Who said "our entire modern way of life is killing us"? And who is trying to avoid mortality? This sounds like the sort of straw-man accusation that a PR hack for W.R. Grace would make.
*Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly* (REHW) looked at "The Truth About Breast Cancer" (#s 571, 572, 573, and 574 [November 6, 13, 20, and 27, 1997], and #575 [December 4, 1997]). They told of more than just "disinfectants and antibiotics":
If you look for a group of chemicals that is causing more than
its fair share of grief, you would probably pick organochlorines.
Very few organochlorines exist in nature, and then only in
relatively small amounts; the vast majority of organochlorines
were created by humans starting around the year 1900 but gearing
up big-time after World War II.
Today there are 15,000 different organochlorines but they all
tend to have three similar characteristics. First, they tend to
persist in the environment (because nature does not break them
down readily), so once created they stay around. Second, they are
not very soluble in water but they tend to be soluble in fat ---
so they tend to enter food chains and bioaccumulate as they move
upward toward the big predators, like eagles, polar bears, and
humans. And third they tend to be toxic and in many instances
carcinogenic. Recently, it has been shown that several of them
interfere with hormones in wildlife --- and probably in humans
--- causing many other problems besides cancer. [#572]
They go on to spell out a few of the nasty properties of organochlorines:
There are at least three aspects of hormone-disrupting chemicals
that make them exceedingly difficult for science to study:
1. Chemicals that interfere with hormones may only be effective
at a particular moment in the development of a baby in the womb.
In the laboratory, exposing a pregnant rat to dioxin on the 15th
day of pregnancy dramatically affects the sexual characteristics
of her male offspring after they mature. Dioxin exposure on other
days has no such effect. (See REHW #290.) It may be that exposure
to organochlorines or other hormone-disrupting chemicals at a
particular moment in the womb primes a baby girl's breast cells
for later growth of cancer.
2. Furthermore, some hormone disrupters (such as the common
pesticide, atrazine) only stay in the body for a few months or a
few years. By the time a baby grows into childhood or adulthood,
these chemicals are gone and can't be studied. DDE and PCBs are
convenient to study because they remain in the body for a long
time, but they are not necessarily important chemicals for breast
cancer. The important ones may well be gone by the time the
research begins.
3. Many of these chemicals work in combinations. Their effects
are additive. Two chemicals present at ineffective levels may
combine to produce an effect. This has been conclusively
shown. Scientists almost never study combinations of chemicals
--- and most of us have combinations of HUNDREDS of different
organochlorines and other xenoestrogens in our bodies, as a
result of continuous chemical trespass by corporations. [#575]
Perhaps Jim should pay a visit to the victims of the W.R. Grace Company in Woburn, MA (subject of the film "A Civil Action") who also no doubt were derided as ignorant naysayers fretting unreasonably about their "mortality" who simply failed to recognize the (entirely irrelevant) wonders of such chemicals as "disinfectants and antibiotics".
Bill