Green Options

Sea vegetables offer nutrients from the sea that are more sustainable than our fisheries.

As a parent of a child with birth defects, I often search for causes and suspect chemicals in our environment are to blame.  For our family, we will probably never know, but that is not the case for the Corby group. Families in the Corby group blame the “massive demolition, excavation and redevelopment” of a former British Steel plant for their children’s birth defects. Many of these children have missing or deformed hands and feet. A recent high court decision ruled in their favor that the “atmospheric soup of toxic materials” was caused by negligence of Corby Borough Council.

Over £1 million have been spent already on defense in a case brought against a UK council by families of kids born with webbed hands, or without fingers altogether, even though toxicology experts say that the rate of abnormality in Corby runs 10 times as high as the national average.

The families seek a multi-million pound award for the birth defects, claimed to be caused by a mismanagement of toxic waste dumps from the steel industry in Corby. Mothers say that they were exposed during the 80s and 90s, and the lead solicitor says he has medical evidence that proves the defects are linked to the dumps.

“We have now got medical reports that rule out alternative explanations for what caused the limb deformities in these children.” - Des Collins

Water contamination by toxic chemicals appears to be the cause of a mutation which resulted in the deaths of thousands of bass larvae in Australia. The two headed fish survived a mere 48 hours before dying off en masse.

Dr. Matt Landos of the Australian College of Veterinarian Sciences specializes in aquatic animals, and says that this is the first time he has ever seen anything like this. He sees no natural explanation for the deaths and is pinning the likely cause on the chemicals being used by a local macadamia nut plantation.

Women exposed to hairspray in the workplace in their first trimester of their pregnancy have more than double the risk of having a son with the genital birth defect hypospadias, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

The study was conducted by researchers from Imperial College London, University College Cork (Ireland), and Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (Spain) and is the first to show a significant link between hairspray and hypospadias, which is one of the most common birth defects of the male genitalia.

The causes of hypospadias are poorly understood. Instead of opening at the tip of the penis, a hypospadic urethra opens elsewhere along a line running from the tip along the underside to the base, usually corrected with surgery in the first year of the boy’s life.