EarthTalk
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine
This column is updated weekly
Send your questions to: EarthTalk, c/o E/Environmental Magazine, PO Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; Submit your question at www.emagazine.com or email to earthtalk@emagazine.com
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Dear EarthTalk : What do you think of those “waste to energy” plants used by cities to generate power? -- Christine Ramadhin, Queens, NY
Waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities, which generate power by burning trash, have been in widespread operation in the U.S. and Europe since the 1970s and are considered by environmental advocates to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand they get rid of garbage without adding to already-stressed landfills and with the added benefit of contributing electricity to the power grid. On the other hand, they do generate toxic pollution, usually as a result of burning vinyl and plastics.
WtE facilities evolved out of basic incinerator technology that simply burns trash and reduces it to ash and smoke. Waste-to-energy plants instead use the garbage to fire a huge boiler. When the garbage “fuel” is burned, it releases heat that turns water into steam. The high-pressure steam turns the blades of a turbine generator to produce electricity.
In the U.S. and Europe, environmental laws regulate WtE plants, typically requiring them to use various anti-pollution devices to keep both harmful gases and particulate pollution (fine bits of dust, soot and other solid materials) out of the air. However, the particles captured are then mixed with the ash that is removed from the bottom of the waste-to-energy plant's furnace when it is cleaned. Environmentalists contend that this toxic ash, which can include dangerous heavy metals, may actually present more of an environmental problem than the airborne emissions themselves, as it usually ends up in landfills where it can leak into and contaminate soil and groundwater.
According to Greenpeace International, WtE facilities are also among the largest sources of dioxin emissions in industrialized countries. Dioxin is a by-product of burning polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other plastics, and has been linked to cancer and other health problems. Greenpeace advocates for phasing out WtE facilities in favor of improving recycling rates that reduce the waste stream in the first place.
Currently about 600 WtE facilities are in operation around the world. According to the National Solid Wastes Management Association, an industry trade group, the United States is home to 98 such plants operating in 29 states. These facilities manage about 13 percent of America's total trash output. In Canada, where landfill space is more abundant, WtE has failed to catch on, with only a few such facilities across the country. WtE has caught on more so in smaller technologically advanced countries such as Japan, Sweden, Denmark, France and Switzerland, where landfill space is at a premium.
Recent improvements in the energy efficiency and environmental impact of WtE facilities means that the technology promises to play a larger role globally in years to come, especially as crowded developing countries start to jump on the bandwagon.
CONTACTS: National Solid Wastes Management Association, www.nswma.org/ ; Greenpeace Incineration Campaign, www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/incineration .
Dear EarthTalk : What kinds of home improvements could I do that would make my house healthier and more environmentally friendly? -- Elizabeth Bram, via e-mail
Most homes are not lacking in ways they can be healthier for family and kinder to the environment. For one, indoor air quality is a serious problem affecting millions of homes. Studies show that air within homes can be more seriously polluted than the air outdoors--even in the largest and most industrialized cities.
According to Glenn Haege, a master handyman who hosts a national radio show on home repair, as our homes and apartments have become more energy efficient and airtight, “humidity levels from cooking and breathing tend to increase, causing mold and mildew.” Harmful chemicals, he says, from construction materials, insulation, furniture, carpeting, padding, paints, solvents and household cleaners, drawn by this moist atmosphere, combine to contaminate the indoor air which then stays trapped inside.
The first step in remedying this problem is to test your indoor air. Pure Air and Envirologix, among others, sell inexpensive and easy-to-use indoor-air quality testing kits. Once you get an idea of the contaminants floating around your home, you can get to work replacing the offending sources accordingly. Green superstores such as the Environmental Home Center, Green Building Supply and Oikos offer a wealth of greener and healthier building supplies and materials. Also, BuildingGreen.com offers a free online “GreenSpec” database with detailed listings for over 2,000 environmentally preferable building products.
Materials outside the home can also contribute to health problems. One example is pressure-treated lumber, which contains a form of cyanide to keep pests away. Kids who play on backyard jungle gyms and decks made of such material can develop rashes and skin infections. Cedar wood is a naturally pest-resistant alternative that, while more expensive, is a kinder-gentler option that will stand the test of time.
Other ways to green-up the home include replacing traditional incandescent light bulbs with more energy-efficient compact fluorescents, as well as switching out conventional hot water heaters in favor of solar or on-demand tankless versions. And for saving on water, replacing traditional showerheads and toilets with pressurized low-flow alternatives can save gallons per day while generating cost savings on utility bills. Likewise, capturing rainwater and shower “gray-water” to irrigate the garden is another smart move.
Do-it-yourselfers can find hundreds of websites offering tips on green building and repair. Glenn Haege's MasterHandyman.com and NaturalHandyMan.com both offer a plethora of articles and links and are good resources if you're looking to improve your own handy skills while staying true to your green ideals. Two helpful books are: Green Remodeling by David Johnston and Kim Master; and Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification by Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows. For less handy homeowners, finding a handyman well versed in green building issues might be a better way to go. The Natural Handyman Network offers a free online search tool that should offer some promising leads.
CONTACTS: MasterHandyman.com, www.masterhandyman.com ; BuildingGreen.com, www.buildinggreen.com ; Envirologix, www.envirologix.com ; Environmental Home Center, www.environmentalhomecenter.com ; Green Building Supply, www.greenbuildingsupply.com ; Oikos, www.oikos.com ; The Natural Handyman Network, www.naturalhandyman.com .
Dear EarthTalk : I read a disturbing report recently that the long-banned pesticide, DDT, was being used in Mozambique to combat malaria. Malaria is a killer, but isn't a return to DDT even scarier? -- Graeme Campbell, South Africa
Much of the developed world banned the use of DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) within about 10 years of the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book, “Silent Spring.” Carson's book, which is credited by many as having spurred the creation of the modern environmental movement, documented the ecosystem damage caused by DDT crop spraying throughout the United States and linked the pesticide's use to the disappearance of songbirds and raptors.
Health officials at the time also linked DDT exposure to nerve damage in humans, and blamed DDT for causing cancer in people who had applied it recklessly. Today, because of widespread indiscriminate use up through the 1960s, most people have traces of DDT in their bodies. DDT has since become increasingly associated with childhood developmental problems, according to the organization, Beyond Pesticides (BP).
Today, two dozen countries--including Mozambique and nine other African nations--permit the use of small amounts of DDT for controlling specific insect-borne diseases, including malaria. Malaria kills one million people, including 800,000 African children, every year. Dr. Arata Kochi, leader of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) global malaria program, strongly advocates using DDT to fight malaria, claiming that it poses little or no health risk when sprayed in small amounts on the inner walls of people's homes.
“Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes…and presents no health risk when used properly,” agrees Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, WHO's assistant director-general for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Asamoa-Baah insists that DDT's public health benefits far outweigh its risks.
Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, disagrees and advocates for techniques that do not rely on pesticides like DDT. “The international community has a social responsibility to reject the use of this chemical and to practice sound and safe pest management practices,” he says. Feldman cites a recent study showing South African women living in DDT-treated dwellings to have 77 times the internationally accepted limit of the chemical in their breast milk. Researchers postulate that large amounts of DDT may have contaminated drinking water, exposing entire villages. “This highlights why no society can be unconcerned with DDT's impact” on health and the worldwide ecosystem, Feldman says.
Feldman is calling for alternative strategies for disease control, including addressing the conditions of poverty that lead to mosquito breeding. We should “no longer treat poverty and development with poisonous band-aids, but join together to address the root causes of insect-borne disease, because the chemical-dependent alternatives are ultimately deadly for everyone,” says Feldman.
CONTACTS Beyond Pesticides, www.beyondpesticides.org ; World Health Organization Malaria Information, www.who.int/topics/malaria/en/ .
Dear EarthTalk : Are there any environmental or human health risks to using nail polish?
-- Deborah Lynn, Milford, CT
Conventional nail polishes dispensed at most drugstores and nail salons contain a veritable witch's brew of chemicals, including toluene, which has been linked to a wide range of health issues from simple headaches and eye, ear, nose and throat irritation to nervous system disorders and damage to the liver and kidneys.
Another common yet toxic ingredient in conventional nail polish is a chemical plasticizer known as dibutyl phthalate (DBP). According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit research and advocacy organization that campaigns to educate consumers about the health risks of cosmetics, studies have linked DBP to underdeveloped genitals and other reproductive system problems in newborn boys.
As such, DBP is banned from cosmetics in the European Union but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States has taken no such action, even though a recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found DBP and other toxic phthalates in the bloodstreams of every person they tested. Further, five percent of women tested who were of childbearing age (ages 20-40) had up to 45 times more of the chemicals in their bodies than researchers had expected to find.
EWG attributes the prevalence of DBP in young women to widespread use of nail polish. “Women of childbearing age should avoid all exposure to DBP when they're considering becoming pregnant, when they're pregnant, or when they're nursing,” says Jane Houlihan, EWG's Vice President for Research.
Luckily, safer nail polishes do exist and are readily available at natural health and beauty supply stores as well as from online outlets such as Natural Solutions and Infinite Health Resources. These products, from such makers as Honeybee Gardens, PeaceKeeper, Jerrie, Visage Naturel and Sante, rely on naturally occurring minerals and plant extracts to beautify nails without the need for toxic ingredients.
Major nail polish manufacturers are also now getting in on the act. According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of organizations that includes EWG and the Breast Cancer Fund, Avon, Estee Lauder, Revlon and L'Oreal confirmed last year that they would begin removing DBP from products. And leading drugstore brand Sally Hansen has said it is reformulating all of its products to remove DBP and toluene as well as formaldehyde, which is also known to cause cancer and reproductive problems.
Exposure to toxic chemicals is not the only health concern associated with nail salons, where nail fungus and bacteria can lurk on the underside of any emery board. Women's health advocate Tracee Cornforth suggests checking out a salon for cleanliness before signing up for services. She also says to make sure attendants disinfect all tools and equipment between customers, and even recommends bringing in one's own manicure or pedicure kit so as to minimize the transmission of any unsightly or painful maladies.
CONTACTS: Environmental Working Group, www.ewg.org ; Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, www.SafeCosmetics.org ; Natural Solutions, www.bewellstaywell.com ; Infinite Health Resources, www.infinitehealthresources.com .
Dear EarthTalk : Why do environmentalists advocate that people “eat locally?” I don't understand the connection between patronizing local food producers and environmental quality. -- Timothy Douglas, Burlington, VT
In our modern age of food preservatives and additives, genetically altered crops and E. coli outbreaks, as with the recent spinach debacle, people are increasingly concerned about the quality and cleanliness of the foods they eat. Given the impossibility of identifying the pesticides used and the route taken to grow and transport, say, a banana from Central America to our local supermarket, foods grown locally make a lot of sense for those who want more control over what they put into their bodies.
John Ikerd, a retired agricultural economics professor who writes about the growing “eat local” movement, says that farmers who sell direct to local consumers need not give priority to packing, shipping and shelf life issues and can instead “select, grow and harvest crops to ensure peak qualities of freshness, nutrition and taste.” Eating local also means eating seasonally, he adds, a practice much in tune with Mother Nature.
“Local food is often safer, too,” says the Center for a New American Dream (CNAD). “Even when it's not organic, small farms tend to be less aggressive than large factory farms about dousing their wares with chemicals.” Small farms are also more likely to grow more variety, too, says CNAD, protecting biodiversity and preserving a wider agricultural gene pool, an important factor in long-term food security.
Eating locally grown food even helps in the fight against global warming. Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reports that the average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there. Buying locally-produced food eliminates the need for all that fuel-guzzling transportation.
Another benefit of eating locally is helping the local economy. Farmers on average receive only 20 cents of each food dollar spent, says Ikerd, the rest going for transportation, processing, packaging, refrigeration and marketing. Farmers who sell food to local customers “receive the full retail value, a dollar for each food dollar spent,” he says. Additionally, eating locally encourages the use of local farmland for farming, thus keeping development in check while preserving open space.
Portland, Oregon's EcoTrust has launched a campaign, the Eat Local Challenge, to encourage people to eat locally for a week so they can see---and taste--the benefits. The organization provides an “Eat Local Scorecard” to those willing to try. Participants must commit to spending 10 percent of their grocery budget on local foods grown within a 100-mile radius of home. In addition they are asked to try one new fruit or vegetable each day, and to freeze or otherwise preserve some food to enjoy later in the year.
EcoTrust also provides consumers with tips on how to eat locally more often. Shopping regularly at local farmers' markets or farmstands tops the list. Also, locally owned grocery and natural foods stores and coops are much more likely than supermarkets to stock local foods. The Local Harvest website provides a comprehensive national directory of farmers' markets, farm stands and other locally grown food sources.
CONTACTS: Center for a New American Dream, www.newdream.org/consumer/farmersmarkets.php ; EcoTrust Eat Local Challenge, www.eatlocal.net ; Local Harvest, www.localharvest.orgDear EarthTalk : What is the best eco-friendly vehicle choice for those of us who need a pickup or SUV? We are about to replace two older trucks with one that is more fuel-efficient. -- Barbara Roemer, via e-mail
Fuel efficiency has not typically been the calling card of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles (SUVs). Small hybrid gasoline-electrics are all the rage now among commuters looking to save money at the pump, but similar technology has been slower to gain traction in the “light truck” category. Carmakers have made strides in recent years, though, to meet growing demand for vehicles of all kinds that will sip and not gulp.
Currently, General Motors is the only carmaker offering hybrid pickups. Hybrid versions of its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 4x4s have been available since 2005, and get about 18 miles per gallon (mpg)/city and 21/highway. The non-hybrid versions get 15/19 mpg, but cost $1,500 less. GM claims that those paying the hybrid premium will get back that extra investment in fuel savings over three to five years.
Toyota reportedly has plans for hybridizing its full-size pickup line, too. The company recently unveiled its FTX concept truck, a large 4x4 hybrid pickup, hinting that technology developed for the project will likely end up in its current full-size Tundra pickup. But no such models have hit showrooms yet, and Toyota remains mum about a release date. Meanwhile, industry analysts have been picking up chatter about a hybrid version of Honda's popular Ridgeline pickup, but the company has yet to publicly announce plans.
Regarding fuel-efficient SUVs, consumers have a few more choices. Ford currently leads the charge with its Escape Hybrid model, a smaller SUV that gets 36/31 mpg. Ford makes similar SUV hybrids under its Mercury and Mazda brands. Meanwhile, Toyota's mid-sized Highlander Hybrid SUV clocks in at 32/27 mpg, while the similar Lexus RX 400 Hybrid gets 33/28 mpg. All these vehicles post significantly better fuel efficiency ratings than their non-hybrid counterparts, but also cost more up front.
If you're looking to purchase a new hybrid-electric car or truck in the U.S. before the end of 2007 you may qualify for a healthy tax credit, depending on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a 2007 4WD Chevrolet Silverado or GMC Sierra hybrid pickup would garner a tax credit worth $650 (2WD versions qualify for a $250 credit), and the new 2WD Ford Escape Hybrid and Toyota's Highlander Hybrid each qualify for a whopping $2,600 credit. Buyers of the 2007 Lexus RX 400h can count on getting $2,200 back. The credits are limited to the first 60,000 sold, though, so if you're looking to jump on the hybrid bandwagon you should run, not walk, to the nearest showroom.
Replacing an older truck with a newer model--especially a hybrid--will almost always guarantee better fuel economy, but it might not be the most environmentally sensitive way to go, all things considered. Some experts would argue for keeping the old truck, and fixing and tuning it up, thus preventing another new vehicle from hitting the roads while an old one clogs up the junkyard. Repairing an old vehicle is usually cheaper than buying a new one, though it is difficult to quantify the cost of ongoing maintenance hassles.
CONTACTS: IRS Hybrid Vehicle Tax Credits, www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=157632,00.html ; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Fuel Economy Information, www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/ .Dear EarthTalk : I heard that using a solar powered water heater in my home would reduce my CO2 emissions significantly. Is this true? And what are the costs?
-- Anthony Gerst, Wapello, IA
According to mechanical engineers at the University of Wisconsin's Solar Energy Laboratory, an average four-person household with an electric water heater needs about 6,400 kilowatt hours of electricity per year to heat their water. Assuming the electricity is generated by a typical power plant with an efficiency of around 30 percent, it means that the average electric water heater is responsible for about eight tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, which is almost double that emitted by a typical modern automobile.
The same family of four using either a natural gas or oil-fired water heater will contribute about two tons of CO2 emissions annually in heating their water.
Surprising as it may seem, analysts believe that the annual total CO2 produced by residential water heaters throughout North America is roughly equal to that produced by all of the cars and light trucks driving around the continent. Another way of looking at it is: If half of all households used solar water heaters, the reduction in CO2 emissions would be the same as doubling the fuel-efficiency of all cars.
And that might not be such a tall order. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), there are 1.5 million solar water heaters already in use in U.S. homes and businesses. Systems can work in any climate and EESI estimates that 40 percent of all U.S. homes have sufficient access to sunlight such that 29 million additional solar heaters could be installed right now.
Another great reason to make the switch is a financial one. According to the EESI, residential solar water heating systems cost between $1,500 and $3,500 compared to $150 to $450 for electric and gas heaters. With savings in electricity or natural gas, solar water heaters pay for themselves within four to eight years. They last between 15 and 40 years--the same as conventional systems--so after that initial payback period is up, zero energy cost essentially means having free hot water for years to come.
What's more, in 2005 the U.S. began offering homeowners tax credits of up to 30 percent (capped at $2,000) of the cost of installing a solar water heater. The credit is not available for swimming pool or hot tub heaters, and the system must be certified by the Solar Rating and Certification Corporation.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy's “Consumer's Guide to Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency,” zoning and building codes relating to the installation of solar water heaters usually reside at the local level, so consumers should be sure to research the standards for their own communities and hire a certified installer familiar with local requirements. Homeowners beware: Most municipalities require a building permit for the installation of a solar hot water heater onto an existing house.
For Canadians looking to get into solar water heating, the Canadian Solar Industries Association maintains a list of certified solar water heater installers, and Natural Resources Canada makes its informative booklet “Solar Water Heating Systems: A Buyer's Guide” available as a free download on their website.
CONTACTS: U.S. Department of Energy, www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/ ; Natural Resources Canada, www.canren.gc.ca/app/filerepository/AC5201041AFA42A1BFD51EA128F787CF.pdf .Dear EarthTalk : Now that autumn is here the leaves are going to pile up in my yard again. Is it really that bad to burn them? Why is it illegal to burn leaves in so many places now? -- Jeffrey Edwards, Westport, CT
Burning fallen leaves used to be standard practice across North America, but most municipalities now ban or discourage the incendiary practice due to the air pollution it causes. The good news is that many towns and cities now offer curbside pickup of leaves and other yard waste, which they then turn into compost for park maintenance or for sale commercially. And there are other burn-free options as well.
Because of the moisture that is usually trapped within leaves, they tend to burn slowly and thus generate large amounts of airborne particulates--fine bits of dust, soot and other solid materials. According to Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, these particulates can reach deep into lung tissue and cause coughing, wheezing, chest pain, shortness of breath and sometimes long-term respiratory problems.
Leaf smoke may also contain hazardous chemicals such as carbon monoxide, which can bind with the hemoglobin in the bloodstream and reduce the amount of oxygen in the blood and lungs accordingly. Another noxious chemical commonly present in leaf smoke is benzo(a)pyrene, which has been shown to cause cancer in animals and is believed to be a major factor in lung cancer caused by cigarette smoke. And while breathing in leaf smoke can irritate the eyes, nose and throat of healthy adults, it can really wreak havoc on small children, the elderly and people with asthma or other lung or heart diseases.
Sporadic individual leaf fires usually don't cause any major pollution, but multiple fires in one geographic area can cause concentrations of air pollutants that exceed federal air quality standards. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), several leaf and yard waste fires burning simultaneously in a particular locale can cause air pollution rivaling that from factories, motor vehicles and lawn equipment.
Purdue University consumer horticulture specialist Rosie Lerner says that composting leaves is the most eco-friendly alternative to burning. Dry leaves alone will take a long time to break down, she says, but mixing in green plant materials, such as grass trimmings, will speed up the process. Sources of nitrogen, such as livestock manure or commercial fertilizer, will also help. “Mix the pile occasionally to keep a good supply of air in the compost,” she says, adding that a compost pile should be a minimum of three cubic feet and will generate soil conditioner within weeks or a few months, depending on conditions.
Another option is to shred leaves for use as mulch for your lawn or to help protect garden and landscape plants. Lerner suggests adding no more than a two-to-three-inch layer of leaves around actively growing plants, chopping or shredding the leaves first so they don't matt down and prevent air from reaching roots.
As to using leaves as mulch for your lawn, it is just a simple matter of mowing right over the leaves with the lawnmower and leaving them there. As with leaves used for garden mulch, this will provide many benefits, including weed suppression, moisture conservation and moderation of soil temperature.
CONTACTS: U.S. EPA Residential Leaf Burning Facts, http://es.epa.gov/techinfo/facts/leafburn.html ; “Composting for Beginners,” www.plowhearth.com/magazine/compost_how_to.asp .
Dear EarthTalk : Is there a connection between Mad Cow Disease and Alzheimer's?
-- Jon Luongo, Brooklyn, NY
Despite limited evidence, some researchers fear that just such a connection might exist. In his 2004 book, Brain Trust , biochemist Colm Kelleher argues that Mad Cow Disease (also known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE) has actually been in North American cattle since long before 1993 when the first case was publicly “discovered” in a beef cow in Canada's Alberta province.
According to Kelleher's research, undocumented cases date back at least a quarter century and may have tainted many a steak and hamburger already consumed. Further, Kelleher speculates that the infectious “prion” proteins that cause Mad Cow Disease and its brain-wasting human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), could be a factor in the substantial increase in cases of Alzheimer's disease in recent years.
Some other research bears out Kelleher's claims; though blaming all of the increase in Alzheimer's on rampant prions might be pushing it. Dr. Michael Greger, Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, cites several studies detailing that as much as 12 percent of all senile dementia or Alzheimer's cases diagnosed in North America these days may actually be cases of CJD.
“It would seem CJD is seriously underdiagnosed at present,” says Greger. He goes on to describe how the symptoms and pathology of both Alzheimer's and CJD overlap. Also, he points to epidemiological evidence suggesting that people eating red meat more than four times a week for prolonged periods have a three times higher chance of suffering dementia than long-time vegetarians.
“We don't know exactly what's happening to the rate of CJD in this country, in part because CJD is not an official illness,” says Greger, explaining that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does not actively monitor incidences of the disease. He adds that several clusters of CJD outbreaks have been reported across the continent in recent years and stresses that more studies need to be done to determine just how many of the five million North Americans with Alzheimer's-like symptoms might actually have CJD.
Regardless, nutritionists hardly need more evidence about the potentially negative health effects of eating red meat. For starters, the saturated animal fat in red meat contributes to heart disease and atherosclerosis. Recent research also shows that frequent red meat eaters face twice the risk of colon cancer as those who indulge less often. Red meat is also thought to increase the risks of rheumatoid arthritis and endometriosis.
Meanwhile, according to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarian diets can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, colon cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, obesity and other debilitating medical conditions. While red meat is a key source of protein and vitamin B12 in North American diets, nutritionists explain that properly planned meat-free diets easily provide these important nutrients while keeping you healthier in the long run.
CONTACTS: Brain Trust, www.colmkelleher.com ; American Dietetic Association, www.eatright.org .Dear EarthTalk : Now that the school year is starting, how can I pack lunches for my kids that are less wasteful of packaging? -- Maryellen, via e-mail
When kids open their lunchboxes after a hard morning of the three Rs (readin', ‘ritin' and ‘rithmetic), they hardly expect to be learning about the other three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle). But parents can use the lunch they pack for the kids as a green lesson--if, that is, they can only hold off on the convenient but wasteful single-use paper napkins, plastic baggies and cutlery, and the pre-packaged foods and juice boxes.
We've all come to depend upon such throwaways to keep us moving speedily through each day, and it is difficult to resist those temptations jutting out at us in the supermarket aisles (especially if we bring the kids shopping with us!). But such conveniences come at an environmental cost as our landfills clog up with plastic and our garbage incinerators continue to belch out hazardous emissions.
So how are parents to “do the right thing?”
Enter Amy Hemmert and Tammy Pelstring, two California moms who were appalled to learn that a typical American school kid generates 67 pounds of discarded lunchbox packaging waste per school year. That's more than 18,000 pounds yearly for the average sized elementary school.
Hemmert and Pelstring began networking with other parents who shared their concerns, and quickly hit upon the “no-brainer” that by switching to reusable lunch containers, cloth napkins, stainless-steel forks and spoons, and refillable drink containers--not to mention eschewing the “Lunchables” and other unhealthy-to-boot prepared meals--they could eliminate their kids' lunch waste altogether.
They also discovered it was a great way to save money, as the costs of single-use disposables like juice boxes adds up quickly in relation to those of doling juice into plastic screw-top “sippie” cups out of half-gallon containers. Sure, some of the silverware and containers never make it back home, but that's a small “one step back” against the “two steps forward” of saving hundreds of dollars per child per school year.
Waste-free lunches also save schools time and money, as less waste cuts down on the frequency of trips to the outside dumpster and on the amount of trash that needs to be hauled away. “If every American child attending a public elementary school packed a waste-free lunch, 1.2 billion pounds of lunch waste would be diverted from landfills each year,” says Hemmert. “Landfills would last longer, and children would learn the importance of protecting the planet,” she adds.
Hemmert and Pelstring, who met in 1995 as members of a mothers group, went on to be good friends and jogging partners and, in 2002, launched a company, Obentec, specializing in the production of stylish reusable and modular lunch containers called Laptop Lunches, fashioned after Asian Bento boxes. The company also produces a free monthly newsletter, the Laptop Lunch Times , which includes lunch recipe suggestions, packing tips and links to related websites.
CONTACTS: Waste-Free Lunches, www.wastefreelunches.org ; Obentec, www.laptoplunches.com .Dear EarthTalk : How can I reduce the amount of paper bills that arrive at my home?
-- Bill C., via e-mail
Fortunately for the world's dwindling forests, a growing number of financial institutions, utilities and universities are implementing paperless billing options that not only save paper, but time and money, too.
Students at hundreds of educational institutions across North America are already receiving and paying their tuition bills online, avoiding the hassle of receiving paper bills and paying by mail, while also saving their schools hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in paper, postage and administrative costs.
Forward-thinking companies already offering their customers similar options include Bank of America, BellSouth, Citibank, Qwest, South Carolina Electric & Gas, Southern California Edison, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual, among many others.
BellSouth offers “e-bills” that you can print out any time but don't have to. With the click of a mouse you can view your bill, access details and billing history, and make secure payments. You can pre-schedule so that each monthly bill gets paid on time, or set it up so that funds are remitted only when you authorize it. Southern California Edison's Online Billing and Payment service involves the same routine, with no paper exchange needed between company and consumer, and no need to print out your bills. Both companies send e-mail notices to let you know each time a new bill has been tendered.
At least two companies, PayTrust and XPress Bill Pay, will coordinate the receipt of all of your bills and present them to you online so you can pay any and all routinely from your desktop, even with different bank accounts, and using credit or debit cards or electronic funds transfer. The company lauds this service as one step removed (and paper saved) from “bill pay” services that still require you to “watch your mailbox, collect your bills on the kitchen table and remember to make a payment.”
“Electronic bill presentment and payment via the Internet is one of the fastest-growing areas in business,” says Nick Rini, a columnist for Telephony , a trade magazine for communications service providers. “With more than 63 billion checks written annually where 80 percent is some sort of bill payment--either business-to-business or consumer-to business--substantial cash-management benefits and customer-service opportunities exist for those who use interactive billing and payment,” he adds.
One advantage of paperless billing, says Rini, is that companies can get paid faster than when they must print, fold, stuff, meter, sort and mail paper bills. Rini estimates that, in the U.S. alone, companies could save $200 million collectively each day if they switched to paperless billing.
“The obvious cost savings come from decreasing, and eventually eliminating, printing and mailing expenses,” says Rini, adding that companies usually pay between 75 cents and $2.00 for each document generated and mailed. Meanwhile, the same companies end up paying another $1.25 for each paper check payment they must process, most if not all of which could be eliminated through online bill payment.
CONTACTS: PayTrust, www.paytrust.com ; XPress Bill Pay, www.xpressbillpay.com .Dear EarthTalk : A friend of mine refuses to swim at our beach near Los Angeles because the water is too polluted. What is the status of beach pollution, and is it safe for my kids and me to take a dip? -- Oscar Jeffries, Santa Monica, CA
Pollution levels are not the same at all beaches, so local conditions dictate whether or not it is safe to swim in the ocean near you. Local officials are required by federal law to monitor coastal pollution levels and post warnings as needed. But some local water quality officials are more diligent than others, so if you have any reason to doubt the cleanliness of the beach water, it is best to stay out.
Beach pollution originates with a variety of sources, including human, animal, agricultural and industrial waste, as well as leaked motor oil and gasoline, among other contaminants flushed out to coastal regions. Swimming in contaminated beach water can expose people to harmful chemicals bacteria and viruses.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the most common illness associated with exposure to contaminated beach water is gastroenteritis, which rears its ugly head in the form of nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, diarrhea, headache and sometimes fever. Ear, eye, nose and throat infections can also ensue from swimming in polluted water. In rare cases--though not typically in the U.S. or Canada--swimmers are exposed to more serious diseases such as dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and typhoid fever.
Back in 2000, Congress called on the EPA to update its beach water health standards by 2005 to reflect increased pollution over the past 20 years--when the agency last issued standards. They missed the deadline, so in 2006 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed suit against the EPA for failing to honor its Congressional mandate. On the same day it filed suit, NRDC issued a report showing that beach closings due to hazardous bacterial contamination had jumped 50 percent in Los Angeles County last year alone. Further, across the U.S. beaches were closed or posted with health advisories 20,000 times in 2005.
According to NRDC, New Hampshire and Delaware had the cleanest ocean beaches, with contamination exceeding federal safety levels in only one percent of the samples taken. But beaches in California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island and South Carolina were in violation of existing contamination standards at least half the time water samples were taken in 2005.
NRDC acknowledges that better local monitoring may explain the increased number of closings in 2005, but warns that many beaches deemed safe according to 20-year-old standards may not actually be so. For its part, the EPA reports it will now not be able to issue updated standards until 2011.
North of the border, Canadians can worry less about contaminated ocean beaches due to less developed coastlines. But the Great Lakes that Canada shares with the U.S. are notoriously polluted and the Great Lakes Commission has been working since 2000 to reduce the amount of raw sewage and industrial pollution jeopardizing water quality there. As with swimming at ocean beaches, freshwater swimmers should always check with local water authorities before diving in.
CONTACTS: EPA Beach Pollution Info, www.epa.gov/beaches/learn/pollution.html ; NRDC Beach Pollution FAQ, www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/qttw.asp ; Great Lakes Commission, www.glc.org .Dear EarthTalk : Is it true that nothing really “biodegrades” in a landfill? -- Laura, via e-mail
Organic substances “biodegrade” when they are broken down by other living organisms (such as enzymes and microbes) into their constituent parts, and in turn recycled by nature as the building blocks for new life. The process can occur aerobically (with the aid of oxygen) or an aerobically (without oxygen). Substances break down much faster under aerobic conditions, as oxygen helps break the molecules apart.
Most landfills are fundamentally anaerobic because they are compacted so tightly and thus do not let much air in. As such, any biodegradation that does take place does so very slowly. “Typically in landfills, there's not much dirt, very little oxygen, and few if any microorganisms,” says green consumer advocate and author Debra Lynn Dadd. She cites a landfill study conducted by University of Arizona researchers that uncovered still-recognizable 25-year-old hot dogs, corncobs and grapes in landfills, as well as 50-year-old newspapers that were still readable.
Biodegradable items also may not break down in landfills if the industrial processing they went through prior to their useful days converted them into forms unrecognizable by the microbes and enzymes that facilitate biodegradation. A typical example is petroleum, which biodegrades easily and quickly in its original form, crude oil. But when petroleum is processed into plastic, it is no longer biodegradable, and as such can clog up landfills indefinitely.
Some manufacturers make claims that their products are photo degradable, which means that they will biodegrade when exposed to sunlight. A popular example is the plastic “polybag” in which many magazines now arrive protected in the mail. But the likelihood that such items will be exposed to sunlight while buried dozens of feet deep in a landfill is little to none. And if they do biodegrade at all, it is only likely to be into smaller pieces of plastic.
Some landfills are now being designed to promote biodegradation through the injection of water, oxygen, and even microbes. But these kinds of facilities are costly to create and as a result have not caught on. Another recent development involves landfills that have separate sections for compostable materials, such as food scraps and yard waste. Some analysts believe that as much as 65 percent of the waste currently sent to landfills in North America consists of such “biomass” that biodegrades rapidly and could generate a new income stream for landfills, marketable soil.
But getting people to sort their trash accordingly is another matter entirely. Indeed, paying heed to the importance of the environment's “Three Rs” (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!) is likely the best approach to solving the problems caused by our ever-growing piles of trash. With landfills around the world reaching capacity, technological fixes are not likely to make our waste disposal problems go away.
CONTACTS: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Reduce-Reuse-Recycle page; www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/reduce.htm .Dear EarthTalk : Would removing dams in the Pacific Northwest allow the wild salmon that used to thrive there return to their former abundance? -- Jake Garmey, Boston, MA
Before white settlement in the Pacific Northwest (pre-1850), each year some 10 million Pacific salmon--a so-called “silver tide”--swam up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to spawn at the streams and tributaries of their births. Native Americans feasted and derived much of their cultural awareness from the presence and cycles of these fish. Today as few as 10,000 salmon return home to the Snake River each season.
Over fishing and pollution--as well as the crossbreeding of native fish with weaker hatchery-born fish--have since taken their toll on wild salmon populations, but most analysts point to the construction of eight large hydropower dams throughout the Columbia/Snake system during the middle of the 20th century as the key factor. According to noted Pacific Northwest naturalist and writer William Dietrich, 106 salmon stocks have gone extinct from Northern California to the Canadian border since the dams were built.
According to Save Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of environmental groups and commercial and sport fishing associations, dams alone are responsible for the loss of 92 percent of salmon headed out to sea and of up to 25 percent on their way back upstream. “Fish are gone entirely from almost 40 percent of their historic rivers,” says Dietrich, who adds that most of the remaining fish are at risk, too, qualifying for full protection under the Endangered Species Act. Quite simply, the fish just cannot swim past the dams.
The idea of removing dams to restore salmon runs is not new. Environmentalists rejoiced in 1999 when Maine removed the 162-year-old Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River to allow passage for decimated stocks of Atlantic salmon. That dam was an obvious choice for removal, as it provided only 1/10th of one percent of Maine's power needs, yet strained and drained 20 percent of the state's watershed lands. In all, more than 145 dams have been removed across the U.S. since the Edwards Dam came down in 1999.
Environmentalists and biologists alike are calling for the removal of dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers, but doubt that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency responsible for developing a salmon plan, will actively promote the idea. Dams in the Pacific Northwest produce nearly seven percent of the nation's electricity without generating greenhouse gases, and the Bush administration is eager to promote hydropower as one way to reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
Meanwhile, the federal government is working to complete removal of the Elwha Dam on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula by 2008. Built a century ago to generate power, the Elwha Dam shut off 70 miles of habitat for the more than 500,000 fish that had spawned there each year. Today, just 5,000 wild Pacific salmon swim up the Elwha River and school at the base of the dam each year, looking for a way upstream that no longer exists. The success or failure of the Elwha Dam removal will certainly impact the debate about the prospects for removing other hydropower dams in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.
CONTACTS: Save Our Wild Salmon, www.wildsalmon.org ; NOAA Fisheries Service, www.nmfs.noaa.gov ; Elwha Restoration Project, www.nps.gov/olym/elwha/ .Dear EarthTalk : In a public restroom, which is the more environmentally sound and healthy option for drying your hands: a paper towel or an electric hand dryer? -- Dee Janis, Binghamton, NY
Most experts would agree that wall-mounted electric hand dryers are preferable to paper towels from an environmental standpoint. Though they do use energy, they shut off automatically and therefore don't waste energy--and they eliminate the need for paper while also keeping paper out of the waste stream.
But the answer may depend upon whom you ask. World Dryer Corporation, which supplies wall mounted dryers, prepared a study for the Topeka, Kansas public school system, which concluded that switching from paper towels to 102 of its wall-mounted dryers system-wide would save annually 587 trees, 690,000 gallons of water, 34.5 tons of solid waste, 103.5 cubic yards of landfill space, and almost $90,000 per year (including electricity costs), with less than a six-month initial payback period for the cost of installation.
Others are not so quick to give the nod to dryers, and cite sanitation as the reason. The Handwashing For Life Institute (HFL), an association of food service suppliers that includes paper makers, argues that hand dryers have “no place” in restaurant or cafeteria washrooms or in other situations where food is being handled. “Most users walk away with wet hands and wet hands transfer bacteria 500 times more readily than dry hands,” says the group's website. HFL advocates paper towels over dryers because they “remove bacteria from hands and reduce general bacterial counts by an average of 58 percent.”
Many hand washers would agree that wall dryers do not work as effectively as paper. After all, who hasn't given their hands a final swipe across a pant leg after using a hand dryer for a few minutes? California State University facilities manager Gary Homesley was one of those, but in assessing whether or not to replace paper towels with electric dryers at a campus student union, he was shocked to learn of the significant amount of resources used to make paper as well as the large amount of pollutants that paper-making was responsible for discharging into the atmosphere.
Ultimately Homesley chose the Xlerator hand dryer. The manufacturer, Excel Dryers, claims that it will dry hands in 10-15 seconds, and that it addresses the effectiveness issue with a high-velocity air stream that actually blows most of the water off the hands, leaving the thin remaining film of water to evaporate more quickly. The product is the first electric hand dryer to be awarded the Environmental Building News GreenSpec designation for conserving energy and reducing waste, and is also the first to qualify for the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
Despite the prevalence of recycled papers and the increased efficiency of electric hand dryers, it may still be disheartening to know that no matter what you are offered at the conclusion of your public restroom visit you are having some environmental impact. For those losing sleep over that, there is always the truly green fallback of carrying your own reusable washcloth.
CONTACTS: World Dryer Corporation, www.worlddryer.com/environment.html ; Handwashing For Life Institute, www.handwashingforlife.com/US/english/Integrated_solutions/paper_towel.asp ; Excel Dryer, www.exceldryer.com ; GreenSpec Directory, www.buildinggreen.com/ecommerce/gs.cfm .Dear EarthTalk : The term “sustainable” seems to be the new green buzzword. What exactly does it mean, particularly when applied to such things, say, as transportation or agriculture? -- Steve Nezhad, Portland, ME
“Sustainable,” quite simply, is the positive result of conducting economic, social or environmental activities in such a way that current needs are met without compromising the well-being of future generations. A sustainable activity also does not despoil the here and now, in part because of how it may affect the future.
For example, cars that run on oil and gasoline are unsustainable on both counts: They make use of a non-renewable resource (that is, one that will be completely depleted at some point in the future); and they pollute the environment right now. Thus they negatively impact the present-day as well as tomorrow.
What, then, is sustainable transportation? Any option that moves people or goods while impacting the environment minimally. Walking and bicycling are the most sustainable, using no energy except for leg power and consuming very little or no resources. And public transportation moves large numbers of people at once while also saving space, as one negative impact of cars is that activities tend to spread out through the process of sprawl, creating the need to travel greater distances to obtain goods or get to work.
As such, to a large extent transportation can be made more sustainable through urban design. The closer together we locate shopping and entertainment centers, the easier it is for public transport to get us there, and the less reliant we are on cars. And cars themselves can be more sustainable by running on clean fuels or on technologies, like hybrids, that use less fuel. Better yet, cars of the not-too-distant future will be powered by fuel cells, which run on hydrogen and spew no pollution. Ideally, that hydrogen will be made from water, using power from solar energy, thus creating no pollution at that point in the process, either.
In the realm of farming, sustainable agriculture in its ideal form provides a living for those who farm and supports the local community's needs while maintaining the natural ecology of the farm and its surrounding environment. According to the National Safety Center (NSC), a “sustainable” farm produces crops without damage to the farm's ecosystem, including the soil, water supplies and other adjoining resources. Sustainable agriculture is also “intergenerational,” says NSC, in that it seeks to pass on to future generations a conserved natural resource instead of one that has been depleted or polluted.
Some examples of sustainable agriculture include avoiding chemicals, rotating crops, and choosing crops that suit the climate, so as to reduce the need for chemicals and preserve the long-term fertility of the soil. In light of modern developments, some might add that avoiding genetically modified crops would also fit with the sustainable model, given the uncertainty of their impact on ecosystems and personal health.
Robert Gilman of the Context Institute defines sustainability as “extending the Golden Rule through time…Do unto future generations as you would have them do unto you.” Meanwhile, Paul Hawken of the Natural Capital Institute offers an equally concise summary: “Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.”
CONTACTS: Context Institute, www.context.org ; Natural Capital Institute, www.naturalcapital.org .Dear EarthTalk : Are there any Amway-like multi-level marketing companies that focus on environmentally friendly products? -- Dave Miller, Fresno, CA
Back in the 1950s, Amway and a handful of other consumer products companies first pioneered the concept of “multi-level marketing” (MLM). In this business model, individuals act as distributors, selling the company's products from home while also recruiting others to do the same. In doing so, they earn commissions on both their own sales and on the sales of those they recruit. In recent years, a number of MLM companies have sprouted up with environmentally friendly products as their focus.
The most well known of the crop is Shaklee, which has been selling green-friendly nutrition, personal care and household products since 1956, when research chemist Dr. Forrest Shaklee started the company. Since then, perhaps in an effort to live up to Dr. Shaklee's personal motto (“Follow the laws of nature and you'll never go wrong”), the company has wracked up a long list of eco-accomplishments. Back in 1960 it introduced the first mass marketed biodegradable cleaning product, Basic-H, an all-natural formula that has since been adopted as an official Earth Day product. More recently, Shaklee became the first independently verified “climate neutral” company in the world, offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions with investments in various renewable energy projects. And just this year, Shaklee embarked upon an ambitious campaign to plant a million trees with the help of thousands of its independent distributors.
Another big player in the green MLM field is Idaho-based Melaleuca, which has been selling natural health care, personal care and household products since 1985. The name Melaleuca is borrowed from a plant that produces organic essential oils found in many of the company's products.
Meanwhile, Amazon Herb Company offers opportunities to sell herbal remedies derived from rainforest plants. “Amazon John” Easterling, who first discovered the healing power of herbs when Shipibo Indians used them to treat him when he fell ill during a visit to the Amazon rainforest, founded the company in 1990. Another up-and-coming player is Krystal Planet, which sells compact fluorescent light bulbs, solar heaters, fuel additives and other energy saving products for home, car and office.
If you're looking to work with an MLM company, keep in mind that just because a company has good green intentions does not mean it is a good deal for you. According to Robert FitzPatrick, who runs the Pyramid Scheme Alert newsletter, less than one in a thousand MLM distributors makes a profit. The bottom line is: Do your homework. As in any business, there are reputable companies and there are bad apples. The perceived opportunity of working independently may seem too good to pass up, so get a solid idea about the work required and the actual return likely before you quit your day job.
CONTACTS: Shaklee, www.shaklee.com ; Amazon Herb, www.amazonherb.com ; Krystal Planet, www.krystal-planet.com ; Melaleuca, www.melaleuca.com ; Pyramid Scheme Alert , www.pyramidschemealert.org .Dear EarthTalk : I'm familiar with the hybrid cars now widely available, but what ever happened to the purely electric cars that were around 10 years ago? --Peter Zilly, Bellingham, WA
The main problem with the electric cars that reared their heads briefly a decade ago was their ability to only go so far on battery power. Charges lasted just 50 miles or so, so you were in trouble if you needed to go farther or ran out of juice somewhere in-between electric outlets. Hybrids, on the other hand, which have side-by-side electric and gas motors, never need to be plugged in and instead use the motions of their gas-powered engines (as well as those of the car's wheels and brakes) to keep their batteries charged at all times. And with a huge infrastructure of gas stations, refueling is always as easy as pulling over to fill up.
Electric car advocates have long touted their alternative vehicles as primarily short-distance commuter cars. At a 50-mile range, most electric cars could make such short trips without the need for recharging. One need only plug their vehicle into an electric outlet in the garage overnight to charge up the battery for the morning commute, and if needed then plug it in at the office for the return trip later.
But most people want more from their cars than just the daily commute--and gassing up takes minutes whereas re-charging takes hours--so sufficient demand never materialized. Hybrids, though they do use gasoline, are as versatile as conventional cars--and the coming “plug-in hybrids” (covered previously in this column) promise to substantially increase efficiency, to perhaps 100 miles per gallon or more, by using the electric motor exclusively for short runs and commutes and the gas engine only for long trips.
Even though all-electric vehicles are not currently in vogue, innovative engineers are busy working to improve them. Technological advances in battery life and engine efficiency mean that electric vehicles may be able to roam farther than ever before. According to EVWorld.com, drivers looking to go electric will soon have a few options:
California-based Tesla Motors will soon be accepting deposits on orders for its Tesla Roadster, and plans its first deliveries for 2007. Tesla claims its car can go 250 miles on a charge, which can even be extended further through its “regenerative braking” technology, similar to that which is employed in the hybrids.
And Spokane, Washington's Commuter Car Corporation is taking orders for its Tango 600 (a kit you have to assemble) and its Tango 100 and 200 models (fully assembled), with plans to deliver by 2007. Actor George Clooney was Commuter Car's first customer. The Tango can only go 60-80 miles on a charge, but boasts of its ability to go zero to 60 in four seconds and attain a top speed of 150 miles per hour.
Elsewhere, California-based AC Propulsion is working with Toyota on a Scion electric conversion, and Cleanova, based in France, is developing an electric Renault Kangoo, a popular European car.
One consideration to keep in mind about electric vehicles is that, if your utility is a dirty coal-fired plant, tapping that power could mean creating more pollution than driving a gasoline powered car. But progress in renewable energies may well solve that problem and help usher in a new era for electric vehicles.
CONTACTS: EVWorld, www.evworld.com ; Tesla Motors, www.teslamotors.com ; Commuter Car Corporation, www.commutercars.com .Dear EarthTalk : What are the implications of the massive thaw that is taking place right now in Western Siberia? -- Brad Arnold, St. Louis Park, MN
Russian researchers returned from an exploratory mission in Western Siberia last year to report that the world's largest frozen peat bog there, land as large as France and Germany combined, was quickly melting away “into shallow lakes.” Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Russia's Tomsk State University and the leader of the research effort, told the journal New Scientist that the situation was an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming.”
The main worry is that as much as a billion tons of methane--a “greenhouse gas” 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide--could be rapidly released from the bog, where it has been sitting harmlessly for thousands of years. This flush of methane into the atmosphere could, in turn, further warm the atmosphere.
Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost any other area of the planet, with an average temperature increase of about three degrees Celsius over the last four decades alone. Kirpotin believes that man-made climate change, combined with cyclical changes in atmospheric circulation caused by melting ice, is to blame. Similar patterns are developing in Eastern Siberia and across the Arctic stretches of Alaska.
Siberia's peat bogs formed about 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The huge bog in question is thought to contain 70 billion tons of methane, or about a quarter of all the methane stored on the Earth's surface worldwide. If it continues to thaw, as it seems likely to do, researchers fear that the methane could force a “tipping point” (point of no return) in the ability of the Earth's climate to regulate itself.
“When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable,” says climate researcher David Viner of England's University of East Anglia. “This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it is gone.”
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of climate researchers, estimated that global temperatures could rise as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, thanks to known sources of greenhouse gas emissions. According to Viner, scientists did not even anticipate the possibility of events like this when making their predictions, and how much they could add to the warming.
Environmentalists are using the Western Siberia findings to step up pressure on world leaders to take concerted action on climate change. Says Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth in the United Kingdom: “If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide. There's still time to take action, but not much.”
CONTACT: New Scientist , www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725124.500 .Dear EarthTalk : The soda bottle I'm holding only lists a few U.S. states and deposit amounts on it. Aren't more than just a few states requiring that bottles be returned for recycling? -- Calvin Terry, Castine, ME
Currently 11 American states have “bottle bill” laws on the books that require a deposit of usually five or 10 cents on beer and soda cans and bottles that can be redeemed when empties are returned to the store. The state of Oregon pioneered such legislation, passing the first U.S. bottle bill back in 1971. Hawaii has the newest one, enacted in 2002. Meanwhile, all but two of Canada's 13 provinces (the remote Northwest Territories and Nunavut) have bottle bills. As with the American laws, Canada's provinces require deposits on all beverage containers other than those containing milk.
The Container Recycling Institute (CRI), an advocacy group based in Washington, DC, works for the passage of new bottle bills and the strengthening of existing ones. According to CRI, bottle bills make sense because they encourage recycling and, in conjunction with curbside recycling programs, extend the life of landfills by keeping cans and bottles out. Indeed, recycling rates in states with bottle bills can be as much as three times higher than in states without them.
Such programs also help reduce litter. Studies have shown that beverage container legislation has reduced total roadside litter by as much as 64 percent in regions with bottle bills. Another documented benefit has been a reduction in incidences of glass laceration, simply because fewer glass bottles end up broken on sidewalks, streets and in kids' play areas. One Massachusetts study attributed a 60 percent decline in reported childhood glass lacerations once the state's bottle bill went into effect.
Despite these benefits, however, many beverage manufacturers oppose bottle bills, arguing that the five to 10 cents added to the price of their products deters customers even though the deposits are redeemable. These companies have effectively squelched bottle bills in many U.S. states through the sheer power of their lobbying efforts. Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and Pepsi and others have spent millions fighting bottle bills, complaining that such legislation duplicates community recycling programs already in place.
But CRI says the argument has been “wrongly cast in either/or terms,” that refundable deposits and curbside recycling programs are not mutually exclusive and should be part of a comprehensive approach to recycling: “If the goal is to maximize recovery of recyclables [and] reduce reliance on raw materials for manufacturing new containers…then a combination of recovery options should be employed to ensure the highest…recovery rates possible.”
Beverage sales are growing, especially bottled water and other non-carbonated drinks. And the waste has been growing as well. According to CRI, some 118 billion aluminum, glass and plastic beverage containers were discarded and not recycled in 2002 alone, more than double the number 20 years earlier. The main issue is really who should pay the costs of recycling. Refundable deposits are fair, says CRI, because they put the costs on the producers and consumers of the beverages instead of on the local communities and taxpayers.
CONTACT: Container Recycling Institute, www.container-recycling.org .
Dear EarthTalk : Is bamboo really an environmentally friendly alternative to wood for making paper? If so, why are we still cutting down trees to keep our copiers and printers humming? -- Ali Forte, via e-mail
Bamboo is a fast-growing and renewable resource, and it has long been used throughout Asia as a raw material for many goods, including paper. With North America's supply of forests now dwindling, bamboo is starting to look like a viable alternative to wood pulp to make paper for Western consumption. It has a similar consistency to wood pulp, and most existing paper mills can adapt to it with existing infrastructure.
On the other hand, clearing forests to establish bamboo plantations across the globe hardly makes environmental sense. Aaron Lehmer of ReThink Paper, a project of Earth Island Institute, calls the rapid expansion of bamboo plantations in Southeast Asia “alarming,” and says that it is “setting up a status quo whereby natural forests are increasingly being developed” for bamboo cultivation for paper.
Most of this bamboo is feeding paper mills in China and India, says Lehmer, but increasing demand from North America and Europe could deplete existing supplies and force Southeast Asian producers to push deeper into the forests. This would deplete primary habitat for hundreds of threatened species of birds, pandas, reptiles and amphibians. “Since there are no international standards or certification mechanisms in place for bamboo, neither paper producers nor consumers have any way of knowing whether the bamboo they purchase is coming from endangered ecosystems,” he adds.
According to the World Bamboo Organization, a trade group, 12 million acres of bamboo reserves exist across Asia today. If demand for bamboo were to increase, Lehmer says, surely the environment in these areas would suffer. Indeed, environmentalists in India are already crying foul over government-subsidized bamboo extraction from that country's supposedly protected forests, including the world-renowned Nagarjunasagar Tiger Reserve, one of the last suitable habitats in the world for the big endangered cats.
ReThink Paper would rather see North American paper producers convert existing mills to process locally generated agricultural waste, such as wheat or rice straw. These are usually plentiful and inexpensive, and paper companies could reap significant financial benefit getting raw material from local farmers eager to offload otherwise unmarketable “biomass” waste. This makes eminent environmental sense, too, says Lehmer, compared to importing bamboo chips from far away on planes, trains, ships and trucks that emit tons of climate-altering carbon dioxide en route.
The debate over papermaking reminds us that modern society has yet to go “paperless” as many predicted we would. But our inability to achieve that goal as yet doesn't make efforts to cut back worthless. Everyone can do their part at home, school and office to reduce paper usage, even if only one sheet at a time.
CONTACTS: ReThink Paper, www.rethinkpaper.org ; World Bamboo Organization, www.world-bamboo.org .Dear EarthTalk: Can you explain what “hormone disrupting” chemicals are, how they affect our health and what they have to do with environmental problems?
-- Tom Rose, Oakland, CA
Many of the human body's process, including reproduction, mental processing and metabolism, are controlled and regulated by hormones, chemical “messengers” produced by the endocrine glands. In the embryo and fetus, hormones guide the development of the brain, the nervous and immune systems, the sexual organs, and the liver, blood and kidneys, among other organs and tissue.
Hormones work by attaching to “receptors,” molecules on cell surfaces that carry information into the cells, triggering certain actions. In recent years, scientists have found that certain man-made chemicals disrupt this process by blocking it altogether, throwing off the timing--or by actually mimicking natural hormones and binding with the cells themselves. Such chemicals have been dubbed “hormone disruptors.”
Since the 1940s thousands of chemicals have been released into our air, water and food. Chemicals now contaminate virtually every corner of the globe, and the average person has over 100 chemicals in his or her body. In one study of pregnant women, the average woman had 286 chemicals in her fetal blood.
Many of the worst chemicals have been banned or phased out, but they continue to linger in the environment and will no doubt do so for centuries to come. Among the worst culprits in hormone disruption are: PCBs, used heavily in the electrical industries until banned in 1978; phthalates, still widely used in the plastics industry; and dioxin, one of the most hazardous of all chemicals, a byproduct of paper-bleaching, waste incineration and coal-burning, among other industrial activities.
The effects of this growing “chemical soup” were first noticed in wildlife. Alligators in Florida's Lake Apopka, for example, have been unable to reproduce in recent years due to underdevelopment in young males. North Sea seals exposed to synthetic chemicals have also developed reproductive problems as well as suppressed immune systems. And gull colonies in California and elsewhere suffered significant population losses after exposure to chemicals interfered with their reproductive capabilities.
According to Our Stolen Future , co-authored by Dr. Theo Colburn of the World Wildlife Fund, former Boston Globe reporter Dianne Dumanoski and Dr. J.P. Myers, now Senior Advisor to the United Nations Foundation, numerous human health problems also owe their origin to hormone disrupting chemicals. They include low sperm count and increased testicular and prostate cancers among men, and increased rates of breast cancer, endometriosis and tubal pregnancies in women. “What we're talking about is an overall low-dose exposure and a cumulative effect,” says Holly Lucille, author of Creating and Maintaining Balance: A Woman's Guide to Safe, Natural Hormone Health .
With so many chemicals permeating our environment, it is almost impossible to attribute specific health problems to specific substances. Individuals can hedge their bets by eating organic and choosing personal care and household products that avoid chemicals. They can also pressure their elected representatives as well as business leaders to work to reduce the amount of pervasive chemicals in the environment.
CONTACT: Our Stolen Future , www.ourstolenfuture.org .Dear EarthTalk : What is better for the environment, cork wine stoppers, or plastic or screw tops? -- Susan Wolniakowski, Duluth, MN
Though you might be surprised, natural cork wine stoppers are the best choice, primarily because harvesting the real stuff is an age-old practice that keeps the world's relatively small population of cork oak trees, which can live for hundreds of years, alive. These scattered pockets of cork oaks, mostly in Portugal and Spain, thrive in the hot, arid conditions of the southern Mediterranean, sheltering a wide array of biodiversity and helping to protect the soil from drying out.
In addition, some wildlife depends upon cork oak forests for their survival, including the Iberian lynx and the Barbary deer, as well as rare birds such as the Imperial Iberian eagle, the black stork and the Egyptian mongoose. As wine producers switch to other types of wine stoppers, the cork oak forests could be abandoned and the trees and the myriad plants and animals that depend on them could die out.
While 70 percent of wine bottles still contain natural cork stoppers, plastic and glass alternatives have been coming on strong in recent years. Indeed, more and more winemakers around the world are switching to alternatives, citing benefits including the avoidance of cork mold that can taint wine and the ability to more easily re-close opened bottles. In Australia and New Zealand--both promising upstarts on the global wine scene--the majority of wine producers use screw caps, mainly because they can make them cheaply instead of paying the relatively high price of importing the natural cork.
But the increasing popularity around the world of screw caps and plastic stoppers has cork producers and environmentalists alike worried. In a recent report, “Cork Screwed,” the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) predicts that, at the current rate of adoption by wine producers, screw caps and other synthetic non-cork wine stoppers will dominate the market by 2015, calling into question the future of Mediterranean cork forests. In order to stem the tide, the organization is supporting efforts by Portuguese cork producers to certify their practices as sustainable by the non-profit Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which promotes sustainable, economically-viable forestry practices around the world.
“Cork oak forests rank among the top biodiversity hotspots in the Mediterranean and in Europe. At the same time, they are the backbone of an entire economy,” says Nora Berrahmouni, coordinator of WWF's Cork Oak Landscapes program. “FSC certification will reinforce the already environmentally friendly characteristics of the cork economy, leading to new opportunities in cork markets,” she adds.
Public opinion will undoubtedly be what calls the day, and producers of plastic stoppers and metal screw caps are working hard to overcome the stigma associated with using their products, as most consumers still associate non-cork stoppers with cheap wine. For now, the world's premiere winemakers in Europe are still bullish on the cork reserves in their own backyards. And wine enthusiasts everywhere can do their part to help the environment by choosing wines with natural cork stoppers.
CONTACTS: Forest Stewardship Council, www.fsc.org/en/whats_new/news/news_notes/23 ; “Cork Screwed,” http://assets.panda.org/downloads/cork_rev12_print.pdf.Dear EarthTalk : What are the health and environmental issues associated with the noise and air pollution at airports? -- John Cermak, via e-mail
Researchers have known for years that exposure to excessively-loud noise can cause changes in blood pressure as well as changes in sleep and digestive patterns--all signs of stress on the human body. The very word “noise” itself derives from the Latin word “noxia,” which means injury or hurt.
On a 1997 questionnaire distributed to two groups--one living near a major airport, and the other in a quiet neighborhood--two-thirds of those living near the airport indicated they were bothered by aircraft noise, and most said that it interfered with their daily activities. The same two-thirds complained more than the other group of sleep difficulties, and also perceived themselves as being in poorer health.
Perhaps even more alarming, the European Commission, which governs the European Union (E.U.), considers living near an airport to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease and stroke, as increased blood pressure from noise pollution can trigger these more serious maladies. The E.U. estimates that 20 percent of Europe's population--or about 80 million people--are exposed to airport noise levels it considers unhealthy and unacceptable.
Airport noise can also have negative effects on children's health and development. A 1980 study examining the impact of airport noise on children's health found higher blood pressure in kids living near Los Angeles' LAX airport than in those living farther away. A 1995 German study found a link between chronic noise exposure at Munich's International Airport and elevated nervous system activity and cardiovascular levels in children living nearby. And a 2005 study published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet , found that kids living near airports in Britain, Holland and Spain lagged behind their classmates in reading by two months for every five decibel increase above average noise levels in their surroundings. The study also associated aircraft noise with lowered reading comprehension, even after socio-economic differences were considered.
Living near an airport also means facing significant exposure to air pollution. Jack Saporito of the U.S. Citizens Aviation Watch Association (CAW), a coalition of concerned municipalities and advocacy groups, cites several studies linking pollutants common around airports--such as diesel exhaust, carbon monoxide and leaked chemicals--to cancer, asthma, liver damage, lung disease, lymphoma, myeloid leukemia, and even depression. CAW is lobbying for the clean up of jet engine exhaust as well as the scrapping or modification of airport expansion plans across the country.
Another group working on this issue is Chicago's Alliance of Residents Concerning O'Hare, which lobbies and conducts extensive public education campaigns in an effort to cut noise and pollution and rein in expansion plans at the world's busiest airport. According to the group, five million area residents may be suffering adverse health effects as a result of O'Hare, only one of four major airports in the region.
CONTACTS: Alliance of Residents Concerning O'Hare, www.areco.org ; U.S. Citizens Aviation Watch Association, www.us-caw.org .Dear EarthTalk: Do fireworks celebrations cause any significant pollution? -- David Hiebert, Scottdale, PA
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the fireworks displays that go on around the U.S. every Fourth of July are still typically propelled by the ignition of gunpowder--a technological innovation that pre-dates the American Revolution itself. And the fall-out from these exhibitions includes a variety of toxic pollutants that rain down on neighborhoods from coast to coast, often in violation of federal Clean Air Act standards.
Depending on the effect sought, fireworks produce smoke and dust that contain various heavy metals, sulfur-coal compounds and other noxious chemicals. Barium, for instance, is used to produce brilliant green colors in fireworks displays, despite being poisonous and radioactive. Copper compounds are used to produce blue colors, even though they contain dioxin, which has been linked to cancer. Cadmium, lithium, antimony, rubidium, strontium, lead and potassium nitrate are also commonly used to produce different effects, even though they can cause a host of respiratory and other health problems.
The chemicals and heavy metals used in fireworks also take their toll on the environment, sometimes contributing to water supply contamination and even acid rain. Their use also deposits physical litter on the ground and into water bodies for miles around. As such, some U.S. states and local governments restrict the use of fireworks in accordance with guidelines set by the Clean Air Act . The American Pyrotechnics Association provides a free online directory of state laws across the U.S. regulating the use of fireworks.
Of course, fireworks displays are not limited to U.S. Independence Day celebrations. Fireworks use is increasing in popularity around the world, including in countries without strict air pollution standards. According to The Ecologist , millennium celebrations in 2000 caused environmental pollution worldwide, filling skies over populated areas with “carcinogenic sulphur compounds and airborne arsenic.”
Not usually known for championing environmental causes, the Walt Disney Company has pioneered new technology using environmentally benign compressed air instead of gunpowder to launch fireworks. Disney puts on hundreds of dazzling fireworks displays every year at its various resort properties in the U.S. and Europe, but hopes its new technology will have beneficial impact on the pyrotechnics industry worldwide. The company has made the details of new patents it has filed for the technology available to the pyrotechnics industry at large with the hope that other companies will also green up their offerings.
While Disney's technological breakthrough is no doubt a step in the right direction, many environmental and public safety advocates would rather see the Fourth of July and other holidays and events celebrated without the use of pyrotechnics. Parades and block parties are some obvious alternatives. Meanwhile, laser light shows can wow a crowd without the negative environmental side effects associated with fireworks.
CONTACTS: American Pyrotechnics Association, www.americanpyro.com/State%20Laws%20(main)/statelaws.html ; Walt Disney Company, http://corporate.disney.go.com/environmentality/press_releases/2004/2004_0628.html .Dear EarthTalk : What have been the most significant environmental impacts of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans? -- Samantha Gray, Tacoma, WA
Perhaps the longest-lasting impact of Hurricane Katrina was its environmental damage that, in real terms, has mainly to do with public health. Significant amounts of industrial waste and raw sewage spilled directly into New Orleans neighborhoods. And oil spills from offshore rigs, coastal refineries, and even corner gas stations have also made their way into residential areas and business districts throughout the region.
Analysts estimate that seven million gallons of oil spilled throughout the region. The U.S. Coast Guard says that much of the spilled oil has been cleaned up or “naturally dispersed,” but environmentalists fear that the initial contamination could devastate the region's biodiversity and ecological health for many years to come, further devastating the region's already ailing fisheries, once the economic lifeblood of the area.
Meanwhile, flooding at five “Superfund” sites (heavily polluted industrial sites slated for federal cleanup), and the wholesale destruction along the already infamous “Cancer Alley” industrial corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, have only served to complicate matters for clean-up officials. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers Katrina the biggest disaster it has ever had to handle.
Household hazardous wastes, pesticides, heavy metals and other toxic chemicals also created a witch's brew of floodwater that quickly seeped down into and contaminated groundwater across hundreds of miles. “The range of toxic chemicals that may have been released is extensive,” says Johns Hopkins University environmental health sciences professor Lynn Goldman. “We're talking about metals, persistent chemicals, solvents, materials that have numerous potential health impacts over the long term.”
According to Hugh Kaufman, an EPA senior policy analyst, environmental regulations in place to prevent the types of discharges that occurred during Katrina were not enforced, making what would have been a bad situation much worse. Unchecked development throughout ecologically sensitive parts of the region put further stress on the environment's ability to absorb and disperse noxious chemicals. “Folks down there were living on borrowed time and, unfortunately, time ran out with Katrina,” Kaufman concludes.
To date, recovery efforts have focused on plugging leaks in levies, clearing debris and repairing water and sewer systems. Officials cannot say when they will be able to concentrate on longer-term issues such as treating contaminated soil and groundwater, though the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun a Herculean effort to physically remove tons of contaminated sediment left behind by receding floodwaters. Meanwhile, financially strapped state and local agencies are slowly cleaning up or removing contaminated buildings, many of which harbor mold and viruses that can still make people sick.
But just as some of these longer-term remediation projects are getting started, the Gulf Coast is battening down the hatches for what promises to be another whopper of a hurricane season this summer and fall, fueled in part by increasing ocean temperatures due to global warming.
CONTACTS: EPA's Response to 2005 Hurricanes Website, www.epa.gov/katrina ; “The Toxic Legacy of Hurricane Katrina,” www.emagazine.com/?issue=125&toc .Dear EarthTalk : Why do modern bacteria “resist” antibiotics, confounding medical treatment? -- Hugo Mestres, Seattle, WA
Antibiotics have played a profoundly important role in staving off bacterial infections since Alexander Fleming first discovered them in 1927. But the effectiveness of these so-called miracle drugs has waned in recent years as some of the very bacteria they are meant to control have been mutating into new forms that don't respond to treatment. Many medical experts blame this phenomenon on both the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in recent years in both human medicine and in agriculture.
Doctors first noticed antibiotic resistance more than a decade ago when children with middle ear infections stopped responding to them. Penicillin as a treatment for strep has also become increasingly less effective. And a recently-discovered strain of staph bacteria does not respond to antibiotic treatments at all, leading medical analysts to worry that certain “super bugs” could emerge that are resistant to even the most potent drugs, rendering some infections incurable. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls antibiotic resistance one of its “top concerns” and “one of the world's most pressing health problems.”
One large part of the problem, according to the CDC, is the tendency for people to take antibiotics to fight viruses, which they cannot do. Antibiotics fight bacteria, not viruses, and will not fight colds, flu, bronchitis, runny noses, or sore throats not due to strep. Nonetheless, says CDC, “more than 10 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed each year for viral conditions that do not benefit from antibiotics.” To address this, a growing number of doctors, including Dr. Randel Cardott, an internist with Iowa's Genesis Convenient Care, are advocating a “wait-and-see” approach to prescribing antibiotics, especially in cases like middle ear infections that sometimes prove to be viral and not bacterial in origin. Cardott says that European physicians have taken this approach for years with no adverse effects.
Scaling back on antibiotics for human maladies won't address the whole problem. Farmers and ranchers use antibiotics heavily, too. In North America, industrial beef, pig and poultry farming is a big unsanitary business, and antibiotics are used extensively to ward off diseases and also for non-medical reasons, such as to promote growth. In fact, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a non-profit research and advocacy group, estimates that some 70 percent of all antibiotics are used as additives in the feed given to healthy pigs, poultry and cattle. These drugs leave the animals' bodies as waste and work their way into local water supplies, as well as right into the food chain. “Nonetheless,” says UCS, “agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry are fighting hard to thwart restrictions on the use of antibiotics in agriculture.”
Keep Antibiotics Working, a non-profit dedicated to reducing antibiotics overuse in agriculture, advocates phasing out unnecessary antibiotics in healthy livestock and poultry. In lieu of Congressional action along these lines, the group is encouraging meat wholesalers and retailers to voluntarily stop buying or selling meat that has been produced using antibiotics for purposes other than treating sick animals. Consumers looking to avoid antibiotics in meat should seek out organic offerings at natural foods markets.
CONTACTS: UCS, www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/antibiotics_and_food/ ; Keep Antibiotics Working, www.keepantibioticsworking.com .Dear EarthTalk : Do houseplants really help to clean indoor air? -- Jackson Schlemmer, London, England
One positive result of the 1970s energy crisis was the development and widespread adoption of improved insulation materials to maintain indoor energy efficiency. Unfortunately, however, many of these materials have compromised indoor air quality due to their tendency to “off-gas” various airborne toxins, including formaldehyde, trichloroethylene (TCE), benzene and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Much of the synthetic carpeting, upholstery and paint used indoors also contain sometimes noxious gases that get trapped inside air-tight homes and offices and which can build up gradually over time. And most synthetic air fresheners only make matters worse, adding even more harmful VOCs to the indoor air. With most people spending upwards of 90 percent of their time indoors, it may be no coincidence that cases of asthma and other respiratory diseases have been on the rise in recent years.
The unlikely hero in this scenario may in fact be the humble houseplant. In a landmark 1984 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) study, initially commissioned to find ways to clean air in space bases and vehicles, researcher Bill Wolverton found that some common houseplants actually cleaned polluted indoor air. He found that philodendrons and golden pothos excelled at stripping formaldehyde from the air, gerbera daisies and chrysanthemums wiped out excessive amounts of indoor benzene, and pot mums and peace lilies absorbed a toxic degreasing solvent known as TCE.
A later NASA study, also conducted by Wolverton, saw houseplants removing up to 87 percent of toxic indoor air within 24 hours. And a 1994 German study reported that one spider plant could cleanse a small room of formaldehyde in just six hours. Further, English ivy, bamboo palm and snake plants have been shown to be effective in removing cigarette smoke as well as noxious odors from carpeting and chemical-laden household cleaners.
Just how can a houseplant be so good at cleansing the air? The reason lies in its basic ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the air while releasing oxygen as part of the photosynthetic process. Houseplants are essentially doing indoors what other plants and trees ordinarily do outdoors.
To maximize the benefits of houseplants in cleaning indoor air, it is generally recommended to use one plant for every 100 square feet of indoor space. Besides those plants mentioned above, other good indoor air cleaners include palms, ferns, dracaenas, corn plants, weeping figs, dumb canes, orchids, arrowheads, dwarf bananas and Chinese evergreens.
For its part, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends opening the windows and letting in some good old-fashioned fresh air as the best antidote to breathing in off-gassed airborne toxins in both homes and offices. But many modern buildings do not permit such exchanges between indoor and outdoor air, and it is in just these situations where houseplants can really make the difference.
CONTACT: Plant-Care.com; www.plant-care.com/indoor-plants-clean-air-1.html .Dear EarthTalk : Can old tires be recycled? If so, where, and what is the recycled material used for? -- George, Rockville, MD
Old tires can indeed be recycled, and thanks to concerted efforts by state and provincial governments from coast-to-coast, as many as 80 percent of them are these days across North America. While some of these old tires are remanufactured into new tires, others are used in a wide variety of applications including railroad ties, rubber-modifiedasphalt, athletic surfaces, insulation, plastic/rubber blends used in a variety of products, even fuel.
The world's first tires were made entirely out of natural rubber, but the Southeast Asian forests where the plants grew could only produce so much. By World War II most tires were composed primarily of synthetic rubber made from petroleum products. Up until the 1960s, tires were routinely recycled and broken down for use in making new tires. But when imported oil got cheaper, demand for recycled synthetic rubber fell, and caches of old tires with nowhere to go -- most landfills won't accept them -- began to sully landscapes across North America. These old tire stockpiles became havens for pests and mosquitoes, and would even occasionally burst into flames and belch noxious chemicals into the air.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, state and provincial governments in the U.S. and Canada led the charge in mandating and funding tire recycling efforts. In doing so they helped spur the markets for reprocessed synthetic rubber that exist today. Now thousands of companies across North America specialize in turning recycled synthetic rubbers into useful new products.
American consumers looking to off load old tires should take a gander at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) “Management of Scrap Tires” website to find tire recycling centers near them. Canadians can turn to the website of the Canadian Association of Tire Recycling Agencies (CATRA) to find out where to take used tires in any province, including even the remote Yukon Territory.
The EPA also offers free Business Planning Guides for those who might be looking to start a tire recycling or re-manufacturing business. The website Scrap Tire News also provides a wealth of knowledge on different ways to get started.
Despite this encouraging progress, North America still faces a backlog of hundreds of millions of old tires, quickly piling up outside filling stations and in backyards near you. The EPA estimates that 290 million scrap tires are generated annually, representing two percent of all solid waste, and that some 265 million are sitting in stockpiles right now. At the very least, we could all take the advice of Participating in Nature: Thomas J. Elpel's Field Guide to Primitive Living Skills and turn our old tires into “sandals with a 50,000 mile warranty!”
CONTACTS: EPA Scrap Tires Page, www.epa.gov/garbage/tires/index.htm ; CATRA, www.catraonline.ca ; Scrap Tire News, www.scraptirenews.com/youask.html ; Tire Sandals, www.hollowtop.com/sandals.htm .Dear EarthTalk : What is the significance of the recent discovery of a cow in Alabama having Mad Cow disease? Isn't that the very first in North America? Should we be worried?
-- Chris Carroll, Austin, TX
Actually, Mad Cow Disease, technically known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), was first detected in North America in January 1993, when a beef cow that had been imported from Britain to the Canadian province of Alberta tested positive. The Canadian government destroyed that particular cow, as well as its entire herd, in order to quell the potential spread of the disease.
Federal agricultural agencies in both Canada and the United States then stepped up testing for BSE coast-to-coast whileimposing stricter import criteria for cows coming in from abroad. And since the disease spreads not from direct cow-to-cow contact but only through consumption of infected feed, both countries banned rendered cow remains from being added to cattle feed beginning in 1997.
The redoubled efforts seemed to pay off, as another case of BSE didn't show up in North America for a decade. But then in May 2003, veterinary officials in Alberta confirmed another case, but this time involving a cow born in Canada. Seven months later, American officials announced the first case of BSE in the U.S., when the remains of a deceased cow from a farm in Washington State tested positive.
Regulators feared that some meat may have made its way into supermarkets, which in turn sparked a wave of mad cow hysteria, including import bans on American beef by some foreign countries. Records showed that the cow had been born in Canada, leading to cross-border finger pointing. But when the disease showed up in a Texas cow in June 2005, and then again recently in an Alabama cow, Americans stopped blaming Canada and began looking to stem the spread of the disease within U.S. borders.
BSE, a fatal disease of the nervous system of cattle, first appeared in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s and then spread across Europe, peaking at almost 1,000 new cases per week in 1993. In 1996, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), an offshoot of BSE, was detected in humans and linked to the eating of meat and cattle products contaminated with BSE. Fewer than 200 cases of vCJD, all originating in Western Europe, have been detected since the human disease was first identified.
Despite assurances by both Canadian and U.S. officials that BSE cases in recent years have been isolated ones and that North American beef is fit for human consumption, some skeptics aren't so sure. “This disease is endemic in U.S. herds,” says News Target health and wellness columnist Mike Adams. “It is circulating in cows right now and there are almost certainly cows infected with mad cow disease that are being slaughtered and used in the human food supply,” he adds. Adams is worried that the millions of Americans who eat red meat every day are putting themselves at risk while the government focuses on spinning the story to stifle valid concerns.
CONTACTS: Health Canada BSE Information, www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/animal/bse-esb/index_e.html ; U.S. Department of Agriculture BSE Newsroom, www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/hot_issues/bse.shtml .Dear EarthTalk : Is it true that livestock grazing is harmful to the environment?
-- Paul Howe, Athol, MA
Most scientists and environmental experts view livestock grazing as an ecological disaster. For starters, cows and sheep are indiscriminate eaters and tend to remove every piece of grass and shrub in sight, thus eliminating shelter and food for birds and other wildlife, leading to their decline. In drier regions, landscape used extensively and repeatedly for grazing eventually turns into barren wasteland not even suitable for the livestock themselves. Further, the significant amounts of waste that livestock animals leave behind play a key role in the pollution of our freshwater supplies.
Today, cattle and sheep ranchers lease roughly 300 million acres of public land in 11 western U.S. states. George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson, in their book Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West (Island Press), document the enormous destruction caused by livestock grazing: “The combined area is as large as the entire Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Florida, with Missouri thrown in,” they report. Indeed, as much as 90 percent of Bureau of Land Management land and 69 percent of U.S. Forest Service land is leased to livestock producers. Federally leased public land includes numerous national parks, wildlife refuges and other nature preserves.
Welfare Ranching charges that livestock ranchers are heavily subsidized with tax dollars, routinely leasing public lands for grazing at well-below market prices. They cite the fact that the federal grazing fee is “often eight to 10 times lower than fees charged on comparable private grazing land.” In addition to dirt-cheap grazing fees, livestock ranchers are also the beneficiaries of low-interest farm loans, and taxpayers support them with emergency bailouts and other state and federally funded programs.
Stephen Leckie of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) says the problem is not limited to the U.S. He cites a 1997 report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) showing that 20 percent of the world's land is used for grazing, while only around 10 percent is devoted to growing crops. In Central America, for example, more than a third of the forests have been cut since the 1960s, while pastureland has increased by 50 percent. Meanwhile, in India, free-roaming cattle and goats pose a serious threat to tiger reserves and national parks, and are jeopardizing re-forestation efforts (by eating young shoots of new plants) that are trying to help mitigate global warming.
Vegetarians have long insisted that raising livestock is one of the least efficient ways to feed people. FAO research, for example, indicates that farm animals are extremely inefficient converters of plants to edible flesh. Studies show that livestock in North America are fed about six times as much corn and other crops as the amount of edible meat they produce. Meanwhile, Overseas Development Council analysts estimate that if North Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by just 10 percent, it would free up 12 million tons of grain annually for humans to eat. And a study by the non-profit Worldwatch Institute found that one pound of steak from steer raised in feedlots costs five pounds of grain, 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.
CONTACTS: FAO, www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0603sp2.htm; IDRC, www.idrc.ca/en/ev-30610-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html; Worldwatch Institute, www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/1994/74/mos/ .Dear EarthTalk : I read somewhere that babies were being born nowadays with a number of man-made chemicals detected in their bloodstreams. This is pretty scary. How could it be?
-- Sandra McGregor, Portland, OR
“Body Burden,” a 2005 study by the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG), found that American babies are born with hundreds of chemical contaminants in their bloodstreams. The findings are based on tests of samples of umbilical-cord blood taken by the American Red Cross from 10 babies, located in different part of the U.S., that were born in August and September of 2004. The most prevalent chemicals found in the newborns were mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.
“Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical-cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests,” the report said.
In the month leading up to a baby's birth, the umbilical cord pulses with the equivalent of at least 300 quarts of blood each day, pumped back and forth from the nutrient- and oxygen-rich placenta to the rapidly growing baby cradled in a sac of amniotic fluid. This cord is a lifeline between mother and baby, bearing nutrients that sustain life and propel growth.
Not long ago scientists thought that the placenta shielded cord blood--and the developing baby--from most chemicals and pollutants in the environment. But the results of EWG's study show otherwise. “Now we know that at this critical time when organs, vessels, membranes and systems are knit together from single cells to finished form in a span of weeks, the umbilical cord carries not only the building blocks of life, but also a steady stream of industrial chemicals, pollutants and pesticides that cross the placenta as readily as residues from cigarettes and alcohol,” the report said.
“These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted,” said House Democrat Louise Slaughter of New York, who is leading the charge in Congress to hold chemical producers more accountable to higher standards. “If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb,” Slaughter added.
Slaughter also had similar tests done on her own blood, which she found to contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that were banned decades ago as well as chemicals like Teflon that are currently under federal investigation. “I have auto exhaust fumes, flame retardant chemicals, and in all, some 271 harmful substances pulsing through my veins,” she said. “That's hardly the picture of health I had hoped for, but I've been living in an industrial society for more than 70 years.”
CONTACT: EWG Body Burden Report, www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/ .Dear EarthTalk : What is causing the bird flu? Could it really kill millions of people?
-- Steve Schlemmer, Andover, MA
Bird flu is a viral infection naturally carried by wild birds, notably ducks that can infect other birds but not get sick themselves. Domestic poultry, however, are very susceptible to the disease and usually get sick and die once infected. Humans, in turn, can catch the disease through close contact with infected birds.
When the influenza strain H5N1 appeared in humans in Hong Kong in 1997 and spread quickly to Asia, Africa and Europe, it sent shockwaves throughout the healthcare profession. The spread of the disease was not sufficient to be considered a pandemic (an epidemic worldwide in scope), but it did infect over 200 people and kill about half of them. There have been no documented cases so far of H5N1 moving from human to human, but experts fear that the virus could mutate into a strain that can--and accordingly kill millions of people. It wouldn't be the first time: Many scientists now believe that the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed 50 million people (including 675,000 Americans and 43,000 Canadians), started as bird flu.
Some researchers see habitat loss as a key factor in the unusual spread of the disease between wild and domestic birds. A recently released United Nations (U.N.) Environment Programme report found that loss of wetlands around the world has forced migrating wild birds onto stopping points along their way--such as rice paddies and farms--that are ordinarily the domicile of domestic chickens, ducks and geese, with whom they normally don't mix. “Wetland depletion has direct implications for migrating wild birds,” says David Rapport, a professor at the University of Western Ontario and a lead researcher on the U.N. study. “Wetland habitat worldwide continues to decline, owing to agricultural expansion and urban development, resulting in fewer staging areas for wild migrating birds.”
Rapport warns that “heroic efforts” like mass culling are not likely to appreciably slow the spread of bird flu. The best hope, he says, is to increase habitat for wild birds and avoid siting large-scale poultry operations along migratory bird routes. Minimizing human contact with domestic poultry is also key, but this would be a tall order given the prevalence of poultry in the human diet. Also, in many parts of Asia, separating poultry from people would be at odds with cultural traditions.
Many North Americans may not realize that the bird flu virus has already arrived here. In November 2005 two wild ducks tested positive for H5N1 in Canada, although not the same dangerous strain that affected Southeast Asia. The virus was also found on a domestic duck in British Columbia shortly thereafter. While no infected birds have been documented in the U.S. yet, researchers say it's only a matter of time.
Just last year U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that a bird flu pandemic was an “absolute certainty,” echoing repeated warnings from the World Health Organization (WHO). A recently released White House report warns that, if there were to be an outbreak, the nation is unprepared and as many as two million people could die. Meanwhile, Canada has earned kudos from WHO, which is using its billion-dollar preparedness plan as a model for other countries to follow.
CONTACTS: Wildlife Trust, www.wildlifetrust.org/enter.cgi?p=news/2006/0101_1_avian.htm ; Health Canada Avian Flu (Bird Flu) Website, www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dc-ma/avia/index_e.html .Dear EarthTalk : What is the “Not Too Pretty” campaign pertaining to the use of cosmetics?-- Lucy Balzary, Los Angeles, CA
The non-profit Environmental Working Group launched the Not Too Pretty campaign in 2002 to raise awareness about the dangers of phthalates, industrial chemicals that are used as solvents in many cosmetics. Most of the mainstream hair sprays, deodorants, nail polishes and perfumes that millions of people use every day contain these harmful chemicals. Phthalates are also employed as plastic softeners in many different consumer products, including children's toys and medical devices.
Shown to damage the liver, kidneys, lungs and reproductive systems in animal studies, phthalates can be absorbed through the skin or inhaled. Scientists at government agencies in both the U.S. and Canada agree that exposure to the chemicals could cause a wide range of health and reproductive problems in people.
Manufacturers use phthalates because they cling to the skin and nails to give perfumes, hair gels and nail polishes more staying power. But a recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that five percent of women between age 20 and 40 had up to 45 times more phthalates in their bodies than researchers initially hypothesized. CDC found phthalates in virtually person tested, but the largest concentrations--20 times higher than the rest of the population--were found in women of child-bearing age. Meanwhile, another study, led by Dr. Shanna Swan of the University of Missouri, identified developmental abnormalities in male infants correlating to high phthalate levels in their mothers' bodies.
Meanwhile, the industry-backed Phthalate Information Center asserts, “There is no reliable evidence that any phthalate has ever caused a health problem for a human from its intended use.” The group accuses organizations of “cherry picking” results “showing impacts on test animals to create unwarranted concern about these products.” But EWG spokesperson Lauren E. Sucher urges people--especially women who are pregnant, nursing or planning on becoming pregnant--to avoid phthalates. EWG offers free online access to its “Skin Deep” database, which lists lotions, creams and polishes that contain phthalates. Health experts encourage women to consult the database before shopping for beauty products.
A 2003 European Union directive bans phthalates in cosmetics sold in Europe, but U.S. and Canadian regulators have not been so proactive, despite mounting evidence of potential harm. Health advocates were temporarily relieved when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would begin enforcing a 1975 law requiring labels on products with ingredients that haven't been safety tested. But such labels remain to be seen, even though 99 percent of cosmetics contain one or more untested ingredients.
Those interested in adding their voices to the chorus of environmental and health advocates opposed to the inclusion of phthalates in cosmetics can submit a customizable pre-written letter to the FDA expressing their concern via EWG's NotTooPretty.org website. The website also provides pages and pages of information and research on the issue for those looking to learn more.
CONTACTS: Not Too Pretty, www.NotTooPretty.org; Skin Deep, www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep .Dear EarthTalk : Where I live in Connecticut, our highways are “parking lots” many times a day. Isn't this an ideal situation for public transit? Why isn't it happening? -- John Moulton, Stamford, CT
An increasing number of public transit options are coming online throughout North America, but those of you idling alone bumper-to-bumper in your cars might not know it. Indeed, lack of knowledge about public transportation options may be the largest impediment to widespread acceptance of more efficient ways of getting around. Driving your own car back and forth to work every day is not as convenient as it once was, and public transit options are now faster and undoubtedly generate less stress and pollution.
In Connecticut, the state-owned CTTRANSIT moves 27 million people a year on well-appointed local and express buses serving all metro areas. And two full-service commuter rail lines, Metro-North and Shore Line East, routinely take riders longer distances. Similar services are available in many urban and suburban areas across the U.S. Municipal websites are the best place to find transit options, routes and schedules.
The best thing to happen to encourage public transit usage has been high gas prices. Over the last year the average price of regular unleaded rose in the U.S. by 76 cents, with prices now $3.00 or more almost everywhere. And transit agencies report a correlation between high gas prices and increased ridership. The Utah Transit Authority says ridership is up 50 percent from last year on a 19-mile light-rail system in Salt Lake City. And Washington, DC's Metrorail has seen some of its busiest days ever during the last few months. In Canada, ridership has risen as much as 10 percent in cities like Vancouver and Winnipeg in step with rising gas prices, though cars remain the travel option of choice in the country's eastern cities.
According to the American Public Transportation Association, 14 million Americans use one or another form of public transportation every weekday, while about 17 million people drive their cars instead. The organization estimates that public trans