8.8 billion bottled waters were sold in 2007 and discarded or recycled.

From USAToday:

Plastic water bottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil per year, according to a 2007 resolution passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. That much energy could power 250,000 homes or fuel 100,000 cars for a year, according to the resolution.

In roughly the last 10 years, the amount of polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles being recycled increased from about 775 million pounds in 1995 to about 1,170 million in 2005, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

But during the same time period, the amount of PET bottles going into landfills skyrocketed from 1,175 million to 3,900 million pounds.

Cornell University professor and environmentalist Doug James said the irony of bottled water is that it’s marketed as clean and healthy when its production contributes to unnecessary environmental degradation. “Fiji water, for example,” he said. “A one-liter bottle is taken out of the aquifer of this little island, and shipped all the way across the world, producing like half a pound of greenhouse gases so you can have this one-liter bottle of water.”

Why are there no deposits on bottled water? We have deposits on 2-liter bottles and they are plastic bottles. Bottling companies have huge lobby groups railing against deposits laws. This is obvious as they don’t want to be involved in cleaning up their mess after they have made their profits.

According to wikipedia:

Studies show that beverage container legislation has reduced total roadside litter by between 30% and 64% in the states with bottle bills.

Studies also show that the recycling rate for beverage containers is vastly increased with a bottle bill. The US beverage container recycling rate was 39.4% in 2001. States with bottle bills recycle approximately 78% while states lacking bottle bill legislation only recycle approximately 23%.

The answer is simple – high quality water filters that attach to the tap. The cost is diffused over time to be very inexpensive and we reap the benefits of good quality water. I highly recommend alkaline antioxidant rich water like that produced by the Jupiter products. I use one and love it. For a big discount, email me directly and I can let you know how I can help you get the water filter you deserve.

I haven’t had any reviews of books or documentaries but that is all about to change. I just saw “King Corn” and was blown away. This is an informative, important look at how the Standard American Diet or SAD as is more appropriate has far reaching effects on our health and how corn is an integral ingredient in this toxic potion.

The film begins when we meet Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis getting their hair analyzed. Hair is a tape recorder of diet and the isotope analysis shows that the carbon in their body primarily originates from corn. They are made out of corn!

Our diets will shorten our generations lifespan and this will be the first time we live shorter lives then the previous generation. Anyone in the health care field can see this process happening.

So what do they do? Best friends Ian and Curt move to Greene, Iowa to grow an acre of corn and experience what it is like and where the corn goes. They grow Yellow Dent Corn, a field corn destined for cattle feed or industrial processing – this isn’t your Hamptons sweet corn.

They produce about 180 bushels of corn, or 5 tons of food per acre, about 10,000 pounds. It took them 31,000 seeds per acre to produce this yield and with the sophisticated machinery only 18 minutes to plant.

Some corn ends up being made into industrial products that become processed foods. Just about every processed food out there contains corn solids, high fructose corn syrup, or some other hydrolyzed corn product hidden behind a chemical name. 70% of high fructose corn syrup ends in beverages. One of the scary ingredients in corn syrup is sulfuric acid, or what you may be more familiar with – battery acid.

But the real scary part is that most of this corn ends up feeding livestock – and this is how we become made up of corn. We eat meat that is made of corn, thus we are made of corn.

For instance, grass-fed free-range livestock take several years to reach maximum yield. This is too slow. So what do they do? They don’t let them move – thats what feedlots are for. Cattle are fed a corn diet for up to 150 days. But they start getting sick with something called acidosis. This is fatal unless treated. This is why livestock consume 70% of the antibiotics used in this country (low doses to combat acidosis). Guess where these antibiotics wind up…yup, in you.

Grain fed livestock is obese (like we get from processed foods), muscle tissue looks more like fat. For instance there are 9 grams of saturated fat verse 1.3 grams of saturated fat per grass fed cow. Hamburgers are fat disguised as meat (65 % of calories are fat). But we can’t blame the producers- Americans demand cheap food so the cycle continues. 16% of our individual wealth is spent on food. This is the best case scenario, 50 years ago this number was double. We are the first generation where abundance brings too much and shortens our lifespan.

Here is the counterpoint put out by the Corn Association.

So I can, so I can
See the light that’s right before my eyes.

-From the 1984 Corey Hart song

And thats some pretty good advice with some new research coming out. From Sharon Moalem’s “Survival of the Sickest“:

“As everybody knows, skin color changes, to some extent, in response to sun exposure. The trigger for that response is the pituitary gland. Under natural circumstances, almost as soon as you are exposed to the sun, your pituitary gland produces hormones that act as boosters for your melanocytes, and your melanocytes start producing melanin in overdrive. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to disrupt that process. The pituitary gland gets it’s information from the optic nerve – when the optic nerve senses sunlight, it signals the pituitary gland to kick-start the melanocytes. Guess what happens when you’re wearing sunglasses? Much less sunlight reaches the optic nerve, much less warning is sent to the pituitary gland, much less melanocyte-stimulating hormone is released, much less melanin is produced – much more sunburn results. If you’re reading this on the beach with your Ray-Bans on, do your skin a favor – take them off.”

This brings us to the topic of Vitamin D and how it can help prevent many forms of cancer. It’s estimated that up to 50,000 people die from cancers that could have been prevented from proper Vitamin D levels. Now, whats the cheapest most effective way to regulate our Vitamin D without overdosing? Sunshine!

I remember a time when my next door neighbor, a biodynamic gardner, took me out to climb Mt. Yale, a 14′er in Buena Vista, Colorado. He abstained from putting sunblock on and when I asked if he was scared of getting skin cancer, he unexpectedly told me, “Yes” and that’s why he wasn’t wearing sunblock. huh? He told me that sunblock was actually implicated in skin cancer. Now I’ve never seen this study before and I’m not saying it’s true, it just got me thinking. The skin is a major detox organ and is going to be damaged by the toxins in our body – not necessarily by the sun. Since we evolved underneath this solar bath for millions of years why all of a sudden has it become poisonous? That makes no sense.

The FDA recommends 200-400 IU’s daily. Guess what – 15 minutes in the sun should garner your body the best type of Vitamin D possible, the endogenous kind, and in the 10,000-15,000 IU’s range (this varies due to altitude, skin color, and latitude). Remember, once the skin shows signs of gently turning pink in the sun- you’ve had enough. Don’t go crazy now – over doing the sun exposure by tanning can prematurely age the skin and increase skin cancer rates. You must build a tolerance this spring just like you need to rebuild your muscles after relaxing on your couch all winter. Avoid tanning beds and go to the source. When you’ve had enough, make sure to avoid sunblocks loaded with toxins. Go biodegradable and organic. Here is a page of good sunblocks. Here is what you want to avoid:

Para Amino benzoic acid (PABA)
Avobenzone
Cinoxate
Dioxybenzone
Homosalate
Menthyl anthranilate
Octocrylene
Octo methoxycinnamate
Octyl salicylate
Oxybenzone
Padimate O
Phenylbenzimidazole
Sulisobenzone
Trolamine salicylate

The question I have and that I want to leave you with is, is there a correlative between the massive widespread use of UV protected eye wear in our culture with a rise in skin cancer?
I’m going to listen to Corey Hart and only wear my sunglasses at night so I can…

Pharmaceutical drugs have now been found in many cities drinking water.

From the health section at CNN:

A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

The federal government doesn’t require any testing and hasn’t set safety limits for drugs in water.

And the scary news is that users of bottled water and home filtration systems don’t necessarily avoid exposure. Bottlers, some of which simply repackage tap water, do not typically treat or test for pharmaceuticals, according to the industry’s main trade group. The same goes for the makers of home filtration systems. Click here for the Jupiter Biostone filtration report.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe — even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

The environmental effect is frightening, and guess what – no one is accountable for our “downstream” pollution so nobody is doing a thing about it. And make no mistake about it – “Recent laboratory research has found that small amounts of medication have affected human embryonic kidney cells, human blood cells and human breast cancer cells. The cancer cells proliferated too quickly; the kidney cells grew too slowly; and the blood cells showed biological activity associated with inflammation.”

These pharmaceuticals in our water are toxic and are dissolved at such very high dilution levels (in the parts per billion and parts per trillion range) that they are acting like homeopathic treatments. There is an unmistakable similarity to homeopathy, which uses dissolved substances in water at such a high dilution rate that the original substance is virtually undetectable. This processing attempts to remove the “toxic” qualities of the substance and leave behind the essence that is used to treat the problem. Homeopathy is an intelligent system and every treatment is highly specific. Our water supply is blanketing us with many different toxic pharmaceuticals: what do you think is happening to us men who are getting small amounts of hormone replacement therapy, estrogen, and mood stabilizers with every sip of water? I feel like less of a man just thinking about that happening. I for one, will continue to use my Jupiter Melody water filtration system. And if you want one to – I will still pass my discount on to you. Nobody should be without a proper water filtration system nowadays.

City Reports

• The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city’s water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

• Officials in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.

• Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

• Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

• A sex hormone was detected in the drinking water of San Francisco, California.

• The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.