Des substances chimiques dans certains parfums
Agence France-Presse

Bruxelles

Plusieurs parfums et eaux de toilette connus sur le marché contiennent des substances chimiques qui pourraient se révéler «néfastes pour la santé», affirme une étude publiée jeudi par l'organisation écologiste Greenpeace.

Selon cette étude, plusieurs parfums contiennent en effet «des substances chimiques qui risquent de pénétrer dans l'organisme, se dégradent difficilement et peuvent avoir des effets néfastes sur la santé».

Le rapport s'appuie sur l'analyse par un laboratoire néerlandais «de deux groupes de substances chimiques artificielles potentiellement dangereuses - les esters de phtalates et les muscs de synthèse - dans 36 parfums connus».

«Les résultats montrent que les phtalates et les muscs synthétiques sont présents dans pratiquement toutes les marques testées», note le rapport (www.vigitox.org).

Le diéthyl phtalate (DEP), très utilisé en cosmétique comme solvant notamment, a été identifié dans 34 parfums sur 36.

Les niveaux les plus élevés sont relevés dans Eternity pour femmes (Calvin Klein) à 22.299 mg/kg soit 2,2% du poids, Iris Blue (Melvita) à 11.189 mg/kg soit 1,1% du poids et Le Mâle de Jean-Paul Gaultier à 9.884 mg/kg soit presque 1%.

Selon Greenpeace, «des études ont montré que le DEP pénètre rapidement dans la peau et se répand dans tout l'organisme après chaque contact». Il s'y transforme rapidement en monoéthyle de phtalate (MEP), «susceptible de modifier l'ADN des spermatozoïdes et de limiter la fonction pulmonaire chez l'homme», indique l'étude, reconnaissant toutefois que «les effets à long terme d'une telle exposition (...) ne sont pas encore bien compris».

Les quantités les plus élevées de muscs de synthèse (composés aromatiques utilisés à la place de muscs naturels), ont été trouvées dans Le Baiser du Dragon de Cartier (45.048 mg soit 4,5% du poids), Le Mâle de Gaultier (64.428 mg/kg soit 6,4%) et White Musc de The Body Shop à 94.069 mg/kg (9,4%).

Les muscs de synthèse peuvent s'accumuler dans les tissus vivants. Certains d'entre eux interfèrent avec le système hormonal chez les poissons, les amphibiens et les mammifères. Ils peuvent aussi exacerber l'exposition à d'autres substances toxiques, relève Greenpeace.

Le producteur du parfum Le Mâle, Beauté Prestige International, a indiqué à l'AFP qu'il «souhaitait étudier l'étude avant de réagir». Interrogée à Paris par l'AFP, la Fédération des industries de la parfumerie n'avait pas fait de commentaires jeudi soir.

L'exposition à un cocktail de substances chimiques dans la vie quotidienne est soupçonnée d'être responsable de l'augmentation du taux de cancer constatée dans les pays occidentaux, hors influence du tabac et de l'âge.

Greenpeace voit dans cette étude une nouvelle arme dans sa campagne pour durcir le projet de nouvelle législation européenne sur les produits chimiques, actuellement débattue au Parlement européen et au Conseil des ministres de l'UE. Le projet (REACH) est l'objet d'un intense lobbying des écologistes et des industriels.

Greenpeace réclame une «évaluation obligatoire des propriétés intrinsèques de toute substance chimique dangereuse et son remplacement, quand c'est possible, par une alternative plus sûre».



http://www.cyberpresse.ca/technosciences/article/article_complet.php?path=/technosciences/article/10/1,5296,0,022005,917251.php

:s190:

et oui.. ben, tout est synthetique... il faut se mefier quand meme (mieux vaut prevenir que guerir)..
t'as lu sur les allergies provoques pour les parfums de synthese qu'on utilise pour la maison aussi?? (apres lire tout ca je me demande ... quand meme, pourquoi avons nous besoins d'acheter ces trucs?! :s190: il y a des manieres naturelles de tuer les mauvaises odeurs .... )

et voila... il faut rechercher sur ce process qu'on utilise aujourd'hui pour faire des faux steaks a partir des morceaux de viande (des restes).
On prend tous les morceaux et on les colle ensemble avac un "meat binder" .... apres on decoupe le gross truc en tranches et le resultat ressemble a des steaks qu'on peut meme pas s'appercevoir qu'ils ne sont pas des vraies steaks mais des trucs reconstitues.....

Voila une petite liste de ce qu'ils utilissent pour coller la viande:

Citation:

0.5% trans-glutaminase, 2.5% sodium polyphosphate, 2.5% anhydrous sodium pyrophosphate, 2.0% sillicon dioxide, and 92.5% casein. Another example of a binding agent contains 75.0% protein (from milk and/or egg) and 25.0% calcium chloride and/or sodium chloride. http://www.freshpatents.com/Method-of-producing-a-frozen-marinated-reconstituted-meat-product-dt20040826ptan20040166212.php

je ne sais pas.. mais je n'aime pas l'idee de manger ces trucs (surtout qu'il n'y a pas d'etudes sur ce qu'il font a notre corps... ces trucs ont ete fabriques pour "faire du fric", pas pour nous garder la sante!!

regarde les noms: glutaminase (euh.. les glutamates provoquent des problemes motores qui ressemblent a la maladie de parkinsons )... sillicon dioxide? euh... le nom ne me donne aucune confiance.... les chlorides (euh... j'ai souvent ecoute parler des chlorides comme cancerigenes...). Bref, mieux vaut rester sur le bio.... ou les appelations controles pour pouvoir savoir et controler nous memes ce qu'on mange!

je me demandais ce qui etait "casein" ... j'ai fait une petite recherche et je tombe sur des trucs foux!!

Citation:

80% of the protein in milk is casein. Casein is a powerful binder... a polymer used to make plastics... and a glue that is better used to make sturdy furniture or hold beer bottle labels in place. It is in thousands of processed foods as a binder... as "something" caseinate. Casein is a powerful allergen... a histamine that creates lots of mucus. The only medicine in Olympic athlete Flo-Jo's body was Benedryl, a power antihistamine she took to combat her last meal... pizza.

pour l'histoire de Flo Jo:
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/111598.html

Common Foods Laced With Chemical
By Andre Picard and Avis Favaro
The Globe and Mail
2-14-5


Everyday foods consumed by Canadians - such as salmon, ground beef, cheese and butter - are laced with chemical flame retardants, according to research commissioned by The Globe and Mail and CTV News.

In fact, the research found that Canadian foods are among the most contaminated with polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the world, with levels up to 1,000 times higher than those found in tests in European countries.

PBDEs are a class of about 25 chemicals that are used as flame retardants in foams, textiles and plastics. They are ubiquitous in modern homes, with the chemicals leeching out of furniture, rugs and electronic products, such as televisions and computers. It is not known exactly how PBDEs migrate from such products into human tissue, but they have been found in industrial sewage sludge, in wildlife and in fatty foods such as meat and fish.

It is unclear what impact the regular absorption of PBDEs has on human health. Nor have scientists established safe levels for the chemicals in humans.

But scientists do say that research conducted on animals - which suggests these chemicals can impair memory, cause learning disabilities and alter thyroid hormone levels - is disquieting and should raise red flags.

"These are persistent toxic chemicals... and certainly it is undesirable to have these toxic chemicals in our food supply," said Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental sciences and public health at the University of Texas, who has done pioneering work on PBDEs.

Research done last year on a group of B.C. women found high levels of PBDEs in their breast milk, but the source was unclear.

"All of a sudden you find out you have something awful in your body and you wonder: 'Where is it coming from?'" said Erin McAllister, a Vancouver mother who took part in the study. "We all suspected it was coming from the food."

To find out, The Globe and Mail and CTV News commissioned an independent laboratory, Axys Analytical Services Ltd. of Sidney, B.C., to test 13 foods commonly consumed by Canadians.

Flame retardants were found in virtually all the foods, sometimes at relatively high levels. Farmed rainbow trout had levels of PBDEs of 3,638 parts per trillion and farmed Atlantic salmon 1,942 ppt. Sausage had 242 ppt and butter 384 ppt, while cheese had PBDEs levels of 23 ppt and milk 10 ppt. Only chicken had virtually undetectable levels. Environmental chemicals tend to accumulate in fat, so not surprisingly fattier foods had higher levels.

"Even though we don't know exactly the meaning of these levels for the health of children or adults... we think the smaller the amount, the safer it would be for people eating the food," Dr. Schecter said.

But Samuel Ben Rejeb, associate director of the bureau of chemical safety in the health products and food branch of Health Canada, said the level of PBDEs in the country's food supply has been closely monitored for years and there is no cause for alarm.

"The levels found in food are very low. They vary in parts per trillion and very low parts per billion - levels that in general were found to not pose a health risk for Canadians."

Dr. Ben Rejeb noted that while food is one of the ways people are exposed to PBDEs, it is not the only one and likely not the biggest source of exposure.

Dr. Schecter said that while it is easy to dismiss levels in food as insignificant, the chemicals do accumulate in the body. He said it's also likely PBDEs pose similar risks to human health as their chemical cousins, polychlorinated biphenyls. The use of PCBs was curtailed in the 1970s after they were found to cause birth defects, impair brain and memory functions, and increase the risk of some forms of cancers.

Many European countries have clamped down on the use of PBDEs in the past decade on the assumption that the chemicals are not good for humans.

Peter O'Toole, program director for the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, the group that represents manufacturers of flame retardants, said PBDEs "have never been demonstrated to have any human or environmental effects. We're far below any level of potential risk to humans."

The benefits of adding these chemicals to household products and mitigating the impact of fires is well established, Mr. O'Toole said. (Fires claim about 400 lives a year in Canada; these rates have fallen since fire retardants became widespread, especially in furniture, although many officials attribute the change to falling smoking rates.)

Beverly Thorpe of Clean Production Action, a Montreal-based consumer group, said the new data on levels of PBDEs in common foods reaffirm her belief that these chemicals should be banned.

"I think it's scandalous that we are still allowing chemical producers to manufacture these chemicals... It's scandalous that we are allowing industry to use them as flame retardants."

Ms. Thorpe said her biggest concern is the impact on children who are exposed to these chemicals over a long period of time, and could develop physical and developmental problems. (One popular but unproved assumption is that the rise in rate of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is due to PBDEs.)

"Any synthetic chemical we are finding in breast milk and food has got to be a major alarm signal that we have to stop production of these chemicals," she argued.

Ms. McAllister shares those concerns and is worried about her daughter Jessica, now 18 months old. "Children are inhaling these poisons every day... breathing it and eating it every day."!

- Andre Picard is the public health reporter at The Globe and Mail.

- Avis Favaro is the medical reporter at CTV News.

© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s

Attention!! un cancerigene a ete importe par erreur et utilise dans plusieurs produits a manger!!!!

Cancer warning for food products

Friday, February 18, 2005

LONDON, England (AP) -- Britain's Food Standards Agency triggered an international food safety alert Friday on a batch of sauce that was contaminated with a dye linked to cancer.

The sauce containing the dye Sudan I was used in hundreds of British foods and exported to several European and Caribbean countries and to North America.

The agency was informed of the contamination when Italian authorities inspected a batch exported there by British company Premier Foods.

The agency said the sauce had been sent to the United States, Canada, France, Greece, Switzerland, Ireland, France, Denmark, Holland, Austria, Cyprus, Belgium, Bermuda, Granada, the Bahamas and Antigua.

The agency used the rapid alert system for food and feed, or RASFF, to send out an alert across Europe, and then to the United States and other countries.

"Sudan I could contribute to an increased risk of cancer," said Jon Bell, chief executive of the agency. "At the levels present the risk is likely to be very small, but it is sensible to avoid eating any more."

Sudan I is a red dye generally used for coloring oils, waxes, petrol and shoe polish. It is banned from food in Britain and across the European Union.

The Food Standards Agency said Sudan I can contribute to an increased risk of cancer, and it is not possible to identify a safe level or to quantify the risk.

It added that the risk from the levels present in the contaminated foods was likely to be small, but stressed that consumers should not be exposed to it unnecessarily.

Since July 2003 all chili powder imported into Britain must be certified to be free of Sudan I -- authorities randomly sample more than 1,000 consignments a year.

However, the batch that has caused the widespread contamination predates that sampling program and was only uncovered after sampling of the Worcestershire sauce that was produced by Premier Foods and exported to Italy.

The agency, which provided a full list of the contaminated products on its Web site, said that people who may have already purchased the products should return them for a full refund.

In Britain, the agency warned consumers against eating more than 350 frozen and fresh food products, including pies, sandwiches, sausages, soups and sauces.

Bell said the watchdog was working with British industry to swiftly remove the foods from the shelves of stores, including supermarket Sainsbury's PLC and sandwich chain Pret-A-Manger.

Given the widespread use of Worcestershire sauce to flavor other foods, Bell said that the agency might still find more affected products.

"We will continue to take action to remove these and minimize the risks to consumers," he said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/02/18/uk.food.warning.ap/

Array Of Toxic Chemicals In Humans 'Alarming'
I Am Polluted
By Mark Stevenson
The Globe and Mail
3-8-5


BOSTON -- My nose is clamped and I'm trying not to choke on a tube a scientist at Harvard University has stuffed in my mouth. I am blowing into a clear plastic bag, which is sealed and later studied for what it contains.

Sure, everyone suffers occasionally from a little bad breath. But what they found in mine was enough to keep my wife away for a week.

Besides my breath, researchers at Harvard's School of Public Health examined my blood, hair, urine, toenails and bones. It's all in the name of the emerging science of body burden, a concept referring to the amount of chemicals that accumulate in the human body.

As it turns out, I am polluted. Everyone is to some degree. But as the list of toxic chemicals identified in people continues to grow, scientists are trying to figure out what the implications are for human health.

"It is alarming," Professor John Spengler says. "This is not meant to be settling information. I think if more people wake up to this fact, the better we are going to be . . . and the more demanding we're going to be of our governments and our industries."

An estimated 35,000 chemicals are in commercial use in Canada and more than twice as many in the United States. The national American government registers an average of 2,000 newly synthesized chemicals each year.

Cosmetics have at least 5,000 chemicals; more than 3,200 are added to food. As many as 1,010 chemicals are used in the production of 11,700 consumer products, and about 500 chemicals are used as active ingredients in pesticides, according to Environmental Protection Agency data cited by the Environmental Working Group, based in Washington, D.C.

Many chemicals end up in the environment, even thousands of kilometres from industry.

Despite being banned years ago, PCBs are still found in Arctic wildlife. Biologists are also finding rising levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), flame retardants used in foam, textiles and plastics, as well as chlorinated paraffins, chemicals used in paints, sealants and rubber-processing.

Scotchgard, which is part of a family of chemicals used to make clothes, carpets and furniture stain-resistant, has been found in polar bears in Alaska and bald eagles around the Great Lakes.

If chemicals are showing up in wildlife and the environment, it's no surprise that many are being discovered in people.

"Pretty much from the minute you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you're exposed to hundreds and hundreds of chemicals," says Jane Houlihan, vice-president of research for the Environmental Working Group. "...In most cases, they're in minuscule quantities. But that fact is it's hundreds [of chemicals] and they're adding up."

What's disturbing, Prof. Spengler says, is how the majority of the chemicals have been approved for use without any research being done on their potential impact on human health, except mainly for those that end up in drugs or food.

What's more, little is known about what our chemical body burden truly is. "So measurements like we're doing on you, and myself, and our research subjects are really part of a new frontier because it's really trying to understand ... what effects these might have on disruption of human function," Prof. Spengler says.

No extensive study has considered the chemical body burden of Canadians, although separate studies have reported the presence of individual compounds -- for example, research documenting a dramatic rise of PBDEs in breast milk.

More wide-ranging studies have been done in the United States.

In one, researchers found at an average of 91 "industrial compounds, pollutants and chemicals" in the blood and urine of nine volunteers and a total of 167 chemicals in the group. According to the research, conducted by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York with the Environmental Working Group, "76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain or nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development." None of the people tested worked with chemicals or lived near an industrial facility.

"I expected to find many different chemicals," Ms. Houlihan says. "But to actually see the numbers roll out that show that one person has 100 chemicals in their blood at one time. It's pretty powerful."

The most comprehensive research on body burden to date was conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and released in 2003. As part of the $6.5-million (U.S.) report, the agency tested the blood and urine of 2,500 volunteers for 116 compounds, including PCBs, pesticides, dioxins, furans and metals.

It found many of the contaminants in at least half of the people they tested. As well, researchers discovered elevated levels of lead in the blood of children and the ubiquitous presence of phthalates, chemicals widely used in plastics that are linked to cancer and reproductive problems in studies on rats.

Meanwhile, they also discovered that chemicals such as DDT and PCBs, which are banned or restricted, appear to be going down.

"Just because they can [detect it] doesn't mean it's at a dangerous level or a level that causes health effects. It mostly reflects the fact that we've improved our ability to measure," says Jim Pirkle, deputy director of science for the CDC, referring to new technology that allows scientists to identify compounds in amounts that would have gone unnoticed a decade earlier.

Dr. Pirkle notes that most of the chemicals being found are in infinitesimally small amounts of parts per million and parts per billion, equivalent to a grain of rice in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

"There are going to be small levels of many things in people. That's because they're dispersed in low levels all over the environment. What you really have to do is stop and look at them one by one and go through them and say, 'Is that a level that's likely to cause disease? Is that a level that's so trivially small, we have good instruments that can measure it, but it's so small it's not of any concern?' You have to do that one chemical at a time."

All this brings us back to Harvard and my own results.

After bombarding my knee for half an hour with a small amount of radiation, the technician in the bone lab gives me the news: My skeleton is contaminated with lead.

Lead is an acute toxin. It's poisonous at higher levels. But even at low concentrations, research has linked it to an increased risk of hypertension, kidney disease, impaired neurological development in children, even cataracts.

The good news is my lead levels place me well within the average range for someone my age with no appreciable health risk, says Howard Hu, a professor of occupational and health medicine at Harvard's School of Public Health.

Others are less fortunate. Dr. Hu has measured lead amounts five to 10 times higher in many women, posing potential harm to their unborn babies.

"There's so many different exposure routes that just living and breathing can provide exposures today," he says. "Lead is in many different consumer products. It was in gasoline. ... It was in food cans, pipes and solder. ... It was in toys and plastics."

In another lab across the street, scientists have clipped a lock of my hair and are analyzing it. It will tell them how much mercury my body contains.

Although it occurs naturally in the environment, mercury is also a byproduct of coal-fired power plants and waste incinerators. When it enters the water and reacts with bacteria, it is transformed into methyl mercury and it accumulates in fish, and people when they eat it.

It's a neurotoxin and the human fetus is particularly vulnerable. At low doses, it can cause subtle changes to the developing brain; at larger doses, it can cause blindness and other birth defects. At high levels, it can kill nerve cells, causing blurred vision, lack of co-ordination and slurred speech.

Fortunately, my mercury level is .411 parts per million, about half the EPA guideline of 1 ppm.

Next came my blood results. As it turns out, my blood contains PCBs and pesticides, including DDT, an insecticide banned in North America decades ago. But for many people my age, my results are considered well within the low-to-average range.


Unfortunately, as Russ Hauser of Harvard's School of Public Health points out, his research is finding that men exposed to similar doses have problems with semen quality, which is associated with infertility.

"PCBs and DDT were banned decades ago, but they're still present in the environment," Dr. Hauser says. "You're exposed primarily through intake of food because they accumulate as we move up the food chain. ... So consuming fish, dairy products, meats, that's primarily how you're exposed."

Although the Harvard scientists were looking for arsenic, a highly poisonous metal, in my toenails, they found virtually none. Prof. Spengler wasn't surprised, saying it's something they typically find in people who drink water from a well and mine comes from a lake.

But he was amazed by something in my breath, the content of which is an indicator of relatively recent exposure to chemicals in the air. It wasn't the list of solvents, such as benzene, that are often associated with vehicle exhaust. It was MTBE, a fuel additive that is not supposed to be widely used in Canada (less than 2 per cent of gas in this country contains it, according to Environment Canada). Prof. Spengler speculates I breathed in MTBE on the way to Harvard in a taxi.


In total, the scientists found 76 chemicals in my body, including PCBs, pesticides, solvents and metals. Even though my body contains extremely small amounts of them, I can't help but ask Prof. Spengler whether I should be worried.

"I would say you're not very toxic compared to people we've measured all over the world, even compared to me," he says.

He points out that his own DDT levels place him in the top fifth of Americans. I'm in the bottom fifth.

"On the one hand, you might say, 'Well, I'm normal. I might be a little high on one thing and low on another.' But that's not the way we should look at it."

Prof. Spengler says the issue is not whether one has an average amount of chemicals in his body. Rather, it's why the average person is carrying around so many chemicals in the first place.

There has been little scientific inquiry into the net effect of being exposed to many chemicals at the same time, the so-called "toxic soup effect."

Complicating the toxicology is the counterintuitive concept of hormesis, a phenomenon in which a small dose of an otherwise toxic substance can be helpful. Studies on plants and animals have documented it in alcohol, antibiotics, hydrocarbons and pesticides.

Nevertheless, Prof. Spengler and many other scientists believe that exposure to a range of chemicals in the environment may be behind a host of emerging health problems in addition to those already well documented. "We're concerned about the growing rates of cancer in our society, the growing rates of autism," he says. "In most developed countries, asthma has grown substantially over the past 20 years, particularly in children"

As for myself, Prof. Spengler says there's very little I can do to reduce the contamination that is already in my body. Aside from eating different types of fish to lower my mercury level, the PCBs and pesticides are there for the long haul while the solvents will continue to show up in my breath as long as I'm exposed to cars and trucks, which are kind of difficult to avoid.

Prof. Spengler says the solution is targeting chemicals we don't want in our bodies in the first place. He points to PBDEs, which has been referred to as the "PCBs of the 21st century."

Research commissioned by The Globe and Mail and CTV News found that many everyday foods consumed by Canadians -- such as salmon, ground beef, cheese and butter -- are laced with PBDEs.

In Sweden, the flame retardants were banned after rising levels were noticed in the breast milk of women. "They said to the industry, 'We don't want them in our plastics. We don't what them in our materials' -- and they started to see the levels come down," Prof. Spengler says.

"Now, you see the similar data out of North American women. . . . The levels are already 50 times higher in our populations and nobody is saying, 'Ban that product.' ... So I think this really has to do with how we've come to judge what is beneficial to the population," he says. "[But] at what point do we invoke some precaution?"

- Mark Stevenson is an independent producer and a regular contributor to the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet. A version of this feature has aired on the show.

MARK'S BODY

Test results show low levels of 76 chemicals.


Metals in blood*
metal Normal levels (ppb): Mark's levels (ppb):
Lead <100 19.13
Manganese 4.2-16.5 969
Cadmium <5 0.06

Mercury in hair
EPA reference level: 1.0 ppm
Mark's level: 0.411 ppm

Arsenic in toenails
Normal level: below 0.2 ppm
Mark's level: 0.032 ppm

Solvents in breath (nanogram/litre)
solvent Mark
MTBE 6.22**
Hexane 2.71
Benzene 4.23
Toluene 4.05
Xylene 1.38
Pinene 4.30
Limonene 108.42***


Pesticides in blood
Mark has 0.879 ppb of DDT (low to average)

PCBs in blood
Mark has 0.82 ppb (low to average)

Lead content in bone
Mark has 4.67 ppm (average)

*Lead, cadmium and mercury are not considered "natural" elements in the body. Manganese, on the other hand, is an essential element at very trace amounts.

**MTBE, a fuel additive to improve emissions, could have been inhaled in the United States where it is much more common than in Canada.

***The high limonene level could be attributed to orange juice or air freshener.

© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ser

Parfums d'ambiance

Des poisons dans l'air
Mario Girard

collaboration spéciale, La Presse

Les parfums d'ambiance sont dangereux. Une étude publiée par le Bureau européen des associations de consommateurs regroupant des organismes d'Italie, de France, d'Espagne, du Portugal et de la Belgique est venue brouiller l'arôme des parfums d'ambiance en présentant une étude qui tend à démontrer que l'emploi de ces produits peut entraîner des «risques majeurs pour la santé».

En mesurant la qualité de l'air ambiant lors de l'utilisation des désodorisants et autres produits parfumés censés rafraîchir la maison, on a démontré que ces produits dégagent des composés organiques volatils appelés COV. Parmi eux, le toluène, qui constitue jusqu'à 10 % des composantes de certains désodorisants. Ou alors le dichlorobenzène, qui forme jusqu'à 42 % des composantes des blocs de désodorisants pour toilettes. À fortes doses, la plupart de ces composés organiques volatils irritent les yeux et les poumons.

Les produits désodorisants en aérosol contiennent des traces de dioxine, du paradichlorobenzène, du formol, toutes substances nocives pour la santé auxquelles il faut encore rajouter l'acétaldéhyde qui, lui, attaque particulièrement le foie.

« Il faut savoir que ces produits dégagent des molécules qui restent dans l'air, explique Danny Bolduc, technicien de laboratoire au département de Biochimie de l'UQAM. Ce sont ces molécules que l'on respire. Selon la concentration du produit et la grandeur de la pièce, ces molécules peuvent voyager longtemps dans la même pièce tant et aussi longtemps qu'on ne l'aère pas. »

Les bougies et l'encens, autres produits fort populaires, représentent aussi un certain danger. Les bougies dégagent de l'acroléine, du formaldéhyde et de l'acétaldéhyde. « Ces produits, tout comme les vaporisateurs, dégagent eux aussi des molécules », dit Danny Bolduc qui n'avait pas encore pris connaissance de cette étude susceptible d'intéresser plusieurs chercheurs.

Selon l'enquête européenne, l'exposition aux fumées d'encens qui contiennent des benzènes et diverses particules provoquerait des troubles de la santé comme la toux, l'asthme, des dermatoses, voire le cancer.
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actuel/article/article_complet.php?path=/actuel/article/1,4230,4909,112004,848694.php

oh la la.. on suppconne qu'une femme Francaise avait deja la maladie de la vache folle en 1971........

French Woman May Have
Had Mad Cow In 1971
By Steve Mitchell
Medical Correspondent
United Press International
3-28-5


WASHINGTON, March 24 (UPI) -- The brain of a French woman who died in 1971 shows evidence consistent with human mad cow disease, United Press International has learned, a finding that if confirmed would indicate the deadly disease began infecting people more than 20 years earlier than previously thought.

A former National Institutes of Health scientist said he tested the woman's brain in 2000 and it showed a pattern that looked like variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- a fatal, brain-wasting illness humans can contract from eating beef products infected with the pathogen that causes mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.

VCJD was unheard of in 1971. The first recognized case was detected in the United Kingdom in 1995, so if the French woman did indeed suffer from vCJD, the case would shift the origins of the disease back more than two decades and possibly to a different country. The woman's brain is held at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

"Variant CJD could've been around for donkey's years, who knows?" said Bruce Johnson, a former researcher at the NIH's Laboratory for Central Nervous System Studies, who examined the woman's brain. The CNSS lab received brains from CJD patients from all over the world and has samples dating back to 1963. The woman's identity could not be revealed for confidentiality reasons, but it is known she was French and approximately 40 to 50 years old when she died in 1971, Johnson said.

Johnson told UPI he tested the woman's brain using a technique called Western blot, which detects prions -- infectious agents thought to play a role in causing vCJD and similar diseases.

At the time of her death, the woman was thought to be suffering from sporadic CJD, a condition with no known cause that appears to arise spontaneously. However, Johnson said, the prions he detected looked different from those associated with CJD and instead were consistent with the prion strain associated with vCJD.

The pattern on the test "was more like BSE than CJD," Johnson said, noting he never saw a pattern like that in the hundreds of other brains from CJD patients he had tested.

A sample of the woman's brain had been injected into a chimpanzee sometime around 1977, and when Johnson examined the chimpanzee's brain, it, too, showed a pattern consistent with vCJD -- not sporadic CJD.

"So she may have been an early case of BSE in France before it ever got to England," he said.

Johnson said he never published his finding because he wanted to confirm it, but he never had an opportunity to do so before he retired in 2003. The CNSS lab was officially closed in April 2004.

He said he hopes to conduct further examinations of the woman's brain when he starts a new position with the Food and Drug Administration.

"If we've still got her brain, we can look and see if it's BSE," he said. One possible way is to inject some of the woman's brain into mice.

Mad cow first showed up in humans in the United Kingdom beginning around 1995. In all, 154 people in that country have been infected with the human equivalent of mad cow disease.

France runs a distant second in vCJD cases with nine. A recent report published in the journal Veterinary Research estimated that from 1980 to 2000 more than 300,000 cattle were infected with BSE in France, yet went undetected.

Stephen Dealler, a microbiologist at Lancaster Royal infirmary, recently proposed a hypothesis that some of the people who developed vCJD in the United Kingdom may have been exposed to BSE in baby food beginning as early as 1970.

Johnson subscribes to the hypothesis put out by his NIH colleague Joe Gibbs, who thought it was possible that all mammals, including cows, spontaneously develop a mad cow-like disease at the rate of one per million. If that is true, Johnson said, the French woman may have developed her condition from being unfortunate enough to have eaten infected meat from that one in a million animal.

Dr. Paul Brown, former medical director of the CNSS lab and an expert on CJD and BSE, worked with Johnson. He told UPI he remembered Johnson mentioning the French woman's brain, but the information did not sound conclusive.

He said more research would need to be done to determine if the woman's disease was variant CJD, including injecting it into laboratory animals and having CJD experts examine the brain tissue.

Patient advocacy representatives had mixed reactions.

"I would be looking to get the opinion of more than one CJD neurologist before making any further comment," Graham Steel, vice-chair of the patient advocacy group Human BSE Foundation in the United Kingdom, told UPI.

"It doesn't surprise me at all that you can find a vCJD case in the NIH's brain collection," said Terry Singeltary, who is associated with several CJD patient groups and closely monitors developments about these diseases.

"It wouldn't surprise me for it to go back that far," Singeltary, whose mother died of a type of CJD called Heidenhain variant in 1997, told UPI. "A lot of scientists believe this BSE epidemic started way before 1984."

Johnson said it was possible there could be other vCJD cases in the NIH's collection, which consists of brain samples from hundreds of patients thought to have CJD.

That may never be known, however. The brains have never been screened for vCJD and the NIH may destroy part or all of the collection.

Copyright © 2001-2005 United Press International

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050323-061733-6847r

attention a l'alluminium!!! (et je dois encore chercher un autre article qui parle plus sur le triclosan...


Triclosan immediately rang an alarm bell about underarm deodorants. Triclosan is in most EVERY deodorant today. A google search will produce more than 88,000 results on this chemical compound. In this article I'll share with you the results of my research on this earlier this year. It was exasperating to say the least.

From http://www.lindachae.com/triclosan.htm we read the following bad news:

"Triclosan is a chlorophenol, a class of chemicals suspected of causing cancer in humans. Externally, it can cause skin irritations, but since ".phenols can temporarily deactivate the sensory nerve endings.contact with [triclosan] often causes little or no pain". "Internally, it can lead to cold sweats, circulatory collapse, convulsions, coma, and even death". Stored in body fat, it can accumulate to toxic levels, damaging the liver, kidneys, and lungs, and can cause paralysis, sterility, suppression of immune function, brain hemorrhage, decreased fertility and sexual function, heart problems, and coma."

ALUMINUM IS ALSO IN DEODORANTS

Another ingredient in antiperspirants is aluminum. It has always been considered a heavy metal similar to mercury (but with a much lower atomic weight.) There has also been evidence aluminum is linked to Alzheimer's. Large concentrations of the metal have been found in the autopsied brains of deceased Alzheimer's patients - and in the very same two regions located in the left and right hemispheres which are known to bring on Alzheimer's symptoms when damaged.

In deodorant, aluminum comes in the form of aluminum chlorhydrate. Heavy metals can be absorbed through the skin. Think about how this works - right where you apply an aluminum-based deodorant are TWO MAJOR LYMPH GLANDS about an inch away under the skin. Yes, they are located right in your arm pits. And your lymph system is a critical part of the body's IMMUNE system.

When you read product labels in any drug store or even in chinamart, you will find as I have that EVERY brand name antiperspirant has this compound. A 'base' described below refers to a common chemical compound used by many different manufacturers. A chemical company makes it and ships it by truck or railroad car to the antiperspirant factory. This is similar to shampoo, which also uses a base compound. Many companies merely add different perfuming agents to a standard base to create a new "brand." No different than cooking your eggs "scrambled, over easy or "sunny side up." An egg is still an egg, and a base is still a base.

Aluminum chlorhydrate is one such antiperspirant base chemical. I have found this is used even in ALL the GEL antiperspirants, too. Transparency does NOT mean it will not contain aluminum chlorhydrate. My research has found ALL gel and non-gel antiperspirants have it aluminum chlorhydrate, and most these have triclosan.

ANTIPERSPIRANTS AND DEODORANTS - THE DIFFERENCE

Antiperspirants should not confused with deodorants. Although the above product names are self-explanatory, chemical compositions are very different. One such product available in both forms is Brut 33. The deodorant version of this brand does not have either aluminum chlorhydrate or triclosan. However, Brut 33 antiperspirant product has both. An antiperspirant functions basically by clogging pores in the skin.

In my research I have been unable to find any women's deodorant without aluminum chlorhydrate.

The action of applying antiperspirant also brings aluminum chlorhydrate and triclosan into the close proximity of capillary blood vessels. This create conditions for these chemicals to be absorbed into the body. It doesn't guarantee that one will get a brain disorder, but it could be like smoking: the sooner someone quits now, the better off they will be later.

There is one big unanswered question which is unlikely any scientist will obtain research funding for:

Can these very common compounds when used together cause other common illnesses - such as type 2 diabetes?

Ted Twietmeyer
www.data4science.net

LONDON: Scientists have managed to stave off the ageing process in mice, a discovery that might pave the way to longer, healthier living in humans too.

Secret of ageing no longer a secret

Experiments at the US-based Washington University School of Medicine showed that protecting the body of mice against highly reactive chemicals called free radicals long suspected as a cause of ageing gave them longer lives, reports the Scottish daily Scotsman.

Mice given higher levels of an enzyme that breaks down free radicals had about a 20 percent increase in their average and maximum lifespan, about four and a half months.

They also had healthier hearts than other mice.

The experiments suggest that people could live longer and be free from many age-related diseases if they were protected from free radicals.

"This study is very supportive of the free radical theory of ageing. It shows the significance of free radicals and of reactive oxygen species in particular in the ageing process," said lead researcher Peter Rabinovitch.

"People used to only focus on specific age-related diseases because it was believed that the ageing process itself could not be affected. What we're realising now is that by intervening in the underlying ageing process, we may be able to produce very significant increases in 'health-span', or healthy life-span."

Rabinovitch and his colleagues studied the enzyme catalase, which helps breakdown hydrogen peroxide - a waste product of the body's metabolic process - into water and oxygen.

Hydrogen peroxide can be a precursor of free radicals.

The damage they cause can, in turn, lead to further flaws in cells' chemical processes, which lead to more free radicals being produced.

Free radicals can create unnecessary chemical reactions, which damage cells,including DNA. Some scientists believe they are major factors in heart disease, cancer and other serious conditions.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1101906.cms

Plastic Food Containers Linked With Breast Cancer
By James Meikle
Health Correspondent
The Guardian - UK
5-29-5


A chemical widely used in food packaging may be a contributing factor to women developing breast cancer, scientists have suggested.

The study links the compound to the development of hormone sensitive tissue in mice and has prompted environmental campaigners to call for far tighter regulation of such chemicals.

Experiments at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, have potentially worrying implications for human health since they suggest mammary glands of female mice grow in a way that makes them more likely to develop breast cancer and also to respond unusually to oestrogen, which fuels most breast cancer in humans.

The compound involved is called bisphenol-A or BPA. It is used in plastic food containers, cans and dental sealants and other research suggests it leaches from products and is absorbed in low concentrations by the human body,

The scientists behind the latest findings say in the journal Endocrinology that they are involved in further work to test the hypothesis that exposure in the womb and shortly after birth to BPA in particular, and to oestrogens in general, might increase people's susceptibility to breast cancer.

It is the second report in a week to raise concerns about widely used chemicals. Research has also shown that phthalates, often found in plastics, affects the genital development of baby boys.

The Tufts researchers report "persistent alterations" to mammary gland development after giving doses of BPA to pregnant mice which were designed to mimic levels humans are likely to be exposed to.

The rodents were treated late in pregnancy and about four days after birth. The offspring were checked as they reached puberty about 30 days later. The researchers found large increases in the number and density of terminal end buds, part of the mammary gland structure where breast tumours start in both animals and humans.

They also found a drop in the number of cells programmed for death, the natural defence mechanism by which the body gets rid of damaged cells that might become cancerous. Animals exposed to higher doses of BPA developed mammary glands more sensitive to oestrogen.

Professor Frederick vom Saal, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, commenting on the findings, said: "This is of tremendous concern because this is clearly a study that is relevant to human exposure levels to this chemical."

Gwynne Lyons, a policy adviser to environment group WWF UK, suggested that humans and wildlife were being put at risk. "Because industry wants business as usual, the UK government and regulatory authorities in the European Union member states are not adequately controlling these gender-bending chemicals and are fighting shy of pressing industry to come up with safer chemicals."

A study to be published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute will raise questions over the long-term daily use of the pain-killer ibuprofen by suggesting it may increase breast cancer risk.

Researchers at the University of Southern California studied the health histories of 114,000 women and compared them to the pills and medicine they said they had taken.

The painkiller is widely available over the counter and has long been seen as one of the safest drugs. Researchers say further study of its possible effects is needed because of the public health impact should the findings be confirmed.

But there is better news for women diagnosed with cancer who may choose to preserve their fertility by freezing eggs before they undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatments.

Existing freezing and thawing techniques can damage the eggs but scientists from the University of Michigan told a conference in Istanbul yesterday they had developed a promising process called vitrification, already tried in mice and scheduled for trials of women this autumn. This instantly freezes the eggs, preventing the formation of dangerous ice crystals.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,2763,1495255,00.html

euh.. au sujet de la grippe aviare... selon ce que je comprends, on ne peut pas le passer d'un etre humain a un autre.. est cela correct?
on a peur que le virus fasse une mutation et qu'apres cela ca soit possible de passer d'une personne a une autre mais cela n'est pas encore le cas...
c'est ca?

oui... pour l'instant, c'est seulement si tu touches un oiseau/volaille contaminé que tu risques...

y'a justement un article assez bien expliqué dans mon journal:

http://www.lematin.ch/nwmatinhome/nwmatinheadactu/actu_suisse/ruee_sur_les_pharmacies.html