More Focus on China – Pesticides and Food Safety

Byoliveridley

I begin to wonder how much of this was not known previously, and is coming out now, pushed by US domestic food interests who can suddenly become a little more competitive.

Reuters AlertNet – Pesticides next frontier in China food safety

China’s farmers overuse pesticides, skip protective clothing and have at their fingertips an array of banned and counterfeit products, raising another area of concern in the country’s fragile food chain. Spraying chemicals on crops improperly or using products that may be fake or banned risks the health of China’s hundreds of millions of farmers and could lead to unsafe levels of residues in fruits and vegetables, experts say. “The government has to stop banned or illegal pesticides being available in the market,” said Angus Lam, a Greenpeace Campaign Manager for Food and Agriculture based in the southern city of Guangzhou. China banned five high toxicity pesticides as of Jan. 1, but Lam said old stock was still in the market, in the hands of traders, retailers and farmers themselves. The government pledged last week to step up inspections in its food industry, saying checks on fertilisers and pesticides would be one of the priority areas.

China is not alone in this problem. Pesticides get overused in the US as well. But it’s as if all of a sudden, the mainstream press is waking up to the reality that is China. It is a developing country with high levels of growth in manufacturing, and a burgeoning middle class. But government regulation mechanisms have a long way to go to catch up.

The US surely knows this, and needed to have a more stringent testing regime with food imports from China. But the FDA was not given the mandate or the money. It is very easy to blame the FDA here. The fact of the matter is that any agency is only as good as the money and mandate it’s given. The political will to take a good look at where your food comes from, and how to ensure its safety needs to come first.

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Wow, Conventional Milk makes Twins!

Byoliveridley

44m.jpgHoly tentacular twins, Batman! This is crazy news, the first study linking the incidence of twins with environmental factors. The culprit is growth hormone fed to cows to increase milk production. According to this Wikipedia article, a third of all dairy cattle use Monsanto’s rBGH (or rBST) brand Posilac®, so obviously, use is widespread.

FEED – July 2006 (from the Union of Concerned Scientists)

1. Engineered hormone in milk may be linked to twinning. A recent study found that women who consumed dairy products were five times more likely to give birth to twins than vegan women. The study suggested that the use of engineered bovine growth hormone/bovine somatotropin (BGH/BST) to boost milk production in dairy cows may be related to the higher level of twinning. BGH is known to increase twinning in dairy cows. In addition, the rate of human twinning is twice as high in the United States, where BGH is used, as in Britain, where BGH is banned. BGH affects twinning rate by increasing insulin-like growth factor (IGF), a protein produced in the milk of both animals and humans, that promotes ovulation and may help early-stage embryos survive. A separate study found that levels of IGF were 13 percent lower in vegan women than in women who consumed dairy products. Read a press release about the study, which was published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine.

If true, no woman should ever drink “conventional” milk (non-organic, non rGBH free, etc). Twins are fun, I love my twin nieces very much, but they are much more difficult to carry and deliver, and there are more complications.

Scary, but I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg as far as environmental effects on childbirth are concerned.

EPA not conducting Environmental Justice Reviews

Byoliveridley

The Environmental Justice movement was started to deal with disparities in the treatment of environmental issues that could be traced back to race/class. It’s disheartening to know that the EPA, which has a mandate to specifically deal with EJ issues has dropped the ball. The next time a landfill/hog factory gets sited near an economically depressed neighborhood, you know why.

Environmental agency inspector criticizes agency’s lack of fairness on reviews – iht,america,US Environmental Justice – Americas – International Herald Tribune

The Environmental Protection Agency is not conducting required reviews to ensure that low-income and minority neighborhoods get the same environmental protection as other communities. The report by the EPA’s inspector general, made public Tuesday, said senior EPA officials have not required regional offices and department heads to conduct environmental justice reviews despite a requirement for such reviews dating from 1994. A survey by the IG’s office found 60 percent of the regional offices and program departments that responded had not conducted the reviews, and 87 percent said they had not been asked to do them, according to the report. Such reviews were required by an executive order that former President Bill Clinton issued in 1994. It was reaffirmed by EPA administrators in 2001 and again last year, said the report by acting Inspector General Bill Roderick. Until adequate reviews are conducted, “The agency cannot determine whether its programs cause disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority and low-income populations,” the report said.

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The US guts Environmental Assessments

Byoliveridley

Environmental assessment in the U.S. was enshrined in law for the first time when President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970. Since then, however, the U.S. has slowly cast aside its role as a leader in the field of environmental assessments, as successive administrations have chipped away at the scope of NEPA, experts say. The cuts have reached a crescendo with President George W. Bush’s administration, and proponents of these assessments worry that pressure to develop natural resources with little oversight of the consequences will lead to an unsustainable future for the U.S.

ES&T Online News: Environmental Magna Carta under siege

Well, perfect. Now you can claim very factually that “you don’t know of any harmful effects of your actions”.

The fact is, the attack on NEPA has come, chronically, from a relatively small group of commodity users—timber companies, highway builders—who simply oppose having the public and environmentalists get in the way of their plans and programs,” Houck maintains.

Can’t say it any better. Information is very important and one thing this Bush administration has been very successful at is reducing the flow of information.

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New York Odor from the Marshes?

Byoliveridley

Turns out that the fugitive emission of nasty sulfur gases in New York that had Fox News suspecting terrorism for a while may have come from more mundane sources.

Sniffing Out the Truth – New York Times

But we haven’t, and we think we can support one of the theories of the odor’s source that has been suggested. Based on our familiarity with the local aquatic environment and regional meteorology, we believe that the odor was caused by gases released from saltwater marshes in the metropolitan area. Let us explain. The intertidal sediments in this region are home to micro-organisms that produce sulfur compounds. When these sediments interact with saltwater that contains low levels of oxygen, gases are released. These gases include hydrogen sulfide and a variety of thiols (like the gas additives thiophane and mercaptan) — all of which have an odor similar to rotten eggs.

First, there was a low tide in the coastal marshes from roughly 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. Second, we experienced winds from the south and an atmospheric inversion, which created something like a low-lying bubble of air.

The result of the two factors? The low tide exposed the marsh sediments and hastened the release of sulfur gases into the atmosphere. The inversion trapped the odor close to the groundand the southerly winds then carried it to Lower Manhattan, where it remained until atmospheric conditions changed.

Damn, this is CSI NY (Atmospheric Chemistry and Modeling Division), good stuff!

Our explanation highlights the consequences of excessive nutrient loading and the resulting low oxygen levels in local coastal waters. (By nutrient loading, we mean exposing water to sewage, fertilizer, chemicals or other pollutants.) Of course, these consequences go beyond odor — they kill marsh vegetation, degrade the wider marine habitat and make it unsafe to swim or fish.

Indeed, so the cause, while natural is not really natural, it is from untreated sewage. New Yorkers, stop blaming New Jersey! Look at yourself!

ED is not just Erectile Dysfunction.

Byoliveridley

The grist features a must read post on endocrine disruption (ED). Great first paragraph, BTW, but read the whole thing. Before Viagra, had any one other than doctors and the unfortunate masses suffering such dysfunction ever heard of erectile dysfunction? The effects of direct to consumer drug marketing of diseases and disorders is the subject of other posts, but this one’s about endocrine disruptors!

Side note, Erectile dysfunction has 2.3 million hits in google, Endocrine Disruption (or disruptors) has 1.7 million, so, at least google is catching up!

The ED you should really be worried about: Endocrine disruption | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

What a crazy world we live in when almost everyone knows what the acronym ED stands for. Millions of dollars have been poured into creating awareness of ED, erectile dysfunction, because it is profitable. This 21st-century sales-pitch strategy — “disease mongering” — has proven to be good for the bottom line. The irony of all this is that there is another ED out there into which millions have also been poured — to keep it a secret. That ED is endocrine disruption, and if the public were to learn about it, bottom lines could shrink instead of grow.

Endocrine disruption should be right at the top of the list of most critical technological disasters facing the world today, up with climate change. With little notice, vast volumes and combinations of synthetic chemicals have settled in every environment in the world, including the womb environment. Synthetic chemicals at very low concentrations in the womb change how genes are programmed, cells develop, tissues form, and organs function, and thus undermine the potential and survival of developing animals, including humans. The chemicals threatening the integrity of future generations are derived from the processing of crude oil and natural gas, the same processes that are driving climate change. This is an integral part of the climate change story.

NC Phosphate Mine to expand: wetlands in trouble

Byoliveridley

newsobserver.com | Mine plan would erase wetlands

The proposal by PCS Phosphate, if approved, would represent the single largest destruction of wetlands permitted in the state — 2,500 acres including the headwaters of seven creeks near the Pamlico River. The rich deposit of black phosphate rock, left by ancient oceans and buried 100 feet beneath the surface, has been extracted from the site by various companies for about 40 years. PCS has worked the mine since 1995 to get phosphate for fertilizer and for use in food additives. In food, it’s turned into phosphoric acid — a flavor enhancer in such products as Coca-Cola, jellies and vegetable oil.

Yes, this is right, phosphoric acid is a “flavor enhancer”. Well, the mine employs a 1000 people in the area, and is not necessarily an evil that must be stopped at all times, for that, see Hog Factories! But this disturbs me.

Hunter Turnage, 44, a Raleigh cable television salesman, has a house across the river from the PCS mine. He is one of several people who have written letters to the state complaining about the odor when the wind blows from the south.

“If you don’t want to smell it, you shut up the windows and turn on the air conditioner,” Turnage said.
“It’s something you just deal with. … I kept thinking one day they would run out of areas to mine. I think they’ll stay there forever –as long as they get continued rights to destroy the wetlands.”

It’s one thing to use up wetlands, knowing fully well that the law requires you to create wetlands elsewhere to compensate, this smell issue is more problematic, and hard to legislate. Which means that various Environmental Justice issues will also come into play.