Ingrid FranzonIn mines of old, before the days of electronic safety alarms, canaries were used. When the canaries stopped singing, the miners knew that they had to get out: the air was no longer safe to breathe. Today, human canaries are falling ill. It’s time for us to heed this warning and seek safety, says Ingrid Franzon, nutrition practitioner from Sweden. Fiorella Belpoggi, from the European Ramazzini Foundation Cesare Maltoni Cance research centre, agrees: The use and production of harmful chemicals must be better regulated to prevent the next generation from being harmed by toxic chemicals. Report by Irene de Pous.

‘We worry about the fate of plants and animals. What about the fate of humans 60 years after mass production of chemicals began?’ According to Franzon it is high time to re-evaluate the effects of more than half a century of chemical farming and pollution, and to change our eating habits. ‘Natural farming has been tested for thousands of years, the massive use of chemicals for only 60 years and we’re already noticing the downside.’ Natural environmental protection can be found in the vitamins and minerals found in food. So we don’t need to be afraid. Knowledge of food and nutrition is vital.

Diet

The body needs to detoxify, explains Franzon, who helps people restore their health with diet and food supplements. We absorb more and more toxins from cosmetics, skin care products, airborne sources and pesticides. Processed foods and readymade meals provide too few vitamins and minerals to deal with these toxins. Nutrition values in fruit and vegetables have decreased enormously over the past 60 years: in some cases more than 50%. If your body can’t get rid of the toxins, you may get symptoms like irritation, headache, allergy and asthma.

So health has everything to do with food. This applies not only with small symptoms, but also with cancer, heart diseases and diabetes. Although most people know the risks, a lack of knowledge about the solutions leads to apathy. A diet of organic vegetables, fruits, grains and protein is a firm base. Food supplements add the lacking nutrients to help our body detoxify. ‘A healthy diet even decreases the genetic risk of obesity and diabetes for the offspring, as research with mice shows,’ says Franzon.

Safety

The world around us is full of chemical compounds, often with unknown consequences. Franzon and Belpoggi both find signs that are alarming.

Belpoggi: ‘In 2007, 160,000 people died of cancer in Italy. That is more than the number of victims during the whole Second World War in Italy. But research is still mainly about treatment.’ Whereas part of the cause, according to Belpoggi, lies in the environment and diet, a factor that we can influence. Also diseases like CFS/ME (Chronicle Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis), MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) and allergies are now termed ‘environmental illnesses’.

‘According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, in 1998 in the United States 80,000 chemical compounds were in circulation. For 43% of these the consequences were unknown; for 50% they were partly known. Only from 7% was there clarity about the toxicity,’ tells Belpoggi. In other words: the fact that something is available on the market doesn’t guarantee its safety. Sometimes things are withdrawn from the market again.

Bright side

Pesticides are everywhere by now, and can even be found in our food after washing or cooking. There is an official list of approved chemicals and pesticides within the EU. The effects of these have not been tested on children, nor have the effects of long term use, Franzon emphasizes. Research on the extinction of birds and fish around the Great Lakes in the United States showed that they became infertile after generations of exposure to oestrogen-like chemicals from fertilizers.

With the introduction of biofuels we expose ourselves to another danger, according to Belpoggi. Biofuels do indeed decrease CO2 emissions. But during the combustion process toxic compounts that are considered to be endocrine disruptors (such as aldehyde) are emitted. These have been demonstrated to present risks to human health.

Belpoggi: We need to conduct adequate long-term studies on new chemicals and new technologies before they are introduced into our environment, in order to evaluate risks to health and the health of future generations.

Meanwhile, we can support good health and minimize the risks as much as possible by eating organic food, detoxifying in the sauna, taking food supplements and, most of all, looking at life on the bright side.

Links
The Ramazzini Institute
The website of Ingrid Franzon: www.kanariefaglarna.com