PETA to Pregnant Women: "NO BUFFALO WINGS for YOU!"

Grown up guys who scarf down Buffalo wings have to worry too! The cholesterol will wreck your male machinery! According to PETA

PETA - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - is now in the midst of a new campaign, warning pregnant women to steer clear of Buffalo wings (the favorite finger food fare of football lovers) warning that buffalo wings might harm the physical development of the sex organs of male babies. In other words, if pregnant women are foolish enough to gobble them during a game (like Thursday night's Broncos- Ravens game) they will have males who grow up to have small penises!

Apparently, PETA recently sent a letter to Drew Cerza, who runs the Buffalo Wing Festival in Buffalo, New York, asking him to bar pregnant women from taking part in a wing-eating contest which has been held each Labor Day since 2002. Lindsay Rajt, director of the PETA campaigns, wrote to Cerza saying “consuming poultry while pregnant may lead to birth defects in utero, including smaller-than-average penises for newborn boys.” And, of course, that means they're likely to grow up with smaller than average penises. Rajt added:

"“Chickens may be little animals, but they suffer in a big way before their wings are hacked off for a stupid contest.”

Barring the emotive issue of butchery to do with any animal consumption, how do the health experts at PETA know that consuming Buffalo wings will have the effect they claim?

Basically, they have disclosed they know little or nothing. In fact, the primo culprit in shrinking or deforming male penises in the womb is the chemical group known as phthalates.  Author Nena Baker (Body Toxic, 2008) observes :

"Researchers have associated high levels of phthalates with lower sperm motility in adult men and one study has correlated phthalates with abdominal obesity and insulin resistance in men"

She also notes:

"Researchers have seen a high association between levels of maternal phthalate metabolites - seen in about 25% of U.S. women - and effects on ASD or ano-genital distance in male offspring"

In the later case, the ASD is decreased - sometimes radically. She also notes increased prevalence of shrunken penises and hypospadia in male fetuses.  And where are these phthalates found? She gives a list of the sources, none of which are buffalo wings:

 personal care products, lotions, soaps, cosmetics etc.

- detergents

-vinyl flooring

- adhesives

-building materials

- plastic bags

- food packaging

-garden hoses

- inflatable recreational toys (including ALL sex toys!)
In other words, just about every single product or thing Americans use.

According to Shanna H. Swan, Ph.D., a professor in the department of preventive medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who conducted the research PETA cites:

"I think any link between eating buffalo wings—even by pregnant women—and the size of their son’s genitals is very tenuous,” (Oh, btw, PETA also warns those of us of the male gender not to go wild eating hot wings either, since "the cholesterol in them will clog up arteries and lead to erectile dysfunction." What is all this preoccupation with the operation of the male sexual machinery?)

Of course, PETA has been on the rampage before - about milk, for example. They generated an intense campaign a couple of years ago, including an over the top video ("Milk Gone Wild") featuring gyrating young women equipped with giant udders,  dancing in a club  and  spurting milk all over the place to the delight of delirious males lapping it up. The point they wanted to try to get over is that cow's milk is bad for you and they paired the "Got Milk?" ads via parodies against "Got Prostate Cancer?", "Got Gas?", "Got Pus?" and other high impact PR, imagery.

To see the video - if you can stomach it- locate it here:

http://www.peta.org/tv/videos/vegetarianism-cows/1389647429001.aspx


Don't say I didn't warn you !

Toxic Nation: Maybe we Have Little Choice

I've blogged on the pervasive use of chemical toxins in this country before, and more recently how the more widespread use may be linked to everything from genetic damage to aggressive prostate, liver and breast cancers. For sure, the anomaly of American males in their 30s being diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer (Gleason score of 8 or higher) may be directly linked to their inhabiting a chemical toxic sea - most of whose components they know nothing about.

Right now, indeed, I am writing this amidst a toxic 'brew' in my own home, as a result of exposure to resins, acrylic acid (e.g. http://www.epa.gov/ttnatw01/hlthef/acrylica.html ) etc. from having a downstairs shower pan replaced and resurfaced. Yes, the thing looks fantastic after the replacement, but the toxins released - which we are now trying to expel using a high-powered fan, maybe not so much. (Don't blame me, btw, it was wifey's idea to refurbish the thing as it "looked too grungy". I guess maybe she figures we may have guests coming at some point to use it!) The point is, in this country there is almost no escaping the toxic stew, which accompanies everything from a simple bathroom shower floor redo, to pest and weed control and even handling DVDs (laden with bisphenol A).

Even oldish toxins can lay in wait and affect the most innocent among us, kids - who may have nothing to do with pesticide spraying or renovating showers. The CDC estimates that in at least  4 million households in the U.S. today children are still exposed to dangerous amounts of lead from old paint that produces dust every time a nail is driven into a wall to hang a picture, a new electric socket is installed, or a family renovates its kitchen. It estimates that more than 500,000 children ages one to five have “elevated” levels of lead in their blood. (No level is considered safe for children.) Studies have linked lost IQ points, attention deficit disorders, behavioral problems, dyslexia, and even possibly high incarceration rates to tiny amounts of lead in children’s bodies.

Sadly, when it came to the creation of America’s pervasive chemical stew, the lead industry was hardly alone. Asbestos is another classic example of an industrial toxin that found its way into people’s homes and bodies. For decades, insulation workers, brake mechanics, construction workers, and a host of others in hundreds of trades fell victim to the disabling and deadly lung diseases of asbestosis or to lung cancer and the fatal cancer called mesothelioma when they breathed in dust produced during the installation of boilers, the insulation of pipes, the fixing of cars that used asbestos brake linings, or the spraying of asbestos on girders.

Despite growing medical knowledge about its effects (and increasing industry attempts to downplay or suppress that knowledge), asbestos was soon introduced to the American home and incorporated into products ranging from insulation for boilers and piping in basements to floor tiles and joint compounds. It was used to make sheetrock walls, roof shingles, ironing boards, oven gloves, and hot plates. Soon an occupational hazard was transformed into a threat to all consumers.


What’s inside the new walls of your new home might be even more dangerous. While the flame retardants commonly used in sofas, chairs, carpets, love seats, curtains, baby products, and even TVs, sounded like a good idea when widely introduced in the 1970s, they turn out to pose hidden dangers that we’re only now beginning to grasp. Researchers have, for instance, linked one of the most common flame retardants, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, to a wide variety of potentially undesirable health effects including thyroid disruption, memory and learning problems, delayed mental and physical development, lower IQ, and the early onset of puberty. Other flame retardants like Tris (1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate have been linked to cancer. As the CDC has documented in an ongoing study of the accumulation of hazardous materials in our bodies, flame retardants can now be found in the blood of “nearly all” of us.


Is this the end of it? Dream on! Lurking in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, for instance, are window cleaners and spot removers that contain known or suspected cancer-causing agents. The same can be said of  any cosmetics (including lotions- linked to hypospadias in male infants) in your bathroom,  or of your plastic water bottle or microwavable food containers.

As for Bisphenol A (BPA), the synthetic chemical used in a variety of plastic consumer products, including your DVDs, some baby bottles, epoxy cements (now wafting through my home) Sarah Vogel of the Environmental Defense Fund has written: “New research on very-low-dose exposure to BPA suggests an association with adverse health effects, including breast and prostate cancer, obesity, neurobehavioral problems, and reproductive abnormalities.”

Do we care? Maybe we do, but inhabiting a techno-civilization where these chemicals are so abundant and  intimately woven into our lives means there's little we can do to control them. Toss out all your DVDs? Hardly likely! Tell my wife no more bathroom renovations like this last one, unless harmless chemicals are employed? Even less bloody likely! Demanding wifey use a newspaper to kill that large 6" diameter arthropod over there as opposed to spraying RAID? Even less probable!


So, in the end, we swim amidst all these toxins, use them - in so far as we have to - then cross fingers and just hope to hell we don't get to be the one stuck with liver, prostate, breast or kidney cancer.....or some awful respiratory disease.