What Does The Term ‘Organic’ Mean?

You know, when we are reading a menu in our favorite restaurant, or talking to an Organic Farmer, the term Organic means ‘pure’ or naturally grown without forced fertilization and pest killing agents… but when you say Organic to a chemist or research biologist you will find it means nothing of the sort…what it means to them is that the compound you are dealing with is a carbon based compound.

Organic in the chemistry field lends itself to carbon based products that come from Coal or Petroleum… or rather PetroChemicals that are synthetic in nature…man made and not found in nature. And what we are discovering is that these synthetics are not part of the balance of things and many of them…hundreds, and growing every day, in fact are now registered at some level as potential or proven carcinogens…the basis for cancers in animals or man. Seventy five years ago there were very few synthetics around, even fewer in the marketplace…and the cancer rates of most nations were very low. Today, with so many things being made from petroleum based chemistry, there are traces of these substances in almost all of our water and our air…worldwide…and we have no way to determine the impact of the chemistries that these synthetic products make when they further combine together in our surface water, our ground water…our air, our food chain… damn near everywhere you can imagine…and when we look into our own bodies we find traces of them in our soft tissue, in our blood, and in our organs.

These are pollutants, have no doubt, and they are getting worse. Breast cancer was almost unknown 120 years ago. Some say that is because we did not live as long as today…and there may be some validity to that…but not to the point that 25% of all women in developed nations are being exposed to it today…that is only four generations back… that’s amazing. Today we find that more than 40% of us…will be diagnosed with some type of cancer in our lifetimes. In fact it is the second highest cause of death in the United States and the number one cause of death for all of us younger than 85.

So with our misguided definition … we want things to be organic…and we think that will make an important change. Well perhaps it will, but we need to put a greater emphasis today on that Organic Compound definition… and strive for clean air and water, and the reduction of pollutants in our food chain if we want to improve the conditions that have proven scientifically to be causing cancers in humans.

Our first step? Well, our first step is to stop ignoring the indicators. We need to act to reduce pollution, and who knows…if we can reduce the organic compounds that we are putting into our air and water we may be able to get a handle on climate change.

Wouldn’t that be something.