ABOUT
Smart discussion of the latest science and news on toxins in your food, water, and air, and what government agencies should be doing to protect public health. Enviroblog is a project of EWG Action Fund.
FEED
An EWG podcast for environmental health news on the go.
TIPS
Did we miss something? Email Enviroblg.
BLOGROLL
STAY CONNECTED
Get our monthly eNewsletter, action alerts, & environmental tips. [Privacy policy, About EWG]
Breathing easier with Enviro-Paint
EPA proposes new smog standards; environmentalists wheeze their disapproval
FEATURED
Elected officials MIA; Instead Wal-Mart and Burger King protecting your health
Back to school: Are we ready? Are we non-toxic?
Fire retardants: Disproportionate risk to small children
Lead: Celebrate its ban, but don't cross it off your list
7 ways to reduce your exposure to PBDEs
Ask EWG
What can I do about fluoride in my water?
What is new carpet treated with? What can I do?
Are stainless steel water bottles safe?
Is mineral-based makeup safer?
SEARCH
Category Archive
Look, up in the sky: It's the green governor
Sacramento's not such a bad place: The summer heat and lousy air quality are balanced by the outdoor recreational opportunities and an unpretentious, small-town feel. But if you're a international movie star used to the bright lights of Hollywood and you somehow get yourself elected governor of California, surely you can't be expected to actually live there.
The first governor to fit that description, Ronald Reagan, had nothing against Sacramento per se, but Nancy found the historic governor's mansion near the Capitol a dump. The state built a new residence in the suburbs that became a white elephant after Jerry Brown decided he preferred a mattress on the floor of a studio apartment. Today we have Arnold Schwarzenegger, who at first toyed with the idea of buying a home and moving his family to Sacramento, then took up residence in a hotel penthouse across the street from his office. But he missed his kids in Brentwood, and he already had a private jet at his disposal, so of late he's been flying home at night and back in the morning. It's a three-hour round trip, not that extreme a commute in California today.
The governor pays for his jet-set commute from his own pocket -- more than half-a-million dollars a year. But wait? Isn't this the same Arnold Schwarzenegger who last year was featured on magazine covers as an environmental hero? The same one who flexed his muscles to lead California's fight against global warming? The one who must be aware of the vast amount of global-warming gases and air pollution his jet is spewing?
Yep, same guy. The Los Angeles Times' Evan Halper and Michael Rothfield broke the story last week:
The governor's Gulfstream jet does nearly as much damage to the environment in one hour as a small car does in a year, according to figures compiled by the Helium Report, an online publication for buyers of luxury items.Administration officials say Schwarzenegger is well aware of this and makes amends by purchasing pollution credits for the carbon dioxide his jet releases. The credits fund efforts worldwide to reduce greenhouse gases, such as projects that harness energy from wind, landfill gas and farm waste, although they don't eliminate the pollution from Schwarzenegger's plane.
Flying the Gulfstream and other jets the governor uses costs as much as $10,000 an hour. Some conservationists say Schwarzenegger is essentially attempting to buy a clean conscience with the carbon offsets, which cost about $43 an hour.
"He has been very bold on all these [environmental] initiatives, so it is sad to see him undercut that," said Denis Hayes, president of the Bullitt Foundation, a philanthropy that funds conservation efforts in Western states. "If you are going to be talking about an issue, you should be living the reality you are trying to embrace."
Don't get me started on pollution credits, but it's better than doing nothing. To be fair, Arnold shouldn't be singled out as the only climate hypocrite in government. Even the greenest members of Congress fly back to their home districts every weekend, and some members of the Legislature who live as far from Sacramento as the Bay Area drive back and forth every day, in state-supplied vehicles. As someone who lived in the Big Tomato for a few years, back when it was hard to find an espresso, I know about the lure of I-80 or Southwest Airlines on Friday afternoon. If you've got your own jet, why not every day?
Here's why not: This governor has gone out on a limb to promote himself as a global warming warrior. It's a laudable stance that has genuinely helped move America toward a greener politics. This latest flap is a rare PR slipup for a master of the game, but it could make some Californians – like, all of us who don't own a jet – think twice about how well his walk matches his talk.
Play the dirty air game!
Imagine you're a board member of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. The Valley has the dirtiest air in California, including four of the 10 smoggiest cities in the country. Childhood asthma is epidemic. Educated workers, fearing for their families' health, are leaving or declining to move to the area.
Among the worst sources of dirty, dangerous air are smog-forming emissions from diesel trucks. Cleaner diesels are coming but 60,000 old trucks will remain on the roads for decades. Do you:
(a) Install advanced catalytic converters on older diesels, cutting emissions by 164 tons per day at a cost of $1.8 billion?
(b) Replace older diesels with cleaner ones as they become available, which will cut emissions by 192 tons a day at a cost of $18 billion?
(c) Ban all diesel trucks on days when smog exceeds safe levels, which will cut emissions by 237 tons a day – at a cost estimated only as "extreme?"
That's just one of the choices you'll make when you play "Fighting for Air," an online game from The Fresno Bee. The Bee, which has been dedicating considerable resources to crusading for clean air, has produced another ambitious, sophisticated and well-executed special report that examines the health and economic costs of air pollution from every imaginable angle. It's a remarkable package of stories, photos, videos, graphics and interactive features that shows just how complex the problem is, and how difficult to solve. (It also is an excellent example of how newspapers can use new media technology to do hard-hitting, public-service journalism online.)
The game challenges you to find cost-effective ways to remove, by 2012, more than 400 tons of smog-forming chemicals from the air each day – the amount needed for the region to meet federal clean-air standards. But you can only hit that target by choosing the strictest and most expensive control strategy for each emission source. (The air board has to worry about 100 kinds of sources; the game only makes you deal with 10.)
If you ban the use of diesels, farm equipment, construction vehicles, trains, portable engines, industrial furnaces, recreational boats and waste incinerators on smog-alert days, you'll get rid of 438 tons of pollution – but at a cost of more than $40 billion. And at each step along the way, you'll have to endure the wrath of farmers, builders, commuters, boat owners and everyone else who says they want clean air but don't want to have change their behavior to get it.
I don't think the Bee's game will replace Dragon Fable around my house, but it is eye-opening. How are we going to find the money to ensure that all of us can breathe safely? Not that I think clean air is too expensive – just the opposite. As numerous studies have shown, dirty air costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year in health care, sick days and school attendance and other hidden costs. Hard choices are part of the price, and we can pay it now or pay it later.
It's not just about the weather any more
In the simplistic view of "the environment" common among policy makers and the press, an artificial line separates wildlife and natural resource issues – saving the whales, protecting the rainforests – from human health concerns like toxic chemicals in consumer products. (Look more closely, of course, and you realize that everything is connected.) Global warming, because its worst impacts lie sometime in the future and are, you know, global, is not usually discussed as a threat to your preschooler's health – right now, today, in your back yard. The week before Christmas, when the EPA denied a petition by California and other states to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, one of the Agency's arguments was that there is a lack of evidence linking carbon emissions to specific health effects.
Now Stanford scientists have produced the first study quantifying the health effects of air pollution attributed solely to climate change – in other words, they've found that the hotter it gets, the more unhealthy the air gets. It's already happening, and it's affecting states with the most severe air pollution, like California, more than other places. This strikes hard at the EPA's position that states can't regulate carbon emissions because global warming is a matter of national policy only. Mark Jacobson, the atmospheric scientist who did the study, told The Sacramento Bee:
"The study shows carbon dioxide is causing the health impacts, it quantifies those impacts and shows California has been impacted greater than other states. . . . They [EPA] should revisit their decision."
The study, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that for every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Farenheit) increase in temperature caused by carbon dioxide, 1,000 more Americans will die annually – 300 more a year in California – and 20 to 30 more will get cancer. Jacobson says it's a clear cause-and-effect relationship, not just a statistical connection.
The killer is smog, or ozone, which forms more rapidly in hotter weather. But there's a feedback loop: Jacobson used computer models to show that warming speeds ozone formation more rapidly in cities that are already smoggy. California has six of the 10 smoggiest cities in the nation, so it's clear that global warming is a more immediate health threat here than in, say, Wyoming.
Jacobson's findings, and more studies to come, could have very far-reaching impacts, perhaps elevating global warming to a top-tier health concern. This would be a most welcome development, for the tendency to keep "nature" and "health" separate has led some elected officials to embrace an environmentalism Lite, standing up for wilderness and national parks but ignoring the need for reform of chemical policy, which might upset industry. Gov. Schwarzenegger, for one, has been far more aggressive in taking on global warming than tackling public health issues.
We'll also get to see how the Bush Administration reacts to evidence that California has a legitimate public health interest in trying to regulate greenhouse gases. The Administration has resisted every effort by the state for five years, so don't hold your breath. Then again, maybe you should.
Reading, writing and risk
Nearly 10 years ago, when EWG and other California environmental groups were sounding the alarm over the dangers of methyl bromide and other airborne pesticides drifting from farm fields into schools and subdivisions, the state’s pesticide agency tried to pooh-pooh our concerns with this twisted logic:
"[Just] because there is a presence of something doesn't mean you are at risk from it,” said Department of Pesticide Regulation spokeswoman Veda Federighi. “[Millions of] Californians live within a half-mile from a freeway. Does that mean they are at risk from auto exhaust?"
Well . . . yeah.
In the years since, there’s been a steady stream of science documenting that kids who live close to traffic corridors are at increased risk of asthma and stunted lung development – damage that may lessen if the child moves to an area with cleaner air, but still lasts for a lifetime. Last week, the LA Times reported:
Recently, studies have shown that the lung capacity of children who live within 500 meters (1,650 feet) of a freeway is significantly reduced compared with those who live more than 1,500 meters (4,950 feet) away.For kids who already live in an area with high levels of pollution, living near a freeway is "adding insult to injury," says Dr. John Balmes, professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and professor of public health at UC Berkeley.
The new findings, by a team of USC researchers, were published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet. They found that, over an 8-year period, kids who lived in a heavily polluted city like Los Angeles and lived within 500 meters of a freeway had almost 10 percent worse lung function than those who lived farther away or in less smoggy cities.
In recognition of the risk, four years ago California passed a law prohibiting schools from being built within 500 feet of major freeways, with exceptions allowed only if there’s no other available location or the school district takes steps to reduce the exposure.
So why is the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to the Times, planning at least seven new schools within 500 feet of a freeway?
The Times didn’t say how LAUSD – where there are an estimated 700 existing schools serving 60,000 students within 500 feet of freeways – is getting around the law. Given the vast web of choked freeways in LA County, our guess is the "no other available location" loophole. The district did say they’re now ranking schools for a variety of air pollution risks, including the number of students, the number of years students spend at the school, distance to freeways and the volume of diesel trucks that travel the nearby freeways. At the same time, the district is exploring “all options” for reducing exposure at the most at-risk schools.
And we certainly agree with the district on the most important point: The best way to protect students is for state and federal regulators to enact rules that reduce air pollution at its source. EWG research found that reducing smog to the levels set by the Air Resources Board would mean 3.3 million fewer school absences a year. Since attendance determines how much money each district gets from the state, cleaner air would mean an additional $82 million in school funding a year. There's just one problem: California's smog standards are only goals, and not legally enforceable.
GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE DEPT.
We don't know if the AP's Terry Chea reads Greetings from California. But a few days after we posted last week's entry on once-and-maybe-future governor Jerry Brown's global warming crusade, Chea filed a national story taking the same angle. The right-wing Pacific Legal Foundation complains that the attorney general is "using the courts to set national social and environmental policy . . . [and] trying to force certain types of solutions on very difficult problems."
Well . . . yeah. Isn't that his job?
Breathing easier with Enviro-Paint
When I was little, I loved the smell of house paint. I have asthma, though -- the kind of asthma that lands you in the hospital at two in the morning because your inhaler just isn't cutting it -- so whenever I tried to sneak into a room that was being repainted my mother would shoo me out of it.
What is it in that fresh-paint smell that's such a trigger for asthmatics? Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are chemical gases released by a wide array of home products, including many cleaners, furnishings, pesticides and permanent markers. They can cause heart and lung problems and make up a large part of both indoor and outdoor air pollution.
Mark Gluck was tired of dealing with asthma attacks from exposure to paint fumes. Plenty of other people are as well, it turns out. Lucky for them, Gluck decided to do something about it -- last March he started his own business. Enviro-Paint does interiors and exteriors using paints with low odor and low or no VOCs, and Gluck makes an effort to use other sustainable painting tools and to recycle as many of his materials as possible.
Thinking of repainting? If you're in Arizona you could always contact Enviro-Paint for an estimate. For the rest of the country, resources like Green Seal can help you find environmentally friendly paints. Building Green TV covered exteriors in Episode 6; if you missed it, you can check out the episode guide on buildinggreentv.com.
EPA proposes new smog standards; environmentalists wheeze their disapproval
Update: Okay, I may have been a little hard on the EPA yesterday. At least they're making an effort. Also, check out Angry Toxicologist's post, The Asthmatic Elephant in the Ozone Room.
Having trouble breathing?
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson wants to fix that -- as long as industry groups don't mind too much.
In their first new recommendation on ground-level ozone since 1997, the Agency is calling for an 11 to 17 percent reduction on current smog standards. Johnson says that "the current standard is insufficient to protect public health," a statement which sounds like it could only lead to vigorous improvements.
And the EPA recommendation is an improvement -- a reduction of ground ozone levels from .08 parts per million to between .070 and .075 parts per million. But while it solicits public comment on the recommendation, the EPA will also consider other options -- including leaving the standards right where they are. While the Agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee has implied that even the proposed reduction might be too lax (they recommend that standards set ozone levels no higher than .070 parts per million), the EPA has left the door open for business and industry groups who consider the reduction costly and unnecessary.
Gosh. I'm breathing better already, aren't you?
I should note that the EPA is also accepting comment on alternative plans that would set the standards as low as .06 parts per million -- so take heart, asthmatics. A 90-day public comment period will follow after the proposal is published in the Federal Register, and the EPA will settle on a number in March of 2008.
Which is the real Chevron?
Last weekend, on my 4-year-old's preschool campout, I was talking to another dad about the environmental commitment of the oil company he works for. They're putting millions of dollars into biofuels research, converting their vehicle fleet to hybrids or natural gas, and my friend is writing speeches for the CEO that proclaim the urgency of addressing global warming.
Today, in the San Francisco Chronicle, I read about an oil company that plans to increase production at its refinery to meet gasoline supply shortages that have helped push Bay Area pump prices to the highest in the country. Problem is, that will also increase the refinery's emissions – not just global warming gases but volatile organic compounds known to cause respiratory disease and cancer, as well as heavy metals and toxic chemicals that will be dumped into the bay. The community around the refinery, which has lived for decades with the impact of its pollution, flaring, and accidents, is demanding safeguards and considering special taxes to offset the health effects of the expansion.
So which company is going green and which is still mired in the muck of environmental evil?
Trick question. They're the same company: Chevron.
Continue reading "Which is the real Chevron?" »
Call 911-SMOG
If a deadly strain of an exotic disease were ravaging Los Angeles, the state and federal governments would waste no time declaring a public health emergency. The Department of Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control would mobilize armies of researchers. The governor and the president would authorize the release of as much money as necessary to stop the spread of the epidemic and protect public health.
Last week, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), a regional planning body, made a plea for help dealing with a public health emergency that kills 5,400 Californians each year: air pollution. SCAG passed a resolution calling on Gov. Schwarzenegger and President Bush to declare a state of emergency in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial counties, authorizing extraordinary measures to fight smog.
"When we have a hurricane or earthquake, they declare a state of emergency," said Hasan Ikhrata, director of planning and policy for the regional body. "These numbers are out of this world … so this is significant enough that they should do the same thing." (LAT)
Continue reading "Call 911-SMOG" »
Last Action Hero
Our governor, who was oiling his quads for the camera when Lois Gibbs was fighting a chemical catastrophe at Love Canal, is suddenly being hailed as an environmental hero.
He's the GOP’s Al Gore. He’s simultaneously on the covers of special green issues of Newsweek and Outside, with fawning articles and Q&As recounting how he gets policy tips from his cousin-in-law Bobby Kennedy Jr. and has one Hummer that runs on hydrogen, another on biodiesel. He’s a jet-setting green diplomat, signing global warming pacts with Canada and Britain. He’s the keynote speaker at prestigious international climate change conferences.
Fine. To a point.
Arnold Schwarzenegger does seem to understand that the planet is in trouble. As a green Republican, he is a welcome contrast to the know-nothing, do-less attitude of President Bush. His movie star persona is perfect for delivering lines like "Arnold to Detroit: Get off your butt.“
But when he says the problem with environmentalism is that it’s not hip or sexy – that the movement has been a failure because it’s based on guilt and sacrifice, not optimism and fun – I must respond with one of the more eloquent lines from his signature role as an android assassin:
Wrong.
Continue reading "Last Action Hero" »
First Class to Nairobi and 2 tons of carbon credits, please
The London papers are nailing the British diplomat whose job it is to lobby other countries to reduce global warming gases – but whose frequent-flier lifestyle produces a staggering 22.3 tons of carbon pollution a year, 30 times more than the average Brit's. John Ashton has racked up more than 80,000 air miles in 10 months on the job, flying to Washington, Nairobi, Tokyo and beyond "to engage with major developed and developing countries to drive forward the international response to climate change." The government said the trips were necessary and that all emissions were offset "as part of the department's commitment to become carbon neutral."
The jet-set world of the international envoy, tycoon and celebrity has been invaded by an inconvenient truth: Air travel produces vast amounts of global warming gases – up to 5 percent of all CO2, and three times as damaging as ground-level emissions. So what's an eco-conscious member of the Beautiful People to do?
Continue reading "First Class to Nairobi and 2 tons of carbon credits, please" »
Coal combustion faces controversy
A recently released MIT report found that coal contributes more to global carbon dioxide emissions than any other energy source. Coal’s high carbon to hydrogen ratio makes it a larger CO2 polluter per unit of energy than other fossil fuels. Coal combustion also emits a variety of other pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, and mercury.
The MIT study shows that the average American is willing to pay 50 percent more to reduce global warming than they were willing to pay three years ago. Despite this trend, cheap and dirty coal power continues to account for half of our nation’s electricity production.
But the pursuit of coal power may be slowing. According to an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Texas utility giant TXU Corp chose to abandon construction plans for nine of eleven proposed coal power plants after facing opposition from environmental groups, state politicians, and investors.
Under current political and economic conditions, the MIT report does not predict a decline in coal combustion. The report encourages technological improvements to increase production efficiency in existing plants and reduce coal-based CO2 emissions.
RAN's World Rainforest Week
Currently, about 40 million acres of rainforest are lost annually, even though they are home to to five to ten million plant and animal species. In addition to their role as diverse habitats, rainforests also help mitigate the effects of global warming by absorbing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.Rainforest Action Network(RAN) has organized a week of actions you can take to ease your strain on the rainforests. Today, for example, is Live Tree Free Day. RAN's suggestions for the day are: steering clear of disposable cups, following some simple steps to greening your workplace vis-a-vis your office's paper purchasing, and writing to Australian Bank ANZ to ask that they stop funding the Tassie Pulp Mill, which is rapidly consuming Tazmanian forests.
Making sure there is always bad weather to report
Several TV stations are now using souped-up Hummers not only as their mobile weather stations, but also as educational tools for schoolchildren. ABC 15 in Phoenix is quite proud of its brightly airbrushed “Weather Hummer,” and their Weather on Wheels website features the Hummer in graphics and interactive puzzles for kids. The Hummer also accompanies the staff meteorologists on their educational trips to area schools.
I can just imagine how those lessons go: "You see kids...giant vehicles like our Weather Hummer here are the second-largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. The pollutants it spews collect in our atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing our planet to warm up. This warming trend leads to conditions that can make weather reporting a REAL ADVENTURE, like wildfires, drought, dust storms, flooding, and bigger and badder hurricanes! And that's why it’s only safe to perform our duties from inside this tank...Ok, while we have your attention--can any of you boys and girls spot us a few bucks for gas?"
The Storm Chaser joins the ranks of other ill-advised uses for the famous combat-utility vehicle (CUV), like...
...shuttling around the staff of classy dining establishments
...ensuring a most memorable high school prom
[more brilliant uses for Hummers after the jump]
Continue reading "Making sure there is always bad weather to report" »
EPA ignoring its own experts on air quality standards
NPR reports uncovering internal documents suggesting that EPA administrator Steven Johnson ignored the advice of EPA scientific advisors when he rejected tougher air quality standards that could save thousands of lives each year.
NYU Med school professor Morton Lippmann, one of the 12 experts on the panel ignored by Johnson, had this to say about the effects of poor air quality: "You can mention a few other things that affect public health more, like cigarette smoking, but you have to get to an issue like that before you get something with more impact than the effect of fine particles on mortality." Lippmann has gone on record in a letter to Stephen Johnson stating that the weak standard "does not provide an adequate margin of safety requisite to protect the public health." Lippmann also feels the EPA has gone out of its way to withhold strong scientific evidence from the public in this matter. [ NPR ]
Honda unveils diesel system to rival gasoline cars
Honda announced Monday its plans for releasing a new and simple diesel powertrain that is as clean as gasoline-fuelled cars. The new cars are slated to hit the U.S. market by 2009. Diesel engines are traditionally known for emitting high exhaust levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx), a greenhouse gas, but Honda's new diesel drivetrain is designed to generate and store ammonia within a two-layer catalytic converter to turn nitrogen oxide into harmless nitrogen.
To learn how much your particular vehicle contributes to poor air quality, check out our Auto Asthma Index.
[ Reuters ] [ Green Car Congress ] [ AutoblogGreen ]
Grandpa marching on Washington for clean air and safer schools
Culminating a hike of several hundred miles, West Virginia grandfather Ed Wiley will arrive in Washington tomorrow to ask the federal government to help where his local officials’ resources fall short. Wiley, a former coal industry contractor, wants to see Marsh Fork Elementary moved from its current location, just yards from a coal silo he says makes kids sick--informal surveys indicate that many of Marsh Fork’s 220 students do have asthma or chronic bronchitis. Wiley’s local officials aren’t convinced the dangers justify the several million-dollar price tag of relocating the school, so he’ll be hand delivering a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, asking for help to build a new school. Good luck, Ed! [Link]
Hybrid happy meals: a wiser choice for McDonald's
Now that McDonald’s Hummer happy meal promo is officially over and the marketing experts who conceived it are out looking for new jobs, their successors should be hard at work searching for a toy that isn’t such a PR nightmare. The answer seems pretty obvious to Nick from TriplePundit and Al from CityHippy--Hybrid Cars.
In addition to appealing to kids’ fascination with technology, putting toy Hybrids in happy meals would be a forward step in McDonald’s quest to become the greener, more socially responsible company they claim to be. I don’t think this is asking too much of the golden arches. Heck—we’ll even waive the consulting fees this time.
**************
Why is McDonald’s blog not posting your comments? I have yet to see my comment posted 28 hours after submission, and I know 3 others who've met with the same result. Al and Nick have also weighed in on the ‘Open for Discussion’ Blog not adhering to the spirit of dialogue that its name implies.
***************
UPDATE: After more than 5 days--and critical posts on TreeHugger, AdWeek, Fast Company, Emergence Marketing, Church of the Customer blog, AutoBlogGreen, TriplePundit, CityHippy, and several others,--McDonald’s is unable to ignore the buzz calling into question the authenticity of its corporate blog. Last night, VP Bob Langert began allowing comments, but has yet to respond to any of them. Langert still needs to respond to live up to his blog’s name, “Open for Discussion.”
[Hat tip to Nick for the sweet graphic]
McDonald’s responds to Hummer protest
On McDonald’s CSR blog, Vice President Bob Langert has defended the company’s Hummer Happy Meal promotion by dismissing the effect that advertising has on children:
… I polled my staff who have or had children. One of them said her children enjoy the little Hummer replicas as toys, just as many kids like toy trucks, regardless of make or model. She drives a MiniCooper, walks with her children to get groceries, bicycles with them on weekends, etc. Another said her grandchildren absolutely love the toy Hummers--that they're fun.When Langert says "the miniature Hummers are just toys, not vehicle recommendations" he's being either naive or disingenuous–-everyone knows that promotions exist to drive sales. Last time I checked, Hummer was not in the business of making kids happy. They are in the business of selling vehicles that pollute the air, waste gas, heat up the atmosphere and send asthmatic kids to the hospital. If McDonald's is truly concerned about the environment and health, why do they want to be associated with that?
Of course, there's nothing scientific about this poll, but I think it makes an important point. Looked at through children's eyes, the miniature Hummers are just toys, not vehicle recommendations…
I've submitted these thoughts in a comment on Mr. Langert's blog, and the comment has yet to be approved for posting. If it’s not up by tomorrow I'm sounding the astroturfing bells.
***************
UPDATE: After more than 5 days--and critical posts on TreeHugger, AdWeek, Fast Company, Emergence Marketing, Church of the Customer blog, AutoBlogGreen, TriplePundit, CityHippy, and several others,--McDonald’s is unable to ignore the buzz calling into question the authenticity of its corporate blog. Last night, VP Bob Langert began allowing comments, but has yet to respond to any of them. Langert still needs to respond to live up to his blog’s name, “Open for Discussion.”
Air Fresheners Not Smelling So Fresh
New Research from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences suggests that the "fresh" smell of many air fresheners is a result of the ingredient1,4 dichlorobenzene (1,4 DCB) which has been found to impair lung function. 1,4 DCB is also found in toilet bowl cleaners, mothballs and various other "deodorizing" products. "The best way to protect yourself, especially children who may have asthma or other respiratory illnesses, is to reduce the use of products and materials that contain these compounds." [via Effect Measure]
The Dirty Secret of Cleaner Cars
On Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece on PZEV’s, or Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles. PZEV’s are poorly marketed versions of the most popular cars on the road. The difference? They have better pollution-control systems than their identical counterparts—so much better that PZEV’s are 70 percent cleaner than vehicles that already meet “low emissions” standards. Sounds a little strange? Well, I’ll say it again—Ford, Honda, Volvo, Chevrolet, Subaru, Mazda, Volkswagon, Nissan, and Toyota currently produce a small number of each of their best-selling models to be as clean as many hybrids and to give off fewer pollutants while driving than their identical counterparts do while parked.
Continue reading "The Dirty Secret of Cleaner Cars" »
New York Battles EPA for Household Chemical Records
Volatile organic compounds, the smog-forming components found in household products like paint and varnish, may also contribute to increased asthma rates. Last year EWG released "Smoggy Schools," a report on what air pollution costs California measured in missed school days and children's medical expenses.
EPA’s Folk Theory of Clean Air Threatens Rural America
Clear Lies Initiative
The Washington Post has the full story, and EWG's analysis of the costs of pollution in California, Smoggy Schools, is here.