Humans are pretty resilient, and difficult to poison, despite the FDA trying to kill us all off!!!

It takes a lot to kill someone.  Not just the psychological implications, but the actual process of taking a toxic substance, delivering a dosage of significant quantity and then allowing the human body to process the toxin, and expire.  It takes a lot, humans can withstand pretty significant doses of some pretty strong poisons before death.  Things that we know are poisonous, like lead, arsenic, mercury are pretty well resisted by the human body.  There are a lot of defensive mechanisms going on in the human body that help to prevent death.  Sure there are nasty things out there, serin gas, nerve gas, stuff that was specifically made by scientists to just out and out kill people, but today this little essay is about less exotic toxins, stuff we find every day in our environment, and worse, things that are added to our food supply.  And there are a lot of things added to our food supply. 

One of the ways that toxicologists measure how effective a chemical is at killing is the laboratory measurement of what is called the "LD50".  This is the specific dosage required to kill one half of a population within a given time frame.  One of the things that our government does is figure out how toxic some of the stuff we deal with daily can damage us.  That's done by the ATSDR which is part of the CDC, which is a small division of the Federal government.  (ATSDR Toxins)  If you go to this site, you can then go to individual toxins or to the human systems that are damaged by particular toxins.  At each of these pages, you can go to specifics about individual toxins and find all the pertinent info on how much it takes to kill 50% of various mammals, including humans, as well as what bodily systems are affected, and the big ones, the half life of the toxin within the body at specific doses.  That means how long a dose of toxin stays in the body using the half life formula, meaning after so many days the body neutralizes half of the toxin.  Interesting stuff, especially when you read that ethyl mercury, the kind that is used in vaccines has a half life of over a year and up to six times more of the ethyl (the kind manufacturers of vaccines claim is safe) ends up in the brain tissues of monkeys over the inorganic methyl mercury, which is the stuff you get from tuna and other seafood.  But that's another story, as we all are led to believe from the AMA, vaccines are not harmful.  This story, is about toxins in food. 

The most interesting thing about the ATDSR site is the relatively small size of the list of toxins that are there.  Not very many of them.  If you look at the FDA list of EAFUS, or the Everything Added to Food in the US list, which has over 10,000 entries, few are on ATDSR.  but then if you go to the EPA site, and look up those same chemicals, you will find that over 700 of them are listed with the EPA as Class II carcinogens.  I haven't done it, the EPA actually removed the individual chemical list detailing which are carcinogens from the web a few years ago, however they do still offer the complete list as a paper copy.  I don't have that kind of money, so I am just relying on what others have found with the EAFUS having 700 chemicals that are on the EPA as carcinogens.  Although Rutgers has a pdf of the older EPA list here (Rutgers)  Anyway, let's look at a  something, just for the fun of it all.  One of the reasons that I grind my own wheat and bake my own bread, (and have done so for the last forty years) is because of the huge list of toxic chemicals that have been added to the commercial bread to make it lighter, fluffier, whiter, and to mask the taste of other chemicals.  One of the newer toxins added to bread is Azodicarbonamide.  This stuff is an industrial plasticizer, it makes plastics used to make shoes, rubber mats and similar stuff, softer.  It does the same to bread, it makes it softer.  It is illegal to use in human food products in every other country in the world.  In the US, the FDA says it is okay to use.  However, the EPA has this to say about it.

This is kind of an anomaly, one division of the Federal Government telling us that one particular chemical is not approved for food use, and yet another giving the go ahead to food manufacturers to use it because it gives them an edge on the competitors by making their products lighter and fluffier. The scary part though is that the FDA does not even acknowledge the stuff is used in food production. Right there in the EAFUS, azodicarbonamide is defined as NIL, which the FDA defines as

NIL

Although listed as a added to food, there is no current reported use of the substance, and, therefore, although toxicology information may be available in PAFA, it is not being updated.

I haven't figured that part out yet. It is listed as an ingredient on about 70% of commercially available bread products in stores. You can see the FDA designation here (FDA EAFUS)
So, what we have is the LD50 of azodicarbonamide as being > 6400 micrograms per kilogram of body weight.  (LD50 info)  And we also see that only about 70% of that which is ingested is excreted, this is from the (The National Toxicology Program)  And if we then go to see what the standard ingredient formulation for manufacture of bread, we see that using up to .0045% by weight as determined by the FDA (FDA on maximum usage)((any greater concentration will result in a metallic taste))((YUCK)) and if we then take the standard simple math and we go with a human male weighing about 180 lbs or about 81.6 Kilos that would then give us an LD50 for our average male of about 522,240 micrograms, or about .018 of an ounce.  If our very average male eats two slices of commercially made bread in the form of toast for breakfast, and has a sandwich for lunch; then that would be about 38 grams per slice, or around 152 grams, or about 5.4 ounces.  Of this, per manufacturers guidelines, and .0045% of that 5.4 ounces is azodicarboanmide would then be, .00024 ounces. If our average man is in fact average, he will excrete 70% of the chemical thus leaving behind in his system .000072 ounces.  If he eats that same amount of bread everyday for a year, he will have approximately .026 ounces in his body.  Now we know that the LD50 for azodicarbonamide is just .018 ounces.  Our average man on average, has over a fifty percent chance of being dead.  Scientifically speaking.  
Sure, there are a lot of variables, the rats they used for the feeding studies only had their urine and feces measured for two weeks to get the figure they derived of 70% excreted.  There is a very strong possibility that humans may excrete more over time, and we don't know exactly where the body stores the excess.  I mean other than the kidneys of rats blowing up with tumors in the studies.  And it is true that commercial bread where I got the weight information of 38 grams per slice (Sara Lee 12 grain) could be off by a lot, since bread isn't just flour, it is also some moisture, High Fructose Corn Syrup, sugar, yeast extracts, potassium sorbate, and well, you get the picture, you can read the label on your bread at home.  So if we just say that we cut the amount in half, that's still just slightly less than the LD50.And just because I truly believe that the human body is a miracle and works in ways that can't be explained, it is possible that a lot more than the 70% is excreted.  Some might be broken down slowly, and purged when our average man drinks to much and gets a bad case of the squirts.  Or who knows what else happens, but let's just say that our figures are too high by another 50%.  That leaves us .0065 ounces in his body after a year.  That's still 30% of a lethal dose for 50% of the subjects.  And if our average man is in fact average, azodicarbonamide is not the only toxic chemical that he is ingesting in his travels through the world of fast and processed food.

So maybe, just maybe, out average man out there is having some health issues, and no doctor can give him any worthwhile prognosis as to why. (Sheesh, that happened TO ME!!!!)  The thing is, that not very many doctors are trained that food is the root of most of the problems with the human body.  You see the human body is very resilient, and even though we poison it every single day with FDA approved toxins, we do hang on.  Remember that the measure of toxicity is LD50, the poison only kills 50% of the test subjects.  The rest hang on with a variety of failing systems and maladies. 

It is your life, how you live it, and what you choose to eat, is your decision.  The federal government allows food manufacturers to put poison in our food, but they don't make us eat it.  Yet.