You Can Protect Yourself from Pollution

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for
the limits of the world.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Political processes have been slow, inefficient, and ineffective in dealing with pollution. So why don’t you deal with ft yourself—at least, with the effects of pollution on your own body? Nutrients you can buy at any health food store provide remarkably effective protection.

Preventing people from polluting the environment you live in is very difficult. Such mass action depends on unreliable political processes. Don’t rely on laws; they may not happen. And even when laws have been enacted, they have often controlled the wrong things, and at fur too great a cost. For example, a nonsmoker living or working with a smoker may
double his or her chances of contracting lung cancer, yet EPA regulations ignore this ubiquitous and lethal form of pollution while wasting billions of our tax dollars controlling pollutants of far less consequence.

You can protect yourself and your loved ones against the most pervasive forms of pollution, without waiting for others to take action, Here are some ways:

Chlorine (an oxidant) and some chlorinated organic compounds in your water supply can promote cancer and contribtute to heart disease. The chlorinated organics are broken down in the body by the mixed-function oxidase enzymes,which are found in all cells but are particularly active in the liver. Upon breakdown, the chlorinated organics are converted to free radicals, which do damage that can lead to cancer and cardiovascular disease. Singlet oxygen, a highly reactive form of oxygen which does similar damage to free radicals (and can even produce free radicals), can be easily made in the lab by reacting salt, water, hydrogen peroxide, and sodium hypochlorite. Chlorinated drinking water contains significant quantities of hypochlorite. Therefore, it can be expected that drinking chlorinated water will increase the levels of dangerous singlet oxygen in your body, since hydrogen peroxide and salt are found there. It is simple and inexpensive to remove these water pollutants in your home by installing a water filter combining coarse filtration (to remove particulates) and activated charcoal, which removes organics and chlorine from the water as it flows through. A suitable water filtration unit (such as the one we use) can be purchased inexpensively from Sears for about $20. The filter cartridge (replaceable for $5.00) lasts about 6 months, some time after which you can begin to taste chlorine again. That’s the time to replace the filter cartridge. We think the filtered water tastes delicious—as good as expensive bottled water—and it is ideal for cooking as well, Note that this type of filter does not remove minerals, which have health benefits (there is a positive correlation between heart attacks and soft water, which is low in minerals). Water distillation units not only remove the desirable minerals, but they have the additional disadvantage that organics and chlorine will distill over with the steam in all but extremely expensive research laboratory units. We are not suggesting that chlorination of public water supplies be halted. ‘The potential hazards of water-borne diseases like typhoid fever are far greater than the carcinogenic hazards of the chlorination products. But after the chlorine has disinfected the water, you can remove it and its byproducts from the water that you use for drinking and cooking. The EPA has proposed that all municipal water systems treat their water with activated charcoal after chlorination. This approach is needlessly expensive, since only a tiny fraction of the water will ever be used internally by humans.

Ozone is a strong oxidizing agent found in all polluted city air and also over green countryside. Pine trees in particular produce ozone and free radicals by releasing hydrocarbons which interact with air and ultraviolet light. The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and the Great Smoky Mountains were covered with this photochemical smog long before the white man arrived in America. Los Angeles, too, already had heavy smog by the time the white man arrived. (In fact, the Indians living here called it “the valley of ten thousand smokes.”) Vitamins E and PABA have both been demonstrated to protect rats against ozone damage. Dietary supplementation of 100 milligrams of dl-alpha-tocopheryl acetate per kilogram of diet extended lethal time for survival of 50 per- cent of the animals exposed continuously to one part per million of ozone from 8.2 to 18.5 days. Another nutrient group effective in providing protection against carcinogenic effects of air pollutants in experimental animals are the precursors to vitamin A, the retinoids, vitamin A itself, and the carotenoids, such as beta carotene (which give carrots their yellow color). Singlet oxygen is created during some reactions of ozone. Both alpha tocopherol and beta carotene (more effective than alpha tocopherol) can quench (terminate chain reactions of) singlet oxygen. Because of its particular molecular structural relationship to beta carotene, we think that the red carotenoid canthaxanthin should be even more effective at quenching singlet oxygen.

Nitrates and nitrites, used in many meats to prevent growth of ultratoxin-producing botulism organisms and carcinogen-producing Aspergillis flavus mold, can combine with amines found in the meats to form carcinogenic nitrosamines. However, vitamin C, in adequate doses, can block nitrosamine formation. In fact, sorne meat packers add sodium ascorbate, a form of vitamin C, to the meat, along with the nitrites. However, there is an FDA-set legal limit on how much C can be added, preventing the packers from providing better protection from nitrosamines. The food industry has filed a request for the FDA to permit higher ascorbate additions to meat.

Most urban lead pollution is found in particles in the air and dust. (Small children may suffer from the much greater hazard of eating lead paint chips, and a few very old urban areas such as parts of New York, Boston, and London are still served by dangerous lead water pipes.) Air particles also contain carcinogenic tars from smoke in the air, which are a far
greater health hazard. These particles can be easily removed from the air you breathe at home by installing an electrostatic precipitator. This device has a fan which sucks air through the unit, where air particles are electrically charged by a fine wire electric grid, The charged particles are then attracted to an oppositely charged metal plate, where they become stuck fast. The cleaned air is blown out the other end. Many electrostatic precipitators also contain a charcoal filter to remove odors. The electrostatic collector cell will need washing every few months or so—which can be simply done in the sink or shower. Electrostatic precipitators are available from Sears, Montgomery Ward, and other large appliance stores. If you smoke, you don’t have to subject the other members of your
family to potentially lethal smoke too, simply by being in the same room. You can get an electrostatic precipitator. Another excellent type of air cleaner is the HEPA filter unit, originally developed to remove plutonium particles from the air in nuclear weapons plants. Although more expensive, it requires less maintenance. If a doctor prescribes such a unit for medical reasons, it is tax deductible.

“The only other solution is that we may evolve into a species immune to all this junk.”

The combination of EDTA (a prescription-drug chelating agent) and vitamin C is quite effective in removing lead accumulations in bone and in the brain. EDTA alone does not remove much of the lead in the brain, where it probably does most of the damage. Lead also appears to be an immune system suppressant and definitely inhibits the actions of free radical-scavenging compounds which contain sulfhydryl (SH) groups. Lead from leaded gasoline is not a significant hazard except in chronic direct contact with leaded gasoline. (Some careless auto mechanics and possibly guards in some old, poorly ventilated automotive tunnels may have this problem).

The oceans naturally contain as much mercury in solution as about 10 million times man’s present annual rate of production of mercury and its compounds. Thus, sea animals, both fish and mammals, have evolved biological means of handling mercury. The most common method is to inactivate the mercury by forming very much less toxic mercury selenide. Sea animals get the selenium they need for these reactions directly from the sea. (Selenium has many other useful properties; e.g,, it is a powerful antioxidant which works synergistically with vitamin E and other antioxidants.) Selenium supplements can help protect you against mercury. Although there have been tragic incidents of local mercury pollution, such as Minamata Bay in Japan, the average mercury content of tuna and other fish has not increased in the past few thousand years, as shown by analysis of fish from Roman and Egyptian tombs.

Sunlight is not often thought of as a pollutant. However, ultraviolet light can damage DNA in skin and contributes to skin aging and is the number one cause of human skin cancer. Several substances are effective in preventing ultraviolet damage. PABA, a vitamin, is used widely in tanning lotions
and sunblocks to protect skin by absorbing UV energy and scavenging singlet oxygen and free radicals. Although you canmake PABA in your body, you do not have a large enough concentration in the skin to provide optimal UV protection.

PABA is effective both orally and topically. Topical PABA esters are even more effective since they resist being washed off the skin by sweat or while swimming. Orally administered BHT, a powerful antioxidant food additive, was very protective in experiments with hairless mice in preventing skin cancer. Oral Vitamin A is another effective protectant against UV induced skin cancer. Oral carotenoids are also useful, including beta carotene and canthaxanthin. Our experimental antioxidant formula roughly triples the amount of ultraviolet light required to cause our skin to burn.

The polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are pollutants formed from burning organics (such as wood, coal, oil, gasoline, candles, tobacco, cannabis, etc.). These compounds are carcinogenic—the PAH free radical reactions attack cellular DNA, resulting in altered, broken, and deformed chromosomes. Antioxidants tend to provide protection against the epoxides and free radicals produced by PAH. This includes vitamins E, C, B-1, and calcium pantothenate, cysteine, zinc, and selenium, Even more effective are the synthetic antioxidants BHT and BHA.

Radiation is a worry to some people. Microwave radiation, below the level that causes heating, does no damage because the microwave photons each carry 100,000 times too little energy to break chemical bonds and create free radicals. The photons of ordinary light are vastly more energetic and
dangerous. If you are concerned about microwaves, you can buy an inexpensive device to detect them at most stores which sell microwave ovens. Microwaves do not create free radicals, mutations, or cancer. Radioactive heavy metals, such as radon, thorium, radium, and polonium, are dangerous.

These metals are generated from coal-burning power plants and are released to the atmosphere on very small respirable particles of fly ash. Most fly ash this fine is not caught by any known practical stack-gas cleaning apparatus. If you breathe in these particles, the metals concentrate in the bones and remain there for life (unless removed by chelation). Coal-burning power plants, even if they could meet the very strict and exceedingly expensive–and probably impractical—1985 EPA standards, actually release more radiation of a hazardous kind per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants. Another source of radiation is potassium-40 and carbon-14, both naturally occurring radioactive forms. Radiation causes cellular damage by creating free radicals. Free radical scavengers are, therefore, effective protectants, especially BHT, BHA, vitamin E, and cysteine. In self experiments, we have found that our experimental antioxidant mixture roughly triples the X-ray dosage required to cause our skin to redden and burn.

Aldehydes are a harmful class of chemical pollutant formed during the burning of fuels; for example, they are found in automobile exhaust, cigarette smoke, and smog and are also formed by the liver from alcohol. Aldehydes autoxidize to produce free radicals and are cross-linkers, mutagens, and carcinogens, and evidence supports the idea that they
make a significant contribution to aging processes. The damaging effects of aldehydes can be largely blocked by taking adequate quantities of supplemental antioxidants. In rat experiments, a combination of vitamins C and B-1, and the amino acid cysteine enabled rats to survive a dose of
acetaldehyde large enough to kill 90 percent of another group of rats not receiving the C, B-1, cysteine supplements.

Emphysema victims suffer from hypoventilation, an inability to breathe in through their damaged lungs enough air for adequate oxygen supplies. Their brains, in particular, suffer from the reduced oxygen supply. One serious consequence of the low oxygen in the brain is an increase in
production of free radicals, atoms or molecules with an unpaired electron which can cause severe damage to many cellular components (especially to the lipid membrane-dependent enzymes and also to the DNA genetic material, where damage may result in cancer-causing mutations). Oxgen in normal quantities helps to control these free radicals.

But emphysema victims cannot breathe in enough air to get this much oxygen. Hydergine® has been shown to provide high levels of protection against free radical damage in the brain, as under conditions of reduced levels of oxygen supply, such as occur in emphysema or impaired cerebral circulation. Most cancers and cases of emphysema in the United States, however, are caused by smoking and drinking, not air or water pollution. In fact, about 35 percent of all cancer deaths are due to high-tar cigarettes coupled with excess alcohol consumption, and about 45 percent are caused by improper nutrition (a combination of excess caloric intake, excess fat intake—polyunsaturated fat being particularly hazardous—low fiber diet, deficiency of retinoids and antioxidants, and obesity). Smoking greatly amplifies the hazards of air pollution. Smoking inhibits the motions of cilia (tiny hair-like projections) which carry mucus and pollutants out of the
lungs. Essentially all coal miners suffering from black lung disease (caused by half a pound or so of coal dust in their lungs) are smokers. Many of these smoking coal miners who have contracted black lung disease are now collecting billions of dollars of tax money.

But is it a wise public policy to subsidize people who choose to cause injury to themselves? Non-smoking miners breathe in just as much coal dust, but they have not destroyed the ability of their lungs to remove this trash. Smoking also seriously damages the ability of the immune system to locate and destroy cancer cells in the lungs.

As P. B. Medawar, the Nobel Prize-winning tumor biologist, has pointed out, everyone probably gets cancer thousands and possibly even millions of times in his life, but these cancers are almost always detected and destroyed by your immune system long before they become noticeable. World War
II shipyard asbestos workers who did not smoke may have a slightly elevated incidence of lung cancer, but those who smoked have an extremely high incidence of parenchymal cancer, an otherwise rare and very deadly type of lung cancer. Uranium miners who do not smoke may or may not have a very slightly elevated risk of hung cancer, but those who do
smoke have an extremely high risk of lung cancer. Most human cancers are the result of an individual’s voluntary choice of life style, not of an involuntary consumption of chemical pollutants in the general environment. (The most important exception to this is hing cancer induced by the involuntary breathing of other people’s tobacco smoke.) Both the EPA
and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulate according to the congressionally legislated doctrine that protection must be designed and enforced for the most susceptible individuals in our society, even if this susceptibility is self-chosen, as is smoking.

As a result of this, nonsmokers are forced to pay billions of their tax dollars per year for costs whose benefits are reaped largely by smokers. In our opinion, it is time to terminate these immense hidden subsidies to smokers, Either let the smokers pay these greatly increased pollution control and safety costs, or let them protect themselves with the proper nutrients, or let them suffer the consequences of their own voluntary actions.