Monthly Archives: May 2013

Right to Housing hearing over – Court will decide by autumn if the case moves ahead

We need a national housing strategy now!

Thank you to all of you who came for a few hours or a few days to watch the housing & homelessness human rights case unfold. We really appreciated your being there and it was good for the judge to see that people are interested and concerned about the outcome.

Fay Faraday and Peter Rosenthal did a brilliant job on behalf of the applicants and Molly Reynolds, Jackie Esmonde/Martha Jackman and Kent Roach/Cheryl Milne were all outstanding on behalf of the interveners. We just finished the 3 days of argument and it’s not clear which way the decision will go. Justice Lederer does not expect to have a decision until next fall.

There was a good article in the Toronto Star about the motion:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/05/26/landmark_homeless_charter_challenge_may_never_be_heard_if_government_wins_bid_to_quash_case.html

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Fragrances in Pesticides?

And pesticides in fragrances…

We live in a messed up world.

 Signs > DANGER (OSHA) > Chemical & Pesticide

I am thinking that adding fragrance chemicals to  ‘CIDEs  makes people think they are not the hazardous killing poisons that they really are, and making them smell better can make them more attractive and harmful to children!

Note that some of the fragrance chemicals might be MORE harmful than the pesticides themselves, as if pesticides weren’t already harmful enough, but those don’t have to be listed, because they are considered “inert ingredients“.

Benzene, for example… It’s a legal fragrance ingredient…

Franny

Can someone explain this to me? How is all this a good idea?

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Who Needs A Healthy Home?

We All Do! But for Children and People With MCS/ES, it is Crucial!

Healthy Homes and Healthy Environments Sustain Life

Love is always a good thing too!

So, what’s the problem? Check out this great short video:

A Wake-Up Story

See some great tips for creating healthy housing here:

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Over 500 Global Scientists Sound New Alarm

Global colony collapse is really happening. Sitting back and ignoring it, wishing it would just resolve on its own, or thinking someone else is going to fix things is no longer an option.

We ALL have to take this seriously and show some love now if future generations are going to have any hope of anything resembling a decent quality of life.

“We must work hard to solve these global problems, starting today.”

Global scientists sign message of Scientific Consensus on Maintaining  Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century:
Information for Policy Makers

Consensus Statement Illustration

As members of the scientific community actively involved in assessing the biological and societal impacts on global change,

we are sounding this alarm to the world.

For humanity’s continued health and prosperity, we all –individuals, businesses, political leaders, religious leaders, scientists, and people in every walk of life –must work hard to solve these five global problems starting today:

1) Climate Disruption        
2) Extinctions        
3) Loss of Ecosystem Diversity        
4) Pollution        
5) Human Population Growth and Resource Consumption

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MCS/ES Symptoms and Environmental Incitants

sensitive to pollution 3

Information about the materials most likely to cause adverse health effects, and the kinds of symptoms commonly experienced from exposures, copied from the 2007 Canadian Human Rights Commission’s  document “The Medical Perspective on Environmental Sensitivities By: Margaret E. Sears (M.Eng., Ph.D.), and a few other resources and links follow:

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Canadian Human Rights Documents Archived

The Government here has been re-organizing and changing all of their web pages lately and some types of information seem to be disappearing.

The_Canadian_Flag

The policy on accommodating people with MCS/ES is no longer available on the website. This is what used to be there (2007-2013):

Policy on Environmental Sensitivities

This policy is issued to encourage employers and service providers to proactively address issues of accommodation for persons with environmental sensitivities.

Policy on Environmental Sensitivities

Individuals with environmental sensitivities experience a variety of adverse reactions to environmental agents at concentrations well below those that might affect the “average person”. This medical condition is a disability and those living with environmental sensitivities  are entitled to the protection of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. The Canadian Human Rights Commission will receive any inquiry and process any complaint from any person who believes that he or she has been discriminated against because of an environmental sensitivity. Like others with a disability, those with environmental sensitivities are required by law to be accommodated.

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Sand, Tar, Oil, Gas, Frack, Health, Life, Fail ?

clean-up-your-mess-love-mother

This is not only an environmental crisis, although that is bad enough since we all depend on clean air and water for basic survival, this is also a health and human crisis.

The quest for and extraction of fossil fuels has reached a level that is threatening us all.

Reality Check: Canada’s Oil Sands

“Each fact included in Oil Sands Reality check is carefully researched, referenced and reviewed by a scientific advisory committee. This website was created as a resource for citizens, media, investors and decision makers who wish to participate in a more informed debate about the impacts of oil sands development.”

http://oilsandsrealitycheck.org/ and  http://tarsandssolutions.org/

  ♦

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Support the Right to Housing legal challenge – in court May 27 & 28th

Important court case regarding housing in Ontario and Canada. If you are in Toronto, please attend, and show your support.

We need a national housing strategy now!

In the spring of 2010, several individuals and the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation filed a landmark legal challenge at the Ontario Superior Court. The ‘Right to Housing challenge’ argues that the governments of Canada and Ontario are in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for their failure to address, and their contribution to, the growing crisis of homelessness and inadequate housing. Almost 10,000 pages of expert witness evidence were submitted to support this case on National Housing Day in the fall of 2011.

The governments of Canada and Ontario have responded by seeking to have the case struck, before the evidence can be heard by a judge.

On Monday, May 27th and Tuesday, May 28th, Fay Faraday, Peter Rosenthal and the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario will argue that the case must proceed.

Amnesty International & the Economic Social and Cultural Rights Network…

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Food and Personal Power

We are what we eat

So what does this have to do with personal power?

Or health?

And whose health are we talking about?

Our health? Farmer health? Land health? Industry and economic health?

Are these the same things or are they different?

Sometimes it’s hard to know. There is so much conflicting information out there. Even when we get an idea that what we are eating isn’t the healthiest choice for us, it can be overwhelming to sift through all the information out there to figure out where to start making changes (even without any allergies or sensitivities).

Plus, those packaged foods are so convenient when we are tired…

And that is where we start to lose personal power… even when we read the labels on those packages, there is so much crucial information that does not get put on any labels.

Knowledge is power.

We are what we eat.

Alice Walker power

We can have a lot more power when we know how to eat.

Eating healthy is a lot easier when we know what the issues are, why we need to make changes, and where to start. Not all of us have had good role models in the kitchen, we might be comfortable with the status quo, and changing our habits can seem daunting. So what to do?

Where do we start when we want to make a change?

eat food

Hey, what is wrong with those products anyway?

The good people at Healthy Child Healthy World have put together an amazingly comprehensive booklet, one that introduces the issues with our current food supply, and offers easy to understand tips on what we can do to choose smart, even on a budget. Don’t get turned off if you don’t have children, this book is a valuable resource for everyone!

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RoundUp: You, the Kids, Pets, Neighbors, Food, Air and Water too

In my post about GMO labeling, I saw the need for a post dedicated to RoundUp aka Glyphosate, but it’s hard to separate the two (GMOs and glyphosate) since most GMOs are designed to be grown with the use of RoundUp aka Glyphosate.

As I was writing, this post kept growing and growing (unlike anything sprayed with glyphosate) and contains something like 42 external links, just in case anyone wants to go nuts exploring the research… There’s probably enough info here without following any of the links (but please do sign the petitions at least) and you can bookmark the post in case you ever need to go deeper.

I’ve tried to break up some of the links with a few photos and a video, so hopefully it doesn’t look too busy, but it got to the point I really don’t know how to edit it without just saying something like

“GMOs and RoundUp aka glyphosate = REALLY REALLY BAD for everyone
and everything except company profits”

and deleting the rest, but after all the work I did, I just can’t do that. Someone else might be capable of turning this into several posts, but I’m not that someone else. Yet… Who knows who I will be when I regain all my brain functions? Anyway, consider this fair warning!

There is so much evidence of harm (REALLY BIG LONG TERM HARM) caused by eating foods that have RoundUp aka Glyphosate used on them (which would be most  processed and packaged foods that are not certified organic), but we are also breathing it in, drinking it, and tracking it into our homes from lawns that it gets sprayed on, pissing it out of our bodies, and making people, pets and farm animals sick (or dead) as well as killing unintended plants with pesticide drift drift drift and more drift, since it easily blows off the property it is applied to, and then affects the plants, critters and people next door too (toxic trespass).

This stuff is designed to KILL, and it isn’t selective. It will kill some things quickly, and some things slowly (and we are composed of some things it can kill slowly).

“Each year in the United States more than 1 billion pounds of synthetic pesticides – insecticides, herbicides, rodenticides and fungicides – are applied in agriculture, homes, schools, parks, playgrounds and daycare centers. The National Toxicology Program has found in animal bioassays that a number of widely used pesticides are carcinogenic. Case-control epidemiologic studies have found consistent, modest associations between pesticide exposures in utero and in early childhood and acute lymphocytic leukemia, childhood brain cancer and childhood non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Rates of childhood leukemia are consistently elevated among children who grow up on farms, among children whose parents used pesticides in the home or garden, and among children of pesticide applicators.” ~ Philip J. Landrigan, MD, chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City

This may be one of the most insidious everyday poisons we are exposed to.

GMO Baby

Baby Formula Manufacturers Seek To Avoid GMO Labeling With Last-Minute Amendment (Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners)

“The herbicide sprayed on most of the world’s genetically engineered crops—and gets soaked into the food portion—is now linked to “autism … gastrointestinal issues such as inflammatory bowel disease, chronic diarrhea, colitis and Crohn’s disease, obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, cancer, cachexia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and ALS, among others.”

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