Roots loses contact with planet earth.

A couple of weekends ago I was in the Eaton Centre when I was accosted by a young woman at the entryway to the Roots store. Spying our Gore-tex jackets and hiking boots, she correctly surmised that we might be "outdoorsy" types.

She wanted to sell us on this "great new product" that would help us on our hiking trips.

Air in a can. Yup, Roots is willing to sell us a can of 90% oxygen for the low-low price of $60. And once you use it all up, do not fret! It can be refilled for a mere $20!

According to Roots, flipping the little plastic nose cover up, bringing the cannister close to your face and spritzing while inhaling promotes mental alertness, relieves stress, increases energy and ability to concentrate.

WTF?!??

Uh, I have so many problems with this.

First - you have eviednce from what epidemiological/clinical studies exactly?

Second - My lungs are perfectly adapted to extract the amount of oxygen I need from the atmosphere thankyouverymuch.

Third - pure oxygen could damage my efficient little alveoli (the bits of my lungs that take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide). The atmosphere is actually made up mostly of nitrogen (not oxygen!) - it's only 20% oxygen. It's well-established that breathing 50-100% oxygen over a prolonged period of time causes lung damage. In fact, there are lung diseases where scarring occurs because of the presence of highly reactive oxygen radicals that are created when the lungs get all inflamed. Yuck. ...so is this cannister of 90% oxygen going to come with a warning label?

Fourth - $60 for something I can (continuously) get for free? You've GOT to be kidding me.

Fifth. Oh and so I'm going to lug this on the hiking trail with me?! Who did the focus groups with the outdoorsy people, I wonder? They didn't manage to figure out that most of us would want to reduce the weight we carry, that we're out there for the challenge and not a quick fix, that creating more "stuff" to send to landfill is unlikely to be our cup of tea.

Sixth - the salesgirl said "wouldn't it be better than breathing in that polluted air outside?" Aside from the fact I'd rather spend my $60 on reducing the amount of emissions I'm responsible for - is she suggesting I just attach this permanently to my nose? (besides, see #3) It's pretty hard to get away from outdoor or indoor pollution in Toronto and please tell me that they aren't really marketing this as a healthy alternative to our dirty air when the energy required to create and fill the cannisters probably caused some of the pollution?

Seventh - You know how athletes train at high altitude so that they can run faster? That's because there's less oxygen up there, so they are forcing their bodies to make more efficient use of the oxygen they do breathe. Which makes me wonder if overuse of Roots' new product could actually dampen the ability of your blood cells to transport oxygen around your body.

Eigth - are they trying to commodify air? I mean talk about tragedy of the commons. I think the most tragic thing would be that the commons ends up all owned and no longer common. (I'm not even going to get into bottled water here, people. But you can guess what I think of that). I refuse to even think about how someone could own my air.

Ninth - talk about a completely transparent attempt to sell me something, anything, for profit. Roots can take that attitude and shove it.

And ten: I leave this spot and all the numbers that come after ten open - for anyone who would like to add a thought.

Mm, lard from sewage

I always figure that one reason why most of us don't always buy organic food is the pricetag - I mean, other than availability, there doesn't really seem to be any other good reason to choose non-organic. You know - that"normal" food that cann often be mass-produced, sprayed with pesticides or fed hormones?

But in China, those that can afford it are willing to pay lots of cash for organic - as much as ten times the cost of the so-called "normal" food. That's because over there, there's not much regulation going on and even less capacity to monitor what's actually happening. For example, there are 200 million farms of 1-2 acres each. That's a lot of farms to visit.

The lack of oversight is probably how lard made from sewage and recycled industrial oil was being sold there.

Ew.

The guy who was doing that has been arrested - and other crackdowns have happened after meat from sick and dead animals was sold to consumers and duck eggs were found to contain a cancer-causing dye. These are examples of people who are delibeerately trying to sneak some terrible stuff past the system. But if they can swing it - who knows what stuff is getting into the food supply unintentionally?

Pesticide soup, anyone?

Only skin deep?

Nobody would ever call me a slave to the cosmetics industry. I just can't be bothered to spend the time doing my makeup and putting goo in my hair - especially since I work mostly from home.

Also I often have only the vaguest notion of what the various lotions and potions are actually supposed to do (Uh, "antioxidant rescue serum"? "Skin Polishing Enzyme Treatment"? I recognize all the words in these names but still have no idea of the specific purpose of these things).

Maybe it's a good thing I'm not too fussed about them. It turns out that lots of cosmetics contain pthalates - chemicals that have been shown to mess with animals' hormone systems. Scientists aren't sure whether they could affect humans or not - but in rodents they cause reduced fertility, increased risk of breast cancer, cause premature puberty, and have even been related to bahavioural changes.

So wait - the stuff that we wear to make ourselves appear more sexy might interefere with the natural processes that regulate our reproductive system and sexual function?

That's messed up.

Could it be?!

I finally have a defense date. For my doctoral dissertation. Yep, in five weeks minus a day I'll be sweating it out in front of my committee trying desperately to answer their questions. And be articulate at the same time.

I'm partly exhilarated and partly terrified

Full of beans

Soy-based substitutes aren't just for meat anymore. Forget pretend salami, veggie hotdogs, and tofurki...

(I don't mind tofu... but Tofurki?? It sounds so wierd. I may just have to try that one day. )

Now you can have soybeans in your home. Literally - a new soy-based adhesive may soon be replacing formaldehyde-based ones in engineered wood like plywood and particleboard.

Formaldehyde isn't nice - it's been associated with irritation of the eyes, skin, nose, throat, and lower airways. Oh yeah, and some studies suggest it might case cancer - like nasopharyngeal, nasal, prostate, lung, and pancreatic cancers as well as leukemia. Even though there's still a bit of uncertainty about those results, it just sounds all-round bad. And people who work in construction often have much higher exposures than you and I, who simply live in our homes and sit on our decks sipping Margaritas...

Anyhoo, the idea of soy protein adhesives has been around for a while - but they weren't durable enough until someone figured out they could crosslink the protein with some kind of resin to make the adhesive look more like what a mussel uses to stick itself to the bottom of a boat.

And those little bu**ers do not like to let go.

A bean, informed by a mollusk, might improve your bedroom floor. Wierd. But true.

I've got worms

I love Christmas carols and hymn - I really do. They remind me of how excited I used to feel around this time of year when I was a kid: just about bursting with anticipation. There's something really nice about just knowing all the words and being able to sing them with alomst anyone - a very "community" kind of experience.

But. For almost a week now I have had a fragment of some Christmas tune I don't really know stuck in my head:

..Willie, play your fife and drum, Robin [something, something hum a bit here];Tu-ra-lu-ra-lu, Pat-a-pat-a-pan...

And that's all I know. And it's not even a great song. Heck, it's not even a traditional carol. And it's driving me crazy!

This type of thing is called an earworm. It's a great name for a REALLY IRRITATING THING.

A thing as lovely as a tree?

*sounds of Christmas carols playing softly in the background...*

Ahh, Christmastime. I'm thinking of smells of gingerbread and nutmeg, mulled wine, pine needles, and PVC fixed with lead.

*sounds of needle being scraped off record* ... What?!

Ah yes. I read an article today saying that most artificial Christmas trees are made of PVC - polyvinyl chloride, which is a known carcinogen at the very least. And lead, which is a developmental and reproductive health hazard, is apparently used to stabilize PVC compounds, so it might be in your fake tree as well.

So if you have an artificial tree, don't chew on it.

And real trees? Well, nice to think that they're out there sucking in some of that excess carbon dioxide while they're growing to be nice and perfectly conical for us - but sadly, they will just release it back into the atmosphere as they decay after you throw it out. Not only that, but depending on where you buy your tree, it might have been treated with insecticides or pesticides.

So if you have a real tree, don't chew on it.

And if you aren't Christian, thank goodness. You get out of all of this bringing-a-tree-inside stuff which is a really weird tradition when you really think about it.

Cereal Cars?

Got any flax in your car? How about soy? Sugar cane? Corn? Nope, I'm not asking if you've been to you nearest organic-foods store. Actually, some major vehicle manufacturers are substituting bio-based products like flax, abaca fibers, and soy-based foams to make the fabric and seat cushions in cars - reducing dependence on petroleum-based products and (hopefully) lowering the carbon emissions required to make the bits and pieces that go into your vehicle.

Toyota, Honda, and (I'm a little weirded out by this, but hey, willing to applaud) Ford are the leaders in making sustainable and healthy changes to some of their cars. In addition to adding stuff that sounds like it belongs in a health nut's cereal to their seat cushions, they are also trying to reduce the amount of plastic and PVC (polyvinyl chloride, a nasty chemical that's notoriously difficult to recycle) they use. This should also reduce the off-gassing of unhealthy chemicals into cars. Chemicals that trigger allergies or cause ong-term health effects. (Uh, yeah. So. That new-car smell? Not exactly good for you.)

Despite these moves, an Ecology Centre Report still only gives out a top grade of C+ (to Toyota). Clearly, there's lots more to be done.

Bring on the granola!

Erm, if Big Tobacco could just butt out?!

AUGH! Those slimy Tobacco industry types have generated horrible, deceptive communications tactics that have inflitrated the consciousness of a bunch of other industries.

First, it was global warming. Now, Gooderich Corporation and other polluting companies in California have adopted those same approaches in an effort to avoid dealing with perchlorate in drinking water. They have even hired a public relations firm that was used by Philip Morris - to develop an anit-regulation campaign. And they're churning out stuff that looks like scientific evidence of the safety of California's drinking water supply - but is actually poorly constructed science intended to implant doubt in the public mind.


Apparently Gooderich, which had a factory in Rialto, about an hour ouside of LA, decided to dispose of tonnes of rocket fuel in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And so they put in in a giant, unlined pit behind the factory. Natch, the stuff seeped into the water supply. Which is a huge drag, considering how precious water is in California.

In Rialto, they figured out that the water was contaminated over ten years ago. And Gooderich is still tryng to weasel out of the cleanup.

The company may be rich, but "good" doesn't even come into it.

Texas toast?

Apparently Texas has plans to open 19 new coal-fired electrical facilities over the next few years.

Just learning that was enough to surprise me.

Ontario is at least trying to phase out coal. The government is having trouble staying on target with the timing they originally (and somewhat uninformedly, according to lots of air quality management people I've spoken to) promised - but they have at least recognized that the health impacts of the pollutants that spew out of the stacks are significant. One plant has been closed already (the Lakeview plant). Five to go.

So I couldn't quite believe that there are still jurisdictions in North America that want to build new coal-fired facilities. The most I can hope for out of this is that this means they're closing some older plants, since the new ones are likely required to meet higher emissions and technology standards than any existing ones.

It might not matter though. A report from last week says that the new plants could cause as many as 240 additional deaths each year and as many as 12,000 over the plants' expected 50-year lifespan.

C'mon Texas. Are you gonna take that?

Just give me a buzz...

I'm one of those annoying people who only has a cellphone. Annoying, because when you try to phone me, it's invariable off, or it's on and I can hear it ringing, but I can't find it.

So I miss a lot of calls. I figure that's OK - I don't want to use my cellphone too much. Aside from the crazy phone bills I get if I'm not careful, there's been some debate about whether having that thing so close to your head for so long could cause brain tumours.

Well, apparently, it's not only my brain I might have to worry about. Cellphone radiation has just been shown to cause major reproductive damage to female fruit flies. Some scientists in Greece exposed fruit flies to radiation from two common types of cellphones for six days ... and thereby induced death of all sorts of cells associated with developing eggs. They figure the radiation caused the DNA in the cells to fragment.

Well, I'm no fruit fly. Aside from assuming that the reproductive system of a fruit fly is probably not like that of a human, I'm guessing the flies reveived full-body exposure to the radiation. And that the radiation wasn't "downsized" to match the size of the bugs.

Overall I can't say that I'm convinced that this is what would happen to me ... even if I placed my cellphone over my ovaries instead of my ear. And plus I wouldn't be able to hear anything that way.

But it's still kind of creepy. Maybe I should get a land line someday...

We'll be swimming in Estrogen

So hi, I'm back for the second day in a row; downright amazing when you consider my posting track record of late. Part of the reason I've been absent from sushinight (so sad) is that I've been busy teaching a course on the health effects of chemical exposures in the workplace. And some of the material was not, shall we say, intimately known to me before I lectured about it.

One of the main topics I've been talking about in class lately is how some chemicals can mimic the hormones in the human body. And the hormonal system is complicated, let me tell you (and not just during puberty, which we all know is a complicated time directly related to wierd things happening with hormones).

But I digress.

Pesticides are one of the biggest baddest classes of compounds when it comes to disrupting hormonal systems. Lots of them are capable of mimicing estrogen. Now, estrogen regulates all sorts of things but I would be most worried about its effect on the reproductive system. Like, say upsetting the female cycle... or affecting fetuses - causing perhaps feminization of baby boys, or weird reproductive deficits when those babies reach adulthood.

Of course, it's hard to say what the effect of very low-dose exposure to environmental contaminants is. But I was still surprised to hear that the EPA has decided to allow pesticide application over and near bodies of water. Apparently, as long as it's needed to control aquatic weeds, mosquitoes or other pests, it can be applied straight into the water or onto overhanging foliage.

Eurgh....

Twisted

Smoking rates have been going down across Canada for at least a couple of decades now. That's great news for Canadians - smoking is related to a whole host of horrible diseases including lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, heart disease, and cancer of the mouth; ugh.

Teenaged girls are usually really prone to following trends, so here's hoping they'll pick up on this. Right now smoking rates among girls aged 15-17 are higher than among boys of the same age.

Apparently they think it will help them stay thin.

I think that most models and celebrities that are role models for teenaged girls these days are at an unhealthy weight. We also know that childhood obesity is on the rise in Canada - partly because our kids aren't getting enough exercise - and partly because of bad food choices.

This is so twisted. I mean, exposing yourself to a well-known toxin - probably in an effort to attain an unhealthy weight, instead of getting regular exercise and eating right.

Not only that - apparently it doesn't work anyway.