3. My dog bit you, but it didn’t hurt you. Industry admits people are exposed, but aren’t harmed by the product because the exposure is within the ‘exposure standards’. Most exposure standards for chemicals in everyday products and electromagnetic fields are not health based standards, but rather are developed in consultation with industry to determine what is ‘practicable’ in a workplace environment. Furthermore, these exposure standards are based on data extrapolated from human epidemiology, animal testing, and cell culture/in vitro laboratory studies112 that fail to account for multiple routes of exposure, mixture effects, transgenerational effects, or individual human risk factors such as age, gender, genetics, nutrition, psychosocial determinants, and comorbidities.113-116
Industry and regulatory authorities are commonly flip sides of the same coin. This connection has long been known, as described in books and articles like: Over a Barrel: Corporate Corruption of Science and its Effects on Workers and the Environment, How to Keep a Toxic Product in the Marketplace; Merchants of Doubt; Science for Sale; Doubt is their Product; and Corporate Ties that Bind, to name a few.
4. My dog bit you and it hurt you, but it wasn’t my fault, it’s yours. Industry shifts the blame onto the consumer because they warned them about the dangers of their own product. Examples include the photos of diseases on cigarette packets and the warnings embedded in cell phones (if you can find them). How can you enforce ‘personal responsibility’ and shift the blame onto the consumer when they don’t have the knowledge to make an informed decision or the financial resources to do anything about it?
For example, families in water-damaged housing commission homes don’t have access to healthy housing; or many families lack the finances to pay thousands of dollars to shield the wall with the smart meter; or families living near busy roads or high voltage transmission lines often cannot afford to move.
Most of the knowledge everyday consumers have about the safety of chemicals in everyday products and wireless technologies has been fabricated by industry through marketing campaigns. This may explain why almost all of the learned people that I know, do not watch television or read newspapers.
How can consumers make an informed choice
when they falsely assume that everything
on the supermarket shelf has been tested
for impact on human health?
The regulation of products and technologies is often done in consultation with the industry responsible for creating the hazard.
It is also geared towards industry profits,
not its impact on human health.