The Brockovich Report

Theoretically, pollutants inflame me. In fact, it occurs to me that the environment itself is tired of being polluted, and it is fighting back. That's one way to look at global warming.

Dirty water inflames me. It's an allergy; I suppose I'm allergic to pollution, or more specifically pollutants. Not just hexavalent chromium, and not just theoretically either. Allergies inflame us all; it's their "job" to rub us the wrong way; and it's no wonder that we're allergic to allergens. No, really, it's what they do. Allergens are substances in the environment which cause some kind of hypersensitive reaction in us. And allergies are what I wanted to talk about, since Spring is allergy season. For centuries nature has been afflicting human sinuses with all the pollen in the air, but it's only since the industrial revolution (I think) that we've been polluting ourselves.

When we were a primitive species living close to the land, the only allergens we had to worry about were natural biologics like pollen and the common food allergens (proteins in cow's milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish and tree nuts.) When we lived off the land, we knew what went into the food. Maybe there wasn't that much of it because this was before fertilizers and pesticides--and maybe the produce from those primitive farms was kind of spindly and bug-bitten-but at least we knew that the primary ingredient of our food was...well...food.

Things have changed some. Now there are so many additives in products, even when it is raw produce, that we have to double rinse off the pesticides with a special solution, or scrub off the wax. And some things don't wash off. Especially if the food we eat may be some weird Franken-fruit or crossbred nouveau veggie hatched in a Monsanto lab by a money-mad scientist. Who knows what the consequences might be to eating this stuff? And then the additives in packaged foods--Disodium EDTA, Nitrates, Formaldehyde, Glutaraldehyde, Ethanol, Methylchloroisothiazolinone . . . just their names are enough to give me hives. Not that I am advocating bacteria infested food. But really, we should be aware of the preservatives lurking in what we consume, and do our best to keep them at a minimum.

The fresher and closer to the earth food is, and the less processing it requires, the healthier it tends to be. I'm sure grocers and canners, and commercial food people would appreciate the benefit in all of our food being as non-perishable as Twinkies. I'm sure it would seem a veritable miracle for a lettuce to last as long in the refrigerator as a preserved cup cake or an Egyptian mummy. But personally speaking as a grocery shopper myself, I'd venture to say that geriatric food does not appeal to the consumer.

This reminds me of a question I just answered in my Ask Brockovich column.

I said it there, and I'll say it here. I prefer organic fruits, vegetables and protein and good clean water. When that's what I eat, my body does great. When I focus on eating the right foods which are preservative, additive and pesticide free, I run like a machine. When I eat right, I don’t have puffy swollen eyes, stuffy sinus, I lose weight, my hair grows, my skin looks good, everything works better, and most of all, I FEEL BETTER. I don't think it is a coincidence.

We see consequences of this commercial food-additive mania in allergies. So think about this when you are sneezing and coughing and scratching, when you reach for your allergy meds, your Kleenex and Benadryl--some of your physical discomfort might be traced back to additives in your food. Try eating fresh for a while, and see if it doesn't help.

It's nearly summer time, and the living is easy. Maybe not that easy, considering the mudslides and wildfires--but summer is still on its way. In honor of the season, I am going to digress for a moment from fighting the bigger battles, and mention something which was brought up to me in an email. A reader sent me news that her child had developed diarrhea and otitis media as a result of swimming in a Calabasas pool. Now, bear in mind that public pools are always a great place to exchange germs and bacteria. I don't know how many pool related ear-aches and cases of pink-eye we all had growing up, but it was a lot.

Dirty pools are a haven for waterborne pathogens, bacteria, parasites, protozoa and viruses. A chlorine resistant parasite called Cryptosporidium is a particular problem along with Amoebic meningoencephalitis, Giardia, E. coli O157:H7 (E. coli), and Shigella. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the communicable nasties that can live in pools.

The problem is not just that the pool may be inadequately filtered and/or chlorinated. It is also that each individual who goes into the water brings his or her own collection of bacteria. This is not a new development. Neither is it new that 20 billion disposable diapers are sent to landfills annually. That the two issues converge in a relatively new development: swimmer diapers, is.

It bears thinking about that disposable diapers are not exactly sanitary in aquatic conditions and these new swimmer's diapers are already developing a reputation as a public health issue. Even if they do manage to contain the visible fecal matter (and there's no guarantee that they'll do that) there's no way they can contain all the bacteria that's in the feces, and all of the urine that the diapers contain. The Center for Disease Control publishes warnings about this; and if your public pool hasn't gotten around to banning these diapers, it is only a matter of time before they will.

So, if you're going to be a responsible parent, don't ask for trouble by putting your baby in the public pool. Don't expose other people to your baby's excreta. (Why would you would want to expose a baby to the virulent waterborne pathogens in a public pool anyway?) If you're going to be a responsible adult, do a visible inspection before you get in the water, and determine if the pool at least looks clean. Inspect on your own behalf and for your child. If you're the one responsible for maintaining the pool, remember you're holding public health in your hand.

Acrylamide

Another chemical has been pointed out by the media. Acrylamide is not exactly the phrase on everyone's lips, but it is nothing new; it's something the EPA set water regulations for in 1974.

FYI, it's an organic white, odorless, flake-like crystal used as a coagulant in water treatment, in making chemicals and dyes, sizing paper and textiles and in ore processing. For the short term, exposure causes damage to the nervous system, weakness and lack of leg coordination; long term, it causes damage to the nervous system, paralysis; cancer.

It's something to learn about.

As far as I know, it's not something adds like a spice or even as a preservative. But if you fry food at high temperatures, it is created in the process.

It's time to eating it and stop feeding it to your kids.

Wake up America. Another reason not to eat fried foods.

I'm not surprised that the chemical acrylamide found in fries, cakes and snacks. I don't think this would be something to sue about, but it is something to know about and to avoid.

I've had my experience with foods that hurt. For the past two years my health has not been good. I attributed it to my exposures to chemicals and my severe allergy to sulfur, After finding no help through modern medicine except more antibiotics, steroids to reduce inflammation, nose sprays, eye drops and more antibiotics, I finally sought help.

It had to be something I was exposed to everyday that was causing all my fatigue, sinus problems, watery eyes, depression.

The culprit seems to have been foods allergies. I got off sugar, processed foods, frozen foods, and yes, by coincidence, french fries. This really started making me aware of what chemicals are in our food. I can absolutely say after several months of watching what I eat, that food can make you sick. Bad food choices can be poison to our bodies.

Fortunately good food choices can make us feel better.

So now, if God didn't make it, I don't eat it, and my health is fantastic. I have energy, no bags under my eyes, no headaches, no sinus problems, I take NO medicine, my vision is no longer blurred.

I'm not trying to set myself up as the poster child for organic eating. I've cheated--I recently had a chocolate chip cookie--even if it didn't stay down very long. It's just that fast food french fries show high levels of acrylamide--from 39 to 72 micrograms. Since it forms in fries during high-temperature frying, realistically, it just means that we can eat our potatoes cooked another way. Besides, who needs all those starchy carbs anyway?

So let's say no to acrylamide. We don't need fries--and other processed fried or baked goods containing acrylamide-- to survive. They aren't so evil they need to be illegal. But we will probably live a little longer and feel a little better without them.

I have said before that being Green has philosophical meaning. Of course philosophy is purely theoretical, and our approach to living Green can not be limited to the philosophical. It has to be purely realistic. We don't live in a philosophical world. We live in a real world. Being Green, Living Green, and making Green choices are not some theoretical thought processes which only affect our minds. These are choices that affect life. Not just our life, but life around us, and the life that is to come after us.

I get a lot of mail from people who share my concerns about how our increasingly contaminated environment increasingly threatens our health.

Just imagine we if we all addressed the issues, we would probably have lower health insurance rates, but who wants that?

Recently I got an email from Mike Cushman, a Canadian who is a prime example of someone who is getting involved. He too has become alarmed by the connection between toxic environment and illness. He read a book by Dr. Devra Davis Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology. Combined with Davis's book, Mike's research and his own family history, Mike had a wake-up call:

• Illness and the contaminated environment are connected.
• Greening the environment should be top priority for us all.

Mike Cushman took advantage of the Freedom of Information Act. He did as we all should; he informed himself, and then he took it on himself to make a noise, and inform other people.

Being Green is not and should not be just another trend for people to make money. It can not be a cause of the week for us to make a so so effort and then move on to the next fad.

Being Green is an imperative.

We must look at all contamination in all its facets. Air. Water. Earth.
We must clean up the contamination in all its facets. Air. Water. Earth.

There is no magic reality. A clean-up won't just happen spontaneously. It won't ever happen if we look the other way. We can not close our eyes. There is only one option for us, and that is to face the issue: we have runaway contamination. It is killing us.

How can we clean it all up?

We must heal the dysfunction of the EPA. We must inform the our public agencies who daily, yearly look the other way and make them do their jobs.

I see the power of Industry; Industry has the funds to clean up after itself. But it does not.
Therefore it is the EPA's job--it is my job--your job--everyone's job--to hold industry accountable.

Thirty years ago, the federal government funded 75% of the costs of maintaining a clean water infrastructure and now its support is down to 5%. One possible solution could be a Clean Water Enforcement Trust Fund. What about a dedicated trust fund that would be used exclusively to keep Industry accountable for cleaning up its own mess? This backed with a two-sided accountability: Industry Accountability AND Administrative Accountability. Americans will NOT tolerate waste, fraud or abuse. There MUST be an effective firewall for this trust fund. Funding must be held to its original intent.

We must all become active participants in Greening the world. Our future generations deserves a greater legacy from us than a ruined planet.

I hate to say "I told you so." But it keeps happening.

Scientific Panel Says Erin Brockovich Was Right. "Sixteen years after activist Erin Brockovich first suggested that hexavalent chromium in drinking water might be a health hazard, a federal scientific panel has agreed with her. " That's a direct quote. And to be accurate, you have to add on a year or two more to get to the day I first started looking into and talking about the undocumented underestimated dangers of hexavalent chromium.

Now there's another batch of scientists who are verifying what I've been talking about. Again. There's an article titled AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water which says "A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows."

I won't say I told you so. It only means that it takes science a little while to catch up with what people observe. (Wait...haven't I been saying that too?)

I won't say I told you so. Though I have been talking about the importance of clean water all along. The importance of having clean water should be apparent to everyone who drinks water. (That includes all of us, right?) Where else do all the groundwater contamination lawsuits come from? There is contamination out there. Water contamination is more widespread than any of us would like to believe.

Other people are saying "I told you so" too. Even Environmental Sociologists like Michael R. Meuser, M.A. Take a look at this website that maps 179 groundwater contamination sites in Santa Clara County alone. 179 contaminated sites in a single county. Why isn't everyone up in arms over the contaminated state of our most essential resource?

But I shouldn't say "I told you so." It's not just industrial solvents, like trichloroethylene, or TCE, a potentially potent carcinogen typical of what industry allows to leach into the water table. This latest probe reveals unexpected findings like prescription drugs dissolved into our drinking water. After all, it makes sense. People take pills; pills dissolve and that water eventually re-enters the water system. The probe talks about pharmaceuticals like medications for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems, anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications, mood-stabilizers, even sex hormones. Adding chlorine, which kills biotic toxic agents, makes it worse. Reverse osmosis--a water purification method--does remove even pharmaceuticals that we don't test for but it is prohibitavely expensive, and it can't be done at every source of contamination, like leaky private septic tanks.

But I won't say "I told you so."

We live in a country that proudly announces we have freedom of speech and free enterprise. Certainly at it's zenith, these freedoms can produce the most sublime art. At the other end of the spectrum we find night-time television flooded with infomercials, and daytime television flooded with commercials that tweak the imagination and regularly imply more utopian product satisfaction than any materialistic thing could realistically deliver. We live in a society where radio ads tease us; newspaper clipper coupons lure us to shop here or there, and full color magazine ads tantalize us into buying expensive brand name products simply for the prestige of wearing the label, even if it is only to the nearest Walmart, Publix, Costco, Kroger or 7/11.

Is it any wonder that the internet abounds with a plethora of advertisement? It's important to remember any time you go on the internet, especially if you're looking for "truth, justice and the American way," you always have to do something that your great great great horse-trading grandfather would have advised you to do.

"Consider the source."

Someone showed me this Washington Times article with the following quote:

"Because for every noble, heartstring-pulling Erin Brockovich fantasy, there are countless real-life personal-injury lawyers who erode public confidence in our civil justice system, undermine America's economic competitiveness and contribute to health care inflation with frequently meritless lawsuits."

First, I'd like to say that there are personal injury lawyers out there in the world because there are people who get injured due to negligence of one kind or another, and they need someone to advocate for them. That said, their worst internet advertising is probably no worse than nighttime infomercials; and one's experience with them is bound to be not far off from one's experience with nighttime infomercials too. Remember that night you stayed up late and after thirty minutes of tele-shopper-hypnotism, ended up purchasing some get rich quick real estate program; or some make a million building websites program; or some extreme diet or exercise plan; or some peculiar kitchen device that looked really amazing in the tele demonstration, but is going to spend the next seventeen years gathering dust in your appliance garage. Hopefully the worst thing that can happen is a brief waste of time, or coming out of the experience like Marion the Librarian, sadder but wiser.

Accessibility of information is one of the great benefits of our age; of course it is a shame thee is so much useless rubbish to sort thru. There are always going to be best case scenarios and worst case scenarios. But somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous, amid that topography of internet verbiage is the path for a victim to find just recourse. And I wonder--is that such a very bad thing?

There's been a public advisory about eating toxic fish. Those of you who have been eating fish because it's healthier, but you've been walking around achy and fatigued, listen up.

" Consumption of smallmouth bass caught in Chartiers Creek from the PA Route 980 Bridge in Canonsburg to the mouth in Washington and Allegheny Counties, and in Little Chartiers Creek from Canonsburg Lake Dam to the mouth in Washington County, should be limited to six meals per year, due to polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, contamination."

I see things like this and it really makes me wonder at the thinking. Do I need fish so much that I want a 1/6th portion of poison with it?

So what is PCB and why is it in my fish?

Polychlorinated biphenyl is an organic compound of benzene, carbon and chlorine that used to be used in coolant, electronics, sealants, adhesives, caulking, pesticides, carbon paper, and various other industrial uses. Production has been banned since the 1970s. It is especially dangerous because it is odorless and tasteless, and so stable that it hangs around a long time.

Clean water is always a concern for me. The EPA has set a limit of 0.0005 milligrams of PCBs per liter of drinking water (0.0005 mg/L). Unfortunately, industry released up to 1,300,000 pounds of PCBs into the Hudson river alone between approximately 1947 and 1977. It's seems that it is still there. And PCBs are bad for people.

PCB consumption is bad for pregnant and nursing woman, and harms the neonatal and natal immune system. It is linked to long term immune and autoimmune disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, dermatitis, bacterial infections, and various cancer.

If you want to know more about PCBs, you can contact the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine
1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop F-32
Atlanta, GA 30333
Phone: 1-800-CDC-INFO • 888-232-6348 (TTY)
FAX: 770-488-4178
Email: cdcinfo@cdc.gov

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Licensing the Right to a Healthy Environment in New York City:
What Will Happen Next?

Raise your hand if you've seen the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. It's a cult hit that has Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson ghost hunting with the use of imaginary technology that attracts the attention of overbearing EPA agent Walter Peck (William Atherton.) Outraged at being ignored, there's a moment in the movie when this reckless EPA agent shuts down the unlicensed "protection grid," subsequently releasing a horde of wonky ghosts to ravage New York City. They should have gotten that license....

I've been pondering the concept of licenses. For the most part, they're a good thing. People should be licensed to do things which require expertise and which could cause harm. It makes sense to license drivers, because driving a car is not a right, it is a privilege earned by proving the ability to control a car and obey traffic laws. Construction permits make sense, because this protects the consumer from shoddy work. Service providers-like REALTORS-get licensed, because licensing confers respectability, high standards and accountability.

Should individuals be required to get a license to test the quality of their personal environment?

I think not.

New York's City Council is considering Proposed Int. No. 650-A. There's one of those two-step double-speak terms in this bill, which concedes the need for "certain instruments designed to detect the presence of certain chemicals, biological agents, and radiation in the environment."

I agree. We need reliable instruments that detect those environmental nasties.

But then the bill moves on to an assertion that isn't so straightforward.

"Such instruments should be deployed and operated only with the knowledge of the Police Department and other appropriate City agencies. "

Isn't this like having to report to the health department every time you take a birth control test? Is it really necessary that individuals pay to get a license to test the quality of their own air and water?

However, I'm not entirely throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There's another section that says "the City has an interest in the reliability and effectiveness of these instruments so that their deployment will not cause excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety that a large-scale public emergency is occurring. "

I partially agree with this statement, but not for the reason they state. The city DOES have an interest in the reliability and effectiveness of instruments and devices available to the public. The city should set, affirm and maintain standards for the testing devices; we all want to be able to rely on the quality of environmental testing devices the same way we can rely on the quality of that pregnancy test.

But it veers into a whole other realm of duplicity when the city claims the purpose of licensing is to control anxiety.

If there is no problem with the environment, then testing should not cause anxiety; testing will relieve anxiety by proving there is no cause for concern. If the tests indicate something bad, then concern is warranted, and the government needs to do something to control the problem, not the reaction of the victims.

Unlike the Ghostbusters, we don't have a protection grid.

But we do have reliable environmental testing.

So I say this to the New York City Council.

Develop standards for the testing devices. Make them available to all. If you license those who test, then don't use the license to prohibit testing; use it to promote testing, and acquisition of test results; then make the test results part of the public record so that environmental quality can be mapped. Problem areas can be found, and fixed. Rather than swooning in fear at the mere possibility of public concern, let's have the government make heroic efforts to be proactive and prevent the problem.

Control the problem and you won't have to deal with the reaction of the victims. Because if you do the right thing and keep it clean, there won't be any victims.

If the technology is available and dependable, everyone should have the right to test their immediate environment for safety.

I'm in the same boat as Mark Twain. "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Well, not precisely the same boat since Mark Twain actually IS quite dead now; and I wasn't quite accused of being dead. However, it just so happens that someone emailed me a note about a blog that talked about something Erin Brockovich would have been interested in. "Would have been?" Excuse me? My statute of limitations has not run out yet.

I would just like the world to know that there are plenty of things that I AM STILL interested in. I haven't given up the ghost. I'm still live and kicking. In fact, I'm so interested in so many things that if I were the McCaughey septuplets, I would still barely have time for a private life.

To give you a little idea of the things that are interesting me right now...(I'm sure you're perched on the edge of your chair...)

First there IS that pollution map someone said I might be interested in.
The map is here. -- an air quality map sponsored by the Air Now website. In fact, the map is provided officially via "AIRNow, EPA, NOAA, NPS, news media, tribal, state, and local agencies (who) work together to report conditions for ozone and particle pollution." It's a good place to check to see if outdoor exercise is going to be a problem, or if planning a car trip is a bad idea on a particular day.

I've known an awful lot of people who have become sick because of their environmental situation. So it is well known that I have an active interest in a number of conditions like Aplastic Anemia and Mesothelioma . In fact I have a website and forum just for the purpose of discussing topics of interest.

Anyone who reads my blog knows I'm following the activities of Alcoa Australia who is facing a class action lawsuit over pollution. The people of Yarloop, a small community south of Perth, suffer from a range of health problems we believe are tied to emissions from an Alcoa bauxite refinery. Yes, I have been there, and lectured.

Anyone who reads my blog also knows I'm standing with the people to help clean up the heavily polluted Asopos River in central Greece, where industry has been blatantly dumping pollutants and toxic waste in the river and lately into deep wells that may be polluting the local aquifer. Yes, been there too.

I just came back from participating in the First Congress of Modernization of the Public Service of Punta Umbria, where for three days 3000 attendees participated in three conferences and six round tables, setting out an action plan to modernize administration and improve the quality of life in Spain.

Because one of my active concerns is to ensure environmental sustainability I was a keynote speaker at the Annual Global Problems, Global Solutions Conference: Saving the Earth and its People, which featured workshops on a variety of social issues.

Constantly things of interest are being thrown in my path. Some are the same things that everyone sees, like toxic toy recalls.

Sometimes I hear of positive things too. Like the Las Vegas Radio station where one of the disc jockeys was living on a platform in the parking lot on a toys for tots drive. They are accepting new and unused toys, (obviously non-toxic ones) or cash, but you can visit the website to participate. Go for it KLUC. We should all do more of the same kind of project, but why wait for the holidays?

I just wanted you all to remember that I am still here, still fiesty, still working toward a cleaner world. I hope you are too.

Think of how it would be if life came with a crystal ball.

There would never be any surprises. We wouldn't have accidents, because we'd know they were going to happen. In fact, we'd have to get rid of the word accident, because we'd know ahead of time that mishap was coming.

Back in 1948 when my father was a football star at Kansas University, if he'd had a crystal ball, he'd have known ahead of time that he would have to turn down the 2008 Orange bowl tickets offered to the KU living legends, because he had prior commitments: taking care of his wife who suffers from dementia. But then, if he knew she was going to suffer from dementia, he might have chosen other insurance.

In fact, we'd all know ahead of time what kind of old age we'd have, and we'd be able to plan accordingly for the type of care we need.

There is no doubt that my father could have used a crystal ball back in the day when he signed up for that health insurance policy. He would not have had to spend decades paying premiums to MetLife for health insurance that would let him down when he needed it the most.

His problem right now is a whole lot bigger than missing that landmark football game. He's just at the end of his rope, since he stoically took care of our mother for as long as he could before he filed his Met Life Insurance claim. This is just the way he is: always acting above and beyond the call of duty. So after he filed his claim for help with her care, he found that there was a 100 day waiting period before the insurance policy will pay.

Legally, Met-Life is acting within their rights. But I ask you, when an agency fails to perform a morally significant action, what should we do? Because it would be morally significant for Met-Life to come to the plate on this, but if they do not, then the consequences of their inaction will be to cause harm to their very own client who has paid premiums for not days, not weeks, not months, not years, but decades.

This kind of omission of responsibility reflects on our entire culture. What kind of people are we? What kind of society do we live in when corporations can hide behind the legal "bottom line," get tangled in picayune issues and ignore the human consequence?

Where is our moral compass?

This is purely a philosophical question and it is not one that I can really answer for myself, much less anyone else. I was just thinking about Christmas trees.

There's something about having a real tree that is just Christmasy. There's just no other way to put it. The way the scent of pine fills the house, the colors, even sweeping up the needles that are left behind, particularly those elusive ones that you find long after the fact--all part of the ambiance of the season.

But.

We kill the tree to have that bit of festivity in the house just like you have to kill a bloom to have flowers in a vase. Because the big difference is, of course, that the bloom is only losing a matter of days of it's life anyway. When I was little, I always wondered if there could be some kind of giant glass of water to stick the Christmas tree in on December 26th, where it could root and we could stick it back in the ground to finish off it's life. Or perhaps some rooting powder where the tree could somehow be grafted back onto its roots. Unlike that short-lived rosebud, a tree--well, it can live for hundreds of years. How many years of life are we taking from that tree; or to be less sentimental and more scientific, how many years of CO2 consumption and oxygen production are we depriving the world of?

Okay, then, we can entirely avoid that issue with having a live tree--one that's in a pot, and after you decorate it, you can always plant it. Plant it in the back yard, plant it in someone else's tree deprived yard, plant it in a forest somewhere...

But what about the plastic tree? What about those aluminum trees that you have to screw together, and then you can take them apart and put them in a box until next year. There are thousands, maybe millions of these permanent trees that are already in existence; nevermind the "carbon footprint" of all the new ones being churned out of factories. Surely the green thing to do is to keep using them. After all, over the span of its usable existence, each of these fake trees saves how many tree-lives? What is the environmental cost of making that plastic or aluminum tree? Especially when, no matter how well made it is, it falls a far second behind the festive ambiance of a live green tree,

Which brings me back to the question of how green Christmas trees really are.

Evergreens are grown specifically to grace your house for the Christmas season. Evergreens--seasonal tree farms--are a sustainable industry, whether the trees are cut before you buy them, or sitting in a dirt ball ready to plant at the end of the day. Even if you have a cut tree, it will eventually end up as mulch somewhere, sustaining the next plant generation.

Is this a blog demanding that everyone use live trees? Not really. Maybe it's just because somewhere in the back of my mind, the Christmas tree reminds me of the Giving Tree.

IF you don't know The Giving Tree, it is a book worthy of exploration; it is a deceptively simple Shel Silverstein tale that many of us read to our children or in our own childhoods. It's a story about unconditional love, about the gifts of nature. It is a story about the relationship between a boy and his tree; and if you think it is a silly and sappy concept, then read it yourself–(don't be surprised when it makes you cry)–and look at the broader view. Here is a tree who gives and gives until she has no more to give; and the boy who takes and takes until there is no more to take. In the end, the boy is an old man, sitting on the stump of what remains of the tree who gave her life to him, and even then she is happy in her giving.

Is this what we are going to do to the earth? Is this earth our Giving Tree? Is it our destiny to dominate the earth to its destruction or to tend the garden to its fruition?

Could we not each choose to give a little back? Take a little less? Could we not honor our own Giving Trees and instead of using them up entirely, learn to cohabitate, to share our lives without using each other up?

Ultimately, the choice is not between a live green, or dead aluminum tree. It's all about the little choices we make every day.

But whatever choices you make, I'm wishing for you and yours, the Merriest, Greenest Christmas, ever.

Revisiting the Spill
Remember Exxon Valdez?

Who? Exxon Valdez, now called Sea River Mediterranean, oil tanker built by National Steel and Shipbuilding of San Diego, runs aground.

What? 11 million gallons of crude oil escapes into the Gulf of Alaska

Where? Prince William Sound, fouling 790 miles of shoreline within Prince William Sound oiled, 200 miles of which is classified as heavily oiled and in the Kenai Peninsula-Kodiak region, more than 2,400 miles of shoreline are found to be oiled. Block Island, Green Island, Sawmill Bay, Smith Island, *(EVOS Restoration Website)

When? March 24 1989

Why? 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 250 bald eagles, two dozen Orcas, billions of salmon, loons, three species of cormorants, harlequin ducks, harbor seals, herring and a partridge in a pear tree.

Exxon's scientists point to the recovery of "bald eagles, black oystercatchers, murres, pink and sockeye salmon, and river otters" and claim that the ecosystem has recovered.

The rest of the world (i.e. all of the scientists, environmentalists and study groups which are not paid by Exxon) feel the area has not yet recovered. Of course, there's no really optimal way to clean up the thin sheet of oil and the mousse (emulsified mixture of oil and sea water). Burning pollutes the air; using the boom to corral and contain is laborious. only marginally effective, and terribly inefficient; dispersants contaminate the water and food supply of indigenous species; and skimming is an equipment and manpower intensive process which is only successful under optimum conditions of calm seas, fresh, fluid oil and well-orchestrated teamwork. The NOAA's National Ocean Service study suggests "incomplete recovery (as of 1998) include species differences in infaunal populations, different grain size structures and lower population abundances at oiled sites..." (I had to look up infaunal. It means species that live on the ocean floor.)

Why am I bringing this up 18 years later?

It's the one month anniversary of the San Francisco Bay Oil spill. Call it a celebration of sorts, not that it's celebratory. Not with today's news of 66,043-110,000 barrels leaking from the Hong Kong-registered tanker in South Korean waters.

At least the cold weather froze the South Korean spill, making recovery and reclamation easier.

Some things are looking better. All those scientific minds pointed toward oil spill clean up have resulted in a improved technology--a mechanical skimmer whose surface is grooved to pick up more oil–and is scraped completely clean on each rotation. Activated carbon plays a part. It's a good thing technology is improving because the potential of the San Francisco Oil spill is just as bad as ever. Bad for the harbor seals. Bad for the sea lions. Bad for the herring, steelhead and Chinook salmon, and innumerable species. Bad for San Francisco. Bad for all of us.

58000 gallons were spilled from the Cosco Busan out of Port of Oakland. How much oil was recovered is not known. What is known is that it will take a long time for the ecosystem to recover, but optimists hope that the ecosystem can absorb the damage.

There's the rub.

Certainly the world has a balance. Certainly there have been instances of oil in the ecosystem in a natural situation, and the world wagged on. But the world is different now from any other time in history. Humans put an added stress on the ecosystem, and there's only so much natural absorption any ecosystem can sustain before homeostasis can no longer be maintained.

So come on scientists and nautical engineers It's time to put your thinking caps on and help us clean up. Find new ways, better ways. Boat designers, it's time to engineer ships which won't leak. If we can self-seal a tire, why not a ship's hold? Come on alternative fuel developers. Let's find a way to float our boats and run our cars which does not require massive oil transportation and consumption.

Come on purveyors of the new technologies. We believe in you. We have to. You're all we have.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the little dutch boy, sticking my finger in a hole in the dike. Except that the dike is like a piece of cheese, and the more fingers I use, the more leaks the dike sprouts.

I was recently in Greece talking about the Asopos River. Now their government is at least starting to work on handling the problem--porting in water for the locals to use instead of the contaminated river water, prosecuting some of the industries who were guilty of dumping, looking for disposal pipes. Only now I am getting letters that tell me how the remaining industries aren't piping their contamination toward the river; they're drilling and dumping it into local wells, so it gets into the groundwater. I hear that Greek Minister for the Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works, Georgios Souflias is resisting the creation of an independent Environmental Ministry. The people of Oinofita are still screaming for justice. The Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) leader Alekos Alavanos has toured the river and says the local drinking water grid should be hooked up to that of the greater Athens' water utility (EYDAP)--of course that is supposed to already be in the works. By the time the infrastructure is built to support it, he may be in office.

I came home to a mailbox full of things going on here at home.

Letters about TexCom Gulf Disposal who wants to inject supposedly nonhazardous wastewater into wells that run into the local groundwater. I'd always like to take these experts who swear the groundwater is safe and see them drink a couple of gallons of it.

Letters from fema trailer residents, who have come up with sick building syndrome from the high formaldehyde levels. The symptoms include nosebleeds, headaches and assorted respiratory illnesses.

A letter from an Americana Apartment resident having to deal with asbestos dust from improperly removed roofing. A similar letter to a similar situation--in the UK.

And here at home, the untreated local water supply of Woodland and Davis is so full of magnesium, sodium and calcium (and chromium 6) that engineers want to daily pipe in 52 million gallons of the purer softer water from the Sacramento river. This is mostly water from very deep fifty year old wells, but that is augmented by newer shallower wells that tap into a much purer local aquifer.

There's so much salt in the wastewater that salinity is also a problem, and the mayor would prefer to rebuild the wastewater facility. What is being projected is an intake river running from "West Sacramento north of Interstate 5, a central treatment plant near Woodland and a pipeline system supplying water to Woodland, Davis and UC Davis." Local water rates would double and the project would not be completed until 2016.

I'm not an engineer, but this looks like it might be staring at the greener grass across the fence. Would it cost that much and take that long to set up a system to filter the local water? What are the alternatives here?

Because unlike the little dutch boy, I don't think sticking my fingers in the holes in the dike is going to be enough.

My daughter used to bring home artwork made of little beads from school .

Such innocent little pellets.

Who knew that if ingested, they would degrade in the digestive system into gamma hydroxy butyrate, otherwise known as the date rape drug? Over the years, how many children have ingested those little tablets?

Not that it was ever marketed to young children--but there are an awful lot of households with older and younger children. And what younger sibling ever really kept his hands off of big brother's or big sister's toys?

This is the kind of recall that really makes you wonder how such inappropriate toys come to market to begin with. Aren't toys automatically supposed to be safe out of the box? But they are obviously not. With all the different types of benign medically safe plastics out there, how did it happen that some chemist or industrial "suit" chose to make a toy of the particular formation that would happen to degrade into gamma hydroxy butyrate when ingested?

It is a shame that we have to be so vigilant, hunting out unsafe toys thru strip malls, department stores and dollar stores the way our ancestors used to watch the forest for bears. How has it come to this, in this contemporary cornucopia of plenty that it is our very prosperity and ingenuity that holds one of the greatest threats to our children? Were Laura Ingalls Wilder's corn husk dolls this dangerous?

I wonder if the danger is a symptom of our high functioning society or if we're moving backwards.

Just look at the problem in the context of Maslow's hierarchy of need. Maslow analyzed society and need, and came up with a hierarchy of how people handle their most pressing issues in a certain order. First is food, shelter, all the physiological needs. That makes sense. First cavemen came in from the rain. After they had shelter, then they could worry about other stuff. Etc... Then comes safety, and after that is love and belonging, followed by esteem; and up at the very top, when all other needs are satisfied, is self-actualization. Most societies in centuries before this one were so busy surviving, they didn't worry about actualization, except for fifteen minutes or so, during the Renaissance.

But back to toys.

Back in day when we were cave dwellers, Wilma Flintstone didn't go to the department store. Maybe she handed little Bam Bam a rock, and just hoped he wouldn't brain his little brother. (Maybe he did, sometimes. Maybe that's why we now have the song "little bunny foo foo." But I digress.) Probably little Bam Bam and his little paleolithic brethren considered themselves lucky if they found anything to play with beyond the bones of yesterday's dinner. But as we developed society, the idea of toys for children developed. As society became more complex, toys themselves became more complicated, to help children learn to exist in their contemporary world.

So, in terms of watching the quality of toys, we've moved beyond the initial stages of basic "toyhood" and we're looking at toys closer, toward the top of the hierarchy, dissecting them under the sophisticated eye of "actualization." (Because, after all, each generation of children is the actualization of the last generation of adults--or at least that's what I'm theorizing. )

Now that as a society, we are looking at toys in terms of safety, it takes us back developmentally several steps, to safety. Ironically, the only reason that we can do this is because we've actually moved to the top of the ladder, to actualization. We have the time to analyze the quality of children's toys because we've got all of those other bases covered. In other words, Fred Flintstone was too worried keeping the saber-toothed whatsit from the door to worry whether or not Bam Bam's toy had lead paint on it.

But unlike hunting and gathering cultures, we contemporary people have tons of leisure time. We don't search for food from dawn to dusk; we come home from work and have long hours free. Free for self actualization. Free for entertainment. Free for nitpicking the quality of our children's toys.

Don't get me wrong. We SHOULD have high standards for the safety of children's toys. There's no excuse for marketing a toy that's dangerous to its target audience. It's really just that the miracle of our inventive genius--and the commercial market--that is so driven to keep producing ever newer, ever more wonderful gadgets...that keep finding new ways to be dangerous.

With the toy buying season upon us, we should be careful consumers. Specifically, careful toy consumers--for those of us who will be buying for children. Even with safe toys, there's no substitute for supervision or...wait, what is that thing called, I know I've heard of it. Oh yeah. Parenting. There's no substitute for parenting.

Take a look at the consumer group "WATCH."

World Against Toys Causing Harm (Watch) is a Massachusetts charitable non-profit corporation founded by Edward M. Swartz, a nationally known trial lawyer and child safety consumer advocate. I know how often lawyers form consumer groups like this just to be able to draw a pool of clients within an unofficial "area of expertise" but the concept behind this group is a pretty good one. Anyway, this group has compiled a list of toys. I can't say that I agree with all of these items on the list, because some problems, such as Jack Sparrow's Spinning Dagger have more to do with age appropriateness than intrinsic lack of safety. Look at the list. Then judge for yourself.

That said...don't tell my kids, but, when I was little, we rode bikes without bicycle helmets. We skated without padding. We got "Mattel" thingmakers where you'd pour weird colorful goop into metal molds and then put the molds into hot little ovens to make flowers or creepy crawlies; we'd play with clackers and accidentally hit ourselves on the head; paint model sets that came with Toluene paint thinner and throw lethal lawn darts. Neighborhood boys horrified girls by shooting at crows with their pump action air rifles; and the light bulbs in our easy bake ovens actually got hot enough to burn us.

Are parents of today too careful? I don't think so. Our world gets less dangerous and more dangerous every day, and as long as we parents have the free time, we should spend it making certain sure that our children have room to grow in an environment that is as safe as we can make it.

I've seen the One Less commercial. The one for Gardasil. I guess you know it too, If you're in the US and have a television, you can't help having seen it. The one that talks about being one One Less

One less what? I wondered, until I finally sat down and made myself pay attention.

Then what struck me most when I actually heard this commercial was how indefinite it was.

It begins aggressively, with strong girls who have definite opinions. They are very certain they want to be One Less. (One less woman to battle cervical cancer.) Well, okay. No one WANTS to have cervical cancer.

But the commercial gets very indefinite when it starts talking about this miracle drug.

Gardasil. The commercial says "It is the only vaccine that MAY guard..(it doesn't say that it DOES guard, just that it may) ...

May what? eliminate the disease? No, nothing so solid. It MAY help protect. You see, it doesn't actually protect, eliminate or prevent. It just MIGHT help.

What might it protect from? It might help protect your daughters from the 4 types of hpv. Ok, that should be a good thing. And this is especially good because hpv causes 70% of cervical cancer. And then, the ad goes on to say, it might not fully protect everyone from 70%. I won't get started on talking about the side affects that are mentioned in the commercial. I'm more worried about the side affects that come afterwards for a drug that "might protect some girls against some of the causes" of cervical cancer.

And now we hear how some people have died after taking it.

Is this a drug that we should be requiring ALL girls to take?

I would understand if it were a vaccine that works across the board like some of the others. Like the vaccine against polio that actually DOES work to make everyone's (uncompromised) immune systems able to resist polio. But this is something else...a vaccine against a virus which might protect some girls against a percentage of some viruses that cause some cancer.

I really don't know how smart this is to require all girls to take this drug, especially when there's some interaction that has caused several deaths related to Gardasil test cases and it only protects a percentage of some girls against some of the virus that causes some of the cancer.

What if Gardasil causes some unknown thing down the road? The way that there already seems to be some unknown thing--some drug, or food, or additive, or who knows what?-that causes some children to develop autism?

Shouldn't we know more about what this drug is going to do to our precious daughters ten years down the road?

Girls have died from taking this drug. Girls have been found with Guillain-Barre Syndrome that showed up after vaccination. The highest incidence of GBS is when the drug was administered in conjunction with more than one type of vaccine - i.e., Gardasil with menactra, or other combinations.

Okay, statistically, the numbers sound like scare tactics. Three deaths out of how many? More importantly--since those deaths seem to have been related to pre-existing conditions like heart disease, what about girls who have undiagnosed heart disease? Is this drug going to kill off all girls with undiagnosed heart disease? Or was it an interaction with something they were taking? And how is this vaccine going to affect girls in ten years? Can the drug developer's scientific research guarantee that--for example--that a percentage won't develop Guillain-Barre Syndrome as the result of some interaction? Or a percentage bear autistic children as a result? or some other unknown consequence?

A note: Boys don't have cervixes but they get HPV too. Don't some of them deserve protection from some HPV also? If not, why not? This is a disease that is spread thru sexual contact. If this drug is safe enough for girls to take, why is it ok for boys to be carriers?

People. Let the scientists work on this one until it's ripe before we start requiring it across the board. Do we have to fall for a drug company's lobby to make their product mandatory?

I want to be one less.
One less parent feeding my daughter an incompletely researched drug in the hopes of finding a magic bullet.

At least leave the decision in my hands. Does everything have to be a government mandate?

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