The down-low on make-up

So here's a question for you... If you go out of your way to eat organic because you're nervous about the long-term health effects of food-borne chemicals, shouldn't you also be nervous about what you put on your skin? I recently stumbled upon an Environmental Working Group resource called the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database, which rates the safety of a dazzling array of personal care products. Perhaps not unexpectedly, there's a whole shwack of potentially dangerous chemicals that we spread all over our bodies every day.

You may also want to check out Ask Umbra's short video, Wake Up to Your Make-up, that claims to "reveal the ugly truths about conventional makeup, and show you how to put on a happy face."

I got a ticket? For IDLING?!?

What better way to educate (or edu-shock) someone into rethinking their choice to leave their vehicle's engine running, than to leave an Idling Infraction ticket on their windshield? The tagline is great: Idling gets you nowhere.

A full PDF of the ticket is available at the Natural Resources Canada website.

USB = U Should Bike

A quick mathematical comparison illustrating that using my bike to run errands today (in this case, to pick up movie tickets and buy a USB cable) was faster and cheaper than going to the gym for a workout followed by using the car to run errands.

Bottom line is, by electing to take my bike, I saved myself 37 minutes and kept $5.28 in my pocket, never mind the fact that I burned no fossil fuels, and caused no air pollution. Win. WIN. WIN!

Wasps building in ma composter

"Wasps building in ma composter" was the subject line of a recent e-mail message from my brother. The words, "Whaddaya think?" followed.

Pests of all kinds, flying and otherwise, tend to avoid a well-tended compost pile for a few good reasons. First of all, 50 to 60 degrees Celsius in a properly functioning composter is simply too hot for man or beast. Secondly, a human visiting every few days with a pitchfork to completely obliterate the pest's habitat doesn't exactly contribute to comfortable living conditions. And third, well-tended piles generally don't have a food source easily accessible on the surface -- it's normally buried under a layer of soil, grass clippings, or leaves.

Properly maintaining the pile is the key to prevention. For some good info on pest-proofing your compost pin -- check out this link to the City of Toronto website.

The Dirty Dozen

In reading an article about prioritizing purchases of organic produce, I learned that different fruits and vegetables have different levels of chemical uptake from pesticides and herbicides. A dietician friend corroborated the story and introduced me to the term, "The Dirty Dozen," which refers to the 12 nastiest fruits and vegetables. Bottom line is, if you want to start reducing your exposure to potentially harmful food-borne chemicals, buy organic when choosing from the dirty dozen list. Or heck, if you can afford it, buy organic food exclusively.

The dirty dozen list follows. Click here for a full list of 43 fruits and vegetables and their respective pesticide loads.

1. Peaches


2. Apples


3. Sweet Bell Peppers


4. Celery


5. Nectarines


6. Strawberries


7. Cherries


8. Lettuce


9. Grapes - Imported


10. Pears


11. Spinach


12. Potatoes

Why I'm lucky to be cancer-free at 36

Top three reasons:

1. Years of inhaling second-hand smoke from my dad's cigarettes;
2. Two summers in the 1990's spent amidst toxic inks and solvents at a sign-printing shop;
3. Countless Saturdays when, as a kid, I hovered over the burn barrel in my parents' backyard, dutifully making sure every last fragment of trash had completely combusted and inhaling god-only-knows how many different carcinogens.

More about burning garbage in your backyard (and why it's a really, really bad idea): http://grist.org/advice/ask/2007/01/08/burning/.

The Long-Awaited Compost Leaderboard

A funny thing has been developing in my family over the past couple of years: a good-natured pissing match over whose backyard composter is registering the highest temperatures. High temperatures in a composter normally indicate heightened microbial activity, which equates to efficient aerobic decomposition of organic matter. Organic matter in a composter is stuff that might otherwise have been sealed in a landfill site only to kick off methane that wrecks the planet (methane is 20 times more volatile as a greenhouse gas than CO2).

The Compost Temp Leaderboard:

2008-Oct-05 Jeff(PB) ambient=18C, compost=71C, diff=53C
2010-06-06 Jeff ambient=18C, compost=39C, diff=11C
 

2009-Jun-18 Bill(PB) ambient=18C, compost=69C, diff=51C
2010-May-26 Bill ambient=3C, compost=68C, diff=65C

2009-Aug-04 Rod&Laurie (PB) ambient=10C, compost=49C, diff=39C
2007-Aug-26 Rod&Laurie ambient=11C, compost=41C, diff=30C

2009-Jun-07 John (PB) ambient=16C, compost=42C, diff=26C
2010-May-24 John ambient=26C, compost=31C, diff=5C


Got an update for the board? Drop me a note and I'll post it. In this contest, everybody wins.