I was about to do a post on my Facebook page, then I thought no I’ll start my blog up again! Not quite the way that I planned to start it up – but sometimes you just have to get started, even though it’s not perfect! My new mantra is done is better than perfect!
So my internal rant started after reading this post on Facebook by the wonderful Dr Jenny Goodman, author of the book “Staying Alive in Toxic Times”. I began to write an essay on my Facebook page, then thought why not do this as a blog post?
The year of my birth 1962, Rachel Carson published a book called “The Silent Spring”. It eventually led to the banning of the use of DDT in the US in 1972 – a whole 10 years later! It wasn’t until 1986 that it was banned in the UK.
Yes I think Roundup/glyphosate does need to be banned too, but it is just a vicious cycle of replacing one toxic chemical with another – this very interesting article published in the Ecologist in 2016 and written by Dr Jonathan R. Latham goes deeper into these issues. What will they bring out to replace it?! A perfect example of this is plastic labelled BPA free – so that makes it safe does it? But what did they replace it with?? Something worse – BPS. It’s the same old story in chemical corporations as it is in any other big industry – pharmaceutical, processed food etc – it’s all about how much money can be made, not whether it’s safe or good for the environment. The corruption is rife – the regulators are funded by the industries and many studies are produced by the very companies who make the chemical/drug etc without releasing the raw data for independent scientific analysis. Remind you of anything? Has anything that has happened over the last couple of years, made you aware that this happens ALL THE TIME?!
It’s business as usual for corporations and this cycle will continue unless we stop using the stuff. I’ve been a gardener for years and do not use weed killer or pesticides. Recently, I’ve found myself digging up so called “weeds” and planting them into my herb garden as they can either be eaten or used for medicine! Cultivating cleavers (aka sticky willy), dandelions, nettles and woundwort are my latest, much to the confusion of my other half! Yes sometimes you lose things to wildlife, but killing off the bottom of the chain isn’t a good idea. Nope I don’t like slugs & snails or those pesky flea beetles that make my rocket look like lace, but my vulnerable plants get circled in something like wool slug pellets and a nightly wander with a torch and a jam jar to remove them. I’m happy to eat less than perfect veg that isn’t covered in toxins – the like of which I have no clue what it might do to my body. Here’s a great article from the RSPB on non-toxic slug control. Weirdly I like snails better than slugs – basically slugs with a house. But they are really quite beautiful… just keep off my plants! 😂
Part of looking after yourself and our environment is watching our toxic load – as a naturopath, this is a critical part of what I would look for when working with my client. When our bodies become overwhelmed, our detox pathways can’t cope and we end up with skin conditions, gut issues or headaches which are the warning signs that it is working hard to keep us safe and well which we would do well to pay attention to before more severe symptoms and illnesses appear.