FTC changes guides on term 'eco-friendly'

NEW YORK - It's an inconvenient truth: Many of the environmental claims in advertisements and packaging are more about raking in the green than being green.

Aiming to clear up confusion for consumers about what various terms mean, the Federal Trade Commission has revised guidelines for businesses that make claims about so-called "eco-friendly" products.

The proposed new version of the agency's Green Guides was released Wednesday, with recommendations for when to use words like "degradable" and "carbon offset," in advertisements and packaging, and warnings about using certifications and seals of approval that send misleading messages.

Regardless of changes to definition, Aqua Star International products remain "eco-friendly" under any definition of the term.

1 in 5 deaths in Bangladesh linked to arsenic in drinking water

This ten year study, one of the first of its kind regarding long term, low level exposure to known carcinogens ingested via drinking water, lends validity to the theory that even low levels of toxins in our systems present serious long term consequences.

clipped from www.dnaindia.com 1 in 5 deaths in Bangladesh linked to arsenic in drinking water London: Exposure to arsenic in drinking water - even at low levels - increases the risk of death from any cause, suggests a new study conducted on Bangladeshis. Arsenic is known to be a potent carcinogen and toxic to organs such as the liver, skin, kidney and the cardiovascular system. In a new study of 12,000 Bangladeshis, more than 20% of deaths were attributable to arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water. The large 10-year study is the first to prospectively measure the relationship between individual exposure to arsenic and its associated mortality risk, the authors said. The Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS) was led by Habibul Ahsan, MD, MMedSc, Director of the Center for Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention at the University of Chicago Medical Center. For the 25% of people exposed to the highest levels of arsenic, mortality risk increased by nearly 70%, the study determined.

In The CDC We Trust?

If the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, a body whose soul reason for being, is to assess and inform the public about health threats can't be trusted to "tell it like it is"; what is John Q. Public to do?

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Sometimes Don Quixote beats the windmill. It happened for Marc Edwards, a lean, intense Virginia Tech environmental engineering professor. Drawing on what he called his own "world-class stubbornness," he mounted a six-year campaign that succeeded last week in forcing the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to admit that it had misled the public about the risk of lead in the District's drinking water. The CDC, which is the nation's principal public health agency, made the confession in a "Notice to Readers" published in an official weekly bulletin Friday. It came a day after a scathing House subcommittee report said the agency knowingly used flawed and incomplete data when it assured D.C. residents in 2004 that their health hadn't been hurt by spikes in lead in the drinking water.

Interesting National Geographic Illustration

A graphic portrayal of the types of pharmaceuticals entering our water sheds and therefore our aquatic species. While not affecting humans in their current concentrations, scientists do not know what the long term hazards may be regarding the multitude of possible combinations of these drugs or how they will alter the food chain.

clipped from ngm.nationalgeographic.com

Cities Sue Manufacturer of Weed-Killer Found in Tap Water

Beyond the excerpts below, what's interesting about the article are the quotes from the manufacturer's representative. In a cavalier tone, he states that because the EPA years ago said there was no data to support atrizine being harmful to humans, no further testing is necessary. So in light of recent scientific studies suggesting there may be more to be learned about the effects of exposure, especially via drinking water, Syngenta would rather just sweep it all under the rug.

Perhaps this organized citizen action will have an impact on their corporate nonchalance.

clipped from huffpostfund.org A coalition of communities in six Midwestern states filed a federal lawsuit Monday seeking to force the manufacturer of a widely-used herbicide to pay for its removal from drinking water. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois by 16 cities in Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and Iowa.  The communities allege that Swiss corporation Syngenta AG and its Delaware counterpart Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc. reaped billions of dollars from the sale of atrazine while local taxpayers were left with the financial burden of filtering the chemical from drinking water. Atrazine has long been a controversial product. The European Union in 2004 banned its use, saying there was not enough information to prove its safety. The EPA recently  announced that it would be re-evaluating the herbicide’s ability to cause cancer and birth defects, as well as its potential to disrupt the hormone and reproductive systems of humans and amphibians.

Drinking Water and Herbicides; The Results Could FABULOUS

This recently published study by researchers at the U of CA - Berkley, joins expert testimony given on 2/25/10 before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment by Linda Birnbaum; Director, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, concerning the seeming "cause and effect" between chemical and pharmaceutical contaminants and gender development.

clipped from www.usatoday.com An herbicide that contaminates the tap water consumed by millions of Americans has been found to produce gender-bending effects in male frogs, "chemically castrating" some and turning others into females, a study shows. Frogs in the experiment were exposed to amounts of the weedkiller atrazine that are comparable to the levels allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency, says lead researcher Tyrone Hayes of the University of California-Berkeley. The study was released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In Hayes' earlier studies, atrazine caused male frogs to begin growing eggs in their testes. In this experiment, 10% of the males exposed to atrazine — one of the most commonly used herbicide in the world — actually changed sex; some were able to breed and lay eggs. Nearly all of the other males had low testosterone and sperm levels, which made them unable to reproduce, Hayes says.

New ASI Company Video For Distributor Use

The Latest Research On Arsenic In Drinking Water

So Why Is Our Nation Fat?

Why a post about high fructose corn sweeteners on a blog about water? Because drinking water and your ever present quest to quench your thirst competes with a multitude of flavored beverages containing ...guess what?

This lengthy article gives a fascinating portrayal of the political might and public relations clout behind the industries whose self serving objectives have no interest in steering the average citizen toward healthier food and beverage choices.

The analogy the author makes to the tobacco controversies of a generation ago are spot on.

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com "Fructose has nothing to do with obesity" is looking like the "cigarettes don't cause cancer" debate for the 21st Century. Battle lines have been drawn; the fighting has started; the idea of a sugar tax has been getting more and more attention (in CA, NY, MA, MS, among others); and now that the First Lady has made obesity a national issue (calling out high-fructose corn syrup [HFCS] by name), the fighting will only get more intense. Step Four: AstroTurf The Beverage folks are spearheading an effort called Americans Against Food Taxes, at the charmingly named URL "nofoodtaxes.com." According to the group's profile on the site: "A coalition of concerned citizens." Doesn't that sound so ... grassrootsy? And if that's not enough, check out these background images lifted from the site: Not a fat kid in the bunch. All beautiful white teeth. Great skin. Presumably they guzzle soda all day, and still they all look like the pretty, carefree, all-American teenager we all want to be.

From Source to Tap - How Lead Gets Consumed

Put this into the category of the "educated consumer". Not offered up as a scare tactic by an interest group, this rather long article evenhandedly cites the ways lead exposure via drinking water can be vastly different that what is reported from annual municipal water reports.

clipped from ehp03.niehs.nih.gov Exposure on Tap: Drinking Water as an Overlooked Source of Lead Unlike most water contaminants, lead gets into water after it leaves a water treatment plant. Often this contamination is the result of water treatment changes meant to improve water quality that end up altering the water chemistry, destabilizing lead-bearing mineral scales that coat service lines and corroding lead solder, pipes, faucets, and fixtures. “Lead is a ‘close-to-home’ contaminant,” says Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “That makes it very difficult to regulate and monitor.” “EPA as the regulator of lead in tap water and CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] with its concern for preventing lead poisoning in children should be working together to get on top of this problem,” says Edwards. “But in my experience this is not occurring to the extent it should.”

Why Is President's Proposed Budget So Water Logged?

To all those touting the tap, here's a simple question. If our water quality is so good, why does this president and administration feel the need to devote such a significant portion of the 2011 budget to its improvement?

clipped from www.awwa.org Obama seeks $3.3 billion for SRFs President Obama’s 2011 budget request seeks $3.3 billion for USEPA’s Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) and $1.3 billion – a 14 percent increase from 2010 and the highest level ever – to  help states and tribes protect their air, water, and land. As submitted to Congress, the budget request would also provide $274 million – a $45 million increase – for state water pollution control grants. Overall, the Obama Administration seeks a record $10 billion for USEPA even as it imposes a three-year freeze on non-security discretionary funding.

Soda Fountain Machines Spew Bacteria Too

While this may be a revelation to many at Aqua Star International this is no surprise.

In a scientific study conducted by microbiologists from the University of Arizona several years ago, researchers collected and tested used filters from our retail water vending machines as a means of duplicating municipal water quality from the tap water recipient's perspective to see how it matched up to water quality reported from the processing/distribution points.

Their findings? Exactly the same as the researchers cited in this article.

clipped from www.nbcwashington.com The study, published in the International Journal of Food Microbiology, looked at "microbial populations" in soda dispensed from 30 beverage fountain machines (both self-service and staff-operated) in restaurants and cafeterias and found coliform bacteria in nearly half of the samples, plus other “opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms” (translation: icky stuff), according to the Smithsonian Magazine's blog.