Posts Tagged Epic
Doctors Advising Pregnant Women To Avoid TSA body Scanners
Posted by EndlessMemories in Cancer, Health, News, TSA on August 8, 2012
via: PrisonPlanet
by: Steve Watson
August 7, 2012
More scientists flag up health risks from x-ray scanners
An article in the New York Times health and science section today carries several revealing details indicating that doctors and scientists are extremely wary of the TSA’s use of full-body “backscatter” X-ray scanners.
The article details an account from pregnant Yolanda Marin-Czachor, a 34-year-old mother and teacher from Green Bay, Wis., who says:
“one of the first things my doctor said was: ‘Do not go through one of those machines. There have not been any long-term studies. I would prefer you stay away from it.’ ”
Explaining that the machines operate a narrowly focused beam of high-intensity radiation very quickly across the body, the article also notes:
David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, says he worries about mechanical malfunctions that could cause the beam to stop in one place for even a few seconds, resulting in greater radiation exposure.
[…]
John Sedat, emeritus professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, believes that the effective dose could be 45 times as high as the T.S.A. has estimated, equivalent to about 10 percent of a single chest X-ray.
Scrutiny over radiation exposure was heightened recently following apparent efforts by the TSA to cover-up a “cluster” of cancer cases amongst scanner operators at Boston-Logan airport. According to FOIA documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), when Union representatives in Boston discovered a “cancer cluster” amongst TSA workers linked with radiation from the body scanners, the TSA sought to downplay the matter and refused to issue employees with dosimeters to measure levels of exposure.
The documents indicated how, “A large number of workers have been falling victim to cancer, strokes and heart disease.”
Court Orders TSA to Explain Lawless Use of Naked Body Scanners
Posted by EndlessMemories in News, TSA on August 4, 2012
via: TheNewAmerican
by: Alex Newman
August 3, 2012
About a year ago, a federal appeals court ordered the deeply unpopular Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to obey the law and hold public hearings on its widely loathed “naked body scanners.” The massive bureaucracy flouted the judicial order and has so far failed to comply. This week, however, the court demanded that the Department of Homeland Security explain itself by the end of the month.
A coalition of TSA critics including the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) originally sought to have the nude scanners removed from airports on constitutional grounds, alleging a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Other opponents also said the pornographic machines violate the right to privacy.
Because the controversial TSA devices use a type of radiation to peer through people’s clothes, many experts and activists worry about health dangers, too — not to mention the fact that federal bureaucrats are ogling naked men, women, and children. Besides, the machines were exposed as completely useless by an engineer last year.
As expected, the appeals court stopped short of ordering the rogue agency to stop using the porno scanners in its July 2011 ruling last July — federal courts are not exactly known for limiting federal power, regardless of what the Constitution states. It did rule, however, that the airport “safety” outfit had failed to hold the lawfully required 90-day public-comment hearings and that the law had to be obeyed “promptly.”
“This rulemaking is the only way to determine whether TSA’s air travel security regime is worth its huge costs and adverse effects on the public’s well-being,” noted former American Airlines chief Robert Crandall and transportation policy analyst Marc Scribner with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Several independent analyses have found that TSA’s use of these machines would be economically wasteful even if they worked as well as TSA claims, but may actually make us less safe.”
According to analysts, the public comments and the TSA’s responses would also create a new avenue to challenge the use of naked body scanners, already in use at some 200 airports. But the arrogant and bloated federal bureaucracy, which was blasted as a useless and even counter-productive waste of taxpayer money last year in a blistering congressional report, has so far decided to keep breaking the law and ignoring the court’s order.
Toxic BPA Now Linked to Leading Killer Heart Disease
Posted by EndlessMemories in Health, News on March 4, 2012
Mike Barrett
March 3, 2012
Although BPA’s ubiquitous use in today’s world makes it difficult to pinpoint it for causing many health and environmental complications, research gives reason to believe it is indeed a cause of health many complications.
Just recently, research has potentially tied the chemical, often used in plastics and food can linings, to an increased risk of heart disease. Researchers also found that individuals who have heart disease were more likely to have higher urinary concentrations of BPA, which has been shown to spike by 1,200 percent after ingesting soup from canned goods.
The study, published in the journal Circulation, used data from the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) to determine the relationship between BPA and heart disease. EPIC is a long-term study which monitors thousands of people’s health, providing researchers with data on BPA concentration levels from individuals that can be followed for years.
For the recent study appearing in Circulation, researchers tracked 758 healthy EPIC subjects who developed cardiovascular disease later in life. While it can’t be fully clarified that BPA is responsible, the researchers noticed a direct link between BPA concentration and heart disease, with the subjects ending up with heart disease being more likely to have higher BPA levels at the start of the 10-year follow up period.
The lead author of the study states:
This study strengthens the statistical link between BPA and heart disease, but we can’t be certain that BPA itself is responsible. It is now important that government agencies organise drug style safety trials of BPA in humans, as much basic information about how BPA behaves in the human body is still unknown.
Needless to say, this isn’t the first time BPA has been tied to a health condition. One study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that pregnant women exposed to high levels of the estrogen-mimicking health destroyer bisphenol A can lead to female offspring becoming depressed, hyperactive, and anxious — all at the early age of 3. Other research has even linked BPA to diabetes.
Of course there are many other health horrors linked to BPA, which is why you need to know how much of the chemical you’re exposing yourself to. Luckily, there are natural substances that have actually been found to reverse this damage on a number of levels.
Knowing what to avoid and how to reverse the damage from BPA is key to protecting your health from damage induced by the chemical.
Breakaway Consciousness 