People are getting sick at an alarming rate. One in three women and one in two men in America will get cancer in their lives. That’s crazy! This should be a concern of epic proportions, but for some reason, most people in America seem to believe in what Joel Salatin1 calls “the cancer fairy.” During the night, the cancer fairy sits down, rolls dice, flips a coin, throws darts at a dartboard, and finally picks names out of a hat for who will be given cancer that night. Luck of the draw. Damn. Sucks to be you.
I think that cancer does not come from the cancer fairy. I think that cancer comes from carcinogens. All day, every day, people are soaking in an ocean of carcinogens. The number of toxins in homes, workplaces, vehicles, and food is staggering. And there’s a pretty huge list of things currently labeled as “likely carcinogens.” The worst of it is, I think that most of the toxins have not even been identified yet.
I think the way to prevent cancer and many other diseases is very simple: reduce toxins. Reduce toxins a lot. To tackle this, I wish to express that some things will have a more significant impact than others. And I want to make a list of these things, expressing how significant an impact there will be. I need units of toxicity – but this area is far too complicated for a simple metric. Therefore, to convey my point, I wish to introduce a bit of fiction to this nonfiction book. In keeping with the spirit of the cancer fairy, I hereby declare that 100 pounds of Toxic Fairy Dust (TFD) is the exact amount that will kill one standard-issue adult human.
The following are some commonly-believed sources of TFD that you are probably already familiar with:
Tobacco: 35 pounds TFD.
Sugar: A critical component to a magnificent huckleberry pie. And a conspirator in half of all ailments. We take sugar cane (a type of grass), smash the juice out of it and boil the water out of the juice, leaving a crusty, dried, brown scum that we crush and bleach. Your tongue’s drug of choice. But I don’t think we are designed to eat grass. I’m going to say that eliminating sugar may save 10 pounds TFD.
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS):2 20 pounds TFD.
Plastic bottles with BPAs (a well researched toxin): 10 pounds TFD.
The following are some further contributors that I think need a quick mention:
Aspartame:3 30 pounds TFD.
Sucralose: 25 pounds TFD.
Saccharin: 3 pounds TFD.
The following are some steps I believe can have a huge impact:4
Go pooless:5 Going without soap or shampoo in the shower saves 5 pounds TFD. More about this in chapter 15.
Stop drinking and bathing in poison: Chlorine is straight-up poison. It kills all living things. Cities are required to chlorinate water. If you drink it, the idea is that the chlorine is significant enough to kill most of the organisms in the water, but not enough to kill you. Eliminating poison in your water supply saves 5 pounds TFD.
Stop using teflon6 and plastic containers: Eliminating nasty stuff from coming into contact with our food once we bring it inside saves 10 pounds TFD. More about this in chapter 15.
Stop eating food loaded with toxins: Eating healthy polyculture-grown food from a garden instead of food loaded with insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics, and other toxic gick saves 35 pounds TFD. Lots more about this later in the book.
Eliminate 98% of household cleaners: The stuff they put in household cleaners is incredibly dangerous. It’s also mostly unnecessary. Replacing commercial cleaners with edible cleaners or hot water saves 45 pounds TFD.7 More about this in chapter 15.
Live in a house made of toxin-free materials:8 The materials used in constructing modern homes are full of off-gassing toxins. There are so many toxins in a standard new home that if the air in the house is not exchanged with fresh outside air every few hours, you may die! Living in a home that is at least six years old and has had a chance to off-gas may save 25 pounds TFD when compared to the first month living in a brand new home. Living in a house built entirely of natural materials will save another 5 pounds TFD.
Avoid the big brown cloud: When I did the commuter job many years ago, I remember being able to see the huge brown cloud over the city and thinking about how I could not get away from breathing that. Even now, when I visit a city, it just stinks of a constant barrage of vehicle exhaust. Then there’s the random whiff of some chemical I cannot identify, followed by the odor of tobacco enhanced with perfumes. And is it just me, or are there a lot of pest control vehicles? The big, brown cloud is a soup made of many wastes of many colors. Outside of the city, there can be challenges if you live near property that has a different cloud of some sort. But there are places that are remote from any of those clouds. 20 pounds TFD.
Once we have reduced the toxins in our environment by a significant extent, the majority of illnesses may just disappear. To better understand this topic, I wish to direct you to three documentaries:
The Food Cure:9 Six people beat cancer by eliminating toxins from their personal environment.
Chemerical:10 A family switches from conventional cleaners to organic. By the end of the movie, not only is the entire family healthier, but the mother appears to have gained 30 IQ points.
Stink:11 After cancer takes a mother, the father explores the toxicity of everyday products - with a focus on a pair of pajamas for a daughter.
Reducing the toxins in our environment is a subject big enough to fill a library with books. There are always new “nontoxic” solutions being offered, some of which are authentically nontoxic and most of which will hide their true toxicity for decades. It’s complicated. It also doesn’t have to be complicated. Similar to the other problems already presented and the many problems unnamed, the solutions and strategies presented in this book would go a long way toward a healthier, happier, more luxuriant life for people on a sustainable Earth.