Jonathan Campbell, Health Consultant
Natural Therapies for Chronic Illness & Health Maintenance

ToxicAlert

Helping people take charge of their health

If you or a loved one or friend is afflicted with cancer, heart disease, AIDS, or other chronic illness, click here.

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What Can We Do?

There are many ways in which people can make a difference, to begin the movement for cleaning up the pollution and protecting themselves, their families, and their communities from toxic pollution.

Start by learning as much as you can about the pollution that is affecting you, your family, and your community directly. Unfortunately for us and the earth, there is no scarcity of sources. In every city and town, in every community, in virtually every household, there are toxic substances and contamination that affect our health.

In your city or town or the one next to yours, there might be an incinerator, a plastics company, a golf course, or a company that uses toxic chemicals in their day-to-day operations. In your home, whether it is the weed killer that you might have applied to your lawn, the lead in the ink on the newspaper that you might have burned in your stove or fireplace, or the pesticide applied to the coffee beans used to make your coffee, toxic chemicals and the products made with or from them have become part of our lives.

Where can we be most effective? I believe that the most acute threat to health today comes from dioxin, the most toxic organic chemical known. This chemical comes about during the manufacture, use, and incineration of chlorinated organic chemicals and plastics. It is a powerful hormone disrupter - it interferes with the delicate chemical messaging system that keeps us healthy. Concentrations of one part per trillion are considered a significant health risk. (That is one drop in 300 Olympic size swimming pools.) It has entered the food chain, and now contaminates all meats, fish, and dairy products. Virtually every man, woman, and child in the meat-eating societies of the world is now a dioxin victim. The symptoms are varied and ghastly: cancer, endometriosis, Attention Deficit Disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and dozens of others. Dioxin and similar chemicals, called PCBs, are strongly suspected of causing a 50% decline in male sperm count in the industrialized countries.

Unfortunate as this situation is, dioxin nonetheless provides us with the opportunity to educate people about the dangers that lie ahead if the world's industrial societies continue to use toxic chemicals. Dioxin contamination is everywhere. Its presence can be measured. Its sources can be identified and eliminated. Household by household, street by street, community by community, town by town, city by city, state by state, country by country, we can build a worldwide movement to reduce dioxin exposure. Then, building on that knowledge and experience, we can ultimately turn away from the toxic culture, so that our children, their grandchildren, and their grandchildren will inherit a healthy place to live.

Read the dioxin page of this website, and pick up and read a copy of the book Dying From Dioxin by Lois Gibbs, published by South End Press. About half of the book is devoted to organizing a Stop Dioxin Exposure campaign in your community. Look at the community action page of this website, and see if there is an organization near you that you can join with. (I am in the process of getting names of community organizations nationwide who are willing to have their names published. Apologies for the incomplete listings). Call the statewide or national organizations to see if they can link you with other activists in your area. If there is noone else in your community, start a neighborhood group to talk about the pollution in your community. Make a copy of the dioxin page of this website and show it to friends and neighbors.

Become an Earth Guardian, proudly displaying your commitment to protecting yourself, your family, and the earth from toxic pollution.