Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith
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 Chemical Industry Archives, a project by environmental working group www.chemicalindustryarchives.org
Environmental Health Perspectives www.ehponline.org
United States National Library of Medicine, Environmental Health and Toxicology http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/enviro.html
The Right-to-Know Network, which provides free access to numerous databases and resources on the environment www.rtknet.org/rtkdata.php
Skin Deep, a cosmetic safety database by
Environmental Working Group www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics www.safecosmetics. |
Bottom Line Health
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| For produce, choose organic varieties if you're buying one of the items found by the environmental working group (a nonprofit group of researchers who investigate environmental health threats) to be among the most contaminated (see chart on page 293).
If you must buy nonorganic, choose produce that is least likely to be contaminated. Wash the nonorganic produce vigorously under running water to remove as much potentially harmful residue as possible. (Organic produce also should be washed. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Click here to read NewsTarget articles on Vitamin D.
The environmental working group, sadly, still does not recognize the healing power of Vitamin D and continues to recommend that people avoid sunlight. This is merely an oversight by the group, not any sort of malicious disinformation conspiracy. The EWG means well, but they remain ignorant of the nutritional impact of vitamin D. |
| In this case, the environmental working group (www.EWG.org), one of my top recommended non-profit organizations, has compiled a list of 700 name-brand sunscreens along with the toxic chemicals they contain. You'll find the list at http://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/
As the EWG reports, many sunscreen products contain cancer-causing chemicals that get absorbed right through the skin:
Some sunscreens absorb into the blood and raise safety concerns. Our review of the technical literature shows that some sunscreen ingredients absorb into the blood, and some are linked to toxic effects. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports "An average adult is exposed to over 100 unique chemicals in personal care products every day -- these exposures add up." The EWG has created a database of ingredients and safety ratings for more than 14,800 personal care products.
A few years ago, Christian Daughton posed the question, "Is the introduction of new chemicals to commerce outrunning our ability to fully assess their significance in the environment or to human health? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Environmental Working Group (www.EWG.org). There's excellent work being done at Commercial Alert (www.CommercialAlert.org) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (www.CSPInet.org). I'm sure there are many more that deserve to be listed here, too. We're all part of a natural living / green living / sustainable future movement that's reshaping the world right now, through highly effective educational campaigns and grassroots organization. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 More than 200 animal studies show that BPA is toxic at very low doses, and the Centers for Disease Control explains that it has found BPA in alarming concentrations in 95 percent of patients being tested. The environmental working group (www.EWG.org) recently released a shocking report describing the very high levels of BPA contamination in canned foods at: http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola/newsrelease.php
Clearly, bisphenol A is a chemical we don't want in our bodies, and infants have proven to be even more susceptible to the long-term health consequences than adults. |
Stacy Malkan
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 Jane Houlihan and Richard Wiles, two researchers at the environmental working group, were having a debate. One of the top government watchdog groups in the US capital, EWG was busy writing exposes about dangerous pesticides in the country's food supply and tracking millions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to big agribusiness. Taking a few weeks out to write a report about nail polish seemed like a good way to get laughed out of the environmental community. But Jane Houlihan's discovery that a chemical linked to birth defects was a common ingredient in nail polish was unsettling. |
| Meanwhile, Jane Houlihan and Richard Wiles were down the street at the environmental working group deciding whether to write the report about nail polish and risk getting laughed out of the environmental community. Jane decided to give it a shot. Through label searches, she found the phthalate DBP in 37 popular nail polishes, top coats and hardeners made by L'Oreal, Maybelline, Oil of Olay and Cover Girl among other popular brands. |
| If She Builds It
Back at the Washington DC offices of the environmental working group, where a banner with the slogan "The Power of Information" hangs in the entranceway, Jane kept working on the spreadsheet, her idea rising higher. "Once I realized that maybe we did have a systematic way to evaluate ingredient safety, we needed to build up a database of ingredients in products," she explained. Nobody in the entire multi-billion-dollar cosmetics industry had a comprehensive list of ingredients in cosmetic products — or if they did they weren't sharing it. |
| Parents know intuitively that babies in the womb are more vulnerable to the effects of industrial chemicals than adults," said Jane Houlihan, vice president of research at the environmental working group and lead author of the cord-blood study. "This intuition is backed by science that has unfolded primarily over the past two decades."
Pound for pound, kids absorb more chemicals into their bodies, and their immature systems often don't detoxify and eliminate chemicals as efficiently as adults. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Below, we reprint the full EWG press release announcing this new sunscreen database:
First-ever online database rates sunscreen safety and effectiveness
Today, the environmental working group (EWG) released the first-ever, in-depth analysis of the safety and effectiveness of more than 700 name-brand sunscreens. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 If you decide to eat a mixture of organic and conventionally grown produce, here are the best vegetables and fruits to buy organic, because otherwise they're found consistently contaminated with pesticides, according to the Environmental Working Group:
¦ Apples ¦ Peaches n Bell peppers » Pears
« Celery s Potatoes
« Cherries ¦ Red raspberries b Imported grapes Spinach
Nectarines > Strawberries
Stop SUGAR SHOCK! to Lose Weight
Sugar Kickers around the world say that kicking sweets and refined carbs peeled off pounds like no other diet they've undertaken. |
Stacy Malkan
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| The number one priority this year was responding to the petition filed by the environmental working group, asking the FDA to recall cosmetics that violated the recommendations of the industry safety panel. The FDA was going to take its time responding to the petition, McEwan explained. They knew it was important and they would have to be careful.
The industry's biggest worry was, again, California. Lobbyist Mike Thompson talked about the difficult past 18 months and warned that this was just the beginning. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 The environmental working group, a consumer advocate and protection nonprofit research organization, put bell peppers on its 2003 list of twelve foods most contaminated with pesticides. The organization recommends buying organic, which is probably a good idea. At the very least, wash them well in a fruit-and-vegetable wash. That said, they're still a great food and a nutritional bargain. |
| The environmental working group, a consumer advocate and protection nonprofit research organization, put onions on its 2003 list of twelve foods least contaminated with pesticides. Nice to know!
Peppers (hot): cayenne, chile, jalapeno
You would think that hot peppers— like chile peppers or cayenne peppers—would be exactly what you'd want to avoid if you had heartburn. Maybe, maybe not. At least one study demonstrated that the active ingredient in ' hot peppers may actually protect the stomach lining from damage. Granted, that study was done in rats, but still. |
| These two nutrients work synergistically to reduce potentially toxic levels of homocysteine, a naturally occurring amino acid that can be harmful to blood vessels, thereby
The environmental working group, a consumer advocate and protection nonprofit research organization, put asparagus on its 2003 list of twelve foods least contaminated with pesticides. Nice to know!
The only downside to asparagus is that it makes your pee smell funny. This is because it contains the amino acid asparagine. It's potentially annoying, but completely harmless. |
| The environmental working group, a consumer advocate and protection nonprofit research organization, put spinach on its 2003 list of twelve foods most contaminated with pesticides. The organization suggests you buy organic. I agree.
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Squash (winter and summer)
Squash comes in two basic categories: winter and summer. While they share characteristics, there are significant differences.
Summer squash comes in several different varieties, including zucchini, crookneck, and pattypan. |
| C
Unfortunately, the environmental working group, a consumer advocate and protection nonprofit research organization, put apples on its 2003 list of twelve foods most contaminated with pesticides. The organization suggests you buy organic. I agree.
Apricots
An apricot is basically a tasty little low-calorie bundle of nutrients put together in a beautiful, sun-colored package. What's not to like? |
| Unfortunately, the environmental working group, a consumer advocate and protection nonprofit research organization, put cherries on its 2003 list of twelve foods most contaminated with pesticides. The organization suggests you buy organic. I agree.
Coconut
*
I really looked forward to writing this section, because I felt it would give me a chance to right one of the greatest nutritional misconceptions of all time: the idea that coconut, because it contains saturated fat, is bad for you.
Let me be very clear at the outset: Coconut and coconut oil are superfoods. |
Mark Schapiro
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 In 2005 and 2006 it seemed as if an iridescent light was shining from all those hidden ingredients now circulating in our veins. The environmental working group conducted tests on the umbilical cords of ten infants and discovered the presence of likely carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting, and neurotoxic chemicals that passed from mothers to their developing fetuses through the placenta.10 Among them were the perfluorinated substances used in nonstick cookware and plastic packaging, and those PBDE flame retardants that Europe had proposed banning at the POPS conference. |
| When the environmental working group (EWG) compared the ingredient lists in over fourteen thousand personal-care products to lists of potential chemical hazards compiled by the EPA, FDA, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the European Chemicals Bureau, and thirty other scientific and regulatory institutions around the world, their discoveries were a revelation. The EWG found hundreds of varieties of skin and tanning lotions, nail polish and mascara and other personal-care products that contain known or possible carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxins. |
| Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer and research director at the environmental working group, a Washington, D.C.-based NGO, characterizes the ingredient-review board's focus as emphasizing acute symptoms, rather than more chronic, accumulative health effects. "The [CIR] boards look at things like eye and skin irritation, factors which most directly affect what people buy, and not what the long-term implications might be. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| MMGI/Chapter2/ch2-l.html. environmental working group. "Overexposed: Organophosphate Insecticides in Children's Food." http://www.ewg.org/reports_content/ops/download.pdf.
-. "Report Card: Pesticides in Produce." http://www.foodnews.org/reportcard.php.
-. "They Are What They Eat: Kids' Food Consumption and Pesticides." http://www.ewg.org/ reports_content/apples/kidseat.pdf.
"Natural and Organic Claims." Letter to producers from Robert C. Post, Director, Labeling and Additives Policy Division, Food Safety and Inspection Service, United States Department of Agriculture, March 8,1999. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 According to another study by the environmental working group, in a test of fifteen thousand cosmetic products, almost 80 percent contained harmful impurities that include known or probable carcinogens, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, plasticizers, and degreasers. Despite these impurities, many of these products were nevertheless labeled as "organic" or "natural" because the government does not regulate personal-care-product labeling, and a product need only contain one or two botanical extracts to acquire the "natural" or "organic" label. |
Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith
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| One of the most surprising discoveries of late has been the detection of perchlorate in 160 public water systems in 22 states, which urged the environmental working group to publish a press release in 2006 declaring perchlorate a "widespread public health threat" for pregnant women. The vast majority of perchlorate manufactured in the United States is used by the Department of Defense to make solid rocket and missile fuel, while smaller amounts are used to make fireworks and road flares. |
| Recently a series of comprehensive studies intended to illustrate the human body burden has been conducted through the collaborative efforts of two nonprofit health and environmental research organizations: environmental working group (EWG), based in Washington, D.C., and Commonweal, based in California. Both strive to use the power of communal information to contribute to and protect public and environmental health. |
David Steinman
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 Ginty from Women's eNews and posted on the environmental working group Web site, here is another example of the cost of dangerous cosmetics:
When Olivia James gave birth to her son Darren seven years ago, she learned he had bright eyes and a dimple on his right cheek. She also learned he had hypospadia, a birth defect in which the urethra fails to extend the whole length of the penis. Repeated surgeries have corrected Darren's problem. |
| Every American and European fragrance the not-for-profit environmental working group tested contains phthalates.11-12 Every single European deodorant EWG recently tested also contains phthalates.13
When testing seventy-two name-brand, off-the-shelf beauty products for the presence of phthalates, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found phthalates in nearly three-quarters of the products tested, though the chemicals were not listed on any of the labels.14
A second report from the same group, "Pretty Nasty," documented similar product test results in Europe. |
Stacy Malkan
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| In her mid 30s, Jane merged her interests into a new career as vice president of research at the environmental working group, specializing in exposing the health risks from toxins in food, air, water and consumer products. But she never wove together the threads of cosmetics, chemicals and children's health until a warm day in October 2000.
The US Centers for Disease Control had just released new research from their study of the levels of toxic chemicals in the bodies of average
15
Americans. |
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