Origins of Heavy Metals in Our Food and Ill Affect on Human Body

Posted by Gam on • Categorized as Health And Fitness

Heavy metals in Earth's environment

Heavy Metals & Increasing Pollution

The unbridled growth of population has spawned many industries to cater to the ever-growing needs of the humans. With lack of concern for environment, we have mindlessly polluted rivers (1), lakes, and oceans with mostly untreated effluents from cities and industries into rivers and seas. Moreover, we have blindly polluted our nature without knowing the impact of our action on the overall ecosystem.

As science started to unravel the symptoms of various unknown diseases to humankind finally tracing the source to presence of heavy metals in the food we eat (2). Indeed, the heavy metals have reached us through the food chain. Our own action has resulted in accumulation of toxic metals in our body affecting vital human organs of the population in the end.

Dangers of Heavy Metals

Not all metals are detrimental to human body. Moreover, some metals are essential for life. Metals are different from other environmental toxins. Your body cannot separate heavy metals through the normal filtering mechanism. Therefore, they stay in solid form and slowly collect over time to create a toxic overburden affecting our health. These toxins gradually collect in the kidney, brain, liver, skeleton, nails, and hair. This results in various forms of kidney problems, development problems such as autism, cancer, and in extreme cases, death.

Heavy metals in home products

Many heavy metals exist in our environment that we deal with every day. However, three heavy metals are more toxic than others are; they are cadmium, mercury, and lead. Cadmium is naturally present in cigarette smoke, food, and water. Also, cadmium found in processed materials such as metal coating, plastic, and fertilizers and many other manmade substances. Continued to next page…

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