Mr. Salois, for all the historically and scientifically incorrect things you stated in your June 20, 2012 letter in the Bitterroot Star, foggy is the right term.
In the United States, it is not your business or anyone else’s what two consenting adults of either sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual, do with regard to sexual activities, especially in their own home. And in the United States, you have a right to state your opinion. However, you have no right to damage my reputation by misquoting me (several times).
You placed quotation marks around “hormone disturbing toxins,” supposedly quoting from my June 12 Bitterroot Star letter. I have never used that phrase. I clearly stated hormone-DISRUPTING toxins were responsible for multiple developmental problems in young animals. Also, almost everyone over twelve knows that alcohol is hormone disrupting, causing Fetal Alcohol Syndrome – not meaningless to the parents. It is also common knowledge that hormone-disrupting toxins are carried by air for thousands of miles from where they are applied and are now in all air except completely filtered air.
Regarding historic exposure to hormone-disrupting toxins. Prior to using fire, humans were exposed by eating certain plants. After use of fire began, exposures were even greater, especially to women who breathed wood smoke while cooking. Then came the Bronze Age, when humans began mining copper, exposing themselves to arsenic and other hormone-disrupting toxins during mining and ore refining, with a documented increase in hormone-disruption and disrupted sexual development. Finally, all the fallen civilizations you listed drank alcohol, cooked with wood, handled very toxic metals, including lead and mercury, and breathed polluted air. The Romans had severe neurological damage as well as hormone disruption because their water ran through lead pipes, very efficiently poisoning all who drank it.
Lead exposure and consequent brain damage was a significant factor in Rome’s demise.
Humans have always been exposed to certain amounts of hormone disrupting toxins and now with use of over 80,000 manmade chemicals, many which are hormone/endocrine disrupting, humans and all other animals are exposed to far more than ever before. Likely, each year since vertebrate species first appeared on earth, a few newborns have had disrupted sexual development. But prevalence appears to be far higher now in mammals, including humans, than at any time in documented history.
Regarding lawyers, judges and politicians, maybe you and they should read the hundreds of studies on hormone/endocrine disruption. It might bring you all out of your thick fog.
Judy Hoy
Stevensville