Green Options

You’ve likely heard of Skin Deep, the cosmetic safety database which lists the toxicity of ingredients in personal care products.  But did you know there is now a similar database for food?

The city of Crestwood, IL is in hot water with the state government. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday claiming that not only did the village serve tainted water for more than 20 years, it knowingly lied to the EPA and residents repeatedly over the years.

One of the more blatant examples came from Crestwood’s own certified water operator. The Illinois EPA ordered the local well tested for toxins, and in a letter, Frank Scaccia said,

‘This sampling would not apply to our facility,’ because the town’s water came from Lake Michigan and not the well.

Officials repeated this lie numerous times over the years, and now Madigan is going after them. Officials face millions of dollars of fines if found guilty in the civil suit.

Crestwood officials violated the public’s trust and the laws designed to protect public health.

You may remember this story. A former Crestwood resident helped uncover the town’s water sins after two of her three children became ill with cancer.

Turns out, the water had been tainted with a highly toxic dry cleaning chemical. But officials fended off further scrutiny, says Madigan, by lying to authorities no fewer than 120 times over the years.

Vegetable emulsifying wax is widely used in a variety of skin care, hair care and cosmetic products as an emulsifier (keeps oil and water from separating) because it is easy to work with and relatively inexpensive.  Sounds harmless enough, right?  You may be surprised to find out that it is actually a chemical cocktail and not the natural ingredient the name implies.  Stephanie Greenwood of Bubble & Bee Organic did some research on this innocuous sounding ingredient and found that it is actually made up of Cetearyl Alcohol (a blend of cetyl and steareth alcohol), Polysorbate 60, PEG-150 Stearate and Steareth-20.  Not sounding quite so natural now.

In shocking news, the Canadian government has announced that two chemicals used in cosmetics are carcinogens that are severely harmful to human health. A further two chemicals found in lipstick and other personal care products have also been found to be highly toxic to the environment.

The two cancer-causing chemicals, isoprene and epichlorohydrin, have been added to the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist to prevent their future use in cosmetics. Health Canada is also proposing that manufacturers use best-available technology to control releases of isoprene.

The cosmetics chemicals posing a danger to the environment are the siloxanes D4 and D5, which are used as emollients to soften the skin and are found in most personal care products on the market in Canada and the United States.

Investigations at the University of Porto show that marinating beef in red wine or beer may reduce the levels of potentially cancer-promoting compounds in cooked meat.

Using beer or red wine marinades reduced the level of heterocyclic amines in pan fried beef by up to 88 per cent. Heterocyclic amines, formed during the browning of meat and fish, are reported to promote carcinogenesis in humans. So marinading possibly has the [...]

Some days I fall victim to the green noise syndrome; I’m so overloaded by the green options all around me I don’t know where to go. Bath and cleaning products are one place I always thought I had it right. If I buy the organic, I’m good to go. Or am I?

I just learned last week that in March, Seventh Generation, Method, and other companies that produced green cleaning products were under scrutiny by the Organic Consumers Association. When testing around a hundred “cosmetic, personal care and household cleaning formulas, [the Association] found that nearly 50% of them contained detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane, which is known to cause cancer in lab animals.” Method, Planet Ultra and Seventh Generation’s “natural” dish cleaning products were among those products that tested positive. All manufacturer’s who tested for 1,4 were asked to remove their “organic” and “natural” labels or they’d face a lawsuit. Just when I thought I was cleaning consciously, I have to go through another round of making change in my lifestyle.

We learned it in Kindergarten–”If you make a mess, CLEAN IT UP!”

Especially if that mess is the gasoline additive MTBE, a possible carcinogen that has leaked into our groundwater. It’s been around since 1979 (ironically, when I was in kindergarten) and is now banned in 23 states, and has not been used by oil companies since 2006.

For more on the 423 million dollar law suit requiring Big Oil to pay big money, check out this article in Grist–after you take a peek at my cartoon, of course…