Green Daily

Have you ever tried to find an ingredients list for a bottle of dish soap? It's nearly impossible. Sometimes mainstream corporations will publish ingredients on their website but more often than not, their formula is so secret that they won't tell you what you putting on your dishes. This very issue is what drove a lawsuit against the likes of Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive by environmentalists.

Six different organizations including the Sierra Club and the American Lung Association have banded together to file suit against several detergent making companies. Representing the claimants is Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law firm in New York.

The crux of the suit falls on the New York's Environmental Conservation Law passed in 1976 that requires companies to file ingredients lists semiannually with the State of New York. Not surprisingly, the only two companies who have been in compliance are Method and Seventh Generation. The rest were put on notice last September.

I would like to see more ingredients listed on detergents that line the shelves. Then again, I spend most of my time cleaning with vinegar.

Firefighters often use a foam to douse a fire instead of water because it reduces the damage water can do to property. They are also useful in fighting petroleum-based fires. The foams have been used for decades, but any made before 2002 likely include PFOs and PFOAs. PFO is a chemical from the family of perfluorochemicals.

They do not break down in water or in humans and animals. The chemicals, used frequently in 3M products until 2002, have been shown to do liver damage, cause birth defects and impair growth in off-spring of animals that were exposed to the chemical while pregnant. It's They are also likely carcinogens.

While 3M no longer makes products with PFOs, fire departments have stockpiles of the foam containing these chemicals, and recent testing in Minnesota shows that the chemical is entering surface water, and staying there. The levels in several suburban, natural lakes were well above state health guidelines. The chemicals likely arrived in the water via the sewer systems: waste water treatment plants aren't designed to remove PFOAs.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency will begin testing communities around the state to see if groundwater has been affected. Firefighting News believes this could have national implications.

If you're a wind power fan like me, you're probably thinking: oh great, here we go again. This is by no means the first time wind turbines have been blamed for a smattering of health problems, but the most recent outbreak of what is being called "wind turbine disease" sounds somewhat legit. According to the Japanese press, over 70 residents living near wind farms are complaining of ill health, which they believe stems from low frequency sounds emitted from the turbines.

The Okawa family, living only 350 meters (less than a quarter mile) from one turbine, reported symptoms like dizziness, numbness, and insomnia soon after the turbine was activated. To test their suspicions, they rented an apartment away from the turbines to sleep each night, where they say symptoms quickly dissipated. Acoustics experts tested their home and found that extremely low frequencies were present in the Okawa home, but reassured them that low frequencies weren't harmful. With so many complaints, the Japanese Environmental Ministry has stepped in to investigate the health effects of these vibrations.

[via CleanTechnica]

Gwyneth Paltrow writes a bloggy-newsletter thingy called GOOP, with all sorts of tips from Gwyneth herself on health, fashion, home, parenting, life. You can enjoy GOOP straight from the website or sign up for the weekly newsletter that will promptly end up in your spam folder if you're me.

Back around the New Year, GOOP focused on detoxing, and Paltrow talked about her experience with the Master Cleanse. The Master Cleanse consists of consuming only lemonade made from lemon or lime juice, maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper. According to Paltrow, it caused her to hallucinate. Nice. She then asked her doctor about it and he advised her that the Master Cleanse could be dangerous and that one can safely "detox" while eating food, as long you cut out whatever is presumably toxic.

So what's the real deal on detox diets and do they work? According to Dr. Michael Picco at the Mayo Clinic, people do report feeling better after a detox diet, which can include cutting out meat, sugar, certain grains, dairy, alcohol and caffeine. Picco says that this feeling of well-being could come from a feeling that you are doing something good for yourself, or could come from calorie restriction, which can lead to feelings of heightened well-being. However, there is no evidence that detox diets remove toxins from the body and most toxins are removed by the kidneys and liver and excreted.

According to Dr. Picco, there can be dangerous side effects of some detox diets including headaches, anemia, low blood sugar and irregular heartbeats. I would assume hallucinating, like Paltrow did, is also not a good sign.

In short, the best detox diet is a good everyday diet, based on fruits, veggies, whole grains and lean sources of protein, along with exercise and stress reduction techniques.

Have you ever tried a detox diet?

Join the Green Challenge every month and make one small change to help the environment. Keep us posted on your progress throughout the month and keep an eye out for spectacular giveaways.

I did a big grocery shopping run over the weekend. I hate to admit that something as simple as shopping for groceries has gotten out of hand for me. I now shop two stores. I choose Whole Foods for various specialty items in addition to dairy, organic produce and chocolate croissants (doesn't everyone?!). I save the big stores for everything else. That's where I found myself on Sunday.

Throughout history, society's mass fears have worked their way into the quaint psychoses of each generation. Whether it's the threat of nuclear annihilation, AIDS, going to school in your underwear, or just about anything else that you can have bad dreams about, seemingly unrelated cases of mental illness can be fixated on a single delusion. These days, psychiatrists are tracking an outbreak of freak outs that all seem to hinge on the fear of global warming.

Doctors are calling it climate change delusion. The first case was recorded in Australia, when a 17 year old boy was admitted to a psychiatric unit because he refused to drink water, believing that it would result in millions of deaths. Now, doctors are noting a rise in all kinds of psychosis and anxiety disorders that center around climate change. At this point it seems important to study whether climate change is creating mass hysteria, or whether it's a topic of societal obsession seized on by susceptible minds.

Either way, if your starting to feel that climate change paranoia is dominating your every move, you might consider taking An Inconvenient Truth out of your DVD player and ignoring mass media -- except Green Daily -- for a little while.

I posted on the bed bug problem spreading across the U.S. last month, but I never got around to thanking the people who wrote in with their own approaches to dealing with a bed bug infestation.

Here are a few of the things I heard.

Aaron Edwards was featured in the photo I posted of a man attacked by bed bugs. He says a friend in Brooklyn had an infestation and used an electronic device from Good Life to get rid of the creatures. The Pest Repeller Ultimate uses "Super Sonic and Electro-Vibrawave Technology" to drive indoor pests mad. The consumer guide doesn't mention bed bugs, but Edwards says his friend washed all of his clothing and linens well, then turned on the device, and hasn't had a problem since.

Thomas wrote that Kleen-Free Naturally worked for him. The product is non-toxic, but it does eat away at the exoskeleton of bed bugs. The trick with this product is that you must locate the bed bugs and spray the formula on them. The Bedbug Terminator is a new item of theirs, EPA exempt. They say all of their products are environmentally safe, and have conducted studies. No information, however, is available on what exactly their products are made of.

Finally, Chris from Xero Bugs wrote in to mention his cedar oil based cleaning products. The smell Cedar-cide is toxic to pests, much like ammonia to humans. These products are not safe for plants, but they are safe for people and animals. Best Yet Insect Spray can be applied to the skin to form a barrier against bed bugs, as well as applied to areas that are infested with bed bugs and other insects. The product description boasts instant death for bed bugs, and is considered a minimum risk pesticide.

Salmonella tainted peanut butter strikes again and this time it is in packets of peanut butter in military Meal-Ready-To-Eat (MRE) packages that FEMA passed out to victims of Hurricane Ike in Texas and now the ice storms in Kentucky and Arkansas.

MREs already distributed in Kentucky were being recalled and those in Arkansas have not been passed out yet according to news sources. Those with the meals are being advised to throw out the peanut butter packets included. The remainder of the meal is safe to eat.

Push up bras may be uncomfortable but they certainly aren't supposed to give wearers scarring, welts, rashes and blisters. This is exactly what happened to some women who bought Victoria's Secret Angels Embrace and Very Sexy Extreme Me Push-Up bras. [Who comes up with these names?]

Ohio resident Roberta Ritter filed a lawsuit against the clothing manufacturer last spring. Once she did so, others joined in a class action suit claiming similar injuries. Ritter's firm did some testing and found the chemical formaldehyde in some brands of Victoria Secret's underwear.

Though Victoria Secret denies intentionally putting cancer causing chemicals in their brassieres. One has to wonder what else is making it's way into their unmentionables.

As you stare out of your windows at the frozen tundra of your backyard and dream of your spring garden, be sure to add a few flowers to the list. There are certain types of flowers and herbs that will repel harmful bugs naturally from your garden. This is a great way to keep your garden organic.

• Marigolds keep the aphids, Mexican bean beetles, squash bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, whiteflies and nematodes away. They will especially benefit your tomatoes.
• Nasturtium will discourage Colorado potato bugs, squash bugs, and whiteflies from entering your vegetable plot.
• Got mosquitoes? Try growing some basil.
• Peppermint is another great herb to grow in the garden as it keeps away the ants, white cabbage moths, aphids, and flea beetles.

You can start growing all of these from seed indoors now for planting in the spring.

As I was growing up in Vermont, it was pretty much understood that you take your shoes off at the door year round. You did this at your own home as well as those that you were visiting. It helped to keep the snow and mud tracked in down to a minimum. Once I moved to the South, I realized that this is not a common practice everywhere. It's unfortunate because tracking the outside in can be bad for your health.

Shoes can track in all sorts of stuff from the outside including pesticides, fungi and animal excrement. All of this can get trapped into carpets where children and pets are especially vulnerable to exposure.

To combat this problem, set up a space near the front door for leaving shoes. I have a narrow cubby that I got from target with twelve slots for six to 12 pairs of shoes depending on the size. It has helped to keep the carpets clean and I feel good knowing that I'm not tracking muck through the house.

[via: Care2]

Yes, you read that right, but perhaps it was just a little bit misleading. Our sister site Lemondrop has a funny post about how a Florida company is collecting used sex toys and recycling them into a variety of products, including playground mulch.

I've posted before about the importance of recycling your sex toys -- anything to avoid a post-apocalyptic mound of dead vibrators, right?

At the time, I could only find one place to recycle them, sextoyrecycling.com, which also makes post-consumer-waste-plastic sex toys. Recyclers are even rewarded with a credit toward their fun products. Now that's an incentive.

And now you have a choice! You can also send your worn out pocket pal to Recycle My Sex Toy, the one in Florida that makes playground mulch.

Recycle My Sex Toy is connected to VibratorShopping.com, which has a full line of green friendly vibrating, non-vibrating, and glass toys, as well as your phlalate-free items and all natural lotions and lubricants. Fun!

It's great to hear that options are growing increasing expanding. Yay for the green economy!

As a former English teacher, I am, essentially, a recovering language junkie. Having spent a decade red-penning papers, correcting grammar and mechanics, and generally defending the ramparts of Western civilization against the incursion of logical fallacies, I still tend to be a little bit obsessive about the misuse of the English language.

For the most part, I have recovered from my teaching-imposed illness, but I still have my prickly side. When I see somebody deliberately misusing the language, I tend to get a little ticked off. I imagine myself, wearing a tunic emblazoned with the image of George Orwell, attending the execution of English abusers.

Don't judge me; we all have our little daydreams.

Recently, Audrae Erickson, President of the Corn Refiners Association, took her place in my personal rogues' gallery of language abusers. In response to a report that some brands of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have been found to contain measurable levels of mercury, she offered the following press release:

Vilsack's first press conference on Monday provided further insight into how the Secretary of Agriculture plans to run his office. His first order of business was to brush up on ethics and sign an Ethics Agreement valuing transparency put forth by President Obama.

Vilsack then outlined his priorities as Secretary of Agriculture and that included promoting "a sustainable, safe, sufficient, and nutritious food supply for all Americans and for people around the world." He also plans on combating childhood obesity and providing block grants to promote nutrition. Vilsack has also expressed concerns about food safety.

As seed catalogs start pouring into your house (or your browser), you might be stuck with an array of choices beyond which tomato to choose. Words like heirloom and organic get thrown around a lot and I specifically wanted to know what made organic seeds different than conventional.

In order for a seed to be organic, it must come from a plant that has been raised organically. This means that it has lived its life without the use of pesticides or synthetic chemicals.

The term "organic" does not mean that your seeds were not genetically modified. There have been cases of organic crops being contaminated with GMO seed. The safest option for steering clear of GMOs would be to choose an heirloom variety or go with a company like Seeds of Change that guarantees the absence of genetic modification.