At this time of year, we’d like to stop and say thank you to all the visitors we’ve had, and to those who’ve joined our cause.
While you’re shopping for loved ones in the next week or so, we hope you’ll remember all the great organizations that need your help in this challenging economic climate.
The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
—from the song Autumn Leaves
Recently we had a post about how “messy backyards” help wildlife. Since I wrote that post, I came across a wonderful article, “Leaf litter is an Environmental Windfall,” by Master Gardener Vera Strader. She explains why autumn leaves are a boon to wildlife and help enrich the soil.
Leaves provide shelter to insects such as earthworms, pillbugs, millipedes, which provides food for toads, frogs, and other small animals. Birds require protein from insects to feed their young. Leaf litter also fosters living soils with huge numbers of soil bacteria, fungi, and nematodes. Strader writes that, “leaves provide a down-like comforter for small animals.”
This past summer, I saw this process occur in my own backyard. I had to clip back all the grape vines on our building’s fire escape for safety reasons. I didn’t get around to getting rid of the pile of leaves and vines until a month or two later. I went to bag the material to throw it away and found dozens of earthworms under it. So I left the pile for the earthworms. Next spring these earthworms will go in my garden (and I’m sure will be a nice snack for some birds, too).
Strader offers practical tips for dealing with fallen leaves. Here are a few:
As Strader writes, “Leave the leaves to save time and money, enrich soil, help sustain wildlife, and benefit water and air quality. Mother Nature will thank you.”
By the way, we’ve received some great photos of wildlife-friendly backyards. Just click on the gallery on the right of this post for the wildlife backyard gallery. Feel free to send in photos of your backyard and we’ll post them in our gallery.
This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.
In CHASING MOLECULES: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry (Island Press, 2009), Elizabeth Grossman, an acclaimed investigative journalist, chronicles the effects of petroleum-based synthetic chemicals in ordinary consumer products on human health and to the environment. These chemicals may even change, at a molecular level, the way our our bodies work. The consequences range from diabetes to cancer, reproductive and neurological disorders.
These synthetic chemicals are ubiquitous in the products we use every day:
Chemicals from these products make their way—through the air, water, and soil—in our environment, our food, and our bodies. In addition, toxic chemicals that were once frozen in Arctic ice are now being released into the air and water as the ice melts because of global warming.
The chemicals can even alter one’s genes in a process scientists call epigenetics. The introduction of a chemical foreign to the body may change the way the gene interacts with other molecules in the cell’s nucleus. Exposure early in life—particularly before or just after birth—seems to be the prime time for these kinds of changes to occur. But epigenetic screening is not part of routine chemical testing of a chemical.
One example that surprised me was the effect of the chemical tributyltin, which is used as a wood preservative, glass coating, and many other uses. In animal studies, it was found that exposure to tributyltin increased the number of fat cells, thus possibly setting into motion a genetic propensity at birth for obesity.
Despite this gloomy scenario, Grossman offers hope in the burgeoning field of green chemistry. She argues that we don’t have to do without these products. Rather, industries need to create products that are “benign by design.” These new compounds will mimic rather than disrupt natural systems. Through interviews with leading researchers, Grossman gives us a first look at this radical transformation.
Don’t be put off by the word “molecules” in the title. I’m not a chemist, yet I found Chasing Molecules to be an extremely absorbing, but not a highly technical, read. It’s a 21st-century Silent Spring, very readable but sometimes shocking. Her message is an urgent wake-up call for industries to invest in green chemistry and to create products that won’t harm people and the environment.
NOTE: Along with the review copy, we received a hand-out written by Grossman with information about the safety of various consumer products. Grossman is careful and measured, never hysterical. We thought it might be useful to share her suggestions (buying children’s toy, plastic containers, etc) with FROGS ARE GREEN readers in the next couple of weeks.
Meet Orifiel
I did a little research because I had never heard of this angel. Orifiel is an archangel, one of the angels that are part of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Unlike the more charismatic angels like Gabriel, Rafael, or Michael, Orifiel is a bit more mysterious. In fact, I could only find information about him/her on a couple of angelology sites. On these sites, Orifiel is described as the angel of the wilderness who helps save the wild areas of earth.
We like the image of frogs as angels of the wildnerness!
Last week I wrote about Atrazine, an endocrine disruptor used widely in pesticides. These chemicals, which mimic human hormones, have been connected with genital deformities in fish, frogs, and possibly newborn baby boys.
This week I’m writing about endocrine disruptors in products a bit closer to home: skin creams, shampoos, deodorants, sunscreens, and other cosmetics and personal-care products. According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics site, endocrine disruptors such as phthalates that are used in cosmetics, “interfere with reproductive functioning by reducing the levels of sex hormones, which are critical for development and functioning of the sex organs. Additional research suggests that these same mechanisms may link phthalates to breast cancer.”
In his book Safe Trip to Eden, David Steinman writes about phthalates:
Because phthalates aren’t always strongly bonded to the materials to which they’ve been added, they can be absorbed through the human body through inhalation or the skin. The body’s largest organ, the skin is an exceptional vehicle for absorption of phthalates via cosmetics and personal care products, enabling their passage into the body without passing through the harsh environment of the gastrointestinal tract or without first passing through the liver, the body’s main detoxifying organ.
I decided to take a trip to CVS to see if I could find products without these chemicals. But virtually every cosmetic and personal-care product I found from shampoo to skin moisturizers, nail polish to sunscreen contains these or other similar chemicals.
I use a shampoo called Aveeno, Active Naturals with Nourishing Wheat Complex and Blue Lotus Flower. It’s in an earthy brownish bottle with images of wheat stalks on it. So it’s natural, right? No. It’s full of chemicals—a real chemical soup actually.
I also use a skin cream called Origins: A Perfect World, Intensely Hydrating Body Cream with Green Tea. The cream came in a very upscale-looking box wrapped with twine and recyclable green packaging. This cream isn’t as natural as it claims either. It’s manufactured by Estee Lauder and gets a so-so rating on the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. (You can search almost any product here.) In fact, I found that some of the budget generic CVS skin creams get a better rating on the database than the pricey Origins.
I finally found some products at CVS that didn’t have chemicals—the Burt’s Bees products—but they weren’t in the cosmetics aisle. Feeling virtuous and frog-friendly, I plopped down $17.99 for Burt’s Bees Radiance SP 15, Day Lotion with Royal Jelly. On the container it says, “Never any Sulfates, Parabens, Phthalates, or Petrochemicals.” Great, right? Well, I used it and, unfortunately it contains a chemical-smelling fragrance, which to my sensitive nose, was so strong I couldn’t use the cream. Evidently cosmetic companies aren’t required to list ingredients in fragrances. So beware when it says “fragrance” as one of the ingredients.
I finally gave up and went to the local health food store. I found lots of chemical-free cosmetics and personal care products there. I ended up with Aubrey Organics, Rosa Mosqueta, Rose Hip, Moisturizing Cream. It has a nice almondy smell that reminds me of Jergens. Ingredients include aloe vera, sweet almond oil, and rose hip oil—and not one chemical!
I’m not saying you have to throw out all your cosmetics, but I would at least be aware of how products are marketed to seem natural or organic when they aren’t at all. Read the labels. Check your cosmetics in the Skin Deep database to see how they rate (note: they also have user reviews of cosmetics). And consider switching to chemical-free organic products. I welcome any feedback about natural cosmetics you’ve used and can recommend to others.
For more information: from Scientific American magazine, “Saving Face: How Safe Are Cosmetics and Body Care Products” and from The Daily Green, “How to Go Green: Nature Skin Care.”
*I got the title of this post from a post by John Laumer on Tree Hugger,”There’s a Frog Disruptor in your Soap,” which discusses the possible dangers of the chemical triclosan in soaps and other products.
In my post Rachel Carson’s Legacy, I wrote about widely-used chemicals called endocrine disruptors that are causing deformities in fish and frogs, and are linked to an increase in genital deformities in newborn baby boys.
When reading about endocrine disruptors, I keep coming across the work of Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, at the University of California–Berkeley. He has studied the effects on frogs of an agricultural pesticide called Atrazine. Hayes found that these chemicals, even at very low levels, were causing male frogs in the wild to develop eggs in their testes (!).
I came across a lecture Dr. Hayes gave called “From ‘Silent Spring’ to Silent Night.” The lecture is about an hour long, but it’s worth watching (see below). Hayes is a funny and engaging speaker and he uses easily understood charts/graphs/pictures to explain how these chemicals effect the frogs—and how they might also effect you.
One Dr. Hayes’s experiments with frogs really hit home with me. He studied two groups of frogs that live along the same river in California. For the experiment he placed the frogs, same species, in cages in the water. One group was placed upstream of the Salinas valley, one of the largest agricultural areas of the country, which is farmed intensely all year round. Runoff containing Atrazine and other chemicals from the farms flows into the river.
The other group of frogs was placed about 50 miles downstream in a clean area. He found that the tadpoles in the area near the farms had retarded growth. They were tiny compared to the frogs in the healthier area. Hayes then injected both groups of frogs with bread yeast. The group of frogs near the farms died within a day or two after being injected with the yeast. The other frogs, from the cleaner area upstream of the agricultural area, survived. They were larger and had stronger immune systems and so were able to fight off the effects of the yeast.
I am not a scientist, but it does make me wonder about claims that some scientists make that the various viruses, parasites, and even the recent claim that frog deformities are caused by dragonfly larvae, are “part of nature.” The frogs living in the “chemical soup” obviously were smaller, weaker, and more susceptible to parasites and diseases.
As Hayes says, we can’t just pass this off as a frog problem that isn’t relevant to humans. Our hormones are chemically identical to frog hormones. Hayes discusses studies indicating higher breast cancer rates in areas where Atrazine is in the well water. He points out that the effects of the chemical may not be obvious now, but may be carried to our children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren.
How can you reduce your own exposure to Atrazine? If you live in the Midwest or other agricultural areas, you might consider drinking bottled water or use a Brita filter on tap water, particularly if you are pregnant. The runoff from farms is at its worst from May to August (in the Midwest). As Elizabeth Royte writes in her book Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and How We Buy It:
Human kidneys filter Atrazine, and most people don’t spend a lot of time swimming in herbicide-laced water as frogs do. But human fetuses do.
I was surprised to learn that Atrazine is sprayed on Christmas trees as well.
Below are two videos. The first is Hayes’s hour-long lecture “From ‘Silent Spring’ to Silent Night.” Under this video is his “Atrazine Rap,” a 2-minute summary of the lecture in case you don’t have time to watch the longer video.
