Soiled, reusable shopping bags pose health risk: Study

A study out of Canada found that reusable shopping bags might be bad for our health.

The Environment and Plastics Industry Council stated Wednesday that a study it funded shows reusable bags “pose a public health risk” due to high counts of yeast, moulds and bacterias in dirty reusable bags.

According to Dr. Richard Summerbell, who spoke on behalf of EPIC, potential hazards include “food poisoning … bacterial boils, allergic reactions, triggering of asthma attacks, and ear infections.”

But B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said reusable bags do not pose a serious public health risk if consumers treat bags as they would cutting boards or food preparation surfaces, and wash them regularly and dry them well.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't think to wash these bags very often. But then again, I also wouldn't put a package of raw meat right in them because, after working as a cashier in high school, I know how leaky those packages can be.

After this initial reaction, I took a second look at who funded this study: The Environment and Plastics Industry Council. Just poking around their website for a minute, I found a link to http://www.myplasticbags.ca/, which actually promotes the use of plastic bags. Hrm... biased study?

Anyway, reusable bags are really popular right now and for a good reason--they're an easy way for anyone to lessen their impact on the environment. I have a bunch of them, but I end up not using them because I need the store bags to scoop cat litter in to. Anyone have any suggestions (aside from buying plastic bags to scoop into) for me so that I can use my reusable bags and also keep my cats happy?

My garden, week 3.

Originally posted 6/2/09.

I meant to post these pictures Sunday when I took them. There's already a big difference between today and Sunday I think. They seem to be growing like crazy! Sunday night my dad and I put up a trellis for the cukes.

Look at how bushy and big the cucumbers in the back are getting!


Front view of Earthbox number 1.


Look, little buds on the peppers! I think this is the cubanelle.


And here's the tomatoes in Earthbox number 2. I kind of expected them to be growing a bit faster.


And here's the tomato in the pot. Which is doing a lot better than I thought it would be! I need to take a picture of its nice, thick stem next week.
And earlier this week I was worrying that the peppers were dying... they looked wilted. Weird.

My garden, week 2.

Originally posted 5/25/09.

I think my garden is doing well! My cucumbers died (like I thought they would) so I replanted with new, healthier-looking ones.

Here's the peppers and the cucumbers. Well, you can kind of see the cucumbers. One of the pepper plants already has little buds on it too! I got a trellis that I have to rig up for the cucumbers.

Here's the roma tomato and the cherry tomato. The roma has some light brown patches on the leaves, but it's still looking healthy. I think I'm going to have to tie them to their stakes soon... or do I wait until they start to fall over?

And here's the last roma. Looking good!

My garden, week 1.

Originally posted 5/16/09.

I planted my "garden" today. I have two Earthboxes and one planter.


In the first Earthbox I have two groupings of cucumbers, which may or may not make it (they're very floppy), and a hot banana pepper, a red bell pepper, and a cubanelle.

In the second Earthbox I have a roma tomato and a cherry tomato.

And in the planter I have another roma tomato.

I wish I had done more research on the Earthboxes because after I planted I read their forums which provided a lot of good tips that I would have liked to know. Oh well, we'll see how everything turns out! Stay tuned.

Here we go again?

I've been thinking about this blog lately and want to start it up again. I've long since graduated from college and now work in marketing... joy. But I still find myself interested in what's going on with the "green" trend and how the world at large is treating its fellow inhabitants. So maybe I'll be better at updating this time around.

I even started my first garden! I posted to my personal blog about it, so I think I'll do some catch up here.

Lost whales might have returned to sea unseen

Since that last news I could find on the whales was two days ago when scientists and onlookers lost track of the whales, it looks like the two finally made it back to sea. After all the coverage of these lost whales it almost seems disappointing that there was no fanfare event of them crossing into the ocean.

Coyotes thriving in big cities, suburbs

Coyotes are such wildly adaptive creatures that it's not surprising that they're doing well in suburban and urban areas. This article gives examples of how suburban sprawl is actually causing an increase in the coyote population. Don't start freaking out about coyotes though, even if there have been some attacks in the news lately, such as in New Jersey.

Still, experts urge perspective: In Cook County, which includes Chicago, there are some 3,000 dog bites on average each year, with a few hundred serious enough to require hospital care, Gerht says. Yet he is unaware of any reported coyote attacks.

They're wild animals and they have a right to living space just as we do.

Rescuers open fire, with water, on lost whales

Does anyone else think that this situation with the whales in the Sacramento River is getting a little ridiculous? I find it hard to believe that there's nothing better that can be done than what's been tried already. Now they've found that using a fire hose seems to help drive them, but they're not going to try it again until Tuesday.

The rescuers decided to try the fire hose after the lost whales resisted attempts to move them down river through banging pipes, a flotilla of boats and the recordings of fellow humpbacks and killer orcas.

The two whales apparently took a wrong turn when they entered San Francisco Bay and traveled 90 miles inland up the Sacramento River. They turned around at the Port of Sacramento and were making progress Monday when they reached the Rio Vista Bridge and began swimming in circles.

I understand that they're wild animals so it's tough to figure out how much to interfere, but it's so sad to read about the whales' injuries and skin problems due to the fresh water.

Polar Bears at Risk as Warming Thaws Icy Home

After seeing the sad, tired (animated) polar bear in An Inconvenient Truth swim to a chunk of ice and have it fall apart under its feet (so sad!), I've been noticing that people are becoming more concerned about the polar bears. Even to the point where people are pushing to get them listed as endangered. And this all makes sense if scientists are right (and I think they are) about the melting ice caps.

Many scientific studies project that warming, widely blamed on emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, could melt the polar ice cap in summer, with estimates of the break-up ranging from decades to sometime beyond 2100.

Bears' favourite hunting ground is the edge of the ice where they use white fur as camouflage to catch seals.

"If there's no ice, there's no way they can catch the seal," said Sarah James of the Gwich'in Council International who lives in Alaska. "Gwich'in" means "people of the caribou", which is the main source of food for about 7,000 indigenous people in Alaska and Canada.

It just gets to me how people are so resistant to changing their lifestyle and don't care that the things we do have major effects on beings that have no control over what we do. We're so self-centered.

Sorry!

I've been bad about posting lately because of finals, graduating, and moving back home. But I'm back. I'm sure I've been missed. ;)