Colon Cancer Support Group

please take a moment to read this often over looked health risk!!!

taken from:
http://www.cancerfightingstrategie...

The Chlorinated Water and Cancer Connection

Pathogens in water have led to many diseases. But did you know that what's put in your water to purify it may be causing your cancer (and heart disease)?

The French, with their lower cancer rates from consuming OPCs and resveratrol in red wine, have made red wine famous for its health benefits. There is another side to their lower cancer rates that most people don't know...

The French do not drink chlorinated water. They ozonate their water to purify it.

Does this make a difference? Absolutely.

"We are quite convinced... that there is an association between cancer and chlorinated water."
Medical College Of Wisconsin research team

We don't use chlorine because it's safe, we use it because it is cheap. We essentially still pour bleach in our water before we drink it. The long-term effects of chlorinated drinking water are disastrous.

According to the U.S. Council Of Environmental Quality, "Cancer risk among people drinking chlorinated water is 93% higher than among those whose water does not contain chlorine."

It may cause much heart disease too. Dr. Joseph Price wrote a highly controversial book in the late sixties titled Coronaries/Cholesterol/Chlorine, and concluded that nothing can negate the incontrovertible fact, that the basic cause of arteriosclerosis, heart attacks and stroke, is chlorine.

Dr. Price later headed up a study using chickens as test subjects, where two groups of several hundred birds were observed throughout their span to maturity.

One group was given water with chlorine and the other without. The group raised with chlorine, when autopsied, showed some level of heart or circulatory disease in every specimen, the group without had no incidence of disease. The group without chlorine grew faster, larger and displayed vigorous health.

This study was well received in the poultry industry, and is still used as a reference today. As a result, most large poultry producers use dechlorinated water.

When chlorine is added to our water, it combines with other natural compounds to form Trihalomethanes (chlorination byproducts), or THMs. These chlorine byproducts trigger the production of free radicals in the body, causing cell damage, and are highly carcinogenic.

"Although concentrations of these carcinogens (THMs) are low, it is precisely these low levels that cancer scientists believe are responsible for the majority of human cancers in the United States". The Environmental Defense Fund

Dr. Robert Carlson, a highly respected University of Minnesota researcher, sums it up by claiming, "Chlorine is the greatest crippler and killer of modern times!"

Breast cancer, which now affects one in every eight women in North America, has recently been linked to the accumulation of chlorine compounds in the breast tissue. A study carried out in Hartford Connecticut, the first of it's kind in North America, found that:

"Women with breast cancer have 50% to 60% higher levels of organochlorines (chlorination byproducts) in their breast tissue than women without breast cancer."

It is not just drinking chlorinated water that is the problem.

Up to two thirds of our exposure to chlorine is due to inhalation of steam and skin absorption while showering. A warm shower opens up the pores of the skin and allows for accelerated absorption of chlorine and other chemicals in water.

The steam we inhale while showering can contain up to 50 times the level of chemicals than tap water due to the fact that chlorine and most other contaminants vaporize much faster and at a lower temperature than water. Inhalation is a much more harmful means of exposure since the chlorine gas (chloroform) we inhale goes directly into our blood stream.

"Showering is suspected as the primary cause of elevated levels of chloroform in nearly every home because of chlorine in the water."
Dr Lance Wallace, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

If you take showers using chlorinated water and are dealing with cancer, clearly installing a shower filter to dechlorinate your shower water makes good sense.
Posted on 10/04/07, 04:01 pm