Nicole Stewart

The Environmental Working Group has all sorts of great information on toxics, their effects on humans, and how to best avoid them. I can easily spend hours browsing around their website reading reports and news coverage on all of their issue work.

One thing I found today is their Everyday Pollution Solutions. It's a sort of top 10 list for going green and keeping healthy. Check it out for yourself, here. In addition to their top 10 tips, you can take a body burden test and a "step-by-step tour of your home to learn the toxic truth about how household products contribute to your body burden of industrial chemicals."

Happy Friday!

In 2005, environmental groups worked to pass House Bill 1465 which made it illegal to dispose of oyster shells in landfills. This bill also made it illegal to dispose of "rigid plastic containers" in landfills, starting October 1, 2009!

Rigid plastic containers are plastic bottles that have a neck smaller than the body of the container. For instance, coke bottles, milk jugs, laundry detergent bottles, etc. 

Not only will this be great for the environment and save on precious landfill space, it will also help create a new economy in NC. From an article in the Winston-Salem Journal, N.C. to ban throwing away bottles:

Plastic-bottle recycling is big business both domestically and internationally, as corporations can cut their costs by reusing the containers instead of producing new ones from virgin materials, Mouw said.

The article continues:

A bit more locally, Clear Path Recycling in Fayetteville is building a $50 million plant that will rely heavily on the company's ability to amass recycled PET plastics from regional material-recovery facilities. After municipalities collect recycled waste from curbside pickup, materials are sent to MRFs where they are separated to be sold to corporations or recycling centers for profit.

Once Clear Path has acquired these plastics, they will be converted into polyester and sold primarily to national carpet manufacturing giant Shaw Floors, Mouw said.

The challenge of course - just as it continues to be for aluminum cans, tires, and white goods - is enforcing the law. What do you recommend as an incentive and/or penalty to make sure the law is enforced?

A friend sent me this story today: A different sort of skyscraper, one that cleans the environment.

The CO2 Scraper is a large-scale construction for holding between two to four hundred large-size trees that will absorb potentially dangerous pollutants and convert global warming-related CO2 (carbon dioxide) into breathable oxygen.

Designed to be placed near factories or other major sources of pollution, the CO2 Scraper is a relatively simple, primarily concrete construction in which trees would be supplied with water and nutrients via a windmill-powered pump system.

It's even designed to be energy self-sufficient! So, what do you think? Could it work?

Click here for one blogger's take.

The new Yadkin Riverkeeper along with river organizations across the globe, have recently released a worldwide pollution map denoting the environmental damage that the company, Alcoa, has done in communities.

The Alcoa Worldwide Pollution Google map is an interactive tool. A click on any pin pointing out a community in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia pops up a summary on what environmental damage the company did in the community and how it responded, along with a link to a news source for more information. Alcoa, one of the world's largest aluminum smelting company, has been cited numerous times for air, soil, and water pollution violations in these areas.

The Yadkin Riverkeeper, Dean Naujoks, has been reviewing reports of existing contamination at Badin Lake, a 5,300-acre body of water that flows into the river in Stanly County via Narrows Dam. Reports of decades of pollution in the area associated with a now-defunct smelter Alcoa operated near it, including data that Alcoa discharged such contaminants as PCBs into the air, land, and waterways, prompted Naujoks to investigate other items regarding the firm's activities. The results were so widespread that he created a map as the best way to keep track of what had happened and where it was located.

From their press release, Dean Naujoks said:

"...Alcoa’s world wide environmental damage is absolutely staggering, and this map helps put it all into perspective... The company is on notice that we are holding them accountable for their actions. They need to be responsible corporate leaders and take appropriate actions...whether it is on the Yadkin River or elsewhere in the world. They will no longer be allowed to operate in relative isolation while they cause wide scale environmental damage across the globe."

For more information on the Alcoa issue in the Yadkin-Pee Dee watershed, click here.

On December 22, 2008 a coal ash spill took place at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a Tennessee Valley Authority generating plant. Truly, the stories that have come out since that morning have shown what sort of environmental catastrophe we are dealing with.

For some of the best coverage of this issue, I urge you to check out our friends at App Voices who are waist-deep in this issue (literally). They have done an amazing job covering every angle of the story since the dam broke. They have even created a website to specifically cover the TVA spill, which includes photos and videos. Below is one video taken on the Emory River documenting the spill and the lack of any clean-up by TVA.

Our respect and admiration go to App Voices and all who are involved in telling the truth about the spill.

This just in:

The NC State Board of Elections has extended early voting on Saturday (the last day to early vote) until 5pm. Originally, early vote sites were scheduled to close at 1pm.

From the News & Observer article reporting on this announcement:

The decision to alter the early voting schedule highlights the remarkable turnout and long lines seen across the surprise swing state since early voting began two weeks ago.

More than 1.7 million people - or 30 percent of registered voters - cast a ballot at one-stop sites through Wednesday night.

For more information on voting, visit the State Board of Elections website. 

And for anyone who hasn't already early voted:

    *You can vote early between now and Saturday at sites across North Carolina. For early voting locations and times in your county, click here.

    *And, at very least, please get out and vote on November 4!

Make sure you know who you're voting for, click here and follow the link for "General Election Sample Ballots." You can get additional voting questions answered and see bios of the candidates running for state office with this non-partisan voter guide.

The first Presidential debate is tonight and that should be a warning bell to voters that the election is nearly here. We all want to make an informed vote but I’ve heard many people over the years complain about the lack of quality information about the candidates. But in today there is certainly a wealth of information about candidates at nearly every level of politics.

If you're looking for information about candidates who will be on your ballot this year, I have three recommendations:

   1. Civic groups in North Carolina have teamed up and put together a non-partisan voter guide. It's now online and it includes bios on all the statewide candidates on the ballot in North Carolina, including judges. (this is a large PDF document) 
   2. See if civic groups and political organizations in your area have voter scorecards about the issues you care about.
   3. Go to the candidates websites and read their issues pages. If you have questions, contact them.

One year there was a new candidate for the state legislature in my area and I called up a number on her website for more information. The candidate herself answered and actually dropped by my house later that day to sit and talk about her positions on issues. I was impressed. But the lesson I learned was that digging for information and asking questions can be really enlightening before voting.

In case you haven't kept up with the loss of our nation's bee colonies, also known as colony collapse disorder, here is some information (quotes from Sabine Vollmer, News & Observer, 8/22/08) about the not-so-sweet situation.

"A Bayer CropScience pesticide (Chlothianidine) is at the center of a legal battle for research data that could help explain what's killing U.S. honeybees in large numbers.

The lawsuit, filed (August 18) in a Washington, D.C., federal court, accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of hiding the honeybee data."

It seems that the problem is not just limited to the United States

"Chlothianidine is made to coat corn, sugar beets and sorghum seeds and protect them from pests. But the chemical has the potential to be very toxic for bees. Three months ago, German regulators banned chlothianidine and related chemicals after the family of pesticides was blamed for the destruction of about 11,000 bee colonies earlier this year."

A sobering statistic, for why this is such an important issue:

"The phenomenon, also known as colony collapse disorder, threatens a significant portion of the U.S. food supply. About one out of every three mouthfuls in the U.S. diet stems from crops pollinated by bees."

To read more about this issue, check out the links below and let us know what you think. 

Pesticide data may tell why bees die, published in the News & Observer on 8/22/08.

Bayer on defensive in bee deaths, published on 8/26/08.

Bayer points to lack of data in bee deaths, published on 8/28/08.

No, seriously.

Some of you may remember this - as Jack Nicholson was a big time promoter.

On a CBC Marketplace airing in 1978, Jack Nicholson made news by advertising a potentially pollution-free fuel for cars. The fuel: hydrogen produced by solar power. The automobile: a standard Chevy with a standard engine. The emissions: steam (Jack suggests using the emissions for a steam bath). Pollutants are negligible and there's no risk of explosion. And, check it out - Jack made the car go in drive and reverse.

There are definitely other stories of oil-free cars out there. Anyone see the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

Help us educate ourselves and share your fun and truth-telling links, by commenting to this blog.

This week the US House and Senate passed a bill that bans lead in children's toys. The bill also bans other harmful toxins that are responsible for making plastic products softer and more flexible (think of a rubber duck). The toxins banned, six types of phthalates, are now thought to act as hormones and cause reproductive problems, especially in boys.

With the overwhelming majority supporting the bill in both houses (4 representatives total voted against it), this vote should send a clear message to the chemical industry that enough is enough. It's time to stop forcing the public to prove that a chemical is unsafe and time for industry to prove to the public that it is safe, before it is put on the market and into our products (children's toys or otherwise).

In similar toxic-related news, Rep. Pricey Harrison was successful in getting a study bill passed in the short session of the NC Legislature this year. This study is with the Child Fatality Task Force (sounds like a worthy cause) and would look at a ban on toxic brominated fire retardants. These chemicals, also known as PBDEs, went into wide-spread use in the 1970's and are now found throughout the home; including in your tvs, computer monitors, foam furniture, baby cribs, etc. Once PBDEs get into your body they stay there and accumulate, and are passed from mothers to their children. Studies show that PBDEs disrupt brain development and hormone systems.

Now, isn't it counter-intuitive that individuals and organizations concerned with public health have to fight to ban harmful chemical after harmful chemical? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of corporations and our government to prove that a chemical is safe before it ever reaches consumers?