Tag: toxins

A Call to Poison Control About Vaccines

Why do some parents think that you might want to call poison control about your child’s vaccines?

Don't believe the anti-vaccine copy pasta about a call to poison control over vaccine ingredients.

Maybe because anti-vax folks think that all vaccine ingredients are toxins…

A Call to Poison Control About Vaccines

Of course, they aren’t, but that doesn’t stop folks from sharing the above story about the “call to poison control.”

Is the story true?

Of course not.

How can I be so sure?

Well for one thing, that’s not the original version of the “call to poison control…”

Don't believe the anti-vaccine copy pasta about a call to poison control over vaccine ingredients.

Apparently, this “friend” has been posting the poison control story for several years now.

Don't believe the anti-vaccine copy pasta about a call to poison control over vaccine ingredients.

In fact, the “call to poison control” is actually a pretty well known anti-vax copy pasta…

Don't believe the anti-vaccine copy pasta about a call to poison control over vaccine ingredients.

Wait, what? Copy pasta?

Yeah. Arguments or stories that people save and repeatedly copy and paste into online forums.

And as you are now suspecting, copy pasta is considered a form of spam…

In fact, this “call to poison control” copy pasta first appeared in 2017 and after going viral in anti-vax circles, it was clearly debunked – with a real call to poison control.

So what would happened if you called poison control with this kind of story?

“My question to you is how are these ingredients categorized? As benign or poison? (I ran a few ingredients, formaldehyde, Tween 80, mercury, aluminum, phenoxyethanol, potassium phosphate, sodium phosphate, sorbitol, etc.)”

As someone who has called poison control (1-800-222-1222) in the course of caring for his patients more than a few times, I can tell you that the conversation would go a lot differently than the copy pasta anti-vaccine story line.

Before answering your “benign or poison” question, the experts at poison control would want to know a little more information about why you were actually calling.

Did a child accidentally get a hold of one or more of these chemicals? After all, if a child somehow got a hold of elemental mercury and inhaled any of it, that could be a medical emergency.

Call poison control if your child takes too much k-phos.

The same with potassium phosphate and sodium phosphate.

Even sorbitol.

Well too much sorbitol likely isn’t a medical emergency, unless your child is a diabetic, but it will likely cause a lot of diarrhea.

And when they found out that you were talking about vaccines?

Poison Control answered the vaccine safety question - way back in 2010.
Poison Control answered the vaccine safety question – way back in 2010.

They would likely nicely tell you that vaccines are not toxic.

“Thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative, is found in some vaccines in very small amounts. (Mercury in vaccines has not been associated with human poisonings).”

Chelation: Therapy or “Therapy”?

And that the ingredients in vaccines are not toxic.

“With mercury, as with other toxic substances, the amount of the substance that reaches target organs determines whether or not someone will be poisoned. To determine how much mercury is in someone’s body, blood levels are measured in cases of short-term, large exposures to mercury vapor. In chronic exposures, urine levels are measured to assess the likelihood of mercury poisoning. The fact that a substance can be measured in a person’s body fluids does not necessarily indicate poisoning.”

Do Fillings Cause Mercury Poisoning?

And they would likely be very nice about it, because they are very nice people, even as they likely get these types of questions a little more than they should.

More on Vaccine Ingredients

Fact Checking What Kids Receive When They Are Vaccinated

A new post is being shared in anti-vax groups that includes two trays of syringes and a long list of scary sounding chemicals, implying that they are all ingredients in vaccines. And that an infant would get them all at a single well child visit.

If you have seen the post and it has you wondering whether or not you should vaccinate your kids, open your eyes! This is classic anti-vaccine propaganda.

Fact Checking What Kids Receive When They Are Vaccinated

How do we know it’s propaganda?

Let’s begin with the fact that these vaccines have been drawn up for more than one child.

We know that because there is no situation in which a child would get 10 separate injections at one time. Even if a toddler was completely unvaccinated and was looking to get started and caught up on his missed vaccines all at once, he wouldn’t get 10 separate injections.

In fact, most of the time, thanks to combination vaccines, infants only get two or three injections at a time.

This post is also easy to recognize as anti-vaccine propaganda because of the way they describe ingredients of vaccines.

  • 2-phenoxyethanol – works as a stabilizer or preservative
  • aluminum – (neurotoxin) –
  • fetal bovine serum – (aborted cow blood) – used as a growth media to provide nutrients to viruses and is removed from the final vaccine
  • formaldehyde – (carcinogen, embalming agent) – formaldehyde in vaccines is not carcinogenic because “carcinogens do not cause cancer at all times, under all circumstances”
  • gelatin – (ground up animal carcuses) – a stabilizer that is formed from the connective tissue of certain animals, usually pigs
  • albumin – (human blood) – most vaccines are now made with recombinant albumin, anyway it is just albumin, a protein, that is in the vaccine, not “human blood”
  • monosodium L-glutamate – (causes obesity & diabetis) – another stabilizer
  • MRC-5 cells – (aborted human babies) – descent cells that have a “distant association with abortion” are mostly removed from final vaccines
  • neomycin –  (antibiotic) – used to prevent bacteria from growing while the vaccine is being developed and is removed from the final vaccine
  • polymyxin B – (antibiotic)
  • polysorbate 80 – (carcinogen) – an emulsifier that “helps ingredients mix together and keep them from separating.”
  • potassium chloride – (used in lethal injection)
  • potassium phosphate – (liquid fertilizer agent)
  • sodium bicarbonate – (baking soda)
  • sodium borate – (Borax, used for cockroach control)
  • sodium chloride – (table salt)
  • sodium citrate – (food additive)
  • sodium hydroxide – (Danger! Corrosive)
  • sodium phosphate – (toxic to any organism) –
  • sodium phosphate monobasic monohydrate – (toxic to any organism)
  • sorbitol – (Not to be injected)
  • streptomycin – (antibiotic)
  • sucrose – (cane sugar)
  • yeast protein – (fungus) – used as a growth medium and removed from the final vaccine
  • urea – (metabolic waste from human urine) – helps to improve temperature stability of some vaccines, but does not come from human urine!
  • other chemical residuals

Although they went out of their way to make them sound scary, it is important to understand that these ingredients are not toxins, at least they aren’t in the doses used in the vaccines.

And while chemicals like potassium phosphate and sodium hydroxide might indeed sound scary to some people, it is also important to remember that we routinely and safely use chemicals every day. As they listed, sodium chloride is table salt!

What about their list of “studies” that followed their list of ingredients? They are easily refuted too – just think cherry picking, VAERS, case reports, and more VAERS.

Basically, the whole post is a collection of PRATTs – anti-vaccine points refuted a thousand times!

Don’t fall for this kind of propaganda anymore.

Vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are obviously necessary.

More on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Where Are the Autistic Kids Who Aren’t Vaccinated?

Thanks to the anti-vaccine movement, it isn’t hard to find autistic kids who aren’t vaccinated.

Wait, what?

Where Are the Autistic Kids Who Aren’t Vaccinated?

For one thing, folks in the anti-vaccine movement do a good job scaring parents, which means that there are simply more unvaccinated kids around.

And because vaccines aren’t associated with autism, these unvaccinated kids can and do develop autism.

How do we know?

Parents in anti-vaccine groups and forums often ask…

Do you know anyone who is autistic and unvaccinated?

And invariably, the answer they get is that yes, many of them either have or know of autistic kids who are unvaccinated.

Hopefully that will eventually lead them all to understand that vaccines are not associated with autism, so that they don’t continue to leave their kids unvaccinated and at risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease.

More on Autistic Kids Who Are Unvaccinated

Is 100% of Injected Aluminum Absorbed?

We know that aluminum is the new focus of folks who try to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

What are they talking about now?

Raw intake vs metallic exposure? Do they just make this stuff up as they go along?
Raw intake vs metallic exposure? Do they just make this stuff up as they go along?

Metabolic exposure, rates of absorption, and injected aluminum.

Metabolic exposure sounds scarier…

Even fellow anti-vaccine folks don’t really understand what he is talking about, but they are ready to eat it up, as it reflects their world view that vaccines are dangerous.

Is 100% of Injected Aluminum Absorbed?

So is all injected aluminum absorbed, as James Lyons-Weiler suggests in his promotional flyer?

Well, it’s going to be initially absorbed somewhere after the vaccine is injected, but not in the way anti-vaccine folks make you think.

It is not all absorbed into our blood right away! Part of the reason that adjuvants work might be because they act as a depot, allowing the vaccine antigens to remain at the injection site for a longer time to stimulate a good immune response.

“We were reassured to find no significant postvaccine rise in serum aluminum level after vaccination of preterm infants with vaccines containing a total of 1200 µg of aluminum.”

Movsas et al on Effect of Routine Vaccination on Aluminum and Essential Element Levels in Preterm Infants

Remember, vaccines are not injected into our bloodstreams and the aluminum in vaccines, in the form of aluminum salts, is not soluble. That means that they don’t dissolve in liquids, but instead need to be metabolized first.

But then 100% gets absorbed?

Amazingly, one of James Lyons-Weiler's own sources says that only 17% of aluminum adjuvants get absorbed...
Amazingly, James Lyons-Weiler’s ignores one of his own sources that says only 17% of aluminum adjuvants get absorbed…

Nope.

It is estimated that only about 17% of the injected aluminum, in the form of aluminum hydroxide, gets absorbed into the bloodstream.

The Inter-Related Processes of Absorption, Distribution, Biotransformation, and Elimination
In addition to our bloodstream, aluminum adjuvants get absorbed into the lymph system before getting eliminated.

Finally, after being initially injected, metabolized, and absorbed, most of the aluminum in vaccines is eliminated.

How is it eliminated?

Most of it is excreted in our urine.

Is there anything scary about all of that?

More on Absorption of Aluminum in Vaccines