toxics

Umbra on flushing medications

Dear Umbra, I work with a number of older women who try to be environmentally conscientious. When it comes to discarding outdated medications though, there seems to be conflicting advice. Medical doctors tell me that all such medicines should be flushed down the toilet. Water resource people say, don’t flush, because all those discarded medicines […]

Umbra on chlorinated swimming pools

Umbra, I recently managed to mangle my knee and am going through all the 4,673 steps necessary to unmangle it and make it happy and functional again. One of the things my doctor advised me to do was swim. Well, swimming pools are of course full of chlorine! Hey, I just bought an expensive filter […]

Dentist the Menace

Here’s one more reason to dread your dentist: Many dental offices flush old fillings down the drain, washing the mercury inside them into the nation’s waterways. That makes dentists the single largest discharger of the toxic metal, according to a national study entitled “Dentist the Menace?” and published by a collection of health and environmental […]

Umbra on chemtrails

I’m interested in learning more about Chemtrails. I understand that they are spread in the sky by jets using aluminum particles and that they are used to create cooler weather to slow down global warming. However, people are suffering from health problems as a result of this spraying action. If you have more information on […]

Hopping Mad

Atrazine, the most popular herbicide in the U.S., appears to cause a wide range of sexual abnormalities in frogs, according to a study by biologist Tyrone Hayes published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Seventy-five million pounds of atrazine are used in the U.S. every year, and it is the most […]

Up in Second-Hand Smoke

Jonna Higgins-Freese reviews Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber

I am an environmental activist, and for almost a year, my husband and I have struggled to understand how our environmental commitments bear on our decision about whether to have children. So when I picked up Sandra Steingraber's new book Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood,, I was immediately drawn in by the opening sentence: "Every woman who becomes pregnant brings to the experience her various identities."

On Bjorn Lomborg and environmental hazards to human health

You know what they say about people who become statisticians? They lacked the personality to become accountants.

How the bear inside you could save the world

“Sobs racked the body of a middle-aged man as he cradled the head of his baby, its dust-covered body dressed only in a blue diaper, lying beside the bodies of three other children, their colorful clothes layered with debris from their shattered homes.” I held this sentence, from a Reuters report on the civilian casualties […]