France is poised to become the first country to ban hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking or hydrofracking, a controversial technique used to extract natural gas and oil trapped in underground rock formations by injecting a mixture of water, sand and toxic chemicals at high pressure to crack open the rock and release the fossil fuels.
Lawmakers in the lower house of the French parliament have voted to ban hydraulic fracturing, which critics and environmentalists say pollutes the water table and contaminates drinking water. If the Senate next month votes the same way, France will set a precedent for national bans on fracking.
France gets most of its electricity from nuclear reactors, and is often held up as a model by those who want to expand the use of nuclear energy, but Japan’s recent nuclear crisis has led the French to start exploring other energy sources. That effort gained momentum recently when the European Center for Energy and Resource Security reported that Europe could cover its energy needs for the next 60 years if it developed its unconventional natural gas resources.
But while French lawmakers ponder how to exploit new energy sources and expand the nation’s energy portfolio, they are constrained by public concern over the environmental consequences. That’s especially true in light of new evidence against fracking, such as the Duke University study that found methane-contaminated drinking water in 85 percent of the private wells tested in Pennsylvania and New York.
Still, it seems no one is satisfied with the fracking ban as it is currently written. Oil and gas companies see it as an impediment. Environmentalists think it doesn’t go far enough.
If the bill is not significantly altered by the Senate, the new law would not revoke any permits that have already been granted. Instead, it would require companies to deliver a report to the government, detailing all the methods they plan to use in exploring or drilling for gas and oil. If those methods include hydraulic fracturing, the permits will be denied.
If the companies fail to report their intention to use fracking, and are discovered using it, executives could face a fine of €75,000 ($107,000) and be sent to prison.
As the bill moves to the French Senate, the debate is almost sure to devolve into the usual arguments about economy versus environment. It shouldn’t.
There is no inherent conflict between environmental sustainability and economic growth. The problem arises when industry operates with complete disregard for the environment, or when environmentalists try to block legitimate industry practices because they aren’t 100-percent green.
The world depends on energy. It’s going to take years to bring clean energy sources to the point where they can replace fossil fuels. Meanwhile, we need to find ways to extract and use fossil fuels that do the least possible damage to the environment and public health.
Fracking doesn’t meet that goal. The ban should stand. And other nations should follow France’s lead.
SIX weeks ago, when I first heard about the reactor damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, I knew the prognosis: If any of the containment vessels or fuel pools exploded, it would mean millions of new cases of cancer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Many advocates of nuclear power would deny this. During the 25th anniversary last week of the Chernobyl disaster, some commentators asserted that few people died in the aftermath, and that there have been relatively few genetic abnormalities in survivors’ offspring. It’s an easy leap from there to arguments about the safety of nuclear energy compared to alternatives like coal, and optimistic predictions about the health of the people living near Fukushima.
But this is dangerously ill informed and short-sighted; if anyone knows better, it’s doctors like me. There’s great debate about the number of fatalities following Chernobyl; the International Atomic Energy Agency has predicted that there will be only about 4,000 deaths from cancer, but a 2009 report published by the New York Academy of Sciences says that almost one million people have already perished from cancer and other diseases. The high doses of radiation caused so many miscarriages that we will never know the number of genetically damaged fetuses that did not come to term. (And both Belarus and Ukraine have group homes full of deformed children.)
Nuclear accidents never cease. We’re decades if not generations away from seeing the full effects of the radioactive emissions from Chernobyl.
As we know from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it takes years to get cancer. Leukemia takes only 5 to 10 years to emerge, but solid cancers take 15 to 60. Furthermore, most radiation-induced mutations are recessive; it can take many generations for two recessive genes to combine to form a child with a particular disease, like my specialty, cystic fibrosis. We can’t possibly imagine how many cancers and other diseases will be caused in the far future by the radioactive isotopes emitted by Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Doctors understand these dangers. We work hard to try to save the life of a child dying of leukemia. We work hard to try to save the life of a woman dying of metastatic breast cancer. And yet the medical dictum says that for incurable diseases, the only recourse is prevention. There’s no group better prepared than doctors to stand up to the physicists of the nuclear industry.
Still, physicists talk convincingly about “permissible doses” of radiation. They consistently ignore internal emitters — radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells. They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body, whether from isotopes emitted from nuclear power plants, medical X-rays, cosmic radiation or background radiation that is naturally present in our environment.
However, doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, and that radiation is cumulative. The mutations caused in cells by this radiation are generally deleterious. We all carry several hundred genes for disease: cystic fibrosis, diabetes, phenylketonuria, muscular dystrophy. There are now more than 2,600 genetic diseases on record, any one of which may be caused by a radiation-induced mutation, and many of which we’re bound to see more of, because we are artificially increasing background levels of radiation.
For many years now, physicists employed by the nuclear industry have been outperforming doctors, at least in politics and the news media. Since the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, physicists have had easy access to Congress. They had harnessed the energy inside the center of the sun, and later physicists, whether lobbying for nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, had the same power. They walk into Congress and Congress virtually prostrates itself. Their technological advancements are there for all to see; the harm will become apparent only decades later.
Doctors, by contrast, have fewer dates with Congress, and much less access on nuclear issues. We don’t typically go around discussing the latent period of carcinogenesis and the amazing advances made in understanding radiobiology. But as a result, we do an inadequate job of explaining the long-term dangers of radiation to policymakers and the public.
When patients come to us with cancer, we deem it rude to inquire if they lived downwind of Three Mile Island in the 1980s or might have eaten Hershey’s chocolate made with milk from cows that grazed in irradiated pastures nearby. We tend to treat the disaster after the fact, instead of fighting to stop it from happening in the first place. Doctors need to confront the nuclear industry.
Nuclear power is neither clean, nor sustainable, nor an alternative to fossil fuels — in fact, it adds substantially to global warming. Solar, wind and geothermal energy, along with conservation, can meet our energy needs.
At the beginning, we had no sense that radiation induced cancer. Marie Curie and her daughter didn’t know that the radioactive materials they handled would kill them. But it didn’t take long for the early nuclear physicists in the Manhattan Project to recognize the toxicity of radioactive elements. I knew many of them quite well. They had hoped that peaceful nuclear energy would absolve their guilt over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it has only extended it.
Physicists had the knowledge to begin the nuclear age. Physicians have the knowledge, credibility and legitimacy to end it.
Helen Caldicott, a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, is the author of “Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer.”
FRENCH NUCLEAR RESEARCH GROUP CRIIRAD ISSUES WARNING AGAINST CONSUMING SPECIFIC FOODS FOR ENTIRE COUNTRY OF FRANCE – All French citizens were warned against consuming rainwater, leafy greens, and all milk derived products (including from goats and sheep as well as cows) due to radioactive fallout contamination in Europe. The U.S. and Canadian governments still claim that all of the above foods are safe in North America, even for infants and pregnant women; unfortunately the reality is that the level of radioactive fallout present here is 8 to 10 times greater that of France and the rest of Europe. – http://www.euractiv.com/en/health/radiation-risks-fukushima-longer-negligible-news-503947
FALLOUT MAPS FOR NORTH AMERICA
These maps, made available by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), show which areas of North America have received or will soon receive the highest dumps of radioactive fallout from Fukushima. The maps show during which time periods to expect incoming fallout in specific areas. It is a tragedy and a scandal that the U.S. and Canadian governments do not provide such information to its citizens. The link below will take you to a page where you can click on which radioactive fallout element to track over which area of the world. Be aware that the amount of fallout already on the ground in North America will continue to affect us for a long time to come, even if concentrations shown on this mapping (which shows current streams of new fallout from Fukushima) become less intense in the future. http://transport.nilu.no/products/fukushima
EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON RADIATION RISK (ECRR) FORECASTS OVER 400,000 CANCERS WILL EVENTUALLY DEVELOP FROM FUKUSHIMA FALLOUT – http://www.llrc.org
EPA IS PLANNING TO INCREASE OFFICIAL “SAFE” RADIATION LEVEL GUIDELINES BY FACTORS OF THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS IN THE NEAR FUTURE – This is a clear sign of how bad things are: to continue the illusion that the fallout crisis is not dangerous, the EPA is planning to increase dramatically the official guidelines for “safe levels” of radiation – even though their current guidelines are already unrealistically high and inaccurate for risks from radioactive contamination of air, food and water. – http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1325
MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS IGNORING REPORTS OF RADIOACTIVE CESIUM FALLOUT TO FOCUS ON RADIOACTIVE IODINE – Since Radioactive Iodine has a short half-life of 8 days, whereas Cesium has a half life in some cases of 30 years, this is another tactic to obscure the long-term danger in North America. – http://www.naturalnews.com/031992_radioactive_cesium.html
RECOMMENDED SOURCES FOR INFORMATION UPDATES
Energy News Website (perhaps the most frequently updated information source in English on the internet for the Radiation crisis in North America): http://enenews.com/
The non-profit Nuclear Information and Resource Service is an excellent and highly recommended source with regular updates: http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm
The non-profit Low-Level Radiation Campaign website has a wealth of helpful information, including good rebuttals to false media reports such as those stating that the Chernobyl accident was “not as bad as people think”: http://www.llrc.org/
NaturalNews website is another frequently updated source of information on the fallout crisis: http://www.naturalnews.com/
SPECIFIC FOODS AND GEOGRAPHIC AREAS OF CONCERN
Below is a summary of key areas and food products of highest concern.
We strongly recommend that you do energetic testing of foods from these areas before consuming them to see if they strengthen or weaken you, using
Vibrational Radiesthesia, or
Kinesiology, or
Pulse Diagnosis.
AREAS WHOSE FOOD PRODUCTS MAY NOW CARRY RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT
The Entirety of the Northern Hemisphere around the world is affected by fallout, as well as the Pacific Ocean.
Most Serious: Japan, Pacific Ocean, and Pacific Rim States
Most Contaminated food areas of North America (based on fallout wind spread patterns charted by European scientific research agencies) in order of likely intensity of contamination, starting with the most contaminated:
Entire Pacific Coast (note that much of the produce in North America comes from this region, especially California)
Northern U.S. States close to Canada, and Canadian areas close to the U.S. (including Toronto etc.)
Eastern States
Central States of the U.S., and Far Northern areas of Canada
SAFEST AREAS OF ORIGIN FOR FOOD PRODUCTS
The majority of contamination is in the northern hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean region. Most of the Southern Hemisphere has little to no fallout (the exception is the Southern Hemisphere in the Pacific; Australia for example is finding radioactive fish in the ocean, so although they may not get much atmospheric fallout they are affected by the massive contamination of the Pacific Ocean.)
Also note that radioactive contamination is being found on non-food products being imported from Japan.
Safest Areas of Origin for food products:
Central America (avoid items from the Pacific Coast area of Mexico)
South America
Africa
Europe is also far less contaminated that North America, although it is also experiencing significant fallout; so it is a better source for products than North America, however not as good as Southern Hemisphere sources. (However some South American produce may contain high levels of pesticides not allowed to be used in the U.S. or Canada.)
ITEMS OF SPECIAL CONCERN FROM AFFECTED AREAS
Most affected:
All Ocean-Derived Products from the Pacific Ocean: the Fukushima accident dumped millions of times the normal background levels of radiation into the Pacific, where it is affecting the entire ocean (most toxic near Japan and bordering areas, but now reaching to the US West Coast: debris from the Tsunami in Japan is also expected to start washing up on the West Coast in the near future.) There are already reports of Pacific Fish showing radioactive contamination.
This indicates a need to be cautious regarding:
All Pacific Ocean Fish
Sea Salt or Ocean Minerals derived from the Pacific
All Pacific Seaweed and Sea Vegetables (order Atlantic Ocean seaweed at www.theseaweedman.com )
Milk and all Dairy Products (butter, cheese etc.) from all animals: Cows, Goats, and Sheep (Dairy products have the most intense immediate absorption of radiation from fallout). Radioactive contamination of milk has been found throughout the United States, especially on the West Coast.
Any plant with a large surface area exposed to the air while growing: The most intense radiation absorption in plants is through rain falling directly on the leaves of the plant, where it is directly absorbed. Rainwater absorbed through the earth into the plant is already of much lower radiation intensity due to the filtering affect of the soil.
All broad leaf plants and plants with large surface areas grown in the open air (rather than in greenhouses) are the most contaminated, for instance Salad Greens, Spinach, Cabbage etc. Contaminated crops in California (carrying radioactive iodine and cesium) have already been confirmed by UC Berkeley.
[Carrots and other root vegetables are less contaminated due to growing underground.]
Water from Rainwater or Open Lake type catchments: instead drink bottled water, or water from underground wells or other underground sources (radiation is greatly reduced when the particles have to travel through the ground.)
PREGNANT (OR BREASTFEEDING) WOMEN AND YOUNG CHILDREN SHOULD ESPECIALLY BE CAREFUL REGARDING THESE ITEMS COMING FROM FALLOUT AFFECTED AREAS
INFORMATION ON RADIATION PROTECTIVE FOODS AND MATERIALS
With contaminated water from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex continuing to pour into the Pacific, scientists are concerned about how that radioactivity might affect marine life. Although the ocean’s capacity to dilute radiation is huge, signs are that nuclear isotopes are already moving up the local food chain.
Over the past half-century, the world has seen its share of incidents in which radioactive material has been dumped or discharged into the oceans. A British nuclear fuels plant has repeatedly released radioactive waste into the Irish Sea, a French nuclear reprocessing plant has discharged similar waste into the English Channel, and for decades the Soviets dumped large quantities of radioactive material into the Arctic Ocean, Kara Sea, and Barents Sea. That radioactive material included reactors from at least 16 Soviet nuclear-powered submarines and icebreakers, and large amounts of liquid and solid nuclear waste from USSR military bases and weapons plants.
Still, the world has never quite seen an event like the one unfolding now off the coast of eastern Japan, in which thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are pouring directly into the ocean. And though the vastness of the ocean has the capacity to dilute nuclear contamination, signs of spreading radioactive material are being found off Japan, including the discovery of elevated concentrations of radioactive cesium and iodine in small fish several dozen miles south of Fukushima, and high levels of radioactivity in seawater 25 miles offshore.
International Atomic Energy Agency. Seawater concentrations of cesium-137, March 23 to March 30.
How this continuing contamination will affect marine life, or humans, is still unclear. But scientists agree that the governments of Japan, the United States, and other nations on the Pacific Rim need to ramp up studies of how far this contamination might spread and in what concentrations.
“Given that the Fukushima nuclear power plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution. We have a few data points from the Japanese — all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific study of the area.”
Buessler and other experts say this much is clear: Both short-lived radioactive elements, such as iodine-131, and longer-lived elements — such as cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years — can be absorbed by phytoplankton, zooplankton, kelp, and other marine life and then be transmitted up the food chain, to fish, marine mammals, and humans. Other radioactive elements — including plutonium, which has been detected outside the Fukushima plant — also pose a threat to marine life. A key question is how concentrated will the radioactive contamination be. Japanese officials hope that a temporary fishing ban off the northeastern Japanese coast will be enough to avert any danger to human health until the flow of radioactive water into the sea can be stopped.
But that spigot is still running. Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the resulting damage to the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, huge quantities of water have been poured on four stricken reactors to keep them cool. Thousands of tons of radioactively contaminated water have then been released from the Fukushima complex into the ocean. And even though the Japanese this week stopped a leak of highly radioactive material from the badly damaged Reactor No. 2, the water used to cool the reactor cores continues to flow into the sea. In addition, atmospheric fallout from the damaged reactors is contaminating the ocean as prevailing winds carry radioactivity out over the Pacific.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has reported that seawater containing radioactive iodine-131 at 5 million times the legal limit has been detected near the plant. According to the Japanese news service, NHK, a recent sample also contained 1.1 million times the legal level of radioactive cesium-137.
Studies from previous releases of nuclear material in the Irish, Kara and Barents Seas, as well as in the Pacific Ocean, show that such radioactive material does travel with ocean currents, is deposited in marine sediment, and does climb the marine food web. In the Irish Sea — where the British Nuclear Fuels plant at Sellafield in the northwestern United Kingdom released radioactive material over many decades, beginning in the 1950s — studies have found radioactive cesium and plutonium concentrating significantly in seals and porpoises that ate contaminated fish. Other studies have shown that radioactive material from Sellafield and from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague in France have been transported to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. A study published in 2003 found that a substantial part of the world’s radioactive contamination is in the marine environment.
Antony Dickson/AFP/Getty Images. A sign inside a Hong Kong supermarket assures shoppers that the sushi for sale is not of Japanese origin.But what impact this radioactive contamination has on marine life and humans is still unclear. Even the mass dumping of nuclear material by the Soviets in the Arctic has not been definitively shown to have caused widespread harm to marine life. That may be because containment vessels around some of the dumped reactors are preventing the escape of radiation. A lack of comprehensive studies by the Russians in the areas where nuclear waste was dumped also has hampered understanding. Two events in the early 1990s — a die-off of seals in the Barents Sea and White Sea from blood cancer, and the deaths of millions of starfish, shellfish, seals and porpoises in the White Sea — have been variously attributed by Russian scientists to pollution or nuclear contamination.
How the radioactive materials released from the Fukushima plants will behave in the ocean will depend on their chemical properties and reactivity, explained Ted Poston, a ecotoxicologist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S. government facility in Richland, Washington. If the radionuclides are in soluble form, they will behave differently than if they are absorbed into particles, said Poston. Soluble iodine, for example, will disperse rather rapidly. But if a radionuclide reacts with other molecules or gets deposited on existing particulates — bits of minerals, for example — they can be suspended in the water or, if larger, may drop to the sea floor.
“If particulates in the water column are very small they will move with the current,” he explained. “If bigger or denser, they can settle in sediment.”
If iodine-131, for example, is taken up by seaweed or plankton, it can be transferred to fish, which are in turn eaten by larger fish, as has been seen in the Irish Sea. Fish can also take in radionuclides in the water through their gills, and radionuclides can be ingested by mollusks. But Edward Lazo, deputy division head for radiation protection at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said, “This is not a fully developed science and there are lots of uncertainties.”
Radioactive iodine is taken up by the thyroid in humans and marine mammals — or in the case of fish, thyroid tissue — and is also readily absorbed by seaweed and kelp. Cesium acts like potassium and is taken up by muscle. Cesium would tend to stay in solution and can eventually end up in marine sediment where, because of its long half life, it will persist for years. Because marine organisms use potassium they can also take up cesium. “Cesium behaves like potassium, so would end up in all marine life,” said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Maryland. “It certainly will have an effect.”
Tom Hei, professor of environmental sciences and vice-chairman of radiation oncology at Columbia University, explained that the mechanisms that determine how an animal takes in radiation are the same for fish as they are for humans. Once in the body — whether inhaled or absorbed through gills or other organs — radiation can make its way into the bloodstream, lungs, and bony structures, potentially causing death, cancer, or genetic damage. Larger animals tend to more sensitive to radiation than smaller ones. Yet small fish, mollusks and crustaceans, as well as plankton and phytoplankton, can absorb radiation, said Poston. How the radiation accumulates depends on the degree of exposure — dose and duration — and the half-life of the element, said Hei.
Depending on its chemical form and by what organisms it is taken up, radiation can also concentrate when it moves through the food chain. A 1999 study found that seals and porpoises in the Irish Sea concentrated radioactive cesium by a factor of 300 relative to its concentration in seawater, and a factor of 3 to 4 compared to the fish they ate.
So far, the Japanese government and TEPCO have provided only limited data on marine contamination from the Fukushima plant. Given the emergency situation, independent monitoring along the coast is difficult, said Jan Beránek, director of Greenpeace International’s nuclear energy project. On April 5, the Japanese government set its first standards for allowable levels of radioactive material in seafood. A number of countries have banned seafood imports from Japan. The U.S. has barred food imports from the prefectures closest to Fukushima and the Food and Drug Administration says it is closely monitoring imported food products, including seafood, for radiation contamination.
“This is not an imminent health concern, but we haven’t seen the end of it,” said Theo Theofanous, professor of chemical and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says it is not conducting any monitoring of the marine environment for radiation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is monitoring airborne radiation, but its spokespeople were unable to say whether the EPA was monitoring the marine environment as well.
Experts such as Buesseler of Woods Hole, as well as activists like Beránek, said an international effort should quickly be launched to sample and measure radionuclides in the ocean, seafloor, and marine life, with close attention paid to which direction ocean currents can be expected to transport water potentially contaminated by Fukushima.
Washington, DC – March 23, 2011 – Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) expressed concern over recent reports that radioactivity from the ongoing Fukushima accident is present in the Japanese food supply. While all food contains radionuclides, whether from natural sources, nuclear testing or otherwise, the increased levels found in Japanese spinach and milk pose health risks to the population. PSR also expressed alarm over the level of misinformation circulating in press reports about the degree to which radiation exposure can be considered “safe.”
According to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no safe doses of radiation. Decades of research show clearly that any dose of radiation increases an individual’s risk for the development of cancer.
“There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” said Jeff Patterson, DO, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Exposure to radionuclides, such as iodine-131 and cesium-137, increases the incidence of cancer. For this reason, every effort must be taken to minimize the radionuclide content in food and water.”
“Consuming food containing radionuclides is particularly dangerous. If an individual ingests or inhales a radioactive particle, it continues to irradiate the body as long as it remains radioactive and stays in the body,”said Alan H. Lockwood, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “The Japanese government should ban the sale of foods that contain radioactivity levels above pre-disaster levels and continue to monitor food and water broadly in the area. In addition, the FDA and EPA must enforce existing regulations and guidelines that address radionuclide content in our food supply here at home.”
As the crisis in Japan goes on, there are an increasing number of sources reporting that 100 milliSieverts (mSv) is the lowest dose at which a person is at risk for cancer. Established research disproves this claim. A dose of 100 mSv creates a one in 100 risk of getting cancer, buta dose of 10 mSv still gives a one in 1,000 chance of getting cancer, and a dose of 1 mSv gives a one in 10,000 risk.
Even if the risk of getting cancer for one individual from a given level of food contamination is low, if thousands or millions of people are exposed, then some of those people will get cancer.
Recent reports indicate the Japanese disaster has released more iodine-131 than cesium-137. Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid, especially of children, with a half-life of over 8 days compared to cesium-137, which has a half-life of just over 30 years. Regardless of the shorter half-life, doses of iodine-131 are extremely dangerous, especially to pregnant women and children, and can lead to incidents of cancer, hypothyroidism, mental retardation and thyroid deficiency, among other conditions.
“Children are much more susceptible to the effects of radiation, and stand a much greater chance of developing cancer than adults,” said Dr. Andrew Kanter, president-elect of PSR’s Board. “So it is particularly dangerous when they consume radioactive food or water.”
All food contains some radioactivity as a result of natural sources, but also from prior above-ground nuclear testing, the Chernobyl accident, and releases from nuclear reactors and from weapons facilities. The factors that will affect the radioactivityin food after the Fukushima accident are complicated. These include the radionuclides that the nuclear reactor emits, weather patterns that control the wind direction and where the radionuclides are deposited, characteristics of the soil (e.g., clays bind nuclides, sand does not) and the nature of the food(leafy plants like spinach are more likely to be contaminated than other plants like rice that have husks, etc.).However, radiation can be concentrated many times in the food chain and any consumption adds to the cumulative risk of cancer and other diseases.
“Reports indicate that the total radioactive releases from the Fukushima reactor have been relatively small so far. If this is the case, then the health effects to the overall population will be correspondingly small,” said Ira Helfand, MD, a member of the Board of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “But it is not true to say that it is “safe” to release this much radiation; some people will get cancer and die as a result.”
You can avoid sugar, aspartame, trans-fats, or MSG if you’re a savvy reader of labels. But if you want to avoid genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), it’s not so easy. They’re not listed on labels. You could buy organic foods, which by law can’t contain more than 5 percent GMO’s — but now that might not work either.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved three new kinds of genetically engineered foods — alfalfa, a type of corn, and sugar beets. And the FDA will likely soon approve GM salmon, which would become the first genetically modified animal to be sold in the U.S., but probably not the last. And the FDA and USDA will not require any of these products, or foods containing them, to be labeled as genetically engineered.
“Even more than questionable approvals, it’s the unwillingness to label these products as such — even the G.E. salmon will be sold without distinction — that is demeaning and undemocratic, and the real reason is clear: producers and producer-friendly agencies correctly suspect that consumers will steer clear of G.E. products if they can identify them. Which may make them unprofitable. Where is the free market when we need it?”
Even more alarming, Dr. Don M. Huber, one of the senior scientists in the U.S., has alerted the federal government to a newly discovered organism related to GM crops may be causing plant death, and infertility and spontaneous abortion in animals fed GM crops.
Dr. Huber believes the appearance and prevalence of this unnamed new organism may be related to the nation’s over-reliance on the weed killer known as Roundup, and to genetically engineered Roundup-Ready crops.
In a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Huber called on the government to immediately stop deregulation of Roundup Ready crops. According to the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, the letter read, in part:
“Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science! … I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high-risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.”
And finally, in other alarming GM crop related news, Terry Redman, the West Australian Minister for Agriculture, wants to redefine the word “organic” to include genetically modified (GM) crops. Not that the difference between organic and GM crops will be a distinction for much longer anyway, according to current farming trends.
Some organic farmers, of course, have already unwillingly been growing GM crops in their fields. Steve Marsh, an Australian organic farmer, one year found his wheat and oats testing 70 percent positive for novel DNA thanks to cross-pollination from nearby farms.
Monsanto, of course, thinks the farmer should pay them for what amounts to the complete loss of his organic farm business — no matter that the genes were most likely wind or bee-propagated, they say they were illegally in his plants, and he should pay them $400,000…
Lastly, are GM crops at least being tested for safety? Somewhere?
The answer is no, and we might never learn the true risks of GM crops during this generation, because the multinational companies that control the patents on GM seeds refuse to allow them to be used by independent scientists for safety testing. This is apparently just another legal perk of having a corporate patent on what has now become a major part of the American food chain.According to a recent CBS/NYT poll, 89 percent of respondents said they wanted to see GE foods labeled as such.
The danger posed by GM crops are no longer theoretical, research scientists have now uncovered a very real link between a previously unknown pathogen and either Roundup weed killer or Roundup Ready crop seeds.
GM crops have invaded our food supply, and more GM foods are in the pipeline, but with them come a long list of unanswered concerns besides the appearance of this new dangerous and deadly pathogen.
According to the above article in the NY Times:
“A majority of our foods already contain GMOs and there’s little reason to think more isn’t on the way. It seems our “regulators” are using us and the environment as guinea pigs, rather than demanding conclusive tests. And without labeling, we have no say in the matter whatsoever.”
This quote sums up many of the multi-layered concerns that now exist regarding genetically modified (GM) foods. First off, they’re impossible to keep from cross-pollinating with non-GM crops, thanks to bees and the wind, so even “organic” crops may become contaminated by GM pollen, thereby turning entire organic fields into GM fields overnight.
Crazy Patent Laws Prevent Independent Researchers from Studying GMO Hazards
Next, GM food health hazards have neither been studied beyond 30 days, nor are they currently being studied. This is because the corporations controlling the seeds restrict access to safety studies, citing the current patent laws.
Lastly, these GM foods now widely appear in our food supply — unlabeled. I’ve gone on record saying that due to the amount of GM crops now grown in this country (over 90 percent of all corn is GM corn and over 95 percent all soy is GM soy) EVERY processed food you encounter at your local supermarket that does not bear the “USDA Organic” label is filled with GM components.
So you’re eating GM foods, and you have been for the last decade, whether you knew it or not. You can thank Congress for this, and the USDA and Monsanto. What ultimate impact these GM foods will have on your health is still unknown, but increased disease, infertility and birth defects appear to be on the top of the list of most likely side effects.
Are GM Food Supporters Even Aware of the Dangers?
Even the staunchest supporter of GM foods must be alarmed when they hear about a new, previously undiscovered electron microscopic pathogen in the shape of a medium-sized virus that has been discovered which appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings.
How can everyone NOT be concerned by this new discovery?
So now we have our first ever confirmed new species to come out of America’s misguided GM food experiment, that is not only the first of its kind ever seen by scientists, but also most likely the first of its kind to ever exist on this planet. And what a surprise, it appears to be very dangerous!
Again, according to Dr. Huber:
“(this new organism) deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.”
Is Dr. Huber Being an Alarmist?
This new micro-fungal organism is associated with something called Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) in soy and is also found in a large variety of livestock given GM feed who experience both spontaneous abortions and infertility.
According to Dr. Huber:
“I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem.”
“The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.”
“For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate (Roundup).”
Dr. Huber goes on to say that this information could lead to the collapse of the US soy and corn export markets, and could also lead to disruptions in both domestic food supply and animal feed supply. He has written to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, and urged his immediately reply to the issue with both resources to study the problem presented by this new pathogen and leadership to address this new threat facing our nation’s food supply.
But…
Why the US Department of Agriculture Secretary is Unlikely to Act on this Danger
Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, now the Secretary of Agriculture, was an appointment that took place despite a massive public outcry.
Vilsack has been a strong supporter of genetically engineered crops, including bio-pharmaceutical corn.
The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, named Vilsack Governor of the Year. He was also the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership.
When Vilsack created the Iowa Values Fund, his first poster child of economic development potential was Trans Ova and their pursuit of cloning dairy cows.
The undemocratic and highly unpopular 2005 seed pre-emption bill was Vilsack’s brainchild. The law strips local government’s right to regulate genetically engineered seed (including where GE can be grown, maintaining GE-free buffers or banning GE corn locally).
Vilsack is an ardent supporter of corn and soy-based biofuels, which use as much or more fossil fuel energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor.
Overall, Vilsack’s record is one of aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and promoting animal cloning.
So getting your hopes up that Dr. Huber’s letter will find a friendly audience in Secretary Vilsack is likely a naïve proposition.
GM Crops Already Caused Mass Suicides in India in the 1990s
According to another source article above, GM crops are already responsible for the deaths of 200,000 Indian farmers. So says Dr Vandana Shiva, physicist, philosopher, activist and winner of last year’s Sydney Peace Prize.
According to Dr. Shiva, there is a typical pattern to this “mass suicide”. Farmers, who have been stricken by drought and poverty, become so enraptured by Monsanto’s promises of wealth if they switch to their GM crops, begin taking on debt to convert to the company’s GM seeds (which are hundreds of times more expensive than traditional seed).
The GM seeds are touted as resisting Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, as well as being single-season seeds that must be purchased every planting season.
This transaction creates an ongoing contract where the farmer is perennially bound to continue purchasing both Roundup and GM seeds from Monsanto. This new economic structure, which replaces the “heirloom seed” economy where the farmers saved their seeds year after year, creates an environment where debt piles up on top of debt, because Monsanto’s promises of increased yields are a myth.
Eventually the debt becomes insurmountable and:“One day, rather than spray pesticide on the soil, the farmer swallows a cupful himself, leaving his family landless, foodless, destitute.”
The FDA is also Under Monsanto Influence
Public health officials like the West Australian Minister For Agriculture and the American deputy FDA commissioner Michael Taylor are examples of a breed of public officials who are unofficially doing the private bidding of the multi-national GM food corporations at the expense of public health and safety.
“If GMOs are indeed responsible for massive sickness and death, then the individual who oversaw the FDA policy that facilitated their introduction holds a uniquely infamous role in human history. That person is Michael Taylor. He had been Monsanto’s attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto’s vice president and chief lobbyist.”
But Michael Taylor’s mission to allow GM foods into the world food supply pales in comparison to the new mission of the GM food conglomerates — to have GM foods included as part of “organic” crop labeling.
Because consumers are getting wise to their tricks and are flocking more and more to organic counterparts of GM options, the GM food companies are now lobbying to have GM crops included under the organic banner.
Will the GM food conglomerates succeed in this mission?
Based on their previous success of getting virtually untested GM foods into the food supply, having GM foods remain in the food supply unchallenged by government regulators, and introducing new GM strains of alfalfa, corn and salmon that look likely to very soon receive approval to join the US food supply, it’s a fairly safe bet that one day soon you will read in your local newspaper that GM foods have been reclassified as organic.
And when that happens, there will be no “Non-GM” food left in our food supply.
What You Can Do To Get Involved
If you don’t already have a copy of the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, please print one out and refer to it often. It can help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. Also remember to look for products (including organic products) that feature the Non-GMO Project Verified Seal to be sure that at-risk ingredients have been tested for GMO content.
You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.
If you’re feeling more ambitious, you can also order the Non-GMO Shopping Tips brochure from the Institute of Responsible Technology in bulk and give it to your family and friends.
Also don’t let Secretary Vilsack ignore this new problem of a micro-fungal pathogen that may be responsible for killing plants, animals and possibly humans!
To again quote Dr. Huber’s letter to Secretary Vilsack:
“Based on a review of the data, [this dangerous new pathogen] is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science! … I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high-risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.”
Always buy USDA Organic products when possible, or buy your fresh produce and meat from local farmers, and especially avoid food products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not organic, as any foods containing these two non-organic ingredients now have a virtual 100 percent chance of containing GM foods.
Permaculture is a design process for creating sustainable living systems. Through careful observation of healthy natural systems, we design patterns that create abundant systems of food, energy, water, shelter and community with minimum labor and pollution. Permaculture teaches how to droughtproof where you live. Permaculture can be practiced by all people, regardeless of location, economic status, or educational achievement. Practical permaculture offers a rich and abundant future.
Permaculture means “permanent agriculture” that allows for a “permanent culture.”
Permaculture teaches us how to simplify our lives and lead a more satisfying lifestyle. Permaculture teaches us how to quickly reduce reliance on fossil fuels and industrial systems that are destroying the earth’s ecosystems. Permaculture is more than a new way of gardening – it’s a sustainable way to live on planet Earth. We create permaculture wherever we live.
Bill Mollison (co-founder of permaculture in 1978 with David Holmgren) describes permaculture as the “conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems and the harmonious integration of landscape and people. The idea is to be able to look out your backdoor and see your friends gathering food.
Permaculture is an integrated, self-sustaining system of perennial agriculture . . . which involves a large diversity of plant and animal species. It is completely self-contained agricultural ecosystem that is designed to minimize maintenance input and maximize product yield. In permaculture, little wheels or cycles of energy are set up . . . and the system virtually keeps itself going! Essentially, it’s a living clockwork that should never run down . . . at least as long as the sun shines and the earth revolves.
I like to call permaculture a “humane technology”, because it’s of human dimensions. By that, I mean that it deals in a very basic way with simple, living elements . . . so it’s available to every man and woman. Permaculture doesn’t involve some sort of complicated technology, as does even an electricity-producing windplant. Instead, it’s a bio-technology . . . which people can intuitively handle . After all, permaculture deals with living systems . . . and since man himself is a living organism, he can readily comprehend it.”
A permaculturist’s skills may include building a house that uses almost no energy (my electric bill is $5 a month), or installing a greywater system and pond. We may have created an edible food forest. We may have set-up a rainwater harvesting system that collects and stores the rain that hits our roofs, or turned our fences into a food source. All this and more is part of a design concept that takes its cues from nature, while creating systems that take less work than conventional agriculture and are wildly abundant.
The good news is you are probably already practicing some permaculture principles.
Permaculture Defined
1. From Bill Mollison:
Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments.
2. From Drylands Permaculture, August 1987, Cathe’ Fish and Bills Steen. Reprinted by Permaculture Drylands Institute, published in The Permaculture Activist (Autumn 1989):
Permaculture: the use of ecology as the basis for designing integrated systems of food production, housing, appropriate technology, and community development. Permaculture is built upon an ethic of caring for the earth and interacting with the environment in mutually beneficial ways.
3. From Lee Barnes (former editor of Katuah Journal and Permaculture Connections), Waynesville, North Carolina:
Permaculture (PERMAnent agriCULTURE or PERMAnent CULTURE) is a sustainable design system stressing the harmonious interrelationship of humans, plants, animals and the Earth.
To paraphrase the founder of permaculture, designer Bill Mollison:
Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things. Each component in a system performs multiple functions, and each function is supported by many elements. Key to efficient design is observation and replication of natural ecosystems, where designers maximize diversity with polycultures, stress efficient energy planning for houses and settlement, using and accelerating natural plant succession, and increasing the highly productive “edge-zones” within the system.
4. From Michael Pilarski, founder of Friends of the Trees, published in International Green Front Report (1988):
Permaculture is: the design of land use systems that are sustainable and environmentally sound; the design of culturally appropriate systems which lead to social stability; a design system characterized by an integrated application of ecological principles in land use; an international movement for land use planning and design; an ethical system stressing positivism and cooperation.
In the broadest sense, permaculture refers to land use systems which promote stability in society, utilize resources in a sustainable way and preserve wildlife habitat and the genetic diversity of wild and domestic plants and animals. It is a synthesis of ecology and geography, of observation and design. Permaculture involves ethics of earth care because the sustainable use of land cannot be separated from life-styles and philosophical issues.
5. From a Bay Area Permaculture Group brochure, published in West Coast Permaculture News & Gossip and Sustainable Living Newsletter (Fall 1995):
Permaculture is a practical concept which can be applied in the city, in suburbia, on the farm, and in the wilderness. Its principles empower people to establish highly productive environments providing for food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs, including economic. Carefully observing natural patterns characteristic of a particular site, the permaculture designer gradually discerns optimal methods for integrating water catchment, human shelter, and energy systems with tree crops, edible and useful perennial plants, domestic and wild animals and aquaculture.
Permaculture adopts techniques and principles from ecology, appropriate technology, sustainable agriculture, and the wisdom of indigenous peoples. The ethical basis of permaculture rests upon care of the earth-maintaining a system in which all life can thrive. This includes human access to resources and provisions, but not the accumulation of wealth, power, or land beyond their needs.
Characteristics of Permaculture†
Permaculture is one of the most holistic, integrated systems analysis and design methodologies found in the world.
Permaculture can be applied to create productive ecosystems from the human- use standpoint or to help degraded ecosystems recover health and wildness. Permaculture can be applied in any ecosystem, no matter how degraded.
Permaculture values and validates traditional knowledge and experience. Permaculture incorporates sustainable agriculture practices and land management techniques and strategies from around the world. Permaculture is a bridge between traditional cultures and emergent earth-tuned cultures.
Permaculture promotes organic agriculture which does not use pesticides to pollute the environment.
Permaculture aims to maximize symbiotic and synergistic relationships between site components
Permaculture design is site specific, client specific, and culture specific.
†Source: Pilarski, Michael (ed.) 1994. Restoration Forestry. Kivaki Press, Durango, CO. p. 450.
The Practical Application of Permaculture
Permaculture is not limited to plant and animal agriculture, but also includes community planning and development, use of appropriate technologies (coupled with an adjustment of life-style), and adoption of concepts and philosophies that are both earth-based and people-centered, such as bioregionalism.
Many of the appropriate technologies advocated by permaculturists are well known. Among these are solar and wind power, composting toilets, solar greenhouses, energy efficient housing, and solar food cooking and drying.
Due to the inherent sustainability of perennial cropping systems, permaculture places a heavy emphasis on tree crops. Systems that integrate annual and perennial crops—such as alley cropping and agroforestry—take advantage of “the edge effect,” increase biological diversity, and offer other characteristics missing in monoculture systems. Thus, multicropping systems that blend woody perennials and annuals hold promise as viable techniques for large-scale farming. Ecological methods of production for any specific crop or farming system (e.g., soil building practices, biological pest control, composting) are central to permaculture as well as to sustainable agriculture in general.
Since permaculture is not a production system, per se, but rather a land use and community planning philosophy, it is not limited to a specific method of production. Furthermore, as permaculture principles may be adapted to farms or villages worldwide, it is site specific and therefore amenable to locally adapted techniques of production.
As an example, standard organic farming and gardening techniques utilizing cover crops, green manures, crop rotation, and mulches are emphasized in permacultural systems. However, there are many other options and technologies available to sustainable farmers working within a permacultural framework (e.g., chisel plows, no-till implements, spading implements, compost turners, rotational grazing). The decision as to which “system” is employed is site-specific and management dependent.
Farming systems and techniques commonly associated with permaculture include agro- forestry, swales, contour plantings, Keyline agriculture (soil and water management), hedgerows and windbreaks, and integrated farming systems such as pond-dike aquaculture, aquaponics, intercropping, and polyculture.
Gardening and recycling methods common to permaculture include edible landscaping, keyhole gardening, companion planting, trellising, sheet mulching, chicken tractors, solar greenhouses, spiral herb gardens, swales, and vermicomposting.
Water collection, management, and re-use systems like Keyline, greywater, rain catchment, constructed wetlands, aquaponics (the integra-tion of hydroponics with recirculating aquaculture), and solar aquatic ponds (also known as Living Machines) play an important role in permaculture designs.
From ATTRA -National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children,” Bill Mollison, 1990.
“You can fix all the world’s problems, in a garden. You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems, and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people today actually don’t know that, and that makes most people very insecure.” Geoff Lawton
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Contact Cathe’
For more info: contact practicalpermaculture (at) gmail (dot) com
Water is an incredibly important to the existence of life on earth. We humans use it for a number of activities in our day-today life. We drink, cook, wash, bathe, and clean all with the help of water. However, even with all of the importance water holds in our lives, many of us know very little about the water we use each day.
All of us know that drinking impure, contaminated water will invite a host of diseases. Hence it is must for us to drink pure water. Further, we assume that bottled water is the purest form of water since it is hygienically prepared and sealed to avoid impurities. The $60 billion global bottled water industry has shown tremendous growth in the recent years. Advertising for bottled water suggests that drinking water in plastic can make you thin, sexy, healthy, affluent, and environmentally responsible. Water bottles have become a fashion accessory. Think again!
It is actually the other way round. Drinking from plastic bottled water is not only damaging to you but also to the environment.
Here are some myths about bottled water:
Its safe: Many people think bottled water is safer than tap water. There is no such guarantee. A man reported getting sick from drinking bottled water because it had high levels of coliform bacteria in it. A study revealed that most bottled water is roughly equivalent to tap water in terms of germs and chemical makeup. Another study determined that at least 25 percent of bottled water (including top brands) is actually filtered tap water.
It is healthy and tastes better: Vitamins, minerals, herbs, protein and all the other additions to water are really nothing but a marketing ploy. Enhanced waters usually contain sugars and artificial flavorings to sweeten the deal.
It’s pure: The labels on many bottles have the words “natural” and “pure” on them can be misleading. Ahmedabad based Consumer Education and Research Society (CERS) conducted a detailed study on the 13 major brands of bottled water and found that as many as 10 brands had foreign floating objects in clear violation of norms. The study also found that none of the brands was free from bacteria (not of the harmful kind), and two of the big brands contained toxic heavy metals much higher than permitted levels.
Not only these myths, but there are further reason why you should avoid bottled water:
It is dangerous to the environment: Every year about 1.5 million tons of plastic go into manufacturing water bottles for the global market, using processes that release toxics such as nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene. These bottles are composed of a plastic called polyethylene terepthalate (PET), which can take as long as 400 to 1000 years to degrade. In addition, more than 80 percent of the PET water bottles are tossed in the trash instead of being recycled. Besides landfills, many bottles end up in oceans, posing a risk to marine life. Furthermore, the manufacturing and shipping of bottles means extra carbon emissions. 60 Million plastic bottles a day are disposed of in America alone!
It impacts the water resources: Bottled spring water is taken from water that flows naturally to the surface of the earth from an underground formation. Thus there is reduction in the underground water resource. Sometimes, bottled water comes from the glaciers which is even more damaging to the environment. Moreover, during filtration, it is estimated that two liters of water are wasted for every single liter that is purified.
Hidden cost: It requires 3 times as much water to make the bottle as it does to fill it. it is an exceptionally wasteful industry. We use more than 17 million barrels of oil to make plastic bottles. This could generate electricity for more than 2.5 million homes or fuel 1 million cars for a year. And this doesn’t include the fuel required to transport the bottles. We are literally drinking up oil in our quest for clean water.
4. Health Cost: Bottled water contains the dangerous chemical, BPA.Numerous studies indicate exposure to low levels of BPA causes a range of serious health effects in laboratory animals, particularly when exposures occur in utero (Maffini 2006). According to Scientific American, BPA is essentially a synthetic hormone, acting much like estrogen, so it’s possibly affecting our bodies in a myriad of ways.
The first is breast cancer. According to a new article just out in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (and also released from The Breast Cancer Fund), there is evidence that suggests a link between increasing instances of breast cancer and BPA, especially when women are exposed to BPA at a younger age. Their advice is that women who are pregnant or nursing limit or eliminate their exposure to BPA. Children especially are susceptible to the adverse health effects of BPA, since their brains and bodies are still developing.
BPA has also been shown to decrease sperm count in lab studies, as well as impact testes development. And in this article published in TIME, BPA might also be causing diabetes, aggressiveness, heart disease, and decreased sensitivity to chemotherapy in cancer patients. The EWG lists these studies showing the adverse health effects of BPA:
A study showing that BPA exposures lead to an error in cell division called aneuploidy that causes spontaneous miscarriages, cancer, and birth defects in people, including Down Syndrome (Hunt et al. 2003).
An investigation demonstrating that low doses of BPA spur both the formation and growth of fat cells, the two factors that drive obesity in humans (Masumo et al. 2002).
A study linking low doses of BPA to insulin resistance, a risk factor for Type II diabetes (Alonso-Magdalena et al. 2006).
A preliminary investigation linking BPA exposures to recurrent miscarriage in a small group of Japanese women, made potentially pivotal by its concordance with lab studies of BPA-induced chromosome damage that could well cause miscarriage (Sugiura-Ogasawara 2005).
What should I do?
There are a lot of things that you can do to not be a part of this lunacy:
Fit a water purifier in your house; drinking filtered water is a much more economical practice than drinking bottled water.
Choose tap water over bottled water whenever possible.
Use a refillable bottle with tap water.
Don’t use plastic bottles.
Convince other to do the same.
So now that you know there is no actual difference between bottled water and regular one, head to your tap and have a sip. If you want to drink water that is 100% pure and provides a healthy lifestyle for you and your family, get a good purifier system. All that you need to do is a touch more research and you may find a tap water filtration system that will save the environment and your wallet. It’s now up to you.
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Water Documentaries that are worth watching:
Tapped is a condemnation of one of the most ubiquitous acts of consumption today, the purchase of bottled water. The scathing new documentary reveals a litany of damaging effects as it follows this environmental scourge from production to “disposal,” including the Pacific Ocean’s floating continents of plastic debris twice the size of the continental United States.
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FLOW – Irena Salinas’ documentary is about the global crisis we face as Earth’s fresh water supply constantly diminishes. The film presents top experts and advocates to show us that every aspect of human life is effected by pollution, wastefulness, privatization and corporate greed as it relates to a natural resource that’s more valuable than oil.
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Blue Gold, Water Wars – The current ways water is being used and exploited by private interests all over the globe is seen having long-term consequences in this documentary about water resources.
The Food System and Resilience
Posted by Jason Bradford on January 26, 2010 – 10:10am
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience Alliance
For something as critical as food, it is common sense that society should design for resilience. Reliability in food production in the face of change requires a system capable of rapid evolution. Resilience is therefore a core principle of sustainability. Unfortunately, our daily bread relies on a food system that is not resilient. As I have explained before, this state of affairs is an outcome of government policies, financial pressures, cheap fossil fuels, and market forces in play over the past several decades. The result is a food system dominated by relatively few large actors, which creates conditions of rigidity and brittleness.
This post is a brief review of:
the basic science of resilience,
how our current food system lacks a resilient structure, and
an overview of what a more resilient food system would be like
Food Webs
Resilence is a concept from the science of ecology. Ecologists study what are called food webs, which are feeding relationships among populations. A simple food web might be a plant eaten by a browsing animal, which is eaten by predator. When animals die a scavenger eats those bodies. And the poop is eaten by microbes that make the nutrients available to the plants again.
Diagram of a simple food web with lines indicated feeding relationships among populations of plants, herbivores and carnivores. A low diversity food web has strong connectivity between parts. Therefore, the loss of one part (as shown by the red cross mark through the herbivore) has big effects on other parts of the food web.
Ecologists have found some important relationships between food web structures and their properties. When food webs are very simple, meaning they have few parts that are connected to each other in straightforward ways, the system often shows unstable dynamics, such as widely fluctuating population sizes. It is easy to see how this happens. If a predator is dependent upon one prey, a decline in that prey will starve the predators.
An early and classic study of a low diversity food web. With only a few, strong connections, volatile dynamics result.
By contrast, diverse food webs have many parts, and often the relationships among parts are weak and not so simple. For example, instead of a few plant species there are many, and there are several herbivores that have a choice of feeding on different plants. The same is true all the way up the food chain, with predators being able to feed on a variety of prey. More diverse systems are more stable because if any particular plant or animal population goes into decline, feeding relationships are plastic and can adjust so that the loss of one part doesn’t cause havoc with others.
High diversity food webs have weaker connectivity among parts and therefore built in redundancy. This permits parts to adjust to losses, effectively buffering against volatility.
The Low Diversity Food System
Farms in the U.S. have become highly specialized to produce a narrow range of products. In the Midwest, for example, corn and soy dominate. In the Willamette Valley of Oregon, grass seed is king.
In 2009, 71% of U.S. cropland consisted of just three species (source USDA).
Low diversity at the farm level is magnified by low diversity all along the input and supply chains. Because of consolidation, few seed companies remain. And when it comes to getting paid after harvest, there are fewer buyers for farm commodities, and fewer distributors and retailers too. Few parts with strong connections among them preconditions the system for high volatility.
Seed industry consolidation 1996-2008 from Phil Howard of Michigan State University. Reaction to this issue via antitrust litigation is now occurring
A Context for the Future
The fundamental emergent properties and core functions of a resilient system remain stable even as rapid change is occurring, whether from external forces or the ebb and flow of individuals and populations that make up an ecosystem. For the food system this means being able to produce, store and distribute food even when critical conditions alter dramatically, such as a credit crisis, energy shortfalls, or extremes in weather. Cheap transportation fuels have obviously been key in the development of our current food system, which emphasizes producing crops with high regional comparative advantages in yields, labor, or mechanization, and exporting them.
If we foresee a future with continued and possibly greater economic, resource and environmental volatility, then reconfiguring the food system for resilience is a smart strategy. Principles for doing so can be found by studying the structure of ecosystems.
The Resilient Farm Strategy
Natural systems are inherently resilient but just as their capacity to cope with disturbance can be degraded, so can it be enhanced. The key to resilience in social-ecological systems is diversity. Biodiversity plays a crucial role by providing functional redundancy. For example, in a grassland ecosystem, several different species will commonly perform nitrogen fixation, but each species may respond differently to climatic events, thus ensuring that even though some species may be lost, the process of nitrogen fixation within the grassland ecosystem will continue. Resilience Alliance
A resilient farm has diversified operations to buffer against volatility. The benefits of diversity accrue in many ways.
Organic and especially agroecological farms are less dependent upon outside inputs that can change in price rapidly and unpredictably. Crop rotation plans include many species of plants and animals that are complementary in functions, such as legumes fixing nitrogen, grasses building soil carbon, and animal manures making nutrients more readily available to plants. Instead of buying mechanized services or fertility inputs, the farm integrates the functional diversity of life to create synergies.
A farm layout and field rotation pattern based on agroecological principles. Colors represent different classes of production: green is pasture, brown is legumes, yellow is grains, red is cover crop, and blue is other seed crop. Each image shows a different year of land-use.
Inherent diversity means no single crop failure will ruin the farm, and soil imbalances are prevented. The focus is on soil health, with all fields going through periods of planting in perennial and deeply rooted species to build soil organic matter and mobilize minerals such as phosphorus from deep layers. Fungi associating with roots locate source rock and solubilize minerals that are trans-located to leaves. Topsoil fertility is therefore built from below.
Landscape structure is created to provide habitat for native and naturalized species that participate positively in the farm food web, such as pollinators and predators. No need to buy pesticides when raptors have homes in the trees, predatory wasps have nectar sources, frogs can breed in clean water, and ground beetles have zones of refuge from tillage, for example.
While the emphasis is on letting the biology do the work, renewable energy infrastructure also creates resilience. Farms are often ideal places for wind and solar technologies, and on-farm biofuels are likely to have positive energy returns.
The many differences between conventional and sustainable farming systems are compared.
Food System Resilience
Most farms in the U.S. operate for purposes of exchange, not self-reliance. A resilient farm therefore needs to consider how it connects to the rest of the economy. Do farms have few or multiple choices in the sources of seeds, fertilizers and other inputs? Do these inputs come from far away mines and seed companies, or from local businesses? Are farmers beholden to a dominant buyer or do many potential buyers exist for their products?
To have a resilient food system the associative farm economy needs diversity too. Since this is typically not the case anymore, transforming the food system, both on and off farm, takes time, coordination among actors, patient financial investment, and the ability to adapt.
Different economic arrangements are competitive at different periods of history. I believe we are entering a time when the diminishing returns on previous investments will open up opportunities for new actors. Because of economic volatility, what works going forward will be different than what worked in the past. This is an age of great innovation where agroecological farming and local food system development will emerge as a natural and smart response to pressures of resource depletion, protection and enhancement of natural capital, and financial and job insecurity.
What will this new food system look like? It will be organized akin to an ecosystem, or food web. Farms and renewable energy infrastructure occupy the level of primary producers, with businesses acting as conduits for feeding omnivorous humans. In contrast to our current food system, which is linear in structure, the future food system will cycle nutrients back to the farm. This structural constraint will mean that much more food is grown for local populations.
Nutrients will still leak from landscapes, and so maintaining long-term fertility will require replacing what is lost. In forests of the Pacific Northwest, salmon migrations brought the mineral wealth of the ocean back to the land. Restoring migratory fish habitat therefore aligns with the needs of agriculture. Harvesting of kelp deposits on beaches and salt deposits from tidal zones and transporting them inland is another viable means of supporting the mineral richness in soils.
Bernie Winters of Clare Island, Ireland, harvests kelp from rocky beaches to remineralize the soils on his farm.
I hope this post has clearly framed the issue of food system resilience and the general principles involved. Many examples exist that align with the goals of resilience, including novel distribution systems, farmer training programs, and specialists on soil restoration. Please share other examples you know of, and discuss aspects of the challenges involved in more detail.
Do you believe in magic? Big Oil and their supporters hope so, as they advocate their latest domestic energy source: oil shale.
Oil shale is neither oil nor shale. This finely-grained sedimentary rock – more properly known as organic marlstone – is infused with kerogen, not oil. Kerogen is a dense blend of ancient algae and pond scum, and is an essential ingredient in oil and natural gas. But transforming kerogen to oil requires millennia, coupled with intense heat and crushing geologic pressure. Otherwise the kerogen remains a relatively energy-poor waxy deposit in sedimentary rocks, such as oil shale.
The United States is home to huge deposits of oil shale, most of which can be found somewhere beneath the Rockies. But before rushing for our shovels, we must consider the costs. Is oil shale worth it?
Low energy density
Fuel sources are measured by their energy density – the amount of heat that can be generated per pound. The kerogen in oil shale, which was not refined by eons of heat and pressure, has a very low energy density. As a result, oil shale remains perhaps the poorest choice among the carbon-based fuels. For comparison, oil shale contains one-tenth the energy of crude oil, one-sixth that of coal and one-fourth that of dried cow manure. Pound for pound, oil shale has roughly the same energy density of a baked potato.
High energy demands
Energy speculators have flirted with oil shale since the late 1800s. Every oil shale boom eventually turns to bust when the returns fail to justify the costs. The rocks must first be heated to approximately 600-970°F. This cooks the kerogen, resulting in an oil-like substance known as shale oil. The shale oil then must be further modified to create a synthetic fuel that can be substituted for crude oil. The entire process requires massive inputs of heat, energy and water, and produces a volume of pollutants and gases.
Extreme environmental costs
Refining synthetic oil from shale is a dirty, thirsty and destructive process. Mining the rocks damages landscapes and ecosystems, increases erosion and pollutes water and air with acidic run-off, sulfur-gas emissions and air-borne particulates. Experimental attempts to convert kerogen without mining holds additional environmental risks, including groundwater pollution. The whole process – from extraction through conversion – may require five barrels of water per barrel of synthetic shale oil, if not more. The U.S. oil shale deposits lie within arid Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, where citizens are concerned their sparse drinking water may be redirected to support environmentally damaging and wasteful oil shale speculation. Coupled with all this, producing and using oil from shale creates even more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional petroleum.
Oil Shale is Not the Answer
Environmentally destructive and prohibitively expensive, oil from shale is not worth the costs. Certainly we must secure our energy future, but oil shale should not be part of this process. This is not the fuel of the future. It’s time we recognize oil shale for what it is, a rock.
As always, the answer comes back to conservation and investment in alternative energies. These may not be easy or immediate answers, but they are the only ones that will work.
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Related Articles On Natural Gas from Shale Rock:
Don’t count on natural gas to solve US energy problems – We often hear statements suggesting that by ramping up shale gas production, the US can raise total natural gas production and solve many of its energy problems. While there is the possibility that shale gas will allow US natural gas supplies to increase for a few years, it is doubtful this advantage will last for many years. Furthermore, the amount of coal and oil that need to be replaced are very high in relationship to natural gas production, so even a large increase in natural gas production would have a small effect. These are some of the reasons I think natural gas optimism is misplaced:
The Saudi-Scale U.S. Oil Reserves We Shouldn’t Tap – – Shale oil is low quality stuff that is hard and expensive to produce. In shale-land, the mother lode is a ton of rock that holds a mere 30 gallons of oil. Refine it and you’ll get 15 gallons of gasoline, barely enough to move one Honda Civic from Boston to Buffalo…
Colorado — A three-year study in Garfield County detailed the migration of methane from fracking operations through natural faults into potable water supplies, but state regulators also fingered faulty casing work by EnCana Oil and Gas for water well contamination, fining the company $370,000.
Pennsylvania — In a land of exploding water wells and quarantined cows, residents of Dimock, Pa., sued Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas in 2009 after a range of chemicals linked to fracking contaminated water wells. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection fined the company more than $240,000. However, the price tag associated with trucking in clean water to homeowners has been placed at more than $10 million.
Wyoming — In September 2010, the EPA discovered water wells in Wyoming were contaminated with 2-butoexythanol phosphate, a common fracking fluid with a range of harmful human-health impacts, and instructed community residents not to drink their water. Indian Country Today reported residents of the Wind River Indian Reservation began using fans while bathing to reduce the risk of explosion. Meanwhile, lawmakers passed rules forcing oil and gas companies in the state to divulge the full list of chemicals used in fracking operations. In an echo of BP’s tussle with the Feds over the makeup of the dispersant Corexit, industry has argued to the EPA that such information must be kept secret as competitive trade information.
New York — Following warnings that contaminated aquifers requiring the construction of industrial treatment plants would raise New York City water rates by a minimum of 30 percent, New York Governor David Paterson issued a statewide seven-month moratorium on “high-volume” fracking in December of 2010.
North Texas — Jay Olaguer, director of air-quality research at the Houston Advanced Research Center, reported last summer that industry is regularly underestimating air emissions from fracking and natural-gas development in the DFW area. He reported that formaldehyde readings in one industry study — which reached 126 parts per billion at one DFW location — were “astoundingly high.” “I’ve never heard of ambient [formaldehyde] concentrations that high,” he told the Current, “except in Brazil where they use alternative fuels such as ethanol and gasohol for automobiles.” Beyond immediate public-health impacts associated with breathing formaldehyde, the chemical is also a powerful precursor to the creation of ground-level ozone.
Nationwide — A wide-ranging EPA study was launched last year after the agency acknowledged “there are serious concerns from citizens and their representatives about hydraulic fracturing’s potential impact on drinking water, human health, and the environment.” Initial findings on the feasibility of fracking are expected to be released in late 2012.
Two recently filed lawsuits in Texas argue that hydraulic fracturing in the Barnett Shale has caused significant groundwater contamination. One suit has been filed pertaining to property in Tarrant County and a similar suit has been filed covering property in Denton County. The Tarrant County suit names Chesapeake Energy and Encana Oil & Gas as Defendants. The Barnett Shale field is a massive natural gas producer, but because the shale is an almost impermeable formation, essentially all of the wells in the field must undergo a process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” in order to produce gas. Fracking is the process in which millions of gallons of water are mixed with chemicals and other materials and are injected under extremely high pressure into the wellbore. This fractures the rock and allows channels to develop through which the gas can migrate to the wellbore.
Gas fracking may already be lowering water tables in South TexasJanuary 6th, 2011. by Robert Crowe | The San Antonio Current – This time around, the wells are drilled horizontally, and then there’s the potential that hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” will have long-term effects on South Texas water tables in a region that has long struggled with drought. A typical fracked well in Karnes County uses 3 to 6 million gallons of water, which is pumped thousands of feet underground to release oil and gas from the shale formation.
Many in Karnes County welcome the boom, but the water issue keeps confronting the oil industry. “They already know they’re gonna run this area out of water; there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” said Braudaway, whose livelihood still depends on oilfield services. For some folks, the water future of South Texas boils down to simple math – when you suddenly pull millions of gallons from local aquifers without replenishing that supply, there’s going to be less for homes, farms, and ranches. “We know it’s happening because our water well has already dropped in just three months,” said Allan Hedtke, a Karnes City resident. In spite of off-and-on drought conditions, Hedtke’s well held steady at 225 feet below ground for years before suddenly dropping to 300 feet last fall. Hedtke and neighbors with similar experiences feel strongly that the recent drilling and oil production activity nearby caused the change. “I can’t prove it’s them, but there’s no other explanation,” he said.
PBS interview with filmmaker Josh Fox about his movie ‘Gasland’, a documentary about ‘fracking’ – “The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.”
Pennsylvania cattle quarantined from gas fracking contamination – Agriculture officials have quarantined 28 beef cattle on a Pennsylvania farm after wastewater from a nearby gas well leaked into a field and came in contact with the animals. As High Country News summarizes, fracking has brought the West “polluted wastewater problems, large scale habitat disturbance, methane leaks from pipelines, and potentially serious health impacts that come along with the use of toxic chemicals in hydraulic fracturing.” And as this article on Civil Eats suggests, even heavily regulated fracking could be enough to destroy much of New York’s Hudson Valley farmland. After all, how many cattle quarantines or lost crops does it take to put a farmer out of business? Answer: not many.
Freaked out by Fracking – Jan 17, 2011 – Evidence from the US suggests shale gas extraction brings a significant risk of ground and surface water contamination and until the evidence base is developed a precautionary approach to development in the UK and Europe is the only responsible action. There is little to suggest that shale gas will play a key role as a transition fuel in the move to a low carbon economy.
New York State Scrutinizes ‘Fracking’ Due to Water Contamination Concerns – New York is putting a hold on the practice of drilling for natural gas by injecting chemicals into the ground. The technique is called hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and it has an alleged record of contaminating drinking water in Wyoming and Texas. The EPA found benzene and other petroleum compounds in water wells in Pavillion, Wyoming, that are thought to have come from fracking. Seventeen of 19 wells were contaminated in the town of 166 people. Chemicals are used in the process to help the materials flow and keep the sandstone open. Besides benzene there are chemicals used such as toluene, xylene, napthalene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol and formaldehyde, just to name a few.
Those in the industry admit that bad well construction and carelessness when operating wells leads to problems. So who oversees the work to make sure things are done properly? One answer to that question comes from Ohio where there are 21 state agents to oversee 34,000 natural gas wells.
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Natural gas “fracking” boom in South Texas – SAN ANTONIO – There is an energy boom going on right in our own back yard. Drilling companies have discovered how to unlock a vast supply of energy beneath South Texas. But activists, celebrities and even the federal government are concerned about the effects it could have on our air and water. In places like North Texas, and Colorado, where fracking is widespread, property owners complain that natural gas has contaminated their wells to the point they can light their drinking water on fire as it comes out of the faucet. Environmental groups want energy companies to make public the exact chemicals they are using in the process. But right now they’re not required to, due to a loophole in the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
International Atomic Energy Agency. Seawater concentrations of cesium-137, March 23 to March 30.
You can avoid sugar, aspartame, trans-fats, or MSG if you’re a savvy reader of labels. But if you want to avoid genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), it’s not so easy. They’re not listed on labels. You could buy organic foods, which by law can’t contain more than 5 percent GMO’s — but now that might not work either.
