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California School District Cleans Up - With CLASS
Feeding the kids and caring for the planet? Yes we can.
New Science, New Solutions Explored at Heinz Conference
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Toxins in our Kids' Foods: Where is the FDA?
Why, oh why is there plastic in my aluminum water bottle?
Fluoride in Your Water: How much is too much?
Borax: Not the Green Alternative It's Cracked Up to Be
Test Your Knowledge of Cosmetics Safety: 8 Myths Debunked
EWG's Tips to avoid BPA exposure
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Cutting the Pork from U.S. Farm Bill
Sunscreen safety & DC drinking water
Perchlorate in people, kids' personal care products & plastics, and sunscreen
BPA in baby formula & safe cosmetics
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What is new carpet treated with? What can I do?
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Monthly Archive
Stay current on TSCA reform progress
The Environmental Working Group's campaign for Kid-Safe Chemicals shifted into high gear exactly a week before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (poetic justice), when Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced the Safe Chemicals Act (SCA) to reform our current ineffective toxic chemicals law, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
EWG staff delivered a petition with more than 88,000 constituent signatures to key lawmakers (picture, right), including Senators Lautenberg and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Work, and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), Chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. See the terrific pictures - including the 188-foot long (!) printed petition - here.
EWG is actively participating in the effort to move this reform process forward. Our scientists and policy experts are blogging about both the House and Senate versions on our Kid-Safe Chemicals Campaign blog. We're assessing the proposed changes and suggesting improvements where we see a need. Here are 5 of the analyses we've posted in the 2 weeks since these documents were released:
- April 28th - Save the Best for Last, or Do the Worst First Ever keep putting off the worst things on your to-do list? Like dusting before tackling the bathrooms or puttering around in the garden before balancing your checkbook as your kids jump on the trampoline (before making their beds)?
Under the House's discussion draft for chemical policy reform, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) won't have that luxury. The draft puts the worst first. Details aside, that's the best approach we can imagine for determining how EPA should approach the task of assessing industrial chemicals that might threaten human health. Keep reading..
- April 26th - New Chemicals: Getting the Right Data, and Getting the Data Right
Under the new legislation pending in Congress to reform the nation's ineffectual chemicals regulation law, it would be easy to paralyze the Environmental Protection Agency under mountains of data -- if it's not done right.The discussion draft circulated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is currently being dissected and debated by industry, environmental and consumer groups, would require EPA to assess 300 existing "priority" chemicals every two years, evaluating them against a strict, health-based safety standard [section 6(b)].
Unfortunately, there's a possibility that the standard applied to new chemicals and new chemical uses, at least as the draft is currently written, could be interpreted in a way that would make it nowhere near as strict. Keep reading.
- April 23rd - R-Rated Chemicals: This is Reform?
Is it possible that Congress would pass a bill allowing new chemicals on the market that might be even less safe than the ones we have now, to be used in products we buy and use everyday - even in children's products?Unfortunately, that's exactly what the newly released House discussion draft of a chemicals regulation reform bill would do. It would be like strictly monitoring your older son's TV watching while letting his kid sister take in an R-rated feature at the theatre. Keep reading.
- April 21st - News to Use, For All of Us
After nearly 35 years with basically no information on just about any chemical, is it possible to have too much "minimal" information? Sounds hard to imagine, but some apparently think so.Here's the issue. Under the newly-released House draft of a chemical regulation reform bill, EPA would identify the 300 chemicals of greatest concern, the so-called priority list. Industry would then have 18 months to submit a "minimum data set" (basically a rundown of what's already known about each chemical) for every compound on that list. This doesn't seem to be a particularly contentious proposal.
The House discussion draft then requires EPA to complete its regulatory review of those 300 compounds within two years. This is where it gets a little tricky. Keep reading.
- April 20th - What We - and EPA - Need to Know
When it comes to protecting us from toxic substances, current law has produced an information wasteland -- where meaningful science on chemical risks is virtually nowhere to be found.Rewriting the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to fix this problem is a cornerstone of any meaningful reform. So it's not surprising that the House Energy and Commerce Committee made this issue the focus of the first of a series of meetings it's hosting to review the "discussion draft" of a reform bill it released last week (April 14). It's called the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010.
Lack of data must never again be an obstacle to protecting public health. To achieve that goal, EPA must have absolute and unencumbered authority to ask for any study that it needs to better understand the risks of any chemical. Keep reading.
- April 15th - Lautenberg Plan: Safety First
In the House, meanwhile, a key committee rolled out its "discussion draft" of a parallel proposal. Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman and Commerce, and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), chairman of the Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, will begin hammering out a final version that could go to a floor vote later this year.Sen. Lautenberg's Safe Chemicals Act will bring order to a chemical industry whose products have largely escaped regulation for the past three decades. With virtually no rules governing the safety of chemicals, American babies are born pre-polluted, their bodies laced with as many as 300 industrial compounds, pollutants, plastics, pesticides and other substances that threaten public health.
Lautenberg puts this problem in the crosshairs by making protection of children and other vulnerable populations the cornerstone of American environmental health policy. Keep reading.
Stay tuned for more news, analysis and action opportunities as this process moves ahead - on EWG's Kid-Safe Chemicals Campaign Blog.
Awakening to Cancer's Environmental Roots
By Sandra Steingraber, Ph. D., Ecologist, author, cancer survivor, and internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health
When I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1979, at the age 20, I drafted a list of goals. The first thing I would do, once I was sprung from the hospital, would be to pay a visit to Claire's Boutique in the mall. There I would get my ears pierced. Next, I would hit the university library. There I would answer the question, Why me?
Neither task was difficult to accomplish, but one had a more predictable outcome than the other.
The ear-piercing achieved exactly what I thought it would: it upset my mother. Her reaction--arising from the particular religious practices of her German-American family--allowed me to be angry with her. And anger allowed me to rebuff her attempts to bond with me over what she saw as a shared medical experience.
I couldn't have walked away from her otherwise. Mom was in treatment for breast cancer. There she was in her wig, her platelet count decimated by chemotherapy, distraught about my earlobes. I had predicted this. I knew that she would see the earrings as an unnecessary mutilation. As if we don't have enough problems already, Sandy, that we can't control.
Those words provided the pretext I needed to storm out of the house and head back to college, forty-five miles and a world away. I had lost the script to my life. I knew how to play the role of the supportive, unrebellious daughter alongside my mother's brave performance as a cancer patient who could calmly accept bad news and carry on. But I didn't know how to be a co-cancer patient.
In the library, I turned my attention to the medical literature on bladder cancer. What did we know about causation? Questions posed by my diagnosing physician--had I ever worked with vulcanized rubber?--led me to believe that environmental exposures must be part of the collective story. They were. There was a trove of data going back to the nineteenth century. Dyes, rubber manufacturing, chlorinated water, air pollutants, dry-cleaning solvents: all were linked to bladder cancer. If not mine, then somebody's.
But, outside of the isolated world of epidemiology and toxicology, there was very little recognition of this evidence. The word carcinogen never appeared in any of the pamphlets on cancer in my doctors' waiting rooms. The medical intake forms I was forever filling out asked detailed questions about the history of cancer in my family but none about, say, chemical contaminants in my hometown drinking water.
I'm adopted. The wells periodically contain trace amounts of dry-cleaning solvent.
As we approach the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day--and the forty-eighth anniversary of Silent Spring's publication--we are still far from a mature acknowledgement of cancer's environmental agents. But there are signs of an awakening awareness. Provinces and municipalities across Canada have banned the cosmetic use of pesticides on the grounds that they are linked to childhood cancers. The European Union has banned carcinogens from cosmetics. Here in the United States, calls grow louder for reform of the flaccid Toxic Substances Control Act, which has proved itself unable to eliminate suspected carcinogens from the marketplace. And I can now find the words carcinogen and environment in the waiting-room literature.
But, for me, the most telling sign of the times is this: my hometown hospital invited me to give a lecture on environmental carcinogens before an audience of physicians concerned about the proposed expansion of a hazardous-waste landfill. Mom came with me. I was the one wearing earrings.
Sandra Steingraber is the author of Living Downstream, newly published in second edition by Da Capo Press to coincide with the release of the documentary film adaptation. This essay is one in a weekly series by Sandra - published at www.livingdownstream.com - exploring how the environment is within us.
Maryland is 5th state to ban BPA
This month Maryland became the 5th state to ban the use of the plastics chemical, bisphenol A (BPA) in children's products, including baby bottles and sippy cups.
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley signed legislation on April 13th that was sponsored by Delegate James Hubbard and Senator Brian Frosh and passed unanimously in both chambers of the General Assembly earlier this year.
Environmental Working Group (EWG), along with Maryland PIRG and the Maryland Nurses Association testified before both Senate and House of Delegate committees in support of the legislation. EWG President Ken Cook had this to say about the victory:
"As a resident of Maryland I applaud the Governor's action that will soon protect the state's young children, including my two year old son from the dangers this chemical poses during this critical period of a child's development. The verdict over BPA's risks to human health in the courts of public opinion, science and now our elected leaders in Annapolis is in. Guilty.To steal from a phrase from a T Bone Burnett song -- BPA's history is pretty rocky and its future ain't long, at least in Maryland. I am particularly proud that my own Senator Brian Frosh led the charge to get this important public health measure enacted. It is yet another impressive accomplishment by one of the most effective state environmental leaders in the country."
Other states and local governments have banned it, too
Maryland joins Connecticut, Minnesota, Washington State, Wisconsin, Chicago, as well as Albany County, Schenectady County and Suffolk County, New York, among the jurisdictions restricting BPA in plastic food containers for infants and young children.
Meanwhile, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering whether to restrict the use of BPA in canned food and other food packaging and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has listed the plasticizer as a 'chemical of concern. BPA is an integral ingredient of epoxy resin, used to coat the interiors of virtually all metal food cans manufactured in North America.
The FDA, EPA, government and independent scientists and health advocates are particularly concerned about BPA leaching into canned infant formula, because of numerous studies that have linked the chemical to developmental abnormalities in fetal and infant test animals.
Want the whole history of BPA? See EWG's BPA timeline.
[Thanks to Flickr CC & Anosmia for the Maryland state capitol pic]
EWG's Healthy Home Checklist: Assess your house
The good news is that there's a lot of information available these days about how to reduce your exposures to toxic chemicals at home. The bad news, of course, is exactly that: there's a lot of information available these days about how to reduce your exposures to toxic chemicals at home.
So here's the key question in it all: How to boil it down to do-able changes to avoid the toxic chemicals that really matter?
Get EWG's Healthy Home Checklist to see how you're doing
About a year ago, we started a monthly healthy home tip series based on our Parents' Guide to Going Green, so you could make one change at a time on a path towards an environmentally healthy home (these things take time!). As those who've been reading them know, each tip is chock-a block with the why's and how-to's for each subject. Lots of useful, science-based info to guide your way - and make changes where they count most.
This month we created a Healthy Home Checklist so you can see how you're going - and identify any important changes still on your "to do" list. We move through the house by room:
- Kitchen (think: cookware, plastics, tap water, and more)
- Bathroom (think: toothpaste, fragrance, liquid soap, and more)
- Laundry and cleaning closet (think: fewer, greener products, full ingredient lists), and
- All around the house (think: lead paint, toys, fire retardants, and more).
When we first released the checklist to our fans via email (not on our list? it's easy to sign up), we asked for feedback because we want to know how people's houses rated and how well the checklist was working as a tool for change. Is it a deep, multi-year green, or a lighter shade of "I just got started and need to lose the non-stick pans" green? From the many emails we received in response, here are a few inspiring comments:
Thank you for this comprehensive checklist, we already have an eco-friendly house (90%), of which I am very proud, but there are always some things to improve. Part of my eco knowledge, I owe it to you guys, so a big thank you for your wonderful work out there.I'm excited that I only missed 2 correct answers: foam in furniture and I have a 1929 house (lead paint.) Since my 30's I have been becoming more and more environmentally aware. When I turned 40 I did a clean sweep of my house/life and ditched chemicals and parabens. It feels good, and I am pleased to have confirmation that I am on the right track.
I was pleased to see that I am doing all that I can at the moment (fabric shower curtains, stainless steel cookware, safe cosmetics, cleaning supplies and toys for the kids, organic food, organic garden, etc). The only thing that I would like to improve on is my furniture. Thankfully it is in good condition (no foam exposed) - but I am willing to bet it was treated with flame-retardents. When I can replace my couch I certainly will with something safe!
Thank you so much EWG for all the great tips! I truly rely on the information that I get from your site to make smart decisions to keep my family healthy and safe!!
Go ahead, assess your house
It's quick and eye-opening, and if your house "passes" with flying colors, you'll know where you stand. If your "to do" list is long, you'll know exactly where to dig in.
Get started with the Healthy Homes Checklist here.
California School District Cleans Up - With CLASS
By Rebecca Sutton, EWG Senior Scientist, in celebration of National Healthy Schools Day (April 26, 2010)
When school purchasing agent Dawn Everson came across a program called CLASS - "Cleaning for Asthma-Safe Schools" - she recognized a great opportunity for the Manteca Unified School District.
Manteca is in California's Central Valley - a region known for air quality problems. Sadly, this is reflected in its high rates of childhood asthma - 21 percent of the 23,000 children attending the district's schools report being diagnosed with this chronic disease.
Toxic cleaners dirty classroom air
Last fall, Environmental Working Group (EWG) conducted classroom air pollution tests that showed that many traditional cleaners foul classroom air by emitting toxic pollutants. The good news is we also found that cleaning classrooms with certified green cleaning supplies means cleaner, healthier air for students, teachers and custodians.
California's CLASS program offers a way to clean up the schools, and the air inside them, by switching to cleaning products certified not to release toxic chemicals, giving students and staff relief from one possible source of their illness. CLASS is offered by the California Department of Public Health's Work-Related Asthma Prevention Program and the Green Schools Initiative (one of EWG's partners), with technical assistance from the Green Purchasing Institute.
Manteca Unified tries green cleaners - and likes them
Just in time for National Healthy Schools Day today (April 26), EWG interviewed Manteca's staff to find out how their efforts are panning out.
"Our district has been working toward 'green' in many areas," noted Everson, the purchasing agent. With CLASS' support, she organized educational sessions with the custodial staff to enlist volunteers to try out certified green cleaners.
"We found out we had several custodians with asthma and we didn't even know it," Everson said. Some custodians reported that they felt wheezy and sick when using some cleaning supplies, so much so that they tended to wait until the end of their shifts to use them.
Custodial staff at six schools decided to try out certified green cleaning supplies from two different vendors. At the end of each two-week trial period, they answered surveys on how well the products performed and if they felt any irritation or allergic reactions while using them.
Manteca is now halfway through these pilot tests, and the initial results are dramatic. Preliminary surveys indicate that the green cleaners may work better than the schools' traditional cleaning supplies and don't leave behind odors or residues, which had been a common problem. Even custodians who had been expected to be particularly loyal to traditional cleaners have given the certified green products glowing evaluations.
Green cleaners can save schools money
As a purchasing agent, Everson said cost is a key concern - as it is for all schools. To her delight, Manteca's pilot program has demonstrated that green cleaners can actually save money.
Certified green cleaning supplies come highly concentrated and must be diluted on the job, a practice that reduces environmental impacts from packaging and shipping. A single bottle of a certified green product can be more expensive than its non-green competitors, but diluting it properly means that schools get a lot more cleaning out of each bottle - and more bang for the buck.
Adding up the numbers, Everson found that green cleaning was a definite money saver. "It's exciting for me to see that we can get a quality product that's going to cost us less and clean just as well or better," she told EWG.
Interested in green cleaning at your school?
Whether you're a concerned parent or work at a school, the time to get behind the green choice is now. Everson noted that one barrier schools face in making the switch is time: scheduling educational and training meetings for busy custodians and selecting and testing products can take a while. Start today, and the kids at your schools will be breathing cleaner air that much quicker!
Get started by downloading EWG's green cleaning fact sheet, sample parent letter to school staff, and a list of steps you can take to encourage your school to start cleaning greener.
More resources from EWG partners
- The Green Schools Initiative's Green Cleaning Toolkit
- Regional Asthma Management & Prevention's (RAMP) Guide for Advocates
- RAMP's Breathing Easier report on green cleaning in schools
[Thanks to Flickr CC & Robert S. Donovan for the colorful cleaning closet]
Inspiring Day in Pittsburgh
Feeding the kids and caring for the planet? Yes we can.
Chef, author (and mom) Aviva Goldfarb knows first hand what can happen at 6 PM on any given night in a busy family: chaos.
Luckily, she's been helping families convert that chaos (hungry kids, tired parents, no dinner!) into a more organized, pleasant, and healthy mealtime. When we stare blankly at the fridge, hoping for a miracle, Goldfarb delivers with her online meal planning service, the Six O'Clock Scramble. The Scramble's mission is music to my ears: to help busy parents make healthy meals in a hurry by helping them plan ahead for a week of meals. What's not to love?
The Scramble goes earth-friendly
This month, Goldfarb added a new cookbook to the mix: SOS! The Six O'Clock Scramble to the Rescue: Earth-Friendly, Kid-Pleasing Dinners for Busy Families. Which is great news because after getting food on the table and trying my darndest to make it healthy, it often feels like there's no chance to factor the planet in there, too!
But there is.
Thanks to Goldfarb's new cookbook, which infuses earth-friendliness right into the Scramble planning. The recipes are organized by season to help you choose seasonal produce (without thinking too hard about it). She highlights EWG's Shoppers' Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which helps people buy organic on a budget by listing the fruits and veggies with the highest and lowest pesticide residues - also known as "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Clean 15."
The book is also peppered with helpful tips on incorporating green habits into the family routine, from reusable shopping bags to simple food scrap composting.
Dig in - it's Earth Week!
Since Earth Day is tomorrow, why not program healthy, earth-friendly eating into your lifestyle today? You can easily start with small steps.
Here are Goldfarb's 7 tips you can use right now to make a sustainable difference:
- Start Composting
- Cut out meat for at least one meal per week
- Bring reusable shopping bags to the grocery store each time you shop
- Vow to pack trash-free lunches with reusable containers, and even cloth napkins
- Shop local - with weekly trips to your local farm markets or even participation in a CSA
- Eat seasonally - the taste is better and the reduced distance travelled makes a big impact on the environment
- Plan and organize your meals to make only one trip to the store per week - you'll conserve gas and reduce food waste
Want to unscramble dinnertime at your house?
Goldfarb has a blog (the Scramblog, natch!), is on Twitter (@theScramble), and of course you can grab a copy of her new cookbook.
Check out this great interview with the author on Planet Green, who named her a Change Maker - with good reason.
New Science, New Solutions Explored at Heinz Conference
Greening your family: One woman's inspiration
Special to Enviroblog by Lindsey Carmichael, MPH, Author, Greening Your Family
My public health ethics class began with the intense, young professor asking a simple question: What do you value the most?
We were given a few moments to reflect, and were then asked to share our answers with the class. Fairly quickly a theme emerged, one focusing on relationships with family. For one student, her relationship with God trumped family, and for a few others the idea of freedom was the thing they valued the most, but people factored into the majority of responses to the question of what they held most dear.
I think it's safe to assume that for those of us who are parents, our children and their well-being rank at the top of the list of things we value. Collective well-being is what Greening Your Family is about.
There was a landmark, one-of-a-kind study conducted in 2004 by the Environmental Working Group called 10 Americans (watch the video). Researchers took samples of the umbilical-cord blood of ten babies and tested it for the presence of 413 toxic chemicals.
The results were alarming. More than 285 industrial chemicals were found in the cord blood, with an average of roughly two hundred chemicals per child. The testing revealed the presence of dioxins, volatile organic compounds, Teflon by-products, and pesticides.1 Exposure to some of these chemicals is associated with a host of serious adverse impacts on human health, including immune and hormone system disruption, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), infertility, birth defects, and cancer.2
How many of you reading this knows a child with ADHD, or has a friend who has had trouble conceiving?
Lobbyists in the industrial chemical industry acknowledge the presence of these chemicals in humans, but they assert that these chemicals exist at extraordinarily low doses, or concentrations, and that therefore any adverse effect on human health is dubious.
Ken Cook, EWG president, addressed this point in a presentation he gave about the 10 Americans experiment. He talked about the fact that many pharmaceuticals are designed to trigger the desired biological effect at very low doses, and discussed various examples.
The asthma drug Albuterol, he said, is designed to be effective at 2.1 parts per billion. Cialis, the erectile-dysfunction drug, is designed to trigger the desired biological effect at 30 parts per billion. Cook made the point that 97.5 parts per billion of the chemical Badge-40H (found in the liners of tin cans and linked to hormone system disruption) were found in a sample of blood taken from a man living in New York City.
The same person registered 45 parts per billion of perfluorocarbons (PFCs), the industrial chemical found in nonstick materials such as Teflon. In studies though PFCs have been linked to both hormone disruption and cancer. Thus, the concentration of some of these chemicals is minute, their effect is not. The impact of exposure to pharmaceuticals is regulated and well studied; the impact of exposure to industrial chemical cocktails is neither well regulated nor well studied.
The 10 Americans study confirms that babies today are born pre-polluted. We know that the most vulnerable times in human development are in the womb and in infancy. And we know, based on the results of EWG's research, among other sources, that as a society, we are not adequately protecting those who are most vulnerable.
It is time to start.
Lindsey Carmichael's Greening Your Family is available from the author's web site. You can read a review in The Boston Globe.
CNN's Sanjay Gupta MD interviews EWG President Ken Cook
Last weekend Dr. Gupta's short interview with EWG Founder & President, Ken Cook, aired on CNN's Sanjay Gupta MD show.
The two men spoke in Mossville, Louisiana, a city renowned for its industrial air pollution and home to the impressive Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a local organization that advocates for clean air and environmental justice.
Bacon, cheese and chicken, please - hold the bun
By Alex Formuzis, EWG Director of Communications
If you've ever wished that one day there would be place you could grab a bacon and cheese pileup with no veggies, smashed between slabs of fried chicken instead of buns, here's good news.
That day is almost here.
On April 12th, KFC will introduce its Double Down sandwich in all of its 15,000-plus locations around the globe. The company thinks this will be no ordinary day for its customers, according to a press release this week (April 6).
"We don't typically talk about our products before they're available in our restaurants," said Javier Benito, executive vice president of marketing and food innovation for KFC. "But we expect Double Down to be in great demand when it becomes available on April 12, and we want fans to have time to arrange their schedules in advance for a visit to KFC to try this legendary sandwich." From KFC's press release.
Of course, KFC will have not one, but two versions of the sandwich available for their discerning customers: Original Recipe and Grilled.
Lots of Calories
The Double Down was a hit with customers when KFC took its newest offering for a test drive last year at several of its locations in Rhode Island and Nebraska. But some media reports said the sandwich delivered more than1,200 calories. "Not true," insists the venerable chicken joint. The Original Recipe sandwich comes laden with only 540 calories with 32 grams of fat, while the grilled version comes in even lower at 460 calories and 23 grams of fat.
"The Double Down contains 540 calories, similar numbers to many of the burgers available at fast food restaurants today," the release said.
When it comes to nutritional claims, we're not so sure that selling a sandwich that's no worse than a Big Mac is something to brag about.
And lots of subsidies...
The price of the Double Down wasn't available right away on the restaurant's website, but it probably won't ding your wallet like an organic apple or bell pepper would.
That's because unlike fruits and vegetables, industrial poultry operations in the U.S. are secondary beneficiaries of the billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies that corn growers receive. The big chicken purveyors feed their birds on inexpensive subsidized corn, which helps keep their products dirt cheap.
Bon appetit.
[Thanks to Flickr & El Gran Dee for the image of the Colonel]
It's time to look upstream
Chanda Chevannes has made an important documentary film about Sandra Steingraber's work, based largely on her first book, Living Downstream. The trailer below will give you a sense of Steingraber's belief that our focus should not be downstream, where we see only symptoms, but rather upstream, where we can see causes. And prevent them.
If you're not familiar with Steingraber's work, you should be. She's an internationally renowned expert on the connections between the environment and reproductive health and cancer (which she calls a "serial killer"), and a beautiful writer who can explain science in a way that makes sense to the rest of us.
Her willingness and ability to raise public awareness about the science of toxic chemicals and how it affects human health is a critical addition to the growing movement to enact strong laws that protect human health from dangerous chemicals.
And her experiences as a cancer survivor and mother add a uniqueness to her scientific lens that makes her work even richer.
Interested in seeing the film? Find a showing near you.
Commandments in the kitchen: Got some?
I've been perusing Alexandra Zissu's new book, The Conscious Kitchen, lately. It's a current, thoroughly-researched, user-friendly reference for buying and cooking food that's good for you and the environment.
I especially liked her get-started "to do" list, which she calls Conscious Commandments (yes, there are 10). I think they're pretty spot-on (and the beauty of it is she actually tells you how to carry out each commandment in the book).
What are your conscious commandments? Alexandra Zissu's are:
- Eat less meat. When eating beef, seek out and choose grass-fed. Other meat and poultry should also be carefully sourced.
- Just say no to bottled water. Drink (filtered) tap instead. This will save money, too.
- Buy local organic or sustainable farmed fruits and vegetables. Don't forget that coffee and tea come from plants, and wine is made from grapes; choose sustainable versions.
- Eat only the least contaminated sustainably harvested wild or well-sourced farmed seafood.
- Always consider packaging when shopping. Choose items packed in materials you can reuse or that can be recycled in your municipality. Buy bulk items instead of overpackaged goods. Always shop with reusable bags.
- Cook at home. Often. And serve only on reusable dishware, not disposable. Clean with eco-friendly products.
- Avoid plastic as often as you can.
- Try composting, even if you live in a city or a house without a yard.
- Whenever possible, reduce energy use in the kitchen by choosing efficient appliances, cooking methods, and dishwashing practices; don't leave appliances plugged in when not in use; ask your electric company for alternative energy sources like wind power.
- Spread the word. Educate everyone you know. Green your office kitchen, your kids' school kitchen, your friends and relatives' kitchens. Make noise; together we can make a huge difference.
Do these 'commandments' work for you? Are they do-able? Or would you change something?
Asbestos: Cover up of a century
By Kenneth A. Cook, Co-founder and President, Environmental Working Group
Thousands of innocent people die while governments do nothing to prevent it. In Darfur it's called genocide. In the case of asbestos-related deaths in the United States, it's just a statistic.
10,000 Americans lose their lives every year as a result of exposure to asbestos. Our government could take action and ban the mineral, but it has not.
A number of other developed countries, including all of Europe, prohibit manufacture and use of asbestos. In the U.S., however, it continues to be imported and used in a number of products that many of us encounter every day.
Industry has known all about the deadly affects of asbestos for decades but covered it up. Manufacturers and users did everything possible to conceal just how deadly it is, particularly for those exposed on the job.
A few years back, EWG compiled industry internal memos and court documents highlighting just how callous and duplicitous the cover-up of asbestos has been. The results of our investigation, including all the documents, are on EWG's chemical index.
A 1966 memo from an executive of the Bendix Corporation (now part of Honeywell) read:
"...if you have enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products, why not die from it."
The legacy of asbestos exposure is one of the great public health tragedies of the last 100 years, one that has taken an incalculable toll on American families. Congress must hold those responsible to account and ban asbestos once and for all.
[Thanks to Flickr CC & ktheory for the pic]
PBS's NOW on toxic natural gas extraction
Josh Fox, director and star of the award-winning new documentary film Gasland, goes on PBS's Now to highlight the threat that natural gas extraction brings to human health and the environment. Fox was inspired to tell this timely story when natural gas drilling came knocking on his door in the Catskills/Poconos region of Upstate New York and Pennsylvania.
EWG's 2009 Drilling Around the Law report also exposes the serious consequences of hydrofracturing (aka "fracking") on water quality. In it we propose solutions for Congress and federal agencies to take - before disaster strikes.
During the largest natural gas boom in American history, watching this interview (with some great film clips) is an important 23 minutes, especially if you're concerned about the safety of tap water in one of the 34 states where fracking is underway.
See the film for yourself at a showing near you.
Spring Clean Your Cosmetics: Go without these 6 ingredients
Also, any given product with "fragrance" on the label could, in theory, have any number of the 3,163 ingredients in it. Cutting one word from your ingredient list could mean cutting your exposure to hundreds of chemicals with unknown health risks.
(Thanks to Flickr CC & Reenie-Just Reenie for the flower)
Healthy Home Tip: Green cleaning this spring
Spring has sprung, so here at EWG our "to do" list now includes a little spring cleaning. Green cleaning, of course. Why green?
Easy. Conventional cleaners contain a variety of toxic chemicals that can harm your family's health. It just doesn't make sense to use potentially harmful cleaners when they're easy to avoid.
It's really quite easy to clean green. Just....
1. Choose greener cleaning supplies
To pick safer cleaners, you need to find out what they're made of (not so easy), then avoid the toxic stuff. When tracking down the ingredients in your cleaning products, you probably won't find them on the label (with a few exceptions, like Seventh Generation, which tells you everything, right there on the label where you need it).
Calling the manufacturer or searching its web site are your best bets; thanks to a new industry initiative to give consumers (some) more info (baby steps), you can start at one central website to hunt down ingredients.
But you should take the time to find out, so you can avoid these 7 ingredients of concern:
- 2-butoxyethanol (or ethylene glycol monobutyl ether) and other glycol ethers
- Alkylphenol ethoxylates (some common ones are: nonyl- and octylphenol ethoxylates, or non- and octoxynols)
- Dye (companies often hide chemical information behind this word; when it's unknown, it's safer to skip it)
- Ethanolamines (common ones to look out for are: mono-, di-, and tri-ethanolamine)
- Fragrance
- Pine or citrus oil (on smoggy or high ozone days, compounds in the oils can react with ozone in the air to form the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde)
- Quaternary ammonium compounds (look out for these: alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (ADBAC), benzalkonium chloride, and didecyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride)
A good idea is to "vote by purchase" and choose only those products with full ingredient lists on the package.
2. Follow these tips for cleaning greener @ home
Do them all today or take it step by step -- whatever works to get you cleaning greener!
- Less is more: Dilute your cleaning supplies according to instructions and use only what's needed to get the job done.
- Open the window: Clean with windows and doors open so you don't trap air pollution inside your home.
- Use gloves and other precautions: Cleaning chemicals may harm or penetrate skin and eyes -- check warning labels.
- Keep kids away: Children are more vulnerable to toxic chemicals. If they like to help, let them clean with soap and water, not toxic cleaners.
- Avoid "antibacterial": If your family is generally healthy, there's no need to use potentially toxic "antibacterial" products, according to the American Medical Association. Wash your hands with plain soap and water.
- Never mix bleach with ammonia, vinegar, or other acids: These combinations can produce deadly gases.
- Don't be fooled by labels -- buy certified green products: Label claims aren't always true. Cleaning supplies certified by Green Seal or EcoLogo meet green standards.
- Try natural alternatives: Experiment with non-toxic options like vinegar (great for windows when diluted with a little water -- wipe with old newspaper or rags) and baking soda (mix with water to form a paste for scrubbing). Of course mix with care; some ingredients are dangerous when combined.
- Take care with pine and citrus oil cleaners: Avoid using these cleaners especially on smoggy days, when the ingredients can react with ozone to produce cancer-causing formaldehyde.
- Skip the biggest hazards: Avoid air fresheners, use a baking soda and water paste to clean the oven and tackle toilet stains, and use a mechanical snake to unclog the drain.
- Dispose of your old toxics safely: If you choose to toss your old cleaners instead of using them up, drop them off at your local hazardous waste facility. Don't pour cleaning supplies down the drain -- some of the ingredients can harm wildlife as well as people.
Download these tips and get them room-by-room here.
3. Investigate alternatives to in-home pesticides
It's best to keep pesticides away from your home -- in and out. At-home exposures are one of the main ways people are exposed to pesticides, and since they're designed to kill, they can (not surprisingly) be dangerous to living beings (people, pets, wildlife).
- Lawn and garden care. Organic gardening and lawn care is effective, and "how to" advice is readily available. Organic is healthier for your kids, pets and the environment than chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
- Indoor pest control. Try preventive and non-toxic alternatives first, there are lots of effective options that don't contain pesticides. Pesticides should be a last resort. While pesticides must be listed on product labels, the other inert ingredients usually aren't and inert ingredients aren't necessarily safe.
- Pet treatments. Ridding your pets of bothersome and harmful pests presents a unique challenge since pests (like ticks) can carry disease, but pesticides can harm the pet as well as human family members. Try some simple prevention steps, like frequent bathing and combing, and of course vacuuming to catch any bugs and their eggs.
If you do choose to apply pesticides to your pet, follow the product's instructions, wash hands immediately, and be sure young children are unlikely to have contact with the pet for 24 hours. The US EPA offers tips for pet owners who use pesticides to do so with caution to reduce adverse effects on treated pets.
Get the full EWG Healthy Home Tip here, and check out the entire series, from pots & pans to shampoo and plastic.
