What You Don't Know You're Breathing

You don't have to identify as "organic."

You don't have to shop at natural grocers.

You don't have to remove plastics from your home.

You don't even have to care about environmental living.

No matter your stance on the "go green" movement, the fact is that the things that surround you still enter your body.

Air moves. Particles travel.

Geography affects everyone.

The emphasis is not who believes what, or follows what, or buys what.

The emphasis is what we are all being exposed to.

The Invisibility Problem

The most dangerous things in life are typically that which we least expect. The things we don't give a second thought to, or don't even know to think about at all.

This is the reality of environmental exposure.

For some, the body sounds the alarm immediately. Reactions that seem to come from nowhere, to things no one else can detect. These people are not imagining it. They are the canaries.

But for the majority, there is no obvious reaction. No rash, no headache, no moment that points to a cause. The body absorbs the exposure quietly, and life continues as normal.

This does not mean nothing is happening. It means the damage is accumulating beneath the surface... slowly deteriorating cells, distorting them, changing the body in ways that may not emerge for years. Inflammation builds. Hormones are disrupted.

The thing is, chronic low-level exposure doesn't typically announce itself. It doesn't arrive as a crisis. Instead, it is usually silent, inconspicuous invisible.

Which makes it that much more dangerous.

Things People Don't Realize They're Encountering

The complete picture of what we are exposed to daily would fill volumes. This is not that. This is but a glimpse into the realities of the invisible attacks we are subjected to on a daily basis.

Today's topic: Glyphosate... chosen because it is non-discriminating and reaches nearly everyone, regardless of geography, income, or lifestyle.

It is everywhere. And it affects everyone.

Glyphosate in the Air and Rain

Glyphosate may be a foreign word to most people, but Roundup almost certainly isn't. Yes, the very same product farmers apply to crops, and what you may have even used in your own garden. Though there is much debate around its safety, and in my opinion that debate exists largely because of the enormous profit tied to its continued use, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified glyphosate as probable human carcinogen. ¹ Only time will tell what many of us already know.

What's more? That same compound is all around us, all the time. Not just on farms, or in your garden bed, or the landscaping at state parks. Everywhere.

A U.S. Geological Survey study found glyphosate present in 60 to 100 percent of air and rain samples tested across multiple U.S. states.²

A separate USGS analysis of the Mississippi Delta documented glyphosate in over 75 percent of air and rain samples during the growing season, with detection patterns consistent across the entire season, not just at application time.³

The compound does not stay put. It volatilizes from treated surfaces days after application and re-enters the atmosphere. It travels. It lands.

It seems impossible. Right? That our air and rain is saturated with such a toxin? That it is normalized as acceptable and used across vast systems within our society?

It is almost unbelievable and yet the evidence is all around us, and is available to anyone who chooses to lift the veil draped before our eyes. Anyone who chooses to recognize the reality of the cage we have built around ourselves.

You think the "go green" movement doesn't apply to you, because it is not something you stand for or care for one way or another, but the truth is that you are a part of it no matter your stance, simply by being a human being, living on Earth in the 21st century. 

I never thought I would be driven to speak so passionately about environmental concerns. I never considered myself an environmentalist. I only wanted to find answers for my son and to create space for purity, so that he and people like him could exist safely in the world. But as I researched and learned, the reality of what is happening before our very eyes became something I could no longer ignore. It is interconnected in ways that cannot be separated. So here I am, proud to stand for my son, for the canaries, for the people unaware of the danger, for humanity, and for the planet we are choosing to poison, its people along with it, our very selves.

Humanity and environment are not separate conversations. You cannot protect one without protecting the other.

Sources

1. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) — IARC Monographs Volume 112. World Health Organization, 2015. 🔗 https://www.iarc.who.int/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-news-glyphosate/

2. Chang, F.C., Simcik, M.F., & Capel, P.D. — Occurrence and Fate of the Herbicide Glyphosate and Its Degradate AMPA in the Atmosphere. U.S. Geological Survey. 🔗 https://www.usgs.gov/publications/occurrence-and-fate-herbicide-glyphosate-and-its-degradate-aminomethylphosphonic-acid

3. Coupe, R.H., et al. — Pesticides in Mississippi Air and Rain: A Comparison Between 1995 and 2007. U.S. Geological Survey, 2014. 🔗 https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70178665