高清福利片

You go to the gym, eat healthy and walk as much as possible. You wash your hands and get vaccinated. You control your health. This is a common story we tell ourselves. Unfortunately, it鈥檚 not quite true.

Factors outside our control have huge influence 鈥� especially products which can sicken or kill us, made by companies and sold routinely.

For instance, you and your family have been听听to dangerous forever chemicals,听听are linked to kidney and testicular cancers. You鈥檙e almost certainly carrying these chemicals, known as PFAS or forever chemicals, in your body听.

And that鈥檚 just the start. We now know exposure to just four classes of product 鈥� tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods and fossil fuels 鈥� are linked to one out of every three deaths worldwide. That is,听听in 19 of the world鈥檚 56 million deaths each year (as of 2019). Pollution 鈥� largely from fossil fuels 鈥� is now the single largest environmental cause of听. Communities of colour and low-income communities experience disproportionate impacts. Over 90% of pollution related deaths occur in low middle income countries.

This means the leading risk factor for disease and death worldwide is corporations who make, market and sell these unhealthy products. Worse, even when these corporations become aware of the harms their products cause, they have often systematically hidden these harms to boost profits at the expense of our health. Major tobacco, oil, food, pharmaceutical and chemical corporations have all applied similar techniques, privatising the profits and spreading the harms.

When companies act to conceal the harm their products do, they prevent us from protecting ourselves and our children. We now have many well-documented cases of corporate wrongdoing, such as听,听,听,听听,听. In these instances, corporations intentionally manufactured doubt or hid the harms of their products to delay or prevent regulation and maintain profits.

Decades of empirical evidence shows these effective tactics have actually been shared and strategically passed from one industry or company to the next.

For instance, when large tobacco companies Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds bought food companies Kraft, General Foods and Nabisco in the 1980s, tobacco executives听听marketing strategies, flavouring and colourings to expand product lines and engineered fatty, sweet and salty听听such as cookies, cereals and frozen foods linked to obesity and diet-related diseases. These foods听听our reward circuits and encourage us to consume more.

Or consider how 鈥榝orever chemicals鈥� became so widespread. A team of scientists (including this article鈥檚 co-author) investigated previously secret internal industry documents from听, the largest makers of forever chemicals PFOA and PFOS.

The documents showed both 3M and DuPont used tactics from the听, such as suppressing unfavourable research and distorting public debate. Like Big Tobacco, 3M and DuPont had a financial interest in suppressing scientific evidence of the harms of their products, while听听in-demand products such as Teflon were safe.

For decades, forever chemicals PFOA and PFOS have been used to make Teflon pans, Scotchgard, firefighting foam and other non-stick materials. By the early 2000s, one of these, PFOS, ended up in our blood at 20 times the level its manufacturer, 3M,听.

As early as 1961, the chief toxicologist at DuPont鈥檚 Teflon subsidiary reported the company鈥檚 wonder-material had 鈥渢he ability to increase the size of the liver of rats at low doses鈥�, and recommended the chemicals be handled 鈥渨ith extreme care鈥�. According to a 1970 internal memo, the DuPont-funded Haskell Laboratory found the chemical class C8 (now known as PFOA/PFOS) was 鈥渉ighly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested鈥�.

Both 3M and DuPont did extensive internal research on the risks their products posed to humans, but they shared little of it. The risks of PFOA including pregnancy-induced hypertension, kidney and testicular cancers, and ulcerative colitis was听.

Now, 60 years after DuPont first learned of the harms these products could cause, many countries are facing the human and environmental consequences and a听听cleanup.

Even though the production of PFOA and PFOS is听, forever chemicals are easily stored in the body and take decades to break down. Worse, PFOA and PFOS are just two of听听different PFAS chemicals, most of which are still in use.

My co-author and I work in the field known as commercial determinants of health, which is to say, the damage corporations can do to us.

One of the key ways companies have been able to avoid regulation and lawsuits is by hiding the evidence. Internal studies showing harm can be easily hidden. External studies can be influenced, either by corporate funding, business-friendly scientists, legal action or lobbying policymakers to avoid regulation.

Here are three ways to prevent this happening again:

1) Require corporations to adhere to the same standards of data sharing and open science as independent scientists do.

If a corporation wants to bring a new product to market, they should have to register and publicly release every study they plan to conduct on its harms so the public can see the results of the study.

2) Sever the financial links between industry and researchers or policymakers.

Many large corporations will spend money on public studies to try to get favourable outcomes for their own interests. To cut these financial ties means boosting public health research, either through government funding or alternatives such as a tax on听. It would also mean听听and bringing lobbying under control by restricting corporate access and spending to policymakers and increasing transparency. And it would mean stopping the听听where government employees or policymakers work for the industry they used to regulate once they leave office.

3) Mandate public transparency of corporate funding to researchers and policymakers.

In 2010, the United States introduced laws to enforce transparency on how much medical and pharmaceutical companies were spending to influence the products doctors chose to use. Research using the data unearthed by these laws has shown the听. We need this model for other industries so we can clearly see where corporate money is going. Registries should be detailed, permanent and easy to search.

These steps would not be easy. But the status quo means corporations can keep selling dangerous or lethal products for much longer than they should.

In doing so, they have become one of the largest influences on our health and will continue to harm generations to come 鈥撎齣n ways hard to counter with yoga and willpower. And your health is more important than corporate profits.

Dr Nick Chartres is a senior researcher in Sydney Pharmacy School. This story was first published in . Top photo: Adobestock