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October 2008 archive
The Melamine Story
Remember melamine? That was the substance recently found in baby formula that resulted in over 54,000 children becoming sick and some dying. It was also the substance at fault in the 2007 pet food scandal that killed dozens, possibly hundreds or thousands of American pets. (It wasn’t just pet food contaminated, chickens and pigs fed melamine ended up in the American human food chain as well.)
What is Melamine?
Melamine is a chemical (often derived from coal) that is used to make plastics and pesticides. It turns out that it is routinely added to animal feed all over China and has also been found in fertilizers in the U.S. In recent years foods such as wheat, corn, and rice gluten; vegetable proteins; ammomunium bicarbonate; and milk from China have all been found tainted with the chemical.
It ended up in milk that was then used for baby formula and chocolate and other goods because it made the milk appear, falsely, to have more protein than it did. Melamine alone is considered of very low toxicity, but when it is combined with cyanuric acid BIG problems can occur—largely in the form of renal damage and kidney failure. Cyanuric acid, in turn, can end up in human food in low levels from animals fed melamine. It is the synergestic effect of the two that seems to have led to the sickness and death of the Chinese infants and the pets.
You have melamine in your house.
At least most of us do. And your kid is eating off of it. Melamine plates, bowls, and cups dominate the kids market. (Melamine, either as melamine resin or as melamine foam can be found in some countertops, dry erase boards, glues, and even in fabrics and flame retardants.) A cute image of Dora the Explorer looking at you off that hard, non-breakable plate? It’s probably melamine. I had a plate that I loved from childhood that came from Australia and had a kangaroo on it. My daughter still eats off it when we go visit Grandma (or used to before I researched this article).
Melamine tableware does indeed contain melamine. It also contains formaldehyde. (Formaldehyde is linked to allergy, asthma, and cancer and is particularly dangerous to children.) The two make a hard polymer that is widely used in the U.S., often in kids tableware. There is research (and more research) that shows that melamine tableware leaches both melamine and formaldehyde into food and beverages throughout the life of the product. The levels were found to not violate “safe” limits in most cases, however there has been almost no research done on whether there is any safe limit when melamine comes into contact with cynuric acid. (The World Health Organization is leading the first studies on this.) What about other combinations too? The FDA has declared that small amounts (below 2.5 pppm) of melanine in adult food is safe for adults, however they also declared there is no safe level for infant formula. Where the standards were surpassed it was the formaldehyde that was the offender.
Even scarier for parents is that these studies showed that everyday use like contact with fruit juice, or dishwashing, or heating were linked with increased levels of leaching. It is particularly bad to microwave melamine products as they absorb heat.
In the meantime, what to do about all those durable children’s plates, cups, etc. that are so darned cute but so darned bad?
In the craziness of a house with kids, why keep anything around that can’t be dishwashed, microwaved, or heated safely? Get rid of it! If you are as attached to a melamine product as I am to my childhood kangaroo plate from Australia, try retiring it to a dollhouse or a display shelf where it can be admired but not eaten from.
Instead use wooden, bamboo, metal, glass, or ceramic products. I bought sets of tali dishes on Devon. (You might have seen the lightweight metal dishes used in many Indian restaurants and households.) They come in many child-appropriate sizes and can be readily mis-used without concern. I also test the fates regularly by giving my toddler ceramic and glass dishes. She has broken one ceramic mug and one glass cup, but those are pretty good odds. (In fact, in that same time, I've broken more myself.)
For continued reading on the subject:
The W.H.O. preliminary study on melamine and cyanuric acid
Prudence, M.D.
The Soft Landing.
Healthy Child, Healthy World.
A partial list of recent food items recalled for containing melamine
Posted on Oct. 30, 2008 at 3:31 p.m. by Green Mama. Discuss (2 comments)
Literacy Trumps Landfill
The idea of reading entire books on a computer screen is somewhat nauseating, but could be part of a greener, print-free future. According to some estimates, about half of printed books are never read and end up getting pulped or stored indefinitely. While this is a complicated industry issue involving returns and print runs, I was recently given some ideas for doing a little inventory overhaul at home.
Open Books, Chicago's first nonprofit literacy bookstore, is hosting The Great American Book Drive this weekend. They're eager for books of all kinds, and profits go to literacy programs around the city. For those of you living car-free, they'll even schedule pick-ups.
The Great American Book Drive:
Sunday October 26th from 10am-4pm
213 W. Institute Place
Chicago, IL 60610
If you have a surplus of paperback self-help books or reference materials, think about donating to Chicago Books to Women in Prison.
Public and school libraries often take in used books. If your branch doesn't, I'm sure a librarian will know of a place in need of donations. They know everything.
Posted on Oct. 21, 2008 at 3:31 p.m. by Christie. Discuss (0 comments)
Are You "Carborexic?"
Writing in the New York Times on October 20, reporter Joanne Kaufman describes the lives of some zealous folks who have become fanatics about their enviromental footprint. She suggests they may be “energy anorexics,” who obsess over personal carbon emissions the way crash dieters watch the bathroom scale.
NYT: Completely Unplugged, Fully Green
PR firms have taken to characterizing people who religiously consider the impact on the environment with all purchasing decisions (and other life decisions, including where they live) as “Dark Greens.” But at the Little Green People Show, we take all shades of green, and even blues and yellows who have the potential to someday be green.
What about you? Can you confess here to your relative level of obsession? Do you find yourself clicking on to TerraPass or some other carbon-computating web site just a little too frequently? Is it interfering with your work? Your relationships? Do tell.
Posted on Oct. 20, 2008 at 11:08 a.m. by Jill. Discuss (1 comment)
Will a Greener Era Be the Result of the Crash?
A blog on Grist points out what I've been noticing -- that the suggestions we're hearing from experts on how to save money during these trying ecnomic times are a LOT like the suggestions on how to live more sustainably.
The green revolution may be forced upon us by the economic crash.
Posted on Oct. 13, 2008 at 8:31 p.m. by Jill. Discuss (1 comment)
Chicken Mania Sweeps the Nation
Nice piece on the "Bright Green Blog" of the Christian Science Monitor on how more and more urban dwellers are electing to raise chickens. This is something that I, with my own four hens, wildly approve of.
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/10/08/report-illicit-urban-chicken-movement-growing-in-us/
Posted on Oct. 11, 2008 at 9:45 a.m. by Jill. Discuss (0 comments)
That Growing Army of "Eco-Kids"
The New York Times today reports that “experts say [there] is a growing army of 'eco-kids'" who care about the environment and police their own households for eco-compliance. They attribute it to (among other things) a recent spate of environmentally-oriented classroom initiatives, to Girl Scout patches trelated to environmental stewardship, the movie Wall-E, and to an emphasis on the environment in the relatively new magazine/web site “Science Explorations,” produced by publishing giant Scholastic Book Service and the American Natural History Museum.
Locally, of course, I’d like to think our work at the Nature Museum, where 200,000 people a year come through to learn about Chicago’s environment and where we have environmental educators going out to dozens of classrooms every month, has something to do with that trend of green-leaning youth.
But as Laurene has said before on the Little Green People Show, we as adults have to make sure we step up ourselves and lead the way. We may not be able to prevent the fact that our generation of leaders will be pushing down a lot of terribly difficult environmental decisions to the next generation, but let’s make sure we let our kids be kids as long as they can.
In the meantime, let’s celebrate the fact that this new generation coming along IS so eco-savvy. I look forward to living in a world like that.
Posted on Oct. 8, 2008 at 7:29 a.m. by Jill. Discuss (2 comments)
Financial Crisis Part 2 - Are Animals to Blame?
Is the financial crisis caused by our deepest evolutionary animal drives? Given who and what we humans are, it couldn’t be otherwise.
Just as an airborne missile seems a long way from hand-to-hand combat, so our banking and financial system, with all its computerized trading and mind-bogglingly large numbers, seems a long way from barter. Yet the intent of a missile and a spear are the same, to kill an enemy who competes for resources; and the purpose of the esoteric financial systems has at its heart the simple exchange of goods and services.
The individuals who created both missiles and adjustable rate mortgages are all terrestrial mammals, just like you. Morning Edition on National Public Radio aired an excellent segment on the character of Wall Street; in it, the commentator, Tim Harford, in all seriousness compares the behaviors of financiers to those of rutting elk. During boom times, traders demonstrate symptoms of similar to those of a victorious bull elk: they pump their fists, yell a lot and look at porn.( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95420469)
The comparison is neither metaphoric nor derogatory, but a simple reminder of facts: We can place ourselves in air conditioned, well-appointed offices, but we remain creatures of this earth. Like any other animal,we fret over our food and shelter, and who we will mate with. The manic floods of testosterone and adrenaline surge through us just as they do a stag. We may hide it behind suit jackets instead of antlers, but deep inside, evolutionary irrationality still rules.
Posted on Oct. 6, 2008 at 10:52 a.m. by Jill. Discuss (0 comments)
Cabrini-Green Farm Dinner
It's not every day you get to eat a fancy catered dinner in a neighborhood once known for hosting, as one researcher put it, one of "the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing developments ever established." This is Chicago's Cabrini-Green. Or rather, it's a description of Cabrini-Green that's becoming increasingly dated. Whatever your feelings about new development (and the forces behind it), the fact is, Cabrini is changing. In the last decade, many of the project buildings have been replaced with mixed income condos and town homes. A new Dominick's has moved in. A Starbucks. A Blockbuster. Etc. But for those who still view Cabrini as all grim concrete expanse, the most surprising new addition may be this: in the middle of it all, there's a community farm.
It's called City Farm and it's out to prove that the growing of vegetables--in a gritty milieu--can be a vital source of urban renewal. Its farm stand serves the neighborhood. Its daily best picks go to top local restaurants like Frontera Grill. And every now and then, it hosts a special event. Which brings me back to my dinner, smack in the middle of the City Farm crop rows, curtsey of the traveling outdoor dinner party/culinary rave known as Outstanding In the Field (OTIF).
OTIF is all about field-to-table dining. Only instead of bringing local produce to restaurants, OTIF brings their restaurant to the food.
What's it like to eat between the crop rows?
Read all about it, right here.
Posted on Oct. 2, 2008 at 3:10 p.m. by Shane. Discuss (0 comments)
