Science News (8/11/07) reports that Bones regulate Blood Sugar via a new hormone discovered in bone building cells (osteoplasts) --- so anything that interferes with these bone cells functioning properly will also affect our blood sugar levels!!
The hormone is called Osteocalcin and good levels of it are needed to help produce the beta cells in the pancreas that produce extra insulin.
This is an amazing discovery because we have a tremendous amount of diabetes here in this region around Asarco. My own question is whether or not the heavy metals, chemicals and radioactive particles from the smelting could damage bones and affect blood sugar levels. We may never know because Industry has such a dampening effect on finding things like this -- kind of like how the chemical industry helped back the IEUBK lead exposure model that says your exposure to chemicals is less because you spend time inside -- but it never took into account swamp coolers (swamp coolers equalize dust inside and outside the house). Or how everyone talks about how Lead (Pb) around here comes from cars and lead-glazed mexican pottery and candy wrappers, but ignores the largest custom smelter in the world sitting right next to the University.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Exposure to alpha radiation linked to high levels of myelodysplastic syndrome (leukemia), cancers, and liver cancer
WHAT TOXIC WASTES DID ASARCO BURN HERE?
"We studied the alpha-radiation risks in patients who received injections of Thorotrast, an X-ray contrast medium used in Europe, Japan, and the United States from 1930 to 1955. Thorotrast was composed of thorium dioxide (ThO2) and Th-232, a naturally occurring radionuclide. Because the physical half-life of ThO2 is 14 billion years and Thorotrast is hardly eliminated from the body, tissues in which it was deposited are irradiated by alpha-radiation for the entire lifetime of the subject. ....Among blood neoplasms with a higher incidence of increase than the general population, erythroleukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome were remarkable. ...
"We studied the alpha-radiation risks in patients who received injections of Thorotrast, an X-ray contrast medium used in Europe, Japan, and the United States from 1930 to 1955. Thorotrast was composed of thorium dioxide (ThO2) and Th-232, a naturally occurring radionuclide. Because the physical half-life of ThO2 is 14 billion years and Thorotrast is hardly eliminated from the body, tissues in which it was deposited are irradiated by alpha-radiation for the entire lifetime of the subject. ....Among blood neoplasms with a higher incidence of increase than the general population, erythroleukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome were remarkable. ...
- J Environ Pathol Toxicol Oncol.2001;20(4):311-5.
Alpha-particle carcinogenesis in Thorotrast patients: epidemiology, dosimetry, pathology, and molecular analysis.
Ishikawa Y, Wada I, Fukumoto M. Department of Pathology, The Cancer Institute, Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, Tokyo.
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11797840&dopt=Citation
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