3 Ways to Reduce Environmental Causes of Acne

Since 1970, the pioneers at the Earth Day Network (EDN) have strived to promote environmental activism around the world. Thanks in part to the organization’s efforts, millions of people work in unison to make our air cleaner, our forests larger and our landfills smaller. Now the EDN wants to broaden the meaning of "environment" to include all issues that affect our health, even the problems that can cause acne.

Environmentalist has certainly made arguments for a direct link between a toxic environment and health diseases like cancer and asthma. We can also get motivated to preserve out planet’s health in order to prevent pimples.

Chloracne versus acne vulgaris


Chloracne is a type of acne caused by exposure to certain polyhalogenated aromatic hydrocarbons called as “dioxins”. Dioxins can enter the air and water via various industrial processing, such as cleaning municipal water. Notwithstanding, for the past decades, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that overall levels of dioxins have steadily declined.

Chloracne differs from the more common form of acne, acne vulgaris, in several ways. For example, lesions from chloracne typically arise on the ears, neck, face and genitalia. And chloracne lesions are not provoked by oily skin or bacteria as is often the case with acne vulgaris.

Additionally, since the chemical agents that cause chloracne are lipophilic (attracted to fats) the toxins can stay in human skin can organs for months, and in some documented cases up to 16 years. Fortunately, there are easy ways to reduce the long term effects of dioxin exposure and developing chloracne.

1. Reduce fat intake


According to the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, adjusting your diet to comply within the Federal Dietary Guidelines will result in multiple health benefits, including reduced dioxin exposure.

That is because dioxins decompose very slowly in the environment and can be deposited on plants and taken up by animals and fish. Dioxins may be concentrated in the food chain so that animals have higher concentrations than the plants, water, soil, or sediments around them. In animals, dioxins tend to accumulate in fat.

However, the CFSAN does not recommend eliminating all fats from your diet. Instead, choose fish, lean meat, poultry, and low or fat free (skim) dairy products and increase your consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grain products.

Here’s other ways to remove dioxins from your diet:

Remove the skin from fish and poultry to reduce their fat content.


Limit using butter or lard used in the preparation of foods and cooking.


Try broiling your food instead to lower your risk of dioxin exposure.

2. Avoid using / buying bleached materials


Besides animal fats, you can encounter dioxins from substances released by industrial bleaching of pulp and paper into the air and water. You can do your part to reduce production of bleached products by buying only non-bleached papers, packaging materials and cloths.

3. Stop unneeded fires


Another way to rid the world of toxins is to avoid unnecessary fires. Don’t burn residential trash because this releases dioxin. Similarly, cigarette smoke also contains small amounts of dioxins.

Everyday, reasons and ways to help improve the health of our planet get more and more personal. Now you can elect to take three simple steps to help free the world of another environmentally induced health condition know as “chloracne”.

Sources:


Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “Questions and Answers about Dioxins”. January 2003; updated July 2006.

Panteleyev, Andrey A & David R. Bickers. Dioxin-induced chloracne - reconstructing the cellular and molecular mechanisms of a classic environmental disease. Experimental Dermatology; September 2006, vol 15, no 9, pp 705–730.