I recently went to the doctor for an MRI on my stomach; I was given a barium sulfate solution to drink before the test. I was looking at the bottle of barium sulfate, it was a 2% solution. I did some simple math and realized that it translates to 20,000 ppm. Now that I’m a chemist in the hazardous waste industry, I know that the regulatory limit for barium is 100 ppm, which means the doctors wanted me to drink hazardous waste. Not just a hazardous waste, but one that is 200 times the regulatory limit. I thought about it for a second and realized that I would not be tested unless I drank the hazardous waste.
Barium is a typical hazardous waste, just like lead, mercury, and chromium, and is one of 8 RCRA metals. RCRA stands for Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976; this law created the hazardous waste industry and hasn’t really changed in 33 years. Knowing that barium is an element that cannot be destroyed, and applying the law of conservation of mass, we conclude that what goes in must come out. So if I have 20,000 ppm of barium in my body, what concentrations can we expect to leave my body? I thought that was a very good question. So, to be a responsible citizen and something of a mad scientist, I decided to collect my urine and send it to an environmental lab for analysis. I am still waiting for the results. I suspect my urine is a List D hazardous waste, D005 specifically. If an industrial manufacturer discharged barium at this level, the EPA would arrest the president of the company.
We’ve all heard stories about drugs in the water and the general consensus is that most drugs end up in the water by passing through our bodies unprocessed, an example I like to use is if you ever take a vitamin you haven’t taken. a while, a couple of hours later you go to the bathroom and your pee is the color of Mountain Dew. This is because drugs, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medicines, whatever you call them, are not fully absorbed by the body; in some cases a vitamin can only be absorbed from 5 to 10%, some more dangerous drugs are absorbed at much lower levels.
The EPA regulates some of these drugs, the ones that existed in 1976. Once used for their intended purpose, they are not considered hazardous waste. These are listed hazardous wastes and usually have a List U or List P designation. So if it’s in a chemical treatment that would be a hazardous waste when put into your body, after it’s processed, it’s no longer a hazardous waste. What you excreted is unregulated, that doesn’t mean it’s gone, that means it’s unregulated and that’s where we have a contamination problem.
The other problem is that in the last 33 years an enormous amount of chemistry has been invented in the medical industry, specifically cancer treatments that involve worryingly dangerous chemicals. Specifically cytotoxic agents that work by breaking into cells by attacking the DNA and breaking the chromosomes, so that when the cell divides it is no longer the same cell, it has been mutated. So if you have a cancer cell that is mutated by one of these drugs when the cancer cell divides, it is no longer a cancer cell. The problem is that these drugs work on all cells, not just cancer cells. They tend to work on fast-growing cells, such as cancer cells, hair cells, and skin cells. What are the fastest growing cells we have? What about embryonic cells, the people that are born?
The dose of some of these chemotherapy drugs is given in concentrations of nanograms per liter which translates to parts per billion. The example I like to use is if you had $1 trillion stacked up like a deck of cards and you turned it on its side, it would go all the way from Boston to central Ohio. That one part per trillion is injected into a cancer patient and only 1% is absorbed by the cells, where does the rest go? What happens to the patient when he absorbed the 1% he gets very sick and his hair falls out. How dangerous are these chemicals? These are all very good questions with simple answers that we don’t want to hear. The first question where the rest of the chemical goes is obvious down the toilet. If you are in a septic system, the chemicals kill the bacteria in the septic system. If you’re on a septic system, you probably have a well, which means these chemicals go into your drinking water.
How dangerous are these chemicals? So dangerous that they are made by men in space suits fitted by pharmacists with a special hood so there is no exposure and are handled by nurses under strict OSHA regulations. The patient is injected with the chemical and sent home. It is well documented that the drug is concentrated in the urine. Did I mention that these drugs are all carcinogens, they cause cancer? Pharmaceutical companies outsource the manufacture of these chemicals because they are too dangerous for them to manufacture themselves.
What other ways does the body excrete the chemical? Sweat glands, respiratory, search the internet for chemotherapy breath and you will find articles about patients undergoing chemotherapy and what their breath and body odor actually smell like. The odors are chemicals, what you are smelling is the excess chemotherapy drugs being given to the patient. And if you could smell the drug, it’s probably much higher than the permissible exposure limit will allow. And you thought secondhand smoke is bad, what about secondhand cancer treatment?
About two years ago, researchers determined that autism is a genetic disorder that does not run in families. How do you have a genetic disorder that is not hereditary? You mutate genes. How do genes mutate? Chemicals There is a class of chemicals that are specifically designed to mutate human genes called cytotoxics, most of which are chemotherapy drugs and are effective at the molecular level. Do you think these chemicals are regulated by the EPA? No.
I have proven that I can drink a quarter of the federally regulated hazardous waste and not die. How much unregulated drug, like a chemotherapy drug, do you think I can take and live?
