The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health

The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health

From Publishers Weekly:

This provocative and frightening look at the synthetic chemicals used by the processed foods, pharmaceutical and chemical industries delivers an excellent, up-to-date summary of “what is really in our food, water, vitamins, prescription drugs, childhood vaccines, cosmetics, and in our homes.” Former Wall Street Journal investigative journalist Fitzgerald (Mugged by the State) takes aim at the belief that “lab-created synthetics are as benign as—and more effective than—naturally occurring foods and medicines.” The “hundred-year lie” dates from 1906, the year Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act. Utilizing a range of articles from science journals and government reports, along with interviews with scientists and environmentalists, Fitzgerald looks at synthetic chemicals—from artificial sweeteners to antidepressants—that are diminishing our health. Throughout, Fitzgerald explodes various myths such as that one right dose of a particular drug works for everyone and that all food additives have been tested for safety. Still, Fitzgerald’s faith in Eastern and other natural healing processes will not convince everyone. The author concludes with practical steps for “choosing a diet of pure foods and a lifestyle free of synthetics.”

Record Efficiency Solar Inverter Could Mean 30% Cheaper Solar

You read that right. Nevermind attempts to improve the solar panels in a photovoltaic power generation setup – this new inverter could mean 30% cheaper solar. Amazing what’s possible when scientists stop to focus some time on the little things often lost in development of complex, cutting-edge technologies.

(This advancement impacts any sort of electrical array where an inverter is used, but I gear this post toward photovoltaics because in my opinion they’re currently by far the best option for alternative energy production. I lost the love for wind turbines when I learned they kill thousands of bats a year. Which warrants a separate post…)

A new inverter developed by engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute achieved an efficiency rating of 98.5 percent. The more efficient the inverter, the less energy is lost in the conversion.

“Fraunhofer researchers succeeded in reducing the power dissipation of conventional inverters by 30 to 50 percent when compared with results obtained with traditional silicon-based transistors.”

So, while increasing the efficiency of the photovoltaic material itself is probably the more exciting direction for improving efficiency, inverters that lose less of the energy as it is usefully delivered are also a development that will help.

(Source: EcoGeek)

Detox Your Home

PlanetGreen.com has a new room-by-room feature detailing how to replace toxic products with more healthy alternatives, and reduce environmentally hazardous materials and practices.

It’s called Detox Your Home and it includes short videos with Sarah Snow, who has two terrific shows on the Discovery Networks:  Get Fresh and Living Fresh.

(More home health links here:  http://del.icio.us/bobodod/home+health and more home related videos here:  http://del.icio.us/bobodod/home+video)

Upwardly mobile trailer park

Nontoxic Dry Cleaning – The Cool Kids Are Doing It

Years ago, I had a good friend who worked nearly full-time at a cleaners. She would arrive home from work each day with a nasty headache and a very limited ability to concentrate on anything at all for very long.

Around that time, I learned that “dry cleaning” doesn’t mean “dry.” It means “without water.” What is used as a substitute for water and soap (or detergent in this case, which often contains synthetic toxins itself) is a chemical commonly known as PERC. Its full chemical name is percholroethylene, and as its name implies, it’s a highly toxic petroleum distillate.

PERC has been banned in California and the United States is in the process of phasing it out through the rest of the country. It is absorbed both through inhalation and absorption through the skin and can build up in one’s system to contribute to a significantly increased risk of developing cancer.

There are alternatives to PERC (2nd source) and I found when I called cleaners within two miles of my home that there were indeed businesses that had already moved on to safer solutions. Unfortunately, PERC is very soluble in water and has been found in U.S. water supplies and not all water filtration systems are capable of filtering it out.

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(Are you interested in what real soap is like? Check out this article by my favorite soap maker, Dr. Bronner’s. And here is their dramatic demonstration of an unreliable GHB drug testing kit that turns out to be an effective test of real versus fake soaps.

For more information regarding toxins in general, take a look at these two pages of links I’ve created: http://del.icio.us/bobodod/toxins and http://del.icio.us/bobodod/nontoxic)

Termites aren’t ants after all – they’re roaches

Weird, weird and strange. That’s what I say to this.

Insect experts at the [London] Natural History Museum reveal that termites, the creatures famous for building enormous mounds and eating houses, are in fact cockroaches.

Termites have long baffled scientists as to their place in the natural world and their relationship with other insects. Although they are part of a large ’superorder’ that includes cockroaches, they were classified separately in a group called Isoptera .

This new research puts termites into the same group as cockroaches, (Blattodea). Termites are now classed as a new family of cockroaches called Termitidae . Isoptera is no longer valid.

Social insects

Termite diet, social behaviour and ecology are very different from their kitchen infesting cockroach counterparts. Confusingly also known as ‘white ants’, termites show many behavioural similarities with ants, wasps and bees as they are ’social’ insects. They produce offspring to carry out specialised tasks such as foraging, mound building, defence or reproduction.

DNA analysis

Dr Paul Eggleton, Daegan Inward and George Beccaloni carried out the most comprehensive DNA study to date . They studied 107 different species of termites, cockroaches and mantids, another group of animals thought to be closely related.

‘The key change in the termites’ evolution from their cockroach ancestors seems to be when they developed the ability to eat wood ,’ said Paul, Museum termite expert, ‘they gradually lost their characteristic egg case, and some of their offspring became sterile workers and soldiers’.

Changing appearance and behaviour

‘It may seem surprising that termites are actually social cockroaches since they look so different, but it is not unusual for animals to change in appearance as their behaviour evolves over time. Perhaps the most famous social insects, ants, evolved from solitary predatory wasps.’

Dr George Beccaloni, the Museum’s cockroach expert adds, ‘It is very rare that such a major change is proposed to how a group of animals is classified by biologists. If our findings are correct the textbooks will need to be rewritten.’

The paper Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches is published online in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Toxic furniture getting some standards

What’s in furniture? It’s enough to make you sick.
Susan Fornoff, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Laura Ingram rarely buys anything new, but last spring the 58-year-old Oakland landlord sprang for 16 feet of new oak bookcases to line the walls of her backyard studio-office.

“There was no problem in the showroom, when I was standing there with huge stacks of shelves,” she said. “But when the shelves arrived, they provoked such a violent allergic reaction in me after delivery that the vendor had to come and get them the next day and put them on a loading dock for three weeks to off-gas.”

The bookcases came back, and Ingram paid a carpenter to install them and a helper to move 35 boxes of books. Still, her chest would hurt, her lips would swell, she’d get confused and feel as if she had the flu.

So the furniture sat in her yard for three more months while she waited for the chemical odor to dissipate. It didn’t. The vendor finally returned Ingram’s money and took the bookcases away.

“This was my attempt to spiff up my environment,” Ingram said. “Now, I’d be extremely wary and want every certificate in the world.”

The problem for Ingram and others who are growing increasingly sensitized to indoor air pollutants is that the certificate doesn’t exist, and the furniture industry resists the notion of labeling its wares. Consumers can read a list of the ingredients in their cornflakes and a summary of what nutrients they contain, but good luck trying to find out what’s in the new set of bedroom furniture we spend eight hours with every night.

The store owner concluded that it was some chemical in the lacquer that made Ingram sick. Lacquers can contain high levels of solvents that release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that the American Lung Association reports can irritate eyes, skin and lungs and cause headaches, nausea and even liver and kidney damage.

Kirk Saunders, a finish specialist at EcoHome Improvement, guesses it was formaldehyde off-gassing from pressed wood. Emissions from urea formaldehyde - “which is really, really bad for you, and is so ubiquitous in an urban environment,” Saunders said - can cause cancer “and other adverse health effects,” according to the California Air Resources Board.