Word: toxicants
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That same year, however, saw the first of the diseases to come--with the outbreak of Lyme disease. Legionnaire's disease emerged in 1978, toxic-shock syndrome in 1978, AIDS in 1983, and chronic-fatigue syndrome in 1985, to name a few. Malaria re-emerged. Today, dengue and yellow are spreading. Instead of improving, the virulence of disease seems only to have entered a new stage...
...polluters well before the Industrial Revolution. As early as 2,500 years ago, in fact, Greek and Roman smelters spewed enough lead to contaminate the entire northern hemisphere, according to a study by France's Domaine University that analyzed lead preserved deep in Greenland's ice. The oldest-ever toxic fallout, long suspected by other scientists, began with pollution from Central European silver refining and other post-Bronze Age industry, and lasted 800 years. With 400 tons of lead found in Greenland alone, the damage rivals that of the 20th century's main culprit: leaded gasoline...
...that people should strive to keep the perils posed by dioxin in perspective and remember other threats that are more easily averted. "Phantom risks and real risks compete not only for our resources but also for our attention," Graham observes. "It's a shame when a mother worries about toxic chemicals, and yet her kids are running around unvaccinated and without bicycle helmets...
...alarm went off with Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring and has been sounding ever since. We live, environmentalists warn, in a world laced with dangerous chemicals, from powerful pesticides to toxic industrial wastes like dioxin and PCBs. Despite periodic waves of public concern and efforts at government regulation (the 1972 banning of DDT in the U.S., for example), the chemicals are still found in small but measurable amounts in air, water, soil -- and our own tissues. Many scientists have long argued that even tiny doses of pollutants can cause cancer in humans, but the contention is hotly disputed...
Well, maybe. But many scientists who have looked into hormone-disrupting chemicals say the issue is much more complex than environmental activists would have people believe. In high doses, the compounds in question, many of which contain chlorine, are clearly toxic and carcinogenic. On the other hand, the case that humans are being affected by very low concentrations remains far from certain. The existing evidence is largely circumstantial, based on extrapolations from animal studies, laboratory work on the chemistry of dioxin and other molecules, and statistics on human disease that may or may not turn out to be accurate...