The story of this story is the fact that they made it a story.

I've gotten used to headlines that claim "Household Chemical (insert name here) found to cause cancer" then in the article subtext they mention that the rats who got cancer from the chemical had a dose so high that they basically had oxygen deprivation problems from the dilution of their blood. So if the cancer hadn't killed them, the chemical would have.
The article then quietly mentions that the amount found in the human body is a miniscule, almost immeasurably small concentration, several orders of magnitude lower than what the rats exposure was.

So when I was forwarded this article about the detected increase in chemicals found in the human body from household items like toothpaste and tuna, of course I was skeptical. But here's what really got me:

In the case of mercury, a known neurotoxin harmful to children's development, Lourie, who is chairman of the board of directors for Environmental Defence, reduced his exposure to the element by not eating fish for a month. Then, over a two-day period, Lourie ate tuna sandwiches for lunch and tuna sushi or tuna steak for dinner. The levels of mercury in Lourie's blood increased by 2.5 times after eating those four tuna meals over two days.

So when you fast from tuna, and your body does what it does naturally, that is, filter harmful chemicals out via the liver and kidneys...then suddenly imbibe a huge amount of that chemical, you get an increase of it in your bloodstream? How is this new science?!
A corollary experiment would be to not drink pop or tea or coffee for a month, then suddenly drink three cups of coffee, then act amazed that there is a spike in your bodies' caffeine level!

The article continues its amazing revelations:

For example, despite banishing anti-bacterial and personal care products containing triclosan from his home for a number of years, the levels of triclosan in Smith's urine stood 2.47 nanograms per millilitre before exposure; they rose to 7,180 ng/mL after exposure over a two-year period using everyday personal-care products.

The purpose of the kidneys, I am told, is to filter out the bodies' toxins and send them to the bladder in the form of urine. Some drugs, chemicals, and naturally occurring compounds are known as "one-pass" chemicals, in that the kidneys catch them as soon as they pass through there, and much of the body may never see them. Is is likely this is happening here? Is this strange molecule being detected and filtered by the kidneys with efficacy? If the increase of a toxic chemical you imbibed is detected in your urine, doesn't that mean your body is working effectively? Wouldn't it be much more disconcerting if you imbibed thousands upon thousands of nanograms of triclosan and then none of it showed up in your urine, implying it was floating about in your body doing who knows what?

I find Rick Smith's claims dubious, and based on trickery and fearmongering. Then again, "never waste a good crisis."


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