Monthly Archives: April 2014

We Share the Air Canary

we share the air canary

Choose fragrance-free products. Clean air is fragrance-chemical-free. Fragrance chemicals create an invisible barrier to access for people who are disabled by pollutants and can cause health harm to everyone who breathes.

We share the air! Help keep it clean!

Pesticides in Shipping Containers and Contents

Did you know that there can be massive amounts of highly toxic pesticides used in the shipping containers, especially when products and materials are shipped over seas?

The Toxins Return

In a world where recycling is being encouraged, this presents some potentially serious  problems that aren’t being widely discussed. Some things have simply not been designed to be reused, and recycling toxic materials just spreads the contamination further afield, causing low level poisoning and some kinds of chronic health problems.

The trend to build all kinds of indoor furniture and garden beds out of pallets is quite troubling. The pallets used in these containers would also have absorbed the pesticides and be unsafe for re-use. This article describes other issues with pallets.

potentially dangerous pallet reuse google imagesScreen shot from google image search of reused pallets
Note potentially hazardous furniture for children and food use

Converting shipping containers into homes is another big trend (see below).

The following documentary depicts some serious problems related to clothing (as well as some other items that were shipped long distances) when saturated with health harming levels of pesticides. Manufacturing issues are also examined in this video.

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Big News for Ontario

From the News Release:

“The province is providing nearly $560,000 to support two new annual fellowships over three years for a total of six new fellowships. They will allow family medicine graduates to complete an extra year of focused training in environmental health, and will help primary care providers like family doctors offer the right care to assess, diagnose and treat environmentally-linked health issues.”

 

“Environmental health is an emerging public health field that examines the relationship between the environment and human health. This includes the role of the environment in contributing to serious health conditions that can be disabling and even life threatening, such as environmental sensitivities, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and other chronic, complex disorders. ”

 

“There is a growing recognition that our environment and our health are connected. Through these new fellowships, we can develop greater understanding of the links between health and the environment in order to provide better care to those suffering from complex chronic illnesses.”

~
~ Deb Matthews
Minister of Health and Long-Term Care

 

“The study of the environment’s effects on human health is an important emerging field of research. Support for investigating environmental impacts on health is emblematic of our government’s commitment to strengthen healthy communities.”

~
~ Jim Bradley
Minister of Environment

Full News Release:

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Everyday Toxic Trespass

Women’s Voices for the Earth has a great page about toxic ingredients commonly found  in products women, men and children are exposed to on a regular basis, usually everyday, even when we try not to be. Check it out, get informed, and take action to protect you, your family and the planet that supports our lives.

 Skin Deep

Take Action via WVE

Mind the Store

 Sadly, our current regulatory systems do more to protect those who are polluting us, than to protect our health. I don’t know how we are going to change this without a massive outcry, but we CAN stop buying the products we learn are harmful to us and to future generations.

The Skin Deep website has information about thousands of personal care products and ingredients, WVE has recipes to make your own, and then some, and Mind the Store is successfully calling on retailers to stop selling toxic products. We have more power than we know, but only when we use it!

Proof: Pesticides Are MORE Toxic Than Declared!

‘Cides are designed to kill. Only the so-called “active” ingredients are listed and tested for how well they kill what they are sold to kill. Human, animal and other environmental effects are rarely if ever researched, and then it’s only for the active ingredients. The combinations of ingredients and the so-called “inert” ingredients which make the products flow or apply better are not taken into consideration. Those “inerts” can also be more toxic than the active ingredients, but don’t have to be listed!

Recent research tested and discovered that these combinations can be up to
1000 times more toxic than declared!

Roundup more TOXIC

Major Pesticides Are More Toxic to Human Cells Than Their Declared Active Principles

Abstract

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What is Generally Recognized As Safe, and For Whom?

It’s really beyond past the time to bust the myth that what gets sold to us has been scientifically determined to be safe for us.

Take food additives this time. Unless you are growing your own organic food, or have a lab in your back pocket, there’s no real way of knowing what the heck we are being sold and consuming.

The food safety protection system is marred by minimal supervision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, rife with apparent conflicts of interest in safety evaluations, and rendered all but toothless by a gaping loophole that allows companies to simply declare as safe hundreds of chemicals added to our foods—without any notification to the FDA or the public, according to an NRDC report”

For more information, please see:

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