September 25th, 2003, 8:45 pm

Subtle Poisons

I have my dorky cell phone headset on as we speak, thanks to the recent report by the Environmental Health Perspectives journal. Their little rat’s brains that looked like swiss cheese after cell phone radiation exposure. I think people have been so caught up in fearing cancer that they have forgotten that there are other, more subtle ways to poison yourself. Like, for example, drinking a nice cold glass of milk, or downing a hearty salad. The Environmental Working Group reports that a group of Texas Tech researchers bought milk from seven supermarkets in Lubbock, TX — and that each jug sampled contained high levels of perchlorate, the main chemical component of rocket fuel.

No suprise there — it’s been an open secret since the late 90s that perchlorate, left behind by such environmental benefactors as Lockheed Martin, had contaminated the Colorado River. It only followed that the local drinking water was found contaminated, followed shortly by the lettuce it watered. Now, the cows that ate and drank contaminants are themselves contaminating. That’s what’s so tricky about bioaccumulation: chemicals tend to increase their concentration the higher up the food chain they go.

That’s why we should all be disturbed to learn that the EWG found “unexpectedly high levels” of chemical fire retardants in the breast milk of every woman sampled in its nationwide study. It should be further noted that all of those women were breastfeeding their children at the time of the study. The chemicals impair attention, learning, and memory at “surprisingly low levels,” the study found. The chemicals affect young, developing minds the most. So, no grotesque disfigurations. No rash of obvious Erin Brockovich-style cancers. Just a generation slowly getting dumber, finding it harder to remember where it parked, having a harder time focusing, and avoiding fruits, vegetables, and water, since they’re all bad for you.