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MY RANT
April 2010
Archive MY Rant
The Health and Fitness Paradox
As I travel across the country, I’m constantly confronted by a curious lifestyle paradox that’s as fascinating as it is frightening. On the one hand, millions of Americans are committed to being healthy and fit. They exercise routinely, even obsessively. They watch what they eat, and even go out of their way to grow their own food or to buy locally grown organic food. They take vitamins and supplements. They filter their water, and use air purifiers in their homes.
And yet when it comes to maintaining their lawns and gardens, many of those same people don’t think twice about applying known toxins, carcinogens, and mutagenic agents to their turf, their trees, their tomatoes…anything and everything that grows. Instead of bending and stooping to pull weeds and burn a few hundred calories along the way, they reach for a synthetic herbicide. Instead of maintaining a compost pile and using the compost to feed their plants (and soil), they opt for a synthetic fertilizer. Instead of hand picking caterpillars from their tomatoes, they douse them with a synthetic pesticide.
And in the process, they wind up turning their yards and gardens into chemical dumping grounds, the very yards and gardens where they let their kids and pets roll and tumble and play, as if somehow their exposure to all those chemicals is no big deal.
Well, folks, it is a big deal. Although science has yet to establish a direct link between the use of synthetic chemicals and a multitude of maladies that plague the population, research has clearly shown that many of the chemicals found in commonly used lawn and garden products are indeed toxic, are indeed carcinogenic, and do indeed have the potential to cause birth defects. And when you consider the fact that for every potentially hazardous synthetic lawn and garden product on the market there’s a safe, all-natural alternative, you have to wonder why anyone would ever opt for anything else.
The reason they do, sadly, is that a maddeningly monstrous and extremely powerful chemical industry wants them to, and spends billions of dollars on advertising to make sure they remain hooked on their products. It’s as simple as that. And I’ll explore that subject in detail in next month’s rant.
