What’s hiding in your cleaning products. You’ll want to know this.

By on February 28, 2012   /   Family, Health   /   1 Comment
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From Living Green Magazine

New independent lab testing on 20 top household cleaning products reveals that cleaning products commonly contain hidden chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and pregnancy complications. The tests were commissioned by the national nonprofit Women’s Voices for the Earth.

The report, “Dirty Secrets: What’s Hiding in Your Cleaning Products?” (www.womensvoices.org) shows that top-selling cleaning products and detergents, including Tide Free & Gentle, Pine-Sol and Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner, contain toxic chemicals not revealed to the consumer.

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Frack attack

By on February 9, 2012   /   Health, Innovation, Leadership, Nature   /   Leave a comment
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From Huffington Post via Women Of Green

WASHINGTON — Natural gas drillers would be required to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” on public lands, according to draft rules created by the Department of Interior. The proposed regulations would also force companies to report the amount of any given chemical injected during the fracking process.

The move for increased regulation comes after President Barack Obama touted his commitment to expanding natural gas production while ensuring the drilling is done responsibly. “My administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” he said during his State of the Union address last month. Fracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of undisclosed chemicals into rocks containing oil or natural gas, has drawn increasing scrutiny from environmentalists who suggest the process contaminates groundwater and destroys ecosystems.

Under the proposed regulations, companies would be required to reveal the “complete chemical makeup of all materials used,” according to a copy of the rules obtained by The Huffington Post. But environmentalists have noted that, while the regulations offer some “good elements,” the rules still offer companies considerable protections for “trade secrets,” an exemption some worry could negate the rule.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said regulations will also cover well-bore integrity and regulation of flowback waters (the fluids that rise to the surface after hydraulic fracturing operations are complete). Further, reports detailing the ingredients used in the fracking fluids and a fluid treatment plan must be submitted 30 days before operations begin at any proposed well.

Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher elaborated in a statement.

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What’s in your sushi these days

By on February 6, 2012   /   Health, Nature   /   1 Comment
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Recent studies estimate that fish off the West Coast ingest over 12,000 ton of plastic a year. How many plastic water, soda, juice bottles and plastic bags did you toss last year? Say NO to plastic. Promise?!

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6 Keys to Happiness to Live By

By on January 16, 2012   /   Health, Heart   /   1 Comment
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Make time for those closest to you. Be kind. Forgive. Give thanks. Let’s add one more…smile often. There you have it. The secret to the fountain of youth. Do you have one you’d like to share?

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The 10 worst cereals in terms of sugar per cup

By on December 6, 2011   /   Family, Health   /   1 Comment
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Most parents would never dream of giving their kids dessert for breakfast. But a survey by the Environmental Working Group finds that many cereals marketed to children have more sugar in them than sweet treats do. Here are the 10 worst cereals in terms of sugar per cup.

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Steffany’s Eco-bold Move Pays Off

By on November 20, 2011   /   Health, Leadership   /   1 Comment
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I was born and raised in a small ranch in Brazil, and since the early days, my mom always made sure that we ate all our veggies and finish our fresh acerola juice. She always let – and sometimes encouraged – my sisters and I go play in the rain and mud. We never got sick and grew up living this very healthy lifestyle. Until this day, my mom is a wealth of knowledge about what’s good for us (eat your flax seeds grounded, but only grind them before you eat, and keep them in the dark!) and she always finds the most unique things at the grocery store, before they become “fashion” like the chia seeds juice or kombucha.

Ecobold evolved from an idea that I had to help people learn how to shop for healthy items. While doing my research, I realized that there were many products out there beyond food that people would love to buy, but didn’t know that they exist or where to get them, so I decided to switch plans to an online marketplace that helps sellers all over the world market their amazing products to the people who want them. And Ecobold was born. We launched just a few months ago with 80 products and today we have almost 3,000 products available in many categories: from beauty, to food, to clothing and even electronics. Our goal is to help sellers market these products and help consumers find these small sellers who are popping up everywhere (but who don’t have a clue on how to do sales online or where to even start). Sellers on our site can be anyone from a mom who decided to make natural soaps in her spare time,to a small business owner selling non-toxic body lotions to their local spas. Since we are based in Silicon Valley, we are in a position to offer them the absolute best tools to show their baby to the world, increase sales, awareness and get repeat customers.

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Moms 1, Chemical Industry 0

By on October 21, 2011   /   Family, Health, Leadership   /   Leave a comment
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By Senator Dianne Feinstein

Chalk up a win for moms around the country.

After years of battle, the chemical industry has reversed its longstanding position against restrictions on the controversial chemical bisphenol A, known as BPA, and asked the Food and Drug Administration to revise regulations on the use of the chemical in baby bottles and sippy cups.

It is ironic that the industry asking federal regulators to revise BPA standards is the very same industry that spent millions of dollars lobbying to block my legislation restricting the use of this dangerous chemical.

The American Chemistry Council must have realized that no matter how much money they spent, no parent, grandparent or concerned person would stand by while our children are used as guinea pigs with a chemical that could seriously harm their immediate and long-term health.

BPA is an endocrine disruptor, meaning that it can interfere with how hormones work in our bodies by changing their normal function. More than 200 studies link BPA exposure to breast and other cancers, reproductive disorders, cardiac disease, diabetes, early puberty and other problems.

Yet, the chemical industry stubbornly refused to listen to science and concerned consumers, and instead leaned on lawmakers.

Last year, the American Chemistry Council actually lobbied to prevent a vote in the Senate on the change it now seems to be advocating–a national ban on BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups.

Here’s why I think chemical industry lobbyists failed: Even though they successfully blocked a vote on BPA, consumers took matters into their own hands and voted against BPA with their wallets. Every time a BPA-free product was purchased, it marked a setback for the chemical industry.

For years the chemical lobby ignored the pleas of concerned parents, environmentalists and advocacy groups that called for a ban on BPA. Companies ignored the studies and continued to argue that there was no established link between BPA and many illnesses. There was simply no other alternative, the companies insisted—baby bottles and sippy cups could only be made with BPA.

Clearly they were wrong.

Read more at Senator Dianne Feinsten’s website

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Harness Your Creative Genius with the Right Fuel

By on September 13, 2011   /   Family, Featured Post, Health   /   1 Comment
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Ellen Livingston is founder of Living Yoga Now, a yoga studio and raw food learning center in Ann Arbor, MI. Ellen has studied nutrition for over 20 years, and lives a vibrant, healthy raw lifestyle. She provides raw food coaching, classes, and nutrition tips.

When passion, mental clarity, and focused energy all come together, our creative expression is at its peak. We’re not likely to make major creative breakthroughs when we’re tired, uninspired, feeling foggy or scatterbrained, or in pain or discomfort of some kind. If you want to live an inspired life and spend a lot of time in your creative genius zone, you need to keep yourself feeling good.

There are many spokes in the “wheel of health” that require our dedicated attention, such as healthy food, good sleep, sunshine, fresh air and exercise, loving relationships, beauty, humor, and meaningful creative work that we enjoy. Our health is hampered by any spoke that is out of alignment. It is a lifetime project to keep all these important requisites of health in balance, a project that requires our constant recommitment if we truly want to thrive and experience our peak creativity.

One spoke is not more critical than another, but the food we choose to put into our body several times every day has a particularly major impact on how we will feel, how well we can function and whether we can tap our genius zone.

Surely you have experienced the dullness of being that follows a very rich or heavy meal, or the mental fog that accompanies a day of eating mostly junk foods. How about a scattered or antsy feeling from refined sugars or stimulants, followed later by a deep tiredness? In these scenarios it is often all we can do just to keep up with the general tasks laid before us – originality and sustained creative flow is just not happening. Can you imagine the possibilities if instead you were running on the perfect fuel and operating at full capacity, all the time?

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Backyard Agrarian’s 30-days without packaged food

By on August 16, 2011   /   Family, Health   /   1 Comment
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Liz Brown Morgan is a wilderness guide, turned environmentalist, turned water lawyer, turned tax lawyer turned Agrarian Revolutionary. Liz is the founder of Backyard Agrarian through which she writes about the requisite Agrarian Revolution and the Landscape Imperative needed to save ourselves – from ourselves. Liz is a yogi, a wild gardener, a telemark skier, a rafter, an eco-entrepreneur and a community activist. She lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains just outside of Boulder, Colorado.

On the cusp of spring, here in the high mountains of Colorado, I found myself embroiled in the weekly battle that my husband typically oversees: Recycling. I was appalled. We are environmentalists. We eat organic food. We buy local. We do, what we thought, was our best to eat and live responsibly given the constraints of the culture that we live in. But here I was, up against that unspoken behemoth of wastefulness: food packaging.

I decided then and there to embark on a 30-day adventure without packaged food. I convinced my husband to join me, cleaned out the cupboards, grabbed some tote bags and Tupperware, and headed to the farmers markets, the grocery stores and whatever farm stands I could find.

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Izilwane takes on women, reproduction and consumption.

By on August 2, 2011   /   Family, Health, Leadership   /   1 Comment
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Tara Waters Lumpkin, environmental and medical anthropologist, is the president of the nonprofit Perception International and founder, editor-in-chief, and project director of the online multimedia platform Izilwane. Perception International is a nonprofit that promotes environmental, cultural, and perceptual diversity worldwide. Izilwane is one of its projects and focuses on creating awareness about the importance of changing how human beings perceive themselves in relationship with other species and the natural world.

Just as Copernicus forever altered our perception of the role of humans in the cosmos, Dr. Lumpkin’s organization believes that humankind can redefine our human place in local and global ecosystems as being a part of nature, rather as seeing ourselves as being above nature. The website asks, “How can we change our perceptions and, thus, alter our negative impact on biodiversity? Are we evolutionarily hard-wired to destroy other species? Or can we become more aware of our own ‘animal nature’ and consciously and deliberately change our behaviors?”

What is truly new about Izilwane is that we work with volunteer eco-reporters from around the globe. Reporters use writing, photos, video, and more to reflect on what is happening globally to biodiversity and how we can change human perceptions to stop the massive species die-off we are perpetuating. By being participatory in our journalistic approach, we are creating activists around the world who support our mission to stop biodiversity loss, as well as educating the general public. This is why we call ourselves a platform not an ezine.

Dr. Lumpkin is also a nonprofit consultant and journalist. Although she is a resident of Taos, New Mexico, her fieldwork has propelled her around the globe. From 1993-1994, Dr. Lumpkin worked in Namibia to conduct research for her PhD, where she studied the community use of traditional medicine. A few years later, in 1997, she traveled to Panama as a “Women in Development” fellow for USAID and the Panamanian National Commission on the Environment where she researched ecotourism possibilities in the Panama Canal Watershed. Since then she has worked for a variety of nonprofits across the world, including Tibet, where she conducted a Maternal and Child Heath Needs Assessment. Her project resulted in the building of a health clinic in Gargon village, and the training of nurse midwives and doctors.

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