
Is the World Making You Sick? - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/is-the-world-making-you-sick?utm_source=tss&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=linkfrom_feature
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enziobodoni
I run a hospital lab, and I see requests for testing for all sorts of bizarre
things, largely by naturopaths, deriving from the "philosophy" expressed here.
We refer to people who believe this stuff as being on the "Quest for Purity",
a quixotic drive to remove all "toxins" from their bodies. Regardless of
whether or not there are substantiated examples of low doses of chemicals
causing effects, the worry about this problem being widespread is a very
common delusion that consumes an enormous amount of attention and money, is
preyed upon by charlatan doctors (or naturopaths, who call themselves
doctors), and is incredibly confounding. The rub in these potential illnesses
is that you can never actually remove any of these exposures completely, and
thus you are required to continue to purchase diagnostics, cures, and
consultations forever. If there is a true toxicobiologic effect in here, it
will be essentially impossible to discern from the obvious and overriding
psychiatric issues and financial conflicts at play.

~~~
claar
Yep, this was pretty much my opinion.

But then my wife got sick. Spent 5 years with myriads of specialists, who all
did their testings, and threw their hands up in the air.

So guess where we eventually land, when traditional medicine gets us no where?
Within months of removing these effect-less "toxins" from her diet, I have a
wife back.

So believe what you want -- I'd do the same if it hadn't radically effected my
own life.

~~~
enziobodoni
It is devilishly difficult to separate correlation and causation. This
difficulty has to be the reason why some forms of "medicine" persist, ie
naturopathy will have to work sometime, just as a stopped watch is right twice
a day. I would never be so foolish as to discount your story, however, without
knowing the actual facts, and without acknowledging that some people do, in
fact, have food allergies, celiac sprue, etc... The problem is that not nearly
as many people actually have these things as they might believe. And, combined
with the STRONG financial motivation for folks to exploit the sufferings of
others like yourself, my point is just hat its devilishly hard to make sense
of anything.

~~~
zenkat
Double-blind experiments are a great way to separate correlation and
causation. See my (@zenkat's) wife's story above. Every so often, she
accidentally and unknowingly eats foods she is sensitive to, and exhibits
symptoms shortly afterwards. We go back and check the label and ... yep,
there's the dairy/soy/yeast extract.

Oh, and there's no financially motivated third-parties here. We've done all
this testing, elimination, and observation on our own.

~~~
enziobodoni
That's not a double blind experiment, but I'd agree it points to an
intolerance. Actual experiments, I will reiterate, are hard to do. Have you
tried feeding your wife food devoid of known triggers but told her they were
in the food? I would hope not, because it's not an ethical thing to do, but
you need that sort of thing to nail it down. Also, since she seems to
accidentally eat food of unknown provenance, can you be sure the times she's
gotten away with it without symptoms that the food in question was truly
devoid of triggers? In others words, it is very very easy to confirm that
things are bad for you, correctly or not.

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wdewind
> There are several types of proof. Nick Ashford and I observed the same
> patterns of inexplicable new-onset intolerances across very different toxic
> exposures in over a dozen countries. Sheep dippers using organophosphate
> pesticides in rural areas of Europe, radiology workers inhaling chemicals
> while developing films in New Zealand, Gulf War veterans, EPA workers in a
> remodeled and poorly ventilated office building in 1987, cleanup crews
> breathing fumes after oil spills. Many would get ill, and a small percentage
> never recovered. They became exquisitely sensitized, as well as disabled.

This doesn't really sound that crazy to me. People working with industrial
chemicals need protection. This is a widely known and accepted fact. It
doesn't point to the entire population getting sick from small doses of
chemicals in their day to day lives, like the flame-retardants in their
mattresses, as the article opens up claiming.

~~~
Scoundreller
I see similar complaints about risk to health and personal safety from
emergency services personnel, but their life expectancies suggest otherwise.

What I would really like to see is an estimation of the life-expectancy of the
workers in these industries. Is it actually lower than average, or does it
appear that the exposure has a minimal effect on health?

Do the benefits of working in the industry out-weigh the risks (e.g. good
health insurance benefits for treating other diseases out-weigh harms from
exposure)?

Are life insurance companies requiring higher premiums?

~~~
DanBC
Farmers dipping sheep in organophosphates may have many years of reduced
quality life before dying at about the same age as other people.

Farm workers are traditionally poor so that might be a confounding factor.

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claar
I predict many of the additives in our food and other products will be dimly
viewed in retrospective, similar to how we view asbestos & lead paint today.

The preservatives, anti-caking agents, food colorings and other profit-
enhancing additives are basically used with an "innocent until proven guilty"
mindset.

As usual, you need only follow the money; who profits from adding these things
to our food? Pretty much everyone.

There's much less profit motivation for pure food, so it simply won't happen
until there's conclusive proof that the additives are bad.

And who's going to pay for that proof -- enough that those profiting from them
can't squash it?

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Because of market forces and some of the documentation regimes, the end cost
to the consumer is higher _without_ these things. One might think it's because
the-products-without are less mainstream and less subject to economy of scale,
or just because shopping at Whole Foods signals caring. That does not make
Whole Foods a scam; it's complicated. Not picking on Whole Foods ( I've never
even been there ) - they're just a visible metaphor for this phenomenon.

There's something in our Values Map that seems to put profit at cross purposes
to "human values" or "caring". It may also be that food "made by hand" is
actually of higher quality since the producers have more control and are
interested in it more as an... art statement(?).

Maybe it is profit; maybe it ain't.

------
stolio
> In 1962, physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn proposed that science makes
> progress not just through the gradual accumulation and analysis of
> knowledge, but also through periodic revolutions in perspective.

Kuhn is almost always referred to as a philosopher because he left physics to
be a "philosopher of science".

In a nutshell I see an article about a scientist who worships a philosopher,
believes she's the leader of the third major revolution in understanding human
illness, and has a theory that's plausible yet difficult to test. Doesn't make
the idea wrong, but these are not good signs.

In her defense she's published a few times on the subject* still something
about the article's rubbing me the wrong way.

* - [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=claudia+miller](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=claudia+miller)

------
noonespecial
There is room for improvement in the modern world. But you know what could be
making us sick in our everyday lives? Cholera. Makes bpa a little less scary
after all.

~~~
nitrogen
Let's not resort to the appeal to worse problems as a reason to give up on
solving problems closer to home.

------
intopieces
If this topic interests you, you might enjoy the Todd Haynes movie [SAFE]
(1995).

~~~
claar
Also related is Katie Couric's Fed Up (2014).

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Kenji
What makes me sick is this fear-mongering. Go back to the industrialization in
England if you want to see real pollution. We have made astonishing advances
when it comes to increasing air quality. Catalysts in cars, all kinds of
regulations about emissions. We are constantly trying to remove harmful
substances from our lives - but that requires evidence, we can't just randomly
blame 'chemicals'. It's far from perfect, I know that. But the average
lifespan of humans has steadily gone up.

~~~
vixen99
Dreadful fear-mongering? Plenty to monger! Good gracious -we are even told to
watch and limit the amount of fish we eat thanks to its mercury content. And
mercury (horribly toxic) is only one of many substances that we should get
concerned about.

"The researchers, led by scientists from Harvard University and the U.S.
Geological Survey, found that the ocean’s mercury levels have already risen
about 30% over the last 20 years. Combined, the findings mean the Pacific
Ocean will be twice as contaminated with mercury in 2050 as it was in 1995 if
the emission rates continue."

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michaelochurch
The reflexive lay dislike for "chemicals" is a bit weird to me, because
everything in this world is made up of chemicals. If anything, the ostensibly
healthy foods like fruits and vegetables probably have _more_ chemical
complexity and heterogeneity than processed foods.

In terms of pollution and the presence of bad chemicals, it's nothing new.
Burning any organic matter releases thousands of chemicals, and for all the
romance around wood fires and stoves, those are much more polluting than most
industrial processes today.

This isn't to invalidate the core concept of the article, which I can't really
evaluate. It seems likely that some of the irritating illnesses people get are
due to hypersensitivity to certain chemical agents that, in low doses, most
people can tolerate. I just doubt that this is a new problem, given that we've
always lived in somewhat of a chemical stew and our air and water have always
harbored things that can kill us.

~~~
lukifer
Honest question: given the incredible variety of chemical compounds in nature,
if one wants to describe specifically those that are directly harmful to
health, or that trigger an immune response in some persons, what is the
optimal umbrella term? ("Toxin" is every bit as overloaded and fuzzy as
"chemical" in common parlance.)

~~~
o_____________o
That's the problem, isn't it? What is directly harmful to health? Beyond those
agents we've universally codified as people poison, "harmful" is a constantly
shifting designation that will always be misappropriated by those with a cross
to bear over their pet subject. Health is such a complex, nuanced subject that
its hard to imagine anything different than the messy passions we're
describing.

~~~
lukifer
That doesn't address the question. To most people, peanuts aren't harmful, but
a small number of people can die due to exposure. A laundry detergent with no
effect on most people may cause some to break out in hives. What do you call
these substances, whether natural or man-made?

~~~
o_____________o
I understood. My answer is that outside of outright toxicants, the language
will always be reduced to a "fuzzy" value, because the proposition of
"harmful" is itself fuzzy, and is doubly so inside a contentious and complex
environment.

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monochr
I have a new law based on Betteridge's law of headlines:

Any scientist who claims to have produced a paradigm shift hasn't.

You're welcome to call it Monochr Law of Paradigms.

~~~
mcmancini
Mancini's corollary: the robustness of the scientific foundation of an article
is inversely proportional to the frequency of the word "chemicals" in the
article

