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Coca-Cola takes a step toward environmentalists on BPA use
By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now
Coca-Cola is getting kudos from environmentalists for meeting them half way on the subject of BPA, bisphenol-A, a toxic chemical used in food packaging.
On May 28 of this year, lobbyists from the chemical industry and food companies gathered at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. According to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting public health and the environment, the focus of the meeting was to white-wash the risks of BPA.
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Tags: · bisphenol-A, BPA, Coca-Cola, Environmental Working Group
Tests show how toxic substances turn up in Americans’ blood
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
We hear every day about dangerous chemicals in household products that are linked to cancer, infertility, autism and other diseases – yet many Americans may not realize just how many of these harmful substances they’ve actually ingested in the course of everyday living.
The answer? About 48. That’s according a study by the Environmental Working Group and Rachel’s Network, in which five leading minority women environmentalists from different parts of the country volunteered to have their blood tested for toxins. The results, say EWG experts, show that regulation of chemicals in the U.S. is weak and “antiquated” and needs a major overhaul.
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Tags: · benzene, Beverly Wright, bisphenol-A, body burden, body products, BPA, chemicals, contamination, Corpus Christi, environmental toxins, Environmental Working Group, Flame retardants, Green Bay, Jean Salone, Jennifer Hill-Kelley, lead, Mercury, musks, New Orleans, PBDEs, perchlorates, PFCs, Plastics, regulation, rocket fuel, Suzie Canales, Teflon, Toxic Substances Control Act
Green groups need your year-end donations
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Now that you’ve worn off the magnetic strip on the credit card buying presents for everyone, gotten the letter that your health insurance premiums are doubling and your job is being “redefined,” it’s time to think about those year-end donations. Sigh.
While environmental groups will likely have an easier time on Capitol Hill next year talking policy with a new Administration that sees global warming as a real threat, they paradoxically could be facing headwinds with donors.
Consider first that some of their large contributors may have been dragged down in the Bernard Madoff securities/Ponzi scheme, which savaged many charitable foundations. While the extent of that damage is being assessed, it’s safe to assume that even nonprofits that escaped that five-alarm fire, have been singed by the economic meltdown.
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Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nature Canada, The Nature Conservancy
Consider natural beauty products and avoid hidden toxins
By Barbara Kessler
After the Environmental Working Group released research on toxins in beauty products showing that teen girls could be especially vulnerable (see our blog), we took a closer look at alternative beauty supplies. These products opt for botanicals and other natural and organic ingredients over the suspect synthetic chemicals — phthalates, parabens and made-made fragrances — that can lurk in your body butter and play games with your hormone or immune system.
The happy news: Natural products are gaining ground in stores. We found everything listed below at Main Street outlets like Target, Walgreens, Ulta, Drugstore.com, Amazon.com., and Whole Foods. And the labels are getting quite explicit, many note when they’re paraben- and phthalate-free. While we can’t scientifically endorse the samplings below, we can say we have used most of them and found them to be effective — and as pampering and great-smelling — as many of their conventional cousins.
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Tags: · Alba, BarbaraKesslerBlog, Burt's Bees, Desert Essence Organics, Environmental Working Group, fragrance, Jason beauty products, parabens, phthalates, Yes to Carrots
For teens, this smells like trouble
My tweener daughter has often patiently explained to me that there are “girly girls” and “Tom Boys” and variations in between. I guess she figures that in the century when I grew up that wasn’t the case, or possibly that my girlhood is so far gone, it can’t even be imagined! I need to be brought up to speed.
As her tutorial goes, “girly girls” – like her – need to dress girlishly and primp with lip gloss, cologne and smell-nice body lotions. Tom Boys, not so much.
As her mom, I want her to be a Shiny Happy Female, but my green side ends up questioning all this girlish goop-la.
Scientists have been sounding alarms about suspicious ingredients in shampoo, lotions and cosmetics for many years and being an obsessive label reader, I’ve tended to agree that it might be worthwhile to deconstruct these labels with their gazillion unpronounceable preservatives, sudsing agents, flavorings and fragrances.
Can a product containing PPG-2 hydroxyethlcoco/isostearmide be completely safe? Not being a chemist, I really don’t know, and I imagine that’s where a lot of us land: wary of this onslaught of chemicals, but without sufficient knowledge to sort it out.
The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based watchdog organization concerned with toxins in our everyday lives, can help. You can gather info on the products you use by consulting the EWG database Skin Deep. The online tool – which includes some 25,000 products — can show you whether your body lotion, mascara or hair conditioner is rated as low, medium or high toxicity. It identifies the chemicals that are noxious; tells how they are potentially dangerous (carcinogen vs. skin irritant, say) and shows the level of research that’s been done.
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Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, Beauty Products, Cosmetics, Environmental Working Group, musks, parabens, phthalates, Rebecca Sutton, Teens, Triclosan
Bottled water: no better than tap
By Barbara Kessler
It’s no secret Americans are suckers for convenience. Consider how we’re losing the ability to make our own coffee. Or the fact that there are 2.8 cup holders per passenger in U.S.-made cars.
Of course what we’re putting in those cup holders may prove to be the most successful of convenience gambits, the plastic bottle of water. Once we got water from wells and then the tap; now we have factories bottle it up, package it, truck it around and then sell it to us. But you know that story.
Here’s a new one: That clear plastic marvel of modern marketing probably contains nothing much more than plain old tap water from somewhere that may or may not have been filtered as well as the water you could get from your own tap.
At the risk of sounding like Joe Biden, let’s say that again: It may or may not have been filtered as well as your own tap water.
That’s the gist of findings by the Environmental Working Group, which decided to look behind the “image of purity” promoted by bottled water sellers by lab testing water samples from ten common brands of bottled water.
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Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, Bottled Water, Environmental Working Group, Tap Water
Sugar and spice and toxins: teen girls exposed to chemicals in beauty products
September 25th, 2008 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Some not so pretty news out about cosmetics this week shows that teen girls tested for chemical exposure from beauty products had become human repositories of parabens, phthalates, triclosan and musks.
These chemicals, some of which are hormone disruptors or have been linked to cancer, turned up in the blood and urine of 20 teenage girls tested by the Environmental Working Group.
On average, the girls, ages 14-19, tested positive for 13 hormone-disrupting chemicals each. Parabens, commonly used as cosmetic preservatives, were detected in every girl tested.
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Tags: · Beauty Products, Cosmetics, Environmental Working Group, musks, parabens, phthalates, Teens, Triclosan
BPA: Steering Away From A Risky Plastic
By Lynette Holloway
Eastman Chemical may have come out ahead in the recent move by the Canadian government to label bisphenol-A, a chemical found in some forms of plastic, as toxic.
That is because the company already manufactures plastic without the noxious chemical, which could put its product in great demand. Last fall, the company rolled out [...]
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Tags: · Aladdin, bisphenol-A, Born Free, BPA, Camelbak, Eastman Chemical, Environmental Working Group, Nalgene, Playtex Infant Care, SIGG, Tritan
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