Drugs/Pharmaceuticals In Drinking Water Video

An Associated Press investigation found that pharmaceutical drugs are widespread in drinking water suppliers. No one really knows what are the long-term health effects. This is yet another reason to install water filtration in your home. Reverse osmosis is one type of home system that is supposed to remove these drugs.

Eco-friendly and Healthy Things To Do for Spring

Spring is here and it is the perfect time to renew your home and garden with eco-friendly practices.

1. Buy a compost bin and begin to recycle household and garden waste for extra rich soil in your garden. Compost adds vital nutrients and microorganisms to the soil.


2. Use several inches of mulch on your garden instead of resorting to weed killers.

3. Buy organic seeds from Seeds of Change or other venues.

4. Spring Cleaning: unclutter your house to create a healthier indoor environment---minimizes dust and other allergens that collect on items and promotes easier cleaning.

5. Spring Cleaning: select natural and biodegradable cleaning products for your home. These are now readily available in health food stores, some grocery chains, and online stores.

6. Add solar lighting to your yard to save energy and provide an attractive addition to your organic yard.

7. Add recycling to your daily routine. Earth911 has a website that enables you to find a local recycling or reuse locations.


Eco-Living at Gaiam

Go Green This Valentine's Day with Eco-Friendly Gifts and Flowers

Valentine's Day is always a big time of year for gifts and flowers. Here are some great sources for green and environmental gifts for your loved one or friend:

1. Send organically grown flowers or chocolate with organic ingredients from Organic Bouquet.
Classic red roses for Valentine's day start at $49.95. Velvet heart chocolates are one option at $59.95. The flowers are USDA certified organic as well as Veriflora certified for sustainable growing practices. The chocolate is fair trade and grown in Costa Rica.





2. The Sierra Club works to protect the environment as well as explore its natural beauty.
Join Sierra Club and share the love this Valentine's Day. (Get a Free Backpack for Joining)


3. GAIAM offers healthy home and eco-friendly gifts. Also use the $10 off a $50 coupon.

Local News Stations and the Green Living Movement

I've been noticing lately that green living is getting dramatically more attention in the media. The major national television networks have green living campaigns, such as NBC's recent "Green Week," which included green tips on commercials and shows throughout the week. The "Biggest Loser" even had a green show with challenges featuring green living topics, such as household waste.

I decided to investigate this further to see if local news stations around the country are also providing green living websites and news stories. My local station, WFAA, now has "Project Green," a Dallas guide to living more ecologically, saving energy, saving water, and saving other natural resources. The website even provides an online calculator for calculating one's carbon footprint.

I found several other sites as well. WGNTV in Chicago offers many videos on recent green living and green building news stories. I was surprised to find that the green fire station in my town, Denton, Texas, was also featured in one of their website videos. Charlottesville; Seattle; Washington, D.C; and El Paso were some other cities as well with green living videos, tips, links, and articles. I am sure there are many more, but it is refreshing to see that green living ideas are getting more attention and becoming more mainstream. A few years ago when I would mention green living tips and ideas, most people were not even aware of the concept or ideas.

Eco-Friendly Gifts for the Holidays

As all of us think about gifts for the upcoming holidays, it's also possible to think about using some of that money for ecologically-minded or environmental causes. Not only can you help a cause and feel good about your purchase, but also the recipient can appreciate the gift of supporting green causes.

Here are few of my favorite sources of eco-friendly gifts:

1. The World Wildlife Fund Gift Catalog
Support the crucial habitat of an endangered species by adopting a single animal, family of animals, or supporting research and the preservation of habitats. The recipient will receive a certificate explaining the purpose of the donation.

2. The Heifer International Gift Catalog
This catalog offers sustainable gifts of tree seedlings, livestock, honeybees, and other items for farming families and individuals in developing countries.

3. The Gaiam website for natural and organic products as well as sustainable gifts. Christmas ornaments from pine needles produced in Nicaragua with a living wage, recycled glass catchers, and more.

4. The NRDC Green Gift Giving Guide

A list of recommended green gifts--national park passes, solar radios, and more.

5. Local craft fairs and health food stores: buy locally-produced items as well as natural and healthy gifts. You can create your own gift baskets of natural soaps and local crafts.

Tips from The Lazy Environmentalist

NBC's Green Week and iVillage featured Josh Dorfman, host of The Lazy Environmentalist radio talk show and author of a new book.

Here are a few of basic tips for going green:

1. Select organic food as well as organic materials in items purchased--from shoes to clothes.
2. Select furnishings made from renewable materials, such as bamboo.
3. Refuse receipts from ATMs, gasoline, and other machines. This saves paper and trees.
4. Use a BRITA water filter (or other water filters can be used) and refill reusable hard plastic bottles instead of buying bottled water. This reduces waste in landfills and the use of plastic.

He has more tips in his book The Lazy Environmentalist:

How You Can Become a Local Environmentalist

By the time a developer submits plans for a commercial or residential development, it is often too late to protect precious habitat or farmland. If there are large tracts of undeveloped land in your area, it is a good idea to find out what regulations or ordinances govern their development. Consider forests, stream and river habitats, open space, and other community assets.

Unless the community has already established environmental protection ordinances or if the land it protected by county, state, or federal regulations, once the property is zoned for a use, there is little in the larger scheme that can be done to protect habitat or other desirable community assets. The developer's planners and engineers generally design and make development decisions based upon the developer’s goals.

1. Contact your local planning and zoning or development department to review existing ordinances. Many municipalities have these regulations available online.

2. If you know of areas that are desirable for protection, find out what the process would be to change the local development codes or ordinances to protect them.

3. Find out what developments are being planned in your area. This may give you an idea of whether more is on the way.

4. Attend local board and committee meetings and find out about the development process.

Off the Subject--Another Picture of Oscar

One Way to Improve Indoor Air Quality: Mechanized Air Cleaning Devices

Since most Americans spend the majority of their time indoors, good indoor air quality is increasingly more important for overall health. The air in your home or office can be a soup of chemicals, pollens, particles, and microbiological agents.

There are three major approaches to improving indoor air quality as enumerated by the EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency).

The EPA states:

“Solutions to air quality problems in apartments, as in homes and offices, involve such actions as: eliminating or controlling the sources of pollution, increasing ventilation, and installing air cleaning devices.”

One Solution: Mechanized Air Cleaning Devices

• Air cleaning devices, come in many forms, but one common type is medium efficiency air filter installed in a special housing on duct systems. These usually have an accordion appearance and are 80-90% efficient.


• The other common type is the high efficiency (up to 99.9%) HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Accumulator) systems installed on dust systems or as stand alone units. HEPA systems on ducts usually require additional fans to push the air through them. Stand alone and portable units also generate sufficient air flow to filter the air. These can filter down to 0.3 microns.


• There are also often adsorption filters that contain activated carbon to filter pollutants in the form of gases. The gas particles adhere to carbon as the air passes through the carbon filter.

AllerAir offers many high-quality, all-steel construction, portable units. Most units have HEPA and activated carbon. A UV lamp can even be added to sterilize bacteria, viruses, and mold present in the air.

The Controversy Over Bottled Water: One Solution--Home and Office Water Purification

Recently after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (2007) banned the purchase of bottled water by City funds, there has been greater discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of bottled water. Some argue that the transport and processing of bottled water as well as the disposal of bottles negatively impacts the environment. They also argue that tap water is as healthy as bottled water.

While municipalities across the country do remove a majority of water contaminants, it is also true that there are residual contaminants in the water. The disinfection process also adds chloramines and other byproducts. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates allowable levels of contaminants in drinking water. A list of contaminants and their possible adverse health effects is available on the EPA website:

http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/index.html#dbps

The EPA categorizes possible water contaminants into: microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals, and radionuclides. There can also be turbidity from soil runoff and other nonregulated contaminants. Not mentioned on this list are possible contaminants, such as copper or lead, after municipal processing from local water pipes.

In reviewing the water quality report for my local city, for instance, I found small and permissible amounts of lead, copper, barium, nitrate, atrazine (herbicide), simazine (herbicide), and chloramines, among others. Even if the low levels present are acceptable by EPA standards, it is a personal choice as to whether one would prefer to ingest even lower levels of contaminants and also have better tasting water.

One solution is to add a whole house/office or individual faucet water purification system to remove the residual contaminants. Seagull, for example, offers water purification systems with a “structured matrix technology” that remove trace amounts of chemicals and any microbiological contaminants found in tap water and creates water quality that is as good as or better than bottled water. In fact, the structured matrix is also “certified to meet the EPA standard for microbiological ‘purification’.”

There is also the added benefit of having purified water for pennies per glass instead of the higher cost for bottled water.

Book Recommendation: Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken

In his latest book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, Paul Hawken provides an optimistic overview of the environmental movement on a global scale. This movement has no particular leader or ideology, yet, as he estimates, there are between one and two million organizations worldwide working on environmental and social justice issues.

The participants of "the largest social movement in all of human history" come from all walks of life, from the farmer in Africa to the urban activists. He looks as some of the roots of the movement as well as indigenous cultures and organizations as they are related to globalization. He then defines this movement as related to two biological terms, "immunity" and "restoration."

He ultimately explores the connection between environmental and social justice issues. The strategy, for instance, of a "zero-waste society" cannot be achieved without reducing both environmental or material waste as well as "waste on a social level"--underemployment and the marginalization of human beings.

This book is timely, given the recent attention to global warming, green living, and green business practices.

"Eco-Tecture", the New Face of Green Building

In the New York Times Magazine of May 20th, Nicolai Ouroussoff discusses the great progress that Europe has made in designing and building green buildings. In fact, Europe is way ahead of the United States in commonly requiring and integrating green building elements, such as energy efficiency and sustainability.

As he says "By the mid-90s, all new construction in Europe had to meet basic requirements in energy consumption, and many European architects began to make sustainability a central theme in their work." Most of the green architecture shown does not "look" green at all, but just quietly integrates these elements into the overall functioning and design of the buildings. Examples are the Dessau, Germany headquarters of the environmental agency, with underground pipes that heat and cool the building as well as the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart that has thick concrete walls to store hot and cool air that is drawn into an atrium.

This Magazine issue has several articles that discuss "eco-tecture"- the design movement of green buildings, zero-energy, green cities, and sustainable living.

It is good to see that the concepts of green building and sustainability are finally getting some needed attention.

When You Want to Take the Sneeze Out of Spring: Steps to Help Reduce Allergies

The spring season is a time of renewal for plants but also a time for allergies for many people. Here are some basic steps you can take, besides consulting your doctor, that may help alleviate your symptoms.

1. Clean up your home: read the earlier post (2/16/07) on basic steps to eliminate allergens in your home.

2. Clean up you bedding: invest in barrier cloth for your mattress and pillows to help reduce dust mites and other allergens from your bedroom. Gaiam (allergen mattess protectors) and the Heart of Vermont carry many of these products.

(GAIAM: Get Coupon Deal: 15% off with $50 purchase Coupon Code: AFC5 until May 31st 2007 if you use link on this blog).

3. Eat a healthy diet and take your vitamins.

4. Invest in an air purfier or filter to help filter out allergens in your home. AllerAir has a great line of powerful air purifiers.

5. Add stress reducers to your routine, such as yoga and exercise.

An Urban Planner's Wish List for Green Development

As an urban planner, I have worked on residential and commercial developments throughout the Dallas Fort-Worth area and before that on the East Coast.

I have developed my own "wish list" of practices I would like to see for all development in the U.S. Here is a short list to start.

1. Require green building standards for all new construction. Right now, certain communities require this, and most don't. These standards can be developed at the local level, modelled after programs and examples around the country.

2. Promote infill development (new development between existing buildings and projects) and adaptive reuse (reuse of existing buildings) whenever possible--and make every effort at the local level to prevent leap-frog development, particularly in the suburbs. Standards could include experiments with transfer development rights or incentives for developers.

3. I wish that all communities would identify environmentally-sensitive areas on a comprehensive plan and develop standards to protect these areas.

4. I would like more education to be available for realtors and development entities on green building and environmental planning practices. This concept should be part of the concept and design process.

5. The promotion of land trusts for prime agricultural and environmentally-sensitive areas.

What are Green Buildings?

There are many definitions. Some define green buildings as indigenous architecture that utilizes local materials and design options as well as utilizes passive solar. Adobe Homesin New Mexico are often a good example of this concept.

Others define green buildings in more modern terms. Over the past 20 years, the term "green buildings" has evolved from many experiments and programs developed around the country, such as Austin's green building program.

The U.S Green Building Council has developed LEED standards for commercial buildings and has a pilot program to develop LEED standards for residential buildings. Buildings become LEED certified by including a specified green building standards for construction.




In general, many of the green building programs often include some of these general principles:

•Site Selection, Design and Preparation: Design sites to have the minimum impact upon wildlife, trees, and other natural features.
•Educate contractors on minimizing environmental impact on construction sites. Recycle remainder building materials and minimize waste as well.
•Design buildings to efficiently use natural light, building orientation to sun, and other site features.
•Select low-impact building materials whenever possible—renewable materials (ex. Bamboo) or recycled materials.
•Select building materials with low volatile organic compounds and off-gassing for healthy indoor air quality.
•Energy-efficient appliances and HVAC systems.
•Solar energy whenever possible.
•Xeriscaping or other native plants for landscaping to eliminate the use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Minimize the use of water for landscaping. Use organic gardening practices.
•Select low-maintenance building materials whenever possible to minimize the future use of building materials and lower long-term costs.
•Promote less-toxic house cleaning practices to minimize indoor air pollutants and contaminants in water runoff.


For Books on Green Building