L.A. Green Bean

My 18 year old sister called me not long ago and said, "So what's the deal with these plastic bottles?"

"Which plastic bottles, exactly?" I asked.

"The Nalgene ones -- is it true that they're bad?"

It seems I've become the go-to person for friends and family on all things toxic. I don't mind at all (I mean hey, it's nice to be treated like an expert), but I tend to get a little bogged down in the details.

"Well," I told my sister, "Your bottle is made of of a kind of plastic called polycarbonate, which contains a chemical called Bisphe--"

"Yeah yeah. Is it going to make me sick?"

"Well, not right away, but BPA is a hormone disruptor, which means--"

She cut me off again. "It'll give me cancer?"

"I take it you never read my blog," I laughed.

"It's too much!" She said. "Just tell me what to do."

Ahh. That again. It makes perfect sense, too. We're all busy people. and we don't have time for details on every subject that enters into our lives. It all boils down to one big question: what should I do?

Dr. Natalie Jeremijenko has taken that often overwhelming question and put it to a script that all of us will recognize: a trip to the doctor's office. But Jeremijenko isn't a medical doctor. She's an engineer and visual artist with a remarkable understanding of human nature.

In her NYU office, Jeremijenko holds clinics to discuss solutions to a problem many medical doctors ignore: environmental pollution. Her "impatients" leave with prescriptions for actual actions they can take to improve their immediate environments, from raising houseplants to attaching a "solar awning" to capture sunlight.

Dr. Jeremijenko is profiled by Amanda Schaffer in this New York Times article. Her philosophy is interesting, and well worth a read.

Oh, and yes, I told my sister to ditch her polycarbonate bottle in favor of one made from stainless steel or HDPE.

Photo by Living the American Dream.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the U.S. chemical industry's war to stop two California bills that would ban carcinogenic Teflon chemicals in food packaging and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in baby bottles. Heading into the final weeks of the legislative session, both bills, which are sponsored by Environmental Working Group, are still alive, and the industry is still throwing everything it's got at them. Over the weekend, more details emerged of the industry's campaign against the second bill, Senate Bill 1713, which would ban bisphenol A, or BPA, from baby bottles, sippy cups and food packaging for young children. The Orange County Register's Jennifer Muir reports:

A chemical industry-backed lobbying group has mounted a statewide campaign to convince Californians that a potentially dangerous compound found in baby products and canned goods is safe, and warns that if efforts to ban it are successful, "going to a grocery store may never be the same."

State officials and scientists say the ads are misleading and designed to scare consumers into keeping products that could harm children on the market.

The campaign, paid for by industry trade group the American Chemistry Council, urges voters to voice opposition to a Senate bill that would outlaw the chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), in products made for young kids.

Dozens of independent scientific studies have suggested that the chemical could cause everything from cancer to reproductive and behavioral problems, although others have found products containing BPA to be safe.

Mailers and ads appearing in newspapers across the state depict an empty grocery cart in the desert and warn that if BPA is banned, canned food and beverages might be vulnerable to spoilage or contamination. Food products, the ads say, could disappear from grocery store shelves even though "rigorous scientific reviews" conclude the products are safe.

"Maybe that's why no other state in the country bans BPA," the ads say.

A spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm, told the Register he did not know how much the anti-1713 campaign has cost, but it included ads in the print and online editions of leading newspapers, direct mail, pre-recorded phone calls and radio ads.

But there are signs that this scorched-Earth campaign by the industry may backfire. Several legislative staffers told me last week they'd gotten calls from residents of their districts complaining about the deceptive nature of the ads. One Assembly member, Lois Wolk of Davis, issued a press release calling the campaign "toxic to the [political] process."

"When people call my office concerned, we tell them the whole story," said Wolk. "We tell them who paid for the mailer and what the bill is really about. Once they hear the facts, most change their position. And many are angry and annoyed at the Chemistry Council for misleading them."

The showdown on the Assembly floor is Tuesday. SB 1713 has already passed the Senate, so if it clears the Assembly, it goes to Gov. Schwarzenegger's desk, and no one is sure which way the Governator is leaning. The Associated Press's Samantha Young reports:

He signed legislation last year banning a common chemical known as phthalates in baby products and toys. But he told lawmakers at the time that a "product by product" ban was not the most effective way to craft state policy regarding potentially unsafe chemicals. . . . The Schwarzenegger administration created a "green chemistry" initiative in 2007 to study how California should regulate chemicals, an approach favored by industry and many scientists who say there should be a more complete vetting of consumer products.

We support a comprehensive approach to chemical reform too. But that shouldn't stop California from acting in the meantime to restrict chemicals that clearly are a hazard to public health.

After a UK study, published late last year, drew convincing connections between certain food additives and hyperactivity in children, Britain's Food Standards Agency asked food companies to comply with a voluntary ban on those products.

Now, a newly-proposed rule in the European Union would require manufacturers who continue to use some of those additives to print a warning on their labels:
The requirement for labelling, which would warn consumers that products "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children", emerged in negotiations between MEPs, the European commission and the council of ministers over a new structure for authorising additives, flavourings and enzymes in food. It has to be approved by ministers later in the year and firms will be given time to comply, probably until mid-2010.
By the time the rule goes into effect (that is, if it gets approved), most major food manufacturers* will already have gotten rid of the additives in question -- in part to comply with the UK's voluntary ban, but also because of consumer demand. The EU warning requirement would apply to imported foods as well, creating incentive for international food manufacturers to get rid of the additives altogether, and meaning that the US might see some residual benefit from the EU's move.

*Does anyone else think the phrase "food manufacturers" is altogether a little bit creepy?

Photo by PorcelainGirl.

After The New York Times' Well Blog listed sardines as one of the 11 best foods you aren't eating, I went out and bought myself a can. I like eating fish occasionally, but I loathe preparing it myself -- and since my resident chef is off in New York State bein' a farmer for the season, I have had an unusually fishless summer.

So, I figured I'd give sardines a go. They get a bad rap (about as bad as anchovies), but according to Nutritionist Jonny Bowden they're "health food in a can."
"They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins."

On top of that, as Plenty magazine points out in an article about sustainable fish, sardines aren't subject to the rampant overfishing that has affected bigger species like tuna, sea bass and swordfish.

I have vivid memories of my 95 year old grandfather, still tied to his farm-work routine, sitting at the kitchen table at 5 in the morning with sardines and toast. It worked for him (clearly, since he lived well into his 90s!), but somehow fish and toast just didn't sound tasty to me. So I set off in search of a recipe to make sardines cool again.

So off I went to Chow.com, where the Chowhounders have solved countless culinary dilemmas for me over the past year. Some of them seemed a little down on sardines, which made me sad, but I did find this easy, tasty recipe.
"I've heated up some olive oil, put in some garlic and red hot pepper flakes. After the garlic is slightly browned, put in the sardines and some chopped tomatoes and saute. The sauteeing action will break up the sardines into bits. Add some par-boiled pasta (about 5 minutes before they're done) along with some pasta water to the pan. Cook until the pasta is done."

Delicious! And since I make that recipe weekly in the summer anyway (sans sardines, until now), it's a really easy way to add good fishy stuff to my diet without contributing to overfishing. My grandfather would be proud.

Photo: Sardine-avocado toast by In Praise of Sardines. See also: In Praise of Sardines, the blog.

-->This post is by EWG's media intern Sameem.

Right on the heels of gas price hype and a housing crisis, we’re finally being presented with legislation that at least acknowledges the need for a more thorough transit planning.

On July 15, Representative Blumenauer of Oregon introduced the Transportation and Housing Choices for Gas Price Relief Act of 2008 into the House. Despite lacking a snazzy name, the bill puts forward some big steps in getting federal attention to transit and planning issues around the country.

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps one of the most influential parts of the legislation is its support for “location-efficient” housing developments. As I mentioned in my last post, only 1 in 5 households in the US are transit accessible. In addition to expanding transit to existing developments, the bill aims to create, maintain, support, and grow communities around existing transit friendly areas. It proposes that mortgage lenders, namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, be given specific goals for granting mortgages to properties that are location-efficient. The bill also proposes more grants for developers who want to build affordable housing near transit.

So now you’ve got your fancy location-efficient residence, and you can hop on to transit and get anywhere you want, right? Probably not. To fill in the gaps in transit systems, or to avoid them all together, more and more commuters are looking to bicycles to get around these days. The bill seeks to spur this on by enticing potential cyclist and their employers with a modest increase in tax credits. Of course an increase in cycle traffic will call for a massive adjustment in road planning, for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike. This readjustment will call for more work and money.

And this is where the bill needs to shine most. In order for all these fancy pieces to fit together, this bill has the potential to reform the way federal money is spent on transportation. Instead of giving priority to highway construction, a reform in transportation spending should help localities.

We’ll keep our eyes on this bill as it makes its way through house committees and onward.

Photo by Striatic.

This is a post by EWG research intern Curtis Maples, who's interested in engineering a sustainable future.

When I hear “conserve”, a chain of thoughts comes into my mind. Something like this:

“Conserve?! What?! Why?! This is AMERICA!”
“Well, what does ‘conserve’ mean anyway?”
Conserve = Use less
“Use less of what?”
Multiple Choice:

• A. Money
  
• B. Food
  
• C. Electricity
  
• D. Water
  
• E. All of the above
  

“Are you serious?”
Its so easy even a caveman can do it!
"So then, to conserve I have to use less and live like a caveman?"

While this chain of thought is obviously an exaggeration, according to popular opinion and in some cases history, this isn’t too far away from what comes to the minds of most Americans when they hear “conservation.” It therefore begs the question: does environmental conservation imply austerity?

Well thanks to the wonderful men and women of science and engineering spending countless happy hours in their cubicles and laboratories, environmental conservation most certainly does not always necessitate austerity. Although austerity is never really a bad thing, often times we live austere lifestyles out of necessity. But what if, with a little more engineering magic and a pinch of creativity, austerity can be rendered unnecessary while achieving the same goal?

There are a few architects and engineers who have done just that. The visionaries of Peabody Trust and the environmental magicians of Bill Dunster Architects, both of the United Kingdom, are saviors to everyone wanting to conserve without being cavemen.

Bill Dunster Architects and Peabody Trust teamed up to develop the Beddington Zero Energy Development project, also known as BedZED. BedZED is the first carbon and zero energy community. That’s right folks, community. You have to see this. It’s a sprawling complex of 100 homes, community facilities, and workspaces for about 100 people. BedZED has all of your favorites from the environmental goodie bag, from on-site renewable power combined with photovoltaics, to passive solar engineering. The homes feature heat exchangers, rooftop gardens, passive ventilation, sunrooms, composting technology and thermal mass insulation. They even provide a community carpooling service! The homes are actually very attractive aesthetically as well.

The project has been resoundingly successful, earning the designers many awards and the freedom to attend happy hours. Actually, these guys likely had the freedom to attend happy hour anyway, given that none of the technology they used is particularly high tech.

As a matter of fact, most of this technology is available “off-the-shelf” and was pioneered by the civilizations of antiquity. This is one of the few technologies that don’t require much research (So much for the government using “research” to cover up their lack of initiative). And these homes are not experiments, either -- these are actually homes that are up for sale, and environmentalists aren’t the only ones lining up to buy.

I just have to reiterate this: These homes emit zero, that’s “0”, net carbon and they use no electricity from the grid. Now keep in mind folks that in the United States and the EU, buildings use 40% of our total energy output. So now the question becomes, if there exists a way to significantly reduce our energy load, which would provide far more surplus energy than building a new plant of any kind, without decreasing quality of life, how come the U.S. isn’t diving in head first after it? Well that’s a question for another post.

Most people don’t think of going to a place of religious worship as a time when they're exposing themselves to the danger. However, it really depends where you worship.

A recent study by a Thai doctor found that burning insence in shrines and temples fills the air with cancer-causing toxic chemicals. Dr Manoon Leechawengwong, who completed the study, found that those chemicals are as bad as traffic fumes and cigarette smoke.

Joss sticks are a type of incense used in many East Asian countries, often burned as an offering. It is believed that their smoke carries prayers to the deceased through its journey upward into the sky.

The two year study of temple workers found that the workers are exposed to a mix of chemicals from the smoke that put them on risk for numerous diseases, including several different cancers. The study also found some DNA changes.

One way to reduce the chemical exposure would be to put the sticks out right after use, instead of letting them burn down completely. This way, the ritual can be preserved, and the pollution is reduced.

It's been 9 months since the 901-foot container ship Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and spilled 50,000 gallons of oil into the Bay. As you may recall, it wasn't just oil, but the tarlike sludge called bunker fuel. SF Bay suffered devastation whose effects will be around a long time – as we used to say in Greenpeace, you can't clean up an oil spill – but now the state of California has taken action against the harm to human health caused by bunker fuel every day – even when the ship doesn't crash.

Since bunker fuel is dirtier than oil, it burns dirtier – a lot dirtier. State scientists say 600 coastal Californians die every year from air pollution emitted by ships burning bunker fuel. So starting next year, ships coming within 24 nautical miles of our shores would have to burn low-sulfur diesel instead of bunker fuel. In the LA Times, Margo Jefferson reports that about 2,000 vessels would be affected each year, including container ships, oil tankers and cruise ships.

California "needs to act now," Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said. "We've known for years that a large percentage of onshore pollution comes from activities in the water. Our ports need to expand and modernize, but the adjacent communities are not willing to tolerate the health risks."

The rules could save 3,600 lives in coastal communities over the first six years through reduced respiratory illnesses and heart disease, including a potential 80% drop in cancer risk associated with ship pollutants, according to regulators.

Nichols called the shipping regulation "the single most significant rule the Air Resources Board has adopted in the last five years."

Because prevailing winds blow from west to east in California, ship exhaust accounts for about a fifth of cancer-causing soot particles and half of the sulfur oxides over land.

The remainder is emitted by diesel-powered trucks, construction equipment, locomotives, industrial engines and agricultural pumps, which are all to be subject to stricter regulation as the state seeks to slash the emission of planet-warming greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

The air board estimates that the new shipping rules will save Californians at least $6 billion a year in health-related expenses and will cost the shipping industry between $140 million and $360 million a year.

A typical cargo ship would pay about $30,000 more in fuel costs for each visit, or about $6 per container shipped from Asia to California. That amounts to 0.1 cent per pair of sneakers, the board noted.

California's new rule is a reminder that oil is a scourge on the planet at every stage of its production – from the wells drilled in formerly pristine wilderness areas, to refinery emissions, to vehicle exhaust. This is a law to prevent an oil spill in the sky.

So I was reading this New York Times article on radon off-gassing from granite countertops, and I was intrigued by this passage:
The E.P.A. recommends taking action if radon gas levels in the home exceeds 4 picocuries per liter of air (a measure of radioactive emission); about the same risk for cancer as smoking a half a pack of cigarettes per day.

Now, I'm not a smoker. In fact, I'm asthmatic, and people I love have been killed by smoking-related cancers. There's no doubt about it: I'm biased against cigarette smoking. So maybe it's unrealistic of me to think that if someone I loved was smoking -- even less than half a pack a day -- and all I had to do to get them to stop was take away the cigarettes. . . does this seem obvious to anyone else?

But maybe that confuses the issue. After all, there are complex politics around cigarettes, but I don't think many people would argue over their right to have radioactive granite countertops in their houses, when there are safer options (including safer granite options) available. Which is what Dr. David J. Brenner of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University was getting at when he said
“It makes sense. If you can choose another counter that doesn’t elevate your risk, however slightly, why wouldn’t you?”

And you know, I think that's true of most of the toxic exposures we talk about in this neck of the blogosphere. I'm always puzzled by the people who want to wait until there's conclusive evidence of extensive harm to human health before making changes to their lifestyles or the law. By then, the damage is already done. If we can prevent it from happening, shouldn't we?

Need to get your counter tested?
For radon testing, the Times recommends contacting the American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists or ordering a kit from the EPA or your local indoor air environment office.

Photo by dotpolka.

In the environmental community, there's a lot of discussion about how to best convey the message of action to the rest of the country. The general consensus is that giving people small actions that are easy to achieve but have a real impact creates a sense of success, and that encourages them to do more -- hence the ubiquitous "Switch to CFLs!"

On the food side of things, a campaign started earlier this year encourages us all to switch from animal-based lunches (like burgers or grilled cheese) to veggie-based lunches like PB&J:

If you're anything like me, right now you're going "Uh-huh, and I bet it's funded by the peanut industry. Or Smuckers." Apparently, the PB&J campaign has gotten a lot of that. The very first paragraph of their "About Us" section states:
The PB&J Campaign is an effort of private citizens concerned about the environment. We've been a little surprised and amused by speculation that the PB&J Campaign is a front for the National Peanut Board, animal rights groups, or even Smuckers. To be clear, the PB&J Campaign is not funded or coordinated by any business or advocacy organizations.

Well, that's a relief. The campaign says that switching to veggie-based lunches conserves water, reduces water pollution, saves pounds of CO2 per sandwich and more efficiently converts plants into energy. And don't worry, if you're allergic to peanuts; any veggie-based lunch will have a lower carbon footprint than a ham sandwich. Even, as they point out in this recent blog post, the Fu Wa tofu hoagie.

Good news for parents and children everywhere: Congress has agreed to a ban on three dangerous phthalates in products made for children under 12. The decision came in spite of the chemical industry's desperate (and well-funded) attempt to shut the provision down. Exxon-Mobil alone spent a significant portion of its $22 million lobbying budget on the project, according to Lyndsey Layton at The Washington Post.

The provision, which would also require extensive testing of three other types of phthalates before potentially banning them, is a part of a major piece of legislation overhauling the Consumer Products Safety Commission. Although President Bush has said that he disagrees with the phthalate ban (no surprise there), I'm willing to speculate that it would probably be hard for him to veto the entire bill, since its purpose is to protect American consumers.

This is, of course, a major step in the right direction, but is it a harbinger of major change to come? Andy Igrejas of the Pew Charitable Trusts told Layton,
"The debate over this one set of chemicals is a referendum on a broken system. Congress saw just how screwed up the system is in protecting people from chemicals, especially children."

Meanwhile, Layton writes that the ban "signals an important crack in the chemical industry's ability to fend off federal regulation and suggests that the landscape may be shifting to favor consumers." Here's hoping they're right -- we're about due for a landscape shift.

Photo by Nat.

David Brower, more than anyone else except possibly Rachel Carson, was the creative force behind the modern American environmental movement. As the first executive director of the Sierra Club, he transformed it from a Northern California hiking club into a potent national political force. When the Sierra Club started compromising too much to suit him, he resigned and founded Friends of the Earth, then went on to help start the California League of Conservation Voters and Earth Island Institute. (He liked to say that each organization was founded to make the one before it seem reasonable.) The subject of one of the best books ever written about the movement, John McPhee's Encounters With the Archdruid, Brower died in 2000 at age 88 in his hometown of Berkeley, where Earth Island is building a super-green center for eco-activism in his honor.

Brower was also a world-class mountaineer. So at the urging of some constituents, Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have introduced legislation to change the name of North Palisade Peak to Brower Palisade. Brower was on the first team of climbers to make a winter ascent of the peak, which at 14,242 feet is the fourth-highest in California.

“Our nation owes David Brower a significant debt for his role in shaping the modern environmental movement during the 1950s and 1960s," said Feinstein. "He helped to preserve vast acres of wilderness in California and across the country. And he has inspired new generations of activists to the cause of safeguarding America’s rich natural heritage."

Not so fast, said Rep. Devin Nunes of Visalia, a Republican whose district includes North Palisade, on the edge of Kings Canyon National Park in Fresno County. He told the Los Angeles Times that Brower wasn't a hero to him, or to the people he represents.

"I most likely wouldn't support it. If you look at a lot of these radical groups that were formed, they've cost my district thousands of jobs. Take the timber industry: We let our forests burn up and meanwhile buy all our wood from Canada -- it's kind of a sad deal."

Even some of Brower's admirers have mixed feelings about the idea. Craig Dostie, senior editor of Backcountry magazine, who lives in the northern Sierra, said he has a "sentimental attachment" to the name North Palisade, that it evokes memories of notable ascents.

The prospects for renaming North Palisade are mixed at best. The head of the U.S. Board on Geographical Names says the government is reluctant to rename physical features.

I've never climbed North Palisade and probably never will, but I'm a bit taken aback to find myself on the same side as Nunes – for very different reasons. Brower loved the Sierra so deeply, and so firmly rejected the idea of himself as a hero, that I bet he wouldn't want his name attached to a mountain. (I'll also bet the notion didn't come from the circumstances Brower often said were the source of the environmental movement's best ideas: scrawled on a bar napkin at last call.) The organizations David Brower founded, and their tireless work to protect public health and natural resources, are monuments enough.

The year is 1958, and Dr. Research and his intrepid team at Bell Laboratory are on a mission to warn the world about the disastrous impacts of carbon emissions. But will anyone listen?

Um. . . apparently not. And this is basically an after-school special! Makes you wonder how long scientists have been aware of the possibility of climate change, and how we ended up where we are today. Wikipedia has more on The Bell Laboratory Science Series.

Via Red, Green and Blue.

This post by EWG research intern Natalia is a follow-up to last week's post Antibacterial: Not just for soap anymore. For more on how to avoid triclosan, check out this cheatsheet.

It might be in your toothbrush. Your socks. Your child’s rattle.

Then again – it might not be. But do you know for sure?

In my last post I touched on some of the environmental hazards of antimicrobials such as triclosan, a general-purpose antifungal and antibacterial chemical found in many personal care products, plastics, and textiles.

However, one of the most worrying things about these chemicals is that while we know how potentially harmful their effects can be, both for the environment and our own health, it’s surprisingly difficult to find information on the products which actually contain these compounds.

In some cases, manufacturers are honest about the antimicrobials they use, but quietly bury their names in the small print of the ingredients labels in a variety of everyday products. To name just a few surprising examples: Colgate Total toothpastes, Clearasil Pimple Treatment Cream, and Right Guard Sport Deodorant all contain triclosan.

In other cases, it can be nearly impossible to determine which products contain antimicrobial agents such as triclosan. Increasing numbers of manufacturers now label products as “antibacterial” without specifying the specific chemicals used. The problem becomes more even complicated when companies play shell games to disguise which of their products contain antimicrobial compounds. A prime example of this is the Microban Product Company.

Contrary to popular belief, triclosan is not the same as Microban. Triclosan is officially registered under the EPA as “Microban additive B” – that is to say, any given product sold under the Microban trade name does not necessarily contain triclosan. Which antimicrobial agent is being used for those products, however, the company will not disclose: it could quite literally be anything!

As concern about environmental issues grows, more and more consumers are trying to make responsible, environmentally-friendly choices in their shopping. Unfortunately, this change cannot happen if companies aren’t fully transparent in labeling their products.

Don’t let advertising gimmicks hide important information about products and the chemicals they contain! You have a right to know what’s in the products you buy. Join us in calling for complete industry disclosure in product labeling – because the choice should be in your hands, not made for you.

Good news of the day: The government is not always slow and ineffective.

Bad news of the day: It is fast only when it want to be.

One would think that if it takes the government over 30 years to set safety standards for sunscreen, they would be as “effective” on other aspects of their work. But, no, that is not the case with this administration (and unfortunately many others before this one).

The last few months of the Bush administration are being used to push for a rule that would make it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins. This is all being done at the Department of Labor, by the political appointees of the commander-in-chief.

According to a Washington Post investigation, the Department of Labor did not disclose the proposal (even though that is required) in public notices, and the text of it is still not made public. The Post further states that the proposal would
“call for reexamining the methods used to measure risks posed by workplace exposure to toxins. The change would address long-standing complaints from businesses that the government overestimates the risk posed by job exposure to chemicals.

The rule would also require the agency to take an extra step before setting new limits on chemicals in the workplace by allowing an additional round of challenges to agency risk assessments.

The department's speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.”

Many people are exposed to toxic chemicals at work, and the public as well as those employees often lack knowledge about exposures. A while ago, we did a conducted a nationwide survey of nurses that suggests associations between the health of nurses and their children and the nurses' long-term exposures to the many hazardous chemicals, drugs, and other agents they encounter over the course of a workday. There are so many people that are exposed to toxic chemicals through their professions that the last thing we need is federal action making it tougher to regulate workplace exposures.

I can’t help but to think of The Simpsons:

"Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don't have to think all the time. Just like that rainforest scare a few years back. Our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn't they?" -- Homer Simpson

A recent New York Times column on sunscreen has been getting a lot of traction on the internet, and since it's partly about, um, us, we thought it was worth a response.

In the column, author Tara Parker Pope quotes Dr. Warwick L. Morison as saying of EWG, "What they are doing is developing their own system for evaluating things." He's right, to a degree, but the method we use is far from "arbitrary" as Morison suggests. In fact, our assessment is based on sunscreen industry data and other published studies on sun protection.

Morison doesn't mention that the Skin Cancer Foundation, where he sits as chairman of the Foundation's photobiology committee, also has their own system for evaluating sunscreens. Unfortunately, SCF's methods fall short.

At a cost of $10,000 to the manufacturer, the Skin Cancer Foundation endorses sunscreen products based on an evaluation that fails to consider two critical factors: whether or not the product protects against UVA protection, and whether the ingredient soaks through the skin and raises health concerns. A quick scan of the sunscreens they endorse reveals several products that don't contain a single approved UVA-screening chemical -- including a product made specifically for kids. Did you catch that? The Skin Cancer Foundation actually endorses a children's sunscreen that provides completely insufficient protection from UVA rays.

As chair of the committee that heads up these assessments, Dr. Morison may not be paid for his work, but he might realize that the organization could be perceived as having a vested interest in defending the products they endorse. The Skin Cancer Foundation's limited and financially conflicted method does not protect consumers.

Our scientists go beyond these limited factors to assess if products provide full-spectrum UV protection, and if they end up in the body in significant amounts. We base our assessments not just on SPF ratings (UVB protection), but also on industry models of UVA protection and peer-reviewed scientific studies on exposures and health risks from sunscreen chemicals.

Dr. Morison's critique of EWG's methods would be more productively aimed at FDA, which has failed to finalize the sunscreen safety standards they began developing 30 years ago. Currently, sunscreens aren¹t required to protect from damaging UVA radiation, manufacturers can (and do) use misleading claims like "instant" and "all-day" and "waterproof" protection, and many brands contain chemicals that absorb through the skin into the blood, raising potential health concerns.

What it comes down to is this: not all sunscreens are the same. We highlight products the provide solid UVA and UVB protection without putting potentially toxic chemicals into the blood of people who use them. Oxybenzone is a chemical to avoid because there's clear evidence that it gets into our blood, and because there's some data implicating it in hormone disruption and UV-related damage. There are sunscreens on the market that offer better protection without all those health risks. Why on earth wouldn't we recommend them?

The Environmental Working Group recommends products that work without posing significant health concerns. The Skin Cancer Foundation and the FDA should ensure that they are doing the same. With more than a million cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year, people can't afford to wait any longer.

PCBs were banned in the '70s, but not before they had already done their damage. They're linked to problems with the brain, nervous and hormone systems, and although average levels in the human body have dropped, human exposure continues. See, PCBs are persistent contaminants, which means they build up in the environment and in us.

Evidence continues to build that PCBs also affect birth sex. A recent study of blood serum from women who were pregnant in San Francisco in the '60s found that those with higher PCB levels were more likely to give birth to boys than those with low PBC levels. The study puts another nail in the coffin for PCBs, but Dr. Pete Myers brings up an important point in his summary of the report:
The exposure levels observed in the study are high compared to today. Thus if these results are indicative of a causal relationship (never possible to confirm with epidemiological studies) then the simplest prediction would be that the chances of having a boy baby should be increasing because PCBs have been decreasing. That is not the case, at least as of the most recent analysis from Canada and the US.
He's right. Evidence from a large-scale study of four industrialized nations indicates that the sex ratio is skewed, and fewer boys are being born -- and, since PCB levels have dropped, we probably can't blame it on that.

But we can look to PCBs as evidence that in-utero exposure to pollutants can affect a child's sex. There are more than 80,000 chemicals in production today, many of which are known to be persistent or to disrupt hormone systems, and most of which haven't really tested for their impact on human health. And you know what? By the time we get around to cleaning up those culprits, they will have done their damage, too.

How many times must history repeat itself before we get our act together and demand that chemical companies put people before profits?

Photo by Erik R. Bishoff.

The state of California, responding to a petition from EWG and other groups, is going to re-evaluate the health effects of perchlorate, the explosive ingredient in rocket fuel and a potent thyroid toxin. The Office of Environmental Hazard Assessment agreed they should look at new evidence that wasn't available in 2004, when they set a Public Health Goal of 6 parts per billion in drinking water, which the state has since adopted as a drinking water standard. EWG's March 2007 analysis of a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Boston University found that Boston-area infants were receiving twice as much perchlorate as the federal government's profoundly inadequate safety standard. We hope the new evidence convinces California to join Massachusetts by setting a new drinking water standard of 1 ppb or lower.

Nowadays, everything seems to be on sale. And I am not talking about the end of the season clearances in stores around us. I'm talking about how if you have enough money you can often buy what ever you want with it -- public support, freedom, education and yes, science.

Here at EWG we work extensively on science for sale issues. Our chromium fraud investigation revealed that safety standards from chromium-6 – the “Erin Brockovich” chemical – had been skewed by a cancer study that was faked by an industry scientist. We revealed the influence of industry on a Harvard professor's suppression of research on fluoride and bone cancer. We blew the whistle on corporate-cozy government contractors in the case of potent chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) and uncovered the major conflict of interest of Sciences International, a consultant that was running the federal safety review of BPA while also working for the chemical industry. As the result of our work, Congress began an investigation of corrupt contracting throughout all regulatory agencies.

But even with EWG's work and the work of other watch dog groups, the situation is still far from being resolved. The question to ask, when thinking about conflict of interest, is who is paying for it and how is that influencing the questions being asked.

BPA is a poster child chemical for funding biases. According to a recent Washington Post article by David Michaels,

"One of the eyebrow-raising statistics about the BPA studies is the stark divergence in results, depending on who funded them. More than 90 percent of the 100-plus government-funded studies performed by independent scientists found health effects from low doses of BPA, while none of the fewer than two dozen chemical-industry-funded studies did.

This striking difference in studies isn't unique to BPA. When a scientist is hired by a firm with a financial interest in the outcome, the likelihood that the result of that study will be favorable to that firm is dramatically increased. This close correlation between the results desired by a study's funders and those reported by the researchers is known in the scientific literature as the "funding effect."

Having a financial stake in the outcome changes the way even the most respected scientists approach their research. Scientists make many decisions about the doses, exposure methods and disease definitions they use in their experiments, and each decision affects the result."

Often, the scientists just plainly manipulate the results. But, according to the Michaels, sometimes close examination of those studies shows that they are comparable in the quality of data and sometimes even better. The puzzle is then, how does that happen?

There are many ways to manipulate the science when the industry is paying the tab—the scientist might not be asking the questions they should be asking; industry funded studies might also be designed to create certain results (and not show some others); as the case with Sciences International and BPA analysis shows, there could be industry presence in choosing the scientific literature that could have big impact on conclusions and so on.

Corporate sponsorship of science should stop once and for all. With the global increases of diseases, public health is not something that should be taken lightly. And there should be no price tag attached to it.

What do drilling for gas on public lands and antibacterial chemicals in consumer products have in common? Neither of them are the answer to our problems. We've got the rundown on two new EWG reports in this edition of Mixed Greens.

Mixed Greens is EWG's environmental health podcast. You can subscribe in iTunes or in a reader, or listen right here in your browser. Check out previous episodes for more Mixed Greens goodness!

Links for this edition:

EWG Report: Coming Up Dry
EWG Report: Pesticide in Soap, Toothpaste and Breast Milk - Is It Kid-Safe?
Cheatsheet: Triclosan