Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Stacy Malkan: No More Tears or Toxic Exposures from Baby Shampoo. Baby powders, lotions and shampoos -- pure as the driven snow right? Not so much. A new study published this week in Pediatrics Journal surmises that toxic chemicals linked to infertility are getting into babies' bodies from their routine use of personal care products. The chemicals in question are called phthalates. Decades of research on lab animals show that phthalates cause infertility, birth defects and other malformations of the male reproductive tract -- health problems that have (coincidentally?) been increasing in people over the past few decades. Several human studies indicate that phthalates may adversely affect health at levels commonly found in people. Developing babies are at highest risk from these toxic exposures. So doesn't it make sense that shampoos and lotions should not contain these chemicals? Unfortunately, most do (see 2002 study that found phthalates in 70% of personal care products tested) [PDF], and the chemicals are not even listed on labels due to weak labeling laws that exempt companies from disclosing fragrance ingredients. So what's a parent to do? The study authors advise: "If parents want to decrease exposures, then we recommend limiting the amount of infant care products used, and not to apply lotions or powders unless indicated for a medical reason." So that's what it's come to: avoiding baby products in order to avoid chemicals suspected of causing reproductive harm. This, of course, should be a wake-up call to the beauty industry. Parents and women of childbearing age can stop using products in order to protect their health and fertility. Or the billion-dollar beauty companies can start making products without these toxic chemicals. Until then, consumers are advised to use fewer products, choose products with no added synthetic fragrance, and call the companies to let them know what you think about toxic exposures that put our reproductive health at risk. Fact sheet how to avoid phthalates. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 1:32:25 PM    comment []

February 5, 2008 by The Independent/UK The World's Rubbish Dump: A Garbage Tip That Stretches From Hawaii to Japan by Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.The vast expanse of debris - in effect the world's largest rubbish dump - is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States." Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added. The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk - which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags - is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land. Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" - a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it. He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by" he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?" Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade. Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings. "After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems." Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute. Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water[base ']s surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said. According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food. Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic, Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles - the raw materials for the plastic industry - are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It[base ']s that simple," said Dr Eriksen. © 2008 The Independent 10:15:45 AM    comment []

February 5, 2008 A Corporate View of Mafia Tactics: Protesting, Lobbying and Citing Upton Sinclair By ADAM LIPTAK Smithfield Foods, which raises, kills and processes more pigs than any company on earth, does not like some of the things a union has been saying about conditions at its giant slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., where 4,650 people work and 32,000 hogs die every day. So Smithfield has filed a racketeering lawsuit against the union, on the theory that speaking out about labor, environmental and safety issues in order to pressure the company to unionize amounts to extortion like that used by organized crime. [base "]It[base ']s economic warfare,[per thou] explained G. Robert Blakey, one of Smithfield[base ']s lawyers. [base "]It[base ']s actually the same thing as what John Gotti used to do. What the union is saying in effect to Smithfield is, [OE]You[base ']ve got to partner up with us to run your company.[base '] [per thou] One hesitates to argue with Mr. Blakey, who helped write the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, the 1970 law Smithfield is suing under, as a staff lawyer in the Senate. But what Mr. Blakey calls extortion sounds quite a bit like free speech. Gene Bruskin, the director of the union[base ']s organizing drive and a defendant in the suit, said his work [base "]bears no relationship to the Mafia whatsoever.[per thou] [base "]If we kidnapped the C.E.O. and we said, [OE]We know where your children go to school,[base '] that[base ']s a Mafia-like act,[per thou] Mr. Bruskin said. [base "]If we told the truth about how the company abuses workers to its customers, that[base ']s traditional free speech.[per thou] Smithfield says the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International, and its officials violated RICO by issuing press releases, contacting civil rights and environmental groups, organizing protests and calling for boycotts. But the most striking assertion in the suit, one Smithfield devotes five pages to, is that the union was engaged in racketeering when it urged local governments in New York, Boston and other cities to pass resolutions condemning the company. After meeting with the union in 2006, a dozen members of the New York City Council sponsored a resolution calling for the city to stop buying meat from Smithfield[base ']s Tar Heel factory [base "]until the company ends all forms of abuse, intimidation and violence against its workers,[per thou] citing a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington that Smithfield had engaged in [base "]intense and widespread coercion[per thou] in battling unionization at its Tar Heel plant. Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito was a sponsor of the resolution, and she said she had been happy to meet with representatives of labor and business groups to hear their concerns. The practice Smithfield calls racketeering is, Ms. Mark-Viverito said, what others call lobbying. The First Amendment has a name for it, too: the right to petition the government. Ms. Mark-Viverito said Smithfield[base ']s lawsuit made no sense to her as a matter of logic, to say nothing of principle. But it did resonate as an exercise of corporate power. [base "]It[base ']s a wacky strategy,[per thou] she said, [base "]that is aimed at coercing the union into backing off.[per thou] Perhaps the union should file its own RICO suit based on the company[base ']s RICO suit. Smithfield[base ']s lawsuit contains other nuggets. It complains, for instance, that the union interfered with its relationship with Paula Deen, [base "]a celebrity chef[per thou] who has a contract to promote Smithfield products on her show on the Food Network. The union has demonstrated at Ms. Deen[base ']s public appearances. In a recent court filing, Smithfield added another complaint: the union [base "]deprived Smithfield of an incomparable marketing opportunity[per thou] by persuading Oprah Winfrey not to allow Ms. Deen to promote Smithfield hams on Ms. Winfrey[base ']s show. Smithfield[base ']s 94-page lawsuit sputters with an outrage not always grounded in a sure command of the English language. A union representative, for instance, was said to have made [base "]salacious statements[per thou] at a water permit hearing by arguing that granting the permit would damage the environment. The suit seeks more than $17 million, an order barring the union from publishing [base "]reports or press releases designed to mislead the public,[per thou] another barring demonstrations [base "]at Paula Deen events,[per thou] and a third barring the union [base "]from participating in the drafting, encouraging, sponsorship and/or passage of public condemnations of plaintiffs by cities, townships or other organizations.[per thou] The courts seem receptive to this new kind of racketeering suit. Last week, Judge Robert E. Payne of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., rejected a motion to dismiss the case, which is now scheduled for trial in October. Mr. Blakey said he knew of six racketeering suits against unions for so-called corporate campaigns meant to pressure companies into unionizing by drawing attention to their asserted shortcomings. Five of the suits survived motions to dismiss, he said, at which point the unions generally entered into settlements. [base "]When they settle,[per thou] Mr. Blakey said, [base "]it normally breaks the campaign.[per thou] A century ago, Upton Sinclair educated the nation about the filth, degradation and misery that pervaded Chicago[base ']s stockyards by writing down what happened in them in [base "]The Jungle.[per thou] Sinclair figures in the Smithfield suit, too. [base "]On or about April 20, 2007,[per thou] the suit says, a union organizer named Jason Lefkowitz had the temerity to quote Sinclair in a critique of Ms. Deen in an online newsletter. That[base ']s right: Smithfield maintains that it is a form of racketeering to quote an American master. Mr. Blakey said it was perfectly appropriate to cite activities protected by the First Amendment as evidence of racketeering, and he seemed to have little sympathy for the argument that some things should be hashed out through debate rather than litigation. On the other hand, listen to Upton Sinclair, as quoted in the RICO suit. [base "]It is difficult to get a man to understand something,[per thou] Sinclair wrote, [base "]when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.[per thou] Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 8:14:27 AM    comment []

Powell’s shame.. Today marks the fifth anniversary of Colin Powell’s presentation on Iraqi WMD before the United Nations. “The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world,” Powell said in his speech. Saad Tawfiq, one of Iraq’s engineers who tried to warn the U.S. that Saddam had shut down his weapons programs, recalls crying as he listened: As one of Saddam Hussein’s most gifted engineers, Tawfiq knew that the Iraqi dictator had shut down his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes in 1995 — and he had told his handlers in US intelligence just that. […] “When I saw Colin Powell I started crying. Immediately. I knew I had tried and lost,” Tawfiq told AFP five years later in the Jordanian capital Amman. [Think Progress] 7:43:56 AM    comment []