Nature in Our Backyard: Hummingbird Chicks Leaving the Nest

I've been wanting to link up with Green Bean's Spot the Pollinator series, but haven't had a chance to take many photos of pollinators. But then I remembered the miracle we witnessed during June 2012 in our last home. And which, incidentally, I have never posted about (except a brief mention in this post on Green Phone Booth).

Two years ago, my kids and I got to watch a hummingbird build her nest right under the (plastic fake wood) lattice over the back patio of our rental home. We then watched that hummingbird sit on the eggs in her nest. I had never seen hummingbird wings as anything other than a blur before this experience. Eventually we saw little tiny hummingbird heads poking their heads over the edge of the nest as their mama brought them food.

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Pesticides in Pressure-treated Wood Pose Health Risks

Let me tell you a really sad story.

Several months ago I started trolling Craig's List for a used wood play structure. My friend had found a pretty nice one for free and I was a little jealous. (Note: my friend did have to drive an hour to pick it up and then invested about a hundred dollars replacing some beams and other parts -- but still, what a bargain!) Also, we had recently purchased a home that was, tragically, not walking distance to a single park. I went to look at a few structures and was unimpressed, especially given the asking price. Then I found one really close by for a great price. The whole family swung by to see it on the way to the farmer's market and we immediately gave the seller a down payment. It seemed perfect: 4 swings (enough for my 3 children plus a friend), monkey bars, a fast slide, and an enclosed fort under the tower.

Soon after my husband rented a truck and enlisted some friends to help him move it to our backyard. The seller was nice enough to do much of the disassembling. Then my husband spent a couple of weekends reassembling it. My kids were thrilled. All seemed well with the world. Until I happened upon some information about pressure-treated wood and arsenic.

And suddenly I realized that the play structure my husband had worked so hard to assemble in my backyard might not be the all-natural wholesome goodness (what's more natural than wood?) that I had taken it for, but might in fact be wood treated with chemical preservatives (a.k.a., pesticides).

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EWG's 2013 Dirty Dozen List

The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™

Every year for the past nine years, the Environmental Working Group has published their Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ based on tests for pesticide residue conducted by the USDA and FDA. EWG specifically highlights "The Dirty Dozen™": produce likely to have a higher level of pesticide residue, which they recommend avoiding or purchasing organic. For the last couple years, EWG has expanded their Dirty Dozen™ list with a Plus category resulting in "The Dirty Dozen Plus™". The "Plus" refers to crops that do not meet traditional Dirty Dozen™ criteria but that were commonly contaminated with exceptionally toxic pesticides. Consumers should prioritize purchasing organic versions of these vegetables as well if possible. The produce with the least residue is termed "The Clean Fifteen™."

Use the The Dirty Dozen™ to Prioritize Purchases

This guide is not intended to scare you into not buying fruits and vegetables. Any produce is better than no produce. And conventional fruit and vegetables are certainly better than processed or packaged foods. Instead, this information is intended to help families who cannot afford to purchase all organic produce limit their exposure to pesticides, especially harmful to developing fetuses and young children. You can use the guide to substitute produce from The Clean Fifteen™ for The Dirty Dozen Plus™ (for example, I might decide our family will eat more kiwi and fewer apples), or use the guide to help you decide which produce you will buy organic and which you will buy conventional (for example, I might buy organic strawberries and conventional onions). When I first started going green, I found that selectively purchasing organic produce helped a lot with the sticker shock of switching to greener foods.

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EWG's 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce

EWG updates this their Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce every year based on tests for pesticide residue conducted by the USDA and FDA.  EWG specifically highlights "The Dirty Dozen," produce likely to have a higher level of pesticide residue, which they recommend avoiding or purchasing organic. They produce with the least residue is termed "The Clean Fifteen." If you can't afford to purchase all organic produce, this guide can help you prioritize which produce to buy organic. I now shop for almost all my produce through the farmer's market and my CSA, but when I first started going green, I picked and chose what to buy organic. I felt fine about buying conventional onions and melons, but only bought organic greens, grapes, and berries. It helped with the sticker shock.

The 2012 Dirty Dozen:

• apples
• celery
• sweet bell peppers
• peaches
• strawberries
• nectarines (imported)
• grapes
• spinach
• lettuce
• cucumbers
• blueberries (domestic)
• potatoes

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Getting the Most Out of Your Farmer’s Market

I love shopping at the farmer's market! In fact, the farmer's market is the only place I shop for food on a weekly basis. I buy most of my produce there. Looking for a farmer's market in your area? Check localharvest.org.


Shopping at the Farmer's Market: Eco-novice's Top Ten Tips

Shop at the right time of day. If you want the best prices, go shortly before the close of the market, when farmers are often willing to haggle, especially if you buy a large amount. If you want the best selection, go in the morning. Which brings me to my next point...

Find out what time the market really opens. Officially, my farmer's market opens at 9 am and closes at 1 pm each Saturday. After shopping there for nearly a year, I found out that almost all the farmers showed up by 7 am in the summer, and 8 am in the winter. Before I figured this out, by the time I showed up at 9 am or 10 am, farmers were often out of items they had in limited quantity. Now I go at 8 am, especially if raspberries are in season.

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Environmental Causes of Autism and Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders

For many years, autism research has focused on genetic factors. But researchers estimate that "the total fraction of ASD attributable to genetic inheritance may be about 30–40%." Now many are calling for more extensive research of environmental factors, including the tens of thousands of untested chemicals that individuals are exposed to via consumer products as well as the environment at large (air, water, soil). The brains of embryos and fetuses are believed to be especially susceptible to toxic chemicals. A workshop of leading researchers convened by the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center, with support from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and Autism Speaks, generated a list of "10 chemicals and mixtures widely distributed in the environment that are already suspected of causing developmental neurotoxicity":

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Deanna Duke: Mom on a Mission

Deanna Duke, long-time environmentalist and parent of two, used to believe that products sold in stores were generally safe since the FDA said they were. Although she started to think otherwise after reading Slow Death by Rubber Duck, still she was satisfied to let other environmentalists focus on toxins in products while she concerned herself with reducing waste and energy use. Then in 2007 Deanna received a "Double Whammy": members of her family were diagnosed with autism and cancer. Deanna was forced to confront the reality that environmental toxins, including those her family was exposed to through the use of everyday supposedly safe products, most likely played a role in these conditions. She then undertook a mission to reduce her family's exposure to toxic chemicals.

Through her very successful blog The Crunchy Chicken and her recently published book The Non-Toxic Avenger: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You, Deanna shares with others her efforts to live free of toxic chemicals. Below, Deanna answers several of my questions regarding her transformation from a trusting consumer to the Non-Toxic Avenger.

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Thanksgiving Reflections

Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays.  I love the traditional Thanksgiving meal. I love that gifts are not exchanged.  I love that the holiday has not been hijacked by marketers and retailers -- possibly because gratitude is in many ways the antithesis of consumerism. I love that it is a non-denominational holiday that unites all Americans.  In honor of Thanksgiving, here are a few things I am thankful for.

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Cockroaches, Fruit Flies, and Ants, Oh My!

Imagine that one day you look into an emptied out toy bin in your family room and you find a pretty large dead black bug in it.  Gross, but you don't think much of it.

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My Love Affair with the Farmers' Market

What I purchased last Saturday at my local farmers' market:
strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums,  red onions, green onions, cilantro,
baby greens, and baby spinach (plus the tomatoes pictured below) -- all organic ($40).

If you have a garden, congratulations.  Seriously, I admire and envy you.  I would love to have a large, gorgeous garden full of herbs, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, carrots, peppers, lettuce as well as several fruit trees in my backyard, but that seems to be a few years into my future.  I do have a short-term goal of planting something.

My favorite summer salad: organic spinach and strawberries
from my farmers' market plus toasted walnuts and parmesan cheese.

But while I don't have my own garden, I do have the farmers' market.  Right now with strawberries in season we are loving our whole grain pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream (see this post for details).  I am also now making lots of my favorite summer salad: spinach, sliced strawberries, toasted walnuts, and freshly grated parmesan cheese with red wine vinegar dressing (see photo above).  I buy the organic spinach and organic strawberries at my farmers' market every week, and can get organic walnuts through my CSA.  Now that tomatoes are in season, I will be eating tomatoes on and in everything, including in the delicious caprese salad (slices of tomatoes layered with slices of fresh mozzarella and basil leaves, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a little freshly grated salt and pepper).

There are so many benefits that come from this direct producer-to-consumer arrangement.  Here are some of the things I love most about the farmers' market.  

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Things I Avoid Eating

image credit: Adam Fields

Here are some things I like to avoid eating:

1. Synthetic hormones (found in conventional meat and dairy products)
2. Antibiotics (found in conventional meat and dairy products)
3. Dioxins, PCBs, PBDEs, DDT and other environmental pollutants (found in fatty animal products)
4. Mercury (mainly fish high in the food chain)
5. E. Coli, Salmonella, etc. (a possibility with any meat or produce)
6. Pesticides (conventional produce)
7. Genetically modified organisms/ GMOs (nearly all processed foods, and many other conventional food products such as corn and oil)
8. Food additives (non-food ingredients added to packaged and processed foods) including: artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, preservatives
9. Imitation food/ manufactured food substitutes: margarine, high-fructose corn syrup
10. Plastic

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New Dirty Dozen and Other Weekend Links

The big news is that EWG published their new Dirty Dozen (and Clean Fifteen). Here is the cute printable guide. I prefer to print out the full list. Each year, EWG ranks pesticide contamination of popular fruits and vegetables based on their analysis of 51,000 tests for pesticides on these foods, conducted by the USDA and the FDA. You can read more about the methodology here.  A few facts that will make your head spin (from EWG):

• As a category. peaches have been treated with more pesticides than any other produce, registering combinations of up to 57 different chemicals. Apples were next, with 56 pesticides and raspberries with 51.
• A single celery sample was contaminated with 13 different chemicals, followed by a single sample of sweet bell peppers (11), and greens (10).

If you value this kind of information, please sign EWG's petition telling the USDA to stop funding a California-based pro-pesticide, big agriculture group, which has accused EWG of discouraging produce consumption (P.S. The USDA has also not yet released the latest pesticide residue data). Consumers aren't smart enough to make up their own minds about pesticides, so the argument goes, and all this information just scares them unnecessarily! This is the same argument used for not labeling GMOs, by the way.  If only we could actually trust the USDA to make decisions in the public interest, instead of acting like the lap dog of Big Ag.  In the meantime, give me the information please.

In other breaking news, the USDA has replaced the Food Pyramid with My Plate.  Definitely more useful, but personally I won't be looking to the USDA for eating advice anytime soon.  Check out this awesome comparison of what the USDA recommends you eat versus what foods they subsidize.  Love that USDA!

A few more reads:

Another reason to eat organic meat.

Tips for avoiding food poisoning without toxic chemicals.

And a fun instead of depressing one: finds at the antique shop!

Happy Father's Day!

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Winner and Weekend Links

The winner of the Nothing But Soap natural laundry soap giveaway is: Heaventaste!

Thank you to all who participated.  If you are like my sister, now that you know you didn't win, you can go ahead and make your purchase from Nothing But Soap.  Amber has great prices!

And if you haven't done so already, remember to enter the giveaway for a set of stainless steel straws made by Etsy shop The Mulled Mind.  There will be 2 more Etsy giveaways in June as well.  Stay tuned!

A few reads for the weekend:

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Weekend Links (Double Edition)

Wow, so many interesting and disturbing reads in the last 2 weeks.  All the Plastic and Food links are followed by a short excerpt from the article or post.  

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Industrial Chemicals + Children's Brains = Impaired Learning

"The combined evidence suggests that neurodevelopmental disorders caused by industrial chemicals have created a silent pandemic in modern society.”

(Excerpt from a 2006 paper in The Lancet medical journal, cited in Steingraber's article "Mind Games")

A few days ago, via MightyNest's blog, I came across the article "Mind Games: How toxic chemicals are impairing children’s ability to learn" by ecologist and cancer-survivor Sandra Steingraber in Orion magazine.  This sobering article discusses the enormous costs of toxic chemicals on our children's brains, including documentation of the ever-increasing prevalence of cognitive and psychomotor disabilities (e.g., autism, ADHD) in children. 

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Ants

Please leave.

Yes, folks, it's that awesome time of year again, at least where I live.  The time when the ants get tired of being wet and/or cold and decide to have a party in your house.  Please note that my ant invasions both this year and last year coincided with the arrival of my in-laws for an extended stay in December. As if I didn't already feel like an ultra-lame housekeeper/ hostess.  I am, in fact, aware that ants are looking for food (my mother-in-law likes to remind me of this), but I will never ever ever be able to keep all crumbs off the floor with small children.  Even keeping food and crumbs within the kitchen and out of the rest of the house is completely beyond my reach. 

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Some Thoughts on Cost (The Cost of Going Green, Part 3)

This post is the third in the series, The Cost of Going Green.  

Previous posts include:

Save Money while Going Green

Save Money on Food while Going Green

How we eat determines how the earth is used. -- Wendell Berry 

(Image from What the World Eats)

In many cases, going green is totally compatible with being frugal.  Our consumerist culture has gotten us into a lot of trouble with chemicals and climate, and you can take a large step in a greener direction simply by buying less.

But sometimes being green does cost more money.  For example, organic and natural food usually cost more money than conventional food.  And it can be tough to pay more for the organic milk, when you know exactly how much the conventional milk costs, because it's right there next to the organic milk on the shelf.  And since we have to buy food over and over again, we face this decision -- Should I pay more for the organic apple, the hormone-free milk, the grass-fed beef, the free-range eggs? -- over and over again.

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Save Money on Food while Going Green (The Cost of Going Green, Part 2)

Visiting the local farm from which we buy much of our organic produce.

In many cases, going green is totally compatible with being frugal.  Our consumerist culture has gotten us into a lot of trouble with chemicals and climate, and you can take a large step in a greener direction simply by buying less.  In part 1 of the series "The Cost of Going Green" I described a number of ways to save money while going green.

But sometimes being green does cost more money.  For example, organic and natural food usually cost more money than conventional food.   Below are some ideas to make greening your food more affordable (I wish I did all of these, but I don't.  I'm working on it):

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Eco-novice's Top 10 Resources

Here are 10 resources I regularly use in my research regarding healthier products and greener living.
 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
The EPA's mission is "to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment -- air, water and land -- upon which life depends."  The site has information on a range of topics, including human health and energy conservation.

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What About Mom?

A reader sent in the question below about organic bras. Since I know very little about the organic cotton clothing world, I asked Rachel (of Euphoria Baby and Euphoria Maternity) to address the question. 

Q: Have you done some research on organic clothing, especially good bras that don’t break the bank and are not made in sweatshops? I see there are lot of organic cotton baby products and not much for mommy.

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