Environmental Health Resolutions to Start the New Year!

Inspired by my friend Brian's eco-resolutions blog post and Gina Johnson's excellent radio show "Its Hot in Here," I've decided to put together some environmental health resolutions for the new year. Add some more below if you've got them, and I encourage everyone to try to make some environmental health new years resolutions of your own.

1. Avoid products containing triclosan. Triclosan is an antibacterial chemical that is put in a lot of soaps and products, but is actually quite toxic. It is persistent and pervasive, contaminates waterways, and has been shown to be an endocrine disruptor in animals. For more information on triclosan, check out this factsheet.

2. Eat more organic food. Chemicals used in conventional agriculture are not only dangerous to our own health, but they pose major threats to farmworkers. Check out the website of one of my favorite organizations, Farmworker Justice, to learn more about some of the problems faced by farmworkers. A great alternative to organic food is buying from small local farms. 2009 = farmer's market time!

3. Eat less high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). (Thanks Brian!) HFCS is not only harmful to health (it has been linked to the rise in obesity), but anyone who has read or heard Michael Pollan knows how bad corn is for the environment. "The environmental footprint of HFCS is deep and wide. Look no farther than the dead zone in the Gulf [of Mexico], an area the size of New Jersey where virtually nothing will live because it has been starved of oxygen by the fertilizer runoff coming down the Mississippi from the Corn Belt. Then there is the atrazine in the water in farm country -- a nasty herbicide that, at concentrations as little as 0.1 part per billion, has been shown to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites." High fructose corn syrup is in almost all processed foods, so this isn't an easy thing to avoid, but I'm going to try to be much more cognizant of it this coming year. For more on the environmental effects of HFCS, check out this Washington Post article.

4. Submit public comments to EPA on issues related to environmental health. The easiest way to do this is through groups that are active on regulatory issues- groups like Food and Water Watch, Environmental Working Group, and Beyond Pesticides often have action alerts about important items on the federal register, with directions on how to post comments, as well as talking points.

5. Get back on the blog wagon. Sorry for the lack of postings, y'all! I promise to do better this time.