I want!

I don’t wear masks often– I used to use them in movie theaters (but I stopped going years ago choosing instead to wait for the DVD I can watch in the fresh air of my home), and when I travel by plane. I use those hard sterile blue masks sometimes when I’m doing some extraordinarily dirty, dusty job around the house or garden. I do find that they help filter out perfume (like in a movie theater), even though they are not made for that purpose. And I’ve used a HEPA double cylinder mask when working with material like lead paint dust– they are big and heavy and boy do they make my nose hurt!

This company has a whole line of animal faces. Too cute.

Get well soon masks

The very sterile looking white gauze mask inspired to make it more cheerful and funny while still serving its purpose. This new mask is no longer masking, but transforming the part of the face it is hiding, integrating face and mask. Currently there are 15 types of masks, varying from animals and human snouts, to zippers. Next to this customized masks are available, such as the mask for the Hanshin Tigers.

Link

A shot of fresh air: Twilight moon

The moon peaking out above our avocado tree just before dusk. There’s a special freshness to the air at this time of day, as the wind starts to shift from trades to a crisp breeze from Mauna Kea mountain (which is sometimes snowcapped in the winter!).

Toilet snorkel

The answer to our problems! (I’m not sure how long we would have to wait until rescued.)

Carrying forth the method of this invention, such insertion of the conduit means or breathing tube through the water trap will expose the open end thereof to fresh air from a vent pipe connected to a sewer line of the toilet. The user may then proceed to breathe fresh air for life-saving purposes, until rescued.

The user can then start inhaling fresh air and oxygen through the device and exhale through his nose. The user can maintain this breathing procedure for hours and until he is rescued.

Link

Toxic Inaction: Why poisonous, unregulated chemicals end up in our blood

Harper’s Magazine examines why the U.S. lags behind Europe in regulating toxic chemicals found in the marketplace despite studies showing high levels of dangerous chemicals making their way into the blood of Americans.

Up until the 1970s, no country had imposed any meaningful oversight of the tens of thousands of chemicals that had entered the marketplace since World War II. Then, in 1976, the U.S. Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which granted the government the authority to track industrial chemicals and to place restrictions on any that proved harmful to humans or the environment.[…]

But TSCA came with an enormous loophole, a caveat leveraged into it by the powerful chemical industry: every chemical already on the market before 1979 was exempted from the law’s primary screening requirements. Three decades after TSCA came into being, 95 percent of all chemicals in circulation have never undergone any testing for toxicity or their impact on the environment[…]

Link

Photo

Girl with Canary Mask

Girl with Canary Mask

Oil on canvas

Kathie Olivas

Link

A shot of fresh air: A bird in the hand

I have always had an affinity for birds, and my garden is a sanctuary for them with bird baths, food, trees and bushes. They feel safe without fear of cats or dogs. There are mynahs, doves, sparrows, rice birds, spice finches, cardinals, and melodious laughing thrushes.

One pair of cardinals has a nest in the front lime tree, and a couple of months ago they returned to raise another family in the same nest for a second year. The babies bumble around on the nearby bamboo branches and scream a lot for food.

This cardinal got stuck inside the chicken run and I cornered him and gently pulled him away from the poultry netting. He looks like a juvenile male with the dark wings and bright head. He was scared but fierce, bit me several times. The feathers were very soft.

There was mystery in holding something wild, so fragile yet so tough. And then pure magic in the moment when I opened my hand and he took to the air.

Plants: Natural solutions to your toxicity problems??

Good magazine says there are houseplants that can cleanse the air of trichloroethylene, formaldehyde, and benzene.

Unless you live in an organic bubble, chances are that most days you interact with plastics, paper goods, synthetic fibers, and other household items that contain trace amounts of toxins—toxins that, in large enough doses, could kill you, but in small doses might still be causing some damage. But fear not: new research shows that readily available and conveniently decorative plants are natural detoxifiers, scrubbing the air of these potentially harmful poisons.

I found out about the claim on boingboing.net, one of my favorite blogs– the comments to the post are worth reading. A sharp and skeptical group those boingboing commenters.

If only the writers cared as much about their work as the graphic designers.

-It’s Dracaena deremensis ‘Janet Craig.’ Jenny Craig is the diet program.
-It’s “pothos.” “Pathos” is the rhetorical term.
-The photo for Philodendron hederaceum (#11) is upside down.

I wrote a post for my blog a while back about the overselling of houseplants as air oxygenators and purifiers. The upshot: it’s not quite junk science, but it’s damn close. Link.

Link to Good post.

Link to boingboing post.

Porches: A breath of fresh air

The Washington Post has an interesting story today about porch trends. The porch in this photo looks so inviting! I can imagine myself sitting there all day with my laptop. As long as the air quality is good, the outdoor-in concept is the way to go. Fresh air rules!

To be sure, a screened porch has practical appeal. But another draw is its modest, old-fashioned charm, the jog of a childhood memory that occurs each time the screen door slaps against its frame. For both reasons, homeowners look to these sheltering spaces as the perfect place to while away the days of summer and beyond.

“We live on the porch all summer long and into the fall,” Henning says. “We have meals, relax, entertain and sit during rainstorms. . . . It reminds me of a summer camp.”

We have our own version of porches here in Hawaii, I’ll post photos of my garden room as the blog progresses– not so fancy, but lots of fresh air and a charm of its own, island style.

Link.

A shot of fresh air: A welcome reflection

Welcome! My front door with reflection of palm & ocean.

Environmental Amnesia: While questioning what we buy, we’ve forgotten where we live

No one is more acutely aware of the pollution level of our immediate environment than we canaries. We not only detect anything awry inside our homes, gardens and offices, but we detect and are affected by laundry soap and perfumes wafting to us from our neighbors’ homes, and any burning miles away depending on the winds.

Most of us also are aware of any industrial smokestacks withing a 20 mile or more radius. We know the location of the closest brown fields, and we are tracking proposed industrial businesses within that same radius because we know it will impact the quality of our lives and the lives of our neighbors.

But according to Sandra Steingraber, an expert in toxic hot spots around the country, most people aren’t paying any attention at all to environmental problems in their region. She’s written an interesting piece this month in Common Dreams.

I’ve noticed two opposing trends. The first is that people increasingly believe that their health is affected by hazardous materials in the environment. And they know a lot more about hazardous materials. Pesticides in strawberries. Lead in lipstick. Bisphenol A in water bottles. But there is decreasing knowledge about the actual environment itself. Public awareness is specific to chemicals in consumer products-which are produced elsewhere (increasingly China) and brought into our homes. The location of those homes on former orchards (where arsenical pesticides were used) or near old toxic-dump sites (where drums of solvents were buried) — these matters seem blurrier and blurrier to the folks in my audiences. In fact, I’ve had to start explaining the word “Superfund,” as it doesn’t seem to ring any real bells for a lot of people-including people in communities where Superfund sites are present. (Superfund sites are the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites. There are 1,305 of them, and they are named for the “super” fund of money put together by Congress in 1980 to clean them up, a trust that went bankrupt five years ago.)

Sandra Steingraber lives in Ithaca, New York, where she is busy exploring the 2006 Toxic Release Inventory data, recently released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As an antidote to environmental amnesia, she recommends entering your zip code into http://www.scorecard.org and then visiting the Web-based public-art project Superfund365, launched by digital artist Brooke Singer.

Link.

Sensitive goggie

see more dog pictures

Everything you ever wanted to know about your cosmetics but were afraid to ask

There’s a handy website run by scientists with information about the toxicity of your cosmetics.

You just type in the brand name or product, and sophisticated charts tell you about all the ingredients, including whether or not they are linked to cancer; developmental/reproductive toxicity; violations, restrictions & warnings; allergies/immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, persistence and bioaccumulation, organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), multiple, additive exposure sources, irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), enhanced skin absorption, contamination concerns, occupational hazards, biochemical or cellular level changes.

My Almay mascara failed miserably.

Skin Deep pairs ingredients in more than 25,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it the largest integrated data resource of its kind. Why did a small nonprofit take on such a big project? Because the FDA doesn’t require companies to test their own products for safety.

Link.

US Senate investigates plastics

The US Senate held hearings on May 14 about toxic plastics used in consumer goods, most notably in baby products, but also in the type of plastic bottles commonly used for water.

In the Los Angles Times:

Democrats want chemical in plastic investigated: Federal agencies are accused of ignoring the dangers of bisphenol A, which some experts think may harm the development of children’s brains.

WASHINGTON — Congress on Wednesday waded into an escalating scientific dispute over a controversial ingredient in plastic products that some think may harm the development of children’s brains and interfere with human reproduction.

Members of a Senate consumer affairs subcommittee faulted federal agencies for reacting too slowly to concerns that children are exposed to bisphenol A, or BPA, through leaching from such items as water bottles, baby bottles and the linings of food and baby formula cans.

Senate Democrats demanded more independent research into the possible hazards of the estrogen-like compound and better labeling of products that include it.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) pushed for legislation he has introduced to prohibit BPA in all products designed for and intended to be used by children age 7 and younger. The compound is used in the manufacture of polycarbonate, a rigid plastic, and epoxy resins.

“Congress should not gamble with our children’s health,” Schumer said. “If there’s a significant chance that this can cause harm, particularly in children, then we ought to err on the side of caution.”

And for you C-SPAN junkies, here are the videos and transcripts of the testimony.

FEMA’s doing a heck of a job!

Following hurricane Katrina, 300,000 people under the care of FEMA were housed in toxic trailers purchased on the fly by the overwhelmed federal agency.

From the Washington Post:

Within days of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in August 2005, frantic officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered nearly $2.7 billion worth of trailers and mobile homes to house the storm’s victims, many of them using a single page of specifications.

Just 25 lines spelled out FEMA’s requirements, with little mention of the safety of those to be housed. Manufacturers produced trailers with unusual speed. Within months, some residents began complaining about unusual sickness; breathing problems; burning eyes, noses and throats; even deaths.

Today, industry and government experts depict the rushed procurement and construction as key failures that may have triggered a public health catastrophe among the more than 300,000 people, many of them children, who lived in FEMA homes.

Formaldehyde — an industrial chemical that can cause nasal cancer, may be linked to leukemia, and worsens asthma and respiratory problems — was present in many of the FEMA housing units in amounts exceeding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended 15-minute exposure limit for workers, the limit at which acute health symptoms begin to appear in sensitive individuals.

Link.

A shot of fresh air: Rebirth

‘Anaeho‘omalu Bay, Kohala

In the summer of 1997, I spent many, many late afternoons at this beach. It’s an hour’s drive from my home, but three or four times a week, I got in the car and drove to the bay, spent 45 minutes briskly walking the shore line, 15 minutes swimming, then sat and watched the sunset, and drove home in time for dinner.

The previous two years had been spent in a quasi retreat, safe in the confines of my home, trying to understand the chemical sensitivities that had started to plague me several years before and trying to figure out how to chart the rest of my life.

The summer at the beach was better than any of the many therapies I had sought, including acupuncture, Rolfing, controlled diet, Epsom salt baths, alternative dentistry, and more. The fresh air was like a tonic and I cannot even begin to express in words the effect of the healing waters of the ocean. I was blissed out.

It was on one of my walks, here on this beach, when I came up with the idea to return to school and finish up my English degree. I thought I’d go back to school and hone my writing skills. Writing, I thought, could be done in the safety of my home (away from the myriad chemicals and synthetic perfumes that get me sick), and the miracle of electronic communication would be my conduit to a new profession.

And that’s just what I did, graduating from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in 1999 with a degree in English and a certificate in Women’s Studies. As luck would have it, the university hired me soon after graduation to help with PR and communications, so I didn’t even have to stress too much about finding work. (And they allow me a home office!)

So this beach holds a very special place in my heart because it put the wind back in my sails and showed me a new way to tack through life.