Featured Article

by David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) More than a third of toys tested contain toxic chemicals, according to a report released by the Ecology Center's Environmental Health Project and the Washington Toxics Coalition.

The groups tested 1,200 toys and other children's products using an X-ray fluorescence analyzer that reveals objects' elemental composition. According to the groups, this method is far more accurate than the types of home lead-testing kits that are widely available.

The researchers found that more than a third of all products tested contained toxic elements, the most common being lead, mercury, cadmium or arsenic. Other elements tested for were bromine, chlorine, chromium and tin.

Seventeen percent of the objects tested contained more lead than is allowed by federal safety standards, or 600 parts per million (ppm). Some products had lead levels more than five times the allowed maximum -- a Hannah Montana card game, for example, tested at 3,056 ppm.

Cadmium levels greater than 100 ppm were found in 2.9 percent of products, and arsenic levels greater than 100 ppm were found in 2.2 percent.

Lead was most common in jewelry, but other products containing toxins included bath toys and bedroom slippers. Many brand-name products were on the report's list of "worst toys," including Elmo's Take-Along card games and a Go Diego Go backpack.

The children's products were tested only to see if they contained toxic substances, so it is unknown exactly how much risk of exposure each product poses, or what the health effects of using them might be.

According to Tracey Easthope, director of the Environmental Health Project, the purpose of the study was to spur the government to carry out better testing, rather than to accuse specific toys of being dangerous.

"We aren't making claims about immediate danger," Easthope said. "But the government is not testing for toxic chemicals, and too many manufacturers are not self-regulating."

"We're publishing the results of our test with the hope that we can urge the government to do this kind of thing themselves," she said.

FDA ignores dangers of food coloring

Consumer advocacy groups are working overtime trying to get the FDA to wake up to the dangers of artificial food colorings—especially for children. As usual, the FDA has turned a deaf ear. The consumer advocacy groups claim these additives could cause hyperactivity and behavior problems in some children.

As you know, I'm not the biggest believer in the ADHD/hyperactivity diagnosis in today's kids – I think it's overblown at best. But there's some convincing and long-standing research about certain dyes used in foodstuffs triggering behavior issues, and the fact that the FDA obstinately refuses to open its mind to these possibilities… well, it's just standard operating procedure for the slow-footed government bureaucracy.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), studies conduced over the last 30 years have indicated that children's behavior can be altered by some artificial dyes. In fact, the British government is currently pressuring UK food manufacturers to switch to safer food colorings.

The FDA, on the other hand, continually ignores these and other findings. Instead, our "vigilant" FDA emphatically says that additives DO NOT cause childhood hyperactivity.

But if the FDA is wrong – and well, let's face it, they've been wrong before – imagine the consequences. There are no foods with more food coloring additives than children's foods. The dyes are used in vast numbers of products that are marketed to children: cereals, candies, sodas, and snack foods. According to Michael F. Jacobson of CSPI, "The purpose of these chemicals is often to mask the absence of real food, to increase the appeal of a low-nutrition product to children, or both – who can tell the parents of kids with behavioral problems that this is truly worth the risk?"

As a parent, I encourage you to be on the safe side and establish your own ban Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Orange B, Red 3, and Yellow 6. I don't think something called "Green 3" occurs naturally…

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Healthy Ideas:

I often define Health-Esteem with a declaration, "I am worth being healthy!" To act upon that declaration, you may have to actually change much of the mind set you have adopted, inherited or been taught throughout most of your life. You must discover respect for yourself and knowledge that you are what you think. Every experience you have had in life has left you with both a physical and emotional memory. Good or bad, remembered or not, the events are imprinted in your cellular memory.

Embracing Health-Esteem means making a commitment to the one part of healing we can take charge of -- our thoughts and emotions. Critical lessons come from the lives we live. Everything we need to know to initiate healing is available by accessing the data banks of our lives. Illness or crisis is inseparable from the fact that we are everything that has happened to us. Health-Esteem is a process of discarding sick-making lessons in our lives and replacing them with healthy thoughts and actions.

For instance, spending two decades as a frenzied workaholic was a sick-making pattern for me. I learned to push everything that I didn't have time for and couldn't deal with out of sight and out of my mind. Unfortunately, all those things hid out in my body waiting to be dealt with, or if ignored long enough, waiting to deal with me. I'm talking about disappointing love affairs, failed friendships, confused spirituality, lack of community involvement, sadness, fear, anger, frustration, and other emotions I simply had no time for. The result was that I got sick. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1985 after experiencing numbness from the waist down and partial blindness. To get well, I had to unlearn my obsession with work, separate myself from what I did for a living and literally birth a self that was willing to participate in all the other parts of life.

By healing, I am not speaking about a cure, but rather an evolution into consciousness. We don't necessarily get over a disease. What we do is become conscious of the disease process and what underlies it. Then we set out to change as much as possible about cultural conditioning and mechanical thinking.

Health-Esteem engenders a rebirthing of yourself, independent from other's perceptions and completely tuned-in to your own wisdom. Here is how to begin. Look in the mirror and say, "I am worth being healthy." Repeat, "I am worth being healthy," five times before you meditate. Say it to yourself while exercising. When someone hurts your feelings, or cuts you off in traffic say, "I am worth being healthy," before responding. Before long, the phrase will be your guide to finding your Health-Esteem.

Test how far along you are on that road by taking this quiz:

Health-Esteem^TM Questionnaire

• Do you feel illness is a natural part of life? Just something that happens with age?

• Do you feel like you're being punished when you get sick?

• Do you find it hard to place value in your health?

• Do you resent spending time and money to stay well?

• Do you think it's more important to look good than to feel good?

• Do you feel like you should be doing something more important when you are exercising?

• Is it fun or "comforting" for you to eat foods that are bad for you?

• In your childhood, was your family unable to teach you health-esteem?

• Does illness make you feel helpless or filled with self-doubt?

• Do you spend more time being critical or appreciative of your body?

• Do you feel like you must change your body in order to be loved?

• Are there negative parts of your personality that you work very hard to keep hidden -- even from yourself?

• Is your own care and maintenance often the last thing you get around to? Do you feel that your health care practitioner is solely responsible for your health?

Every "Yes" to one of the previous questions is a sign post indicating an area where work needs to be done to improve your Health-Esteem.
Finally, is there a big enough "Why" in your life to motivate change? There certainly was a big enough "Why" in my life and it was called diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. I've been symptom-free since 1990 without taking one drug, and I owe that largely to my work with Health-Esteem. Find the "Why" in your life to help you feel, love and live a better life filled with realized dreams.
 

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