Eco scams
Ever hear the quote from P.T. Barnum? “There’s a sucker born every minute” Well, it seems that we are awash in people who are trying to separate you from your hard earned money and nowhere is that effort stronger with more fraudulent claims that in the “green” movement.
My latest run in with quack science and pseudo scientific claims is with the folks who peddle green laundry solutions, new ways to clean but without all those nasty detergents and toxins that inevitably enter the ecosystem.
There is this thing called “laundry discs” that consist of three plastic encased ceramic discs that you throw in with the laundry. They are supposedly good for 700 washes and say they will clean your clothes at a fraction of the cost of regular laundry detergent and without all the pollution. Nice idea. But how do they work? Well first off, inside the package, the instructions recommend the use of laundry detergent in conjunction with the discs. They also recommend using borax and bleaches in conjunction with the product. Sound fishy? Sort of defeats the purpose doesn’t it? They go on to say the discs create ions from the electrically charged ceramic discs. Any chemistry student knows that water is full of ions to begin with. Its called pH and measures the acidity or baseness of the water. So how do the discs create more ions and if they do how do they keep the chemistry from immediately bonding them back together? Then there is the problem of the electrically charged discs. How in blazes do they stay charged in the water??? Its just a bunch of ceramic beads rattling around in a plastic case! And they sell this stuff and its not cheap!
Its pure hokum, pseudo scientific words making outrageous, impossible claims. Now generally, I really don’t care about the loads of BS out there, laundry loads included, but it is particularly galling when business preys on our desires to use less, make less of an ecological impact, to line their own pockets. And when this stuff is sold as an eco panacea in local so called “green” stores its even worse. I found this product in a local large Halifax green store on Quinpool. And I am sure that its well meaning clientele have been picking it off the shelves in the hopes that not only saving money, but reducing the ecoburden as well. Both the store and the folks who buy this stuff need to get a short lesson in science.
Quack, quack! Back to P.T. and his adage. Folks, learn some basic science and be a little skeptical. If it sounds too good to be true, it is! If you really think that three plastic encased ceramic discs will clean your laundry for two years, then you probably think that Elvis is still alive as well. We seems to suspend our thinking when we hear phrases like “ions” “electrically charged” or “electrostatic”.
Now where was that carburetor that runs on water and gives me 100 miles to the gallon?
February 20th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Hi richard;
The world will try and sell us security on alot of products.
The establishment media will have to find a new tactic with which to ridicule those who oppose
the fluoridation of water after a major new Scientific American report concluded that “Scientific attitudes
toward fluoridation may be starting to shift” as new evidence emerges of the poison’s link to disorders
affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland, as well as lowering IQ.
“Today almost 60 percent of the U.S. population drinks fluoridated water, including residents of 46 of the
nation’s 50 largest cities,” reports Scientific American’s Dan Fagin.
Fagin is an award-wining environmental reporter and Director of New York University’s Science, Health
and Environmental Reporting Program.
“Outside the U.S., fluoridation has spread to Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and a few other
countries. Critics of the practice have generally been dismissed as gadflies or zealots by mainstream
researchers and public health agencies in those countries as well as the U.S. (In other nations, however,
water fluoridation is rare and controversial.)”
Indeed, the zeitgeist for scoffing at those who spoke of the dangers of mass medicating the public against
their will with fluoride was the deranged and paranoid character of General Ripper in the hit 1964 Peter
Selllers movie Dr. Strangelove.
But that stereotype is quickly fading as serious scientific research uncovers proof that all the horror stories
about sodium fluoride told down the decades are essentially true.
The Scientific American study “Concluded that fluoride can subtly alter endocrine function, especially in the
thyroid — the gland that produces hormones regulating growth and metabolism.”
The report also notes that “a series of epidemiological studies in China have associated high fluoride
exposures with lower IQ.”
“Epidemiological studies and tests on lab animals suggest that high fluoride exposure increases the risk
of bone fracture, especially in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and diabetics,” writes Fagin.
Fagin interviewed Steven Levy, director of the Iowa Fluoride Study which tracked about 700 Iowa children
for sixteen years. Nine-year-old “Iowa children who lived in communities where the water was fluoridated
were 50 percent more likely to have mild fluorosis… than [nine-year-old] children living in nonfluoridated
areas of the state,” writes Fagin.
The study adds to a growing literature of shocking scientific studies proving fluoride’s link with all manner
of health defects, even as governments in the west, including recently the UK, make plans to mass medicate
the population against their will with this deadly toxin.
In 2005, a study conducted at the Harvard School of Dental Health found that fluoride in tap water directly
contributes to causing bone cancer in young boys.
“New American research suggests that boys exposed to fluoride between the ages of five and 10 will suffer
an increased rate of osteosarcoma - bone cancer - between the ages of 10 and 19,” according to a London
Observer article about the study.
Based on the findings of the study, the respected Environmental Working Group lobbied to have fluoride in
tap water be added to the US government’s classified list of substances known or anticipated to cause cancer in humans.
Cancer rates in the U.S. have skyrocketed with one in three people now contracting the disease at some stage in their life.
The link to bone cancer has also been discovered by other scientists, but a controversy ensued after it
emerged that Harvard Professor Chester Douglass, who downplayed the connection in his final report, was in fact editor-in-chief of The Colgate Oral Health Report, a quarterly newsletter funded by Colgate-Palmolive Co.,
which makes fluoridated toothpaste.
An August 2006 Chinese study found that fluoride in drinking water damages children’s liver and kidney functions.
FACTS ABOUT FLUORIDE
- Fluoride is a waste by-product of the fertilizer and aluminum industry and it’s also a Part II
Poison under the UK Poisons Act 1972.
- Fluoride is one of the basic ingredients in both PROZAC (FLUoxetene Hydrochloride) and Sarin nerve gas (Isopropyl-Methyl-Phosphoryl FLUoride).
- USAF Major George R. Jordan testified before Un-American Activity committees of
Congress in the 1950’s that in his post as U.S.-Soviet liaison officer, the Soviets openly admitted to
“Using the fluoride in the water supplies in their concentration camps, to make the prisoners stupid, docile,
and subservient.”
- The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany’s Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride’s supposed effect on children’s teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people in their concentration camps into calm submission. (Ref. book: “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben” by Joseph Borkin.)
- 97% of western Europe has rejected fluoridated water due to the known health risks, however 10% of Britons drink it and the UK government is trying to fast track the fluoridation of the entire country’s water supply.
- In Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg fluoridation of water was rejected because it was classified as compulsive medication against the subject’s will and therefore violated fundamental human rights.