Endocrine Disrupters

(this is the handout I will be distributing in Saxapahaw tomorrow)

What are Endocrine Disrupters?

Endocrine disrupters are chemicals that affect the endocrine system and prevent hormones from performing their usual functions in the body. In humans, as in animals, hormones play an important role in communications; they affect mood and memory, reproduction and development, and virtually any other biological process you can name.

Exposure to endocrine disrupters during critical stages of development can result in permanent effects on overall health, intelligence, and the ability to reproduce. Hormone disrupters are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, and immune problems. Even incredibly tiny concentrations can interfere with reproduction.

Bisphenol-A (BPA)
BPA is a hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment.

BPA is used as a plastic coating for children's teeth to prevent cavities, as a coating in metal cans to prevent the metal from contact with food contents, as the plastic in food containers, refrigerator shelving, baby bottles, water bottles, returnable containers for juice, milk and water, micro-wave ovenware and eating utensils. Scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles are known to leach this chemical into liquids.

10 Everyday Pollution Solutions
(see the Environmental Working Group link for explanations of each)

1. Use cast iron pans instead of nonstick.
   
2. To avoid chemicals leaching into food, go easy on processed, canned or fast foods and never microwave plastic. (Bisphenol A)
   
3. Buy organic, or eat vegetables and fruit grown with minimal pesticides.
   
4. Use iodized salt to combat chemical interference from the thyroid.
   
5. Seal outdoor wooden structures (arsenic).
   
6. Leave your shoes at the door. This minimizes distribution of dust-bound pollutants.
   
7. Avoid perfume, cologne and products with added fragrance as well as antibacterial soaps.
   
8. Buy products with natural fibers, like cotton and wool, that are naturally fire resistant. (Chemical flame retardant PBDE)
   
9. Eat low-mercury fish like tilapia & pollock, rather than high-mercury choices like tuna & swordfish.
   
10. Filter your water for drinking and cooking.

DON’T FLUSH!
Wastewater treatment plants and septic systems are generally not designed to treat pharmaceutical waste. Dissolve unwanted medications in water and mix with kitty litter or sawdust (or any material that absorbs the dissolved medication and makes it less appealing for pets or children to eat), then place in a sealed plastic bag BEFORE tossing in the trash.

Other articles I will be distributing:

• Stewing over sewage fertilizer
  
• Rivers of Doubt: Minute quantities of everyday contaminants in our drinking supply could add up to big trouble
  
• Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs): Basic information

More on Carrying Capacity

From Rachel's Democracy & Health News #919, August 9, 2007

Why precaution? Because of cumulative impacts.

One of the reasons for adopting the precautionary principle, rather than the "trust in economic growth" decision rule, is "cumulative impacts."

The foundational assumption of the "trust in economic growth" rule (that economic activity is generally to the net benefit of society, even if it causes environmental damage) is further assumed to be true no matter how large our economy becomes. To implement the "trust in economic growth" rule, all we do is eliminate any activity without a net benefit, and in doing this we examine each activity independently. The surviving economic activities, and the accompanying cost-benefit- justified damage to the environment, are both thought to be able to grow forever.

Not only is there no limit to how large our economy can become, there is no limit as to how large justified environmental damage can become either. The "trust in economic growth" decision rule contains no independent constraint on the total damage we do to Earth -- indeed the core structure of this decision rule assumes that we do not need any such constraint. People who think this way see no need for the precautionary principle precisely because they see no need for the preferential avoidance of damage to the environment that it embodies.

But, as we now know, there is in fact a need for a limit to the damage we do to earth. Unfortunately, the human enterprise has now grown so large that we are running up against the limits of the Earth -- if we are not careful, we can destroy our only home. (Examples abound: global warming, thinning of Earth's ozone shield, depletion of ocean fisheries, shortages of fresh water, accelerated loss of species, and so on.)

And it is the cumulative impact of all we are doing that creates this problem. One can liken it to the famous "straw that broke the camel's back." At some point "the last straw" is added to the camel's load, its carrying capacity exceeded. Just as it would miss the larger picture to assume that since one or a few straws do not hurt the camel, straw after straw can be piled on without concern, so the "trust in economic growth" decision rule misses the larger picture by assuming that cost-benefit-justified environmental damage can grow forever.

Thus, it is the total size of our cumulative impacts that is prompting us to revisit our prevailing decision rule. This is why we now need a decision rule that leads us to contain the damage we do. It is why we now must work preferentially to avoid damage to the Earth, even if we forego some activities that would provide a net benefit if we lived in an "open" or "empty" world whose limits were not being exceeded. We can still develop economically, but we must live within the constraints imposed by Earth itself.

Ultimately, the conclusion that we must learn to live within the capacity of a fragile Earth to provide for us, painful as it is, is thrust upon us by the best science that we have -- the science that looks at the whole biosphere, senses the deep interconnections between all its parts, places us as an element of its ecology, recognizes the time scale involved in its creation and our own evolution within it, and reveals, forever incompletely, the manifold and mounting impacts that we are having upon it and ourselves.

Lois Gibbs in Saxapahaw

Famed Love Canal Environmental Activist will speak in Saxapahaw, NC

Nationally-acclaimed environmental leader Lois Gibbs, Executive Director, Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), will be in North Carolina to discuss the importance of community activism in fighting polluting industry. Lois is known as the "mother of Superfund" for her groundbreaking victory in 1980 relocating 900 families away from the Love Canal, the site of a former toxic chemical waste dump. Families with children living in the Love Canal district experienced birth defects, miscarriages, cancers and health problems.

Please join us for this FREE event!
Sunday, August 19, from 1-4 p.m.
River Landing Inn, 5942 Whitney Road, Graham, NC 27253
(*just across the bridge from Saxapahaw)
Live music by MEBANESVILLE ~ PICNIC pickins!

The event is being sponsored by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL), Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and BE SAFE, NOT SORRY of Alamance County. Leaders from local community-based organizations in Alamance, Orange, Guilford and Granville Counties who will be speaking about their current challenges fighting polluting industries include:

• Martha Hamblin, GASP for Clean Air. Stericycle medical waste incinerator;
  
• Pat Dodson, Be Safe - Not Sorry. South Atlantic steel galvanizing plant and polluting industry ordnances;
  
• Nancy Holt, Neighbors Opposing Bio-Sludge (NO-BS). Health and environmental risks of land application of sewage sludge;
  
• Linda Moore, Watchdogs in the Southeast (WISE). Neighborhoods united to stop an asphalt plant;
  
• Mike Holland, Coalition for Environmental Responsibility & Education through Synergy (CERES). Protecting & preserving the quality of life in the Haw River Valley.

And more.…for an afternoon of discussion, activism, music, and picnicking at the beautiful River Landing Inn on the Haw River. The Inn will offer rooms at a 10% discount for the event. For more information contact Sue Dayton/BREDL: sdayton@swcp.com.

Children are not just small adults

From today's Rachel Democracy and Health News

Childhood Growth Stages Determine What Harm Pollution Does

Geneva, Switzerland -- An increased risk of cancer, heart and lung
disease in adults can result from exposures to certain environmental
chemicals during childhood, the World Health Organization said today.
This finding is part of the first report ever issued by the agency
focusing on children's special susceptibility to harmful chemical
exposures at different stages of their growth.

Air and water contaminants, pesticides in food, lead in soil, as well
many other environmental threats which alter the delicate organism of
a growing child may cause or worsen disease and induce developmental
problems, said the World Health Organization, WHO, releasing the
report at its Geneva headquarters.

The peer-reviewed report highlights the fact that in children, the
stage in their development when exposure to a threat occurs may be
just as important as the magnitude of the exposure.

"Children are not just small adults," said Dr. Terri Damstra, team
leader for WHO's Interregional Research Unit. "Children are especially
vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to
environmental factors -- and this response may differ according to the
different periods of development they are going through."

"For example, their lungs are not fully developed at birth, or even at
the age of eight, and lung maturation may be altered by air pollutants
that induce acute respiratory effects in childhood and may be the
origin of chronic respiratory disease later in life," Dr. Damstra
said.

Over 30 percent of the global burden of disease in children can be
attributed to environmental factors, the WHO study found. (more)

Drought

My garden is dying. I have been watering a few select plants, mostly shrubs that were planted this year so that their roots systems are still vulnerable. This morning I actually dug up a few that are at deaths door and put them in containers so that I can water them. And we're only in a moderate drought? But how many years in a row is this?

Now on top of the drought, we have the excessive heat with the associated air quality advisories. We need a tropical storm!

Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem

This is one of the best examples of systems dynamics that I have seen in a good long while. We have to stop looking for fixes for one problem without analyzing the consequences that fix might have on other aspects of life.

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http://www.agweekly.com/articles/2007/04/01/news/opinion/opin81.txt

Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem

By David Tilman and Jason Hill, Special to The Washington Post

The world has come full circle. A century ago our first transportation biofuels — the hay and oats fed to our horses — were replaced by gasoline. Today, ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans have begun edging out gasoline and diesel.

This has been hailed as an overwhelmingly positive development that will help us reduce the threat of climate change and ease our dependence on foreign oil. In political circles, ethanol is the flavor of the day, and presidential candidates have been cycling through Iowa extolling its benefits. Lost in the ethanol-induced euphoria, however, is the fact that three of our most fundamental needs — food, energy, and a livable and sustainable environment — are now in direct conflict. Moreover, our recent analyses of the full costs and benefits of various biofuels, performed at the University of Minnesota, present a markedly different and more nuanced picture than has been heard on the campaign trail.

Some biofuels, if properly produced, do have the potential to provide climate-friendly energy, but where and how can we grow them? Our most fertile lands are already dedicated to food production. As demand for both food and energy increases, competition for fertile lands could raise food prices enough to drive the poorer third of the globe into malnourishment. The destruction of rainforests and other ecosystems to make new farmland would threaten the continued existence of countless animal and plant species and would increase the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Finding and implementing solutions to the food, fuel and environment conflict is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. But solutions will be neither adopted nor sought until we understand the interlinked problems we face. (see full article for the rest of the article)

Honey's New Furrever Home

Honey Boy was officially adopted today by a wonderful woman named Joanna (she wants a lap cat!) and her other cat Lacey. He chastised me all the over to Raleigh but when we got to Joanna's he lost all his bravado. Lacey came up to the carrier and immediately began rubbing up against it in welcome. So we let Honey (now Chester!) out and he took off exploring. Lacey followed him around, occasionally hissing to establish her dominance, but there were no problems other than Honey's shyness. He ended up hiding under the bed. I took him some treats, which he ate, but he wouldn't come out. So the last time I saw the boy, he was cowering in the dark. Not the way I wanted the introduction to go.

So the sweet boy is gone. Joanna has promised to feed him wet food and has extended an open invitation to visit. Lucy is once again an only cat, much to her pleasure. And while I will not miss his 5:00 am wake up calls, I will miss his very loud purring, the way he liked to hold hands, and his willingness to be picked up and hugged anytime I wanted. I hope he is very happy with his new family.

Saturday, August 11. Joanna called to say she was totally in love with my Sweet Honey and that he has a home furrever!

Carrying Capacity

Carrying capacity can be defined as the "maximum number of organisms that can use a given area of habitat without degrading the habitat and without causing social stresses that result in the population being reduced." Overpopulation is the result of exceeding carrying capacity. In a local environment, such as Orange County, how do we determine carrying capacity?

Apparently many of our local officials, those who make land use policies, believe that as long as we are building inside the urban services boundary, there is no problem with carrying capacity. They believe that if we have strict requirements for open space and stormwater management with investment in public art and transit that we can proceed with total build out. Does carrying capacity relate only to land use? What about resources, such as water and sewer, air quality, or waste management?

The county's comprehensive plan has a goal of “Less solid waste per capita with cost effective and environmentally responsible disposal and management.” Using a normalization factor, such as per capita, is a good start at informing growth management from a real on-the-ground approach over the theoretical approach that has been dominating the conversation in the past several years. But per capita doesn't tell the entire story. We also need to know the growth projections being used by the planners. We can reduce per capita trash consumption while still growing our total volume produced. Is it acceptable to reduce per capita trash production while increasing total volume given the costs we will be incurring from shipping our trash out of county as of 2011? Is affordability part of carrying capacity?

I believe there are signals, the unaffordability of our housing, our failed landfill siting exercises, our persistent school funding issues, and growing stormwater problems, that should be interpreted as threats continued growth imposes on our natural environment and quality of life. The precautionary principle says that despite the lack of cause and effect evidence, we should still proactively engage in measures to protect the environment and social structures of the community. "According to the precautionary principle, precautionary action should be undertaken when there are credible threats of harm, despite residual scientific uncertainty about cause and effect relationships."

The assumption used by most elected officials, the Village Project and others is that growth is inevitable. Some embrace it; others don't. But discussion around growth seem to always come down to a choice between urban density and sprawl. I hope the upcoming election will bring this false dichotomy into a serious political discussion. Do we proceed with building out southern Orange County or do we recognize that some activities associated with growth "may cause serious, irreparable, or widespread harm and that [we] have a responsibility to prevent harm and to preserve the natural foundations of life, now and into the future."