The Touch, the Feel, of GE Cotton?

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(Beyond Pesticides, October 8, 2014) After headliners like genetically engineered (GE) Roundup-Ready corn and soybeans failed to deliver on claims of decreased pesticide use and environmental sustainability, instead leading to the rise of “superweeds,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved more dangerous, 2,4-D-resistent versions   shortly after. Now after the predictable failure of Roundup-Ready cotton, USDA is set to approve dicamba-tolerant GE cotton, coming soon to a t-shirt near you.   Feeling a bit itchy now?

USDA’s proposal to deregulate and allow into the environment yet another GE variety will inevitably lead to damaging effects on non-GE crops, native plant species, and environmental biodiversity. USDA acknowledges that the purpose of dicamba-tolerant cotton “is to provide growers with an additional in-crop weed management option to manage [glyphosate resistant] broadleaf weed species,” but introducing crops resistant to other chemical technologies like dicamba may provide short-term relief from resistant weeds, but is not a long-term, sustainable solution to burgeoning weed resistance. This current proposal also includes dicamba-tolerant soybean, as well as a stacked tolerance to the herbicide glufosinate.

Contrary to industry proclamations, providing these GE “tools” to farmers only keeps them on a perpetual chemical treadmill that continues to propagate resistant weeds, endanger our environment, health, and agricultural economy.

KEEP READING ON BEYOND PESTICIDES

Microfiber Madness: Synthetic Fabrics Harm Wildlife, Poison the Food Supply and Expose You to Toxic Chemicals

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Author: Reynard Loki | Published on: July 20, 2016

Doing laundry isn’t something most of us enjoy doing. And now the evidence is clear that the world’s aquatic animals don’t enjoy it either. It turns out that clothes made from synthetic fibers shed tiny plastic microfibers in every wash. This fibrous debris goes from your washing machine, through the municipal sewage system and ends up in all sorts of waterways—marine, coastal and freshwater—where the tiny fibers are ingested by fish, crabs and other aquatic wildlife. In turn, many of these animals end up in our food supply—and on our dinner plates. It seems we are slowly, and literally, eating the shirts off our backs.

A host of recent studies have sounded alarm bells. One frightening conclusion is that these microfibers—a subcategory of microplastics—are even more pervasive in the environment than microbeads, tiny plastic beads common in beauty products that were recently banned in the United States.

One of first researchers to lift the veil on this environmental crisis was ecologist Mark Browne. In 2011, Browne, now a senior research associate at the University of New South Wales in Australia, published a paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that concluded microfibers from synthetic fabrics like nylon and acrylic make up 85 percent of human-made debris across the world’s shorelines. The vast majority of that synthetic waste is being released from clothing when it’s washed in laundry machines.

KEEP READING ON ALTERNET

Cotton, Cashmere, Chemicals – What Really Goes Into Making Your Clothes?

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Author: Elizabeth Grossman | Published on: June 12, 2015

The US Federal Trade Commission has something to say about what you wear.

While not a fashion arbiter and unable to advise on attire for family gatherings, the FTC oversees what appears on the labels inside your clothes. As the federal agency responsible for enforcing the Textile Products Identification Act and related laws, it makes sure clothing is accurately labeled with its fabric content. But it turns out, apart from these laws (and a few — including some state laws — that restrict certain hazardous substances from being used in children’s clothing), there is no overarching US law that regulates or requires listing of materials outside of fabrics that go into producing our clothing.

Why does this matter? Because manufacturers use hundreds of substances to produce clothing that don’t show up on clothing labels. And many of these are hazardous to the environment and to human health.

KEEP READING ON TRUTHOUT

Beyond Monsanto’s GMO Cotton: Why Consumers Need to Care What We Wear

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As the linked article below this article points out, Monsanto’s new super-toxic GMO dicamba-resistant cotton is already wreaking havoc across the U.S. But even beyond Monsanto’s latest “Frankencotton,” there are a myriad of reasons why we need to start paying as much attention to what we wear as we do to what we eat.

We are not only what we eat, but also what we wear. The U.S. is the largest clothing and apparel market in the world, with 2016 sales of approximately $350 billion. The average American household spends about four percent of its income on clothing, more than one-third of what we spend on food.

If Americans are what we wear, then we—even the most rebel youth, conscious women, organic consumers, and justice advocates—judged by what we wear (not just what we say) are increasingly corporatized. The fashion statement we’re apparently making with what we wear is that we don’t care. A look at the labels in our clothing, or the corporate logos on our shoes, reveals that the brand name bullies, the transnational giants in the garment and apparel industry, reign supreme.

Walk into any department store or clothing retailer. Look for a label that says “certified Organic Cotton or Wool and Fair Trade.” Search through rack after rack, in store after store, but you aren’t likely to find very many items that are non-GMO, organic and Fair Trade certified.

There are, however, a growing number of online and retail clothing companies and brands, which offer non-sweatshop, natural fiber and organic clothes, accessories, and textiles. These companies include Patagonia, PACT, Under the Canopy, Fibershed, Savory Institute, TS Designs, Maggie’s Organics, Indigenous, Hempy’s, and many others.  Unfortunately, most U.S. consumers, even organic consumers, have never heard of these socially and environmentally responsible clothing companies.

Given the importance of clothing and fashion in American culture and the economy, there are a number of rarely discussed, yet crucial issues we need to consider—health, environmental, and ethical—before we pull out our wallets to purchase yet another item of clothing or a textile product.

1.Synthetic fibers in clothing and textiles pollute the environment, the ocean, and ultimately the food chain. Clothes and textiles are made from both natural fibers, like cotton, hemp and wool, and synthetic fibers, like fleece, rayon or polyester. Synthetic fibers, often marketed as wrinkle-resistant, durable or easy-to-clean, are industrially produced, utilizing large amounts of energy and toxic chemicals. Polyester, for example, is made from petroleum, a non-renewable fossil fuel. Rayon, technically “semi-synthetic,” is derived from wood pulp and transformed into fiber through a highly water- and chemical-intensive process in notoriously polluting factories.

Once manufactured into fleece sweaters, bath towels or sheets, and brought home by consumers, synthetic fibers pollute the natural environment in the form of “micro-plastics.”

Whereas natural fibers, including cotton or wool, biodegrade over time, synthetic fibers do not. Scientists and marine biologists have begun sounding the alarm that clothing and other consumer products containing synthetic fibers (such as polyester, nylon, fleece and acrylics) release plastic-like micro-particles when washed, passing through sewage treatment plants, polluting surface waters and the oceans, where they are eaten and bio-accumulate in fish and other marine life, eventually contaminating the seafood that we eat.

 “[S]ynthetic fibers are problematic because they do not biodegrade, and tend to bind with molecules of harmful chemical pollutants found in wastewater, such as pesticides or flame retardants.”

 As Reynard Loki pointed out in Alternet last year:

Finished apparel products contain large quantities of chemical substances . . . many of which are released from garments during consumer washing. This indicates that microfibers are of particular concern regarding their potential to transport hazardous chemicals into the environment. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) receive large amounts of microfibers daily. While most of these microfibers are removed, a significant amount is still released into the local environment. Aquatic organisms throughout the food chain consume micro-plastics and microfibers both directly and indirectly. Within the food chain, these particles have been found to cause physical and chemical impacts, resulting in starvation and reproductive consequences in species. Synthetic fleece jackets release an average of 1.7 grams of microfibers with every wash. Older synthetic fleece jackets shed nearly two times the amount of microfiber than new ones.

If you already have clothing or textiles containing synthetic fibers, and certainly most of us do, please consult the articles below for how you can safely and responsibly wash these garments, by using a washing laundry bag called “Guppy Friend”  or by installing a filter in your washing machine.

But perhaps the safest thing to do is to stop buying clothing and textiles containing synthetic fibers.

2. Non-organic cotton is one of the most genetically engineered, pesticide- and chemically-contaminated crops in the world. Over 90 percent of the cotton grown in the U.S. is genetically engineered, spliced with the Bt toxin and modified to survive the spraying of large quantities of Monsanto’s controversial herbicide, Roundup. GMO cotton is grown on 70 million acres across the world, including the overwhelming majority of cotton grown in the U.S. India, Pakistan and China. While occupying a relatively small percentage of arable land globally (2.4 percent), GMO/chemical cotton crops account for a staggering 25 percent of global insecticide sales. In the U.S., it typically takes a third of a pound of toxic agricultural chemicals to produce a pound of cotton—that is, the amount of cotton it takes to make one T-shirt. Several pesticides used on cotton are known carcinogens, including Roundup.

Not only do these pesticides linger on the clothes worn next to human skin, but the fish, marine and wildlife surrounding or downstream from cotton fields also suffer from pesticide pollution. Non-organic cotton crops utilize large amounts of chemical fertilizers that routinely pollute groundwater and emit nitrous oxide, the most destructive of all greenhouse gases—300 times more destructive per weight than CO2. Non-organic cotton requires large amount of irrigation water and is typically processed and dyed with synthetic chemicals. Routine spraying of non-organic cotton fields with herbicides such as Roundup, and application of chemical fertilizers, not only kill soil fertility, but also destroy the soil’s’ ability to properly infiltrate and store rainwater and to naturally sequester excess carbon from the atmosphere.

3. GMO and toxic cotton: You’re eating it. Keep in mind that most of the world’s highly contaminated cotton seeds and cotton gin trash end up in animal feed (especially non-organic dairy) and in low-grade vegetable cooking oils, purchased by consumers or used in fast food restaurants and school cafeterias. Non-organic cotton is one of the most toxic crops on the planet.

Government regulatory agencies, prompted by large cotton farmers and the garment industry, falsely claim that cotton is not a “food crop,” (in spite of the fact that 60 percent of what is harvested by weight ends up in the food chain). This means that super-toxic pesticides and herbicides are allowed to be sprayed, in copious quantities, on the cotton plant. So-called cotton by-products—cotton seeds, cotton seed oil and cotton gin trash—end up being sold and consumed as ingredients in both animal feed and human food. The pesticide residues in cottonseed accumulates in the fatty tissues of dairy cows, and are passed on in the milk and dairy products consumed by humans. Cottonseed oil is routinely laced into a variety of food products, from vitamins to potato chips, and is often addes to olive oil without being labeled. This means that GMOs and pesticide residues from cotton crops find their way into a wide range of non-organic food products, triggering health issues including food allergies, cancer and liver, kidney and immune system damage.

4. Agricultural workers are being poisoned by toxic cotton. Farmers, farm workers and residents of rural communities who work and live in closest proximity to cotton fields suffer from exposure to pesticides, GMOs and chemicals. Many of these agricultural workers suffer from acute pesticide poisoning. Rural cotton farmers in particular lack the necessary safety equipment and training for handling the hazardous pesticides, leading to chronic and acute health issues. Pesticides used in cotton farming have been shown to cause endocrine dysfunction, with farmers in rural and poor areas especially at risk.

5. Millions of cotton farmers in the developing world are exploited in the global marketplace. Small cotton farmers in developing countries struggle financially, unable to compete in the global market because of multi-billion dollar (taxpayer-financed) U.S. cotton subsidies. The result is both economically and socially devastating. Subsidies allow U.S. cotton farmers to sell cotton at less than the price of production, lowering market prices for cotton, while production costs continue to rise along with the cost of seeds and pesticides. Thus, cotton farming in some developing countries is no longer financially viable, due to U.S. subsidies. Developing countries dependent on agricultural production falter economically, as farmers fall into debt. India’s cotton farmers are committing suicide at an alarming rate in response to this phenomenon, its once-thriving cotton belt since renamed the “suicide belt.”

6. Most garments are manufactured in sweatshops, such as those in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan and Viet-Nam, that routinely abuse and exploit their workers. Paid less than minimum wage, less than a living wage, and often deprived even of these wages, garment factory workers suffer from unsafe working conditions, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, 18-hour work shifts and other illegal labor practices in an industry that prospers from the dehumanization of its labor force. Women make up the overwhelming percentage of garment factory workers who are forced to work in these conditions under the threat of extreme poverty. Obscured by the maze of global industry, labor laws remain unenforced in sweatshops, while those who sell these garments to consumers claim ignorance of the exploitation from which they profit.

7. Chemical-intensive clothing poses dangers to human health. Skin is the body’s largest organ. One of its major jobs is to protect internal systems. But skin also acts as a conduit, a way of entering the bloodstream through absorption. Chemicals and pesticides from synthetic materials and non-organic cotton make their way into human bodies through our skin. If you care about what you put in your body, you must also care what you put on your body. Health issues from such toxic chemical exposure range from headache to asthma to cancer.

8. The dangers of GMO/ chemical cotton and synthetic fibers increase the more your clothing promises. “Easy care” garments are especially saturated by chemicals, such as formaldehyde, triclosan and pre-fluorinated chemicals, to give clothes features such as anti-microbial, anti-odor or anti-wrinkle characteristics. Formaldehyde, used to eliminate wrinkles, static, odor and bacteria from clothes, is highly toxic and known to cause cancer, skin ulcerations, heart palpitations, eczema, asthma and other health issues. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies pre-fluorinated chemicals—which make fabric stain resistant—as cancer-causing agents. Triclosan is another chemical used in clothing to prevent the growth of bacteria on athletic clothing. These chemicals in “easy care” garments enter the bloodstream via the skin. Clothing containing nanoparticles, often marketed as stain- or odor-resistant, represents a new and ominous health and environmental threat. Nanoparticles in consumer products are neither labeled nor safety-tested.

9. What women wear “down there” is not as innocuous as you may think. Because feminine hygiene products are considered “medical devices,” those who manufacture pads and tampons are not required to disclose their ingredients. Bleached and made from the chemical- and pesticide-drenched materials of non-organic cotton and rayon (wood pulp), pads and tampons contain various ingredients that may be toxic and absorbed through skin and mucous membranes. The FDA regulates the process through which tampon materials are bleached, claiming that levels of dioxins (toxic, chemically-related compounds common in environmental pollutants) are at or below the “detectable level” and that such trace amounts do not trigger health concerns. The World Health Organization explains that “dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer.” Dioxins are present in environmental pollution, and commonly consumed by humans through food. Alhough new bleaching procedures for tampon materials generate a significantly less amount of dioxins, trace amounts remain.

Cotton used in pads and tampons also contain the pesticide residue from the highly treated crop, as well as genetically modified ingredients. What looks like cotton can also be bleached wood pulp, or rayon, a semi-synthetic material made in a chemically-intensive process. Toxic Shock Syndrome, a rare and dangerous illness caused by a bacterial infection from Staphylococcus aureus, has been linked to super-absorbent tampons made of a blend of synthetic materials including rayon. Toxic Shock Syndrome occurs from leaving such tampons inserted for long periods of time, creating both an environment for the bacteria to grow as well as tears and abrasions inside the vagina.  As with anti-odor clothing, tampons with fragrance or anti-odor properties contain more chemicals that may be harmful to health. Safer alternatives to conventional feminine hygiene products include organic tampons and pads.

10. The choices you make regarding your clothing and textiles are not only expressions of style or identity, but are vital to personal health as well as environmental and ethical responsibility. You should feel good in your clothes—good about the way your clothes were produced and made, good about their effects on your health, and good about the way they make you feel. Consumerist culture is toxic in the way it encourages people to constantly buy and replace clothing produced through unethical conditions. It can be difficult to divorce yourself from this toxic culture, to establish your clothing choices outside of this pressure. To not care about clothes and textiles is not the solution. The solution, rather, is to care what you wear. The solution is to care how fibers are produced and processed, to care how your clothes are made, to care what is in the garments you wear next to your skin, and ultimately, to care how you feel wearing them.

It’s time to care about what we put on or in our bodies and into the environment. It’s time to address the issue of sweatshops in the fields as well as sweatshop factories. It time to Care What We Wear as we consider Clothes for a Change.

The Dirty Secret About Your Clothes

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Author: Esha Chhabra | Published: December 30, 2016

In the Colours of Nature dye house, Vijayakumar Varathan is busy prepping a vat of indigo. At 51, he looks frail, with a tanned body made mostly of bones, but he runs to and fro, setting up an open fire where he’ll brew cauldrons of natural colorants made from plants.

He’s worked here for 15 years. But until his early 30s, Varathan mixed chemicals in a conventional clothing factory in the same region of southern India. There he developed a disease that caused layers of his skin to peel off. Even today, it is discolored. “It was pretty bad,” he says, in his fragmented English. “But I didn’t have a choice.”

Conventional textile manufacturing is tough on both the people who work in it and their land. Issues arise at almost every stage of the process — the ubiquitous genetically modified seeds that strain farmers’ budgets, the pesticides used in cotton fields, the harsh chemicals used in dyes, the toxic waste that pollutes rivers, and the chemically treated clothing that ends up in landfills. The problems are exacerbated in the low-price, quick-turnaround segment of the market known as “fast fashion,” which encourages cheap production and a throwaway mind-set.

A new crop of small businesses are investing in organic farming, natural dyes and a transparent supply chain that encourages shoppers to think about the effect of their purchases — and they’re selling their products online and in a small but growing number of U.S. stores, from small trendy boutiques to Target.

These include Colorado-based PACT, which makes underwear and loungewear from all-organic cotton; New Jersey-based Boll and Branch, which sells organic-cotton bedsheets, blankets and towels; and two companies based in Los Angeles — Jungmaven, a hemp and organic-cotton T-shirt company, and Industry of All Nations, whose clothes are made with natural dyes and fibers from around the world.

The geographical heartland for most of these sustainable start-ups is India, the second-largest manufacturer of textiles in the world, behind China. Textile manufacturing is a $108 billion-a-year business here, employing more than 35 million people — including Varathan and his fellow workers at Colours of Nature.

The air inside the dye house smells of fermented indigo, oddly similar to the scent of cow dung. Pungent, to say the least. Men squat over indigo vats, dipping in T-shirt after T-shirt — some of them multiple times, to produce a darker, more intense shade. They hand the colored garments to sari-clad women, who throw them onto a clothesline. The T-shirts transform from green to blue as the indigo encounters oxygen. Dozens in varying shades of blue are drying in rows stretched across a sunny field.

KEEP READING ON THE WASHINGTON POST 

Reports Launched Urging a Future Which Prioritises Soil Health and Biodiversity

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Published: February 21, 2017 

Two reports have been launched today supporting a future which prioritises soil health and where land use contributes to mitigating the impacts of climate change.

One report is by the Soil Association, a charity promoting organic food, and the other by Simon Fairlie of the Land Workers’ Alliance, a group promoting sustainable methods of farming.

Both reports envision a future which prioritises soil health and biodiversity and where land use contributes to mitigating the impacts of climate change.

They also both agree on the need to maintain or increase the amount currently received by farmers through the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).

However, they say direct payments based on land area should be scrapped and investment retargeted towards rewarding farmers not landowners.

The reports say funding should also be used to provide funding for advice, training, and farmer-led research and innovation.

KEEP READING ON FARMINGUK

What is Regenerative Agriculture?

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Authors: The Carbon Underground and Regenerative Agriculture Initiative

  Published: February 16, 2017

“Regenerative Agriculture” describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.

Specifically, Regenerative Agriculture is a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density. Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, primarily through the practices that increase soil organic matter. This not only aids in increasing soil biota diversity and health, but increases biodiversity both above and below the soil surface, while increasing both water holding capacity and sequestering carbon at greater depths, thus drawing down climate-damaging levels of atmospheric CO2, and improving soil structure to reverse civilization-threatening human-caused soil loss. Research continues to reveal the damaging effects to soil from tillage, applications of agricultural chemicals and salt based fertilizers, and carbon mining. Regenerative Agriculture reverses this paradigm to build for the future.

Regenerative Agricultural Practices are:

Practices that (i) contribute to generating/building soils and soil fertility and health; (ii) increase water percolation, water retention, and clean and safe water runoff; (iii) increase biodiversity and ecosystem health and resiliency; and (iv) invert the carbon emissions of our current agriculture to one of remarkably significant carbon sequestration thereby cleansing the atmosphere of legacy levels of CO2.

Practices include:

  1. No-till/minimum tillage. Tillage breaks up (pulverizes) soil aggregation and fungal communities while adding excess O2 to the soil for increased respiration and CO2 emission. It can be one of the most degrading agricultural practices, greatly increasing soil erosion and carbon loss. A secondary effect is soil capping and slaking that can plug soil spaces for percolation creating much more water runoff and soil loss. Conversely, no-till/minimum tillage, in conjunction with other regenerative practices, enhances soil aggregation, water infiltration and retention, and carbon sequestration. However, some soils benefit from interim ripping to break apart hardpans, which can increase root zones and yields and have the capacity to increase soil health and carbon sequestration. Certain low level chiseling may have similar positive effects.
  2. Soil fertility is increased in regenerative systems biologically through application of cover crops, crop rotations, compost, and animal manures, which restore the plant/soil microbiome to promote liberation, transfer, and cycling of essential soil nutrients. Artificial and synthetic fertilizers have created imbalances in the structure and function of microbial communities in soils, bypassing the natural biological acquisition of nutrients for the plants, creating a dependent agroecosystem and weaker, less resilient plants. Research has observed that application of synthetic and artificial fertilizers contribute to climate change through (i) the energy costs of production and transportation of the fertilizers, (ii) chemical breakdown and migration into water resources and the atmosphere; (iii) the distortion of soil microbial communities including the diminution of soil methanothrops, and (iv) the accelerated decomposition of soil organic matter.
  1. Building biological ecosystem diversity begins with inoculation of soils with composts or compost extracts to restore soil microbial community population, structure and functionality restoring soil system energy (Ccompounds as exudates) through full-time planting of multiple crop intercrop plantings, multispecies cover crops, and borders planted for bee habitat and other beneficial insects. This can include the highly successful push-pull systems. It is critical to change synthetic nutrient dependent monocultures, low-biodiversity and soil degrading practices.
  1. Well-managed grazing practices stimulate improved plant growth, increased soil carbon deposits, and overall pasture and grazing land productivity while greatly increasing soil fertility, insect and plant biodiversity, and soil carbon sequestration. These practices not only improve ecological health, but also the health of the animal and human consumer through improved micro-nutrients availability and better dietary omega balances. Feed lots and confined animal feeding systems contribute dramatically to (i) unhealthy monoculture production systems, (ii) low nutrient density forage (iii) increased water pollution, (iv) antibiotic usage and resistance, and (v) CO2 and methane emissions, all of which together yield broken and ecosystem-degrading food-production systems.

Co-Authors:

Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, California State University, Chico https://www.csuchico.edu/sustainablefuture/aginitiative/

The Carbon Underground

https://thecarbonunderground.org/

This definition will continue to evolve as research and practice inform what builds the health of soils, sequesters carbon, and grows more topsoil for future generations.

DOWNLOAD THE DEFINITION HERE 

How Clothes Are Polluting the Food Supply

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Author: Dr. Joeseph Mercola | Published: February 21, 2017 

Every day, each and every one of us contribute to the ongoing destruction of the environment simply by participating in modern society.

Not only do people inappropriately dispose of drugs by flushing them down the toilet, the cleaning and personal care products we use and the clothes we wear and wash on a daily basis also contribute to the environmental pollution.

Indeed, the environmental impacts of our clothing choices are shocking, as studies assessing toxic effects of various fabric treatments (such as dyes, flame retardants and stain-resistant chemicals) to laundry detergents and the fabric fibers themselves need serious attention.

The Drawback of Fleece

Microfibers1 in particular have gained notoriety for posing a serious threat to marine life and migrating into fields and onto our plates. As noted by NPR:2

“The innovation of synthetic fleece has allowed many outdoor enthusiasts to hike with warmth and comfort.

But what many … don’t know is that each wash … releases thousands of microscopic plastic fibers, or microfibers, into the environment — from their favorite national park to agricultural lands to waters with fish that make it back onto our plates.

This has scientists wondering: Are we eating our sweaters’ synthetic microfibers?

Probably, says Chelsea Rochman, [Ph.D.,] an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, St. George. ‘Microfibers seem to be one of the most common plastic debris items in animals and environmental samples,’ Rochman says.”

Microfibers Have Become a Very Significant Water Pollutant

Indeed, synthetic microfibers make up 85 percent of shoreline debris worldwide,3 and tend to be found in higher concentrations in beach sediment near waste water treatment plants.4

Water testing done by the Rozalia Project also showed microfibers are showing up in most water samples collected from the Hudson River.5 The fibers have also been found in both table salt6 and fish sold for human consumption.7

A 2015 study from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) directly linked microbead plastics and man-made microfibers to the pollution in fish,8 and when Abigail Barrows — chief investigator for Global Microplastics Initiative — sampled over 2,000 marine and freshwater fish, 90 percent had microfiber debris in their bodies.

Near identical results have been reported by Amy Lusher, a microplastics researcher based in the U.K. who co-authored a study9 on microplastic pollution in the northeast Atlantic Ocean, published in 2014. There really does not appear to be any place on Earth that remains unspoiled by plastic pollution.

As Abby Barrows, a microplastics researcher for Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation told The Washington Post:10

“Working in this field of research … can be really depressing. I open up a box of water — it’s from some beautiful place in Palau, and it’s just full of plastics.

Or it’s from Antarctica, and I think there’s definitely not going to be anything in here. And it’s just full of fragments. I haven’t seen a sample that doesn’t contain an alarming amount of plastic.”

Microfibers Are Also a Potential Food Contaminant

Microfibers, which are more prevalent than microbeads (found in face scrubs and similar items), are particularly detrimental as the fibers are easily consumed by fish and other wildlife, accumulating in the gut and concentrating in the bodies of other animals higher up the food chain.

In one study, microfibers raised mortality among water fleas.11 In another, the presence of fibers were found to reduce overall food intake of crabs, worms and langoustines (aka Norway lobster),12,13 thereby threatening their growth and survival rates.

Making matters worse, these microscopic plastic fibers actually soak up toxins like a sponge, concentrating polychlorinated bisphenyls (PCBs), pesticides and oil in ever higher amounts as you move up the food chain.

Factors That Worsen Microfiber Release

Tests show each washing of a synthetic fleece jacket releases an average of 1.7 grams of microfiber, and may release as much as 2.7 grams.14,15,16 For comparison, a paperclip weighs about 1.5 grams.

The older the jacket, the more microfibers are released,17 and lower quality generic brand fleece was also found to shed 170 percent more over its lifespan than higher quality fleece.

Separate research18,19 published in Marine Pollution Bulletin found that the type of fabric also makes a difference in the rate of microfiber shed. In a comparison of acrylic, polyester and a polyester-cotton blend, acrylic was the worst, shedding microfibers up to four times faster than the polyester-cotton blend.

Different types of washing machines may also release different amounts of fibers (and chemicals) from your clothes. Tests show top loading machines release about 530 percent more microfibers than front loading models.20

KEEP READING ON MERCOLA.COM

Reversing Climate Change One Step at a Time

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Author: Alex Madison | Published: February 11, 2017

Carbon is the basis of all life. Plants, animals, humans and everything living is made up of the element, but carbon once combined with oxygen becomes carbon dioxide, the excess of which is the primary cause of global warming.

In fact, just recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced 2016 as the hottest year on record. As in the hottest year since modern record keeping began in 1880. 2015 and 2014 made the same record in their time.

Although President Trump has previously said global warming is a “hoax” created by China, and the climate change webpage has now been removed from the White House’s website, an overwhelming consensus of scientists disagree.

In California, a large contributor to CO2 emissions is agriculture, accounting for more than 8 percent of the emission in the state, and globally accounting for roughly 16 percent. This is due to a number of factors like tilling and the manure and gas of livestock. California being one of the leading agricultural states in the nation, took action with the passing of a climate law in July 2016 to regulate cow methane, which requires the reduction of methane emission coming from dairy farms by 40 percent by 2030.

So what are farmers doing? Or maybe the better question, who is helping these farmers understand sustainable agriculture practices and how to become part of the solution, not the problem?

This is the ambition of Torri Estrada, environmental scientist and co-founder of the Carbon Cycle Institute in Petaluma. Its mission is to stop and reverse climate change by advancing natural, science-based solutions that remove atmospheric carbon. For the Carbon Cycle Institute, it’s all about the soil.

KEEP READING ON PETALUMA360

Regenerating Public Health: Beyond Obama and Trump

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Author: Ronnie Cummins | Published: February 5, 2017

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As evidenced by the 2016 primary and general elections, Americans–Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and Independents–want real change, radical change, not just “business as usual.” That’s why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) nearly won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 with his call for a “Revolution,” including Medicare for All, reining in Wall Street, higher taxes on corporate profits, an end to wars in the Middle East, and free tuition for students at public colleges. Polls consistently indicated that had Sanders survived the dirty tricks of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and actually won the Democratic Party nomination, he could have defeated Trump by a significant margin.

On the Republican side of the partisan divide, 63 million (mainly white),bitterly dissatisfied Americans cast their votes against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed revolutionary, who promised to “Make America Great Again,” by reducing taxes, and by raising the living standards of everyday Americans. Trump’s platform included putting an end to Obamacare and providing a more effective and affordable system of healthcare by devolving power to the states.

Since his inauguration, Trump and his minions have unfortunately declared war on the majority of Americans with a divisive, indeed alarming, series of sexist, racist, authoritarian and homophobic policy pronouncements and executive orders. After declaring he would “drain the swamp” of lobbyists and special interests, Trump has instead hypocritically put forth the nominations of corporate millionaires, billionaires, Wall Street insiders, militarists and climate deniers to his Cabinet, along with an anti-abortion extremist to the Supreme Court, and has enacted a series of executive decrees on immigration, environmental pollution, and pipelines that have brought millions of protesters out into the streets.

According to the well-respected Institute on Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP),

“Trump has issued instructions to effectively gag government scientists, thus threatening continuity and public accountability in research, and is preparing to gut regulations across multiple sectors that were designed in the public interest. He is building a cabinet of powerful millionaires and billionaires, some of whom oppose the very purpose that their agencies are mandated to serve. He is perpetuating the idea that recognition of climate change is subject to a belief system rather than to scientific evidence. He is attempting to reverse the social-, economic- and environmental-achievement and promise of renewable energy. –IATP newsletter Feb. 4, 2017.

One of the most pressing crises we face, a major topic in the 2016 elections, is our rapidly deteriorating public health and healthcare system. See the linked article and video at the end of this article. Unfortunately, neither Establishment Democrats (Clinton et al) nor Republicans (Trump) appear ready to “bite the hand that feeds them” (Big Pharma, the American Medical Association, insurance companies, junk food conglomerates, corporate agribusiness, chemical polluters) and offer a real solution, in terms of effective and affordable healthcare and public policy that address the underlying causes of rampant disease and sickness, not just the symptoms.

The root causes of the world’s most expensive and ineffective system of healthcare—the U.S. healthcare system—are not only medical errors (failing to focus on prevention and nutrition for example) and malpractice (the third leading cause of death in America), but also the self-destructive lifestyle choices or addictions (junk food, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and lack of exercise) of the majority of the population. The everyday behavior of consumers in our Fast Food nation, compounded by the routine “profit-at-any-cost” contamination of our environment, have not only degenerated public health, but have also raised healthcare costs ($3.3 trillion per year and rising) to the point where they are threatening to bankrupt our entire economic system.

We literally cannot afford to provide universal healthcare for all as long as our medical model is focused on treating the evermore serious and widespread sicknesses of the body politic (for example obesity and diabetes) rather than the underlying causes. However, with the right preventive and holistic approach, we could easily afford Medicare for All–and it would cost much less for both consumers and employers than what we are spending now.

We do need socialized medicine, accessible to everyone regardless of their income level. But we need universal healthcare based upon a fundamentally different model, whereby we stop just treating the symptoms of our degenerating public health and start treating the causes.

U.S. healthcare costs in 2016 averaged $10,345 per person for a total of $3.35 trillion dollars, a full 18 percent of the entire economy, twice as much as any other industrialized country. Healthcare costs are projected to grow at 6 percent a year over the next decade, eventually likely bankrupting not only millions of consumers, but the entire federal government.

Whatever your opinion on the merits and drawbacks of the so-called Affordable Care Act, Trump and Congress appear poised to put an end to Obamacare. Millions of Trump supporters say that one of the main reasons they voted for Trump and the Republicans was to get rid of Obamacare. The ACA, launched with great fanfare by Obama and Congressional Democrats, supposedly to make quality healthcare available and affordable to all Americans, became increasingly unpopular once it proved incapable of taming Big Pharma’s insatiable lust for profits. As costs and deductibles rose, and once people realized they were forced by federal law to purchase health insurance, no matter what the cost, Obamacare lost support.

Although millions of previously uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions or low incomes have undoubtedly benefited from Obamacare (along with Big Pharma and insurance companies whose profits increased because the law made it mandatory to purchase health insurance), it looks like the ACA will now be replaced by a system of taxpayer-funded, but state-administered block grants and health savings accounts.

Trumpcare, in most states, will likely lead to reduced benefits for low-income individuals or families, and make it harder for the tens of millions of Americans with chronic and often serious pre-existing conditions to afford health insurance. At the same time it will likely provide tax advantages for large businesses and upper-income Americans. On the positive side, from the standpoint of natural health consumers, Trumpcare may indeed offer more choice for middle- and upper-income consumers on how they spend the money in their health savings accounts, including more flexibility on vaccine choice and expanded coverage for natural health remedies, supplements and practices, including naturopathy and homeopathy.

Meanwhile polls indicate that more than 60 percent of Americans are not that enthusiastic about either Obamacare or Trumpcare. Most consumers say they would prefer a Medicare for All program of universal healthcare paid for by employers and individuals—with the wealthy and the corporations paying their fair share. Under the popular Medicare for All plan proposed by Bernie Sanders, employers would pay a 6.2-percent health tax and workers a 2.2-percent tax to pay for healthcare for all, with an average saving in healthcare costs of $5,000 for middle class families, savings of $9,000 per employee for businesses and $6 trillion in healthcare cost savings over a decade for the entire country.

But with the Trump Administration and the current make-up of Congress and state legislatures, don’t hold your breath waiting for a Bernie Sanders-style Medicare for All program. If we’re ever going to see universal healthcare for all with a focus on prevention, natural health and consumer choice–what we call Regenerative Health–we will  have to elect a Brand New Congress  along with a brand new slate of radical-minded local and state elected political officials, what Bernie Sanders supporters call “Our Revolution.”

In the meantime, welcome to Degeneration Nation. Swimming in a toxic soup of 90,000 basically unregulated industrial and agricultural chemicals–carcinogens, neurotoxins, pesticides, hormone disruptors, immune suppressors, excitotoxins, GMOs. Worn down by corporate junk food, tainted consumer products, air and water pollution, incessant advertising, infectious disease, synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, dangerous vaccines, cigarette smoke, and alcohol. Zapped 24/7 with electromagnetic radiation. Stressed out by poverty and economic insecurity, fear of crime, rampant consumerism, and a murderous work pace.

A growing majority of Americans are chronically sick and dispirited

Ignoring, in fact profiting off of this public health crisis, mainstream medical practitioners, the corporate media, and elected public officials continue to ignore or cover-up the toxic, business-as-usual, roots of Degeneration Nation.

Corrupt politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike support a powerful Medical Industrial Pharmaceutical Complex that offers expensive, yet mostly ineffective, drugs and treatment to allay our growing public health crisis. Then they proceed to collect their payoffs in the form of campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations).

A recent case in point is the rejection by the U.S. Senate of a commonsense bill put forward by Bernie Sanders to require U.S. government, taxpayer-funded health care programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration) to bargain with Big Pharma to lower prescription drug prices and to allow the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. Not only did Senate Republicans vote against this bill, but they were provided a margin of victory by the support of 13 Democratic Senators. And of course President Trump, notwithstanding his recent rhetoric about how Big Pharma is gouging us, said nothing.

Big Pharma spends more on lobbying than any other industry in the United States, according to the Center for Public Integrity. In addition, Big Pharma feeds the insatiable appetite of the mainstream media, spending more than $5 billion dollars a year on advertising, including advertising pharmaceutical drugs, a practice banned in every other industrialized nation except New Zealand. Last but not least, U.S. doctors make more money than any other medical practitioners in the world, though they typically pay a steep price in terms of a 70-hour workweek, skyrocketing malpractice insurance, and indentured servitude to Big Pharma, insurance companies and giant hospitals.

The Emperor of Degeneration Nation has no clothes, but very few of our so-called political leaders, other than Bernie Sanders, are talking seriously about what to do about it.

American consumers and employers will spend over three trillion dollars this year on health insurance, pharmaceutical drugs, hospitals, and medical bills, yet we remain–mentally and physically–among the unhealthiest people on Earth. Forty-eight percent of U.S. men and 38% of women can now look forward to getting cancer. A third of our children suffer from chronic disease, eight percent suffer from serious food allergies, 10% from asthma, 17% are diagnosed with learning or behavior disabilities, almost two percent from autism, while a third of low-income preschool kids are already overweight or obese. Heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, cancer, and obesity are spiraling out-of-control among all sectors of the population.

The fundamental causes of most of our chronic health problems are not genetic or inherited, but rather derive from couch potato/commuter lifestyles; over consumption of highly processed, high-cholesterol, nutritionally deficient, and contaminated factory-farmed and industrialized foods; and an increasingly polluted, stressful, and toxic environment.

These, of course, are problems that even the most expensive prescription drugs and high-tech medical procedures cannot cure. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. Within a few years, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and others, America’s health care costs will soar beyond four trillion dollars annually, bankrupting Medicare and millions of American families and businesses.  Unless we quickly change our priorities from “maintaining” our Degeneration Nation to universally preventing disease and promoting overall wellness–including cleaning up our food supply and environment–America’s health crisis will become terminal.

With millions of Americans mentally or physically debilitated, permanently hooked on the world’s most expensive prescription drugs, Big Pharma, HMOs, and insurance tycoons rake in billions.

According to Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, in 2002:

“The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has [become] a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, [using] its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.”

Keep in mind these figures are from 14 years ago. Currently big pharma rakes in over $500 billion in revenues in the U.S .and Canada alone.

In order to bring about radical change (Medicare for All with a major emphasis on prevention and natural health practices), we will have to put the “fear of the grassroots” into the minds of Congress and the nation’s several hundred thousand elected public officials. But we will only be able to accomplish this if can move beyond partisan tunnel-vision politics and Big Pharma industrial medicine.

The critics of corporate healthcare and Big Pharma must stop quibbling. It’s time to close ranks, and mobilize a massive united front to support the progressive Medicare for All healthcare movement, representing the 40 million Americans with no or inadequate health insurance, the 20 million with pre-existing conditions, and the 60 million more who simply can’t afford Obamacare or Trump healthcare prices. These 120 million dissatisfied and economically stressed out Americans need to be reinforced by an army of radicals and libertarians, the 50 million alternative heath consumers who have rejected Big Pharma’s trillion-dollar drug and health maintenance scam altogether. Unless we bring together liberals, radicals, and natural health advocates, and mobilize this new majority, around a new model of public health focused on disease prevention and wellness promotion, rather than so-called “health maintenance,” we will fail.

The toxic side effects of Degeneration Nation are poisoning the body politic. With much of the population fixated on their personal or family’s health and psychological problems, worried about losing their jobs or their health coverage, doped up on prescription drugs or alcohol, and, for many, compensating for their alienating jobs with rampant consumerism, corrupt politicians and corporations run amuck.

National and global mega-crises–climate change, environmental destruction, poverty, unemployment, and endless war–steadily grow worse. Out-gunned and out-maneuvered, public interest organizations have defensively barricaded themselves in their respective single-issue silos–competing rather than cooperating, seldom if ever making the crucial links between food, environment, lifestyle, work, tax policy, military spending and health. Intimidated and/or bought off by Big Pharma and the medical industrial complex, few of the nation’s elected public officials dare talk about the obvious solution to our national health crisis: universal health care with a preventive and holistic focus.

We need universal, publicly funded healthcare because millions of sick and disadvantaged Americans are suffering and dying. We need universal healthcare because Big Pharma, HMOs and insurance companies are gouging consumers for $3.35 trillion dollars a year, profitably “maintaining” their illnesses, rather than curing them, steadily moving the nation along a trajectory that, combined with out-of-control military spending and corporate tax evasion, will eventually bankrupt the economy.

Can we afford universal healthcare with a focus on prevention and wellness?

In every industrialized country in the world, except for the U.S, medical care is considered a basic human right, alongside food and shelter, which a civilized society must provide for all. Of course it’s very difficult for a corporate-indentured government like the U.S. to afford universal healthcare, if big pharmaceutical companies, for-profit hospitals and health insurers are allowed to jack up their profit margins at will, while the rich and the corporations are allowed to evade taxes. Healthcare reform in the U.S. must be coupled with price controls on drugs and medical costs, as well as tax reform, whereby the corporations and the wealthy are forced to pay their fair share of federal taxes, including a transaction tax on Wall Street speculators. Taking the profits out of healthcare and eliminating the vast army of bureaucrats who administer our current for-profit healthcare system in favor of turning over responsibility to our federal Social Security and Medicaid administration will save us $360 billion dollars in administration costs.

And of course slashing our bloated military budget will bring in hundreds of billions of dollars, plenty of money to pay for every American to be enrolled in Medicare for All and receive the medical care they choose (including natural health products and practitioners) and need, and plenty of money to start changing our food and farming and land-use system from one that makes people sick, to one that makes people healthy.

In the U.S. corporations paid almost 40 percent of all federal taxes in 1943. Now they pay less than 10 percent. In 1960, millionaires were taxed at the rate of 90 percent. Now the top rate for millionaires and billionaires is 35 percent. Trump plans to reduce this tax rate on the rich and large corporations even more. Putting an end to this institutionalized tax evasion is a prerequisite for being able to afford publicly funded universal healt care–without raising taxes for the middle class, the working class and low-income communities.

Regenerating public health

To repeat: Federally funded Medicare for All healthcare is not enough. We need non-profit universal healthcare that promotes wellness and prevents people from getting sick–before they end up in the hospital or become permanently addicted to expensive prescription drugs with dangerous side effects. Simply giving everyone access to Big Pharma’s overpriced drugs, and corporate hospitals’ profit-at-any-cost tests and treatment, will result in little more than soaring healthcare costs, with uninsured and insured alike remaining sick or becoming even sicker.

To regenerate and cure Degeneration Nation and revitalize the body politic, we need to connect the dots between food, diet and health; exercise and health; exposure to toxics and health; stress reduction and health; and poverty and health.

As 75 million organic consumers and alternative health consumers can attest, complementary and preventive medicine, utilizing natural herbs, minerals, natural vitamins and supplements, organic whole foods, lifestyle changes, and holistic healing practices are safe, affordable and effective. Preventive healthcare, natural medicine, and proper nutrition have been linked to a broad range of health and social benefits, including disease reduction, increased academic performance, and lower healthcare costs.

Of course we still need conventional medicine and practitioners: hospitals, diagnostic tests, surgeons, and specialists, as well as preventive and holistic healers. I am a vocal advocate for organic food and integrative medicine, but if I suffer a heart attack, break my leg or get shot in an anti-war demonstration, I want to be taken to a well-equipped and staffed hospital, not to a health food store or my local acupuncturist. But after my hospital treatment, I don’t want to become a prescription drug junky or be driven into bankruptcy court by a $100,000+ hospital bill.

Millions of Americans currently have no health insurance whatsoever, while 50 million or more are woefully underinsured. Meanwhile Big Pharma and profit-obsessed HMOs and hospitals are focused mainly on selling you overpriced (often hazardous) prescription drugs, running expensive tests, and keeping you on permanent health maintenance, rather than preventing and/or curing our most common ailments such as cancer, hypertension, heart disease, lung problems, diabetes, obesity, stroke, and mental illness. Rampant medical malpractice and the failure of conventional medicine to address our serious ailments is the primary reason that 50 million alternative health consumers are taking matters into their own hands and paying $50 billion dollars a year out of their own pockets for nutritional supplements, herbal remedies and natural health practitioners.

Even worse than just expensively maintaining–rather than curing–chronic illnesses, the collateral damage of Big Pharma’s business-as-usual approach can only be described as catastrophic. As an AMA (American Medical Association) publication admitted a decade ago, drug-related “problems” annually kill, 198,815 people, put 8.8 million in hospitals, and account for up to 28 percent of hospital admissions.” Over the past decade this carnage has increased. Newsweek magazine, among others, has reported that side effects from prescription drugs are now the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.

As medical analyst Gary Null warned almost a decade ago:

“A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that. the number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million, the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million.

The problem is clear. The solution is obvious. The multi-trillion-dollar life-or-death question is whether we can overcome our partisan and sectarian divisions and mobilize the grassroots power of the majority of Americans who are sick and tired of living in Degeneration Nation. Can we heal the perennial split between proponents of conventional medicine and the alternative health consumer movement? Can progressives and natural health advocates reach out to the economically disadvantaged and stressed-out majority to create a massive grassroots pressure that will literally force our currently indentured politicians to “do the right thing?” Can we figure out how to change people’s self-destructive eating and lifestyle decisions, while still respecting individual liberty?

The time for action is now.

It’s time to overthrow Big Pharma’s control over our government, our health and our pocketbooks. It’s time to regenerate public health and the body politic. It’s time for a Regeneration Revolution.

For more Information: Surprising Links: How Big Banks Manipulate and Influence Your Health