth of molds, yeasts and bacteria.

  • Antioxidants

    ... keep foods from becoming rancid, browning, or developing black spots. Antioxidants also minimize the damage to some essential amino acids and the loss of some vitamins

• Requirements:

  Preservatives must be listed by their common names on ingredient labels of all foods that contain them.

• Concerns about Nitrites and cancer
• Concerns about BHA and cancer
• Concerns about toxic effects of BHT
• Concerns about Sulfites and hypersensitivity reactions.

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Nitrites

• Nitrite = NO₂
• Nitrate = NO₃
• Purpose of nitrites:
  1. Inhibit the growth of bacterial spores that cause botulism, a deadly food-borne illness.
  2. Color enhancement of cured meat, poultry, and fish products.
• Nitrates react with secondary amines to form nitrosamines

  Amines are ubiqitous in nature, including in food, biological systems, and the environment.

• Nitrates react with substituted amides to form nitrosamides
• Nitrosamines and nitrosamides are carcinogenic.
• Why are carcinogenic food additives allowed in food?

  The risk of adverse health effects from botulism is much greater than the risk of developing cancer from small amounts of nitrites, therefore nitrites are allowed.

• A food manufacturer wanting to use sodium nitrites must show that nitrosamines will not form in hazardous amounts in the product under the additive's intended conditions of use. For example, regulations specify that sodium nitrite, used as an antimicrobial against the formation of botulinum toxin in smoked fish, must be present in 100 to 200 parts per million. In addition, other antioxidants, such as sodium ascorbate or sodium erythorbate, may be added to inhibit the formation of nitrosamines.

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BHA

Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is a phenolic antioxidant Phenolic antioxidants prevent rancidity of fats and oils in food by protecting against lipid oxidation.

When the food additives amendment was enacted (1958), BHA and BHT were listed as common preservatives considered generally recognized as safe (GRAS). GRAS regulations limit BHA and BHT to 0.02 percent or 200 parts per million (ppm) of the fat or oil content of the food product.

Both BHT and BHA have been removed from the GRAS list and subjected to tolerances.

BHA is also used as a preservative for dry foods, such as cereals. The FDA set limits for each type of food. On cereals, for example, FDA limited BHA to 50 ppm of the total product.

Studies have suggested that at very high levels in the diets of laboratory animals, BHA could cause tumors in the forestomach of rats, mice and hamsters, and liver tumors in fish. The importance of this in humans is unknown, because humans do not have forestomachs. BHA did not cause cancer in experimental dogs, pigs, and monkeys, species which do not have forestomachs.

Other studies have shown that BHA protects against some chemical carcinogens, depending on the conditions of the tests.

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BHT

• Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) is a phenolic antioxidant
• Phenolic antioxidants prevent rancidity of fats and oils in food by protecting against lipid oxidation.
• Although not toxic itself, BHT may interact with other substances:
  • Protects against toxicity in some cases
  • Potentiates toxicity in others
  • For example, in animal studies BHT was demonstrated to be protective against mutagens such as benzo(a)pyrene and carcinogens when given during or before exposure to benzo(a)pyrene, but enhances toxicity when given after exposure.
• • Some beneficial health effects of BHT:
  • There are reports that BHT inhibits formations of some types of tumors.
  • Protective against carbon tetrachloride poisoning.
  • There is some evidence that it slows aging in mice.

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Sulfites

From "A Fresh Look at Food Preservatives" by Judith E. Foulke, staff writer for FDA Consumer Magazine

Sulfites are used as antioxidants to prevent discoloration of light-colored fruits and vegetables, such as dried apples and dehydrated potatoes. They are also used in wine-making because they inhibit bacterial growth but do not interfere with the desired development of yeast.

FDA prohibits the use of sulfites in foods that are important sources of thiamin (vitamin B1), such as enriched flour, because sulfites destroy the nutrient.

Most people don't have a problem with sulfites. However, since 1985, when the agency started reporting on sulfites through the Adverse Reaction Monitoring System, over 1,000 adverse reactions have been recorded. FDA estimated that more than 1 million asthmatics are sensitive or allergic to sulfites.

In 1986, FDA ruled that sulfites used specifically as preservatives must be listed on the label, regardless of the amount in the finished product. Sulfites used in food processing but not serving as preservatives in the final food must be listed on the label if present at levels of 10 parts per million (ppm) or higher. Regulations issued in 1990 extended these required listings to standardized foods.

Also in 1986, FDA banned the use of sulfites on fruits and vegetables intended to be eaten raw, such as in salad bars and grocery store produce sections. Please the FDA site Sulfites: Safe for Most, Dangerous for Some

The symptom most reported by sulfite-sensitive people is difficulty breathing. Other problems range from stomach ache and hives to anaphylactic shock. In addition to knowing which food preservatives are sulfites and which foods are likely to contain them, sulfite-sensitive consumers can help themselves avoid health problems by following these suggestions:

• Read food labels and choose foods that don't contain sulfites (Click here to see a list of sulfites).
• Be aware that foods served in restaurants, especially potato products and some canned foods, could contain sulfites. Ask the waiter if sulfites are used in what you plan to order.

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• Click here for a table showing foods which MAY contain sulfites.

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• Back to Specific Concerns Page

• Back to Food Additive Safety Page

EXTOXNET FAQS

FoodAdditive Main Menu

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(source://www.medaccess.com/consumer_rep/hc0045.htm)

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Prepared Summer 1997 by Bernadene Magnuson, Ph.D.
University of Idaho, Dept. of Food Science and Toxicology - EXTOXNET FAQ Team.

 

... so basically, you can't trust anything they've said about how safe thimerosal is, or vaccines are. They've been doing the bidding of Big Pharma all along, in addition to their own pathological quest to vaccinate everyone against everything as soon after birth as possible (as if there is no other way to prevent diseases, and as if vaccines are harmless).

Click through the link to read David Kirby's piece on the Huffington Post.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/cdc-vaccine-study-design_b_108398.html

CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has delivered a potentially explosive report to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, in which she admits to a startling string of errors in the design and methods used in the CDC's landmark 2003 study that found no link between mercury in vaccines and autism, ADHD, speech delay or tics.

Gerberding was responding to a 2006 report from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which concluded that the CDC's flagship thimerosal safety study was riddled with "several areas of weaknesses" that combined to "reduce the usefulness" of the study.

"CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote in an undated mea culpa to Congress, (provided to me through a Capitol Hill staffer) adding that her agency "does not plan to use" the database in question, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, (VSD) for any future "ecological studies" of autism.

In fact, Gerberding's report said, any continued use of the VSD for similar ecological studies of vaccines and autism "would be uninformative and potentially misleading."

Ecological vaccine studies are large, epidemiological analyses of risks and trends using computerized data from large populations -- in this case children enrolled at several big HMOs -- without ever examining a single patient in person.

CDC officials conducted at least five separate analyses of the data over a four-year period from 1999-2003. The first analysis showed that children exposed to the most thimerosal by one month of age had extremely high relative risks for a number of outcomes, compared with children who got little or no mercury: The relative risk for ADHD was 8.29 times higher, for autism, it was 7.62 times higher, ADD, 6.38 times higher, tics, 5.65 times, and speech and language delays were 2.09 more likely among kids who got the most mercury.

Over time, however, all of these risks declined into statistical insignificance, statistical inconsistency or else outright oblivion: The relative risk for autism plummeted from 7.62 in the first analysis, to 2.48 in the second version, to 1.69 in the third round, to 1.52 in the fourth, and down to nothing at all in the fifth, final, and published analysis printed in the Journal Pediatrics in November of 2003.

Vaccine officials attributed the steady drop to the elimination of "statistical noise" from the data through due diligence and the endeavor for excellence in governmental statistical analysis.

Indeed, the VSD study was the main pillar of a hugely influential 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine, which also concluded that there was no evidence of link between mercury, vaccines and autism.

To this day, public health officials routinely point to five "large epidemiological studies" representing the "highest quality science," none of which found any link to thimerosal.

In fact, the American VSD study has long been held up as the best and brightest of them all (the others were in Sweden, the UK, and two in Denmark). And this reputation has stuck in the minds of medicine and the media.

Curiously though, even the study's lead author -- Dr. Thomas Verstraeten, an employee of vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline -- protested that the VSD study "found no evidence against an association, as a negative study would. In fact, he said that additional study was needed, which "is the conclusion to which a neutral study must come."

That's when Congress stepped in.

In 2005, a group of Senators and Representatives headed by Sen. Joe Lieberman wrote to the NIEHS (an agency of the National Institutes of Health) saying that many parents no longer trusted the CDC to conduct independent minded studies of its own vaccine program. Lieberman et al asked NIEHS to review the CDC's work on the vaccine database and report back with critiques and suggestions.

The final NIEHS report was a serious and thoughtful critique of where the CDC went wrong in its design, conduct and analysis of the study. The NIEHS panel "identified several serious problems," with the CDC's effort, criticism to which the agency had not responded -- until now.

In her letter to the House Appropriations Committee, the CDC Director responded directly to many -- though not all -- of the most important criticisms and recommendations contained in the NIEHS panel report.

For example, the NIEHS had criticized CDC for failing to account for other mercury exposures, including maternal sources from flu shots and immune globulin, as well as mercury in food and the environment.

"CDC acknowledges this concern and recognizes this limitation," the Gerberding reply says.

The NIEHS also took CDC to task for eliminating 25% of the study population for a variety of reasons, even though this represented, "a susceptible population whose removal from the analysis might unintentionally reduce the ability to detect an effect of thimerosal." This strict entry criteria likely led to an "under-ascertainment" of autism cases, the NIEHS reported.

"CDC concurs," Gerberding wrote, again noting that its study design was "not appropriate for studying this vaccine safety topic. The data are intended for administrative purposes and may not be predictive of the outcomes studied."

Another serious problem was that the HMOs changed the way they tracked and recorded autism diagnoses over time, including during the period when vaccine mercury levels were in decline. Such changes could "affect the observed rate of autism and could confound or distort trends in autism rates," the NIEHS warned.

"CDC concurs," Dr. Gerberding wrote again, "that conducting an ecologic analysis using VSD administrative data to address potential associations between thimerosal exposure and risk of ASD is not useful."

Read that sentence one more time. The head of the CDC is saying that its most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for thimerosal is, in effect, "useless."

I hope everyone will read it, including the recommendations to make the VSD better, and the CDC's agreement with all of the suggestions.

As questionable at the US thimerosal study was, "it was an improvement on other studies, including the two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs," Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of Public Health at UC Davis Medical School and Chair of the NIEHS panel, told reporter Dan Olmsted at UPI.

That leaves very little for the CDC to go on in terms of proving that thimerosal and autism are not associated in any way.

Yes, there is always the study of disability services data from California -- which seem to be rising among the youngest cohorts of kids, who presumably received little or no mercury because thimerosal was largely removed from childhood shots.

But California is an "ecological study" with problems of its own.

"Although (this) information is often used by media and research entities to develop statistics and draw conclusions, some of these findings may misrepresent the quarterly figures," cautions the website of the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS). "Increases in the number of persons reported from one quarter to the next do not necessarily represent persons who are new to the DDS system."

Even the CDC admits that "there are several limitations" with linking a VSD study design with the California data, Gerberding wrote to Congress, because, among other things, California only counts "persons who were referred to and/or voluntarily entered" the disability system."

It will be interesting to see how the House Committee -- and the mainstream media -- react to this rather breathtaking confession by the CDC, which does seem to want to conduct the best vaccine-autism science possible (see Gerberding's replies to NIEHS recommendations for improving the VSD: CDC officials are currently conducting in- depth follow up studies with VSD patients).

As the waning months of the Bush administration get underway, I can't help but wonder if a little housecleaning might be going on at some of our top health agencies.

Yes, it fosters the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Yes, it bioaccumulates.

Yes, it's probably an endocrine disruptor.

So, why is it in your toothpaste? (Colgate Total, I'm looking at you!) When they tell you a product "fights germs for 12 hours!" it's probably not a good thing to put into your mouth. If "morning breath" really bothers you, brush your teeth (with Tom's of Maine) as soon as you wake up.

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» Triclosan | Environmental Working Group

Triclosan is an antimicrobial agent found in a broad variety of products, ranging from hospital and household liquid hand soap, detergents, and other sanitizing products, to toothpaste and hair products, pesticides, and plastic and foam products like cutting boards and shoe insoles. The popularity of antibacterial consumer products has led to increased consumer use of triclosan (Perencevich 2001; Tan 2002). This antimicrobial agent is marketed under a variety of trademarked names as well, including Microban, Irgasan DP-300, Lexol 300, Ster-Zac, Cloxifenolum, Biofresh, and others.

Triclosan has been detected in human breast milk and blood samples from the general population (Adolfsson-Erici 2002; TNO 2005), and in the urine of 61 percent of 90 girls ages 6 to 8 tested in a recent study spearheaded by Mount Sinai School of Medicine (Wolff 2007). EWG-led biomonitoring studies have detected triclosan in 17 of 21 people tested (EWG 2007a). Scientists recently found triclosan in 58 percent of 85 streams across the U.S. (Kolpin 2002), the likely result of its presence in discharges of treated wastewater.

The amount of triclosan in the wastwater stream is estimated to be as much as 3 to 5 milligrams per person per day from residences alone (McAvoy 2002); in addition, substantial discharges of this antimicrobial agent are expected from laundries, hair salons, medical facilities, and many other commercial and industrial sites. Optimal water treatment can result in degradation and removal of 95 percent of triclosan (Samsoe-Petersen 2003); however, small amounts may pass through the treatment plants to receiving waters.

Triclosan kills microbes by disrupting protein production, and also by binding to the active site of a critical carrier protein reductase that is essential for fatty acid synthesis. This target enzyme is present in microbes but not in humans. Though triclosan is known to be acutely toxic to certain types of aquatic organisms (Orvos 2002), available studies do not indicate it causes cancer or birth defects in humans (Bhargava 1996). Products containing triclosan may occasionally cause skin irritation in people with a specific sensitivity (Bhargava 1996).

Triclosan has the tendency to bioaccumulate (Samsoe-Petersen 2003), or become more concentrated in the fatty tissues of humans and other animals that are exposed to this chemical. The chemical structure of triclosan is similar to that of DES, a non-steroidal estrogen linked to cancer development in those exposed in utero, raising concerns about its potential to act as an endocrine disruptor. A recent study on fish showed that triclosan had weakly androgenic effects, but no estrogenic effects (Foran 2000).

In contrast, another study found that low levels of triclosan in combination with thyroid hormones triggered rapid transformation of tadpoles into frogs (Veldhoen 2006). Rather than mimicking the thyroid hormone, triclosan, in concentrations of less than 1 part per billion commonly measured in U.S. streams, appeared to make thyroid hormones more potent. This hormone signaling mechanism is similar in frogs and humans, suggesting that triclosan could potentially disrupt the human thyroid system.

The evolving interaction between microbes and antiseptic agents has led to concern that use of specific antimicrobial ingredients may provoke the development of strains of bacteria that are resistant to disinfection. Studies have described strains of bacteria that have acquired reduced susceptibility to triclosan (McMurry 1998; Chuanchuen 2001). The identification of a triclosan-resistant bacterial enzyme suggests that resistance to this antiseptic ingredient may develop more readily than to other agents (Heath 2000). In addition, exposing specific bacterial strains to triclosan appears to result in selection favoring bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics (Chuanchuen 2001).

The American Medical Association has advanced an official recommendation against using antibacterial products in the home due to concern about antimicrobial resistance (Tan 2002). A Food and Drug Administration panel reviewed the existing research and found no evidence that households that use antibacterial products are healthier than households that use soap and water and other typical cleansing products (FDA 2005).

Studies indicate that in surface waters, triclosan can interact with sunlight and microbes to form methyl triclosan, a chemical that may bioacummulate in wildlife and humans (Adolfsson-Erici 2002; Lindstrom 2002). A recent European study found methyl triclosan in fish, especially concentrated in fatty tissue (Balmer 2004). Triclosan also can degrade into a form of dioxin, a class of chemicals linked to a broad range of toxicities including cancer (Lores 2005). New research shows that triclosan in tap water can react with residual chlorine from standard water disinfecting procedures to form a variety of chlorinated byproducts at low levels, including chloroform, a suspected human carcinogen (Fiss 2007).