fawn

I finally threw away my Nalgene bottles last week after clinging to them for years, despite the warnings from environmental scientists that the polycarbonate plastic bottles contained nasty chemicals called endocrine disruptors. I love my Nalgene bottles. They’re indestructible, convenient, and have probably saved me thousands of purchases of bottled water. So despite the gnawing doubts, I’ve kept on using them. But last week I read a new study that put the final nail in the coffin, at least as far as I’m concerned.

We’ve known for a long time that polycarbonate plastic contains a chemical called Bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA is the quintessential endocrine disruptor. (An endocrine disruptor is a pollutant that can mimic hormones in the human body. The pollutant can plug into the body’s hormone receptors and scramble the critical growth & development signals that hormones carry, increasing risks for all kinds of health problems, from cancer to fertility to obesity.

The argument has been over whether or not the polycarbonate plastic bottles leach BPA into drinking water under normal conditions. The evidence is pretty strong that super-heating bottles or exposing them to harsh detergents releases BPA. But what happens to drinking water under normal use conditions?

A team of researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine recently put that question to the test in a new study. They bought brand new Nalgene bottles at a camping store, and got a bunch of rock climbers at the local climbing gym to donate some used ones. They found that at room temperature, the bottles steadily leached measurable amounts of BPA into the drinking water (measurable in ng/hour). The longer the water sat in the bottles, the more BPA they could measure in the water. They even used a standard test to confirm that the levels of BPA they were measuring mimicked the toxic action of estrogen to developing cerebellar neurons. Filling the bottles with just-boiled water (as many of us are wont to do while camping) dramatically increased the migration of BPA into the water by as much as 55-fold.

Several previous studies have also looked at BPA migration from polycarbonate infant formula bottles, food and beverage containers. The upshot is that we are exposed to endocrine disruptors, including BPA, from a wide variety of sources, and each of them contributes to our total burden of exposure throughout our lives. While this particular study doesn’t say that you can pin your health problems on your water bottle, the authors strongly state that they are one component of our total exposure to endocrine disruptors. Some of these exposures you can’t really change – at least not without changing environmental regulations. But many of them can be changed – starting with pitching the polycarbonate water bottle.

PS: Need suggestions for a replacement bottle? I carry around an old Gatorade bottle that I refill with water (just avoid bottles with a #3 or #7 on the bottom). You can also find lightweight stainless steel or enameled aluminum bottles at some health food and sporting goods stores.

Oh, the beleaguered frogs. You probably already know that amphibian species are declining around the world. You have probably seen the depressing photos of deformed frogs trying to get through life with too many (or too few) legs. You may even have seen Dr. Tyrone Hayes‘ breathtaking presentation on how the herbicide atrazine turns boy frogs in to hermaphrodite frogs.

This week the N&O ran a story about a new study that reinforces the theory that farm runoff is causing the deformed limbs. Excess nutrients in the water lead to lots more parasites in the water that turn normal tadpoles into sickly, deformed adult frogs.

One of the questions about this research is, how come the trematodes make frogs so sick? They’re not a new pathogen - they’ve always been in the frogs’ environments. It’s just that lately the frogs can’t seem to fight them off. Another stumper: if it’s one disease deforming the frogs, why does it affect so many species? Leopard frogs, bullfrogs, wood frogs, and many others have shown up with the deformed limbs, in many different parts of the U.S. and Canada.

The answer may actually lie in the frogs’ immune systems: one of Tyrone Hayes’ experiments found that wild frogs who live in pristine waters are easily able to fight off common infections, while wild frogs who live in waters containing agricultural runoff die at astonishing rates from the same exposure to disease. Distinguished researchers around the world have pointed at all sorts of explanations for the frog decline, deformities and hermaphrodism: climate change, habitat destruction, parasites, pesticides, and more. The sad answer may be that there is no smoking gun, but that an alphabet soup of environmental changes have over-burdened the frogs’ immune systems to the point of destruction. Parasites and infections that formerly posed little or no threat to amphibian populations become deadly.

Biologists like to call frogs a “sentinel species,” because they are so sensitive to their environments and serve as indicators for problems that can grow to affect other species as well. I hope we’re paying attention.

Cross-posted from PESTed's weekly news commentary, Fair Ground.

One of my favorite kinds of environmental projects is a community garden.  Done well, a community garden provides a classic example of a project that address the triple-bottom-line of social justice, environmental and economic sustainability.

Farmworker groups in Sampson county have organized a community garden to address hunger among farmworkers there.  Amazingly, the people who harvest our food often go without food themselves.  Working together on a community garden ensures that these very low-income workers get to eat high-quality foods, builds solidarity among the workers and even provides some extra income, since the workers have developed the project into a market garden.

Student Action with Farmworkers is hosting a “Solidarity Day” and Gardening Tool Drive on February 20th to support this project and benefit farmworkers in NC. You can help by donating gardening tool items, and by organizing your school, church, or workplace to donate items like garden gloves, hand tools, shovels, rakes, sun hats or baseball caps, and white cotton socks.

There are drop-off locations at DesignCorps in Raleigh and at SAF in Durham, but items can be mailed to SAF from anywhere, as long as they arrive by February 20th.  Here's a flyer (pdf) about the project, or check out SAF's web page to learn more (scroll to the bottom). 

The World Health Organization recently touched off an international controversy by endorsing the indoor spraying of DDT for malaria control in Africa, where malaria is on the rise.  Environmentalists in Africa and around the world have decried the decision for its short-sightedness, drawing accusations of insensitivity and racism from some camps.  Chemical industry commentators have seized on the opportunity to declare DDT - a symbol of the modern environmental movement - vindicated, and Rachel Carson "dead wrong."  African agricultural exporters warn of a catastrophe if their products are rejected by world consumrs due to contamination (pesticides imported to Africa for such "public health" uses are commonly diverted to agricultural projects through the black market).

Malaria is a serious problem in Africa, killing around 2 million people - primarily children - every year.  Malaria is partially a land-use problem that develops when wetlands are drained for farmland.  Political crises and unsustainable agricultural practices, compounded with drug-resistant strains of malaria, have exacerbated the problem in Uganda in recent years, leading to an upswing in malaria cases that prompted this new pro-DDT policy shift at the WHO.

However, DDT is no less dangerous - or more effective - than it was forty years ago.  Mosquito resistance to DDT was already becoming a serious problem when the WHO discontinued its use in the 1960s.  Back then, we knew the pesticide stayed in the environment a long time, and that it was a major threat to bird populations.  Now we also know that it lodges in the fat in our bodies and does not break down, damaging neurological development, increasing cancer risk, and contaminating breast milk.  Every human on the planet has measurable DDT residues in their bodies - residues persisting from uses that happened decades ago.  A recent study has strongly implicated DDT in the rise of Parkinson's disesase.  A quick search of the scientific literature turns up hundreds of recent studies examining the myriad ways this legacy of DDT pollution is harming human health and the environment.

The recent rise in malaria cases in Africa must not be ignored by the world community.  However, the WHO's DDT plan is not only short-sighted in terms of environmental health, but is also a fast & cheap response to a long-term, expensive problem that deserves much greater investment.  Anti-malaria programs that combine high-quality drugs, education, distribution of bed nets, and targeted, low-toxicity pesticide use with investment in sustainable land use & development projects will prevent many more cases of malaria and save vastly more lives than DDT spraying.  Such a program will also cost more.  But to do any less - and to imperil future generations in the bargain - is unacceptable.

Read more about the politics and the science behind this controversy at the Pesticide Action Network’s DDT and Malaria Resource Center.

If you're feeling a little gloomy these days, brought on by the late-winter gray skies or understandable pessimism about the future of the planet, I can sympathize.  But there is a whole herd of reasons to have hope for our future springing up right now.  It's kidding, calving and foaling season at North Carolina's organic farms.

The "Farm Photo of the Week" at Chatham extension agent Debbie Roos's website, Growing Small Farms, was taken at Celebrity Dairy, one of the state's star sustainable operations.  The folks at Celebrity Dairy are artisan cheesemakers who sell their delectable wares only locally, and run a successful bed & breakfast on the farm.  The dairy hosts Sunday Dinners once a month, and "Open Barns" twice a year.  At this spring's Open Barn, Debbie Roos shot some amazing photos of kidding, the birth of a new baby goat at the dairy (note: the squeamish might not enjoy some of these very real birth photos, though they are inspiring).

Clicking through these photos caused me to reflect a bit on the concept of sustainability.  We environmentalists often talk about new technologies, cutting-edge alternative fuels, green chemistry and design, and while inspired and much-needed, for the average person many of these sustainable technologies are still very much out of reach.  Sustainability must also include economics - even if we power our cars with hydrogen and wear clothes made from earth-friendly fibers, we must also employ people in jobs that pay fairly and in conditions that are humane and healthy.  I believe that we can do that, and I believe it because we have such a vibrant model right here on North Carolina's sustainable & organic farms.

Agriculture is the classic example of an unsustainable industry - both ecologically and economically.  While factory-style hog farming, for example, sticks farmers with huge, high-risk hog barns and sickening waste lagoons, the wealth generated by these operations is largely concentrated in the hands of just a few mega-sized conglomerates (Smithfield, anyone?).  The same is true for row crops - just a few huge seed & chemical giants, like Monsanto and Dow, win the vast majority of the wealth generated by conventional farming - leaving the mythical "family farmer" out in the cold.

Sustainable agriculture obliterates that concentration of wealth and environmental damage, both by farming with methods that create closed-loop, ecologically sound systems, and by spreading the wealth among many more people, right in the same communities where the farms are located.  I'm not trying to argue that farmers will get rich by going organic, because they certainly won't.  But looking through the kidding photos from Celebrity Dairy, you'll notice that this small operation both employs several people - feeding more than one family - and trains new growers through an apprenticeship program.   If that's not enough of an endorsement, the humane and caring treatment of their animals might just win you over, especially if you have passed one of those tractor trailers hauling hogs on I-40 any time recently.  

Celebrity Dairy, and the hundreds of other successful sustainable and organic farms dotting the countryside in North Carolina, give me hope for a future that will be humane, beautiful, and that will provide for the basic needs of all who share this planet.  And if you drive through the back roads of Chatham County right now, you might hear the cries of the tiny new creatures who herald this bright new day.  Baaaaa!

Have you seen the commercials running on TV from the American Chemistry Council (formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers' Association)? The ACC has just launched a new ad campaign called "essential," and they're spending $3.5 million dollars to convince the American public that their toxic by-products are essential to our safety and quality of life. Um... better living through chemistry? What year is it, again?

So why does this industry need to spend millions of dollars to promote toxic waste? It seems that campaigns to substitute safer alternatives are getting too much traction with the public. From cosmetics to pest control, there are safer alternatives to many of the toxic chemicals that the ACC says are "essential" to our happiness and health. Maybe they're feeling a little threatened.

Toxics organizations, from the folks who live at the fencelines of polluting facilities to international advocacy groups, are promoting a safer approach to chemicals policy in a groundbreaking document called the Louisville Charter. The charter states:

A first step to creating a safe and healthy global environment is a major reform of our nation’s chemicals policy. Any reform must:

• Require Safer Substitutes and Solutions: eliminate the use and emissions of hazardous chemicals by altering production processes, substituting safer chemicals, redesigning products and systems, rewarding innovation and re-examining product function.
• Phase Out Persistent, Bioaccumulative, or Highly Toxic Chemicals: Prioritize for elimination chemicals that are slow to degrade, accumulate in our bodies or living organisms, or are highly hazardous to humans or the environment.
• Give the Public and Workers the Full Right-to-Know and Participate: Disclose chemicals and materials, list quantities of chemicals produced, used, released, and exported, and provide public/worker access to chemical hazard, use and exposure information.
• Act on Early Warnings: Prevent harm from new or existing chemicals when credible evidence of harm exists.
• Require Comprehensive Safety Data for All Chemicals: This is the principle of “No Data, No Market.”
• Take Immediate Action: When communities and workers are exposed to levels of chemicals that pose a health hazard, immediate action is necessary to eliminate these exposures. We must ensure that no population is disproportionately burdened by chemicals.

Last night Veronica Butcher and I had a great visit with activists, like Melanie and Debbie (below), in Greensboro at the Take Action Tour!

We gave a presentation on children and toxics, and how activists can get involved to end the use of toxic chemicals such as pesticides in our public schools. We also discussed the School Children’s Health Act, an excellent bill that the NC Senate will take up during the 2006 short session. It was great to meet new folks and to see friends from the Deep River Project and the NC Pediatric Society.

The presentation took place at the Edwards Library, a beautiful, environmentally-friendly building with lovely trails for nature walks. If you go, don’t miss the mural in the foyer! You have to look up – the ceiling contains a spectacular nature mural by Chip Holton, depicting four seasons in the Piedmont and adorned with poetry by Thomas Berry. Look carefully for the dozens of hidden images!

More Take Action Tour stops are coming up in Wilmington, Fayetteville and Elizabeth City. Are you going to be there??

Considering that cotton is one of the most chemical-intensive crops in the world, it's no surprise that there is a growing demand for organic cotton products in the US. As I write this entry (in early October) residents of eastern North Carolina are experiencing their annual run-ins with fall cotton defoliation and the aerial applicators who spray the patchwork of fields across rural and semi-rural areas (around 800,000 acres of cotton are grown in NC, almost exclusively in the coastal plain).

Not too long ago I was getting ready to knit a baby gift for a friend who had a preemie, and gave a little extra thought to the material I was knitting with - wouldn't organic cotton be a better choice for a delicate preemie? When I looked around a bit, I found that there are quite a few options in organic cotton yarn, and so far I'm really pleased with the ones I've tried. I made that gift - a hat & receiving blanket - from Blue Sky Alpacas organic cotton, a very soft, thick cotton yarn that comes in several naturally-occurring colors (no dyes or bleaches are used). Now I'm working on another project with Pakucho organic cotton, a lighter-weight, tweedier-feeling cotton made by Peruvian spinners that also comes in several undyed natural colors (check out the article in Knitters Review). Pakucho isn't quite as soft, so I think I won't use it for baby items, but the Blue Sky Alpacas yarn is now my standard for baby gifts. And golly, there seem to be a lot of them these days. Lately my enviro friends have been reproducing like little (organic) bunnies.

As with all things "premium," you might expect these yarns to cost twice as much as conventional cotton of similar quality. But in this case, you'd be wrong. Because both yarns are made by small, artisan spinners, they are on-par with some of the finest yarns available, quality-wise, and in comparison the prices are quite good. Besides, baby projects are small... you don't need to buy too much of it to get the job done. Now, good luck finding them at your local yarn store - I've had to buy all my organic cotton on the web. Anybody got any leads on a local retailer??

Like to knit? Like the environment? How do the two intersect for you?