The Tribune

By Dr Monique Thompson

In the last article we looked at the importance of avoidance when it comes down to detoxifying the body and removing harmful chemicals from our system. This only makes sense, right?

If you are trying to flush something out of your system, you would avoid putting those same harmful chemicals in there to begin with in order to make your efforts more effective.

We ended that conversation reiterating the importance of ensuring that selected fruits and vegetables were organic due to their high pesticide content.

This week, we shift gears just a tad to have a brief, but hopefully insightful look, at another major source of toxins in our toxic world that we would do well to avoid at some lengths.

Actually, I am not even going to talk about the “world” in this article. I am talking about “the city dump” burning on our little rock in the Atlantic Ocean that is 21 miles by seven miles. Renew Bahamas Solid Waste Management Company is responsible for the environmentally sound management of waste at the landfill.

To say that the burning of waste is hazardous to human health is understating the obvious. I know this, you know this, and I am certain even primary school students know this.

And we do certainly hear individuals mention the ill-effects in passing: “Oh, that smoke will cause breathing problems.”

And when the dump burns for weeks on end government officials allude to the dangers by saying something to the effect of, “If you encounter problems, go to the clinic.”

But just what kind of hazards are we dealing with here? Just how toxic is this burning dump to human health? What about the environment? Or the economy?! Although I do not have the wordage to address all the ill-effects in this article, that information is en route.

As toxins are released from burning waste, they go into the air and can travel quite far. Eventually, however, what goes up, must come down, as the saying goes.

And these toxins land either in water or on land where they persist in the environment for many, many years. They can be found in soil, groundwater, or the fats of different animals. Collectively, this leads to bio-accumulation, which simply means that the pollutants add up.

This is bad news for human health (and the environment of course) because we are at the top of the food chain and eat the plants that grow in toxic soils and we feed on the toxic fat of animals that hold on to pollutants for dear life.

Specifically regarding the health of Bahamians as it pertains to breathing in the smoke released from the landfills, inhaling even small amounts of the pollutants produced by burning a conglomerate of waste including plastic, rubber and cardboard, can have significant, deleterious effects on health.

This is especially true for our kids, the elderly, and individuals who may already have a respiratory ailment. The burning of waste has been shown to be linked with the development of cancer and heart disease; causes rashes, nausea, and headaches; leads to damage in the kidneys, liver, nervous and reproductive systems; as well as cause and aggravate respiratory ailments such as asthma and emphysema.

As you may very well suspect, there are different toxic pollutants that lead to different illnesses. The most studied of these chemicals include dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), particle pollution, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide (CO; one that is familiar as an inhaled poison), and ash, with the former three – dioxins, PAHs, and HCB – causing cancer.

Needless to say, the health effects are very far reaching. Stay tuned to see just what else is going up in smoke as our government continues to sleep on this 100-acre problem that we face.

• Dr Monique Thompson is the founder of and a physician at Cornerstone Healing Institute, an integrative & holistic medical clinic. Call 356-0083 or visit www.chibahamas.com for more information.