April 24th, 2013

Apples, strawberries, grapes and celery. All of these are healthy foods, but unfortunately they arrive at the grocery with the highest pesticide residues and top the latest “Dirty Dozen” list released by the Environmental Working Group. The other Dirty Dozen foods include some of the most delectable fruits and vegetables. You’ll just have to buy the organic versions if you want to avoid the trace pesticides that ride along.

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October 3rd, 2012

When the Environmental Working Group released their scorecard on green cleaners last month, I sprang from my chair to check the label on the case of Ecover Limescale Remover that UPS had just delivered.

I don’t usually buy by the case, but this was the only way I could get this cleaner, which I adore because it transforms my shower door from an icky, opaque bacteria-generator into a sheet of glistening glass, without using toxic ingredients. Or so I believed.
Fortunately, my limescale remover skated by with a solid “B” on the EWG 2012 Guide to Healthy Cleaning. Whew!

But some of the other products I’m using did not make the grade, despite being sold as “green” or “natural” products.

That’s right. Amazingly, many green cleaners contain endocrine disrupters, suspected carcinogens, toxic ingredients with unknown effects and needlessly harsh ingredients, like sodium laurel sulfate, according to the EWG review of more than 2,000 cleaners .

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May 16th, 2012

Ready for summer break? You’d better do your homework before you hit the beach. Sunscreen products remain a risky proposition in the US, according to the 2012 Sunscreen Guide released by the Environmental Working Group today.

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January 24th, 2012

By Barbara Kessler Green Right Now Last month, the Environmental Working Group came out with a study showing that sugary cereals marketed to children were, well, really sugary. Many of them were composed of more than half sugar, based on their weight. EWG’s review of 84 cereals found that Kellogg’s Honey Smacks was 56 percent [...]

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November 28th, 2011

ell phones and tablet computers may be coveted holiday gifts, but parents should consider the potential health effects of these devices before giving them to children, according to the Environmental Health Trust (EHT) and Healthy Child Healthy World (HCHW) , two educational groups focused on environmental health…. Manufacturer safety warnings, the groups note, are simply not sufficient to protect children because they were designed to meet a test for a “typical user” who never was typical:

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June 9th, 2011

If you want to protect your skin from the sun this summer, get ready to squint at the fine print on those sunscreens lined up at the local drug store — according to an analysis by a consumer advocacy group only one in five are both safe and effective.

The Environmental Working Group’s 5^th annual Sunscreen Report reviewed 600 sport and beach sunscreens, and found that just 129 of them could be counted on to exclude toxic compounds and also provide reliable broad spectrum sun protection.

Among the products that failed to make the cut are many familiar brands, like Neutrogena, Hawaiian Tropics, Revlon, Panama Jack and even some brands billed as being more eco-friendly, like Nature’s Gate Organics.

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August 23rd, 2010

Green consumers may be waging war against bottled water, but on the home front, when it comes to thirst, drinking water straight from the tap may still make you cringe.
The water may have a taste or odor that turns you off. There are also worries about whether it contains chemicals, metals, biological organisms, pesticides/herbicides and even pharmaceuticals.
Thus, the growing trend of trendy water-filter pitchers or carafes.

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June 21st, 2010

If you want to save your skin from the sun damage, you’ll have to do more than just slap on the sunscreen with the highest UVA/UVB number. In fact, there’s a wealth to learn about on the fine print of your prospective skin cancer protectant, and unless you’ve got a master’s in bio-chemistry, you’ll need a little help. That’s where the Environmental Working Group can help.

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May 13th, 2010

What is that lovely fragrance you’re wearing? Shhh, it’s a secret. Why? Because the multi-billion dollar perfume industry won’t tell you. Thanks to lax regulatory oversight and the scent industry’s ability to keep their formulas “secret,” the ingredients lurking beneath the word “fragrance” on the label likely contain unhealthy chemicals and additives.

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May 7th, 2010

Public health officials have “grossly underestimated” the likelihood that environmental contaminants trigger a large proportion of the cancers diagnosed in 1.5 million Americans annually, according to a landmark report issued yesterday by the President’s Cancer Panel.

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March 16th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

With all the talk about natural cosmetics, organic makeup and getting the chemicals out of personal products, you’d think that finding basic, non-toxic facial foundations would be a simple matter.

You’d be wrong. We took five foundations that claim to be “natural” and free of concerning chemicals and matched them against Skin Deep, the database that rates makeup for toxicity.

The results surprised us. They’ll probably surprise you. And they remind us once again that the labels touting “organic” and “natural” ingredients, can be deceiving in body products. A cosmetic can use those labels, and still contain compounds that raise red flags.

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February 18th, 2010

From Green Right Now Reports

Whether or not cell phone radiation presents a human health risk remains one of those dangling public health questions. Some studies have suggested that longtime users of cell phones face an increased chance of developing brain or salivary gland cancers. But many others have found no link, prompting some public health groups to give cell phone a clean bill.

Motorola Droid at the high end of the radiation scale at 1.49 SAR when held at the ear

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