Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases

[Dover]

Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases

Scientists alarmed as number of cases triples in 20 years

Juliette Jowit, environment editor
Sunday August 15, 2004
The Observer

The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered.
The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health.

In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year from these conditions in England and Wales. By the late 1990s, there were 10,000.

'This has really scared me,' said Professor Colin Pritchard of Bournemouth University, one of the report's authors. 'These are nasty diseases: people are getting more of them and they are starting earlier. We have to look at the environment and ask ourselves what we are doing.'.....cont'd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1283588,00.html

[gulfcoastliberal]

1. What we are doing?

What we are doing is poisoning our world for short-term gain, that's what we're doing. The oceans are turning into acid, the rainforests will soon be gone, and global warmimg is melting the permafrost. We're fucked - just a matter of time before nature violently corrects our misdeeds. It will not be pretty. The worst part is, it was all preventable.

[HuckleB]

2. Thanks for sharing. This is important information.

Plus, I now have an excuse to spend an evening at the Library, checking out the report and anything else I happen upon.

:)

[kwolf68]

3. ..

Environmental issues should be the forefront of the Kerry/Edwards campaign. They are both stalwarts of our environment and can be trusted.

Instead of tackling the environment from the standpoint of more song-birds, wolves, and cleaner creeks (all great), we need to showcase environmental decay as an example of a systematic problem with what Bush and the Republican zealots promote.

Basically, the environment exemplifies the fact Repukes believe greed and profits are the MO for our nation. They would sellout or exploit anything and everything if some major corporation (contributor) could profitably benefit. EVERYTHING is for sale, EVERYTHING is subject to exploitation in Bush’s America.

The notion that we can’t have a clean, safe, bountiful environment while also having job growth was debunked during the Clinton administration. Clinton signed many environmental laws positively affecting everything from our water to air to our wildlands. All that and Clinton still managed to produce 22 million (I think) jobs for our nation.

What the environment will SHOW is whose side Bush is on. Throughout the history of our nation, corporate industry has exploited human beings because they were on an unbridled quest for wealth and power, nothing entrepreneurial about it. Black Lung Disease, Industrial Deaths, Mining Deaths, Brown Lung Disease Smoking, DDT, etc., etc…each time we try to curtail such nefarious outputs the Far Right comes out yelling socialism and other debate-draining clichés…all the while as we see children and adults come down with asthma, or worse. Not to mention genetic defects.

In the end, most of these health problems are only subjected to poor communities, people with little power to fight against the well-financed establishment. If a polluting shithole plant opened by a rich Republican neighborhood, you bet your ass it would get moved, closed down OR (YES FOLKS) the proper environmental controls placed on it.

[HuckleB]

4. A kick in time saves lime!