Category Archives: Environment

Skin Deep – Improved Database from the Environmental Working Group

The Environmental Working Group, a pro-environment lobbiest group, has released the newest version of their skin care toxicity product database. Anyone who uses cosmetics, deodorants, shampoos or conditioners needs to look at this product safety database.

Skin Deep is the only tool available to consumers to assess and compare the safety of personal care products.

Looking for safer sunscreen to protect the kids this summer? Or shampoos without dangerous preservatives? Skin Deep helps you learn what not to buy, and helps you find safer options for you and your family.

And along with adding thousands of products and a dozen new toxicity databases, we have also overhauled the look and feel of Skin Deep. You’ll find it easier to search for products and find answers about how chemicals affect our health.

Science in the News

Here are some recent tidbits and factoids that might be of interest.

  • Women who live in polluted areas with poor air quality have babies with lower birthweights. This finding, according to researchers at Yale University should make it clear that air quality improvements are critical in protecting new born babies. Low birthweight equals poor health so it would behove us to work to make our cities healthier.
  • According to a study done in the U.K., researchers found that women who had an early start to puberty were more likely to have obese children. While it is obvious to some of us that hormone disrupting chemicals in the environment are partly to blame, we also have to ensure that these high risk women are educated in the field of proper nutrition so that their children don’t become obese,
  • When it comes to air quality, ethanol and gasoline are pretty much the same.  To this date, I can’t seem to wrap my brain around the whole ethanol is good for America mantra. It isn’t that efficient, takes a lot of fuel to make, and will cause food prices to go up as ethanol producing corn gets planted over a greater area. Bad politics following bad science is a sure fire way to a big mistake.
  • In 2005, industrial and federal facilities in the United States released 4 billion pounds of chemicals into the environment, up 3 percent from the previous year or 117 million pounds more. This number explains why the present administration is so hell bent on not making some companies report their toxic releases. Not for business sake, but to hide the frightening numbers. Lead, a known neurotoxin, was added to our environment to the tune of 469 million pounds. Mercury, one of the deadliest poisons known, had 4.4 million pounds injected into our world by industry. Just think that only a few milligrams can spell disaster for a person and we are talking in the millions of pounds.
  • Polyphenols found in green tea, may have negative side effects when taken in large quantities. Taking 10 cups or the equivalent as a supplement form of green tea is the limit. Too much of a good thing can be bad for you in this case.
  • Every mother knows them and dreads them, the infamous baby growth chart. Ub a review published by the New Scientist, those charts may have been flawed, causing mothers to overfeed their children thereby leading to an increased risk of obesity.  Oops. According to Laurence Grummer-Strawn of the Center for Disease Control, “rapid growth in infancy has been shown to be associated with increased obesity.” My tip to mothers, dump the charts and watch your baby, if they look healthy and not emaciated, they are probably fine. To pediatricians, do the same.

 

    For the Environments Sake – Stop Buying Bottled Water

    When it comes to wasting reseources, there are few things that can highlight human folly than bottled water.  As I mentioned in a previous post, buying bottled water, especially Fiji water, is a terrible drain on the environment. What is sad is many of the people who drink bottled water are the same people who want to protect the environment. Time to change folks.  Here is an article from a Tasmanian on-line newspaper (I go to the ends of the internet world for my readers) that spells out how bad bottled water is for our world. Hopefully it will make you stop buying it. I did.

    Anti Global Warming Activists Stop Pointing Your Finger at China and India

    The rallying cry by American anti-global warming activists has been the growing concern that China and India’s burgeoning economies will quickly surpass the United States as the largest polluters in the world. Only problem is, that those two countries and many other third world nations are doing far more to curtail pollution than we are. The fact is, they have more regulations demanding better gas mileage from auto manufacturers than we do, are doing more to curb greenhouse gases and doing more to better the environment than we are. Of course, they have a lot of work to do because there are segments of their society that think dumping toxins on the poor is ok because they don’t have a strong voice in the government but do we?

    It really saddens me when I see people complain about mercury in the environment and how it negatively affects human health, yet they see no problem whining about the cost to business if we demand they be better environmental citizens. The Bush Administration continues to put roadblocks in our way by proposing to cutback industry reporting of pollution to “remove the burden on small business”. Yeah, small business. That is if you define small as making of half a billion dollars a year. What price our health?  Apparently not much. Sad but true.

    Personal Observation – The Planet Earth

    Has anyone not seen the television series The Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel???  This amazing piece of work should be mandatory viewing for everyone who marvels at the beauty that is our home world. After seeing it with my kids (who can watch it over and over), I have a far greater respect for Earth and vow to continue my work to educate people to do more to protect this beautiful place we live in.

    Economics Over Your Child’s Life – The Conservative View of the World

    In a book I reviewed earlier this week, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, by Dr. Paul D. Blanc, there is one part that both angered and sickened me. It had to do with a review of the effects of lead by the conservative think tank – the American Enterprise Institute – Brookings Joint Center AEI/BJC on Regulatory Studies. The comment shows the kind of denial and obfuscation that the conservative right uses to protect industry’s ability to dump toxins on us despite overwhelming research.

    Lead is a well known neurotoxin that was used in both gasoline and paint prior to the 1970s. According to numerous studies, lead causes IQ levels to drop, especially in children. What amazed me is that the AEI/BJC did not dispute the fact that lead was neurotoxic but that economically parents gain only $1,100 per IQ point while their children gain $1,900 through lead abatement. Are they kidding me??? Do we measure life benefits in terms of parents versus children? What kind of moral system do these people hold dear? One of their comments was “This analysis suggests lead standards will redistribute resources from parents to their children, because the benefits to parents are less than the costs of the standards. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development should reconsider their lead standards.”

    Appalling?  You bet. Morally corrupt?  Closer to the truth. My parents came to this country back in 1953 to make their kids lives better, not at our expense but at theirs. The AEI/BJC is one of the many groups that our present administration looks to for advice. What does that say for us when the argument used to reconsider reintroducing lead into our environment is that parents should make more money at the expense of their children?

    But lest this be a Bush-Bashing party, let me make it clear that this kind of disgusting government behavior has been going on for centuries and by just about every government in this world. In 1868, the British Fisheries Preservation Authority wrote a pamphlet entitled On Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom. they saw the problems back than.

    Dr. Blanc even points out that in 1549 writers talk about things like sick building syndrome (not that term exactly) in a paper called Aerarium Sanitatis. We know that pollution and the dumping of toxins are killing us and causing incalcuable damage to our children and generations to come. As long as it is business as usual, we will continue to be dumped on and lied to about the dangers that surround us.

    Please get this book. I don’t care if you get it through clicking on the link below or through any portal you chose, get it. It is one of the finest books on the effects of environmental toxins on human health I have ever read and believe me, I have read a lot of them.

     

    How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace

    Toxicity and Obesity – The link is there

    My post today is from the lovely town of Bogota, Colombia where I am lecturing at a major medical conference on the topic of obesity and toxicity as well as testing protocols for environmental toxins. My hosts, Heel of Colombia (wonderful homeopathic products) heard my talk in Baden Baden, Germany last year at Medical Week and asked me to come here and bring my message to South America. To view the PowerPoint presentation, click on the link below.

    Toxicity and Obesity

    Tomorrow, I will post my second lecture on laboratory testing for environmental toxins.

    It’s Easy Being Green – A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living

    While browsing the book shelves at the local Barnes and Nobel, I came across this handy book that I believe is a must own for anyone interested in being earth-friendly.  It’s practical, readable and worth the effort to get. Click on the link below to pick up your copy.

    Here are a few tips from the book:

    “Always cover pots when cooking. It speed up cooking and uses less energy.”

    “Reuse water leftover after common household uses to water plants instead of pouring it down the drain (e.g., from a double boiler, washing produce, steaming vegetables, cookin pasta, soaking beans, soaking frozen meat in its packaging, etc.) Transfer leftover water to a watering can for later use. Make sure water is cool beofre using it to water plants.”

    “Before discarding empty latex paint cans, leave the top off and allow the remaining paint to dry completely. Latex paint is not hazardous once it iis solidified.”

    “Fix slow drains. Pour half a cup of baking soda down the drain and follow it with half a cup of white vinegar. Let it sit for twenty minutes to a half hour, then pour boiling water down the drain (about two quarts).”

    “When buying packaged products, all other things being equal, buy the brand that uses the least amount of packaging.”

     

    It\'s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living

    A Real 1,000 Points of Light

    Some of you may know about my involvement in Rotary, an organization dedicated to helping people around the world. Starting on July 1st, 2007, I will become the President of the Rotary Club of Reno Centennial Sunset. Because of this position, I will be able to guide the club towards charitable actions that I feel are important. As you can see from my previous posts, I am very dedicated towards resolving environmental issues so one of my first goals as Club President, I will propose a 1,000 bulb switch out program for the needy.

    The 1,000 Blub Switch Out (BSO) Program will help poor people switch from using energy wasting incandescent bulb to the more efficient compact fluorescent blubs (CFB). Not only will these blubs save the people money (estimate are from $3.50 – $7.00 a year) but they will lower CO2 emmisions substantially.  According the the New Scientist, it will reduce 1000 tons of CO2 over the bulbs lifetime. Of course, this may not seem like much but if I work this project through Rotary and the 32,000 other clubs, I estimate that I can get that number to 1 million bulbs in the next 5 years which would lower the CO2 emmisions by over 1 million tons. Not a bad little project!

    Of course, this won’t be my only environmentally focused project. I will be looking into a bunch more.  If anyone of you has an idea please post it and I will take a look at it and see if it is something we can do.

    Want to Make an Ecological Difference? Stop Buying Bottled Water

    When I came upon this bit of information I was astonished and dismayed. Bottled water is not only environmentally bad, it is harmful to third world countries and its people as well.

    This coming Monday, February 12th I will be doing a presentation entitled “10 Things You Can Do To Save The Environment And Protect Your Health” at the Rotary Club of Incline Village. My tenth item was about not buying bottled water anymore. Here are the major points. After reading it I bet you will never look at bottled water the same ever again.

    • Let’s take the example of Fiji Water.
    • It is transported 8,700 killometers from Fiji to San Francisco. Imagine the fuel used to transport the water and the bottles (it is bottled in Fiji).
    • The bottles themselves use petrochemicals to manufacture and the plastic for the bottle is transported from China about 7,000 kilometers away requiring more fuel to transport.
    • A bottle that holds 1 liter requires 25 liters of water in its manufacturing process (this includes power plant cooling water).
    • Every bottle takes 1,000 years to biodegrade. More than 50% of the bottled water brands out there simply purchase U.S. municipal reserve water (your tap water) and filter it before bottling it. Then they resell it to you for an average of $5/gallon.
    • Buy a water filter. You’ll save lots of money.
    • One thing that should outrage every Rotarian especially.
      Companies like Coke (Dasani), and Pepsi (Aquafina) have discovered that buying up the drinkable water from some third-world country, bottling their water source and shipping it to you to sell to the U.S., is less expensive than paying for water from the municipal reserve. And they’re buying up the ONLY drinkable water sources in some countries.
    • So every bottle you drink is not just at the expense of the environment, but also at the expense of another somewhere else, who doesn’t have any other water. And you do.
    • Do you wonder why third world countries don’t like us?

    Buying bottled water, unless you really need it should embarass you. It is unnecessary and bad for the environment and does nothing to make you any healthier than if you bought a water filter for your kitchen tap and filled a reusable bottle everyday. Come on America, stop being lazy and uncaring and change your habits. You will save money and make the world a better place.