Bisphenol-A Study: Polycarbonates=Source

A recent Harvard study showed that polycarbonate bottles do indeed appear to increase bisphenol-A levels in humans. After a "wash-out" period where study subjects drank from non-plastic bottles, they started drinking from poly bottles...and voila, bisphenol-A showed up in their urine.

The study doesn't get in to the effects, if any, of the bisphenol-A on our bodies, but does provide some interesting reading.

Read the Harvard press release here.

You can peruse a PDF of the full-blown study, as published by the journal Environmental Health Perspectives here.

A Visualization of the North Pacific Garbage Gyre

Taken from GOOD Magazine , May 12, 2009

Transparency: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
(Click on Image for link)

Gyre Illustration by Jacob Magraw-Mickelson

NPGP Compendium Infographic Anyone?

Good Magazine is a great place to while away your online time (even if you are addicted to FB) - lots of smart stuff for thinking people can be found there. Clicking on over there today, I can see that they added an intriguing "infographic" that hits the updated "high" points of the North Pacific Garbage Patch. Every scintillating talking point concerning the NPGP all in one place - including a nice alphabetical list of those nasty Persistent Organic Pollutants! Good mag is da bomb!

So, again Compendium Infographic anyone?

Cigarette Butts: Fish Buzz-Kill

Well, the facts are now out: second-hand butts can kill. This revelation made the rounds in the news about a week ago, but is certainly worth mentioning on our blog.

Guess what, fish dont even have to smoke to join in on the buzz-kill (emphasis on the "kill") phenomenon that is sweeping our oceans. Aside from cigarette butts being the NUMBER ONE most-littered item today, they are also composed of plastic (yep, taking forever to decompose in the environment), and they resemble yummy fish-food morsels (yep, they get stuck in sea animals' bowels, eventually killing them) - well now the experts are telling us that they also leach toxic chemicals, which can harm fish, into the ocean environment...one expert has shown that "Even one butt in a liter of water can kill the fish in a period of 96 hours.". That is pretty crazy.

You can read (and listen to) the article here. You can also Google a gaggle of related articles as well.

...and while you're out there Googling, go to YouTube and search for "Hold Onto Your Butt" to see some vids of our local anti-butt-litter campaign, which attempts to address this very issue.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em...(fish, that is)

The Joke's On Us... :(

...But it lacks the "haha" part of a joke that we all expect...

Part and parcel of all of the other bad things about bottled water is the ugly privatization issue that's also built in. Our local San Diego Food & Water Watch rep, Corie Lopez, describes some of the hidden costs of our nation's addiction to bottled water in a recently published article. (F&WW has built the "Take Back The Tap" program to address these issues.)

The article is in the form of a "PDF" file (requires a PDF-reader program) and you can find it here.

Thank you Corie!