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March 29, 2022 - Epoch Times
21:59
Poison Control Centers Warn About Toxic Chemical in At-Home Virus Test Kits, Children At More Risk
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This is your daily Fox Matter Update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion by talking about toxic chemicals, specifically about the fact that poison control centers here in the U.S. have been warning Americans about a toxic chemical that is present in at-home COVID test kits.
Now to back up for a quick minute, let me set the stage and explain what's actually happening.
You might remember that in order to expand at-home COVID testing, late last year in December, the Biden administration announced a new initiative to give away 1 billion COVID self-test kits to American households free of charge.
Now back then, the administration experienced a delay with their program, and so they missed the holiday season, which was one of the main reasons that they actually wanted to roll out the program in the first place so that people can get tested before seeing their families for the holidays.
But that didn't work out.
Regardless, though, after about a month-long delay, well, in January of this year, in January of 2022, the Biden administration finally began to send out COVID test kits.
And the process of getting one is relatively simple.
You can go on over to the USPS website, fill out a form, put your name, address, and they will ship it to you within a few days.
However, even after the program was initiated, after the test began to get rolled out, well not everything has been peaches and cream.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, to start with, as we've already discussed on a previous episode, many Americans were rather surprised when they opened up their mailboxes only to find that their government-issued COVID test kits were actually made in China.
That's right.
Millions of test kits that the Biden administration sent out to American households have the three beautiful words, made in China, emblazoned on the box.
We discussed this issue a few episodes ago, and the reason that so many of these tests are actually made in China has to do with the $2.1 billion worth of contracts that were signed between the U.S. government and a company called iHealth Labs, which is actually a subsidiary of a Chinese company called Andon Health, which is based over in the Chinese megacity of Tianjin.
However, as surprising as that development was...
Well, what's become even more worrying is the fact that, as I just mentioned earlier, poison control centers here in the U.S. are warning Americans about a toxic chemical that is present on these at-home COVID test kits.
Here's how the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center described the situation over on their website.
Quote, Poison control centers nationwide have been reporting the same finding.
The substance that is a concern is called the reagent liquid.
It is used to trigger the chemical reaction that detects the presence of coronavirus.
The ingredient of worry in this liquid is a chemical called sodium azide, which is used as a preservative in these kits.
And indeed, as they mentioned in that statement on their website, the National Poison Control Center has issued an official warning regarding this chemical, which as they mentioned is called sodium azide, and it's found in things like herbicides, pest control agents, as well as airbags for cars.
And within the at-home COVID test kits, sodium azide is the liquid that you would put your cotton swab into to test for coronavirus.
However, in the warning from the National Poison Control Center, they laid out the danger that this chemical causes to people, and especially to children.
Here's specifically what they said as a part of their statement.
Quote, It is important to note that the extraction vial in many rapid antigen kits includes the chemical sodium azide as a preservative agent.
Sodium azide is a colorless, tasteless, and odorless powder that has been used as a propellant in automobile airbags, in herbicide, and a pest control agent.
When swallowed, sodium azide can cause low blood pressure, dizziness, headache, and heart palpitations.
In more severe cases, seizures, loss of consciousness, and death may occur.
Sodium azide is a very potent poison, and ingestion of relatively low doses can cause significant toxicity.
People also may spill it on their skin, which can cause skin irritation or chemical burns.
And just imagine that scenario for yourself for just a quick moment.
You take a test in order to determine whether you have COVID. You test negative for COVID, but as a result of the test itself, you develop all these symptoms.
However, the statement then goes on to say that the amount of sodium azide in the COVID test could be relatively okay for adults, but they did have a warning regarding children.
Here's what it says.
Fortunately, the amount of sodium azide in most rapid antigen kits is much lower than the amount expected to cause poisoning if swallowed by an adult.
However, the extraction vials do look like small squeeze bottles or eyedroppers.
Some people may accidentally confuse them with medications and apply the drops into their eyes or nose, which may cause irritation.
People also may spill it on their skin, which can cause skin irritation or chemical burns.
Small children may accidentally swallow the contents of the vial or choke on the vial's small cap.
And then furthermore, down in this statement, which is again issued by the National Poison Control Center, they also mentioned that this problem is not stemming from a single manufacturer, but rather, here's what they wrote.
Quote, And furthermore, it appears that cases of exposure to this particular chemical are going up throughout the entire country.
For instance, in an interview with a local publication, a clinical toxicologist over at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, well, she said this, quote, We started getting our first exposures to these test kits around early November.
It was really all ages.
Mostly, I've been very worried about our young children.
And as she alluded to, doctors throughout the entire country are seeing accidental exposure to this chemical occurring both in children as well as in adults.
Here's, for instance, what a physician with the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, well, here's what she said to a local publication just over the weekend.
Quote, People might mistake them for eye drops.
Children might drop it on their skin.
Adults will sometimes mistakenly put them into their eyes.
You don't want to leave it on the skin because it could potentially cause an allergic reaction or a skin rash.
If someone drinks the solution, it's really important to contact poison control right away.
The solutions have different ingredients.
Some have non-toxic ingredients, and others have more dangerous ingredients.
Now, in terms of what you should do if you have any of these test kits at home, well, frankly, that is, of course, up to you.
I'm just providing you with the information so that you can make up your own decisions.
However, here's what an official from the St.
Luke's University Health Network, here's what he said when he was specifically asked about this question.
Use them properly, dispose of them properly, and it won't cause an issue.
And so, as he mentioned, if you do have these test kits at home and you still choose to use them, well, be mindful of that sodium azide.
And if you know anyone that has been exposed to this poison, well, I'll throw several links into the description box below this video of not only the references that we discussed, but also some poison control resources that you can contact as well.
They'll all be down there in the description box below.
And I'll ask in return is that you take a quick moment to smash that like button so the YouTube algorithm will share this video out to ever more people.
And by the way, speaking of having our videos shared out to ever more people, well, there's something else I'd like to mention on the topic of hardcore censorship here on YouTube.
Our last episode, which was published on Friday, covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
And as all of our episodes typically are, it was fact-based and everything was properly sourced.
But YouTube did something to that episode that I've never seen done before.
So if you were on your phone and you clicked on that episode because you wanted to watch it, an alert came up saying that this episode contains inappropriate and offensive content.
Are you sure you want to watch it?
Well, okay, you hit confirm.
And then a second window pops up asking you again, hey, do you really want to watch it?
And then only after you hit the button again can you watch the episode.
That is crazy.
I've never seen anything like that before.
And frankly, I was doubly surprised because in making that episode, I thought that we did not talk about anything controversial, at least in my opinion.
We didn't talk about COVID. We didn't talk about vaccines.
We didn't talk about mandates.
Nothing like that.
Furthermore, it's not like that episode contained any original footage of ours coming out of Ukraine.
We had access to the same publicly available footage that everyone else has access to.
And so, just to check, I went over to CNN's YouTube channel, and wouldn't you know it, none of their videos had this problem.
You could watch them all day long, and YouTube won't bother you at all.
It's only the unapproved sources of information, like the Epoch Times, that appears to have this issue.
And on the back end, you can see the chart of how many views that episode got, and it was shooting up like a rocket.
It was on track to hit 600, 700,000, maybe even a million views, but right there, you can see exactly where YouTube decided to block the episode, and the views pretty much flatlined.
And after seeing that happen in real time, what it made me realize is that the net is basically beginning to tighten ever more here on YouTube.
The topics that we can actually discuss without getting censored is getting tighter and tighter.
And so, later this week, when I go over to Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in order to cover the trucker convoy that's making its way to Washington, D.C., Well, I'm not going to be able to post the videos here on YouTube.
Maybe I'll post a few clips, but the real stuff, the live interviews with the actual truckers, well, that will be posted over on EpicTV, which is our awesome no-censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome live coverage of the trucker protests that, again, just due to the censorship here on YouTube, you cannot find here.
Also, there's a ton of other great content over on EpicTV.
There's movies, there's other programs.
And so, by subscribing to EpicTV, not only will you have access to all that great content, Let's move on over and discuss Joe Biden's cognitive ability.
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And now Roman in the studio, back to you.
Now, while I was down in Florida over the weekend, I took the unique opportunity to sit down and speak with Dr.
Ronnie Jackson, who is a congressman from Texas.
He's a former rear admiral of the U.S. Navy, and he's the former chief medical advisor to President Trump.
And we discussed many different topics, including Ukraine, the trucker's convoy, the ballooning national debt, as well as his insight into why 66 percent of voters recently said that they want Joe Biden to submit to a cognitive test.
Take a listen.
13th Congressional District of Texas, which is basically the entire Texas panhandle, a lot in North Texas, 41 counties, 42,000 square miles.
It just so happens that it's also the number one most conservative district in the entire country.
So that's the area I'm coming from.
I'm a retired Navy rear admiral, retired emergency medicine physician, spent 25 years on active duty in the Navy.
Wow.
So there's a lot to unpack there, right?
Yeah.
So the first thing I wanted to actually dive into is that since you have that military background, you were in the U.S. Navy, and you served in Iraq as a doctor, you were doing resuscitative medicine as well as emergency medicine right there on the battlefield.
Right.
Can you give a little bit of insight into what we can expect to see right now in Ukraine, maybe for somebody who's never been on a battlefield, what type of injuries are likely going to come out of this, and maybe what type of humanitarian issues as well?
Well, the injuries are horrible, obviously.
They're not the kind of injuries you see in the United States.
If you go to one of the busy emergency departments in the inner city where you see a lot of small arms, gunfire, and knives and things like that, these are injuries from bombs and IEDs and things of that nature that basically remove limbs and stuff.
So you'll see people with amputations, things of that nature.
The unfortunate thing is with the large number of people Trying to flee the incoming Russian troops.
A lot of those people are going to get caught up in a lot of that fire.
They're going to be around when those bombs come in.
They're going to be there when those IEDs go off and things of that nature.
And it's just going to be a horrible thing.
Not to mention the fact that they leave with hardly anything, just the clothes on their back.
So they don't have a way to feed themselves or clothe themselves or keep themselves warm.
And let's not forget, it's winter over there right now, so it's brutally cold over there.
So there's going to be just a lot of people that are going to be subjected to hunger and hypothermia and starvation and not to mention get caught up in some of the crossfire and some of the weapons that the Russians are going to use to take these large cities.
Yeah, it's a total disaster.
Yeah.
So maybe setting aside what happened prior to the invasion, all the politics that happened prior to it, what do you think is the best approach moving forward?
So the Biden administration recently announced a new round of sanctions, so did a lot of other Western countries.
You think that's a good approach?
Is that enough?
Is there something else that needs to be done?
Well, there's a lot more that needs to be done, obviously.
I think they gave away a lot of the negotiating of power that they had.
I think they should have done, you know, not to go back too far, but all the sanctions should have been in place before they crossed the border.
And the deal should have been, we're going to put the sanctions in place, we'll remove the sanctions when you remove your troops from the Ukrainian border and stop threatening the Ukrainians.
That's where the sanctions should have been put in place, right?
Not after they're already in.
This is a moment of weakness.
This is a window of opportunity for Putin, and it'll be soon a window of opportunity for the Chinese president with Taiwan.
Everyone around the country, the Iranians, see this as a window of opportunity to get the nuclear weapon they've been wanting for a long time.
But everyone sees Biden as weak, ineffective, incoherent, not committed, not in control of his own domestic policy, and certainly not in control of foreign affairs and not leading NATO in Europe like we should have and like we historically have done in the past.
So the sanctions need to be tougher.
They need to be, you know, sanctioned in the banks more effectively.
There's a lot of stuff they could do there to really shut down the banking and their ability to use their currency to do anything.
They could sanction Putin himself.
They could sanction Russian oil and gas.
These are all kinds of things that need to be done.
I mean, it's embarrassing right now that we've gone from a country that was energy independent to a country now that brings in about 200,000 barrels a day of Russian oil, right?
And to some extent, if you look back and you think about what that means, that means that to some extent we have financed his ability to go into Ukraine and do some of this.
We've built his economy up and given him the resources he needs to attack Ukraine.
And it's just crazy.
That would have never happened in the Trump administration.
It wouldn't even have been considered.
In the Trump administration, we were energy independent.
We were a net exporter of oil and gas.
So it's really horrible that we've gotten to where we got right now, and there's not a lot left on the table to work with.
And I really think that, you know, in the days to come, the Russians will completely occupy the country of Ukraine, and they'll install a puppet government that, you know, that's going to meet their needs, and their mission accomplished.
So what do you think is the best approach?
Because what you mentioned are, to get a lot harsher on Putin and oligarchs and people around him targeting the energy sector.
But at the same time, I imagine, I mean, there's no good case scenario, right?
Like, this is a terrible situation.
But I imagine doing that would push Russia further to align with China on the global stage.
I know that as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, The Chinese Communist Party sent several airplanes into Taiwan's air defense zone.
I mean, they've been doing that more and more, but that happened right then.
And then there was a leak from their bureau of propaganda saying, hey, told the media outlets in China saying, hey, don't criticize Russia because when we invade Taiwan, we need Russia's support.
So how do we kind of balance the two?
Well, we can't.
We've pushed our adversaries together to some extent, right?
And the thing is, when we impose the sanctions and we start shutting down some of Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas, they're going to turn around and they're just going to sell that oil and gas to the Chinese.
The Chinese need it, right?
So the Chinese will be their new trading partner with oil and gas, and they'll probably even make more money trading with the Chinese than they would have with the Europeans.
And they've been working for a long time behind the scenes, you know, talking about, like, well, we do this, we expect you guys to give us top cover and not say anything and protect us in the UN, and we'll do the same for you.
And so, you know, make no mistake about it, the Chinese are watching what's going on right now.
And they're preparing to do the same thing in Taiwan.
And they're not going to say anything to undermine the Russians' efforts to take Ukraine.
And they expect the Russians to not say anything to undermine their efforts to take Taiwan.
And they expect the United States to continue to be weak and ineffective in its leadership.
And they're both going to get what they want.
So I wanted to shift gears a little bit back here domestically.
So you are the congressman from the 13th District of Texas, the 13th Congressional District.
Right now, at this moment, as we're speaking, there's actually a convoy of truckers going across your district on their way to Washington, D.C. Do you have anything to say to those truckers?
Stay in there.
Hang in there.
I love the fact that they're fighting for the government to stay out of our business and not be able to take our personal freedoms away from us.
I know that when they get there in D.C., it'll be a big inconvenience for a lot of people that live there and stuff, but I think the bigger picture here is they're fighting for all of our rights.
They're fighting for our personal freedoms that have been taken away.
We saw what happened in Canada.
It's not a stretch to think that that could happen right here in the United States now as far as we've gone.
I tell people all the time, if you showed me where we were in the United States right now, where Biden has led us, and you compared that to a few years ago when Trump was in office, I would have told you that the kind of stuff that happens in this country, that that would never happen in this country.
And I would tell you that if it did happen, it would take decades to take place.
Joe Biden has done it in one year.
In one year, he has completely changed this country for the worst, and he's taken away our personal freedoms.
And we just got to get them back no matter what.
At some point, we have to put our foot down and say enough is enough.
And that's what the truckers are doing to some extent.
I wanted to kind of shift a little bit over to Joe Biden.
So normally I wouldn't ask this type of question, but because there was a recent poll, I believe it was a Rasmussen poll, which found that 66% of voters think that Joe Biden should take a cognitive test.
He should take a mental test to prove his cognitive ability.
So you are kind of uniquely positioned because you were actually the chief medical advisor to President Trump.
Right?
Is that correct?
That's correct.
So you have a lot of insight into, you know, the Oval Office, the stresses of the Oval Office, as well as, you know, the medical care of the president.
What's your opinion of this?
Well, let's take it even further.
I was at the White House for 14 years.
I took care of President Bush for three years.
I took care of President Obama for eight years.
And I took care of President Trump for three years.
So I've taken care of three presidents and three administrations.
I know exactly what it takes mentally and physically to do that job.
And I can tell you, and I was saying it before he even became president, Joe Biden no longer has that.
He may have, but his window of opportunity closes at some particular point.
He has some cognitive issues that are related to his age, period.
I don't know what they entail.
I don't know if he's got Parkinson's or dementia or Alzheimer's.
I'm not making a diagnosis.
I'm making an observation as an American and as a physician and as somebody who's been in that role.
That he's got something going on that's cognitively related to his age, and we need to know what it is.
The press went crazy when I was President Trump's physician demanding that he get a cognitive test done as part of his physical exam.
That's never been done for a president ever before.
But we submitted, you know, and I did that because I knew good and well that President Trump had zero cognitive issues.
I was with him every day, sharp as a tack, got a better memory than most people I know, and I knew for a fact that he had no cognitive issues at all.
We administered the test.
We briefed the press on it along with his extensive brief of his physical exam.
And then when we saw recently when President Biden had his physical exam rolled out by his doctor, it was a complete joke.
They came out, they didn't even talk about the real issues that we would want to know on the physical side of the house.
Didn't tell us what medications he was on, you know, and what health issues he really has.
And there was no mention of a cognitive test.
So either they didn't do one or the results weren't good and they didn't want to publish it.
My thoughts are they didn't do one because they know what the answer would be.
You know, he wouldn't do well on it.
And, you know, at this point, I don't even know if we even need a cognitive test anymore.
He's failed on the national stage and on the global stage so much right now that I think, like you said, most people realize that something's wrong with him.
We don't even need a cognitive test to tell us that anymore.
But I'm still demanding that we get one.
I think the precedent was set.
I think that the left should be demanding this as well.
It was the far left, the liberal press, and the elites in academic medicine that were demanding this.
Their voices are quiet right now, crickets, but they should be stepping up and making the same demands of President Biden that they made of President Trump.
And if people want to know more about it, go to testbiden.com because I'm pushing that issue as hard as I can right now, and I want answers to that question.
Now, of course, that was not the full interview because of the aforementioned censorship here on YouTube.
We can't post it here.
However, if you'd like to watch the full interview in its entirety, you can do so over on Epic TV. I'll throw a link to it.
It'll be right there in the top of the description box.
Hope you click on it.
Hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
And lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed, again, while YouTube still allows it.
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We'll put links to all of our videos there, so in case anything ever does happen here on YouTube, you can find us over on Telegram.
And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from The Epoch Times.
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