Star Market at Chestnut Hill in Newton, Mass., recently became the first grocery store in the nation to receive US Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Partnership platinum store award. The advanced refrigeration technology in the new store, which is part of the Shaw’s line of supermarkets, significantly reduces its impact on climate change and the stratospheric ozone layer by cutting the use of refrigerants by 85 percent compared with the typical supermarket.
Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, called the store’s efforts “wicked cool.”
Squint and you can’t see them. Try a standard microscope. They’re still not there.
And yet, they’re everywhere. Nanoparticles are in hundreds, if not thousands, of consumer products, from sunscreen to child car seats to sports socks.
So the EPA has decided to take a closer look at these eensy particles, to investigate their potential to harm humans and the environment.
Nanos, which are about 1/100,000 of the width of a human hair and have been aggregating in consumer goods faster than E coli at a feed lot, have raised concerns among environmentalists, public health officials and others. These guardians of the environment want to know more about how nanos act in water. air and soil, and also whether they can invade and damage human tissue.
Here’s a little cautionary tale about how bigger is not always better, and knowing who to blame doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. It’s also about the inter-connectedness of our energy and food systems, and specifically how coal-fired power plants affect your diet.
Say you were camping with friends and caught a really BIG fish. This squirming monster would give you bragging rights for a year. Now say you caught a smaller fish, suitable for pan frying but not Kodak-worthy.
What do you do? If you’re Daniel Boone, you toss the little guy back. But if you’re a post-industrial age sportsman or woman, you will want to consider this: Keep the big hunker and you’ve got more to eat, and disproportionately more mercury contamination.
SAN LEANDRO, CA (KGO) — This week it will be 200 days since President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a massive federal program to create jobs by infusing cash into local communities. Some of that stimulus money is being used to clean up an environmental hazard in the Bay Area. >> Read the full story
Your kids may be working on their ABCs, but is their school working on its IPM?
That’s Integrated Pest Management, an increasingly requested – or required – method of fighting pests without using potentially harmful pesticides. (Or using minimal pesticides.)
For decades, schools liberally applied toxic pesticides on their grounds and in their classrooms to beat back bugs and rodents. Exterminators or the school janitor might have sprayed DDT, diazinon or chlordane. If things got bad enough, teachers would (and still could) take matters into their own hands with a can of Raid.
A new cancer study from India suggests that fluoride is a contributing factor to osteosarcoma, or bone cancer – but just how much fluoride intake causes the uncommon disease is not clear.
Fluoride in Americans’ tap water has spurred controversy since its introduction in 1945. Anti-fluoride activists say the risks are too high to add “medication” to the water, while government officials cite scientific studies that prove fewer cavities and no serious risk.
In Europe, most countries refuse to treat their water with fluoride with the exception of the United Kingdom. According to the British Medical Journal, fluoridation was introduced in 1963, and the Department of Health reports that rates of dental decay have been reduced 70 percent. But experts remain divided over epidemiological research that has suggested that water fluoridation might be linked to osteoporosis, dental fluorosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and other health problems.
How do cars pollute? In two main ways, through inefficient mileage (guzzling a gallon of gas every eight or 10 or 14 miles) and through tailpipe emissions.
There’s the pollution associated with manufacturing, also, but to keep it simple let’s stick with emissions and mileage. Obviously, both affect the air. Think of mileage as a measure of your car’s pollution volume over time – if a gallon of gas doesn’t take you very far, you have to burn a lot more gas — and emissions as the chemistry of that pollution; if the mix is particularly noxious, your car will be a bigger offender than one with better tailpipe controls.
So if you want to buy the cleanest car you can — in the price range you need — you’ll look at both factors. Fortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already done this work, assigning a “greenhouse gas” score to most models. Find it at the EPA’s Green Vehicles website.
The glass can be greener on the other side, if you recycle it.
Everyone knows that paper and plastic can be recycled. But sadly many people forget to recycle their glass. All glass containers or jars should be recycled.
Glass is 100% recyclable which means nothing will be wasted. When glass is recycled over and over again, there is no loss in quality and no waste or by-products. When glass manufacturers use recyclable materials to make new glass products, they are using less energy, cutting raw materials and CO2 emissions.
Just days before President Obama pledged to restore science to its rightful place in public policy, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies released a report addressing environmental changes some political appointees have preferred to ignore: Sea levels are rising, and coastal communities, along with governments responsible for the species that depend on coastal environments, are going to have to take measures to deal with it.
Economic turmoil has convinced many Americans to put off large discretionary purchases, but those intent on upgrading the home theater this holiday season (or those finally replacing ancient TVs before next year’s digital switchover) should consider changes made in the marketplace this weekend.
On November 1, new standards by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program took effect. “Turning the channel on energy guzzling sets,” to use the colorful imagery of EPA’s Stephen L. Johnson, the new specs apply to models that are up to 30 percent more energy efficient than conventional TVs.
When David Kilbourne picked up his 8-year-old son from Lake Travis Elementary in spring 2007, he noticed smoke billowing from idling buses parked in queue behind the school. The exhaust fumes his son was breathing each day as he waited to be picked up, he says, were contributing to his son’s migraine headaches. “My son is the quarterback for his youth football team,” said Kilbourne. “Because there’s only one quarterback, when he gets these headaches, it affects the team.”
Kilbourne remembers noticing the bus exhaust during the school’s bus safety week. “They were talking about how buses are safe when it comes to traffic accidents,” he said, “but there’s more to a bus’s safety than traffic accidents, like having air that’s safe to breathe.”
The coincidence spurred Kilbourne to take action. Not only did he write several letters to his local newspaper, but Kilbourne approached the head of his district’s transportation department to discuss air quality in and around its buses. After he spoke to Rick Walterscheid, the transportation director at the Lake Travis Independent School District, the school system put a no-idling policy into effect.
Walterscheid didn’t stop there, either. Later that year the 79th Texas Legislature adopted House Bill 3469, which established and authorized the formation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to administer a statewide clean school bus program.
From Green Right Now Reports
