A satiric look at the
hazards of modern living -

I awoke this morning with a
bold new objective. I was going
to avoid all environmental con-
taminants, and especially avoid
carcinogens. I called it PLAN A.

At first consciousness, I
leaped from my cozy bed and
stumbled half-awake to the win-
dow to breathe fresh air because
I felt that the radon gas level and
residues of asbestos from insula-
tion in my house had probably
gone rampant overnight from
lack of ventilation, Luckily, I
only got seven seconds exposure
to house gas on this special new
day.

However, the neighbors were

about to accuse me of a different -

kind of exposure, so I pulled my
clothes over to the window with

a fishing pole and got dressed
’ while my head hung out.

Unfortunately, because the
window was open, CFC’s
residues from my new computer
chips escaped into the at-
mosphere ' where they would
- wreak havoc with the ozone and
help increase skin cancer risk.

I then leaped out the window
in an attempt to avoid more

- radon exposure and sprained my
ankle but realized that I had

landed. square into carcinogenic

solar radiation.

To counteract this negative ef-
“fect, 1 dived into the shade of my
house and slinked along the
walls to my waiting vehicle,
which I had tuned up the day
before, hooking up an anti-
pollution system in anticipation
of PLAN A.

At the restaurant, I sat over
by the no-smoking corner and
sucked oxygen from a tank in
my pack so that I wouldn’t get
second-hand smoke and further
increase lung cancer risk.

Other patrons were very con-
cerned and kept asking me if I

‘wanted an ambulance or

something. _ .

I asked for a glass of double
distilled water for breakfast to
avoid chlorination and fluorina- —
tion’ which makes chloroform
and other carcinogens in the
drinking water.

I ordered fresh baked bread
and took a can of peanut butter
from my pack that had been ap-
proved by a chemical laboratory
to be free of aflotoxins (potent
carcinogens), but they said to eat
it fast so I choked down the
whole can quickly before new
carcinogenic mold could get
started,

by Jorma Jyrkkanen

I passed on the milk because
of cesium and strontium-90
from radioactive fallout, PCB’s
and, I suspect, dioxins from
grazing on phenoxy herbicide-
treated pasturelands.

I passed on the coffee because
it is. mutagenic, contains
pesticides, eats bone tissue,
causes addiction, and contains
dioxin, furans, and, I suspect,
residues of kraft mill effluent
leachates from the paper filters,
not to mention that burning my
mouth could induce cancerous
change in normal healthy mouth
tissue. —_

Eggs were out of the question

Does the basic structure of |
government really need fixing?

Letter

To the Editor; y

-I may owe the premier an
ironic vote of thanks for sug-
gesting user fees on the Omineca
Princess. That really got
people’s attention, now didn’t
it?

Reading of the reaction of the
Lakes District community to the
commission of inquiry into the
feasibility of user fees on inland
ferries, headed by Dr. Don Ka-
sianchuk; made me proud of the
sense of need to defend.the com-

- mon good that these people have

demonstrated. Everyone in the
‘Lakes District would suffer in
some way if there were to be a
toll imposed to cross Francois
Lake. Has anyone thought to
ask about the Usk Ferry?

Let’s be equally forceful in
telling the premier we will not
tolerate the dismantling of the
rest of the Highways system;
and let us also tell him that we
do not wish to see the distribu-
tion of liquor turned over. to
those whose first interest is to
profit from the sale of alcohol
instead of the responsibility to
control a dangerous substance.

Bonded Agent for:

* Mutual Life
* Mutual Trust
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Let us tell him that we will not
accept that the testing of food
should be done by any agency
other than a responsible govern-
ment.

The privateers got three out of
eight employees to buy the soil
and tissue testing labs down in
Kelowna and to employ six. The
other two are supposed to be of-
fered jobs elsewhere in the
government service. I hope for
our sakes and for the sake of
those workers that the operation
doesn’t get swallowed up in a
corporate munch, Selling agen-
cies like that is a good way to
lose control over their regulatory
functions. How will the govern-
ment know what sort of stuff is
being approved for use as fer-
tilizers? Does the lab have to
supply all test results to the
Ministry of Agriculture? Do
consumers have access to this in-
formation?

In a way it is good of the
premier to suggest these things.
It gives us the opportunity to
think about the services we, as a
society, have taken so long in
developing, and in that way to
gain a new respect for their

value. However, it remains our §°
_responsibility to defend these in- ..J-

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the large corporate groups, or
indeed an individual.

continued on page 21

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because of cholesterol and the
controversy surrounding that,
possible salmonella, and because
I didn’t know if the chickens had
been raised on sawdust from
phenol-treated wood. ;

Though it was risky, I had
fiber rich whole grain cereal and
fresh fruit, inspected for mold
of course, and double washed in
distilled water to remove
pesticide residues.

Bacon was out of the question
because of dimethylnitrosamines
from the preservatives.

This left me a touch hungry.
but undeterred from my objec-
tive — execution of PLAN A.

However, because of my
failure to coffee.up, I wasn’t
quite awake when I left the
restaurant, got into a fender
bender, broke my nose and got
reprimanded at work for sleep-
ing on the job.

-- Terrace Review —

‘| was sure things

could only improve ... .

I was wrong.’’

~ e
Once at work, I noticed that a

broken mercury thermometer
lay on the floor with mercury
missing and I asked around.
Egads — I was informed that
mercury had spilled onto the
carpet.

Metallic mercury vapor can
lead to shyness, blushing, loss of
sex drive, tremors, induce lateral
sclerosis-like symptoms, in-
crease mongolism risk and
predispose one'to cancer.

I quickly ran outside wincing
in pain and inhaled deeply, but
alas, there was smoke from the
local incinerator burner and
road dust everywhere.

I ran limping up-wind of these _
sources of octachloro and

hexachlorodibenzo-p-dioxins
and furans, managing to out-

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Wednesday, February 3, 1988 7

sancer prevention and the complete paranoid

distance my secretary and
several chaps with white lab
coats who had wanted a con-
sultation with me, but who were
now also running for cover, and
at last found a place that seemed
safe,

The top of Terrace Mountain.
I didn’t care if I was going to be
docked a day’s pay; it was worth
it just to be free of cancer for
another day. So there I sat with
my umbrella to screen the sun’s

_ rays, all the while avoiding the

carcinogenic epoxy resin handle.

But at noon time, I got so
hungry I ‘started to chew on
natural foods in the bush.

I avoided the bracken because
it was loaded with carcinogens,
laughed at the bog blueberry
because I knew it concentrated
strontium, and stayed away
from lichen soup because I knew
it concentrated radioactive
pollutants from the air. -

I suspected that watercress
might also concentrate radioac-

tive iodine because it is supposed -

to be a good source of iodine,
and I doubted it was smart
enough to avoid the radioactive
nuclides, so I steered clear of
that risk.

I knew it was risky, because
one cannot be sure they were
analyzed properly, but I ate
some huckleberries, I was

careful not to pick these where ~

atrazine was sprayed on railways
and highways, or where Tordon
was sprayed on ditches and

‘power lines.

Though my ankle, still smar-
ting from my early morning leap
out the window, throbbed with
pain, I knew it was better to not
see the doctor and have x-rays,

which have been linked to over ~

70,000 cancers per year in the

U.S.A., and because he might —

continued on page 14

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