William Furr ([info]thugkiwi) wrote,
@ 2009-05-11 15:39:00
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Current location:Work
Current mood: indescribable
Current music:Creed - Illusion

Story of Stuff
If ya'll haven't heard of or watched The Story of Stuff, you're missing out. I highly recommend it.

Renee sent it to me a while ago, but I just now got to it because an article about it came up on the New York Times, and I was even further intrigued.


Video Warning of Pitfalls of Consumption Is a Hit in Schools - NYTimes.com

Interestingly, and thankfully, the website includes an annotated script with footnotes and references.

I dug deeper and found a cool write-up of Victor Lebow, including a scanned copy of his 1955 paper that's quoted in the film.

I knew a lot of the stuff in this video already from my own personal growth over the past few years, but there were a few things that I hadn't either thought through or come across yet.

In particular, I was horrified by the notion that human mother's breast milk is the very tip-top of the food chain (unless you count the breast-milk of cannibal mothers?), wherein the very highest bio-concentrations of toxins can be found. The same effect is found at lots of different levels of the food chain. Fish was the one I was most aware of. Tuna, for example, are predators who eat smaller fish, who in turn eat smaller things, that in turn eat smaller things. At each step of the chain, the next rung up accumulates all of the toxins (heavy metals, pesticides, etc.) that each individual thing on a lower rung had eaten. In general, it's safer to eat lower on the food chain. For example, it's safer to eat catfish than things that eat catfish.

Applying the same logic leads inexorably to the conclusion that mother's milk, in terms of bio-accumulated toxins, is the most dangerous stuff around.

Also, I knew that our current suburban consumer culture was a deliberate product of post-war re-purposing of the economy in the 1950s, but I had no idea just how deliberate the efforts were and are to create an ever-accelerating consumer-based culture. The whole idea is astounding to me. In hindsight, it looks so incredibly stupid and ugly. How could they possible have thought this was a good idea for humanity?

In the cold light of hindsight, it's easy to dismiss them as villains: greedy, short-sighted, stupid, wasteful... I'm sure the reality of their motivations is far more complex. I can't help but be amazed and dumbstruck.

Even Victor Lebow seems to have had second thoughts, judging by his later publication, Free Enterprise: The Opium of the American People


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[info]subwaysex
2009-05-11 11:45 pm UTC (link)
> In particular, I was horrified by the notion that human mother's breast milk is the very tip-top of the food chain (unless you count the breast-milk of cannibal mothers?), wherein the very highest bio-concentrations of toxins can be found. The same effect is found at lots of different levels of the food chain. Fish was the one I was most aware of. Tuna, for example, are predators who eat smaller fish, who in turn eat smaller things, that in turn eat smaller things. At each step of the chain, the next rung up accumulates all of the toxins (heavy metals, pesticides, etc.) that each individual thing on a lower rung had eaten. In general, it's safer to eat lower on the food chain. For example, it's safer to eat catfish than things that eat catfish.

> Applying the same logic leads inexorably to the conclusion that mother's milk, in terms of bio-accumulated toxins, is the most dangerous stuff around.

I don't think it works that way. For one thing, nutrients we need also accumulate as you get higher in the food chain. So while, e.g., salmon might have a higher mercury concentration than the stuff it feeds on, it also has a much higher concentration of Omega-3 fatty acids. Likewise, breastmilk might have some toxic components, but it is also the food specifically designed and intended for infants to consume.

Also, chemicals don't necessarily aggregate as you move up the food chain. Some things might directly accumulate (e.g. if you eat three fish which have 3mg of mercury each, you might now contain 9mg of mercury), but others may be passed as you move up the food chain (e.g. you might only absorb 4mg of mercury from those same three fish).

I think the breast milk argument basically mocks itself. We know that babies fed breast milk are, on average, measurably healthier than babies not fed breast milk. That alone seems to debunk the alarmist claim that breast milk is the most dangerous stuff around. (Also, if dangerous chemicals leeched into breastmilk in significant amounts, wouldn't women who'd been exposed to heavy elements be breast-pumping as a way to detox?)

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[info]thugkiwi
2009-05-12 02:08 pm UTC (link)
Hey Derek. Looking forward to visiting you out in California soon. :)

So what about the rest of the video? Was there anything else interesting or of value there?

"Also, chemicals don't necessarily aggregate as you move up the food chain. Some things might directly accumulate (e.g. if you eat three fish which have 3mg of mercury each, you might now contain 9mg of mercury), but others may be passed as you move up the food chain (e.g. you might only absorb 4mg of mercury from those same three fish)."

Which is it? You can't have both. Either one or the other of those things happen. The bio-magnification effect is well-established in aquatic food chains, and there is evidence the same occurs in terrestrial food chains.

(To be precise, bioaccumulation is when uptake of a substance from food and the environment (e.g. - water, air) happens at a rate greater than its excretion within an individual. Biomagnification is increasing accumulation up the food chain due to successively higher levels of bioaccumulation through food.)

"I think the breast milk argument basically mocks itself. We know that babies fed breast milk are, on average, measurably healthier than babies not fed breast milk."

We all also know that pregnant women and children are far more sensitive to contaminants and toxins. There is a huge list of things pregnant women are supposed to avoid. Smoking and drinking are obvious ones, but also eating tuna and other biomagnified toxin sources.

I hate that you have to pay for access to online journals of peer-reviewed research. Anyway, this is very suggestive:

What is in Breast Milk That Should Not Be?: Biomagnification - How the Infant Arrives at the Top of the Food Chain - Pediatr Nurs. 2005;31(4):333-338. © 2005 Jannetti Publications, Inc.

Depuration of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in breast milk from California first-time mothers

Determination of Q1, an unknown organochlorine contaminant, in human milk, Antarctic air, and further environmental samples

Oh yeah, I just remembered that the annotated script of the film contains footnotes and refernces.

Chemicals found in breast milk
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3000

http://safemilk.org/article.php?list=type&type=5

Anyway, as much fun as that was, this argument is still a red herring away from the real issue of a deliberately structured destructive society.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]thugkiwi
2009-05-12 02:21 pm UTC (link)
"That alone seems to debunk the alarmist claim that breast milk is the most dangerous stuff around."

Renee pointed this out to me. I should be clear that this is MY alarmist, unwarranted, hyperbolic claim.

Annie Leonard makes a similar point in the film, but she's much more careful with her language. Here's the excerpt from the annotated script:

"Do you know what is the food at the top of the food chain with the highest levels of many toxic contaminants? Human breast milk. (25)

That means that we have reached a point where the smallest members of our societies — our babies — are getting their highest lifetime dose of toxic chemicals from breastfeeding from their mothers. (26) Is that not an incredible violation? Breastfeeding must be the most fundamental human act of nurturing; it should be sacred and safe. Now breastfeeding is still best and mothers should definitely keep breastfeeding, (27) but we should protect it. They [government] should protect it. I thought they were looking
out for us.

And of course, the people who bear the biggest brunt of these toxic chemicals are the factory workers (28), many of whom are women of reproductive age. (29) They’re working with reproductive toxics, carcinogens
and more. Now, I ask you, what kind of woman of reproductive age would work in a job exposed to reproductive toxics, except one who had no other option?"

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
really?
[info]rebekahiscool
2009-05-16 01:17 am UTC (link)
What the hell eats a catfish?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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