I had the idea to do this cartoon last October after reading this article on EcoSnobberySucks. But when I read in the latest issue of Mother Jones Magazine that Komen has long denied the toxic impact of bpa on human health, and after the recent Planned Parenthood debacle, I [...]
Photo: Healthy Stuff/Press photos
Healthy Stuff has released their test results for 2011 on child car seats. The organization has been testing car safety seats since 2008. The bad news in 2011: over half of child car seats still have elements detected suggesting the use of chemicals with known or suspected deleterious health effects. The good news: since Healthy Stuff started testing child seats in 2008, the average rankings have improved by 64%.
...Read the full story on TreeHugger
I encounter the ocean every day. Really, every day.
Just this morning, in fact, I made chocolate milk and a peanut butter sandwich for my daughter’s lunchbox and spread a little sunscreen on her cheeks. Then we brushed our teeth, I put on some make-up and off we went to school and work.
You might be thinking: So, where’s the ocean?
It’s in the peanut butter, chocolate milk, toothpaste, make-up and sunscreen. The first four items all include carrageenan, a form of red algae that helps give products their consistency. And SPF 50 sunscreen was developed from a coral reef organism.
It’s World Oceans Day, and if you thought you only came into contact with the sea when you went to the beach or ate fish, think again. Whether you live in Miami, Florida or Miami, Ohio, chances are you use products made from our oceans every day. Here are five more of them:
And these are just a few of the things that make life more enjoyable; our oceans also meet essential needs by providing food, jobs, clean air, and the building blocks of life-saving medicines that treat cancer.
But there’s a problem; our oceans and coasts are not healthy. If we want to keep enjoying all that the oceans give us, we’ve got to give back in return. On World Oceans Day, here are five things you can do on behalf of the sea.
If you can’t get to the beach on World Oceans Day, do the next best thing: eat ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream. I’m going to.
Kerry Crisley is an Associate Director for Strategic Communications at The Nature Conservancy with an emphasis on our marine work.
(Image: Blackberry ice cream. Image credit: gordonramsaysubmissions/Flickr via a Creative Commons license.)
The following post was originally published on Martha Stewart’s WholeLiving.com
My aunt Sylvia. My dear childhood friend, Danielle. Three of my grandparents. A close friend’s husband. My colleague. All of these people near and dear to my heart have battled cancer, some successfully, some not.
Chances are we all have someone close to us who has gone through this terrible disease. We walk, run, bike, and swim at events in their honor to support efforts to find a cure. And we should; it’s that important.
But there’s something else we can do that can help preserve the building blocks of new, and potentially life-saving, medicines: We can save our coral reefs.
Coral reefs have an incredible diversity of life—from plants, animals and fungi down to the tiniest micro-organism. And this diversity holds so much potential for medical research. In fact, we are 300 to 400 times more likely to find that next big medical breakthrough in our reefs than on land.
The drug Ara-C, for example, has helped save the lives of millions of people with leukemia—including Boston’s Arden O’Conner (in video, above). This medicine was derived from a compound discovered in a Caribbean reef sponge. Now it’s created synthetically in a lab, so we don’t need to keep going back to the reefs to maintain our supply of it. The important thing was that the sponge existed for us to study in the first place.
We’ve only scratched the surface of what our reefs can offer medically. As Dr. Bruce Chabner, director of clinical research for the cancer center at Massachusetts General Hospital put it, “The sea could very well hold the building blocks of drugs that could treat, or even cure, cancer. We don’t know. But if we lose the reefs, we’ll never find out.”
The problem is that our reefs right now are not healthy. Most of them—75 percent in fact—are in serious trouble from things like overfishing, coastal development and pollution. These are things we can change.
Now is our time to do something about this. Saving coral reefs means saving ourselves. To find out more about what is being done, and more importantly, what you can do, check out The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt-A-Reef program. The easiest thing you can do is tell a friend about how important this amazing habitat is and what it is doing for mankind. It brings a whole new meaning to “life-giving water.”
Stephanie Wear is a marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy’s Global Marine Team. She is working to improve tools that build resilience in coral reef communities so that coral reefs survive the impacts of a changing climate.
Get instant access to her current trip to Palau (including an amazing picture of a giant clam) by following @stephwear on Twitter or her visiting new website http://stephwear.com/.
(Image: Coral reef in the Caribbean. Image credit: © Nancy Sefton)
This is probably the only place on the web you’ll find news about both diapers and glacier melt:
Image credit: Steven Depolo, used under Creative Commons license.
Dear Pablo: Can a USDA certified organic can of vegetables still be considered organic if it is in a BPA-lined can?
There are really two questions here: whether or not the USDA consider food packaged in BPA-lined cans organic and; whether or not we should consider food packaged in BPA-lined cans organic. First we need to figure out what BPA i...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image: ECHA Guidance
This week Europe proposed to add seven more chemicals to the list of substances of very high concern (SVHC). The addition of a chemical to the SVHC list enables European regulators to ban the chemical from the market unless it is proven that the risks are adequately controlled, or there is not a feasible substitute and the socio-economic benefits justify the risk. The pr...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image: SaferChemicals.org
Some problems just won't go away. That's what a lot of companies probably think about people who gripe about issues the companies would rather not deal with—as well as what the people griping think about the actual problem. TCE, or trichloroethylene, contamination of water supplies is one...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Workers use cleavers for extracting metal parts from used capacitors.
What is E-waste?
E-waste stands for electronic waste. This includes anything from discarded and broken cell phones, computers, iPods, and small appliances.
Developed nations are dealing with a crisis of overconsumption, which produces many harmful consequences. One of these consequences is e-waste, which is created when electronic products are thrown away. Unfortunately, the production, consumption and ultimate disposal of e-waste is sped up with planned obsolescence, when products are intentionally designed to have a short lifespan—they either break quickly and cannot be repaired inexpensively, or new versions are continually being designed to replace older ones. With the technology available to us, products can be designed to last for decades, if not longer. However, things seem to be lasting for less and less time. This is all in the name of profit, benefitting corporations that want consumers to keep buying products. According to Greenpeace USA, the average lifespan of computers in developed countries has dropped from six years in 1997 to just two years in 2005, and mobile phones have a lifecycle of less than two years in developed countries.
But the dangers don’t come solely from the waste itself; even more severe problems occur when the waste is broken apart. When e-waste is disposed of, it is often sent overseas where people in struggling developing nations take apart the products to recycle the e-waste and attempt to salvage parts with any value. Some recycling companies that appear to be reputable engage in this careless practice as well. North America and Europe are known to export a large percentage of their e-waste to countries like India, China, and Ghana.
In the process of taking apart the electronics, these overseas workers are exposed to dangerous toxins, putting themselves, their families and their environment at risk. These toxins include heavy metals such as lead, beryllium and mercury, as well as chlorinated solvents, flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These are all deadly chemicals. Why should people in developing countries have to pay for the greed of our wasteful consumer society?
What can you do about E-waste?
Photo credit: Greenpeace India
Supporters of clean air and water this week pushed back against a Republican Party proposal to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job to protect Americans from air pollution.
As Republicans pressed forward with an anti-EPA bill, a coalition of environmental, public health and civil rights organizations emphasized the need for government oversight over coal and oil companies who are among the biggest polluters in the country and the biggest contributors to what amounts to a public health crisis. Now more than ever, this coalition, which includes the Sierra Club, the NAACP and Physicians for Social Responsibility, insisted the EPA is needed to lead the effort to regulate pollution-causing emissions.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, explained, “Coal and oil are polluting our air. They give us asthma. They’re fouling our water with cancer-causing toxins.”
“Coal and oil are polluting our political process and they are draining the life from our economy,” he told reporters on a conference call sponsored by the coalition. “As we’ve seen time and time again with situations like the BP oil disaster in the Gulf, big oil and dirty coal can’t be trusted to police themselves.”
“To these polluters, our health matters less than our profits,” he said.
It is the Environmental Protection Agency that stands in the way of their unrestrained habits that are making us sick. “There’s a reason why ‘protection’ is the EPA’s middle name,” Brune said.
With the agency’s effort to regulation pollution, the data shows that as many as 1.7 million asthma attacks and $110 billion in health costs were avoided in 2010 alone, Brune explained.
But the effort to protect public health hasn’t ended. EPA oversight should be expanded to protect the public from the adverse affects of pollution that causes global warming and to ensure an equitable enforcement of standards for all communities in the country.
Jacqueline Patterson, director of the environmental and climate justice program at the NAACP, discussed ongoing racially- and class-based inequalities in terms of exposure to harmful toxins and pollution.
“Communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately exposed to airborne toxins that lead to respiratory illnesses ranging to asthma, chronic bronchitis, COPD, and even lung cancer and other illnesses,” Patterson noted.
Based on studies conducted by her office, Patterson added, 71 percent of African Americans live in counties that are in violation of federal clean air standards. Almost eight in 10 African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. Within a three-mile radius of any coal-fired power plant, the population is disproportionately people of color. People who are likely to live within what is considered to be the “detrimental” range of a coal-fired power plant earn about 15 percent less than the national average income.
Simply put, race and income are the top two factors in considering where to locate pollution-causing facilities like coal-fired power plants.
Patterson also cited studies that indicate pollution from coal-fired power plants cause more than 30,000 premature deaths, 7,000 asthma-related emergency room visits, and 18,000 cases of chronic bronchitis each year. Asthma related illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths occur among African Americans at far higher rates than among whites, she said.
Economist Matthew Kotchen rejected claims that EPA regulation of pollution weakens the economy. He noted that the harmful effects of air pollution increase overall healthcare costs, reduce property values, and lower work productivity due to more sick days, all of which result in quantifiable harmful economic effects that outweigh lost profits for specific oil and coal corporations. “There are real costs associated with this air pollution,” he said. But unfortunately, as pollution standards exist now, corporations have little or no incentive to study and account for these costs.
Kotchen said that a federal cap-and-trade program or EPA-originated safeguards extended to such emissions would create the incentive for polluting corporations to consider the broader economic consequences of air pollution.
Americans in large majorities agree that the EPA needs to be allowed to continue to fight harmful air pollution. New polling data released by Public Policy Polling this week showed the public disagrees with the Republicans’ efforts to keep the EPA from doing its job.
Specifically, the poll was conducted in the districts of leading Republicans who advocate placing limits on EPA regulation of air pollution. According to Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, the findings showed strong opposition even among independents and Republicans to this agenda.
“What we see in the findings across the board is a strikingly consistent affirmation by Americans that they support the EPA and its anti-pollution, pro-public health role,” Jensen told reporters. “Whether they are in rural or urban districts, Americans clearly believe that Congress should be doing what’s best for public health, not polluters.”
Pete Altman, climate campaign director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sponsored the surveys, said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chair, “and other members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will now be hard-pressed to ignore the fact that their constituents want Congress to let the EPA do its job of safeguarding the health of American families.”
Upton’s committee is currently considering a bill that would weaken Clean Air Act provisions and prevent the EPA from regulating air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. Kristen Welker-Hood, director of environment and health at Physicians for Social Responsibility, explained that greenhouse gases actually contribute to the development of smog and harmful pollutants that adversely affect public health. She said that the Republican bill would “absolutely have an impact on the ability of the EPA to regulate air pollutants.”
This article was first published in People’s World on February 10th, 2011.
Author: Joel Wendland.
Image: Global Justice Game
There's a region in Louisiana known as cancer alley (or chemical corridor, take your pick). You can guess why. Cancer claims victims at an alarming rate along the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where more than 140 industrial plants spew pollution into the air and water.
Where is Cancer Alley?
Set in the middle is St. James Parish (Louisiana's counties are called parishes), consi...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image: Global Justice Game
There's a region in Louisiana known as cancer alley (or chemical corridor, take your pick). You can guess why. Cancer claims victims at an alarming rate along the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where more than 140 industrial plants spew pollution into the air and water.
Where is Cancer Alley?
Set in the middle is St. James Parish (Louisiana's counties are called parishes), consi...Read the full story on TreeHugger
photo: Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, Louisiana State University/Creative Commons
Something to bring the horror of the Gulf oil spill back fresh to memory: The NRDC says that the FDA is grossly underestimating the exposure to carcinogens in seafood that Gulf Coast residents have been and are being exposed to. It all comes down to how much seafood they ea...Read the full story on TreeHugger
photo: Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, Louisiana State University/Creative Commons
Something to bring the horror of the Gulf oil spill back fresh to memory: The NRDC says that the FDA is grossly underestimating the exposure to carcinogens in seafood that Gulf Coast residents have been and are being exposed to. It all comes down to how much seafood they ea...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo: FearfulStills
Recent University of South Carolina (USC) studies have outlined two important tools in cancer prevention. The studies, which were carried out at USC's Arnold School of Health and the South Carolina Cancer Center, found that seaweed and sunlight both had a huge impact on cancer prevention, according to The State. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo: Felizitas Gemetz for Fraunhofer IWM
We've covered all sorts of cycling helmets in the past. The Lazer helmet with lubrication between two shells, the Hövding Helmet, which is really an airbag for your head, the multisport Helium helmet that is certified not only for cycling, but also canoeing, and climbing, and the armad...Read the full story on TreeHugger
We’re surrounded by endocrine-disrupting compounds at every turn, not to mention countless pesticides and other environmental toxins. Could all this chemical crap have ties to rising rates of breast cancer in women around the world? In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Breast Cancer Fund is highlighting its 2010 State of the Evidence report on how the disease is linked to all kinds of toxic substances, and you can’t afford not to read it.
A long string of recent studies cited in the report have linked breast cancer to everything from seemingly omnipresent BPA to air pollution. “Recent data demonstrate that early exposure to BPA leads to abnormalities in mammary tissue development that are observable even during gestation and are maintained into adulthood,” reads one sobering paragraph.
It’s easy to get lost in doom and gloom when the evidence is so overwhelming. For me, as someone who has struggled with hormone-related health problems associated with higher risk of cancer, the data can be downright frightening: who knew that sunscreen is often estrogenic?
Read the report. Get angry. Pass this information on to every woman you know. Then, take action. Don’t just go pink for a single month – go green for life. Your life. Ditch products packed with unpronounceable ingredients and go for natural alternatives. Stop consuming hormonally modified foods.
If you’re a regular Eco Chick reader, chances are you’re already doing a lot of positive things – in particular, reducing your exposure to toxic substances in personal care products and household products from cosmetics to cleaners. It can seem like an insurmountable challenge when you’re first starting out, but it gets easier – stick with it.
And there are plenty of other things you can do to lower your risk of developing breast cancer, even if you have a family history of the disease. The American Cancer Society recommends regular exercise, a healthy body weight and low consumption of alcoholic beverages as important ways to be proactive.
Want more tips? Check out the Breast Cancer Fund’s Twitter feed, which offers up simple ways to beat breast cancer in 140 characters or less.
Photo by Anthony Cain
A page from 'State of the Evidence' shows the difficulty of linking risks to causes for breast cancer. Courtesy Breast Cancer Fund.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and you're likely to see pink ribbons along with fall colors, as groups raise money for breast cancer research and emphasize the importance of early detection. It's a good cause. Does it go far enough? The Breast Cancer Fund, a San Francisco nonprofit, says no. It wants to se...Read the full story on TreeHugger
