Originally posted by -0mega-
But I for one would rather eat something I LIKE that contains good and bad stuff, and have a 0,0001% increased chance of poisoning (as in, getting the symptoms), rather than eat pure poison and have a 0,5% increased chance of poisoning, while it doesn't even taste nearly as good as a steak, for example. (or vegetable, or whatever you like to eat), or while it has 10 times worse symptoms (eg.: headache vs. death)
[edit on 3/6/07 by -0mega-]

The lies told by chemical, food and drug companies
Mike: Let me play the skeptic with you for a second here. As consumers in the Western world, we are being continually assured by food corporations, petrochemical companies, drug companies and even government regulatory bodies like the FDA, that all of these chemicals are perfectly safe. There are even allowable limits of many of these chemicals, which the EPA says are perfectly safe. Why should a consumer believe that he or she needs to read your book if all of these chemicals are advertised as being safe for us?

Fitzgerald: There are two big -- and by big I mean monumental -- problems with the argument and the perspective taken by federal regulatory agencies and by the manufacturers of foods and medicines. The argument is that trace levels of these chemicals do no harm to human health. What that argument ignores is the cumulative effect of hundreds, if not thousands, of these chemicals entering and then mixing within the human body. This is known as the "body burden." We each carry a "body burden" of these synthetic chemicals.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, starting in 1999, began testing the blood of thousands of Americans to determine what synthetic chemicals are being carried in their blood, their body fat and their body organs. The results of these tests -- more than 10,000 people have been tested so far -- is that every single person tested was found to carry hundreds of these synthetic chemicals. The problem here is that our bodies do not recognize these synthetic chemicals, most of which have been invented, patented and produced since World War II. Our livers, which are the main detoxifying organs of our bodies, do not recognize these synthetic chemicals, and as a result, do not metabolize them. Instead, the chemicals are either pushed off into the far reaches of the liver, to be stored, or sent into body fat and body organs to be stored. As these toxins accumulate, they begin to interact with each other. This is where the problem -- that regulatory agencies and manufactures want to overlook -- becomes a health disaster for us.

That is the problem of synergies; the synergistic reactions of two or more chemicals in the body. When they interact, it is much more powerful than any one individual chemical can do on its own. It may be true -- manufacturers and regulatory agencies insist that it is true -- that these chemicals, in trace amounts on their own, may be harmless to human health. I have a question about that, but I don't really deal with that in-depth in the book. Instead I look at what happens when all of these chemicals accumulate in the human body and they interact with each other to create toxic synergies. This, I believe, is the key to the explosion in human illness and disease levels that we have seen since World War II.

Originally posted by selfless
How can your father-in-law own a subway?