Articles tagged “Household Toxins”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Meet Daniel Sieberg By Team Planet Green IN G Word May 5 2008 Daniel Sieberg joined CBS News as the network's science and technology correspondent in December 2006. He contributes to the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, the CBS Early Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Radio and CBSNews.com. Sieberg has reported on... + READ MORE

Get the Scoop on Green Wood Furniture By Collin Dunn IN Home & Garden Apr 22 2008 Last week, we highlighted the environmental impact of buying wood furniture, but that's just the tip of the so-called iceberg; where and how we choose to source wood furniture also has some pretty serious health and social implications. + READ MORE

Choose a Health-Friendly Water Bottle By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Food & Health Apr 1 2008 You may be ready to give your disposable-water-bottle habit the old heave-ho, but picking a reusable beverage container to sip from can be a tricky proposition, especially with so much talk swirling around bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor said to leach from polycarbonate plastics (typically marked with the... + READ MORE

Get a Greener Television By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Mar 25 2008 Plasma, LCD, or good old-fashioned CRT? If you think that an LCD television always trumps a CRT clunker in terms of energy efficiency, however, you're missing the big picture.Screen size is an important factor that can quickly overwhelm even an LCD's built-in energy savings. + READ MORE

Garden, Eat Salad to Reduce Lung Cancer Risk By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Food & Health Mar 21 2008 Score another one for good old-fashioned diet and exercise: Eating four or more servings of green salad a week, and working in the garden once or twice a week, can substantially reduce your risk of developing lung cancer, whether you're a smoker or a nonsmoker, according to researchers at the University of Texas M.D.... + READ MORE

Wash Your Hands to Get Rid of Fire Retardants By Lloyd Alter IN Food & Health Mar 19 2008 Planet Green previously covered the fire retardant polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE), which is widely used in plastics and foams.The chemicals are fat-soluble, so eating oily finger foods like french fries, chicken fingers or anything else kids (and adults) can n't get enough of is probably a route by which people... + READ MORE

Look Before You Leap Into the Indoor Pool By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Food & Health Mar 14 2008 Indoor swimming is a great form of exercise, especially in the dark winter months when we're not exactly champing at the bit to freeze our tuckuses outside.The flip side is that chlorine is highly reactive; it not only kills bacteria, but also combines with organic chemicals coming from people's bodies, [such as] sweat... + READ MORE

Raise a Greener Glass This St. Patrick's Day By Collin Dunn IN Food & Health Mar 11 2008 If the approaching St. Patrick's Day holiday has you dreaming of leprechauns, shamrocks and quaffing a wee pint (or two) of green beer, making a few key choices can help lead to you to the green pot o' gold and a tasty, more planet-friendly holiday. + READ MORE

Get an Electric Kettle, Don't Overfill It By Lloyd Alter IN Home & Garden Mar 7 2008 Drink Tea? The Energy Savings Trust in the United Kingdom estimates that "if we each boil the water we need to make a cup of tea instead of filling the kettle every time, we could save enough electricity in a year to run nearly half of all the street lighting in the country." + READ MORE

Know Your Cosmetics Ingredients: Top Five Ingredients to Avoid By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Fashion & Beauty Feb 19 2008 Gaping loopholes in public-health laws give cosmetics companies the license to use almost any ingredient they want in their products, whether it's sunscreen or baby shampoo, without any restrictions or requirements for safety testing. Ingredients include carcinogens in baby shampoo called 1,4-dioxane and coal tar in... + READ MORE

Get the Lead Out: Don't Drink, Cook with Hot Water From the Tap By Collin Dunn IN Food & Health Jan 30 2008 Lead, the nasty neurotoxin that can cause a range of health effects, from behavioral problems and learning disabilities to seizures and death, has a way of sneaking into our homes; it's been found in our kids' toys, paint , and even glassware. Hot water is more corrosive, drawing more of the nasties out (something we... + READ MORE

Detox Your Home: Fix Leaks, Fight Mold By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Jan 24 2008 Pinpointing and stoppering up the source of household leaks will not only save you some cash, but it'll also prevent mold and mildew from establishing a foothold in your home, a situation that can lead to rot, structural damage, paint flaking, and myriad health problems. Tea Tree TreasureMakes 2 cups, lasts... + READ MORE

Avoid Hazardous Materials, Buy an EPEAT-Registered PC By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Tech & Transport Jan 23 2008 Although computer makers have made strides in reducing toxic components in their desktops, laptops, and monitors, most PCs are still chockfull of hazardous substances. Purchases of EPEAT-registered PCs and monitors over the next five years, according to the EPA, can potentially reduce hazardous waste by more than 4... + READ MORE

Build a Green Library: How to Go Further with Woody Harrelson & Friends By Collin Dunn IN Home & Garden Jan 23 2008 Speaking from experience is one of the more compelling ways to give quality advice, which is something that Woody Harrelson and his friends put to good use in How To Go Further: A Guide to Simple Organic Living (2005, Warwick Publishing). The journey turned out to be a life (and lifestyle) changer for Harrelson, who is + READ MORE

Use a Pedometer to Lose Weight By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Food & Health Jan 17 2008 Participation in a pedometer-based walking program can help you lose a modest amount of weight, even without changing your diet, according to a University of Michigan Health System analysis of nine studies that was published in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Annals of Family Medicine. Participants lost an average of 0.11... + READ MORE

Detox Your Body By Lloyd Alter IN Food & Health Jan 15 2008 London Smog 1952 Devra Davis, the director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute is, according to Nancy White of The Star, a blue-chip cancer epidemiologist with a Grade A scientific pedigree: a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, a decade at the National Academy of... + READ MORE

Best of 2007: Detox Your Home By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Home & Garden Jan 3 2008 Indoor air pollution can be two to five times worse than outdoor air pollution, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Neutralize trace organic pollutants, such as benzene and formaldehyde, simply by growing certain varieties of houseplants.Find out which ones you want to add to your your detox arsenal, + READ MORE

Power Up with Rechargeable Batteries By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Tech & Transport Jan 3 2008 Billions upon billions of batteries are purchased, used, and disposed of every year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Because one rechargeable battery can replace hundreds of its single-use counterparts, purchasing rechargeables is one way of reducing the number of batteries clogging up the waste... + READ MORE

Toast the New Year Without Lead Crystal By Team Planet Green IN Food & Health Dec 29 2007 New Year's resolutions are often hard to keep but my first one is easy and green: Stop drinking wine out of leaded crystal stemware. Experts seem to agree that while the danger is small if the wine is consumed over a short space of time (such as a dinner), trace amounts of lead do leach into beverages, especially white + READ MORE

Encourage E-waste Recycling in Your Workplace By Jasmin Malik Chua IN Work & Connect Dec 21 2007 While our computers, cellphones, iPods, and other techno gadgetry are perfectly innocuous on their own, they can release toxins such as lead, mercury, and cadmium into the air and water when burned or dumped. You can also purchase a collection box from GreenDisk for rounding up wayward laptops, CDs, diskettes, DVDs,... + READ MORE