Greenpeace says that “Nike and Adidas are playing with toxic polluters in China” and that during recent investigations, Greenpeace found several major international clothing brands, including the sports giants Adidas and Nike, supplied by factories in China that are releasing toxic chemicals into major rivers.
Nike and Adidas, however, say their work at the offending factories isn’t what led to the hazardous chemical discharges.
The detox team at Greenpeace published this “Detox video” parodying Nike and Adidas commercials and various celebrities of sport and music like David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Snoop Dogg and others, in order to “challeng Nike and Adidas to champion a toxic-free future.”
With the introduction of Google+, the new social network by Google, the competition between social networks is getting hotter and hotter. The Google+ project is taking advantage of Facebook’s flaws to get users to adhere to the new functionalities that it offers.
BTW, if you want a Google+ invitation, leave a comment using your gmail email and I’ll send it to you. [Read More…]
The Internet has been flooded with false email warnings to avoid freezing water in plastic bottles so as not to get exposed to carcinogenic dioxins. One hoax email has been erroneously attributed to Johns Hopkins University since the spring of 2004. The Office of Communications and Public Affairs discussed the issue with Rolf Halden, PhD, PE, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the Center for Water and Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Halden received his masters and doctoral degrees researching dioxin contamination in the environment. We sat down with him to set the record straight on dioxins in the food supply and the risks associated with drinking water from plastic bottles and cooking with plastics.
Question: What are dioxins?
Answer: Dioxins are organic environmental pollutants sometimes referred to as the most toxic compounds made by mankind. They are a group of chemicals, which include 75 different chlorinated molecules of dibenzo-p-dioxin and 135 chlorinated dibenzofurans. Some polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) also are referred to as dioxin-like compounds. Exposure to dioxins can cause chloracne, a severe form of skin disease, as well as reproductive and developmental effects, and more importantly, liver damage and cancer.
Question: Where do dioxins come from?
Answer: We always thought dioxins were man-made compounds produced inadvertently during the bleaching of pulp and manufacturing of pesticides like Agent Orange and other chlorinated aromatics. But dioxins in sediments from lakes and oceans predate these human activities. It is now generally accepted that a principal source of dioxins are various combustion processes, including natural events such as wild fires and even volcanic eruptions.
Today, the critical issue is the incineration of waste, particularly the incineration of hospital waste, which contains a great deal of polyvinyl chloride and aromatic compounds that can serve as dioxin precursors. One study examined the burning of household trash in drums in the backyard. It turns out that these small burnings of debris can put out as much or more dioxins as a full-sized incinerator burning hundreds of tons of refuse per day. The incinerators are equipped with state-of-the-art emission controls that limit dioxin formation and their release into the environment, but the backyard trash burning does not. You set it ablaze and chemistry takes over. What happens next is that the dioxins are sent into the atmosphere where they become attached to particles and fall back to earth. Then they bind to, or are taken up, by fish and other animals, where they get concentrated and stored in fat before eventually ending up on our lunch and dinner plates. People are exposed to them mostly from eating meat and fish rich in fat.
Question: What do you make of this recent email warning that claims dioxins can be released by freezing water in plastic bottles? [Read More…]
