board77

Wasp killer is a neurotoxin. When I was in the Army, they told us a way to test if the chemical warfare detection gadgets were working was to spray some wasp killer nearby. That would set them off, or so I was told.

I hate that stuff, but we keep a can of it in our garage anyway, because my husband is very allergic to wasp or bee stings, and an angry wasp could kill him. He uses it to knock down wasps in the air that are getting too close. I prefer to toss gasoline on the nest and kill them that way, if necessary. The sudden thermal shock makes them fall down dead. (You don't light the gasoline) They just get too cold and die.

Mostly we leave wasps alone, because on the whole they are good creatures. We just can't have them defending nests in areas where my husband has to work. We really ought to get him desensitized to them- he'd be a lot safer- but that is a long, drawn out, expensive affair I hear.

One of these years we'll get around to it.

Does anyone know if "petrolatum" is a petroleum product or not? I've stopped using my chapstick, because it has petrolatum in it- and petroleum products are the bad guys according to the book. But all of a sudden I'm not sure if it really is or not. I bought some natural beeswax stuff for lips, but it's much more expensive and doesn't work as well- so all of a sudden I am wondering if it really IS a petroleum product like it sounds like?

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re: emphesema
When I was a teenager I worked as a nurse's aid in a retirement home and one of the residents was dying of emphesema. He was so pitiful, I've never even been tempted to smoke.

[url=http://www.answers.com/petrolatum#Encyclopedia] This Encyclopedia Article[/url] wrote:

petrolatum, colorless to yellowish-white hydrocarbon mixture obtained by fractional distillation of petroleum. In its jellylike semisolid form (known as petroleum jelly and also by several trade names) it is used in preparing medicinal ointments and for lubrication. As a nearly colorless, highly refined liquid known as liquid petrolatum, liquid paraffin, or mineral oil, it is used as a lubricant, as a laxative, and as a base for nasal sprays.

I guess that means yes.

MH: I used to ride ambulances. I saw a man turn blue. Enough said.

The irony is that we medics saw the end stages of emphysema, cancer, and a variety of other smoking0-related illnesses daily, yet about half the people I worked with smoked. They said it eased their stress (and after I worked my first really bad call I could see where the desire to light up or drink up would come from :/). The other half were vehemently against smoking. 'Twas strange.

This discussion of plastic has made me feel rather hopeless as there's no way I can get away from plastic. Oh, I could rid my home of it, more or less, but I spend far mkore time at work than I do at home and I'm not sure modern biochemistry would even happen if we didn't have plastic. For some things, there is a glass or metal alternative, but for most things we're kinda stuck with plastic. We try to cut back our waste by reusing a freakish amount of our plastic but we can never get free of it. There are some types of containers that metal or glass just can't be made into (that and some our stuff would corrode metal, or get messed up by the metal, and proteins tend to stick to glass, which can have some very bad results if you're working with a really sensitive sample).

Not to mention plastics in medicine, including all kinds of permanently implanted materials such as heart valves.

I think this will all prove to be much less serious than the initial suggestion. At least, that has been how similar scares have played out in the past, such as aluminum pots and Alzheimer's disease. It is a single study based on assessments of data from many studies, and large amounts of data can often be used to draw diametrically opposite conclusions, depending on how they're analyzed.

Also, note that it was one particular plasticizer being discussed. Not all plastics are the same or use the same chemicals as plasticizers. BPA is used in polycarbonate plastic, the hard, clear plastic that's used to make shatter-resistant eyeglass lenses, bicycle helmets, shatterproof water bottles, "bulletproof glass," etc. The softer, cloudier plastics such as polypropylene and polyethylene don't contain BPA. Plastic wrap doesn't contain BPA.

I do know that polycarbonate, the one plastic in the study MH cited, is included in recycling code 7 ("Other Plastics"). In other words, if it's recycling code 1 through 6, it certainly is not the "dangerous" plastic.

Polycarbonate is not used in flexible products. Plastic wrap and bags are not polycarbonate.

Well, moving foods into glass containers is working well for me- regardless of whether or not the particular plastic was hazardous or not. Not only is the glass impervious to the occasional mealy bug that seems endemic in my house... but it's also impervious to my bird! Our little conure is going through his annual insanity of thinking he has to build a nest in my kitchen cabinets, and shred anything he finds there into nesting materiel. I spent yesterday afternoon cleaning up where he shredded a cardboard box and it's contents (teabags) in the topmost shelf in one of my cabinets, and all the tea sifted down to the lower shelves, so they all had to be cleaned out.

Yesterday evening I was due to start my progesterone cream applications again. Yesterday afternoon, my youngest daughter made chocolate cupcakes. Now I've had no trouble sticking to a rather strict no sugar, mostly organic diet for the last month.... but yesterday afternoon I was hit by the carb cravings typical of the low progesterone, high estrogen syndrome, and ended up eating three or four of the cup cakes. I just scarfed them down without even a second thought.

The timing on using the progesterone seems to be quite precise. If I'd been just a few hours sooner with my first application, then I would have possibly not been hit by such intense cravings. Today I'm fine, and didn't even look twice at the cupcakes on the table this morning.

Hormones have too much influence on brain activity!

I heard a reference on a local radio talk show yesterday about a website called our ourstolenfuture.com.

Apparently there is a book out called "Our Stolen Future" that discusses endocrine disruption due to environmental xenoestrogens, and this website is devoted to tracking the latest research on the subject.

Just a casual look down their article list solved a long term puzzle for me. Calcium influx and prolactin secretion increased by extremely low doses of EDCs

Apparently, very low doses of xenoestrogens can cause increased calcium absorbtion by cells, which in turn causes increased prolactin secretion. Now, I had to look up "prolactin" in the Wikipedia to make sure, linky but it turns out that among other things, prolactin causes milk production.

Now one of the minor mysteries in my life is that for 10 years after I weaned my youngest daughter, I still had milk in my breasts. 10 years! I once asked my doctor about this, and he acted like it was my fault and told me to stop checking. Like expressing a single drop of milk 2 or 3 times a year could stimulate the breasts to keep making milk. Idiot doctor.

Anyway, this explains it. The xenoestrogens from all the plastics in my life were causing the breasts to keep in standby mode for making milk because of the increased prolactin levels.

I guess I'm going to get the book "Our Stolen Future" and see what it has to say. This stuff is real.

MariaHobbit, your posts always make me open my eyes very wide:

Interesting.

MH, I'm not sure that it is so unusual to be able to express a few drops of milk for years after ceasing breastfeeding. I still can do so, though my son is now almost 8 so it's been not quite 6 years since I stopped feeding him.

I think it depends on how successfully one has breastfed, and for how long altogether one did so. As long as the milk is not...erm... overflowing...so to speak, a couple of drops would simply indicate to me that your body liked nourishing your babies.

I'm not discounting the external influences you've quoted btw, simply saying that more natural processes may be at play as well.

Or you could be experiencing the same endocrine disruption that I am, Impy.

It's planet-wide!

I sure hope my kids' reproductive capability hasn't been trashed by all this. They've had much more pervasive and earlier exposure to the plastics/pesticides xenoestrogen problem than I did. I fed them from plastic bottles when they were infants! I kept expressed milk in small plastic containers when I tried to breast feed and still work.

California is mulling a ban on this kind of plastic right now for products made for children under 3. http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/200503 ... _sys.shtml

I hope they do it, and that the idea spreads.