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More and more we are hearing about bamboo and how it is now being used in ways that are a far cry from the conventionally available tiki torches and fishing poles. Now you can find bamboo in flooring, crown molding, clothing, bed linens, towels, paper, and even cloth baby diapers.

So why exactly is bamboo all the rage? It is a very durable material that is used to make some of the most beautiful and luxurious items around. It is also an environmentally responsible choice.

Bamboo and the Environment

Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on this planet. While some think of it as a tree it is actually grass and it grows one third faster than the fastest growing tree; it reaches a harvestable size in three to five years. Some species grow as much as four feet a day. It requires no pesticides, is harvested with no impact to the environment, and is capable of complete regeneration without need to replant. Bamboo also helps mitigate water pollution due to its high nitrogen consumption. This is great news for those conscious of the environment.

Bamboo’s Amazing Durability

Bamboo is a viable replacement for wood. Not only can it be harvested faster but it rivals wood in strength and durability to. It is one of the strongest building materials, with a tensile strength that rivals steel. Bamboo withstands up to 52,000 pounds of pressure {psi}. Its tensile strength is eight times that of oak or maple. In addition to its hardness rating, bamboo is also resilient. This means it “bounces back” after most impacts and doesn’t dent. These qualities make it an excellent choice for hard floors, cabinetry, and moldings.

Bamboo is Soft as Silk

Bamboo is also gaining popularity in the textile market. Its soft, silky feel, its antimicrobial quality, and its breathability are making this eco-friendly fiber a big hit. Bamboo fabric also dyes very easily making it a great choice for all sorts of colorful towels, bedding items, and clothing. It has even become popular among the manufacturers of cloth baby diapers because of its silky softness, eco-friendly status, and its ability to withstand numerous launderings while still looking like new.

Bamboo is Beautiful and Practical

The use of bamboo translates into some of the most beautiful and luxurious home items available. The beauty and majesty of this plant, its all-natural qualities and Asian origins are making this fiber a much sought after product. It has so many uses that you can bring this beautiful plant into nearly every room in your house. No other plant has as many uses and impacted so many cultures in so many ways.

I wish I could say that this is a new Federal law but it IS progress!

Thimerosal banned from kids’ vaccines

By Dorsey Griffith
SACRAMENTO BEE
SACRAMENTO - Vaccines containing a mercury-based preservative are now largely off-limits to children younger than 3 and pregnant women in California.

The only exception to the new state law, which took effect Saturday, is the vaccine against Japanese encephalitis virus, a deadly mosquito-borne illness endemic to certain parts of Asia.

The new law, sponsored by Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, was aimed at reducing the risk of neurodevelopmental problems such as autism, which many parents believe can be traced to exposure to thimerosal, a substance used as a preservative in many vaccines.

Several large federal studies have shown no link between childhood vaccines and autism, but additional research is ongoing.

The U.S. Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1999 began to advocate the elimination of thimerosal from vaccines because some infants who received them were exposed to mercury at levels that exceeded Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.

Except for trace amounts allowable under the new law, thimerosal has been removed childhood vaccines.

The flu vaccine had been an exception. But concerns about its safety re-emerged in 2004, after the federal government recommended babies between 6 months and 2 years be added to the list of those who should get annual flu shots.

Aventis Pasteur, the company that manufactures the lion’s share of flu vaccine, has increased the supplies of its thimerosal-free version in response to demand.

“Based on what we know, we anticipate there will be an adequate supply of thimerosal-free flu vaccine for pregnant women and children under three,” said Department of Health Services spokesman Ken August.

The state has ordered 684,480 doses of flu vaccine to be distributed to counties for the upcoming season. The total includes 50,000 doses of thimerosal-free vaccine for children ages 1-3 and 15,000 doses for pregnant women. In addition, the state ordered 10,000 doses of FluMist, also thimerosal-free, for use in healthy people ages 5-49.

Aventis had opposed the Pavley bill, citing in a statement concerns that the ban could “undermine public confidence in immunization and ultimately deprive children of access to needed influenza vaccine.”

In response to industry worries and related concerns cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the legislation ultimately was amended to give the industry more time to stock up on thimerosal-free flu vaccine.

The new law also allows for exceptions when no other alternatives are available or during public health emergencies.

August said Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe issued an exception for the Japanese encephalitis virus vaccine.

“Given the absence of a mercury-free vaccine against Japanese encephalitis virus, and because the risk of fatal disease or brain injury far exceed any risk of mercury in the vaccine, the secretary is exercising her authority and temporarily exempting the vaccine from the provision of the law for a 12-month period.”

About 50,000 cases of the disease are reported annually in Asia. There is no cure, and up to 25 percent of those infected die from the disease.

August said that California distributes about 32,000 doses of the three-dose vaccine in annually. Last year, 19,000 went to the military and the rest to people traveling to certain parts of Asia. It is unknown how many of those doses went to very young children or pregnant women.

Source

You may or may not have heard of mineral makeup before, but if you�re a woman who loves cosmetics; it�s definitely something to look into.

Mineral Makeup is made from pure minerals from the earth. Unlike regular liquid foundations, mineral foundations have a powder consistency but are much different than your usual pressed powder. Mineral makeup foundations have the same coverage as liquid, without the oily mess you may be used to. Mineral makeup is all natural and is made up of crushed minerals and inorganic pigments found in nature. They contain no oils, and are light on your skin. This is perfect if you have sensitive skin.

Not only does mineral makeup give great coverage, but it has also been found to be good for your skin. Since Mineral makeup contains no oils it is less likely to clog your pores and cause breakouts. There is also a natural SPF found in most mineral makeup that will help prevent sun damage on your skin.

Another one of the great benefits of mineral makeup is that it won�t run off your face in the heat like most liquid foundations. Mineral makeup is great in humid weather, so even if you sweat, your makeup will stay in place.

Most major cosmetic companies are starting their own lines of mineral makeup. Most lines include foundations, concealers, blush, eye shadows, and even eyeliners in the most popular shades for the season.

Once you try mineral makeup you will not want to go back to regular foundations and concealers. The benefits of mineral makeup far outweigh what traditional makeup has to offer.

USDA Certified Organic

What the seal means = Products must contain only certified organic ingredients (excluding water and salt).

Buy Fresh, Buy Local

What the label means = This label is part of a campaign implemented by Foodroutes Network. Local groups promote local food in their communities through a range of direct marketing outlets including CSAs, farmers markets, restaurants, and independently owned grocery stores.

Fair-Trade Certified

What the seal means = Global Exchange is a membership-based international human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, economic and environmental justice around the world. Fair Trade is an idea and a movement. The idea stems from the belief that global trade does not have to ignore people by focusing solely on laws of supply and demand, but rather that trade can be informed by higher virtues of justice and morality.

Most people spend a lot of time thinking about food. They think about meals they need to plan for their families, food they need to add to their grocery list, new restaurants they need to try, and the carb and calories counts of the foods they love. They have a lot of opinions about their food and what they like and dislike. But many are still not thinking about food in a meaningful way. They are not thinking about where their food comes from, how it gets to them, under what circumstances, and at what cost. There are social, environmental, and ethical considerations that often go un-noticed.

That is why I think Grub Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen is one of the most important books I have ever read. For me, it is as meaningful and important at Rachel Carson’s work in Silent Spring. This book is a ground breaking, whistle blowing, expose on all of the fake food that fills our supermarkets and all of the very compelling reasons we NEED to start choosing organic, local, and fair foods. It is written by Anne Lappe, the co-founder of The Small Planet Institute and Bryant Terry a chef and founder of b-healthy a non-profit organization based in New York City. Both of the authors are food justice activists. They work together to create a guide for the young, the hip, the socially tuned-in, and for all who want to eat real food.

After reading this book you will no longer be able to look at food the same way. As Eric Schlosser (of Fast Food Nation) writes in the forward section, “What we eat has changed more in the last 30 years then in the previous thirty thousand. Trans fats, genetically engineered soybeans, livestock pumped with growth hormones and fed slaughterhouse waste, Chicken McNuggets nobody’s eaten this stuff before. We have become a nation of guinea pigs, the subjects of a vast scientific experiment, waiting to see what happens when humans eat to much industrialized food.”

As I read the book I kept remembering the words spoken by the character Morpheus in the popular movie The Matrix, “How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?” If you are ready to go down the rabbit hole and find out the truth about the foods we eat and the industry behind the food then forget about the red pill - read this book and you will be living in Wonderland no longer.

The book starts out by exposing the six illusions that many have about their food and it goes on to give us a huge wake up call. This book addresses the pesticides used on our food and exposes the large food corporations for their deplorable and greedy practices. The evidence in the book is backed up by numerous cited resources and provides some eye opening if not downright terrifying information that an unsuspecting public of food consumers really NEEDS to know about the food they eat and the mega corporations that are supplying it. This book shows us that eating has become not just a necessity for life but a political act. As Lappe says, “Our food choices, conscious or not, shape our world”.

One particular quote that seems to sum it all up is taken from John Kinsman, a Wisconsin organic dairy farmer that says “Every time you spend money on food you are voting for the world you want.”

After several chapters of eye opening details about all the fake food filling our supermarkets and the heinous political actions of the food industry, the book goes on to explain the correlation between organics and your health. I especially love the fact that this book points out that shifting our diet in a healthier direction doesn’t mean we get it right 100% of the time. The key is to develop habits that make it easier for us to have good days and harder to have bad days.

The latter half of the book contains a series of menus for every season, complete with recipes, soundtracks to cook and eat by, and artwork and poetry that evokes the spirit of eating Grub.

Truly, this is an organic food user’s guide and no conscious food consumer can let this book go unread. I have already decided that this book will make the perfect gift for friends and family who often inquire about my strange eating habits. Hopefully I can share this book with as many people as possible and help them see a need to join the revolution of people who want to change food and farming, creating better health and a better world.

Reprinted from the Pocono Record

July 06, 2006

YONKERS, N.Y. — An investigation Consumer Reports has found that shoppers don’t need to buy organic foods across the board to get added health value. The report tells shoppers which organic products are worth seeking out — and which ones are not. Consumers can pass on organic seafood and shampoo, for example, because their labels can be misleading.

The full investigation appeared in the February issue of Consumer Reports. The complete report, including a list of organic products that are worth buying and which are not, is also available on www.ConsumerReports.org.

Here are some of the recommendations Consumer Reports gives shoppers about organic products.

Organic products worth buying to avoid chemicals found in the conventionally produced versions: Fruits and vegetables, such as apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, spinach, and strawberries. The USDA’s own lab testing found that even after washing, some fruits and vegetables consistently carry much higher levels of pesticide residue than others. Meats, poultry, eggs, and dairy products are also worth seeking out.
Organic products worth buying only if price is no object, include: processed foods and certain produce items, such as cauliflower, sweet corn, broccoli, mangos and sweet peas. Multiple pesticide residues are, in general, rarely found on conventionally grown versions of these fruits and vegetables, according to research by the Environmental Working Group.

Organically labeled items not worth buying include seafood and cosmetics. Whether caught in the wild or farmed, fish can be labeled organic, despite the presence of contaminants such as mercury and PCBs. The USDA has not yet developed organic certification standards for seafood. And while the USDA claims that organic labeled-cosmetics follow the same standards as food, Consumer Reports has found indiscriminate use of synthetic ingredients and violations of food-labeling standards.

The article also found that because of inconsistent and often weak government standards, organic-sounding labels could be confusing to consumers and even meaningless on some products due to lack of enforcement.

Even among the most meaningful and verified organic labels, there are subtle but important differences. If a product is labeled “organic,” at least 95 percent of its ingredients must be organically produced. There is one important exception, however, and that’s organic labels on seafood. Such tags are meaningless because the U.S. Department of Agriculture has no standards to back them up.

Also meaningless is the label “natural” or “all natural.” No standard definition for these terms exists except when it’s applied to meat and poultry products, which the USDA defines as not containing any artificial flavoring, colors, chemical preservatives, or synthetic ingredients, and even those claims are not independently verified.

Consumers interested in learning more about the health and environmental benefits of organic foods can visit www.GreenerChoices.org. Information about food labels is available at www.eco-labels.org.

Organic Without Breaking the Bank

The experts at Consumer Reports found many ways to save when buying organic, including:

Comparison shop. Doing price checks for regularly purchased organic items pays off: Consumer Reports found the price for the same jar of organic baby food ranged from 69 cents to $1.29 among several grocery stores in the suburban New York City area.

Go local. Find organic growers at most farmers’ markets. A USDA study in 2002 found that about 40 percent of those farmers don’t charge a premium.

Join the farm team. By buying a share in a community-supported organic farm consumers may get a weekly supply of produce in season for less than non-organic supermarket prices.

Order by mail. National providers will ship items such as organic beef www.mynaturalbeef.com. Other helpful sites are www.eatwellguide.org and www.theorganicpages.com.

The article below is of great interest to me. Since my cancer diagnosis I have thought alot about how important an organic diet free of chemicals and pesticides is to the human body and its ability to ward off cancer cells. The volume of chemicals and pesticides in conventional foods MUST surely have some effect on cancer rates in my opinion.

By JOHN THRELFALL
Jul 05 2006

Worldwide, people are being diagnosed with cancer at rates unprecedented in recorded history. And after examining a staggering 10 million people over a 70-year period, a recent Swedish study found that cancers were “90 percent environmental in origin”-meaning the vast majority develop from exposure to toxins outside our bodies: radiation, tobacco smoke, alcohol, the sun, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, processed foods . . . sadly, the list goes on (and on).

Fortunately, there’s something we can do to help prevent cancer-and according to local author Guy Dauncey, it may be as simple as eating organic.

“I premise all my work on the knowledge that, as humans with all our incredible intelligence, we could live cooperatively and lovingly together on a really beautiful planet,” says Dauncey. “Non-organic food is hurting the whole planet, through lack of nutrients, damage to the soil and to the ecosystem. But we had to work through the industrial age and the very primitive beginning of science and technology to get where we are now-and we’re going to look back on industrial farming as a huge error that we should never have made.”

But don’t peg Dauncey as just another doom-and-gloomer. As well as currently working on a book called Cancer 101: Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic (a follow-up to his award-winning Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to a Global Climate Change), he is also the president of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association and editor of the monthly newsletter EcoNews. More importantly, given his role as keynote speaker at this weekend’s Organic Islands Festival (see sidebar), Dauncey is also the co-chair of Prevent Cancer Now (www.preventcancernow.ca), a new national non-profit agency aimed at eliminating the preventable causes of cancer-including harmful non-organic farming methods.

“Modern farming, with its chemicals and pesticides-which are there purely for the sake of increased yield and increased profit-are not doing us a favour,” Dauncey explains. “Since we started modern farming, the quantity of nutrients in the soil have fallen by an average of 50 percent just since 1950-because farmers are no longer treating the soil with manure and nitrogen-fixing cover crops.”

“Consider selenium,” he continues, “which is a known preventative against cancer. Selenium uptake by plants is inhibited by three things: modern fertilizers, mercury pollution from coal-fired power and acid rain from fossil fuels. In Britain, just since 1978, selenium levels have fallen by almost 50 percent.”

Selenium is just one of the many cancer-fighting elements losing ground to industrial farming; basic mineral content is another. “Researchers in Britain, Canada and America have all reported levels of iron, calcium, sodium, copper and magnesium-as well as selenium-have fallen over the past 50 years.” Dauncey cracks off statistics like a baseball fan would recite RBIs. “Meats and cheeses have lost half their iron; broccoli has lost 63 percent of its calcium; potatoes have lost 100 percent of their vitamin C. The nutrients are just not there, whereas organic farming methods build the soil and retain high mineral levels across the board.”

Put all that into a grocery store context, and it means the non-organic food we’re eating simply isn’t cutting it. “One of the suspicions about why there’s so much obesity right now is that because people are eating nutrient-deprived food [and] our bodies are saying, ‘Eat more, eat more-you’re not getting the nutrients’.” Want an example you can sink your teeth into? Try a Skippy and Wonder Bread sandwich. “You eat a slice of really wholesome organic brown bread, you feel pretty full,” says Dauncey, “but if you eat white bread and processed peanut butter, you don’t feel full, and you want more of it.”

But while Dauncey is full of daunting facts, he does see a silver lining to the dark cloud we’re currently living under. “I work on the basis that there are only two problems in the world,” he chuckles. “One is the sum total of all our social-environmental-economic-corporate-whatever-you-want-to-call-them problems; the second is the belief that we cannot solve them.”

When asked for solutions, Dauncey perks up. “Number one, eat organic food-and I mean fresh, local organic food, not cardboard strawberries from California.” (Think eating organic is too expensive? Dauncey suggests growing your own and cooking from scratch, rather than relying on pre-packaged foods.) “The second thing,” he says, “is to clean the toxins out of your house.” That includes harmful household cleaners, garden pesticides, tobacco smoke, ambient radiation and electro-magnetic exposure from cell phones, power lines and electronic appliances.

Despite our current woes, Dauncey remains optimistic we can find our way to a healthier future. “I’m hopeful that we can find solutions because the solutions are out there,” he concludes. “I know they make rational sense, I know they save us money and can strengthen our economies in a deep sense. If we really want to guide our culture towards what everyone wants-greater joy, happiness and inner peace-you need to remove the toxins from our food, bring back the neighbours, build stronger families, get the cars off the streets so we can talk to each other while walking around, and protect the forests and the soil.”

See? It’s easy. We just have to want it.

Source

I have to rant today. I love America and I love all of the freedoms and rights we have here. But one thing really irritates me. Why isn’t my right to breathe clean air? Why are other people allowed to come near my home and pollute the air, adversely affecting my health? Where is my right to health and wellness?!

This is something I have thought about a lot in regards to smoking. I am all for banning smoking from public places. If I do not want to breathe the diseased air that emanates from cigarettes I feel that I should not have to. I do not allow people to smoke anywhere near me or my children and I am quite vocal about it if someone tries. This angers a lot of people but their habit does not ONLY involve them and their health, it involves anyone within close proximity. And that is just wrong.

Today I went outside to make a quick trip to the post office. Almost immediately after stepping outside from my backdoor I smelled a horrific chemical smell. Across the street a farmer was spraying some sort of pesticide on his soy bean crops with a huge tractor and mechanical arm. My throat started to hurt immediately, my eyes stung, I got a sinus headache, and I generally just felt awful.

How can this be allowed I ask? How can it be okay for someone to spray noxious chemicals into the air for anyone too be harmed by? Yes, this farmer may feel that spraying these chemicals is important to his livelihood but how is that fair to me, who felt sick all day because of his actions? How is that fair to recipients of his crops who will eat soy beans laden with chemicals?

It is NOT FAIR at all!

Thanks for listening to my rant