On dying river crocks and implications for people

There may be an emerging thread of connection that seems worthy of concern to me. And I would think so for lots of other people too. Referencing some articles on the mysterious deaths of large portions of the South African river crocks in the past couple of years, (for example see
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-killing-crocs
) The scientists are not finding an obvious single cause. But the effect that is causing the deaths, is a hardening of the body fats, such as in their tail which they need to flex for propulsion while hunting food, becoming too stiff from the hardened fat to flex anymore, immobilized. They also found similar hardened yellowed fats in some fish in the river.

Examining the hardened yellowed fat from dead specimens, the scientists looking for some chemical known to be a toxin, "“Everything is there,” Bouwman says, referring to the detection of DDT, PCBs, dioxins and brominated flame retardants, “but nothing is screaming, ‘it’s me, it’s me, it’s me.’ ”"

The article continues, " Danny Govender, a disease ecologist for South African National Parks. .. notes that samples taken from live crocs in 2007 showed that the fat of some crocodiles was beginning to harden. Along with Bouwman, she hypothesizes that all these toxins, found below harmful levels individually, could be acting together in a deadly brew."

This concept of a lot of different kinds of toxic chemicals, none of which individually are considered lethal in their quantities, and thus each presumed "safe," reminds me of the L-Tryptophan fiasco several years back. Suddenly those taking this supplement, which had already been in use for decades without problems as a supplement to help brain function and sleeping, was causing people to die. The FDA totally banned the sale of L-Tryptophan in order to solve the problem. But L-Tryptophan is actually an essential nutrient without which people cannot live. Eventually it was found that one batch of the chemical had been contaminated somehow with a broad spectrum of toxic substances, so that none of them were deemed "unsafe in that quantity" but taken together they overwhelmed the body's ability to get rid of the toxins fast enough. (Note that the L-Tryptophan nutritional supplement has cautiously and expensively reappeared on the market although probably still deemed illegal by the FDA; it is obvious that the nutrient itself was not the real cause of the problem of that one batch of the supplement.) The factor of significance in our context here is that it was a collection of small quantities of toxins of many types that was the lethal agent.

Now remember that the human body uses fat to stash toxic substances that it cannot get rid of through the normal pathways fast enough; it is not just crocks and fish that do that. Once the toxins are stashed away in the fat, it is hard to get rid of the fat; and if so, the toxins stored in it must be dealt with then too.

Is there a connection with this to the "obesity/overweight plague" that has happened here in America in recent times? I myself had always been quite lean and wiry, but in the past decade or so I suddenly got a potbelly that seems quite out of place on my lean frame, upping my weight from 125 to 160 pounds, and my clothes did not fit anymore, of course. The weight seems amazingly constant regardless of how much I eat or don't eat. Or how much exercise I do. The potbelly size cannot get much bigger or I would burst. Thus my body's ability to deal with a plethora of toxins by stashing them in my abdominal fat has reached its capacity, and thus further toxins will probably have to go into the organs themselves, causing problems.

Lots of information is available on the many strange toxins that are now found in the typical living environment, along with learned estimates of safe levels of each one (but acting alone.) Some are incidental from the plastics and other derivatives of petrochemicals we use so abundantly and end up in the environment and thus into food and water supplies.

And there are very common food additives that are well known to decompose into very toxic substances when in the human body, such as the artificial sweetener Aspartame and the flavoring agent MSG (MonoSodium Glutamate and its many deceptive aliases on labels) also turns toxic components inside the body, such as into the toxic "wood" alcohol chemical, an extremely toxic substance well known to cause blindness and death as well as death of some brain cells in smaller doses.

It seems that it would be so easy for the FDA to ban their use in foods if it were not for the powerful business interests that would block that. And it would take a total ban - at least for MSG - because it causes people to eat more of the food with the additive in it thus more sales and more profits; any lone food manufacturer unilaterally stopping putting MSG in their foods would find sales would slump and that is not permitted in our culture; thus all businesses would equally have to simultaneously stop the use of MSG in order to not give any food corporation advantage over the others. BTW when I was younger and MSG was not being used in food, the food tasted great with natural flavorings, no MSG needed; in case that is a worry.

Are these valid connections that I have proposed here? If so, the implications are pretty scary.

Maybe ignoring it will make it go away. Sure it will, right.