The Brockovich Report

Take a look at 6697 reports of issues with the HPVR vaccine, familiarly known as Gardasil. Those are a lot of reports, especially as it is a known fact that not all people follow up with reporting their reactions.

Did you have a reaction from your Gardasil inoculation? If so, l want to know about it.

Now, bear in mind that these reactions include developing hives or a big red spot at the site of the vaccination. In fact, they include pregnancy, headache, dizziness, pain, fainting, shaking, loss of consciousness, pallor, fever, flu, dry eyes--and that is just on the first page. Database reports run the gamut. Ok, to be completely fair, the pregnancy was a "false pregnancy report" apparently caused by the vaccine. Dizziness fainting and pain are not unexpected for anyone with any kind of doctor phobia. (And I'd like to know what is NOT natural about having symptoms of dread about strange people in white coats poking you with sharp needles?)

But to get back to the topic--you can revisit the reports and find 103 events where HPV4 reactions are considered life-threatening. Life threatening reports are a whole other thing. There were some anaphylactic reactions that were life-threatening, and at least 5 deaths--though it isn't always clear from the report what caused some of those deaths.

But let's never mind all that.

Let's go back to the beginning of Gardasil. Let's go back to Dr. Diane Harper. If you aren't familiar with her, Harper is the Dartmouth Medical school doctor who helped develop Gardasil. If anyone is an expert on the vaccine, it is she. What does SHE think of how Gardasil is being marketed as a cancer preventative? She's not a happy camper.

Take at a couple of quotes from this FW Daily News article by CINDY BEVINGTON.
Not only does Harper say that it is silly for states to be mandating Gardasil for younger girls. She says, "Giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment." It isn't helpful and it might be harmful.

Furthermore, she says the same thing I have been saying all along.

"There also is not enough evidence gathered on side effects to know that safety is not an issue."

Shouldn't we be considering safety first? But, remember that Dr. Diane Harper is not a Marketing Whiz. She's just one of the scientists who created the vaccine which is effective against 4 of 20 strains of HPV. In her opinion, the vaccine is not for 9 year old girls. (Go on, read the article.)

Harper is also concerned about the adults. She goes on to say, "Also, the public needs to know that with vaccinated women and women who still get Pap smears (which test for abnormal cells that can lead to cancer), some of them will still get cervical cancer."

What? Did I hear that right? Merck has been telling us the vaccine is supposed to make us all "ONE LESS." You know Merck. Merck & Co., Inc. is a global research-driven pharmaceutical company that tells the world it is all about putting patients first. But if that is the case, why is this vaccine aimed at an age group not recommended by one of the vaccine's developers; and why is it acting as if it has found the preventative for cancer?

Maybe we need one less Pharmaceutical company. Or at least one less Marketing Department.

Chromium Six has reared its ugly head again. Now it has been found in Ireland, specifically at a former steel plant in Cork, Ireland. The plant has been closed since 2001 after twenty years in operation stockpiling masses of toxins. In 2003, the Irish Department of Environment took over responsibility for the property. Since then, they have been inventorying the site, which is now a toxic chemical dump. Not the healthiest job to do.

Here is something I have heard before, though it was someone other than the Minister for Environment John Gormley saying it:

"People will not be exposed to any health risk because of hazardous waste at Haulbowline in Cork." He says so because someone in his office says so, according to BBC news.

The statement was in reply to one of the people subcontracted to work on the site who found toxic levels of Chromium Six.

If it isn't dangerous, why did they stop work? Why close the door if you're denying the horses are out? But apparently someone has called a stop-work order. Lucky for those subcontractors and locals whose job it is to pick thru the half a million tons of hazardous materials buried at the dump site. I hope someone is heavily insured. Not that insurance, or lawsuits, or settlements help when people are doomed to die of cancer because their very environment is killing them.

We live in a world of such constant change that we are sometimes left ragged and overwhelmed along the sidelines in shell-shock. Alvin Toffler wrote about this in 1970, and termed the phenomenon "Future Shock." The rate of social change leaves us suffering with "shattering stress and disorientation."

But that was back in the Seventies. Somehow we have managed to bump along without all of us shattering and losing all of our sanity. I think that is because some things change so slowly they almost seem to stay the same. These things become for us bastions of stability, almost foundations for reality, in the same way the rising and setting of the sun establishes temporal parameters. This is day. This is night.

When a piece of that foundation is abruptly gone, we look up in disorientation from our rapid-fire day to day reality. It's like that credit card advertisement, where the people are humming along like happy little machines until someone doesn't pull out the correct plastic, then everything stops.

In a journalistic world where spin and buzz have more impact than fact, and members of the press deliberately obfuscate issues for their own respective agendas, Tim Russert was one of the few who had a great skill. He knew how to ask questions. He knew how to get to the story.

For seventeen years, Tim Russert has been the face of "Meet the Press." For that weekly public "hour," he spent many unseen hours in preparation behind the scenes. Americans know his face and name. He is one of those bastions in our daily lives, one of the bricks in the foundation of American life.

I watched with sadness the news of Tim Russert's heart attack.

What a legacy he left behind. How sadly ironic that he wrote from the heart about fathers (Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons, Big Russ and Me : Father and Son: Lessons of Life) and the timing of his death will forever after tie him to Father's Day.

How gracious and thoughtful he was even under duress.

They said on the news even though he did have a condition, he had recently passed a stress test (in April.) The unexpectedness of his death left me looking at heart conditions, at how much we all work and get stressed over things, and the importance of exercise, excellent diet and sleep.

It has been no time at all since my Mom died in my arms. Tim Russert's death tapped into my own wellspring of grief. I'm sure he reminds us all of those empty seats in our lives.

It's time to remember. It's time to do.
Time to remember just how short life really is.
Time to notice how much we get wrapped up in work.
Time to take good care of ourselves.
Time to enjoy every day.

We all walk in the shadow of death, so don't take anything for granted.

Enjoy your family, the earth and all that we have..

Because ultimately all we have is now.

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.

Don't forget about Gardasil if I don't talk about it every week. They won't talk about it in Australia, either. Hundreds of Australian girls have experienced paralysis, dizzy spells and seizures and more. Australian records are not to my knowledge made public as they are in the US.

Gardasil is a vaccine that claims to be partially effective against some strains of HPV, some of which may cause cancer. Look at all of that equivocation: partially effective against some strains which might...

Weigh that against the ad campaign about wanting to be one woman less who has cancer.
There's a huge leap between partially effective against some...especially when there's some indication that taking the vaccine may be related to Acute Demyelinating Encephalomyelitis. Don't believe it? Look up "Brittany bell" and Gardasil.

How did MERC push its way thru the FDA approval process and get put on the market before it had completely complied with U.S. protocols and procedures? We know at least one reason why: they were in a rush to beat a competitive European product before it hits the US. Market.

Before you jump in with all four feet defending this vaccine as a cancer preventative, please remember that drug companies are NOT all about protecting our daughters. They are all about selling products. The vaccine has not been fully tested. No one has been studying it long enough to know what the LONG TERM consequences are. They don't even know how long the vaccine is effective or how frequently it will require boosters. How can anyone be talking about requiring ALL our young girls to be vaccinated with such an unknown quantity? What about the side effects? What are they?

Before my daughter ingests or is exposed to any chemical, I want to know it has been fully tested and is judged completely effective as well as completely safe.

After 5758 documented complaints of adverse reactions and up to 8 DEATHS, I believe a safety check is warranted. Individuals with Lyme disease, for example, had especially adverse reactions; and there are a lot of undiagnosed cases of Lyne disease out there.

And frankly, even if it is safe, it is NOT effective. *"Protective efficacy of this vaccine against different types of human papillomavirus was very low and the protection may be because of sub-clinical infection with human papillomavirus or antigenically related viruses." Pendru Raghunath, Senior Research Fellow.

And why is it not approved for use in males? Males get HPV, even if they do not get cervical cancer. Is it possible that marketing it to boys would remind people that the vaccine is not really a cancer preventative but a partially effective measure against a sexually transmitted disease?

The National Vaccine Information Center issued a press release that Gardasil MERCK'S GARDASIL VACCINE NOT PROVEN SAFE FOR LITTLE GIRLS National Vaccine Information Center Criticizes _FDA for Fast Tracking Licensure. The issues include flawed science, marketing strategy, and a need to show apparent results in a race for research grants.

Shades of Orwell and Doublespeak.

Are those the drug companies claim to be helping today actually tomorrow's victims?

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.

Life is all about cycles. Open up any student biology book and it will show you animal life cycles, cell cycles, water cycles, ecosystem cycles and the like. It is all a balance between producers and consumers, and how energy flows through an ecosystem.

If you look at the big picture of our ecosystem, plants get their energy from the sun; herbivores get their energy from plants; carnivores get their energy from herbivores; and omnivores get their energy from plants and herbivores. It's pretty efficient. Most energy is recycled within our ecosystem, but there is some loss, mostly heat or kinetic. This in spite of that law in physics. The "law of conservation of energy" that states that the quantity of energy in a system is constant.

It seems that our scientists should be able to use that law, somehow, to help us find energy sources as all of this energy is constantly transitioning form one form to another to another to another.

We just have to find that balance, you know the one implied in that Disney Lion King song--Circle of Life. Not that the Circle of Life song goes into physics; but it promises "we find our place/ On the path unwinding/ In the Circle/ The Circle of Life."

For us, nature is the ultimate environmental continuum in our circle of life, one that is not overly destructive--especially as we human beings are conscious of our participation in the dynamics of life-cycles.

We just have to find our place in it.

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."

In history, they always talk about the pendulum swinging. First we go one way, then we swing back the other. Right now, we're still on the upswing. For years--forever maybe except for a little rebellious blip during the sixties--we have been a consumer society. Way back when our agrarian culture moved from the farms and toward the cities, the substance and spirit of being "successful" transmogrified. Forget actualization. Making it isn't really about developing who we are as much as it is about improving and increasing what we have.

I grew up in a house where if something broke, my father fixed it or had it fixed. If the television quit, we fixed it or did without. We didn't toss it out and run to the store to get a new one. No one of that generation did. Because products weren't built with planned obsolescence. They didn't have unibody plastic insides that couldn't be serviced; they had replaceable parts. They were intended to be archival--built to last. Things have changed. In a way, we are at the mercy of progress. Simply because robotic factories build fast in enormous quantities instead of slowly by hand--making our entire marketplace possible; and because technology changes so fast that we must toss out old devices to access the current thing; but also because we can only buy stuff that we are sold. And we are sold stuff that is expected to be tossed instead of repaired. Simply, products are made to be cheaper to buy than to fix.

I mentioned the buzzword last week: consumerism. Conspicuous consumerism. You know, keeping up with the Joneses. One upsmanship. Having the biggest house, the fastest car on the block. Our whole Horatio Alger rags-to-riches philosophy of life just wouldn't have the same oomph if we didn't get to show off the riches a little bit when we get to be a have instead of a have-not. Make that show off the riches alot.

We are all about shopping. I know because that's what the television tells me. And magazines. And the media.

Last week I was talking about this same thing. Shopping green is a good start--but in a sense, is it not an oxymoron? Because being green is not so much buying new stuff that happens to be organic and recyclable. It isn't so much about being a consumer. It's about being a "conserver." Remember conservation? As in people who repair what they have instead of replace it. As in conservation of resources. Recall the conservation movement: to protect plants, animals and habitats. Energy conservation: reducing energy consumption, and finding renewable resources.

How does all of this shopping we do fit in with the holistic philosophy of reduced consumption and smaller footprints?

The idea of conservation flies in the face of the construct our entire society, which hinges on consumers using up stuff that industry has to make more of. I don't want to put the cogs and wheels out of business; maybe the marketplace will keep chugging along until it finds the happy medium where new unbiodegradable pseudo-disposable-plastic-styrofoam-wasteful junk merchandise is replaced by high quality product that is intended to last. And of course, if industry will clean up after itself, or better yet, devise ways not to be destructive, then that's even better.

But still--buying green is a start; it is certainly better than the alternative. And I wonder is buying green the new gateway drug that will take us one day to a more balanced society? Only the swinging pendulum knows for sure.

Smell the freshly cut grass. It's the scent of green.

Hear each leaf whisper in the wind. It's the sound of green.

Feel the brush of the willow, the velvet of verdant moss under your bare feet. It's the touch of green.

I don't think it's an accident that green is the symbol and the name of the Green movement. It's the color signature of life. Instant recognition. The media person who coined the metaphor should have his name inscribed up there with the major media geniuses. What better to symbolize the environment and sustainability? And sustaining life--and a better quality of life--is what being green is all about.

The green movement is all about choice. Where we choose to live; how we choose to live. More importantly, it is a lifestyle philosophy. We Americans have that luxury that many other countries do not have: choice. After decades of conspicuous consumerism, how do we now choose to lessen our impact on the earth? The only way we can is to choose the "greener" options. And choose less. Waste less.

We can always choose to buy the item that is sustainable, like bamboo instead of Brazilian Rosewood, for example. Because bamboo grows fast and replaces itself, and Brazilian Rosewood is so rare they don't even import it any more. Or eating Wild Alaskan Salmon (who die when they spawn anyway) instead of slow growing Orange Roughy that can live to be 149 years old. Sometimes it is about buying less, or getting what is locally grown so it hasn't required significant transportation. But living green is not just about shopping.

It's about lifestyle choices--everything from riding public transportation to using organic produce to not using pesticides to creating a wildscape in your yard instead of a lawn to recycling instead of buying new. There's a deeper meaning beneath the action of choice. It is a philosophy of living life "naturally."

Instead of gossiping how some "green" movie star shows up in a gas guzzler, shouldn't we all be talking about groundwater contamination? Why aren't people pushing to get adequate funding for the EPA so that it isn't a failure? Where are the priorities? Without clean water there is no life. We can not live without it. It's time for all of us to make a lifestyle choice too: to write about something significant. Like clean water.

Being Green is not a trend. It's not a popular movement. It is an evolution. The philosophy not new. We've heard it at least three times. It's the philosophy of the Native Americans who lived lightly on the land. It's like the second coming of the hippies (or Sixties revenge if you prefer.) And now it's the science of "environmentalism." If it takes that triangulation to get the idea across that maybe we should waste not want not, then so be it. But whether it is couched in the terms of science, sixties or Native American mythology, the whole movement rises on a backbone of reverence for the earth, for the amazing biology that sustains us. It is amazing; and it is too frail for us to take for granted. We cannot afford for our children to drink water that gives them cancer. We cannot let the green movement fall to the wayside. We must choose Green while we have a choice.

Before it is too late.