As Organic and Natural As I Can Be!

Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme - Burt's Bees

FlamesofJune — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:39:05 -0800

burtsbees.com

Naturally Nourishing Milk & Honey Body Lotion - Burt's Bees

FlamesofJune — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:31:27 -0800

burtsbees.com

100% Pure Lengthening & Conditioning Mascara

FlamesofJune — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:29:40 -0800

qvc.com

Safe, natural cosmetics and bath product recommendations?

FlamesofJune — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:30:25 -0800

I've had a growing interest in switching over my current beauty products, to those that do not contain harmful chemicals. I figure that if I can find something that works well then why use something that is linked to cancer, hormones, etc?
Now and again I mull through the information at EWG's Skin Deep website, but so many of the brands that are "safe" are ones I have never heard of. I open to trying new things but I'd like to read some reviews or find some opinions before I go buying up all these things and find that I don't like the product.

Does anyone have a personal recommendation for a product (no parabens please!) or know of a website with natural product reviews?
Of the more trickier things I'd like to find are:
deodorant
mascara
eyeliner
face lotion

I've compiled a list of mascaras but I haven't picked one to try yet:

Mascaras- paraben free

FlamesofJune — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:55:44 -0800

List of mascaras I've found that don't contain parabens, and often many other unwanted chemicals. Now I'd like to know which ones work best!

A new effort to help shoppers stay healthy: Country of Origin Labeling

tdsollog — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:32:57 -0700

A new effort to help shoppers stay healthy
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/113/story/277025.html
Published: Monday, October 06, 2008

Press and wire reports
WASHINGTON - No more wondering where your hamburger came from, or where your lettuce and tomatoes were grown: Shoppers can now see lots more foods labeled with the country of origin.

It's a law years in the making but timely, as China's milk scandal and the recent salmonella-tainted Mexican peppers prompt growing concern over the safety of imported foods.

Still, hold the import-bashing: Numerous outbreaks in recent years have come from U.S.-produced foods, like spinach grown in California.

Until now, shoppers have had little clue where many everyday foods - meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, certain nuts - originate. That's what the so-called COOL law, for country-of-origin labeling, changes.

Those who want to buy local - or who prefer, say, Chilean grapes and New Zealand lamb - can more easily exercise their purchasing power. Those worried about lax safety regulations in certain countries can avoid those imports. And the next time tomatoes are suspected of food poisoning, consumers may be able to tell investigators they bought only ones grown in a certain region, speeding the probe.
"We do see it as an important step on the road to a more comprehensive system for tracing food items" during outbreaks, says Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

In southern New Jersey, major supermarkets like ShopRite and Acme are making sure they comply.

Employees have been trained on what the labels mean, how to make sure signs are labeled and how to handle any questions from customers.

"It's clearly an opportunity for the customer to have more confidence in what they're buying," said Dan Croce, director of operations for Acme Markets.

Though many customers may not be immediately aware of the changes, some heard about the new labeling through various news outlets, and most people think it's a useful resource for shoppers.

"I think the more consumers know, the better off they are," said Pauline Ludwig, 46, of Linwood.

While it won't change the food that supermarkets carry, it may change buying habits in their customers.

"You hear a lot of things, not all of them good, from foreign countries," said Pat Broome, 58, of Linwood.

The changes are numerous, but despite widespread labeling in supermarkets, there are still some products that might not carry these new labels.

"There's some things that may seem unclear to the consumers' eyes," said Karen Meleta, a spokeswoman for ShopRite.

How? There are bunches of exceptions. Fresh strawberries get a label but not chocolate-covered ones. Raw peanuts? Label. Roasted ones? No label. Those popular pre-washed salad mixes? Sometimes.

Even with the inconsistency, the goal is expanded consumer confidence. While supermarkets know how to handle food re-calls and bacteria scares, more labeling puts more power in the hands of the shopper.

What does the new law require?

That retailers notify customers of the country of origin - including the U.S. - of raw beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, goat, wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish, fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables, peanuts, pecans, macadamia nuts and whole ginseng. (The aim was big agricultural commodities; ginseng was added for fear of imports masquerading as U.S.-grown.)

Where will I see the country of origin?

Anywhere it fits. The rubber band around asparagus; the plastic wrap on ground beef; the little sticker that says "Gala" on an apple. If a food isn't normally sold in any packaging - such as a bin of fresh green beans or mushrooms - then the store must post a sign.

Aren't many foods already labeled?

Some fresh produce already uses origin labeling as advertising. "Fresh from Florida" or "Jersey Grown" or "Vidalia Onion" tags don't have to be changed under the new rules; the shopper should realize they're all U.S. products.

The COOL law mandating such labels first passed in 2002, but lobbying by grocery stores and large meatpackers led Congress to delay the U.S. Department of Agriculture from implementing it. Seafood labeling was phased in first, in 2005 - a key change given recurring safety problems with fish and shellfish from certain countries, including China.

What's the biggest exception?

The labels aren't for processed foods, meaning no label if the food is cooked, or an ingredient in a bigger dish or otherwise substantially changed. So plain raw chicken must be labeled but not breaded chicken tenders. Raw pork chops are labeled, but not ham or bacon. Fresh or frozen peas get labeled, but not canned peas. Raw shelled pecans, but not a trail mix.

What if the foods are merely mixed together?

They're exempt, too. So cantaloupe slices from Guatemala get labeled. Mix in some Florida watermelon chunks, and no label. Frozen peas, labeled. Frozen peas and carrots, no label. As for bagged salads, USDA considers iceberg and Romaine to be just lettuce, so that bag gets a label. Add some radicchio? No label.

Must all stores comply?

No. Meat and seafood sold in butcher shops and fish markets are exempt.

What if companies buy food from various places - beef from both U.S. and Mexican ranchers, for instance?

That's a bone of contention between large U.S. meat producers and smaller ranchers that produce exclusively U.S. animals. Tyson Fresh Meats, for instance, says it's too expensive to separate which of its cattle came from which country. So in a July letter to customers, Tyson said it would label all beef "Product of the U.S., Canada or Mexico." The National Farmers Union is protesting; USDA is considering the complaints.

Aren't country labels on some processed foods?

Yes, tariff regulations have long required that a food put into consumer-ready packaging abroad be labeled as an import; that doesn't apply to bulk ingredients.

When does the change take effect?

The law went into effect on Oct. 1, although USDA won't begin fining laggards until spring. Violations can bring a $1,000 penalty.

New safety study: Mobile phone use 'raises children's risk of brain cancer fivefold'

tdsollog — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:18:14 -0700

(My personal commnent.... my 12-year-old son wants a cell phone, and I have not given him one yet. Now, I have an extra reason to say "No!!!!")

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Mobile phone use 'raises children's risk of brain cancer fivefold'

Alarming new research from Sweden on the effects of radiation raises fears that today's youngsters face an epidemic of the disease in later life

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 21 September 2008

Children and teenagers are five times more likely to get brain cancer if they use mobile phones, startling new research indicates.

The study, experts say, raises fears that today's young people may suffer an "epidemic" of the disease in later life. At least nine out of 10 British 16-year-olds have their own handset, as do more than 40 per cent of primary schoolchildren.

Yet investigating dangers to the young has been omitted from a massive £3.1m British investigation of the risks of cancer from using mobile phones, launched this year, even though the official Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) Programme – which is conducting it – admits that the issue is of the "highest priority".

Despite recommendations of an official report that the use of mobiles by children should be "minimised", the Government has done almost nothing to discourage it.

Last week the European Parliament voted by 522 to 16 to urge ministers across Europe to bring in stricter limits for exposure to radiation from mobile and cordless phones, Wi-fi and other devices, partly because children are especially vulnerable to them. They are more at risk because their brains and nervous systems are still developing and because – since their heads are smaller and their skulls are thinner – the radiation penetrates deeper into their brains.

The Swedish research was reported this month at the first international conference on mobile phones and health.

It sprung from a further analysis of data from one of the biggest studies carried out into the risk that the radiation causes cancer, headed by Professor Lennart Hardell of the University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden. Professor Hardell told the conference – held at the Royal Society by the Radiation Research Trust – that "people who started mobile phone use before the age of 20" had more than five-fold increase in glioma", a cancer of the glial cells that support the central nervous system. The extra risk to young people of contracting the disease from using the cordless phone found in many homes was almost as great, at more than four times higher.

Those who started using mobiles young, he added, were also five times more likely to get acoustic neuromas, benign but often disabling tumours of the auditory nerve, which usually cause deafness.

By contrast, people who were in their twenties before using handsets were only 50 per cent more likely to contract gliomas and just twice as likely to get acoustic neuromas.

Professor Hardell told the IoS: "This is a warning sign. It is very worrying. We should be taking precautions. " He believes that children under 12 should not use mobiles except in emergencies and that teenagers should use hands-free devices or headsets and concentrate on texting. At 20 the danger diminishes because then the brain is fully developed. Indeed, he admits, the hazard to children and teenagers may be greater even than his results suggest, because the results of his study do not show the effects of their using the phones for many years. Most cancers take decades to develop, longer than mobile phones have been on the market.

The research has shown that adults who have used the handsets for more than 10 years are much more likely to get gliomas and acoustic neuromas, but he said that there was not enough data to show how such relatively long-term use would increase the risk for those who had started young.

He wants more research to be done, but the risks to children will not be studied in the MTHR study, which will follow 90,000 people in Britain. Professor David Coggon, the chairman of the programmes management committee, said they had not been included because other research was being done on young people by a study at Sweden's Kariolinska Institute.

He said: "It looks frightening to see a five-fold increase in cancer among people who started use in childhood," but he said he "would be extremely surprised" if the risk was shown to be so high once all the evidence was in.

But David Carpenter, dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of NewYork – who also attended the conference – said: "Children are spending significant time on mobile phones. We may be facing a public health crisis in an epidemic of brain cancers as a result of mobile phone use."

In 2000 and 2005, two official inquiries under Sir William Stewart, a former government chief scientist, recommended the use of mobile phones by children should be "discouraged" and "minimised".

But almost nothing has been done, and their use by the young has more than doubled since the turn of the millennium.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mobile-phone-use-raises-childr...

A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss

tdsollog — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:54:24 -0700

A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss
By KIM SEVERSON, NY Times
Published: July 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/dining/22local.html?th&emc=th

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.

Call them the lazy locavores - city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.

Even couples planning a wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York City can jump on the local food train. For as little as $72 a person, they can offer guests a “100-mile menu” of food from the caterer’s farm and neighboring fields in upstate New York.

“The highest form of luxury is now growing it yourself or paying other people to grow it for you,” said Corby Kummer, the food columnist and book author. “This has become fashion.”

Locally grown food, even fully cooked meals, can be delivered to your door. A share in a cow raised in a nearby field can be brought to you, ready for the freezer - a phenomenon dubbed cow pooling. There is pork pooling as well. At Sugar Mountain Farm in Vermont, the demand for a half or whole rare-breed pig is so great that people will not be seeing pork until the late fall.

Although a completely local diet is out of reach for even the most dedicated, the shift toward it is being driven by the increasingly popular view that fast food is the enemy and that local food tastes better. Depending on the season, local produce can cost an additional $1 a pound or more. But long-distance food, with its attendant petroleum consumption and cheap wages, is harming the planet and does nothing to help build communities, locavores believe.

As a result of interest in local food and rising grocery bills, backyard gardens have been enjoying a renaissance across the country, but what might be called the remote-control backyard garden - no planting, no weeding, no dirt under the fingernails - is a twist. “They want to have a garden, they don’t want to garden,” said the cookbook author Deborah Madison, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

Her neighbor Chase Ault, a business consultant, recently had a vegetable garden installed with a customized set of plants and a regular service agreement. “I am working 24-7 these days, but I wanted to have something growing in front of me,” Ms. Ault said.

Like organic food, which corporate manufacturers embraced in the 1990s, before it, local food is quickly moving into the mainstream. Last year, the New Oxford American Dictionary picked locavore as its word of the year. A National Restaurant Association survey this year of more than 1,200 chefs, many of whom work for chain restaurants or large food companies, found locally grown produce to be the second-hottest American food trend, just behind bite-size desserts.

For a growing number of diners, a food’s provenance is more important than its brand name, said Michelle Barry, who studies American eating patterns for the Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash. As a result, grocery stores are looking to repackage products like milk and cheese to play up any local angle.

That will be a boon to people who find that shortcuts are necessary if they wish to eat locally. “If you live on East 80th 14 floors up and all you have is a potted plant, it’s tough,” said Lynne Rossetto Kasper, the host of the radio show “The Splendid Table,” who recruited 15 listeners for a study on the subject. Researchers will record their struggles to make 80 percent of their meals from organic or local sources. Spices are the only exemption.

Lazy locavores would never go to such extremes. Rather, they might simply sign up with the FruitGuys. The company, which has offices in San Francisco and Philadelphia, will deliver boxes of local, sustainably raised or organic fruit right to the cubicle.

In the mood for a meal that reeks of community but does not necessitate a communal activity? Three Stone Hearth in Berkeley, Calif., which describes itself as a community supported kitchen, offers its customers the opportunity to make friends while making food from local, sustainable farms, but the worker-owned company also offers online shopping for people who do not have the time to pick up orders or participate in educational activities.

Customers 20 miles away in the affluent community of Mill Valley, for example, can pay $15 to have jars filled with Andalusian stew, made with pasture-raised pork, delivered to their door. The jars, of course, are returnable.

“It’s a very savvy crowd that understands how all the pieces of sustainable farming and nutrition fit together,” said Larry Wisch, one of five worker-owners at Three Stone Hearth. “But they don’t want the headaches of getting here.”

Or you could just have your private chef handle all your local food needs. At their Hamptons summer house, John and Lorna Brett Howard want to eat almost exclusively local, which means that in place of one trip to the grocery store, their chef, Michael Welch, makes several trips to farm stands and the fishmonger.

“What I’m seeing with my clients is not the trendiness or the politics,” Mr. Welch said. “They are looking only at taste.”

Mrs. Howard said she ate local vegetables growing up in northern Michigan and Chicago. But her husband, a private equity fund manager, ate a lot of expensive imported food with little thought about where it came from. But all that has changed.

“It’s like the first time you start drinking good red wine and you realize what you were drinking was so bad you can’t go back to it,” Mrs. Howard said. “It’s that same way with vegetables.”

The author Barbara Kingsolver, whose book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” was a best seller last year, did not have the lazy locavore in mind when she wrote about the implications of making her family spend a year eating local. But she celebrates the trend.

“As a person of rural origin who has lived much of my life in rural places,” she said, “I can’t tell you how joyful it makes me to hear that it’s trendy for people in Manhattan to own a part of a cow.”

Mays Landing woman gets 'Green funeral' in Estell Manor, New Jersey

tdsollog — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:25:37 -0700

I saw this article below, and I have given some thought about this. My grandfather was a funeral director before he retired, and I am concerned about "green issues", so this struck me. Personally, I want to be cremated...

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Mays Landing woman gets 'Green funeral' in Estell Manor
By ERIC SCOTT CAMPBELL Staff Writer, 609-272-7227
Published: Thursday, July 17, 2008
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/185/story/207357.html

ESTELL MANOR - No polish, no preservation, no speeches. It's no surprise Mildred Michel, lover of nature and simplicity, would want a "green burial" to commit her remains to the earth.
So her family gathered briefly Wednesday morning around a bare pine box in a corner plot of Atlantic County Veterans Cemetery at the Atlantic County Park in Estell Manor. Michel, 80, of Mays Landing, died Monday, and per her wishes, the funeral home had not embalmed her or placed her in an ornate and tightly sealed casket.

"We had talked about that these last few weeks. She was always a nature person," said Charles Michel, Mildred's son, after the funeral. "She didn't like to see futility and waste in things."

The green burial has emerged in recent years as a popular choice for those who wonder whether preservatives associated with bodies and caskets pollute.

The greenness of Michel's arrangements was dulled by a touch of gray; like most New Jersey graveyards, the veterans cemetery requires encasing a casket in a concrete vault. Ease of grounds maintenance motivates the policy - without a vault, soil sinks as the casket degrades - and despite requests from the family and the funeral home, no exception could be made.

Still, the veterans cemetery was the place for Mildred Michel. Her husband, who shares his son's name, is an Army veteran of World War II's Normandy invasion. When the hearse arrived, three generations of Michel men carried the casket to the plot. One family member read Psalm 23, then everyone laid a flower on the casket before it descended.

More important to the mother of three and grandmother of seven than environmental factors was that the burial arrangements suit her brood.

"She wanted a simple funeral with just family. She always hated open-casket funerals," considering them uncomfortable for children, Michel's son said.

Jim Dimiceli of Atwood Peterson O'Brien Funeral Home in Egg Harbor City provided the family some low-key direction for the brief ceremony. It was the first green burial for the Egg Harbor City funeral home since it began offering the option in January.

"It seemed like the way to go," Dimiceli said of the new policy. Customers who did not want an embalmment "wanted an alternative to cremation." The business has prearranged two more green burials.

The cost is "significantly cheaper" than a conventional funeral, Dimiceli said.

Though the younger Charles Michel was careful to say he did not think badly of those who adhere to tradition, he said of his parents, "They would rather see the money be spent on a park bench."

Both Charles Michels have decided on low-impact burials for themselves. Michel's husband wants to be cremated, then buried in his wife's plot, his son said.

On this morning, the rest of the wide, grassy cemetery was empty, save for a deer galloping a hundred yards away. The family seemed eager to leave the heat and stillness to remember Mildred Michel in a practical setting she'd prefer - however conscientious the burial, a grave site does not host lively conversation as well as a home does.

E-mail Eric Scott Campbell: ECampbell@pressofac.com

Energy Efficiency Initiative Launched by New York State

supermommie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:39:46 -0700

times square

If I ever have to give a quip on what’s the most effective way to solve our collective energy problems, I often answer with “We have to do more with less, and doing with less, period.” It may not be the flashy high tech answer people seem to want to hear but in my opinion seems to be the most sound way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and increase the ability of renewable energy to have an impact.

A new announcement today by the State of New York Public Service Commission shows that they too have gotten this message. The Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (EEPS) is an energy efficiency program which hopes to reduce energy usage by 15% of projected levels by 2015. It is expected that New York’s energy usage will be 11% higher than current levels by that time.

Short-term costs to consumers yield long-term savings
The program requires utilities to begin collecting additional System Benefits Charges (currently 30-90 cents per month) from consumers from October 2008, a total of $172 million annually, which will be used to fund energy efficiency programs. It is hoped that when fully funded that the program will bring $4 billion in benefits to consumers through these programs and the jobs creating in implementing them. Consumers will see the benefits by 2011, when electric bills are expected to be 2.1-4.1% lower.

In its press release, the Commission emphasized reducing demand (especially peak demand) as critical for this program to be effective. Doing more with less and doing with less.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/energy-efficiency-initiative-ny....