CITES PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERNS

Pollution standards are too weak to protect people from the air they breathe, the E.P.A. administrator said Thursday, recommending tougher limits on the smog across the country.

Still, under pressure from big business, the administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, left the door open to keeping the rules as they are.

It is the Environmental Protection Agency’s first new recommendation since 1997 for ground-level ozone, the principal component of smog, that noxious combination of car exhaust, industrial emissions and gasoline vapors aggravated by summertime sun and heat.

Mr. Johnson recommended reducing current smog standards by 11 percent to 17 percent. Among other benefits, the agency estimated this could reduce by 30 percent to 60 percent the risk of children’s having trouble breathing normally.

“Based upon the current science, I have concluded that the current standard is insufficient to protect public health,” Mr. Johnson said, noting that ozone can harm the lungs and aggravate asthma.

Studies have linked increased ozone levels with higher hospital admissions. The agency will release an impact analysis of its proposal in a few weeks that will detail health benefits and economic costs.

The E.P.A. measures smog by calculating the concentration of ozone molecules in the atmosphere over an eight-hour period. The current standard is 0.084 parts per million, which the agency proposes reducing to 0.070 to 0.075 parts per million.

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A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level – turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas.

All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and – hey presto! – a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).

Key to GRC’s process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.

GRC’s machine is called the Hawk-10. Its smaller incarnations look just like an industrial microwave with bits of machinery attached to it. Larger versions resemble a concrete mixer.

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SOURCE: New Scientist

CALLS FOR QUICK ACTION

Enough fertile land could turn into desert within the next generation to create an “environmental crisis of global proportions,” large-scale migrations and political instability in parts of Africa and Central Asia unless current trends are quickly stemmed, a new United Nations report concludes.

“The costs of desertification are large,” said Zafar Adeel of the United Nations University, who is based in Canada and is an author of the report, to be released Thursday.

“Already at the moment there are tens of millions of people on the move,” Dr. Adeel said in an interview. “There’s internal displacement. There’s international migration. There are a number of causes. But by and large, in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia this movement is triggered by degradation of land.”

The report’s authors say individual nations and international groups must collaborate to solve what has so far been an underrecognized crisis in the making, caused mainly by climate change. Water resources are overexploited because the poor have no other options, and climate change has exacerbated the cycle. Governments and wealthier countries must aid these populations to develop more sustainable livelihoods or suffer the consequences, the report says.

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CONCERN ABOUT EFFECTS OF COMMON CHEMICAL LEADS CONSUMERS TO SEEK SAFER OPTIONS

It is, perhaps, a measure of just how mainstream sex toys have become that there are now budding consumer and environmental awareness campaigns being waged over them.

The biggest controversy is about the materials from which many toys are made.

Most vibrators, dildos and “love dolls,” for instance — especially the soft, pliable “jelly” type — use some form of plastic. In an effort to make the materials softer and more lifelike, PVC plastics suppliers incorporate one or more members of a family of compounds called phthalates (FAY-lates).

To hear some environmentalists tell it, using a vibrator that includes phthalates is akin to bathing in DDT. Alarmed, some sex toy retailers, most prominently San Francisco-based Good Vibrations, are banning toys that include phthalates. But to hear the chemical industry tell it, phthalates are about as benign as mountain spring water. So what is a sex toy consumer to do?

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SOURCE: MSNBC – Sexploration

GOOGLE IS BACKING FUEL-EFFICIENT, HYBRID CARS AS PART OF A PLAN TO MAKE THE ENTIRE FIRM CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2008.

Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, will give $1m in grants to encourage the adoption of hybrids.

It has pledged a further $10m to help commercialise plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles.

“We believe our support can stimulate public consumption,” said Urs Hoelzle, Google’s operations senior vice president.

“These types of cars could make a big difference in how much carbon they produce,” he added.

Power producer

The firm said the hybrid vehicles produced 65% fewer CO2 emissions than the average car in Europe.

Google’s own fleet will be converted to hybrid technology and the firm will look for grant proposals to promote further use of fuel-efficient cars later in the year.

Google said it was investing in renewable energy sources and offsetting emissions that could not be eliminated directly, in order to go carbon neutral.

The US web giant announced it had finished phase one of a 1.6-megawatt solar panel system at its headquarters in Mountain View, California.

It will provide almost a third of the HQ’s energy needs. The firm has also committed to creating an additional 50 megawatts of renewable energy by 2012 – enough to power 50,000 homes.

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MANY STORED EMBRYOS WILL BE DESTROYED ANYWAY, AND LETTING THEM BE USED IN RESEARCH COULD LEAD TO LIFESAVING TREATMENTS

Stem cell research is in the opinion of most credible SCIENTISTS, the greatest hope for combating many of today’s most debilitating diseases. As a person currently living with one of those diseases, this is a matter of great personal importance for me.

Now if only the politicians were so decent

-LIB

A majority of couples with stored embryos from fertility treatments say they would be willing to donate unused embryos for stem cell research, says a doctor who surveyed patients.

“Large numbers of infertility patients … support using embryos for research, and these are people who have invested emotionally and financially in these embryos,” Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly of Duke University said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Use of stem cells derived from embryos is a moral issue that has troubled politicians, religious and medical leaders and couples with stored embryos. And it’s an issue with strong advocates on both sides. The problem is, obtaining stem cells kills the embryo.

Many see this as wrong and argue that they are protecting life. That’s what led President Bush to veto a bill Wednesday that would have eased limits on using embryos in research.

Others point out that many stored embryos will be destroyed anyway, and letting them be used in research could lead to lifesaving treatments. So Lyerly and Ruth R. Faden of Johns Hopkins University decided to ask the opinions of couples who had undergone fertility treatments and who had frozen embryos in storage at treatment centers.

The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness.

With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground.

“I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,” Alex Menton, 11, reported to his classmates the next day. “The mindfulness really helped.”

As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.

Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept – as they did yoga five years ago – and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects.

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TYSON IS THE WORLD’S LARGEST PROCESSOR AND MARKETER OF CHICKEN, BEEF, AND PORK AND SUPPLIES CHICKEN TO KFC, TACO BELL, MCDONALD’S, BURGER KING, WENDY’S, WAL-MART, KROGER AND COSTCO

It’s about time. Now let’s hope that all of the other meat packers follow suit.

-LIB

Tyson Foods, one of the nation’s largest poultry producers, said yesterday that it would no longer use antibiotics to raise chicken sold fresh in stores and would start a $70 million advertising campaign to promote the shift.

The company said that fresh chicken raised without antibiotics was shipped to stores Monday and would be sold beginning later this week in packaging that emphasizes there are no artificial ingredients.

“We’re providing mainstream consumers with products they want,” Tyson’s chief executive, Richard L. Bond, said at a news conference.

Consumers will have to pay slightly more for the privilege though. Dave Hogberg, a senior vice president at Tyson, declined to specify how much of an increase shoppers would see at stores, but he said it would be “below the cost consumers say they’re willing to pay.”

He added that competitors charge about $1.50 to $2 a pound more for boneless, skinless chicken breast without antibiotics and that the price increase for Tyson’s antibiotic-free chicken would be less than $1 a pound.

Tyson will also be spending more to raise the antibiotic-free chickens, although Mr. Hogberg declined to say how much. He said that Tyson was converting 20 – not quite half – of its production facilities to produce the products.

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TAKING STEPS: IN CALIFORNIA, MINNESOTA, NEW MEXICO, AND ELSEWHERE, TRIBES HAVE USED SOME OF THEIR CASINO PROFITS TO START ALTERNATIVE OR RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS, INCLUDING BIOMASS-FUELED POWER PLANTS

From New Hampshire to California, American Indian leaders are speaking out more forcefully about the danger of climate change.

Members of six tribes recently gathered near the Baker River in the White Mountains for a sacred ceremony honoring “Earth Mother.” Talking Hawk, a Mohawk Indian who asked to be identified by his Indian name, pointed to the river’s tea-colored water as proof that the overwhelming amount of pollution humans have produced has caused changes around the globe.

“It’s August color. It’s not normal,” he said.

“Earth Mother is fighting back – not only from the four winds, but also from underneath,” he said. “Scientists call it global warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry.”

At a United Nations meeting last month, several American Indian leaders spoke at a session called “Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change.” Also in May, tribal representatives from Alaska and northern Canada – where pack ice has vanished earlier and earlier each spring – traveled to Washington to press their case.

Those who study American Indian culture believe their presence in the debate could be influential. They point to “The Crying Indian,” (View Commercial) one of the country’s most influential public-service TV ads.

In the spot, actor Iron Eyes Cody, in a buckskin suit, paddles a canoe up a trash-strewn urban creek and then stands by a busy highway cluttered with litter. The ad, which aired in the 1970s, ends with a close-up of Cody, shedding a single tear after a passing motorist throws trash at his feet.

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Federal environmental officials misled Lower Manhattan residents about the extent of contamination in their condominiums and apartments after the collapse of the World Trade Center, according to a preliminary report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.

According to the report, made public during a Senate subcommittee hearing, the Environmental Protection Agency did not accurately report the results of a residential cleanup program in 2002 and 2003. More than 4,000 apartments in Lower Manhattan were professionally decontaminated in that program, and the agency reported that only a “very small” number of air samples taken in those residences showed unsafe levels of asbestos.

But the agency failed to explain that 80 percent of the air samples were taken after the apartments had already been cleaned.

“That was misleading,” said John B. Stephenson, director of the natural resources and environment division of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress. He spoke after testifying at a hearing of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which is reviewing the government’s response to environmental and health issues at ground zero.

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SOURCE: NY Times