Haven’t heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch yet?  Besides the chemicals that that likely affect human health, like phalates and bisphenol-A, and the use of finite and polluting fossil fuels, the plastics that are so important and ubiquitous in our society are toxic to our oceans as well.  Surfline.com has a good article on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and a Good Morning America segment too.

We’ve been chronicling some of our efforts toward an eco-friendly nursery over at http://www.orionslaughter.com and now we can switch to logging our efforts at raising a sustainable baby! Orion was born on 7/10/09 at 2:53pm, weighing 7 lbs, 11 oz, and 21 inches long. Laura and he are doing great and I’ll be posting on our adventures with cloth diapers soon! Sorry for the lack of updates lately, we’ve been working hard preparing our home for Orion’s arrival and now we’re getting used to an entirely new life with our wonderful new family.

Autism has become a major issue for modern parents, affecting 1 in 150 children, and can be linked to a number of exposures, including vaccines, according to a piece written last year by actress Jenny McCarthy and actor Jim Carrey and published in the New York Times (McCarthy, Carrey, 2008).  Unfortunately, although some legitimate sources are cited, including statistics from the CDC, McCarthy’s article uses mostly supposition and anecdotal evidence to support her arguments that vaccines “play a major role” in the development of autism.  McCarthy and Carrey have apparrently had success in reversing many of their son’s autism symptoms through “starting a gluten-free, casein-free diet, vitmain supplementation, detox of metals, and anti-fungals for yeast overgrowth that plagued his intestines” (McCarthy, Carrey, 2008).  While they do make an excellent point that physicians that they have seen after this improvement have not investigated the factors in his recovery, an action that could potentially lead to more understanding of the disease, the improvements could be due to any one of their interventions, behavioral or cognitive therapy, or a combination of factors.

Although it is true that Autism rates have risen in recent years and is a major health problem, it is imperative to use information derived from reliable sources before rushing to stop vaccinations, an intervention that saves countless lives.  The Wakefield paper published in 1998 that began the popular notion that autism is caused by vaccines was only a case series, where 12 children who were observed to have developed intestinal problems within a month of the MMR vaccine, and 8 of whom were also diagnosed with autism at that time (“A Look at What Causes”, 2008).  While there may be a correlation, this does not denote causation, and along with the small sample size and type of study, this paper should not be used to base any conclusions on, only the possibilty of future research.  Other studies are currently looking at biochemical contributors for autism that may lead back to an environmental cause (Deth, Muratore, Benzecry, Power-Charnitsky, & Waly, 2008; Van Den Hazel, Zuurbier, Babisch, Bartonova, Bistrup, Bolte, et al., 2006), and the CHARGE Study is an ongoing large-scale case-control study investigating a wide array of possible environmental and genetic factors into the development of autism and hopes to uncover some statistically significant causational factors (Hertz-Picciotto, I., Croen, L., Hansen, R., Jones, C., Van De Water, J., & Pessah, I., 2006).

There is much epidemiologic work to be done in the search for causes of the autism epidemic.  Although it is good to have these types of issues brought to the attention of the public through media, much of the media information and hype is innaccurate.   In this case, because of celebrity status and media attention, McCarthy and Carrey write a heartfelt and well-intentioned piece that is presented by lay-people without the epidemiologic background to properly interpret and synthesize the current data on autism and it’s contributors.  This lack of scientific rigor and support in many popular media outlets unfortunately is not uncommon and spreads innacurate and potentially harmful information.

References:

Deth, R., Muratore, C., Benzecry, J., Power-Charnitsky, V., & Waly, M. (2008). How environmental and genetic factors combine to cause autism: A redox/methylation hypothesis [Abstract]. NeuroToxicology, 29(1), 190-201. Retrieved May 10, 2009 from the EBSCO Database.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center.  (2008)  A Look at What Causes, and What Doesn’t Cause, Autism.  Retrieved on May 9, 2009 from:  http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=84662#other_studies .

Hertz-Picciotto, I., Croen, L., Hansen, R., Jones, C., Van De Water, J., & Pessah, I. (2006). The CHARGE Study: An Epidemiologic Investigation of Genetic and Environmental Factors Contributing to Autism. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(7), 1119-1125. Retrieved May 10, 2009

McCarthy, J., Carrey, J. (2008, April 4).  Jenny McCarthy:  My son’s recovery from autism.  CNN.com.  Retrieved on May 8, 2009 from:  http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/mccarthy.autsimtreatment/ .

Van Den Hazel, P., Zuurbier, M., Babisch, W., Bartonova, A., Bistrup, M., Bolte, G., et al. (2006). Today’s epidemics in children: Possible relations to environmental pollution and suggested preventive measures. Acta Paediatrica, 95, 18-25. Retrieved May 10, 2009 from the EBSCO database.

Cap and Trade: What is It?

Hank Green over at ecogeek.com has posted a nearly auction-style, fast primer on the Cap and Trade system proposed by the Obama administration. This is a must see, as this legislation stands to be one of the most important pieces in starting our emissions decline. He does a good job flitting though the major point of contention – the assertion by many conservatives that it’s just another tax. Although it can be construed as such, it’s more of a pollution cap with monetary incentives for companies, a system that should be much more flexible, functional, and fair to both businesses and American citizens than a straight “carbon tax”.

Hit the “Fox News Fears Imbalance” link above, WordPress is not properly embedding Comedy Central Video – sorry.

Incredibly, but not so surprisingly, the right-winged pundits such O’Reilly and Limbaugh,and the rest of Fox News, have completely flipped their attitudes about supporting the American presidency. It was not so long ago that these very same people ranted and raved about how “Un-American” it was to criticize the war in Iraq or any of the other poorly informed/thought-out decisions of our last President. Now, when it’s not “their boy” in the White House, they’ve opted to take the Un-American route of unabashedly fear-mongering, undermining, and other douchebaggery while covering President Obama’s first few days in office, rather than being constructive and contributing reasonable and intelligent discourse to the sorely needed changes in our government.

This Friday, January 15, is national call-in day to promote a single-payer healthcare system.  Here is the official page with information on HR676 and how to contact your congressperson.  Also, you can call (202) 225-3121 and ask to be connected to the office of your Representative or your Senators (you can also look up their direct numbers using your zip code here)

Being in the healthcare community, I find it hard to believe that so many people don’t support this concept.  One of the big arguments is whether healthcare is a right or a privilege and when you work in the medical field, it is obvious that it should be a right, just like having a firefighter to put out your burning house, or a police officer to rescue you from an assailant, everyone should have basic medical care.  We often hear the term “socialized” attached to single-payer healthcare as a fear tactic because of the negative stigma still associated with the term socialism.  Single-payer, however, is not government run healthcare, it is private healthcare with government paying the bills instead of insurance companies.  Essentially nothing will change with how you interact with your physician or clinic, but rather than insurance companies artificially driving up costs and making profits on people’s health, denying legitimate claims, and costing an extra 15% or more in administrative costs, medicare and medicaid will cover everyone!  Costs overall will decrease, and the out of pocket expense to the individual will be lower than the current system.  If we can combine this with a massive expansion in public health education and services, along with major tort reform to revamp medical liability, we might just be able to improve our status from spending more money per capita than any other country, yet ranking number 37 in the world in quality of health care.  Shameful.

Please call in on Friday and make your voice heard!

I can’t get this to embed properly, but click on the Mumbai Tragedy Link for the video.

This is a brilliant exchange between John Olliver and John Stewart on 12/1/09’s The Daily Show. Simply brilliant – an incredibly accurate discussion of terrorists of any kind.

Photo credit: StoptheMegaDairy.org via earthfirst

It seems that the Bush Administration is trying to get a few more jabs in before heading out of office, making our nation even more unsafe and removing regulations that keep our citizens healthy.

According to the National Resources Defense Council, on October 31st, the Bush Administration signed a rule that exempts factory farms from needing permits that limit water pollution runoff.  Modern factory farms, also known as concentrating animal feeding operations (CAFOs), besides being generally cruel to animals and foster antibiotic resistance through unregulated use, also generate huge amounts of untreated liquid and solid waste from livestock that are forced to live in confined areas.  This rule will keep authorities from having to regulate this waste, which will contaminate waterways and other farms, and will undoubtedly lead to further public health crises similar to the E Coli outbreak that we just had in September of this year.

The recent national outbreak of E Coli O157:H7 in spinach was quickly traced back to farms in Salinas Valley, CA, and is a stark reminder of the importance of maintaining a working and vigilant public health system.  It demonstrates how disease tracking and data collection is imperative as a foundation for this process, with rapid action taken by public health field workers to isolate and stop the spread of disease outbreak.  Local physicians and healthcare professionals reported cases of patients with diarrheal illness consistent with a possible E. coli O157:H7 outbreak to their local public health departments.  Through the national public health system network, these departments, in turn, reported the illnesses to the CDC (Grant et al, 2008).  The CDC was able to quickly recognize a pattern and made a public announcement of the outbreak on September 13, 2008.  A study was initiated the next day by the public health departments of Utah and New Mexico, which isolated and contained the source of the outbreak, and within 2 weeks had hard evidence implicating spinach grown in our state that had likely been contaminated by runoff from local cattle farms.  Not only did the public health system discover the cause of the illness, but it then was able to help draft policy changes encouraging improved sanitation that will hopefully decrease the risk of similar contamination in the future.

Unfortunately, whatever we learned from this and similar incidents will be undone with this exemption in waste regulation.  This is an excellent example of how corporate pressure influences the government to make irresponsible decisions.  The economic pressure from factory farms has overcome the health risks to citizens caused by unregulated waste runoff.  The state public health departments, the FDA, and the EPA must review this rule and take political action to prevent the increased public health risk that it poses.

National Resource Defense Council.

Ok, so first we’ve thrown hundreds of billions of dollars haphazardly at banks, much of which they’ve already hoarded, squandered, and rearranged, rather than taking a few weeks for our government to carefully draft an educated and well-thought out plan to mediate the value to loan ratio problem, devalue existing loans to help foreclosing homeowners restructure debt, and tightly regulate the use of said taxpayer dollars to avoid the current system of lining the pockets of the greedy lenders and traders who were gambling away everyone’s debt and 401k money.

Now we’re talking about bailing out three companies, who no matter how “Downhome American” and “Heartlandy” they are, have spent the last half century manipulating the American public through engineered obsolescence and ruthless marketing campaigns to sell the biggest and least efficient vehicles, partnered with oil companies to actively fight emissions standards and efficiency requirements, have purposefully withheld technology that would improve mileage and save fuel, have killed California’s zero-emission legislation through legal actions, failed to have any concern whatsoever for the growing climate change and peak oil crises, and have allowed their own greed and obliviousness, purposeful or not, to lead to their own downfall.

The ONLY way we should give any money to the U.S. Auto industry is if they are required to use these funds to completely revamp their lines to include only vehicles that are electric, are compatible with modern biofuels, or use some other type of renewable and low or no emissions fuel. They must also begin large initiatives to convert existing vehicles to run on one of these fuels. The beauty is, that this is in reality a fairly easy proposal: Most modern gasoline engines can be easily modified to run E85 or natural gas, every diesel can run on 100% biodiesel (it’s just not covered by warranty) and can easily be modified to run on vegetable oil. Pretty much any vehicle chassis can be easily converted to run on electricity, using standard golf cart batteries to go more than 40 miles to a charge at highway speeds, more than enough for the vast majority of daily drivers. With minimal training and barely adequate electrical skills, I’ve even been thinking about building one in my garage. The “Big Three” have much smarter people than I with much more mechanical knowledge,and they have much, much. . . MUCH bigger garages.

For that matter, I can think of quite a few things we can do as well with that 813 billion (in tax breaks and funds) Congress has already authorized to bail out Wall Street. How about we pay our craftsmen and builders to learn about energy efficient and eco-friendly building techniques? Why don’t we start a national solar loan program that gives anyone who wishes a low interest loan to get solar water heating and photovoltaic panels? Why don’t we reteach and train those losing their jobs how to grow food, how to farm energy, how to retrofit homes for efficiency, and other skills? Why don’t we help towns and cities rebuild their energy infrastructures to make clean power, ethanol, and biodiesel from waste streams and utilize resources efficiently?

We need to use this money wisely in a well-designed renewable energy “New Deal” for our country to build a sustainable infrastructure for a future of economic prosperity, food security, and clean energy.

reference: bbc news article

Finally, a Time for Change

We’ve done it! Elected a man whom we hope has the integrity, the intelligence, and the vision that he’s shown us in this election race. If you haven’t watched his acceptance speech yet, it is truly inspiring and makes me, for the first time in years, proud to be an American, with hope that we can once again live up to the ideals that we were founded upon – freedom and justice (and sustainability) for all.