Compromising the Elixer of Life

Water is really the life-giving elixir. Water is not only what you drink, it is what the plants and animals drink. Freshwater systems occupy only 0.8 percent of Earth's surface.

The Worldwatch Institute reports that our renewable water supply amounts to approx 0.3 percent of the world's total freshwater, which is less that is presently being used. Sandra Postel, a Senior Fellow of The Worldwatch Institute, and expert in global water problems, states that "Most irrigation-based civilizations fail." Wow, that is a stark and scary statement. Her compelling facts back up her statement, leaving me with a sense of urgency about figuring out how can we avoid this path of failure. How can we?

The Why Files water map and linked articles provide detailed information from The World Health Organization -- WHO. "Of a population of roughly 6.1 billion, more than 1 billion lack access to potable water. The World Health Organization says that at any time, up to half of humanity has one of the six main diseases -- diarrhea, schistosomiasis, or trachoma, or infestation with ascaris, guinea worm, or hookworm -- associated with poor drinking water and inadequate sanitation."

Since most of us eat more plants than animals, and plants do not effectively process or filter the water the take up (up-take), the quality of the water that they are water with is very important. However, what about polluted water? What about our "water footprint?"

Discover Magazine has been doing a series of articles on water. Better Planet: Everything You Know About Water Conservation Is Wrong Forget short showers. Worry about the 6,340 gallons of "virtual water" in your leather bag. by Thomas M. Kostigen, published online May 28, 2008. I will leave you with two very shocking statements as teasers to encourage you to pop over there and read the whole article.

"...if each of us avoided wasting just one cupful of coffee a day, we could save enough water over the course of a year to provide two gallons to every one of the more than 1.1 billion people who don’t have access to freshwater at all.

That is a stark statistic, when as many as 5 million people die unnecessarily each year because of lack of water and water-related illnesses; one-third are under age 5."

Farther along in the article he writes: "Right now we lose 30 to 50 percent of the food we grow—and all the virtual water in it—by the time it is ready for consumption, says Daniel Zimmer, executive director of the World Water Council (WWC) in Marseille, France."

Discover Magazine has earned worldwide respect among the learned community they report on, and provides a wealth of information.

The Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram online news has a section devoted to clean water issues called Plant DFW: Drinking Water from a series of articles that they did in May 2008. The issues they address are underground chemical plumes affecting their water system (what do we have here on the Kitsap Peninsula?), Airline water, and more. They provide plenty of links, too. Discover Magazine is linked there as is National Geographic's The Green Guide.

The Associated Press (AP) investigated our water supplies in twenty-four major cities at the end of last year. They found what many of us have known for a while: the drugs that we take pass through our digestive systems and into the sewage stream. The extent of this pollution of our water was profiled in article written by Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard, published by the AP, March 10, 2008. Sex Hormones, Mood Stabilizers Found In Drinking Water Of 41 M Americans

Here is a taste of a this long and thoughtful piece.

“People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The waste water is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

Sewage treatment plants are not set up to handle these chemicals, so now our birth control pills, antibiotics, pain relievers are in our drinking water. I first became aware of this problem when I read an article several years ago about the feminising of fish, amphibians, and mollusks species that can change gender. This is a serious problem for our food supply.

This is a really important issue for farming. How can our food supply be pure if our water is polluted? The title of the story is a link to the AP site. I have quoted few paragraphs so that you can see why this investigation is important.

A vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose.
Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs _ and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen _ in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

I encourage you to read the entire story. I have not found a follow up to this story. If you know of additional or follow up information, please share the links to it.

If, like me, you don't know about these drugs, and their effects on the human being, read this chapter from a text book for psychiatrists. Mood Stableizers are discussed in this online book from the Australia New Zealand Association of Psychiatrists in Training.

This is described as: Chapter 18: Mood stabilizers Saturday, 27 August 2005, Last modified: April 28, 2006, This chapter is not exciting. It provides more detail than medical students need. There is little controversy attached to mood stabilizers.

Why is this important and the blue planet: the water planet? What are we to do when freshwater systems occupy only 0.8 percent of Earth's surface and less that 3% of all the earth's water is potable, fresh water: that means able to be used by people, plants or animals. Without water, there is no life.

Demand for local food at an all time high

What a modern headline: “Demand for local food at an all time high.” A person born in 1908 probably would not be able to understand it, yet today the issue of locally grown versus imported food may be essential to our continued well-being. The locally grown food issue is, ironically, worldwide.

For all the industrialized nations the food chain has become a complex system based on global corporations that separate producers and consumers are through a chain of processors, value-added manufacturers, shippers and haulers, and retailers. This food chain is so convoluted it is almost impossible to understand. For example, If you shop at Costco and many other grocery stores, you are familiar with the Earthbound Farm Organic Foods, which is a subsidiary brand of Natural Selection Foods, which is a subsidiary of Tanimura and Antle.

The Certified Organic Associations of BC (Canada) has a chart of the global corporations that own some of the organic (but not local) brands you can find on your grocery store shelves. Who Owns What in the Organic food industry, by Phil Howard, an assistant professor at Michigan State University's Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies is surprising. If after reading the chart, you feel like you are in a modern version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who's on First,” you are not alone.

The global organic food industry is threatened by the movement to buy from local farmers, who actually provide less than 2% of all food consumed in the United States, and probably the industrialized world, as well, although I have no statistics on this. The globalization of food, which took away the issue of seasonality, so you could have tomatoes, cherries, broccoli, and more year-round, proved to be a highly disruptive situation to both food distribution and agriculture. Food distributors who did not provide out of season food found themselves out of business. Farmers planted one or two crops to meet the huge demand that nationwide and worldwide distribution created.

The local food movement may be as disruptive in reverse. If you enter the phrase “demand for locally grown food” into Yahoo Search, you will get 9,870,000 articles returned.

LOCAL FOOD DISTRIBUTION

Local Kitsap Peninsula food is actually difficult to find. All of the local CSA (community supported agriculture) farms were sold out weeks in advance. Local farmers markets report an increase in customers of double or more over last year. Even our miserable weather and resulting slow season does not deter CSA members and farmers market customers.

However, not everyone can join a CSA or go to a farmers market. To help people who want to enjoy locally grown food, Bainbridge Islander Carlee Ashen started Farm Courier to bring local produce to Bainbridge Island doorsteps. She is at the forefront of local food distribution. Farm Courier enjoys an unique place in the local food distribution system, but Ashen’s success is going to inspire others to copy her business model and join her in providing fresh, locally grown food on the Kitsap Peninsula.Farm Courier and Carlee Ashen were recently featured in this Bainbridge Island Review article Cyber market links Bainbridge growers to residents hungry for local food.

Crossposted with http://www.buylocalfoodinkitsap.org/

Sad news for peregrine lovers

The Seattle Times reported today that none of the peregrine (falcon) babies survived this year. The peregrines have been nesting atop the WA MU tower since 1994. They have successfully raised many babies. Just the headline
Falcon babies atop Seattle's WAMU tower all dead brought me great sorrow. Ángel González, Seattle Times business reporter, has been following the peregrines. I have stood in that building and watched the peregrine baby cam in past years.

The death of these baby birds is not the only tragedy because the bird population has been declining for a very long time at an alarming rate. I did a quick search on Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, and I was sadly bemused by the hatred of her and this book that still bubbles up 46 years later. The idea that we have as many birds as we had in 1962, when Silent Spring first appeared is wrong. It is not just DDT, the chemical that Carson pinpointed in bird deaths then, but a lot of factors, including not enough water put out for birds. In my philosophy, the Earth should be a garden of wonder, but it has turned into a garden of terror for many, including the birds.

What is important about these deaths is that the death of birds and the overall decline of the world's bird population continues. Whether it is grinding along or accelerating makes no difference. I quickly looked for an article to share with you about this problem, and I found very few entries. The best continues to be a six year old article from National Geographic, published November 5, 2002, Quarter of U.S. Birds in Decline, Says Audubon by John Pickrell. There is a wealth of information on the National Audubon Society website. It is worth going there.

A quarter of all bird species in the United States have declined in population since the 1970s, according to a report issued by the National Audubon Society.

Of more than 800 native U.S. bird species, 201 are included on the group's Watchlist 2000, and 214 are on Watchlist 2007.

I do not have time to search further, today, for more information, but my sorrow for the peregrines is increased by my sorrow at the seeming lack of easily accessible information that is recent, concerning this.

The Watchlist 2007 is found here. Just because a bird is not on the Watchlist does not mean that it is thriving for no species of bird is really thriving. In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses what happens when anything, good or bad, crosses a threshold and becomes epidemic. Has the greater population of birds yet crossed the tipping point into extinction?

What you can do. If you have a yard, put out water for the birds, especially if you are in a dry area or an area bordering salt water. Birds need lots of fresh water to survive. If you are in a desert or drought area, add all types of bird food.

Why this is important to farming. Birds are a natural pest control system. While many complain that birds eat grain and human food, it is bird food, too. My father always told me that the most important tithe that anyone could give was 10% back to the wild animals and birds. We have become so greedy that we will destroy everything and ourselves through our unkind farming practices.

Climate Change, Global Warming, and Mary Rosenblum's Water Rites

Less than 3% of the world’s water is potable, and a large percentage of that is in the polar ice caps and glaciers that are melting into the oceans to become unusable salt water. Desalination plants have proven to be inadequate and costly, so maintaining the fresh water we have is increasingly important.

In the past few years, it has become clear that water is the “new oil” in terms of ownership, availability, price, and a reason for war. In Darfur,the war there is a geo-political disaster that is being fought for water, oil, tribal dominance and religion. In Darfur, drilling a well is a political act than can get you murdered. Other parts of the world, such as China, India, most of Northern Africa, and a few areas of the US, do not have enough fresh, potable water to meet the needs of every person who lives there.

In her novel, Water Rites, Mary Rosenblum explores what a world dominated by water shortages will be like in the Pacific Northwest. We just added Water Rites to our Bookshelf because it brings home the problems of global warming in an excellent novel. You can buy it there from Powell’s Books.

This is a book that you can and should read with your family, including children. Water Rites should be on every reading group’s booklist.

I’ve know Mary Rosenblum for about 20 years. Her knowledge of life and our world is wide and deep. Whenever we get together, she educates me in the most delight conversations on global warming, sustainable farming, child rearing, and sheep herding. She understands in the way that only a person with ties to family, the land, and the Earth can that global climate change is accelerating. Mary started thinking and writing about global warming in 1992. In Water Rites, Mary explores what life will like when too little fresh water is the norm.

In 1994, Mary published her first novel, The Drylands, and received the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. That book is again available with three short stories set in the same world and sharing some the same characters as Water Rites.

Mary set her stories south of Portland, Oregon, near the area where she lives and farms, and about 200 miles south of our farm. Her characters are men and women like us, who are caught in a global disaster, enduring the hardships while helping other people to survive, too.

The first three stories, Water Bringer, Celilo, and The Bee Man, depict the lives of people living on the land that is dying from the drought. These people, seen as hicks by the ignorant, are shaped in amazing ways by their circumstances. I really cannot say much more, because the unfolding of these stories is so moving that I do not want to harm them with spoilers.

The fourth story is the award winning novel, The Drylands. We follow Major Carter Voltaire, of the US Army Corp of Engineers, trying to allocate water and build a pipeline to drought stricken agricultural areas. The story is vivid and the characters richly drawn. The characters we meet in the first three stories inhabit Voltaire’s world. It is his responsibility to get fresh water to the drought-stricken farm lands, while Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and other coastal cities drown in sea water.

In the foreword, Mary writes that in 1994 the scary global warming predictions were forty years out, but now, fourteen years later, they are becoming a fact of our lives. As Mary concludes in her foreword, “Think of that next time you vote, or purchase a car. Pay Attention, okay? It won’t be a nice world to live in.” (Water Rites, p. 11)

You can visit Mary’s website at www.maryrosenblum.com. There you will find a list of her other novels and short stories. There is also a picture of Mary with the wonderful dogs that she breeds and trains.

Inert Is Not Inert Anymore

Inert
adj.

1. Unable to move or act.
2. Sluggish in action or motion; lethargic. See synonyms at inactive.
3. Chemistry. Not readily reactive with other elements; forming few or no chemical compounds.
4. Having no pharmacologic or therapeutic action.

[Latin iners, inert- : in-, not; see in–1 + ars, skill.]

Seems like a straightforward definition, but if you care about being poisoned, maybe you should care about this:

Ingredients can be listed as "inert" if they do not have an action pertinent to stated action of the product. This means that an herbicide that kills plants can have in its "inert" ingredients pesticides that kill pests, or you, or your kids and pets. Or inversely, a pesticide to kill a specific pest (like we're not all linked!) could wipe out all the food crops, or flowers, or your yard.

OK, maybe that sounds harsh or paranoid, but if you rid your yard of one noxious weed, you could set off a chain reaction if you use some products. When I first heard about the Inert ingredients, I thought it was one of those "urban myths." I searched for information on it and found many articles. Here is a link to an article Aerial Spraying for the Brown Apple Moth to Resume" that discusses this issue. The article is in Beyond Pesticides Daily New Blog (October 24, 2007). Here is a quote from the article about one inert list:

However, the inert chemicals in CheckMate LBAM-F have now come under scrutiny by local residents. These inerts ingredients causing concern are: butylated hydroxytoluene, tricaprylyl methyl ammonium chloride, polyvinyl alcohol, and sodium phosphate. These inerts are listed by the US EPA as List 3 - Inerts of unknown toxicity, and List 4B - Other ingredients for which EPA has sufficient information to reasonably conclude that the current use pattern in pesticide products will not adversely affect public health or the environment, respectively.

Suzanne Dowling, a concerned resident, said, “There are health hazards associated with each and every one of the four inert ingredients of the product to be dumped on us.”

There are additional links in this article.

For the regulators of certified organic products the inert list is of prime concern. One of the men who works for WSDA Organic Program told me that they spend a huge amount of their time testing the inert ingredients of products being put forth as "organic".

If you read my last post about Pesticides in children, you can extrapolate the implications of non-inert Inert ingredients.

Spring is coming, and state and local pest controllers will be out aerial spraying gypsy or codling moths honestly not knowing about the "inert" list. They truly believe it to be a real inert ingredient such a silica.

Question of the day:
How do we move to knowing what is really in things?

As more and more people suffer from neurological problems, allergies, diseases, and syndromes, it is time to look at the environment in which we live. The following article appeared at the end of January 2008. As with all newspaper articles, it was a one-edition wonder. I am quoting some of it here with appropriate links, and links to the original study, at the bottom of this, to educate us all.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 30, 2008
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html

Harmful pesticides found in everyday food products
Mercer Island children tested in yearlong study

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Government promises to rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren't doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children.

The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue [15 January 2008] of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.

The subjects for his testing were 21 children, ages 3 to 11, from two elementary schools and a Montessori preschool on Mercer Island.

With good scientific caution, Chensheng Lu, went on to discuss the limitations of current research, noting, however, that:

"In animal and a few human studies, we know chlorpyrifos inhibits an enzyme that transmits a signal in the brain so the body can function properly. Unfortunately, that's all we know."

The article continues, discussing Chlorpyrifos:

Dangerous science

Chlorpyrifos, made by Dow Chemical Co., is one of the most widely used organophosphate insecticides in the United States and, many believe, the world.

For years, millions of pounds of the chemical insecticide were used in schools, homes, day care centers and public housing, and studies show that children were often exposed to enormously high doses. Just as the EPA was ready to ban the product, which analysts said would have damaged Dow's overseas sales, the company "voluntarily" removed it from the home market. Yet, with few exceptions, the agricultural uses continued.

The EPA's Web site is a study in contradictions when it comes to chlorpyrifos.

To be fair to the EPA, the website actually reflects attitudes towards these chemicals over time. It is, however confusing, because you need to read the dates of the various documents. If you search on the word chlorpyrifos, nearly a half million articles or references will be identified. This chemical has been in use since, at least 1988, and likely earlier.

To read more about this, go to the article at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html

P-I senior correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattlepi.com.

The study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives www.ehponline.org The study was published in the 15 January 2008 issue. You can download a PDF copy of the study from EHP at http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/10912/abstract.html