Environmental Working Group

Hey Gang!

This website was amazing and I'm definitely going to use it for many other products.
I'm a huge sunscreen fan. I don't know if the freckles and pale skin gave it away ha ha. In all seasons, I have to apply sunscreen numerous times, so I decided to put in my most favorite brand. My picture is linked to the part of the website.

My over all score was 7. For the positives, my spf protection was good and stability was excellent. Nothing was extremely health threatening about this product. The UVA and UVB balance and my health concern was moderate. I'm a little confused though because a score of 7 means high hazard. In the "other concerns" line it showed oxybenzone and vitamin A. What I questioned is why Vitamin A would be bad for you?

I'll come back to the Vitamin A part later, but for now I'm going to tackle oxybenzone. This chemical is one that is tied to reproductive issues, immunotoxicity, and allergies.  Blagh! I did some extra research and came to find that Vitamin A  in sunscreen is linked to skin tumors.

Now, that I learned what was negative about all of this, my mission was to find a plan of action to change. I found what the website recommended. My recommendation was a hat and clothing. Well I can try for this, but it's not that realistic for me all of the time. The top sunscreens are, Adorable Baby, Alba Bontanica, and All Terrain.

I'll have do some research on how much these cost, but they are probably cheaper than trying to deal with medical issues after they have been diagnosed. TTYL!

Read 'n' Seed 4: Third quarter of the book, "Aqua Shock."

This is a picture from Jay Cook State Park near Duluth. The water used to be up to the tree, and the water level is almost down to nothing. Clear eye opener for me!



1. Read chapters 6-8; pages 135-209.

2. So just who exactly hold the power to say that you I can or can’t have water? Chapter 6, “America’s Water Gods” say that the power is distributed among a wide scale of people such as the state engineers teamed up with their directors of state departments of natural resources, watershed organizations, federal government, Army Corps, regional water boards, private individuals capitalizing on their water rights etc. Whew, that was a lot. Basically, it’s divided amongst people who run the country politically, those who have the knowledge to manage the water (scientists), and those who hold money power such as capitalists.

Water experts are proposing ideas to make conserving water a possibility for the future, but the ideas will take time, effort, money, and most importantly, coming out of denial. In efforts for this, these experts are also pushing for a type of water coalition composed of those who hold the political power over the water and those who hold the knowledge on how to conserve the water efficiently. Either way, access to water in the future will mostly lie in the hands of political officials, so vote wisely.

Water is becoming a commodity (economic good/ trade object) due to the rising price of it. The question is, should it be a commodity since many think it’s a God-given right? There isn’t an answer for that yet , but in the near future water costs are going to keep rising . This is largely due to infrastructure replacement needs. Some people are picking up on this and using water as a source of investment for stocks or capitalizing on water with out considering other peoples needs.

Chapter 8, “Can we save our water,” was my favorite chapter. This chapter gives a form of solution and what we realistically need to do to achieve that. While reading this, I about landscaping ideas that use little water, how we should recycle our water, what types water guzzling appliances should be replaced, and that we should start thinking of how we need water, not how we want water. The book wrapped up with saying that water isn’t an infinite source anymore so we better get our butts in gear to change.
3. The UN has hired a water czar, which is like an advocate ruler or leader for the water issue for the whole world. However, some water experts are saying that the water crisis doesn’t need a water czar, but rather we need a team effort of political officials and scientists to carry out what is best for the United States as a whole. That’s what Israel did. Even though they are a small country they have figured out ways to be sustainable with water for their country as a whole.

I’ve mentioned infrastructure in previous posts, but this is one of our keys to sustainability. This is basically the network of pipes and irrigation systems that deliver us our water. One of the biggest themes of the book for a solution is pointing out that our problem isn’t having to little water; it’s having a poor system that manages it. Daniel Williams, water expert, said that “we need a one-hundred year plan on a very large scale-state and continent wide, to ensure we have enough water to sustain ourselves rather than spend and incredible amount of money……..to ship water from point A to point B.”

The water costs are going up due to our weak areas, and certain people are jumping on this as an opportunity for money. A water bank, is a money exchange network where water rights are bought, sold, and traded. The economic view on water says that a shortage on water means there will be a greater demand, which drives the price up. Whoever is on the power side of the money decides if farmers get water for their crops. If those people with the water power say they own the water, including the rain, you better check the laws to make sure it’s legal to put our rain buckets so it’s not considered stealing.





The book speaks on our water needs vs. our water demands. Having a huge lawn that suck up a lot of water keeps water in the plants rather than bringing it back to the aquifers (underground water supply). A xieriscape is a form of landscaping that includes low maintenance vegetation that run on small amounts of water. I’ll post more websites down below in my blog to find out you can incorporate that into your garden.

4. Here’s an issue I read about from 2008. Detroit and Michigan were in a fued because the Canadians accused Detroit of “stealing Canadian” hundreds of billions of gallons of water over the past 40 years. This is because the river that Detroit’s major water provider is also 100 yards into the Canadian Border. This is why water issues get so murky on how to deal with them. There is hope for issues like this! The book did mention ways that humans can take water and recycle it to be put back upstream. In order to do this we need to make water conservation a priority.

Incorporating other countries ideas on water conservation could help too! Steven Maxwell, who is a water business expert, mentioned that water is a monopoly and other countries regulate the monopoly with some type of checks and balance. This works well, but America just hasn’t adopted this way of life yet.

If you’re into science, listen to this. A geoscientist has the idea to use old mothball warships into water desalination plants. Florida has figured out a way to use reverse osmosis on Everglade water to help meet their H2O demand. How’s that for recycling! Hearing things like this amaze me of what the human brain is capable of and how we can apply it to sustainability.

So overall, we know the crisis, but what can be done about it? These next steps include individuals and society as a whole.
Step1: (now that you’re out of water denial) What are your water needs and your water demands.
Does every house in Florida and Vegas need a swimming pool. Do we need to take hot baths? De we need carwashes?
Step two: Think of small ways to make a big difference
Try not to water the lawn or turn it into a xieriscape. Turn off the water while brushing your teeth. Conserve on gas. Shorten up shower time. Turn electrical things off when they aren’t being use. Eat what you need. Go light on the animal products. If you are going to eat animal products, make what you need to avoid waste.
Step three: Keep water local.
Catch rain water and bring it back to the aquifer.
Treat waste water locally and return the clean treated water back into
ground.
Return water to dry damaged rivers and lakes.
Step 4: Politics
Vote for a representative that will stand up for water
If your representative isn’t educated on the topic, communicate about it to them, and let them know where you stand.

This affects everyone and anything that relies on water. Not only that, but we also will have a to start paying more for water regardless due to new infrastructure needs. In addition to this jump in cost, if we don't conserve water there will be even more of an increase in price due to careless methods of wasting. If this isn't done, we may have to go find water rather than watch t.v, go to the movies, or even class. If we don't have our basics down, the rest of life is going to be hard to manage.


This is worth our effort and energy. If we don’t have water, we don’t have life.

Read 'n' Seed 3: Second quarter of "Aqua Shock"

Hey gang! Here's some more info about our precious h2o.
1. I read chapters 3-5, which covers pages 57-134.
2. Main topics of Chapter 3 discussed how exactly our water is disappearing. The factors include climate change, global warming, poor and outdated infrastructure systems, leaky faucets leading to a big waste, and uneven water rationing amongst the country. Chapter 4 covers the how our water becomes contaminated by human consumption of toxins and how we excrete them into the water which can't be filtered by our outdated water systems. In addition to this, lead is traced in our water from old pipes that need to be replaced with a pretty penny. Agriculture runoff, man made pollutants, natural pollutants. With all this being said, many people think our drinking tap water is safe, but even bottle water has traces of pharmaceuticals, hormones, antibiotics, and mood stabilizers. Chapter 5 reveals how Politics is dragged into this. Since we are running out of water, who gets what water supply? Cases are being brought to the supreme court because people are doing what they need to to get water for them and their crops. Even if it means taking it. There are three ways of giving water rights to the people, but some experts are mentioning laws on water will only making things worse.
3. The first term that I came upon is on the issue that people are moving to arid or semi-arid land. This is land that is dry climate which creates because we have to transport the water to them. More energy for transportation=more water usage and loss through leaky old pipes. These pipes lead to the loss of 7 billion gallons of water a day. Overall I learned that the water supply is a cycle and humans are interrupting that cycle by globally warming our earth, blocking it with concrete foundations, and polluting it with our living styles. Our climate is changing and a huge problem arises when people aren't willing to change with it. We need to build new damns and reservoirs to conserve water for when we need it.
True or False; our drinking water is safe and it's especially safe from bottled water? FALSE! Per year 7 million Americans get sick from our drinking water. This is due to lead in old pipes that haven't been replaced. Our water systems are not able to filter the chemicals we excrete and eliminate. You can bet that when you take tylenol, antidepressants, and other pharmaceuticals that it's going to end up in the water. O did I mention that we also have arsenic, salmonella, fertilizers, and other pollutants from manure run off. The newest one is methyl tert-butyl. This is when they add oxygen to gasoline and it ends up in our water and causes cancer issues.
Chapter 5 discusses how the war over water will be developed and who the key players are. The two ways that water rights will be decided on are riparian right and prior appropriation. Riparian means the land owner that touches the water gets to use it, and prior appropriation is what private owner seizes and uses the water first gets to keep it. However people get the ownership of water, that means there might be rules and people will get in trouble if you violate them. Some experts say that making rules will just make more issues for America.
4. This is already affecting society, and if we do not change with the ways the water changes we could see a battle for one of our most basic living. If we do not conserve water we may find the day that we turn on the tap and nothing comes out. Lowering water levels could mean that ships in the Great Lakes may not have the water to provide their mode of travel. This could hurt our pocket books severely.

Here are ways we can start to fix things:
On an individual basis:
1) Turn off the tap water while brushing your teeth. (this will save up to 8 GALLONS PER DAY)
2) Change to water friendly appliances (save up to 30% water waste)
3) turn your facets on below full water blast.
4) give left over water to plants and animals.
5) Abusing extra pharmaceutical chemicals and other chemicals will wind up in our water...the less the better
6) Produce less CO2 to contribute to global warming
7) Use 6o gallon barrels to capture rain water for water storage and usage

On a national level
1) Build more damns and reservoirs
2) Replace old leaky and toxic pipes
3) Shift population to where the environment can sustain people for drinking water
etc

I will make a new post that shows small ways to conserve on water and how to communicate with others on how to conserve water.

Eye opener CSPI

Hey gang!
Just took the quizzes quickly and I'm shocked, but at the same time I understand.

What caught my eyes is that in 2002 140 million livestock and 9 billion chicks and turkeys were slaughtered for us. That's 30 birds per American. I've often contemplated what we as a nation can do to cut down on things like this. Do we really need buffets? Do we really need steak houses for the huge 10 oz steaks. My answer is not really. I've been working on how to incorporate the "flexitarian diet" which is almost vegitarian with some meat products here and there for the vitamin b12's

My new flexitarian habits were reinforced when I entered what I eat because here are my ratings:
.4 grains for grass
22.1 lbs for fertilizer
.2 pesitcides
2,397 lbs of manure created.

2. Eat green calculator
My next test scores were in the grand total column
Health 104
environment -25
animal welfare-18
I didn't take the plege yet. Not ready to yet.

3. My highest score was in the dairy category
4. My lowest was in the vegetables
5. What I can do to change some of this is meet with a nutritionist to lay out a food plan that will work with lowering this score.

Summary
1. What this means to me is that I'm a little confused on how to make a food plan for myself and how much in each category of the food groups. I've been basing my meal plan off of mypyramid.gov but I may need to do a little more research on how to figure out what exactly I need to eat. So far, I know which food groups to shy away from but I don't know what the bare minimum is to eat inorder to make sure i'm not nutrient deficient.

Ecological Eye Opener

I took a couple of the ecological calculators to figure out where I stand with my eco life. On the IUHPE website I took an activity that told me that if everyone lived like I did, we would need 4.9 earths to sustain us. Instantly the guilt set in of how much my life impacts the earth. Instead of guilt getting to me I decided to do the best I can with my new knowledge throught this class. I now find myself shutting off lights, unplugging devices, biking/walking whenever possible and my new mission is to try and start taking the bus. For my next trip, I may consider taking a train across country rather than a plane. I've made changes in the past to start being eco friendly such as eating what I NEED, showering in shorter time periods, recycling, etc and I'm going to keep doing those things.

At the same time, I wondered how accurate these websites are. How do you know to calculate how many earths it will take to sustain all of us? Another flaw is that these websites don't ask about what your effort in reducing my ecological foot print but instead they ask only what your negative actions are. I'm just going to keep doing the best I can and hopefully I can help other people change as well.

~Shannon Flaherty

Read 'N' Seed 2

Picture link
Introduction
My book again is called "Aqua Shock, The Water Crisis in America."

1. I covered the Introduction, Chapter 1 and 2-pages 1-55.

2. The main topics I read about included how our water is supplied on this earth by mother nature, how humans obtain and distribute water, the amount of water we use that exceeds the amount provided, and due to lack of water future conflicts of present day and in the future to come.

3. I learned enough to quit denying that there really is a water crisis. The average human uses 80-100 gallons of water a day and the U.S. alone uses 408 BILLION gallons of water per day. That's a lot and I'll explain why in question 4. The book opens in a very direct way that the world is drying up and that many are in denial about it. Not all are in denial, because there are already states fighting over what is left. First term I learned was, "aquifer." This is our supply of water under our ground surface. One of the book's experts, David E Williams mentioned that we are using aquifers as a water checking account when we should be using at a savings. Next term, I learned is "water cycle" aka "hydrologic cycle." This term tells us that water doesn't escape into space, so our water supply is moved by nature from the atmosphere, down into the ground, then to water in the surface, then back up to the atmosphere.

4. The problems are laid out pretty clearly which affects every thing that relies on water which affects you and I.

Problem #1 Many are in denial that the earth is drying up. I was guilty of this before reading this book. It's easy to be in denial when we have running water, and have Lake Superior right outside out window.

Problem #2 Humans are not being water sustainble with the amount that is given to us at a time. Many parts of the country borrow water from other places through irrigation systems. That's not a problem until the place we borrow it from needs the water. Also, humans are using too much at a time. Here are some facts

• highest use is 195billion gallons for energy production and for thermoelectric power plants.
• 2nd Highest use is irrigating crops, watering livestock, and other agriculture by 142 billion gallons
• Bathing 50-70 gallons of water for a bathtub
• 5 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of gasoline
• We need 2-4 liters of water per day and it’s 2,000 to 5,000 liters it takes to produce the same person’s daily food
Keep in mind the water we use to wash the dishes, wash the car, water the plants, give to the dog, washing your hands, consume through pop, juices, alcohol, and so on.

Think of our water supply as a bank account. You're getting paid on Friday (water cycle replenishing us) and its monday. We are going to the mall on a daily basis/utilizing too much water, before our paycheck/ water relief comes in. If we use our credit card/ borrowing water that can provide temporary relief, but we still aren't making enough to hit even. This can cause us to head towards water bankruptcy.

Problem #3 Global warming is going to cause even more drought in the climate imbalance.

Problem #4 Imbalance of water leads to conflict, and conflict leads to war.


Why should we care as Duluthlians living near an abundant source of water? Lake Superior is at chronic low levels since January 1926. Other states and Canada are becoming more thirsty due to their own supplies of water being reduced down to drought levels. For example, if we keep living the way we are, the Lakewalk won't have much of a lake.

To address this we first must get out of denial. Start with yourself to make a change, Energy is the biggest sucker of water so turn off your electicty when not needed. The water we run down the drains uses energy to desanitize it. Turn off the faucet, shorten shower times, leave rain buckets out for water supply for plants, etc. At a bigger level we need to redo our infrastructure. We need to build dams, aqueducts, and other water supplies for tomorrow, not yesterday.

Read 'n' Seed

picture link

1. The title of my book is Aqua Shock: The Water Crisis In America by Susan J. Marks
2. This book is about our water supply: where most of it is currently, how has it changed, and why should be be concerned about are present and future in regards to it. 
3. I chose this book because I keep hearing that the "next war" is going to be over water and how our northland will see an "economic boom" due to our great lakes. I realized that I don't know much about this current issue, so it would be best to use this Reed 'N' Seed opportunity to educate myself. 
4. Links:  Great Lakes Information Network, Georgia Drought.org, World Bank.org 
5. There are 208 pages in this book and eight chapters. The first quarter will have the introduction and the first two chapters. The second, will have chapters 3-5, and the third quarter will have chapters 6-8. 

I'm really glad to be researching a new topic and being able to share it with everybody. I'll do my best to make my posts clear like the water we desire to drink.