 the Phoenix metro area. Clearly, these chemicals are off gassing and emerging from the ground above the plumes of chemical contamination that start with the Motorola 52nd Street Superfund Site (52nd Street to 7th Avenue) and go on to the West Van Buren Study Area, which is in the WQARF Program (7th Avenue to 91st Avenue). The JATAP study erroneously attributes the TCE, vinyl chloride, and some of the other toxic chemicals found to “stationary sources,” a term used for air pollution coming out of smokestacks or from a facility. There are no industrial sources of these chemicals in the Phoenix metro area. (TCE was banned from industrial uses decades ago.) [TCE (Trichloroethylene) degrades or breaks down into vinyl chloride and/or chloroform.]
The EPA is here sampling soil gases and air inside some homes in the east end of the 52nd Street Motorola Superfund Site, where the depth to groundwater is quite shallow, to determine the extent of how much TCE and its break down components, vinyl chloride and chloroform, are seeping into homes as the toxic chemicals rise from the plume of contamination and emerge into the air.
One of the shocking findings is that South Phoenix has some of the highest levels of TCE, but there is no plume off gassing there. Instead, as South Phoenix and the Salt River bed are the lowest points, geographically and topographically, in the Phoenix metro area, the fumes that are emitted from the plumes and contaminated soils are slumping to, and pooling in, South Phoenix.
The communities on or adjacent to plumes of TCE and PCE all had high levels of these carcinogens in their ambient air. West Phoenix had the highest levels and concentrations. This is chronic, low-level exposure. Since the air in Phoenix tends to slide down gradient to the Salt River bed, pool there, then blow back and forth along the riverbed, South Phoenix, while not the site of one of these plumes, is the unlucky recipient of the seeping and pooling of some these fumes out of the contaminated plumes. But these chemicals also did find their way many miles away to the rural control site in Queen Valley, where there are no plumes of TCE underground, or any industrial sources. So there is widespread air contamination from TCE, PCE, vinyl chloride, and other chemicals emanating from these underground reservoirs of carcinogens, traveling many miles with prevailing winds.
Of course, no one in the communities where the high levels were found was ever told, and nothing has been done to mitigate the problem.
EPA has set a standard for cancer risk, with a one in a million chance in a lifetime of exposure considered “acceptable.” But the JATAP monitoring had found in the high end of the monitoring levels, formaldehyde at 34 times this standard; benzene at 8 times this standard, 1,3 butadiene at 7.5 times this standard, chloroform at 3.6 times this standard, acetaldehyde at 3.4 times this standard, PCE at 3 times this standard, and TCE, with the new standard expected to be dropped from 5ppb to 1-2ppb as an acceptable standard, also above the one in a million chance in a lifetime of exposure. And, remember, citizens are being subjected to all of these carcinogens, not just one. Some of these chemicals are attributed to “mobile sources,” or vehicular traffic burning hydrocarbons.
And it calls into question the value of cancer risk standards. If there are levels many times the “acceptable cancer risk,” then why isn’t anyone doing anything about it or even informing and/or warning the people who live in these more polluted areas?
When DWAZ approached the Office of the Mayor of Phoenix about this, it was referred to the City of Phoenix’ Office of Environmental Programs. The manager of that department stated that the levels “weren’t high every day.” When we asked if that was the City’s and the Mayor’s final response, it was then referred to Colin Tetreault, Senior Sustainability Policy Advisor, Office of the Mayor. After several months, there is no response.Doctor in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and lecturer (profesor asociado) in the Department of Sociology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His areas of interest are European governance of employment, industrial relations, employment and working conditions and employment policies. Since April 2013 he has been a researcher at notus-asr, having been involved in different research projects on the European Semester, the representativeness of the social partners in several European sectors, fraudulent forms of contracting work, active labour market policies, dual vocational training and industrial relations models. In addition, he has worked in European projects analysing the impact of digitalization on working conditions and industrial relations. He has published various research reports, articles in social science journals, as well as book chapters.THE KEY to my incredible recovery has been my diet. I follow the Autoimmune Protocol which is basically a very restrictive version of paleo. The idea of a Palaeolithic diet can be traced to a 1975 book by gastroenterologist Walter Voegtlin, which in 1985 was further developed by Stanley Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner, and popularized by Loren Cordain in his 2002 book The Paleo Diet.
There are a lot of myths about this diet, and I’m not convinced that anyone can follow a true paleo diet as not much of the original paleo pantry exists due to human cultivation and selective breeding of crops and livestock. Another criticism of paleo is that humans have adapted and evolved and can therefore eat a different diet. A further argument against paleo is that our stone age ancestors lived shorter lives and therefore our current diets must somehow be better.
I believe the first two points are largely true; it is indeed very difficult to eat a true paleo diet in our modern world, and yes humans are an adaptable species and can eat a far wider range of foods than those available thousands of years ago, just not all of us have adapted quite yet! However, I disagree that our current diet is the key to our longevity. I will investigate that point later.
I have written the following essay on what I believe our ancestors ate. This is not an academic paper and is designed to be easily accessible, however references are provided should you wish to look into my sources further. The photos were taken at the Natural History Museum in London. I can highly recommend visiting.
My paleo diet works for me, it may not suit you. Listen to your own body and do what you feel is best.
Check out my infographic on the evolution of human diet.
Right now, about two thirds of the Western world is on some kind of diet (1). The rest probably were on a diet but have given up and are now on a binge. Collectively we are overweight, sick and getting worse. Our modern choices about what we eat and how much we eat has gone really terribly wrong. The current trend in diet books tell us we need to return to a sensible, ancestral way of eating, the problem is there are so many diets out there and they offer conflicting, inconsistent and often highly confusing information. One group of self-help books suggests we give up carbohydrates, another that we give up fats, another that counting calories is the best way while others say that eating like a caveman will cure everything or that the world will be a better place if we go vegetarian or vegan.
It doesn’t help that doctors, scientists, dieticians and nutritionists alike frequently identify a single dietary element as the cause of chronic disease. We are told that saturated fat causes heart disease (2) and salt causes high blood pressure (3). However, evidence gathered over the past 30 years now indicates that virtually all so-called ‘diseases of civilisation’ have multiple dietary elements as the root cause, along with other environmental agents and genetic susceptibility.
Coronary heart disease, for instance, does not arise simply from excessive saturated fat in the diet but rather from a complex interaction of multiple nutritional factors directly linked to the excessive consumption of foods introduced in Neolithic and industrial eras (dairy products, cereals, refined cereals, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils, fatty meats, salt, and combinations of these foods) (4). These foods, in turn, adversely influence other nutritional factors, which universally underlie or exacerbate virtually all chronic diseases of civilisation.
TO UNDERSTAND why these lifestyle diseases exist, I'm going to take you on an interactive history lesson. Stand up and take a single pace. You've moved about a yard. Consider that distance to equate to 1000 years of history. You're now in the time just before the Norman conquest of England and humans number just 200 million across the whole planet. In that single pace you've arrived before the Magna Carta, Richard III, the crusades, the great plague, Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, the Americas, Australia, the renaissance, the printing press, Newton, Einstein, science, electricity, the computer and indeed almost everything we humans view as our greatest accomplishments. Take another pace, the Roman Empire stretches across most of Europe at a time before Christianity, Islam and the Mayan empire. Take another 2 paces, ancient Egypt is at the height of its power. Take another two and humans have just discovered iron, another two and you reach 6000BC and agriculture has just reached Europe, another three and you've crossed your kitchen into the Neolithic era some 11,000 years ago, just after the last ice age (5).
Let's stop here for a moment. About now, humans are well established across most of the planet, including in Australia and South America (6). We typically live in communities number