Toxic America with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and EWG’s Ken Cook

We always endeavor to report on things that we know based on facts or studies.  This small review is most definitely and opinion piece from us, so you should form you own opinion by reading the links and watching the various videos available at the links.

Keys Review, Toxic America

Well if you missed it, the CNN series with Sanjay Gupta titled Toxic America was quite good.

Generally speaking, there was nothing new.  The wonderful thing about when people like Sanjay or Memet Oz grab a hold of something is that they simplify thing to a point where even us scientist get it.

Last night was the second and last episode and was mostly based on the EWG research that they found over 200 industrial chemicals in the umbilical cord of ten recently born babies.  Ken did very well coming off calm and well collected whereas the chemical industries Doberman looked and acted somewhat the fool.

I think that Sanjay was more than concerned because of the number of references back to him being the father of three girls.  His comments were delivered from a point of concern as a doctor, but to me it was clearly first as a father.  The espisode began with old videos of how the chemical industry positioned DDT as safe in the late 40’s through the 50’s.  His positioning was, if they thought it was safe then and we know it was not, what about all the 80,000+  chemicals that have gone untested except for the 200 mentioned.  Not a good score as an industry.  Tested 200 out of 80,000…that’s a confidence builder.

Awareness begins with a small wave that grows and grows until the majority gets it!  Then as it moves mainstream, more and more people start to understand and start to talk about things as if they are a part of everyday life.  Marketers refer to this as a life cycle.  There are first Early Adopters, then there are the Early Majority followed by the Late Majority.  Toward the end of the cycle comes the Late Adopters.  This sort of looks like a bell curve with time along the bottom axis and volume or more people along the vertical axis.  So, Sanjay spending two nights on an series called Toxic America is what I believe is the beginning of the climb along that bell curve.  For most of you, there will be not too much new because part of the reason you are reading this is because you already get it.  Think of it this way, as an early adopter, you have witnessed the long slow pull of awareness.  I think based on Sanjay and Ken Cook last night, the climb will be steep and fast with vast amounts of momentum.

I do believe that last night was the turning point for all the hard work by the EWG, the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, Teen Turning Green and the Breast Cancer Fund.  Keys has been involved early on in much of this effort and we are pleased to see this review by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  Like all story tellers, he has condensed, boiled down and footnoted it for the rest of us.

Here are the links that you should spend some time with as soon as you can.

Toxic America http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/toxic.america/

Dr Gupta’s site http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/house.call/index.html (please read this one as soon as you can because it is current events based.