‘”Natural” flavors are often anything but.

The term “natural flavors” sounds innocuous. Spot the phrase on the ingredients list on a box of raspberry fruit bars and you might imagine something along the lines of raspberry concentrate, or perhaps a puree. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to be correct. “Natural flavors” is simply a catch-all term that can hide dozens of ingredients, and they aren’t necessarily different from artificial additives.

What’s the difference between natural and artificial flavors?

The term “natural” implies that a substance is close to the state in which it’s found in nature – an oil, juice, puree or other type of extract from a whole food source like fruit. But, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the kinds of substances suggested by the term “natural flavors” can’t be listed as flavorings at all. If a flavorful ingredient included in a food product has any nutritional value, it’s going to be listed by name on the label.

To create natural flavors, food scientists, called flavorists, distill flavors from whole foods and then combine them with chemical compounds which act as a carrier and make them more potent and shelf-stable. Artificial flavors, on the other hand, are entirely chemically-derived. Both types of flavoring are manufactured in a laboratory.

What exactly is in natural flavors?

According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, a natural flavoring is defined as:

The essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or any other edible portions of a plant, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose primary function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.

Any substance that’s approved for use in food and originally came from a natural source can be listed under natural flavors. The term is opaque, and doesn’t give consumers much of a clue in knowing where the natural flavors may have come from. Sometimes, the flavors that are actually present can be far from what you’d expect. One common ingredient, known as castoreum, is often used to enhance raspberry and vanilla flavors. Castoreum is made from the anal secretions of beavers. There’s no telling how food scientists came upon that discovery; flavor chemistry is apparently a complicated science.

Why are food companies not forced to disclose the contents of their natural flavors?

Call up a food company and ask them what’s actually in their natural flavors, and chances are, they won’t be willing to tell you.

Food manufacturers have to disclose potential allergens in their products on the labels, including the ingredients in “natural flavors.” They are also required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to identify flavorings that are technically meat or dairy products, like “dried broth” or “meat extracts” (though this does not apply to all animal-sourced flavorings, like castoreum.)

Flavor chemistry is “a pretty secretive industry,” according to a recent article in the New Jersey Monthly. Flavorists are often contractually bound to not speak about their work. The term “natural flavors” disguises the trade secrets of food companies. Given this cloak of secrecy, they can ostensibly maintain secret recipes to protect themselves against copycat competitors, would-be Doritos Ranch knock-offs and Coca-Cola wannabes.

Are natural flavors safe?

Some food experts claim that natural flavors are actually less safe than artificial flavors.

“Artificial flavorings are simpler in composition and potentially safer because only safety-tested components are utilized,” says Gary Reineccius, a professor in the department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota.

Besides, a chemical is a chemical.

“Another difference between natural and artificial flavorings is cost. The search for ‘natural’ sources of chemicals often requires that a manufacturer go to great lengths to obtain a given chemical. …Furthermore, the process is costly,” explains Reineccius. “This pure, natural chemical is identical to the version made in an organic chemist’s laboratory, yet it is much more expensive than the synthetic alternative. Consumers pay a lot for natural flavorings. But these are in fact no better in quality, nor are they safer, than their cost-effective artificial counterparts.”

Debates about artificial versus natural flavorings aside, the most troubling issue for many is the lack of transparency about what’s in our food. Catch-all terms like natural flavors put consumers at the mercy of manufacturers, reducing the buyer’s ability to make informed purchases.

There’s one very effective way to avoid questionable flavorings: cut back on processed foods. Natural flavors are added to foods because processing wrings out the real, original flavors and leaves the final product bland, though shelf-stable.

Image: pink sherbet photography

I’ve been to Mexico many times, always typically as a dirty surfing traveler. I’ve gotten sick. Whether it’s the water, the food, the fruit in the market, I don’t know, but Mexico isn’t a country that typically agrees with me. It’s a land of contradictions and uncanny juxtapositions. Just on the outskirts of four star hotels in Zihuantenejo is an old Mexico where life is slow, poor and dirty. The town where I am, Saladita, is far away from the glass bottom boat rides and fancy resorts, but it’s been marked by old surfers looking to retire in a surfer’s paradise. But just back off the beach, a few miles inland is the land of serious drug violence. Tourists, even dirty ones with surfboards, are largely shielded from this reality. Drug fighting is bad for beach tourism, especially when it produces a surfeit of bodies being dumped into the ocean. Just a year ago, there were an inordinate amount of shark attacks on swimmers and it was surmised by marine biologists that these attacks may be happening because sharks have gotten used to the taste of human flesh because so many bodies end up in the ocean from different sides of warring factions. No joke.

But where I am, it’s a different world. Saladita is known for a perfect wave that breaks consistently. It’s the kind of wave that surfers dream about – long, peely, and easy to catch. I’ve surfed my guts when we first got here but I haven’t been in the ocean for two days. Why? The rain came. Everywhere, the smell of burning plastic on the beach carries on the wind, and the deluge of trash that comes out of the river makes the ocean off limits for many hours after wards, especially for someone like me. Everywhere I go in the world, I look at places through an environmental, water quality lens. I look at behavior. I look at systems. I see many people unaware that they are poisoning themselves. I wish I didn’t, but you can’t un-know reality once you engage in perceiving it.

Just yesterday, walking around, documenting the human stain on this divine land, I asked a guy spraying chemicals on weeds by the river bank what he was spraying. Paraquat. Paraquat is a non-selective herbicide (meaning it kills everything) and it’s extremely toxic to humans. He filled it from an even bigger tank on the back of a truck, over and over again. Never mind the septic tank leaks, never mind the straight dumping of feces into the river in very poor areas, never mind the animals crapping on the river bank, and never mind all the garbage sent out to sea. Chemicals freak me out. Even taking a small swig of Paraquat and spitting it out can cause death. Sure, it’s diluted a bit, but no matter what, it’s getting into my body. Because everything runs down hill.

But what do you do? And is it a gringo’s place to do anything? That’s the rub. By all standards other than environmental, surfers spending cash and building houses is a good thing for the local people. They make money. And good money.

Right in front of the wave, there is a surf camp called Lourdes’s. Lourdes is a woman about 35, a regal Mexican goddess who makes it her job to know everything that happens in Saladita. Her surf lodge is basic, includes clean sheets and ceiling fans, but otherwise no luxury. I see the money she makes – all cash. I see the car she drives. Surfers are good for her quality of life. But don’t piss off Lourdes. You want to build a vacation Palapa with an infinity pool? Or you just want to buy a cheap bag of ditch weed? You must first pass the ‘pinche gringo’ test with Lourdes. She owns the place and she will bring a hammer down on anyone not in her good graces.

To wit, just up the road sits a half finished Hacienda that was being built by a guy from California. He pissed Lourdes off, and the next day the workers building his place quit coming and stole all the building materials. The guy can’t get anyone to finish it and he’s persona non-grata around these parts. As a traveling surfer, it’s something I like to see: Mexican ownership of Mexican resources.

But how long will it be before people quit coming here to surf because the water is so dirty? With all this gringo infusion of cash, why is there so little infrastructure to manage the waste humans create? It’s all about margins and people in power that control those margins. It’s overwhelming, indeed. Constantly, the environmental movement is chastised for being too ‘doom and gloom’ and enviro non-profits all that want to remain solvent try to balance bad news with hope. But sometimes, looking at the challenges that face a place even as beautiful as this one, you realize quickly that hope is not an effective strategy. Oh Mexico, my heart is still hopeful for you, but I fear for you.

Image: ripkas

Having spent time in Malaria-infested regions and seeing some of the suffering firsthand, I got a kick out of watching a crowd at TED squirm last year when Bill Gates released a little swarm of mosquitoes on his audience. It’s a huge deal, and it’s a good thing that Gates and big-name players such as Colin Powell, Queen Rania and others are raising awareness about just how globally devastating the bug-borne illness is. The disease kills more than a million people every year, mostly African children, and gaining traction in an environmentally acceptable way has remained elusive.

But here’s some good news from the front: Researchers at the University of Haifa have identified the “chemical identity” of compounds released by one of the malaria carrier’s aquatic predators. Mimicking this identity basically scares the shit out of mosquitoes. The big idea now is to introduce these natural chemicals where they breed, encouraging them to go do their business elsewhere – an often fatally time-consuming challenge in the short lifespan of Culiseta longiareolata (a.k.a. Pure Evil Creatures).

The team responsible for the breakthrough had previously shown that mosquitoes chemically sense at least one particular “predator of its progeny” – the backswimmer – and avoid places where these baby-eaters hang out. Now the team has identified the backswimmer’s actual chemical footprint (a combination of n-tricosane and n-heneicosane) that repels these mosquitoes from laying eggs. According to a university release, “Applying such synthetic compounds to mosquito breeding sites would not only result in much fewer mosquitoes in the immediate area but probably reduce mosquito populations overall.”

In the release, Team leader Professor Leon Blaustein explains that there are three primary ways to stop the bugs: The first is to hit “˜em where they breed, somehow keeping them from leaving the area in which they’re born. The second is to try to kill them once they’ve spread to residential areas – a difficult, expensive, and usually bad-chemical affair. The third and final option is to put it on you, the bitee (EcoSalon recently offered up some survival tips), and your we-all-know-how-well-they-work repellents. (Don’t you love slathering yourself with chemical acronyms?)

Aside from the chemical nature of these usually not-so-eco-friendly approaches, Blustein adds that mosquitoes often develop resistance to pesticides and that the group’s “new findings of chemical identification of predator-released egg-laying repellants can be a breakthrough in providing a natural, environmentally friendly and inexpensive option to the arsenal in the first line of defense.”

Images: otisarchives2, Ixtla

When President Obama outlined his administration’s plans to curb the ongoing BP oil spill in his national address last night, he mentioned the “wrenching anxiety” that local fishers feel at the potential loss of their livelihoods. But Obama failed to mention another cause of disquiet: the fact that the oil and its chemical dispersants may cause major complications for pregnant women and their unborn children living along the Gulf Coast.

According to Lucinda Marshall at Truthout, young children and babies in utero are at a major risk of chemical poisoning after oil spills because their immune systems are not fully developed, leaving them incapacitated to fight off dangerous compounds. While the National Institutes of Health have provided information on the way endocrine disrupters – common in both the oil and the substances used to clean it up – scientists aren’t clear on the effects of the chemicals, in part because until very recently, they had no idea which chemicals were being disseminated.

Now, without first telling Nalco Holding Co., the manufacturer of the dispersants that BP is using, the Environmental Protection Agency has released a list of ingredients used to break down the oil. And – shocker – the news isn’t pretty. One of the ingredients, 2-butoxyethanol, caused major health problems among cleanup workers on the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. That, plus the oil itself, could spell major risks to pregnant women and their fetuses.

According to Dr. Gina Solomon, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Some of the volatile chemicals in oil have been linked to miscarriage, preterm birth, and low birth weight, so it is a good idea for pregnant women to avoid the areas where there are elevated levels of VOCs [Volatile Organic Compounds] in the air. These are areas that include noticeable smells of oil or visible oil and also any areas where the EPA monitoring system detects elevated levels. The EPA air monitoring results are being updated regularly at www.epa.gov/bpspill. To be cautious, pregnant women may choose to avoid any areas directly along the waterfront and beachfront, even when oil is not visible.”

That’s easy enough advice to follow for would-be Gulf Coast vacationers (as if there are any this season). But for pregnant women living near the spill zone – where oil and dispersants reenter the atmosphere after being burned off the water – avoiding chemical exposure is akin to turning a blind eye to the disaster itself.

Image: Hello Turkey Toe

Five years ago, a group of women’s health advocates met with scientists in California to discuss creeping infertility rates among men and women. Between 1995 and 2002, the number of couples having problems conceiving had grown from 6.1 million to 7.3 million. That meant that one out of every eight heterosexual couples was infertile, according to Center for Disease Control data.

Women’s health advocates and scientists had long known that environmental contaminants like cigarette smoke and mercury were major culprits when it came to diminished fertility. But what brought the two groups together for the first time was alarming evidence that commonplace material, such as plastics, could damage the reproductive system.

Sounds like old news, right? We’ve all fretted over bisphenol-a, a chemical found in plastic bottles that caused hormonal changes in animals in lab tests, and we all kvelled when in 2008 Nalgene opted to stop using the plastic in its camping wares. But while our attention has shifted to the next environmental catastrophe du jour, those pesky chemicals haven’t gone anywhere.

Last week, lawmakers in both houses of Congress introduced the Safe Chemicals Act, a bill meant to up the ante when it comes to chemical testing in the United States. If made into law, the bill will fortify the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, a weak attempt at federal regulation. As RH Reality Check contributor Jennifer Rogers notes, the “TSCA was already outdated before it was signed into law. Many dangerous chemicals were ‘grandfathered in’ under the new law and remain in use today. Many new chemicals remain unregulated because the legislation was limited in scope.”

According to EHS Today, a trade publication for environment, health, and safety workers, the TSCA’s greatest weakness is its inability to stop dangerous chemicals from entering the market. “Under current policy, the [Environmental Protection Agency] can call for safety testing only after evidence surfaces demonstrating a chemical is dangerous. As a result, EPA has been able to require testing for just 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals currently registered in the United States and has been able to ban only five dangerous substances.”

The new bill would require manufacturers to provide information to the EPA about chemicals currently in circulation as well as those headed for the market. And while some environmental groups want even stricter regulations, women’s health groups say the bill is a small, yet serious step, toward curbing infertility due to pollutants. We’ll drink (out of a glass bottle) to that.

Image: Michelle Schantz (Schantzilla)

When the peace of a community is shattered by man-made disaster – an oil spill, a toxic gas leak, a nuclear meltdown – a scar is left that may fade with passing decades but will never fully heal. While some may be able to clean up and return to a sense of normalcy, others stand fenced-off and unchanged like a silent memorial. Located around the globe, these seven catastrophic environmental disasters have had a profound effect upon the earth and local residents that continues today, as many as 50 years later.

Love Canal Community Contamination

In the late 1950s, the little neighborhood of Love Canal, New York seemed idyllic. Located just miles from the picturesque Niagara Falls, the land was purchased by the city from Hooker Chemical Company for a dollar. It was worth much less. The residents of the neighborhood’s 100 newly constructed homes had no idea that they were living atop one big hazardous chemical dumping ground.

But the consequences of building homes and a school where over 21,000 tons of toxic waste lurked just beneath the surface became all too clear by the 1970s with shockingly high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, cancer and nervous disorders. Resident Lois Gibbs led a campaign to uncover the cause, and a federal health emergency was declared, demolishing houses and relocating more than 800 families.

As a result of the tragedy, the Superfund Act was passed by Congress to hold polluters responsible for severe environmental damage. In 2004, Love Canal was finally declared clean, though most of the neighborhood remains abandoned – even though hundreds of similar toxic Superfund sites still sit waiting for their turn.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Meltdown

March 28, 1979 marked the beginning of a three-day series of “mechanical, electrical and human failures” that produced a catastrophic meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania.

Though the radiation released wasn’t significant enough to cause a public health crisis, the accident brought a general lack of oversight and emergency response planning in the nuclear power industry to light and led to a huge spike in local opposition to the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Cleanup and decontamination of the Three Mile Island accident site cost $975 million and wasn’t completed until 1993. Today, Three Mile Island is still in operation, though the generating station involved in the meltdown is no longer used. A radiation leak was investigated in November 2009, but federal officials say there was no threat to public safety.

Minamata Mercury Poisoning

It’s not common knowledge amongst Westerners, but the Minamata mercury incident in Japan was severe enough to get a disease named after it. A chemical company called Chisso Corporation disposed of thousands of tons of industrial wastewater containing methyl mercury in the town of Minamata from 1908 to 1968, which poisoned the local population through consumption of contaminated seafood.

What’s now known as Minamata Disease was discovered in 1956, when clusters of victims in fishing hamlets along the bay came forward with strange symptoms. Severe cases of the disease led to paralysis, insanity, coma and death within weeks of symptoms first appearing. Similar effects were seen in local animals like cats and birds.

Over 2,265 victims have been officially certified by the Japanese government – 1,784 of whom have died – but over 17,000 people have applied for certification. Chisso Corporation, which stopped using mercury in 1969, has spent $86 million compensating over 10,000 victims and was ordered to clean up the contamination in 2004.


Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill

Who can forget the Exxon-Valdez oil spill? 11 million gallons of sticky black crude oil fouled the pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska on March 23rd, 1989 after a tanker crashed into an iceberg as the captain napped. While it’s far from the largest oil spill in history, it caused the most environmental damage, and images of wildlife suffocating in oil hit the public hard.

10,000 workers spent four summers cleaning up 1,400 miles of coastline, and recent images of Prince William Sound seem to show total recovery. But swaths of oil are still buried just beneath the surface of many beaches and many species affected by the spill are still struggling. If there’s one positive thing that came out of this disaster, it’s the federal Oil Pollution Act, which changed critical industry practices and standards to prevent similar damage from subsequent spills.

Bhopal Gas Leak

The death toll may be as high as 35,000 and the nightmare still continues for victims of one of the most horrendous environmental disasters of all time. Half a million residents of Bhopal, India were poisoned on December 3rd, 1984 when the Union-Carbide pesticide manufacturing plant released extremely volatile methyl isocyanate gas and other toxins into the air due to lax safety standards and budget cuts. Bodies lined the streets and thousands more suffered agony, blindness and permanent health problems.

Many survivors unwittingly passed Bhopal’s legacy to their own children in the form of congenital defects, but that’s not the only way the incident still haunts the population. Union Carbide – now owned by Dow Chemical Company – never cleaned up the contamination and the factory site continues to leak deadly chemicals into the air, soil and water.  The company has eluded charges of culpable homicide in Bhopal for over 20 years.

TVA Coal Sludge Spill

America’s worst man-made environmental disaster occurred on December 22nd, 2008 at the Kingston Tennessee Valley Authority power plant as 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal sludge burst over a dam wall, invading the Emory River and 400 acres of nearby homes and farmland.

Coal ash, a waste product, contains arsenic and potentially carcinogenic heavy metals, yet is not regulated by the EPA. That was supposed to change within a year of the spill, but the agency has delayed action. Meanwhile, experts say the spill could have severe lasting health effects for area residents.

TVA estimated that it would have all 2.4 million cubic yards out of the area by 2013, but announced in March 2010 that a complete cleanup is “technologically impossible.”

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Nobody knows exactly how many people died as a result of the catastrophic nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Ukraine on April 26th, 1986. Officials count 56 direct fatalities and 4,000 cancer deaths, but these estimates are likely on the low side. 1,100 buses evacuated area residents the day the accident occurred, but they had already been exposed to radiation that was high enough to set off alarms in Sweden.

Today, the adjacent city of Pripyat is a disturbing ghost town full of rusting metal, peeling paint and evidence of lives seemingly abandoned in mid-step. Gas masks and baby dolls litter the hallways of a school, clothes still flutter in the wind on a clothesline at an apartment complex.  The displaced survivors may be going on with their lives in other cities, but they’re often doing so with brain tumors, debilitating headaches and birth defects.

People are officially forbidden to live within the 17-mile “Exclusion Zone” around Chernobyl, and radiation levels in the area are still 10-100 times higher than normal “background levels” but several million people continue to live on contaminated land.

Images: coal-ash-spill.com, google sightseeing, Three Mile Island via wikimedia commons, Chisso Factory Effluent via wikimedia commons, Exxon Spill via wikimedia commons, Dow Chemical Banner via wikimedia commons and View of Chernobyl via wikimedia commons

After years of claiming it’s not a risk, the EPA has announced that it will formally list Bisphenol A (BPA) as a “chemical of concern”. Considering all the studies showing how this hormone disruptor can affect our bodies, this is great news – but don’t expect big changes anytime soon. As we wait for manufacturers to perform tests on the chemical’s impact, it’s up to us to avoid BPA as much as we can.

Cutting BPA out altogether is easier said than done if you want to use any modern products whatsoever, but you can significantly lower your exposure – as long as you know exactly where this chemical is lurking. We’ve heard a lot about BPA in some reusable bottles, but some of the sources are surprisingly sneaky. Here are 17 common products that contain BPA and how to avoid them.

1. Dental Sealants – If you want to protect those pearly whites with some dental bonding or sealants, beware the specter of BPA. A study found that this chemical can leach into saliva following certain dental procedures. But don’t panic – BPA-free alternatives are available; just ask your dentist.

2. Receipts – You know how most modern receipts have a really smooth texture? That slick coating usually contains (you guessed it) BPA. And it’s no trivial nanogram quantity – we’re talking sizeable amounts that can pass into your skin or consumed when you eat. Studies on exactly how much ends up in the body are forthcoming, but at least this one is easy to avoid: just say no to receipts. You’ll save paper and prevent waste, too.

3. Baby Bottles – Babies are particularly susceptible to harmful effects from BPA, so many parents find the fact that it’s present in some bottles worrisome to say the least. Luckily, however, BPA-free bottles are now widely available and the top six baby bottle makers in the U.S. have agreed to stop using the chemical.

4. Children’s Toys – Nom nom nom! Gotta love all that BPA (not to mention lead and other toxins) that children end up chomping on when they’re innocently playing with their toys. But thanks to all those protective parents out there, the internet is rife with recommendations for BPA-free brands. Check out the Consumer Reports Toy Buying Guide for safe options.

5. Canned Food Liners – Soups, juices, beans and tomatoes. All of these goods and more are often tainted with BPA when canned, all because of a protective plastic lining. The Environmental Working Group performed tests on a wide range of goods and found the highest concentrations in infant formula, chicken soup and ravioli. But not all brands use BPA – get a list at Treehugger.

6. Canning Jar Lids – Alas, even when you preserve your own foods, BPA is there to rain on your parade. Canning jar lids have a lining similar to that in tin cans, but there’s usually minimal contact with food. If you want to be extra-careful, seek out glass-lidded canning jars like those made by Weck.

7. Plastic food containers – They may be convenient, making it easy to store, transport and reheat food, but plastic food containers are one of the biggest sources of BPA. The easiest and most important step you can take is to stop microwaving food in plastic containers. BPA-free stainless steel and glass options are readily available and last longer anyway.

8. Medical Devices – Could plastic components be leaching BPA into patients’ bodies during heart bypass surgeries and hemodialysis? The FDA haslaunched a pair of studies to find out. It’s a concern due to the length of time that patients can be exposed to the chemical, but it only affects a small portion of the population so chances are, you don’t have to worry about this one.

9. Pizza Boxes – If you haven’t groaned in frustration already, do it now and get it out of your system. Yes, even certain recycled pizza boxes are said to contain BPA. Since pizza boxes can’t usually be recycled anyway, why not make this easy on yourselves and either make pizza at home or eat in instead of getting delivery. Score an easy and extremely delicious New York-style pizza crust recipe (my personal favorite) from Recipezaar.com.

10. Toilet Paper – Remember those pesky receipts? It turns out, they’re often recycled into toilet paper, BPA and all. But this problem is bigger than the amount that gets transferred to your private bits in the bathroom. Once toilet paper is flushed and processed at waste plants, much of that BPA ends up in surface water and groundwater. Does this mean we should ditch recycled toilet paper and use that virgin tree stuff instead? Not necessarily, but it is a tough call.

11. Water Coolers – The large hard plastic bottles used in water coolers are yet another source of BPA. A better (and less wasteful) option is to simply outfit your kitchen faucet with a filter from Brita or PUR, which are BPA-free.

12. Soda Cans – If you’re one of those people with a Diet Coke can permanently glued to your hand, listen up. Bizarre chemical ingredients and artificial sweeteners aren’t the only enemy in that caustic stuff – BPA is found in almost all brands of canned soft drinks. Cut back on your soda intake, and you’ll be better off in more ways than one.

13. Beer and Wine – While there’s no good way to avoid the BPA that is sometimes found in the epoxy lining of wine vats short of giving up wine altogether (crazy talk!), you can skip the BPA-flavored beer by simply choosing bottles over cans. BPA is a bigger risk in canned beer than in soda, because it’s highly soluble in alcohol.

14. Eyewear – If you wear sunglasses or eyeglasses with plastic lenses, you’re probably in constant contact with BPA all day long. It’s tough to tell how much of an impact this could have on health, but if you want to be safe, metal frames are a good bet.

15. CDs and DVDs – It’s probably safe to say that you don’t often lick your CDs or DVDs, and we handle them so briefly, the BPA contained within these items isn’t a threat to most people.

16. Blenders and Food Processors – Since these items are in direct contact with our food, it’s good to know which brands contain BPA and which don’t. Consumer research website Z Recommends has a handy guide, with the Beaba Babycook, the Vita-Mix 5200 blender and Hamilton Beach’s Big Mouth food processors all coming out winners in the “safe” category.

17. Car Parts – These days, car interiors are almost entirely made from hard plastics, so it’s not too surprising to learn that BPA lurks in the steering wheel, gear shift, dashboard and more. Good luck finding a plastic-free vehicle – but hey, it’s another good excuse to walk more often.

Images: stevendepolo, conor lawless, rolandslakis, fernashes

Okay, take the green glove test in your house. Are you still using a laundry list of surface cleaners with harsh chemicals? Are you lifting carpet stains with products that give off ugly fumes? We told you about the good stuff that’s out there, but maybe you forgot when you scrubbed those dishes with conventional soap from the factory. But it is time to say no to convention and get your green on, even if you hate housework as much as we do.

As long as you are stuck with the dreaded chore, here is a refresher on green cleaning products that will make you feel so darn good about responsible mopping and dusting, you will whistle while you work!

Spot-On Eco Carpet

Did you blunder with your color choice and select a neutral beige instead of graphite grey or chocolate? We can dig it. It’s just a drag to be a slave to that carpet, insisting visitors remove their shoes, yelling at loved ones for trekking muddy boots along the stairs up to their rooms. If you are able to go the DIY carpet cleaning route and avoid professionals who charge a lot and use chemicals to lift the stains, review our post on the natural way to rinse a rug.

9 Great Eco Cleaners

You’re walking down the aisle, perusing the products, taking in the odors, confused about what to buy. Why not make a list with these great cleaning solutions, from Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid for squeaky green plates to Sun & Earth Concentrated Laundry Detergent for non-irritating socks? Brighten your abode with ingredients like coconut and vegetable oils.

Adding Greener Laundry Products to the Fold

The wash and fold has always been fairly routine, but staging a laundry space that is up to green standards will make this job healthier for you and the planet. Among the best apparatus in this room – natural drying racks that allow you to cut down on the electric appliances by hang drying your garments when possible. Reusable bags also help the schlepping of clothes from hamper to machine and back to the drawers. Other scoops for the natural laundry maven can be found by perusing this post on eco laundry supplies and tips.

Easy Eco-Friendly Bathroom Cleaning

Scrubbing toilets makes us feel flushed but using chlorine-free, biodegradable cleaners is number one when performing this dreaded task. Shower surfaces, too, need a gentle touch to remove grime and even old soap residue. Where to find plant-based ingredients on the grocery shelves? Look no further.

10 Myths About Dry Cleaning

The labels say “dry clean only,” but we have found there are some garments that can be delicately handled at home. How do you know how to separate the fragile sweater and tough trousers? Learn about the myths of dry cleaning from the green soldiers who have braved hand washing and found it can clean even better than many of those pricey dry cleaning companies.

Here are some additional posts to make the most out of winter cleaning, from polishing metals for upcoming parties to keeping a ship-shape kitchen for everyday cooking and dining.

Non-toxic Tips for Cleaning Household Metal

Top 10 chemical-Free Cleaning Tips; How to Reinvent Spring Cleaning

Orange Knockout

Flying Saucers Did My Laundry

Main Image: Kimberly Robyn

The sad truth is the carpets that hold up best to traffic are the ones coated with toxins. And we don’t want those in a place where humans dwell.

If you do have a healthy wool carpet in your home, you can still clean it without harsh chemicals like perchloroethylene – which the EPA has linked to kidney and liver damage. Naphthalene, made from coal tar, is also considered a carcinogen that can harm the central nervous system.

Ask cleaning services if they simply steam to lift dirt or apply shampoos to loosen those hard-to-clean coffee and wine stains. Treatments like Oxi Fresh use an oxygenated method by applying less water and natural ingredients. Some cleaners also use citrus-based products that smell much better than standard chemicals. Just check and see if their products are plant-based chemicals (Biokleen, NatureClean and Seventh Generation’s Natural Citrus Carpet Cleaner) or made with synthetics.

Here are some natural ways to go for maintaining cleaner carpet:

1. For daily maintenance, have guests and family members remove shoes when entering the house if you have carpet on the first floor. Otherwise, remove shoes before heading upstairs. Obviously there can be exceptions, such as when you are entertaining. Guests often complain about taking off shoes for a more formal event. They may have holy socks or need the height so their pants won’t droop.

2. ehow tells us to spot clean with vinegar and water by mixing equal parts into a spray bottle and applying to the stain, then blotting with a clean, dry towel. For tougher stains, you can make a paste of baking soda and water and coat the stain. Let the paste sit for about 30 minutes, then wipe away with a damp cloth. For deeper cleaning, they suggest going with biodegradable cleaners like AFM Safecoat added to a rented carpet cleaner.

3. Do It Yourself recommends regular vacuuming to prevent dirt and pet dander from settling into your carpet fibers, and to sprinkle on some baking soda before your sweep to eliminate potential orders. You can even add spice, such as cinnamon or cloves, in the baking soda before you spread it. Also, let the baking soda sit on the carpet to lift stains and dirt at least 10 minutes before you vacuum.

4. For spot removal, use a clean dry cloth or paper towel to soak up the spill and blot the stain rather than rubbing it. Once you blot it, apply club soda or soda water to dissolve and lift, then blot up the liquid. You also can use hydrogen peroxide and vinegar mixed with water or rubbing alcohol to lift the stains. You might also try making your own spot cleaner with a teaspoon of liquid dish detergent and one to two cups of water.

In terms of cleaning fiber rugs, such as sisal, it is best to just use water or soda water. These can be the hardest rugs to maintain because many products don’t work very well to get out the stains.

Let us know if you have some other tried and true green methods of carpet cleaning!

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A new study by French scientists has found the inert ingredients in Roundup to be toxic to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cells. Expect intense debate.

Roundup is a top-selling weed killer that has been used for years by homeowners and farmers. It’s always been considered a safe product with health studies consistently finding that its most active ingredient, the herbicide glyphosate, acceptable to use near humans.

However,  the new study shows that Roundup’s inert ingredients -  solvents, preservatives and surfactants – can kill human cells even when the ingredients have a dilute presence.

In fact, the study found that one specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was even more more deadly than the herbicide itself to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies inert ingredients as any ingredient that doesn’t harm pests. POEA is on the EPA’s list of nearly 4,000 inert chemicals approved for use.

But calling them “inert” is misleading. These ingredients, while safe for insects, pests or weeds, are not exactly harmless.

Because specific herbicide formulations are often protected as trade secrets, the amount and types of inert ingredients is never disclosed and therefore, the effects of exposure are studied less than the active herbicide ingredients.

This may soon change. Petitioned by a group of  250 plus environmental, health and labor organizations, the EPA is due to make a decision later this year.

To learn more about this issue, read the in-depth Scientific American article, “Weed-Whacking Herbicide Proves Deadly to Human Cells.”

Image: hashmil