tagged w/ Earth day 2010
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http://www/environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/pops-in-food
Thirty-eight years after DDT was banned, Americans still consume trace amounts of the infamous insecticide every day, along with more than 20 other banned chemicals. These legacy contaminants are ubiquitous in U.S. food, particularly dairy products, meat and fish. Their decades-long presence underscores the dangers of a new generation of chemicals with similar properties and health risks.
In a photograph from a 1947 newspaper advertisement, a smiling mother leans over her baby’s crib. The wall behind her is decorated with rows of flowers and Disney characters. Above the photo, a headline reads “Protect Your Children From Disease Carrying Insects.”
The ad, for wallpaper impregnated with DDT, captures a moment of historical ignorance, before the infamous insecticide nearly wiped out many birds and turned up inside the bodies of virtually everyone on Earth.
The story of DDT teaches a lesson about the past. But experts say it also provides a glimpse into the future.
Thirty-eight years after it was banned, Americans still consume traces of DDT and its metabolites every day, along with more than 20 other banned chemicals. Residues of these legacy contaminants are ubiquitous in U.S. food, particularly dairy products, meat and fish.
Their decades-long presence in the food supply underscores the dangers of a new and widely used generation of chemicals with similar properties and health risks.
“They’re manmade, and they’re toxic and they bio-accumulate,” said Arnold Schecter, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health who has been studying human exposure to chemicals for more than 25 years. “So the fact that they’re still around a long time after they’ve been banned isn’t surprising.”
Recent studies sketch a complex profile of legacy contaminants in U.S. food - a profusion of chemicals in trace amounts, pervasive but uneven across the food supply, occurring sometimes by themselves, but more often in combination with others. Included are DDT and several lesser-known organochlorine pesticides, as well as industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which were used until the late 1970s in electrical equipment.
This picture raises a host of equally complicated questions: Are small amounts of these chemicals dangerous, by themselves or in mixtures? Why are they still around and how are they getting into our food?
Think of these chemicals like sand in your shoes after a trip to the beach. Despite our efforts to rid ourselves of it, we discover more later - sometimes that evening, sometimes years later - when we put on the same pair of summer shoes and feel the grains between our toes.
“They’re manmade, and they’re toxic, and they bio-accumulate. So the fact that they’re still around a long time after they’ve been banned isn’t surprising,” -Arnold Schecter, University of Texas School of Public Health Like those grains of sand, many chemicals stick around. They belong to a class called “persistent organic pollutants” or POPs - which take decades to break down in sediment and soil and can travel globally on wind and water, ending up in regions as remote as the Arctic. These migratory POPs, when ingested, take up semi-permanent residence in the fat tissue of living organisms. In animals, and sometimes in humans, many of them can raise the risk of cancer or other diseases, alter hormones, reduce fertility or disrupt brain development.
The good news is that DDT and other organochlorine pesticides, PCBs and industrial byproducts called dioxins have declined significantly in food and the environment since they were banned or restricted decades ago. A few have dipped below detectable levels. “We don’t expect the levels in food or people to go down abruptly, we expect them to go down over time. And that’s what we’re seeing,” Schecter said.
Declining populations of birds of prey are often the first sign of pollution that may threaten people’s health.
Precise trends of chemicals in food are hard to identify because both government and independent studies have focused on different foods in different places at different times. However, levels in human breast milk indicate that, by 1990, DDT had dropped to one-tenth of 1970 levels, according to a 1999 report in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Similar trends exist for PCBs and dioxins. In most places, POPs are a mere fraction of what they were.
Last year, as part of an ongoing study of POPs in the food supply, Schecter and his colleagues collected and analyzed more than 300 samples from supermarkets around Dallas, Texas. The samples were combined into 31 food types, such as yogurt, chicken and peanut butter, and tested for old contaminants as well as newer ones.
“Every food within this study contained multiple pesticides,” the authors wrote in a paper published in February in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
The DDT metabolite DDE was the most prevalent, occurring in 23 of the 31 foods sampled.
People consume more DDT than any other persistent organic pollutant, the researchers found. Its relative abundance in food today is due to its widespread historical use. In the United States alone, an estimated 1.35 billion pounds were sprayed to wipe out mosquitoes and agricultural pests over a period of about 30 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
continuedhttp://www/environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/pops-in-food
Thirty-eight years... more
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This was the CBS Special for Earth Day that was broadcast with Walter Cronkite as the correspondent in conjunction with Earth Week. I remember watching this with my parents. I was 11 years old.
Little did I know that for all the strides we would make, we would move so far backward; How I wish the movement that began with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was the movement we had today instead of the fragemented bought and sold government appeasing one we have today that cares more for making "friends" with the likes of an
EXXON or Monsanto rather then holding them accountable for their crimes against nature.This was the CBS Special for Earth Day that was broadcast with Walter Cronkite as the... more
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This Thursday April 22, will be the fourtieth Earth Day I have lived through. But I have lived on this Earth approximately 18,697 days and there has not been one day where this Earth has failed to provide for all of my needs in every sense. And because of this, I pledged a long time ago to do my part as a citizen of this Earth to do all I can to preserve its beauty, mystery, and the systems that provide for our sustenance. That is what Earth Day is all about. It is about remembering all our Earth gives to us and paying homage to her and pledging to do all we can to do the same for her.
However, on this Earth Day as on many other days before I am filled with hope yet sadness at seeing how we humans on the whole do not understand this message. Climate change combined with pollution now threaten to place our Earth on a collision course with catastrophe as we push the limitations of the very systems that give us life. We have become detached from Earth even though we live here. The beauty of a sunrise, a clear mountain stream, a tree, and now even the soul satisfying practice of tilling our own soil have been depraved by those who care little for the essence of Earth beyond what they can sell it for.
So on this Earth Day as I have for almost every other of the approxomate 18,697 days I have lived here, I will pay homage to the magnificence of a planet unlike any other. A planet of unsurpassed beauty and potential.
And I will never give up in doing all I can to preserve this giver of all life.
And I will blog. And I will speak out. And I will take action. And I will fight.
For our Earth. Our home.
For without her, there is nothing else.
P.S. to Mother Earth: Thank you.
Happy Earth Day.This Thursday April 22, will be the fourtieth Earth Day I have lived through. But I... more
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What do sharks have to do with space? The SharkTaskForce takes a look in this special tribute to Earth Day 2010.What do sharks have to do with space? The SharkTaskForce takes a look in this special... more
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11th Annual Topanga Earth Day Festival Weekend
April 17 - 18
The Festival will bring live music, conscious-living speakers, sustainable living workshops and Native Wisdom to the Canyon, as well as thousands of Earth Day celebrants.
This festival is a 90-percent waste-free non-profit event, which will unify people from around the world in celebration and promotion of ecological awareness, cultural respect and music
Set in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles' original conscious-living community, the festival will give attendees the unique opportunity to learn about a variety of sustainable and holistic living solutions through guest speakers and workshops, a healing village and ecological vendors who are "living by example," and wild wild good times.11th Annual Topanga Earth Day Festival Weekend
April 17 - 18
The Festival will... more
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Are you coping with Copenhagen? Well pack your bags~ Bolivian President Evo Morales just announced that Bolivia will host the World Summit for Climate Change from April 19th to April 22nd 2010, in response to the failure of the climate talks in Copenhagen.
"Cochabamba will be the scenario for diverse social movements to discuss
about the consequences global warming brings about, how we harm our
environment and every single hazard jeopardizing planet Earth," explained
Morales when addressing the press.
Bolivian Foreign Ministry will be taking care of the details and the
organization behind the summit. "My idea is to summon everyone on April
19th, so as to conclude the summit on International Day of Mother Earth,
April 22nd," added Morales.
Bolivian President insisted on the idea of organizing a world referendum on
climate change, as well as forming a Climate Justice Court in the United
Nations. He justified the summit in the name on mankind, life and the
planet, and also as a response to the failure of the 15th Summit on Climate
Change. "The problems of climate change are directly linked to the
irrational development of industry," said the president.
Within the framework of a press conference due to the celebrations for the
49th anniversary of the foundation of the Culpina municipality, in the
region of Chuquisaca, Morales stated that he believes industrialized nations
are obsessed with the idea of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius
and the aftermath of this resolution "it is not being analyzed," he pointed
out. "Allowing global warming to rise up to 2 degrees Celsius is a huge
threaten against mankind's survival," warned Morales. He also said that he
had requested technical and scientific arguments to support a large-scale
international mobilization to defend the environment, especially water.
He regretted that the summit held in Copenhagen had concluded without
reaching any important agreement. However, he noted that the event was an
opportunity to break the hegemony of industrialized countries attending the
gathering.
The head of state assured that the summit will count on the participation of
scholars, experts, social organizations and heads of state. "Our main goal
is to reach a consensus so as to move forwards to the next Summit on Climate
Change, to be held in Mexico on 2011," he concluded.
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Welcoming the environmental journalist to the endangered species list (video)
Are you coping with Copenhagen? Well pack your bags~ Bolivian President... more
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leahl
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2 years ago
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Tweet about ways to Go Green for a chance to win a trip for two to the Earth Day Celebration in Washington, DC Saturday, April 24 - Monday, April 26th. The grand prize winner will receive a trip for two to Earth Day on the National Mall including roundtrip flight (with carbon offsets), hotel stay, metro card and earth day gift bag!
Enter now!!!
http://createthegood.org/twittergreenTweet about ways to Go Green for a chance to win a trip for two to the Earth Day... more
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