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Getting the Lead Out |
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Lead Poisoning |
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What a
beautiful animal the angelfish is. I killed a whole tankful of them with lead, and
never knew it. As a teenager, I was
really into tropical fish, successfully breeding Siamese fighting fish at age
14. That was a rather strange experience. The babies started to fight
at a surprisingly tender age, so of course I had to isolate each one. Until I
sold them, I had forty baby-food jars of fighting fish in my bedroom.
But they were far from alone; I also kept a large bluegill sunfish (by
himself), and an assortment of other species in several more aquariums, all
nicely filling up my rather small part of the house. Walking into my
room was like a visit to Jacques Cousteau's rumpus room. A Fish Story I always wanted to breed
angelfish. I had a number of really fine angels which I moved to a private
tank furnished with some beautiful plants. The plants were held down with
some metal “plant weights” that I bought at the local pet shop. Plants,
you see, often get uprooted and float to the surface. So when I saw the
package of nice, easily bendable, made-to-order soft metal strips, I bought
it. The weights held the
plants down admirably. All the angelfish died. It was pretty
awful. I woke up one morning bright and early to check on my charges,
and half of the angelfish were dead. The rest were swimming erratically,
in an unbalanced circling movement. It is sad to see sparkling silver
angelfish swimming on their sides, upside down, and writhing in their death
throes, and not being able to do anything about it. It was not until I had
taken chemistry at college that I had a guess at what had happened. Those
plant weights were made of lead. The lead leached into the aquarium
water, and the angelfish may have died of lead poisoning. Vitamin C Over the years, we have
all heard about the hazards of lead. These include lead paint ingestion
by children, lead dust inhalation by miners and metalworkers, lead in solder
used in plumbing, and leaded gasoline contaminating cattle. We know
that lead poisoning can cause severe mental retardation. Lead has been clearly
linked with Alzheimer’s disease. We have been told to
avoid lead in the home and to stop lead pollution of our environment. But
we have not been told how to remove it from our bodies at home. No
drugs are needed; vitamin C megadoses will do the job efficiently. Saturation,
or “bowel tolerance” doses of vitamin C will chelate lead right
out of a person. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v03n07.shtml
That is good news for everybody. Hair Analysis I am sometimes critical
of hair analysis, as it is too often employed unscientifically (and for
profit) by vitamin salespeople to prescribe supplements. Hair analysis
is NOT a reliable method to determine your body’s levels of nutrients.
It is, however, a very good way to determine your body’s levels of
heavy metals. Forensic pathologists use hair analysis to measure lead,
cadmium, mercury and other toxins. A “before” and a few “after”
readings can be most useful for diagnosis and also most encouraging as they
indicate improvement with vitamin C treatment. Lead-Avoidance
Checklist Not using, and removing,
lead remain the best ways to avoid problems with it. The good news is
that environmental lead pollution is way, way down, making it one of the
great hippie Eco-freak contributions to world health. I was there, and saw it
happen. The EPA and our much tighter environmental laws are largely 1970’s
products of ‘60s activists. There is still more to do, though. Here’s
what is directly in your power: 1. Do not use lead solder
for plumbing projects. Make sure your plumber doesn’t, either. 2. Have lead paint and
lead products taken away by your community’s Hazardous Waste Disposal
Unit. And you do have one; check the phone book’s Government
Listings, or call the EPA, toll-free, or hit their website, for help. 3. When a
lead-painted room, house or barn is repainted, have the contractor use all
precautions, including collection and removal of all paint scrapings. 4. This next suggestion
is pretty cool: plant Sunflowers. Yes, sunflowers, those giant yellow
smiley-faces of the farm, will efficiently suck up lead from contaminated
soil. Their roots silently clean the dirt as their huge blossoms follow
the sun across the sky. I make it a policy to border house, garden,
garage and barn with sunflowers. This is all the more vital if that
barn is an old one, and most wood barns are. When I was a kid, my Dad
used barn paint on our house because it was a buck cheaper per gallon and, he
believed, longer lasting than regular house paints. We had the only
barn-red house in the neighborhood, and maybe even the city. Pop also
made a large wood and metal star to display on our white front door at
Christmas time. He painted it with the red barn paint, too. Imagine,
if you will, the overall patriotic effect of a bright-red house, with a bright
red star on the door . . . during the
McCarthy era. Dad (who was fortunately well-known as a very American WWII
veteran) finally realized the humor of the whole thing, and painted a
one-inch green border around the star. The house stayed red until I was
old enough to paint it brown. But I digress, as
usual. Back to the sunflowers. Each autumn, after the sunflowers dry and
die, be sure to throw them out in the trash. Do not burn them or
compost them; lead-laced sunflowers can be safely landfilled. When in The ancient Romans used
rot-proof, rustproof, cheap-to-make, easy-to-use lead pipe for their
plumbing. In fact, “plumber” comes from the Latin word plumbum,
and the chemical symbol for lead is Pb to this day. There is speculation as
to whether the decline of the Roman Empire, complete with its civil wars,
corruption and mad emperors, was the result of chronic lead poisoning. Geologic cores in the
arctic and elsewhere have shown that the ancient Romans polluted as much as
half of the world with lead many centuries ago. Smelting metal ores
often drives off lead fumes, and they travel with the weather. And autopsies
of the corpses of ancient Romans have revealed unusually high quantities of
lead in their bodies. They, like my angelfish,
never knew what made them sick. Now we know, and we know what to do to
get the lead out. Copyright 2007, 2003 and
prior years by Andrew W. Saul. Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
) For ordering information, Click Here . |
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
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