Category Archives: Environment

Allergies and Toxicity in Children – A Real Dilemma

Robyn O’Brien, a mother from Boulder, Colorado has taken up the battle against the people who would lead you to believe that environmental toxins and genetically modified foods have nothing to do with the explosion of allergies in children (among other health issues). Having just gotten off the phone with her, I noted a passion to tell the world about this issue and to educate the mother out there as to the growing problem affectin so many of them. Her website Allergy Kids is full of useful information about this important issue.

The more toxic our environment, the more damage will be done to our children and almost more importantly, their children. People like Robyn are the ones who will shake up this world and force the changes necessary to protect ourselves and kids. Please visit her site today.

Four Hundred Scientists Dispute Global Warming – Or Do They?

According to Senator James Inhofe (R – OK), there is no consensus among scientists about global warming. He even goes on to list 400 people he claims are prominent climate scientists. Well guess what? Baloney. A number of the people on the list are weatherman on television, twenty percent of them are paid by the fossil fuel industry, seventy people on the list have no apparent experience in climate science and twenty of them are economists.

Don’t believe me? Here is the list of the four hundred and thirteen people who signed this deceptive piece of paper. Even if there are 400 or so scientists who deny global warming, how about the 50,000 members of the American Geophysical Union who do? It is time to stop arguing with the idiots. I no longer believe that we need to prove ourselves to those people who would consistently deny what we know to be the truth. The earth is warming and man has a lot to do with it.

Want more information before making a decision whether to believe it or not? Go to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change and read the reports.

The deniers keep telling us that fighting global warming will cost jobs and hurt our economy. What utter nonsense. Imagine the jobs we can create if we mobilize our country to develop new technologies to decrease the need for fossil fuels. You know who’s economy will be hurt and whose jobs will be lost? Those executives of fossil fuel companies that rely on polluting our planet for their bloated salaries. The old boys club is hurt economically, not our nation. In truth, our economy will be hurt staying the course, innovation is the way our country became great, stagnation, which is what the current administration wants, is what will put us in the same category as the end of the Roman Empire.

We can only become great again by leading the world, not bleeding it. We have a chance to make a difference, let’s not screw it up.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Five

Tips for the caring in the world

Tip #21 – Buy organic whenever possible. In the ’60s, the world used 30 million tons of pesticides and fertilizers a year. In 2000, it went up to 140 million tons. Buying organic tells food producers that you don’t want that to continue. Organic foods are simply healthier than non-organic.

Tip #22 – Stop buying artificial air fresheners. They contain volitile chemicals like phthalates that are flat out bad for you and especially children. Use things like potpourri’s or the like. You can find lots of natural oils at the local health food store that work just as well as their chemical cousins.

Tip #23 – Lay off products made with palm oil. To make palm oil, vast areas of the rain forest are being cut down, especially in Indonesia for the palm plantations. Switch to better oils like olive, canola or sunflower instead.

Tip #24 – Switch to safe detergents – At the Schauss house, we use Ecos laundry detergent which we get at Costco. Many regular detergents contain environmentally unfriendly chemicals which ruin our waterways.

Tip #25 – Buy fish that are caught in environmentally safe ways. Overfishing is becoming a problem, farm bred fish contain lots of chemicals, and popular fish like tuna contains mercury. Buying sustainable and healthy fish is important. My favorites are Vital Choice out of Washington. Not only is their fish phenomenal, they are really nice people as well.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Four

More tips to make your world greener.

Tip #16- Dump the gas powered lawnmower. Gasoline powered mowers generate as much pollution per hour as 40 cars. Switch to an electric or better yet, get a manual reel mower.

Tip #17- Plant a tree. Seems simple but we all need to do it. Even if you don’t have land to plant a tree there are a number of organizations that can do it for you. Dell Computers has a website that allows you to make a donation to help plants trees. Their program is called “Plant a Tree for Me” and it allows you to see how little you need to donate to offset things like computers, printers and other computer related products.

Tip #18- Turn off the heat when washing clothes. Did you know there is no reason to use hot or even warm water when washing your clothes? You use 30% less energy when you wash in warm rather than hot and even more when you wash in cold water. To top it off, your clothes will last longer which is also good for the environment. You save lots of money and make the world a better place. Not bad eh?

Tip #19- Donate your old cellphones. At my house, the kids love playing with our old cell phones but for those of you without kids, or those with different tastes in toys, donate your old cell phones to charity because if you throw them out, they will leach toxic chemicals into the environment.

Tip #20 – Drop the pesticides. One of the worst things you can do to the environment is the use of pesticides. There are so many natural alternatives like putting bay leaves into your flour and cereals will repel weevils, ants hate peppermint and cucumber peel, and if you have mice, soak cotton balls in citronella or oil of peppermint and leave them in areas you notice they like to congregate.

Come back tomorrow for more tips.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Three

Here are more of my favorite ways to change our world.

Tip #11 – Invest in the rainforest. The United States is the richest country in the world and I am proud to say, the most giving. Still, every year we give gifts to our family members and friends and often times the gifts are used for a short time then either discarded or put away. Imagine a gift that will last a lifetime and make a difference. Go to the World Land Trust and buy an acre of the rainforest and you can do just that. Buy a half acre or an acre. Imagine 1/2 acre of land in lieu of 2 weeks worth of lattés.

Tip #12 – Don’t keep your cell phone charger plugged in. If you do, 95% of the energy it uses is wasted. Remember that what we want to do here is reduce waste first then consumption. I believe America can become energy self-sufficient if it cut back just one-quarter of its wasteful habits.

Tip #13 – Turn your office computer off each night. The amount of energy that a computer burns overnight when not being used is the equivalent of laser printing 800 pages of documents. This adds up in one year to 1.9 tons of CO2 (which would cost you $10.45 to offset [Carbon Fund Offset Calculator]).

Tip #14 – Say no to junk mail. Aside from being horribly annoying, junk mail is horrible for the environment. Go to the Direct Marketing Association to opt out of receiving junk mail. It won’t eliminate it but it will lower it substantially which will in turn save trees.

Tip #15 – Turn off your screen and forget about the “screen saver”. Screen savers use almost as much energy as when you are using the screen. Turn off your screen if you will be away from your desk more than 1/2 an hour.

Come back tomorrow for 5 more tips.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time – Part Two

Here is part two of my multi-part series on changing the world by lowering your environmental footprint.

Tip #6 – Don’t shave on weekends. Doesn’t seem like much but if you think about it, all we need to do are a number of small things to make a big difference.

Tip #7 – Recycle newspaper. For every yard in height of newspaper you recycle, you save one tree from being cut down. Remember, trees help suck up the CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Tip #8 – Unplug electronic devices. When you leave computers, TV’s and other household appliances plugged in and on standby when they won’t be used for a few hours, they are draining electricity anyway. Unplug your television if you won’t be around to watch it for 8 hours or so. Better yet, reduce your television viewing and not only will you be saving money and electricity, you’ll be finding lots of better things to do with your life. They didn’t call it the boob tube for nothing.

Tip #9 – Buy organic milk instead of regular. Not only will you reduce the use of environmentally unfriendly pesticides, insecticides and hormones, you will benefit from the ingestion of healthier milk, richer in omega-3 fatty acids than regular milk.

Tip #10 – Reuse cooking water. Why dump the water you cooked your pasta in down the drain? Save it, let it cool and water your plants. Same with the water used to cook your veggies. Think about reusing the water you use to cook with and you’ll not only be saving water and money, but you will be adding nutrients to your plants as well.

As I said yesterday, find a couple of things here and there to change your lifestyle and pretty soon, everything you do will be green.

Change the World, a Little Step at a Time

Now that the release of my book “Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World” is only a month away, I thought it’s time to start giving my readers tips on how you can make a difference when it comes to our environment. We tend to think that our footprint compared to big companies and governments are so small that any change we make is miniscule. Furthermore, so many of the books out there remind us that if ¼ of the population were to do something (like change from incandescent to fluorescent bulbs), the environment would improve greatly. This is nice in the abstract but how does this excite me to make a difference. My thought is that it doesn’t matter what everyone else does until you do it yourself.

If you can put your head on your pillow tonight knowing that you did something, even something very small, to lower your environmental footprint, then you will have helped save our planet.

My blog for the next few weeks will focus on tips of ways you and your family can make a difference. No need to do them all; pick a few that you feel you can accomplish and those that pertain to your life. I will be posting those things my family and I will be doing to change our habits to be better stewards of our environment. Together we can and will change this world.

Tip #1 – If you can’t lower your travel, offset your carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission by going to the CarbonFund website and make a donation. They have calculators to show how much your travels generate greenhouse gases and what it would cost to offset them. An example is how much my car, a 2003 Saturn Vue would cost to offset for one year. I travel about 15,000 miles a year and to offset the 6.34 tons of CO₂it cost me $34.85 to offset that (My Prius only cost me $13.31). This money goes towards projects that will counter my polluting ways. My next car will be one that is about 20% more efficient than the Vue which is another way to lower my footprint.

Tip #2 – Automate your bill paying. Bills are never fun to pay but paying them online instead of via the mail reduces paper waste, lowers the gas needed to transport the payment and lowers postage costs. My family has been doing this for a few years now and it is much more efficient than the old paper way.

Tip #3 – Cook your meals from scratch. Stop buying pre-packaged foods that are a waste of material, energy hogs (creation of the product to the containers), and is infinitely healthier for you. My two daughters go to a Montessori school and they don’t allow pre-packaged foods to be used for their lunches which I believe is a great thing. The amount of time it takes to make a real meal versus a pre-packaged one is small. Make dinner creation a family event. It will bring you closer and will be good for your health and the health of our world.

Tip #4 – Don’t buy bottled water. Ugh, this one annoys me to no end. Fiji Water could be the worst. Imagine the amount of energy it takes to transport the bottling material from China to Fiji, then to pump the water up to the bottling plant and then shipping it to the US? Sound ridiculous to you? Does to me. I once wrote about this on my blog to show the insanity of buying bottled water. Get a glass or stainless steel container and bottle your own tap water (use a filter if you need to). It’s smart, environmentally right and you will save a bundle of money (remember, bottled water costs around $9.00 a gallon, tap is about .03¢).

Tip #5 – Stop using bleach. There are a number of alternatives and here is an easy one. Instead of using bleach tablets to keep your toilet clean, mix a cup of borax, mix in some vinegar (just a teaspoon should do) and leave overnight. Scrub in the morning and your porcelain is clean as can be and non-toxic. Guess what the Schauss family will be doing today?

The next few weeks I will be sharing lots more of these tips and then I will be uploading a tracker spreadsheet to help you see what kind of an impact you are having. It could become a fun, family affair or you can make it a neighborhood challenge to see who can make the biggest difference.

Perchlorates and Iodine – Another Reason to Ban this Substance

Turns out that the molecular pump that drives iodine also does the same to the toxic chemical perchlorate. Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, led by Dr. Nancy Carrasco, found that perchlorate does double damage to lactating mothers and their babies because the chemical depletes the child of much needed iodine.

This finding is proof that perchlorates (found in jet engine fuel) is more dangerous than the industry admits. Isn’t that how it always works?

Since perchlorate is unavoidable, it is yet another reason to make sure you get adequate amounts of iodine in your diet or at least take a supplement (75 mcg should do for healthy people). Better yet, get tested. Doctor’s Data has a great iodine challenge test that everyone should get at least once every five years.

According to Time Magazine – The Top 10 Green Ideas

Time Magazine had a recent article about the top 10 Green Ideas. The health of our environment is critical as our own health is closely tied to it. Here is Time’s top 10:

#1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – This group of scientists were the ones to come out and show, global warming is real and we need as interconnected humans, to do something and to do it now. We have to stop the denial and move ahead before we are so overwhelmed, we would be unable to make a difference.

#2. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – Since our government is idiotically refusing to lead the charge against global warming, corporations together with the USCAP are taking over. According to the Time article “USCAP called for mandatory cuts of 60% to 80% in carbon emissions by 2050, and a uniform nationwide market for carbon. When big business is this far ahead of government, it’s clearly time for a change.”

#3. The Green Supply Chain – Companies like Wal-Mart, Procter and Gamble as well as Unilever are pressuring their suppliers to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and try to combat climate change.

#4. Avoided Deforestation – This is a no-brainer. We need our forests to save us from ourselves. We need to stop cutting down trees with no thought of tomorrow.

#5. Green-Collar Jobs – Instead of thinking that we cannot become more efficient because we will lose jobs, which is what our present Administration in the White House thinks, we can build jobs by creating new jobs that are green and friendly to the environment like organic biodynamic farming.

#6. Plug-in Hybrids – There is a company that can convert a car into a plug-in hybrid. CalCar is the company and while it is expensive, the technology is moving forward.

#7. E-Flex – Cars that can be made to run on newer technologies as soon as they came out.

#8. Congestion Pricing – Make people pay to use their cars in cities like New York. When I visited there I was astonished at how many people drove cars into Manhattan unnecessarily. It was insane. London and Singapore have already implemented this system.

#9. Carbon Capping – This idea puts a limit to how much carbon burning companies can do. The government would charge a fee for each unit of burning and then refund it to the people most needing help.

#10. Geo-engineering – This idea is to create large projects to help cool the planet. No one know if any idea on the table will work, but there is a sense of urgency to start thinking about ways before it is too late.

What I would add to the discussion is the need for everybody to do something, anything, each and every day to help combat global warming and also to reduce our polluting ways. Stop using pesticides, buy only organic when possible, vote with your dollars and buy ecologically superior products. We can do something, the important thing is to do it and do it now.

Mark Schauss: Russian Rulers Podcast Blogsite

Russia, the vast nation, with an even bigger history.