Homo+Toxicus+Balducci

Laura Balducci Homo Toxicus

The 2008 film Homo Toxicus is written and directed by Carole Poliquin. The movie was created to create awareness of the over use of toxins and the overexposure to humans. The film stresses the impact it is having on both the environment and human life. One of the most influential facts presented in the movie was the fact that humans and newborns have been found to have nearly 250 toxins in their blood. In blood and umbilical cords numerous metals, pesticides and PCBs have been found. The movie goes on to show the effects concentrations of these toxins in our blood have affected populations all over North America. The Inuit population is being affected by OCs found in fish and sea mammals. It is one of the matrices where chemicals that get put into the water by industries, ships, and people are getting into the bloodstreams of sea life and so when the Inuits eat those creatures they now have the same chemicals in their blood that the sea life had. This is affecting the population’s immune systems on a large scale. The people and especially children are more susceptible to diseases, cancer and infection. The schools have to have the teachers teach with microphones because so many children have permanent hearing damage from reoccurring ear infections. Another population is seeing an increase in the amount of children with attention deficit disorders and is struggling to educate the children and keep their attention in school. One population of Indians living near a chemical plant in Ontario, Canada, has an unnaturally high rate of miscarriages especially males. The community has an imbalanced male to female ratio which is going to make it hard for that Indian community to survive. It’s crazy to think that the chemicals we are putting into the air and water are not just killing animals but are also beginning to disable or wipe out human populations. How come this company is still running? Why isn’t the government stepping in? Corporation and government power corruption are preventing change. Another matrix to do with fertility is pesticides in farming going to produce and then to humans and also farmland to water to farmers. Sperm counts are actually lower in males that live in the country than those in the cities. The chemicals from the agricultural production are making their way into the farmers’ systems. And it’s not just lower sperm counts; some men are actually infertile in these areas. The film does admit that there are groups that are in charge of managing the risks involved in using chemicals. They have banned or limited the use of many different toxins, but among the groups there are no consistencies. Hormones in beef that were banned by the European Union are legal in Canada. Then there is the point made that these groups only evaluate a toxins danger based on it being the only substance in the water or air. There are no studies done where multiple toxins are in one sample. One chemical may not be the source of infertility or immune deficiency, but put a few together and now what do you have? No regulatory group knows. There are 100-1800 times more pesticides used in Canada than other countries. One intervention the film shows is a group of people who list all the pesticides used on produce. This is just one way to educate the public. This film emphasizes that change can be made by educating the people and refusal to buy chemically treated foods. The movie is targeting anyone who buys food and people who want children. They want to educate the public and hopefully get people to protest and not support users and producers of toxins. Pesticides were first used in the 1930s but were not widely used until between 1945 and 1960. ([]) Correlating with this factor, the NIH confirmed that from 1938 to 1990, sperm counts have dropped on average 1.5 million sperm per milliliter each year in the US, which is about 1.5%. (Europe is about 3% each year) ( []) Another product with a big environmental imprint introduced in the 1940s was plastic. This is another item that involves the use of many different chemicals. The sad thing is pesticides and plastics have more “friendly” substitutes but people are too lazy or too inconvenienced to use them. Produce can be grown naturally and products and containers can be made out of glass, wood or metals. There is just so much technology that has been introduced containing harmful substances and still used. Who knows what the exact cause is? The first step should simply be reducing or eliminating the use of potentially hazardous chemicals. The human population, not just the earth, depends on it.