London coats, your lungs with NO2

I have in the past been a resident of the Big Smoke,
London. It is an exciting town. So exciting that
you forget that the air is killing you.

I lived in the East end, and not near any factories.
Still, I would go running in a green park, and
never near cars (I had learned that, but I see
folks every day running in traffic- I equate it
to smoking).

Still, I would find my health getting worse
after jogging and not better. I knew something
was wrong. I find that my nose gets irritated
in big cities too, like Athens. It just can't take
the exhaust stink. Well London doesn't stink
like that , but its air is still a soup.

I have chats with people who are interested
in the air pollution in London, and these people
are having an effect on the posh mayor Boris.
He has had his world rocked by the data. The
story changed overnight once even he could
not ignore the stats.

Still, these are not the pro-cyclist lobby. The
cyclists are still trying not to get killed. They
have no time to worry about smog, but they
are in the thick of it, with their lungs fully
open. They must be shortening their lives
with every day. Watch this:



This guy talks about his search for biking masks.
He is not a cycling freak. He realises the
damage to his lungs.
He claims that cars have air filters for the A/C so drivers are safe, plus he gives stats on the amount of air taken in during activity is 4 times as much as the sedentary driver. Cyclists are brave and/or crazy.

So, Oxford Street is the big toney shopping
area for the rich and the great unwashed,
cheek to cheek. I find myself getting butt-
checked by fat rich broads.

Apparently it's the worst most polluted
main street on the planet. It's worse than
Beijing where they wear masks.

Look for the Clean Air sign turning black.
You see that we have taken most industry
out of cities but since then, we have  let
the rich decide how to take debt and make
our cities in their image, without any concern
for the cockroach-like people that make
the city tick. Us.

checkit: The Guardian

Welcome to London – the most toxic town on the planet

Oxford Street's more polluted than Beijing and the sky's alive with cranes. Just what kind of city is Boris Johnson creating?

Zoe Williams

Tuesday 8 July 2014 18.55 BST

Emissions research from King's College London has found nitrogen dioxide concentrations on Oxford Street to be worse than they are anywhere else on Earth, in the history of air pollution. David Carslaw, who led the research, said: "To my knowledge this is the highest in the world in terms of both hourly and annual mean." That's higher than Beijing and Dhaka, higher than anywhere where face masks are the norm and the streets seem to throng with lost medics, and more than 11 times the EU limit.

A spokesman for the mayor of London called the figures "misleading", and said that the capital's air pollution was lower than that in many world cities. The fact is, there is too much stop-start traffic, too many tall buildings, too much nitrogen dioxide. But if you were more interested in winning a debate than you are in the air your fellow Londoners were breathing, you could see this as room for manoeuvre.

I met a consultant for Transport for London recently who was very keen on this art project: a clean white canvas, with "fresh air" painted in a light glue across the middle of it. You'd stick it up in Vauxhall Cross, in central London, and over time the "fresh air" would go completely black. I wasn't wild about the idea, on the grounds of urban morale. What are you going to do, as you watch your local canvas get darker and darker, and imagine what that is doing to your internal workings? How will that help?

And yet, arrested by these figures, although unsurprised by them – having cycled down Oxford Street often enough to have seen the diesel fumes shimmering in the sun – I think there probably are things we can do.

…

. We would have a 20mph speed limit across every conurbation, calming all traffic and reducing the braking and rapid acceleration that have made nitrogen dioxide levels as high as they are. We would consolidate loads on the outskirts of the capital, and drive them in only overnight. If we were serious, in other words, we would make a concerted effort to make all our cities liveable, and stop splitting hairs about which was really damaging our health, between doing no exercise and creating cities in which exercise was undoable.

Third, at some point, we're surely allowed to ask some deeper questions about what this picture tells us. If we have the most polluted main street on the planet, then it is likely that we are taking on characteristics of developing nations: rapid development and urbanisation with insufficient regard for people who live around it, who most probably won't ever benefit from it. In London, the skyline is alive with cranes: the financial services group Deloitte uses words such as "in full swing", but to me the cranes look more predatory than creative. I don't get the sense, when I see another tower of glass, that sometime soon it's going to look like a thriving, mixed community.

We've become so accustomed to the mantra that businesses and developers are king that we've ceased to even make the demand for some kind of equity between their interests and ours….

I let companies decide what's healthy for me

That's a lie.  It takes a long time, even for a
bad, counter-culture cynic like me to believe
that our governments would let companies
pollute our bodies with untested chemicals
that they think will work , that make them
happier with their products that are made
smoother, because of an oil slick of
chemicals.

If you believe that fluoride is just a chemical
runoff that companies bottled and foisted on
us, with bribing of politicians under the
banner of tooth enamel protection, then
this story is for you.

Couple it with the Zerohedge story on how
the US is getting stupider:

checkit: Collective evolution

Harvard Research Finds Link Between Fluoridated Water, ADHD & Mental Disorders

March 5, 2014 by Joe Martino. 8 Comments.

New research published in The Lancet by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) found that various chemicals that many children are exposed to are having a direct effect on the creation of disorders labelled under the name ADHD as well as other mental disorders. One of the chemicals said to be having an effect is fluoride, or variations of fluoride. Governments have been performing artificial fluoridation for a number of years regardless of the lack of effectiveness it has in preventing tooth decay.

The research began in a study published in 2006 which initially looked at the effects of various industrial chemicals on neuro-development.[1] The research continued with an analysis of more industrial chemicals including fluoride. 27 additional studies, including one that linked fluoride to the lowering of IQ in children, clearly illustrated the fact that fluoride is detrimental to brain development and can lead to autism spectrum disorders and other mental issues. The issue is being coined “a silent epidemic” and most health authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the issue.

 The two main researchers involved in the study, Philippe Grandjean from HSPH and Philip Landrigan, both agree that the reason for the increase in incidences of chemical-related neuro-developmental disorders is due to the increasing number of untested chemicals that are being approved without proper testing. The public is also not fully being told of the dangers which is causing many to perform independent research to find out the true effects. The issue is not just in water fluoridation, but also in the vaccination of our children.

“Since 2006, the number of chemicals known to damage the human brain more generally, but that are not regulated to protect children’s health, had increased from 202 to 214,” writes Julia Medew for The Sydney Morning Herald. “The pair said this could be the tip of the iceberg because the vast majority of the more than 80,000 industrial chemicals widely used in the United States have never been tested for their toxic effects on the developing fetus or child.”

 The fact is, fluoride is a known developmental neurotoxin and practices of water fluoridation have long been proven to be ineffective. If individuals choose to use fluoridated tooth paste or choose fluoride treatments at their dental office, that is acceptable but two things should happen:

 1. People should be taught about the harmful effects of fluoride and the damage it can cause to your teeth and your body.

 2. Water fluoridation should be stopped everywhere immediately as it is nothing more than a legal way for chemical companies to get rid of toxic waste while profiting.

 Fluoride accumulates in the body over time, so even though the amounts being ingested might be small each time, it builds up over years and can cause serious health issues. Research has found that fluoride affects normal endocrine function, causes kidney disease, bone weakness, dental fluorosis, cancer, lowering of IQ, calcification of the pineal gland, arthritis, immune deficiencies, skeletal fluorosis and much more.

2 ZH

Dumb & Dumber - Scientific Proof That People Are Getting 'Stupider'
Submitted by Tyler Durden
on 08/25/2014 15:23 -0400
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog, Are people dumber than they used to be? Were previous generations mentally sharper than us? You may have suspected that people are getting stupider for quite some time, but now we actually have scientific evidence that this is the case. As you will read about below, average IQs are dropping all over the globe, SAT scores in the U.S. have been declining for decades, and scientists have even discovered that our brains have been getting smaller over time. So if it seems on some days like you woke up in the middle of the movie “Idiocracy”, you might not be too far off. Much of the stuff that they put in our junk food is not good for brain development, our education system is a total joke and most Americans are absolutely addicted to mindless entertainment. Fortunately we have a lot of technology that does much of our thinking for us these days, because if we had to depend on our own mental capabilities most of us would be in a tremendous amount of trouble. Sadly, this appears to be a phenomenon that is happening all over the planet. As a recent Daily Mail article explained, IQ scores are falling in country after country… Richard Lynn, a psychologist at the University of Ulster, calculated the decline in humans’ genetic potential. He used data on average IQs around the world in 1950 and 2000 to discover that our collective intelligence has dropped by one IQ point. Dr Lynn predicts that if this trend continues, we could lose another 1.3 IQ points by 2050. One IQ point does not sound like a lot, but when you go back even further in time the declines become a lot more dramatic. For example, a psychology professor at the University of Amsterdam named Jan te Nijenhuis has calculated that we have lost a total of 14 IQ points on average since the Victorian Era. And we don’t need a professor to tell us that this is true. Just go back and read some of the literature from that time period. Much of it is written at such a high level that I can barely even understand it. There is other evidence that people are getting stupider as well. For instance, SAT scores in the United States have fallen significantly in recent years… There appears to be a disturbing trend in American high schools. If we judge the quality of education by the scores that students get on their SATs, then it appears that things are getting worse. Since 2006, the overall average SAT score has fallen by 20 points, dropping from 1518 to 1498 in 2012. Scores are also down in each of the three categories tested, with reading dropping 9 points, mathematics dropping 4 points, and writing falling 9 points. It’s a fair bet that students aren’t becoming less intelligent, so exactly what is going on? And this decline in SAT scores is not just limited to the past few years. As the following chart from Zero Hedge demonstrates, SAT scores have been declining in America for decades…