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Earth Week Daily Action: Eliminate 3-5 Toxic Personal Care Products

by MitziDalgleish6 Posted on April 22, 2016

Less is more when it comes to how many creams, lotions, soaps and fragrances you use on your body.

That’s because, the less you use, the more money you’ll save and the healthier you’ll be. Earth Week is the perfect time to take stock of what you use and cut back 3-5 that you don’t really need.

Why bother?

Most personal care products contain a worrisome cocktail of questionable if not downright dangerous chemicals that have been linked to cancer, reproductive failure, learning disabilities and asthma.

Here are some of the worst ingredients your products may contain:

Phthalates – Phthalates are industrial compounds that soften plastics. But they also give perfume its slightly oily texture, give hair sprays their oomph and are found in nail polish and many other products. The problems with phthalates are well documented and include links to abnormal development of reproductive organs in baby boys and premature breast development in young girls, among other ills.

Parabens – Parabens are a preservative common in cosmetics and personal care products. Parabens havealso been linked to allergic dermatitis and skin rashes, and have been found in breast cancer tissue.

Synthetic Fragrances – Fragrances and preservatives are the main ingredients in cosmetics. Ironically, fragrances are also the most common cause of skin problems, like contact dermatitis. They also trigger asthma and less dangerous responses, like sneezing and itchy eyes. More than 5,000 different kinds of fragrances are used in makeup, shampoo, soap and lotion.

Triclosan – Public health officials are raising alarms about this chemical because its antibacterial properties may be giving rise to a group of “super germs” that cannot be controlled by available antibiotics. Doctors believe it’s important to build up natural resistance to germs, but triclosan inhibits our ability to do so.

Next Steps

During Earth Week, go into your bathroom and put every single cosmetic and personal care product you use out on the counter. Deodorants, mascara, shampoo, body lotion, foundation, blush, acne treatment, insect repellent, sunless tanning lotion, antiaging cream…put it all out where you can see it and get the full scope of what you’re buying and applying.

You should notice two things:

First, there may beat least 20 products you put on your body almost every day, and as many as 40 you use regularly!

Second, many of those products are “doubles,” in the sense that you may be using two or more products at the same time, when one would do just fine.

Weed out the doubles. Do you need a face cleanser, a face toner, a face serum and a skin “brightener?” Wouldn’t it be just fine to wash your face, put on a little lotion and then whatever make-up you feel you need?

Speaking of make-up, do you need lotion, foundation, blush AND bronzer? Since so many foundations have lotion in them and so many bronzers add blush to your cheeks, can you just use those two?

Look at everything you use and get rid of the doubles (or triples).

Now, check ingredients. Again, put everything aside that contains phthalates, synthetic fragrances, parabens and triclosan.

If that gets rid of just about everything you use, don’t worry. You can get started on a new path to using fewer but healthier products as soon as you clean out the cupboard.

You can find safer products at most food coops, online, and at health food stores. Care2 has also pulled together lots of recommendations. Check out these posts to help you set up a better beauty and health regimen.

Related:
 Get the Lead Out of Your Lipstick
12 Non-toxic Nail Polish Brands
Good Scents: Natural Perfumes
DIY Deodorant Recipe That Works

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Earth Week Daily Action: Eliminate 3-5 Toxic Personal Care Products

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North Carolina’s GOP Just Fast-Tracked the Broadest Anti-LGBT Bill in the Country

by LeoraMendez Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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UPDATE 2 (3/23/16): North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed HB 2 into law late Wednesday night, invalidating a Charlotte LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance and similar laws in nine other localities. His office released the following statement: “This new government regulation defies common sense and basic community norms by allowing, for example, a man to use a woman’s bathroom, shower or locker room…As a result, I have signed legislation passed by a bipartisan majority to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette which was to go into effect April 1.”

UPDATE 1 (3/23/16): North Carolina Gov. McCrory plans to sign HB 2 into law on Wednesday evening, his spokesperson tells BuzzFeed.

North Carolina state legislators introduced, debated, and passed a sweeping anti-LGBT bill on Wednesday, pushing it through a Republican-controlled Assembly so fast that 11 Democrats walked out in protest before the Senate vote late in the afternoon.

House Bill 2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, strikes down all existing LGBT nondiscrimination statutes across the state, on top of banning transgender people from using some public restrooms. “That North Carolina is making discrimination part of the law is shameful,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in a video statement Wednesday.

Republican lawmakers introduced the bill in the House during a special session called to deal with a Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance that was set to go into effect on April 1. The Charlotte ordinance adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under the city’s existing anti-discrimination law. It includes a provision allowing transgender people to use restrooms at public facilities based on their gender identity and also protects LGBT people from discrimination by businesses and other institutions that serve the general public, like stores or schools.

Nine other localities in the state have ordinances similar to Charlotte’s, but if House Bill 2 becomes law, all of them will be invalidated. In their place, the legislation proposes a statewide ordinance that would protect people from discrimination based on “race, religion, color, national origin, or biological sex.” The “biological sex” provision would be a new addition, and refers to the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate.

State representatives said they didn’t have a chance to read HB 2 before it was introduced Wednesday morning, an hour before its scheduled vote by the House Judiciary Committee. The committee chairman gave lawmakers a five-minute break to read the bill after a request from Democratic Rep. Bobby Richardson.

As this bill sailed through the House, Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson listed the bill’s sweeping implications on Facebook:

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Here’s what’s happening – at light speed – in the General Assembly’s “emergency” session right now.In response to…

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The bill passed the House 83-to-25 on Wednesday afternoon, and 32-to-0 in the Senate later in the evening after Democratic lawmakers walked out en masse rather than debate the bill. (GOP Senate leader Phil Berger told ABC News that such a walkout was unprecedented during his 15 years in office.) Gov. Pat McCrory hasn’t said whether he will sign the bill, but when Charlotte passed its nondiscrimination statute in February, McCrory expressed strong opposition and promised state-level backlash: “This shift in policy could also create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy,” he wrote in an email to the Charlotte city council, adding that the bill would “most likely cause immediate state legislative intervention.”

With the bill now headed to the governor’s desk, several companies expressed their opposition to it, including Dow Chemical and North Carolina-based Red Hat.

“In blocking the will of Charlotte and other cities,” tweeted the Human Rights Campaign’s Chad Griffin, the Assembly “is trampling on the rights of every taxpayer in North Carolina.”

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North Carolina’s GOP Just Fast-Tracked the Broadest Anti-LGBT Bill in the Country

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How You Can Be Green in the Office

by WendyWWQHcs Posted on March 5, 2016

I have a nine-to-five job, spending most of my day in front of the computer and far removed from any Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) property. I will likely not be doing hands-on conservation on any given work day. Sometimes, cubicle dwellers like me need to think hard about how we can contribute in environmentally positive ways in our workplace.

Recently, the NCC national office in Toronto opened a can of worms in hopes of closing the loop with our organic wastes. Up until November 2015, there had been no organic waste collection in our building. That all changed when a vermiculture start-up contacted NCC about composting our food waste through Green Bins Growing.

Owner and operator of WasteNot Worm Farms, Jocelyn Molyneux, is just about the most enthusiastic person Ive seen about red, wriggly worms. Over a lunch and learn, Jocelyn introduced our group to the important roles worms play in agriculture, the differences between traditional (hot) composting and worm composting and their fertilizer by-products. Of about a dozen attendees, only one had experience with worm composting and that was from the college she attended that had adopted this practice.

So whats the point of all this, and is it worth it?

Worms are the soils natural nutrient recycling squad and they are quite apt at this job. They eat decaying matter and produce nutrient-rich biofertilizer. By signing on for an office worm composting system, were looking to divert our organic waste away from landfill to a process that feeds back into our food system.

Jocelyn told us one pound of worms can eat up to one pound of food waste each day. The resulting manure material is called worm castings a dense, nutrient-rich humus that sequesters carbons, feeds soil with beneficial microbes that kick-start the soil food web and provides natural plant growth stimulators.

Compare this to conventional fertilizers, which are generally made from petroleum products: conventional fertilizers damage the natural soil ecosystem, reducing soil fertility by killing soil microbes and creating a dependency on further chemical fertilizer applications. Check out this fertilizer buying guide published by National Geographic.

Even when compared to traditional composting, worms come out on top. Traditional composting produces a low-grade soil mulch where the high heat treatment has killed most beneficial microbes and much of the carbon and other nutrients have broken down, Jocelyn says.

The price difference is telling, too. Worm castings weigh in at $400 U.S./cubic yard versus $30 U.S./cubic yard for compost.

A big incentive with WasteNot Worm Farm is that we receive 25 percent of our years castings to give out to employees or donate to a community garden. A good deal, compared to buying it at $5/lb, if you ask me!

Meeting our worms

Red wigglers are small but have a big appetite (Photo by NCC)

After receiving the 101 on worm composting, we had the chance to introduce ourselves to the red wigglers we had just employed. To our surprise, these are thin, spindly worms about two to four inches long; nothing like the big plump earthworms (night crawlers) some of us encounter while working in our gardens.

A brave few held their hand out to meet the worms, but were told not to handle them for too long as worms are photosensitive and can go into spasms under prolonged exposure to light.

We will not however actually have a worm bin in our kitchen, and for good reason! WasteNot Worm Farms collects our food wastes weekly, reducing the risk of fruit flies and limiting the waft of bad odors. Composting at a central farm facility (about 80 kilometres outside of Toronto) is more efficient for a small operation like WasteNot Worm Farms. Like the worms themselves, WasteNot Worm Farms is small but has a big appetite.

Ontario sends three million tonnes of organics to landfill each year, mostly because it’s cheaper to landfill in Michigan than it is to compost in Ontario.

Canadians are hungry for sustainable solutions, and worm farming is a simple, inexpensive biotechnology that recycles waste nutrients back to our soil. With early adopters like the Nature Conservancy of Canada leading the way, I’m confident that vermicomposting is on the verge of becoming a popular Zero Waste industrial recycling solution, says Jocelyn.

Trashing out then and now

Green Bin Growing (Photo by NCC)

It has now been four months since we started using the green bins and I can already see a drastic diversion of wastes. In the past without organic waste collection services, we had no choice but to dump our food scraps into the same bin as our non-recyclables. Since we signed on with WasteNot Worm Farms, our staff have been diligent in correctly sorting their organic, compostable items, recyclables and trash.

Our hope is that by paying a small premium for Green Bins Growing, we are supporting a waste management practice that promotes environmental sustainability. We are looking forward to seeing the volume of worm castings our wastes can generate over the year, ensuring were doing our part to cycle those nutrients back into our soil.

This post originally appeared on Land Lines and was written by Wendy Ho, editorial coordinator with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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How You Can Be Green in the Office

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6 Things I Would Ask the Presidential Candidates About Food and Farming

by GuyKrajewski Posted on February 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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The 2016 presidential election is hurtling into unknown territory, as candidates blessed by party elites fight for their political lives while insurgents suck up all the oxygen. But one time-tested electoral tradition remains in place: Everyone—from the socialist Vermont Jew with the excellent Brooklyn accent to the xenophobic billionaire reality-TV star—is largely ignoring food and farm policy on the stump.

Meanwhile, slow-motion ecological crises haunt the country’s main farming regions, and diet-related maladies generate massive burdens on the US health care system. Over the next three frantic weeks—with five debates and more than two dozen primaries—the two major-party candidates may well emerge. If I were a debate moderator or a reporter on the trail, here are some questions I would ask them:

1. Bolstered by tens of billions of dollars of crop and insurance subsidies over two decades, farms in the US Corn Belt—the former prairies occupying much of the upper Midwest—churn out the feed that drives the country’s meat industry. They also produce the feedstock for ethanol, which accounts for about 10 percent of fuel we use in cars. Yet the region is losing the very resource that makes all this bounty possible: Its precious store of topsoil is disappearing much faster than the natural replacement rate—a trend that will likely accelerate as climate change proceeds apace. And all of that runaway dirt carries agrichemicals into waterways along with it, fouling tap water in Des Moines, Columbus, Toledo, and countless other communities and feeding a monstrous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

A growing body of research suggests that diversifying crops—growing other stuff besides just corn and soybeans, including everything from wheat and oats to vegetables—could go a long way to reversing these catastrophes. As president, how would you push farm policy to reward soil- and water-friendly farming practices in the heartland?

2. Meanwhile, in the country’s fruit and vegetable belt, a different kind of water crisis unfolds. Drought persists in California—the source of 81 percent of US-grown carrots, 95 percent of broccoli, 86 percent of cauliflower, 74 percent of raspberries, 91 percent of strawberries, and nearly all almonds and pistachios, plus a fifth of US milk production. In the state’s massive Central Valley, agriculture has gotten so ravenous for irrigation water that its aquifers have been declining steadily for decades. Meanwhile, the Imperial Valley in California’s bone-dry southeastern corner provides about two-thirds of US winter vegetables. These crops are irrigated by water diverted from the declining Colorado River, putting the region’s farms into increasing competition with the 40 million people who rely on the waterway for drinking water. For decades, federal policy has encouraged California’s produce dominance by investing in irrigation infrastructure and through sweetheart water deals with well-connected Central Valley growers. Some observers—okay, me—have called for a “de-Californication” of US fruit and vegetable production in response to these crises. How would your administration respond to California’s declining water resources in the context of its central position in our food system?

3. Republican candidates have focused largely on the alleged scourge of undocumented immigrants from points south, while the Democratic debate has hinged on income inequality. The two issues intersect on our plates, through the hidden labor required to feed us. According to the US Department of Agriculture, about 70 percent of workers on US crop fields come from Mexico or Central America, and more than 40 percent of them are undocumented. Median hourly wage: $9.17. In restaurants, where the median hourly wage stands at $10, tips included, around one in six workers are immigrants, nearly double the rate outside the restaurant industry. After spasms of union busting in the 1980s, the meatpacking industry, too, relies heavily on immigrants—and pays an average wage of $12.50 per hour. How would you act to improve wages and working conditions for the people who feed us?

4. Under Hillary Clinton, the US State Department conducted a “concerted strategy to promote agricultural biotechnology overseas, compel countries to import biotech crops and foods they do not want, and lobby foreign governments—especially in the developing world—to adopt policies to pave the way to cultivate biotech crops,” a 2013 Food & Water Watch analysis of diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks found. Meanwhile, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has called for a different approach to agricultural policy: a “rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems.” Would your administration continue to promote biotech crops around the world and lobby foreign governments to accept them? Why or why not?

5. For decades, US antitrust authorities have watched idly as huge food companies gobble each other up, grabbing ever larger shares of food and agriculture markets. According to Mary Hendrickson, a rural sociologist at the University of Missouri, just four companies (not the same ones in each case) slaughter and pack more than 80 percent of US beef cows, 60 percent of the country’s pigs, and half of its chickens. After last year’s merger of chemical behemoths Dow and Dupont, three companies—DowDuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta—will soon own something like 57 percent of the global seed market and sell 46 percent of pesticides. Since then, state-owned China National Chemical Corp. has bought Syngenta. Early in his administration, President Barack Obama initiated serious investigations of these highly consolidated industries, responding to farmers’ complaints of uncompetitive markets. After much buildup, these efforts ended with a thud. How would your Department of Justice look at consolidation in ag markets—and would you consider antitrust action to break them up?

6. According to a 2013 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, annual US medical expenses from treating heart disease and stroke stood at $94 billion in 2010—and were expected to nearly triple by 2030, driven largely by diets dominated by hyperprocessed food. The report concluded that if Americans followed USDA recommendations for daily consumption of fruits and vegetables, 127,000 lives and $17 billion in medical expenses would be saved annually. What’s the proper federal role for convincing people to eat healthier—especially people of limited means? (Hat tip to Food Tank, which asks nine other excellent questions.)

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6 Things I Would Ask the Presidential Candidates About Food and Farming

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The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

by Peggy Mason Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bees are dying in record numbers—and now the government admits that an extremely common pesticide is at least partially to blame.

For more than a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency has been under pressure from environmentalists and beekeepers to reconsider its approval of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, based on a mounting body of research suggesting they harm bees and other pollinators at tiny doses. In a report released Wednesday, the EPA basically conceded the case.

Marketed by European chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer, neonics are the most widely used pesticides both in the United States and globally. In 2009, the agency commenced a long, slow process of reassessing them—not as a class, but rather one by one (there are five altogether). Meanwhile, tens of millions of acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year, and the health of US honeybee hives continues to be dismal.

The EPA’s long-awaited assessment focused on how one of the most prominent neonics—Bayer’s imidacloprid—affects bees. The report card was so dire that the EPA “could potentially take action” to “restrict or limit the use” of the chemical by the end of this year, an agency spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

Reviewing dozens of studies from independent and industry-funded researchers, the EPA’s risk-assessment team established that when bees encounter imidacloprid at levels above 25 parts per billion—a common level for neonics in farm fields—they suffer harm. “These effects include decreases in pollinators as well as less honey produced,” the EPA’s press release states.

The crops most likely to expose honeybees to harmful levels of imidacloprid are cotton and citrus, while “corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level.” Note in the below USGS chart that a substantial amount of imidacloprid goes into the US cotton crop.

Imidacloprid use has surged in recent years. Uh-oh. US Geological Survey

Meanwhile, the fact that the EPA says imidacloprid-treated corn likely doesn’t harm bees sounds comforting, but as the same USGS chart shows, corn gets little or no imidacloprid. (It gets huge amounts of another neonic, clothianidin, whose EPA risk assessment hasn’t been released yet.)

The biggest imidacloprid-treated crop of all is soybeans, and soy remains an information black hole. The EPA assessment notes that soybeans are “attractive to bees via pollen and nectar,” meaning they could expose bees to dangerous levels of imidacloprid, but data on how much of the pesticide shows up in soybeans’ pollen and nectar are “unavailable,” both from Bayer and from independent researchers. Oops. Mind you, imidacloprid has been registered for use by the EPA since the 1990s.

The agency still has to consider public comments on the bee assessment it just released, and it also has to complete a risk assessment of imidacloprid’s effect on other species. In addition to their impact on bees, neonic pesticides may also harm birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates, recent studies suggest. Then there are the assessments of the other four neonic products that need to be done. Frustrated at the glacial pace of the EPA’s deliberations, a coalition of beekeepers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday demanding that the agency withdraw its approvals for the most-used neonic products.

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The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

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What Exactly Is in Dishwasher Detergent?

by MarionRhem2128 Posted on December 26, 2015

Have you ever wondered how the chemicals in your dishwasher detergent can scrape off the nastiest grime without any scrubbing? Most detergents have special ingredients to work their magic, but many of these ingredients can be harmful to humans and aquatic life. Heres a closer look at what youre putting in your dishwasher.

How Dishwasher Detergent Works

A detergent has certain requirements to work properly in automatic dishwashers. One key factor is that it must not produce any foam or suds. These can inhibit the washing action. The detergent must also do the following:

Reduce the surface tension of water.
Tie up minerals in the water.
Emulsify grease and oil.
Allow water to sheet off surfaces to minimize water spots.
Protect metals from the corrosive effects of heat and water.

Typically, detergents use a mixture of synthetic chemicals and additives to accomplish all these functions.

Detergent Ingredients

The chemicals and additives used in most commercial dishwasher detergents typically fall into the following categories.

Alkaline builders. Soften hard water by combining with minerals, mostly calcium and magnesium. When minerals are kept in solution, they will not leave spots or film on the dishes. Builders are typically 90-95 percent of the volume of a dishwasher detergent.

Phosphates are a commonly used builder. They are known to pollute lakes and rivers, creating algae blooms that starve fish of oxygen. For this reason, the use of phosphates in dishwasher detergent has been banned in some U.S. states.

Surfactants. Lower the surface tension of water. This allows water to evenly spread over surfaces and seep into food residue more effectively in order to break it up.

Surfactants only make up 1-5 percent of a detergent. The types used in dishwasher detergent are considered fairly non-toxic, although some surfactants are associated with skin irritation and possible respiratory symptoms.

Corrosion inhibitors. Prevent rust and protect machine parts, metal utensils and other metal ware.

Many of these inhibitors are actually corrosive themselves. For instance, inhaling sodium silicate, a common inhibitor, can lead to severe irritation of the upper respiratory tract. It can also burn parts of the digestive system if swallowed, or burn skin on contact.

Chlorine compounds and bleaching agents. Sanitize dishes and break down proteins like eggs or milk. Also remove stains and reduce spotting of glassware.

These agents are often very poisonous. Due to the high concentration of chlorine in detergents, it has become the number one cause of household poisoning. Chlorine and bleaching agents are often what you smell when the dishwasher is working, and the fumes alone can cause respiratory problems.

Perfumes. Cover the chemical smell of the other ingredients and any stinky food residue on the dishes.

Over 3,000 chemicals are used to make perfume and fragrance mixtures. Some of these chemicals have been linked to dermatitis, allergies and respiratory issues.

Alkaline salts and oxidizing agents. Break down acids, grease and oil.

Many of these agents can be very corrosive if inhaled, touched or ingested.

Enzymes. Break down starches and proteins in food residue.

Enzyme preparations can be strong eye irritants, so its important to make sure you never splash or get any dishwasher detergent in your eyes.

Safer Options

Most of the chemical ingredients in dishwasher detergent will leave small amounts of residue on your dishes. This means youre eating tiny amounts with every meal.

Thankfully, healthier options for dishwasher detergent are available. In their Guide to Healthy Cleaning, the Environmental Working Group evaluates many commercial cleaning products available today.

They recently evaluated 105 dishwasher detergents. Out of these, a mere 12 received an A rating, which means they are considered relatively safe for human and environmental health. The top 12 are listed on their website.

Many recipes are also available for home-made dishwasher detergent. The effectiveness of these can vary depending on the type of water in your home and your individual dishwasher. If youre going to try a new recipe for detergent, its best to experiment with a small batch at first to see how it works.

Related
6 Mistakes Youre Probably Making With Your Dishwasher
27 Dishwasher Maintenance Tips to Maximize Performance
E-Cigarettes Are Definitely Not as Safe as You Think

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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What Exactly Is in Dishwasher Detergent?

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The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

by JohnBorowski Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked its controversial approval of a novel herbicide mix, sending shares of its maker, chemical giant Dow, down nearly 3 percent in Wednesday trading.

The product, Enlist Duo, is the signature weed-killing cocktail of Dow AgroScience, Dow’s ag subsidiary. It’s composed of two endocrine-disrupting chemicals, 2-4-D and glypohosate, that have landed on the World Health Organization’s lists of “possible” and “probable” carcinogens, respectively. Dow markets it for use alongside corn and soybean varieties that have been genetically engineered to withstand the combined herbicides, to counter the rapid rise of weeds that have evolved to resist glyphosate alone. Approved by the EPA last year, Enlist Duo is the company’s “crown jewel,” a Wall Street analyst recently told The Wall Street Journal. The US Department of Agriculture thinks farmers will embrace it rapidly—it will boost 2,4-D use by as much as 600 percent by 2020, the agency projects.

How inconvenient for Dow’s shareholders, then, that the EPA has changed its mind. Last Tuesday, the agency petitioned the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals to revoke its approval of Enlist Duo, temporarily barring farmers from using it.

The reason for the reversal is fascinating. The decision hinges on the so-called “synergistic” effects of combined pesticides. When you combine two or more herbicides, do you merely get the weed-slaying properties of each—or do you also get something new and greater than the sum of the parts? There’s not a lot of data on that. Generally, pesticides are tested for safety in isolation, even though farmers tend to use several at once in the field. Yet studies have repeatedly shown—see here and here—that chemical combinations can be much more toxic than you’d expect from analyzing each of their components.

When the EPA reviewed safety data supplied by Dow, it found “no indication of synergism between the two Enlist Duo ingredients for mammals, freshwater fish, and freshwater invertebrates,” its court petition states, and thus it concluded that the “mixture of the two ingredients does not show a greater toxicity compared to either parent compound alone.”

But later, agency officials looked at Dow’s application to the US Patent Office for Enlist Duo, originally filed in 2013, and found something quite different: “claims of ‘synergistic herbicidal weed control.'” The EPA was not amused. “Specifically, Dow did not submit to EPA during the registration process the extensive information relating to potential synergism it cited to the Patent Office,” the agency complained to the court. “EPA only learned of the existence of that information after the registrations were issued and only recently obtained the information.”

In others words, Dow was assuring the EPA that its proposed cocktail was really nothing new—just the combination of two already-approved agrichemicals—while simultaneously telling the patent office that Enlist did indeed bring new and different weed-leveling properties to the farm field. In short, two different messages for two different audiences—the EPA sees potentially heightened toxicity from synergistic effects, while the investors who pore over patents might see a potential blockbuster in an herbicide mix that’s more than just the sum of its two components.

Dow has now handed that “extensive information” on Enlist Duo’s synergistic effects to the EPA. In a press release, Dow AgroSciences President and CEO Tim Hassinger vowed to resolve the EPA’s issues “in the next few months, in time for the 2016 crop use season.” Given that the EPA relies on company-supplied data to make these decisions, he’s probably right—the EPA’s action last week will amount to a speed bump on the road to Enlist Duo’s conquering of the nation’s vast corn/soybean belt. But considering the confusion so far, now might be the time for the EPA to demand independent testing of this powerful and potentially soon-to-be ubiquitous mix.

Meanwhile, last Wednesday’s action marks the second time in November the EPA has seen fit to revoke registration of a would-be blockbuster Dow pesticide. Just a week before, the agency nixed its approval of the insecticide sulfoxaflor, months after a federal appeals court found that Dow had delivered the agency “flawed and limited data” about the chemical’s impact on honeybees.

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The Government Buried Some Really Important Herbicide News Right Before Thanksgiving

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Big Corporations Are Using a Record Amount of Clean Energy

by DeloresMerritt Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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On November 30, world leaders will flock to Paris to hammer out an international agreement to slow global warming. The agreement is likely to give a boost to the clean energy industry, as countries around the world pour money into wind and solar projects as a way to cut their greenhouse gas footprints.

In the United States clean energy is already a booming business. Solar is the fastest-growing energy source in the country, and in 2015 total investment in renewable energy projects here reached nearly $40 billion. Here’s some more good news: Big corporations are signing up for a record amount of clean energy for their offices, data centers, warehouses, and other facilities, according to a new analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit environmental research outfit.

RMI tracked publicly announced contracts between corporations and large-scale wind and solar farms and found that in 2015 the total reached 2,100 megawatts, roughly equal to 525,000 home rooftop solar systems. That’s 75 percent higher than what RMI measured last year, and it includes more than a dozen companies with new contracts. New contracts this year include Dow Chemical, General Motors, Walmart, and Kaiser Permanente. It’s also a big win for the climate: Electricity accounts for one-third of US greenhouse gas emissions, and more than one-third of electricity goes to commercial users. So if big companies are clamoring for clean energy, that can have a significant, near-term impact on reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas footprint.

“The pressure is mounting for corporate executives to take action” on climate change, said Hervé Touati, RMI’s managing director. “What they realize is that signing these large deals is the best way to say you are addressing your sustainability agenda.”

In most cases, the contracts are “power purchase agreements,” where the company agrees to buy a certain amount of power from a wind or solar farm at a fixed price for 10 to 20 years. These contracts are mutually beneficial, Touati explained: They give renewable energy developers the guaranteed revenue they need to finance big new projects, and give the companies long-term certainty about one of their biggest expenses, electricity.

Tech companies such as Google and Facebook were early adopters of large-scale clean energy, thanks to the sky-high electricity consumption at data centers. Last year, Apple announced that 94 percent of its operations are powered by clean energy, including a massive solar array outside its data center in North Carolina. Now, Touati said, a more diverse mix of corporations is getting in on the act, including hospitals, hotels, and shipping companies.

That trend is driven by a confluence of factors that have made clean energy contracts seem like low-hanging fruit to top corporate financial officers. The cost of clean energy is continuing to plummet—solar power could soon be cheaper than conventional grid electricity in all 50 states. Meanwhile, customers and investors are increasingly conscientious about companies’ impact on the environment. A recent survey by the World Resources Institute found that half of all Fortune 500 companies have implemented specific goals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewables.

The only losers in this arrangement, Touati said, are traditional electric utilities, which more cling to fossil fuel-fired power plants. For those power companies, the loss of big corporate customers is harder to brush off than losing a few homes to rooftop solar. That could motivate them to clean up their act more quickly.

“When we come with Google and Facebook and those big names and we tell electric utilities that these big corporations want this, then they start to listen,” he said. “This trend is going to be difficult to stop.”

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Big Corporations Are Using a Record Amount of Clean Energy

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Tyson Foods Wants the Supreme Court to Let It Keep Stealing Workers’ Wages

by DavidSpann Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Workers have filed dozens of lawsuits against Tyson Foods alleging millions of dollars in “wage theft” for its failure to keep wage and hour records and to properly pay workers for overtime as required by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA). On Tuesday, Tyson came before the US Supreme Court and argued that the justices should make those lawsuits go away. Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo is truly a David-versus-Goliath lawsuit, with about 3,000 low-income, often immigrant workers going up against the world’s second-largest meat processor, which has more than $30 billion in annual sales.

Tyson has asked the nation’s highest court to throw out a lawsuit that resulted in a $6 million jury verdict against the company in Iowa for cheating its workers out of earned overtime. Tyson doesn’t just want the case thrown out, though. The verdict at issue amounts to peanuts for the multinational corporation—a little more than two hours’ worth of Tyson’s annual profits. The company also wants the court to issue a broad ruling that would effectively immunize it against future class actions for wage and hour theft, and make it much harder for workers everywhere to join together to bring such claims. If it wins this case, Tyson could have it both ways: It could effectively continue to violate the FSLA and escape liability for it in court.

Tyson is one of three significant legal assaults on class actions before the court this term, waged by big businesses seeking to make it more difficult for workers and consumers to join together to sue them for misconduct. Weighing in on Tyson’s side in the case are other corporate giants, including Wal-Mart, Dow Chemical, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

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Tyson Foods Wants the Supreme Court to Let It Keep Stealing Workers’ Wages

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These Nail Polish Brands Contain a Chemical That Could Mess With Your Hormones

by LukeSackett Posted on October 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Want some toxins with that mani-pedi?

A new study by researchers at Duke University and the Environmental Working Group found that a common nail polish chemical and suspected endocrine disruptor called TPHP is leaching into the bodies of polish-wearers.

TPHP, also known as TPP, is commonly used as a fire retardant in furniture and a hardener in plastic goods. According to the authors, research suggests that the chemical causes changes in hormone regulation, metabolism, and reproductive systems.

The study, published today in Environmental International, found that women who painted their nails with polishes containing TPHP saw a sevenfold increase of a TPHP metabolite (a substance formed when the body metabolizes TPHP) just 10 to 14 hours after painting their nails.

“It is very troubling that nail polish being marketed to women and teenage girls contains a suspected endocrine disruptor,” said Johanna Congleton, a co-author of the study, in a press release. “It is even more troubling to learn that their bodies absorb this chemical relatively quickly after they apply a coat of polish.”

TPHP is a common addition to nail polishes; an analysis of EWG’s Skin Deep database found that about half of all nail polishes—or 1,500 polishes in the database—contain the chemical, including popular brands like OPI, Sallie Hansen, and Revlon. (Below are a few big-name brands; here‘s the complete database.)

Environmental Working Group

To figure out if the chemical was being absorbed from fumes or directly from the nails, some women in the study wore gloves and applied polish to synthetic nails, while others applied polish directly to their own nails. The TPHP metabolite levels of the former group didn’t change significantly while the latter group saw a sevenfold increase, suggesting that fumes weren’t the main vehicle for the chemical. Nails are impermeable to most molecules, so the researchers theorize that the chemical leached through the cuticles, or that another ingredient in the polish made the nails more permeable.

It’s still unknown if the levels of TPHP coming from nail polish are harmful to the body, as most of the studies on the effects of TPHP have been conducted on animals.

It’s also unknown if there’s a less toxic chemical that could replace TPHP in nail polishes. The chemical acts as a plasticizer, making the polish flexible but durable. It may have replaced a chemical called DBP, which fell out of popularity when it was found to be a hormone disruptor. If companies move away from TPHP, as they did with DBP, the challenge is making sure the replacement isn’t just as toxic as the original. “I’m assuming that if you need a plasticizer, there are other options available,” said Congleton in an interview. “But I would want to be able to identify what those are and make sure the right questions have been asked.”

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These Nail Polish Brands Contain a Chemical That Could Mess With Your Hormones

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