June 25, 2006 - Day 5 - Week 12 - Testing

I have had my blood tested more in the past 90 days than in my 63 years combined.  I thought that chemo therapy was to be the only time I was going to have a needle inserted into my hand or arm, but boy I was mistaken.  Testing, I have come to find out, is as important as the treatment itself.  Blood is taken and analyzed to determine if the regimen is working and my blood count is remaining normal.

I have been and will continue to be tested throughout the eight months and probably indefinitely.

Tests are good for they measure progress. In school we all accepted that Miss Fielding our 3^rd grade teacher would test our math and English proficiency and from that time on tests were an integral part of our learning experience. I am resigned to the fact that the tests I will undergo will determine, to a significant degree, my future.

With some irony, I have been interested in the testing of chemicals that have been produced since the 2^nd world war.  This fascination began with a conversation with David Hall in 1992.  This agri-business inventor from Australia told of his declining health and use of agricultural chemicals on his 100,000 acres he had under cultivation.  This convergence led to his inventing a non-chemically based fertilizer called Eco-Min.

I began acutely aware that the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act Inventory consists of 75,000, yes thousand, registered chemicals and only approximately 3% have been tested for their possible carcinogenicity.  That is correct.  Chemicals are produced but few ever are scrutinized for their possible damaging impact to the human’s internal eco-system.  Testing is minimal and not mandated for the majority of chemicals that enter into our water, air, soil, plants, lawns, trees, etc. etc. etc.

The same EPA inventory also notes that around 6.5 billion pounds of toxic chemicals, “including nearly 100 million pounds of carcinogens (identified experimentally and/or epidemiologically) are discard by industry into the environment annually.”

My body is perhaps housing minute amounts of hundreds if not thousands of these same chemicals.  But, what is a person supposed to do?  We can wear a breathing apparatus, distill our drinking water, and eat only certified organic food for the rest of our lives, but that is neither practical nor possible.

As you may recall I addressed the issue of our having become a chemical culture in earlier writings, but now I recognize that the issue also has to do with the importance of testing. In the future, which for me is now, the real issue may be not me being tested, but the chemicals produced by industry being tested more thoroughly.

Since childhood we have all learned to accept testing as a necessary and vital part of life. Let’s use the precautionary principle and demand that nothing can be introduced into our environment unless it is tested.  This would become perhaps our first line of defense in developing our cancer prevention strategy.  Just a thought!

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