Bottled Water Banned
Colleges and universities of varying sizes and types throughout the USA have banned or restricted bottled water sales as demanded from student-led referendums and lobbied directives. The motives are mostly ecological.
Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. According to Food and Water Watch, that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. And while the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away.
Not all garbage ends up at the dump. A river, sewer or beach can’t catch everything the rain washes away, either. In fact, Earth’s largest landfill isn’t on land at all. The Great North Pacific Patch stretches for hundreds of miles across the North Pacific Ocean, forming a toxic, floating dump, on the high seas. It’s an example of a worldwide problem: plastic that begins in human hands yet ends up in the ocean, often inside animals’ stomachs, or around their necks.
It has estimated that the floating plastic polluted patch known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the size of Texas and that over a million sea birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.
Bottle Water Isn’t As Healthy As You Are Led To Believe
In 2009, almost 50 percent of all bottled water came from municipal tap water supplies.
According to a 2010 survey, only 3 companies provide the public with the same level of information available for tap water. This includes where the water came from, how it was treated and what the results of the water quality tests were.
Independent testing of bottled water conducted by the Environmental Working Group in 2008 found that 10 popular brands of bottled water, purchased from grocery stores and other retailers in 9 states and the District of Columbia, contained 38 chemical pollutants, with an average of 8 contaminants in each brand.
Excerpted from a recent Natural News article by staff writer, Ethan Huff:
The study’s published abstract explains that 13 of the 18 bottled-water products tested exhibited “significant” anti-estrogenic activity, while 16 of the 18 samples were found to inhibit the body’s androgen receptors by an astounding 90 percent.
These hormone-disrupting chemicals can lead to all sorts of health issues. As you can image, the $22 billion retail packaged-water industry in the U.S. is not thrilled with this movement to ban plastic water bottles on college campuses. They’ve upped their marketing efforts in college towns, stating that bottled water is a safe, convenient product that is “one of the healthiest drinks on the shelf” and that it’s packaging is recyclable.
But college students aren’t buying it.
Instead, students and administrations are creating stations on campus that can effectively filter and process out those chemicals where students and faculty may refill glass or metal containers or even reusable plastic containers. Reducing the carbon footprint, reducing the pollution created by petroleum fueled plastics, and an ever-growing mass of discarded plastic waste, should be a common goal shared by young and old.
“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t. We’re afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
“We can’t. We will fall!”
“Come to the edge.”
And they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.
– Guillaume Apollinaire
“Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other — it doesn’t matter who it is — and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.” – Mother Teresa
Mobile Phone Calls Acutely Increase Blood Pressure
As of December 2012, 87% of American adults had a mobile phone. According to a recent study from doctors G. Crippa; D. Zabzuni; A. Cassi; and E. Bravi of Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital, talking on your mobile phones causes a significant rise in blood pressure. During a phone call, blood pressure readings jumped significantly from 121/77 to 129/82. Systolic blood pressure rise was less drastic in patients who were used to participating in more than 30 phone calls per day.
It always amazes me to see folks talking on their phone while out walking or worse on the treadmill or elliptical machine at the gym. Exercise is a great stress buster, but this is negated if you can’t turn the stress off while you exercise. Turn this cell phones off while exercising!
Saying Om: Yoga Can Lower Blood Pressure
No big news here! Anything you do to lower your stress including meditating, watching a funny movie, spending time with a pet or in thoughtful prayer, will lower your blood pressure.
Yoga calms the mind and works out the body, but now, a study on the effects of yoga on hypertension concluded that yoga can significantly lower blood pressure. The 24-week study, conducted by Debbie L. Cohen, MD; Anne Bowler, BA and Raymond R. Townsend, MD of the University of Pennsylvania, showed that people who practiced yoga 2 – 3 times per week saw their blood pressure decrease significantly: an average of three points for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, from 133/80 to 130/77. Participants who only followed a controlled diet—and did not practice yoga—saw only a decrease of one point, from 134/83 to 132/82.
Diet Cola Contributes Weight Gain and Diabetes
Diet soda is calorie-free, but it won’t necessarily help you lose weight. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of about a decade, diet soda drinkers had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And get this: participants who slurped down two or more sodas a day experienced a 500% greater increase. The way artificial sweeteners confuse the body may play a part, but another reason might be psychological, says Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork. When you know you’re not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza, reports the Health.com.
Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of conditions (including high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol, and large waist circumference) that put people at high risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, Bjork explains.
Diet Soda Not Good For Your Bones
Women over 60 are already at a greater risk for osteoporosis than men, and Tufts University researchers found that drinking soda, including diet soda, compounds the problem. They discovered that female cola drinkers had nearly 4% lower bone mineral density in their hips than women who didn’t drink soda. The research even controlled for the participants’ calcium and vitamin D intake. Additionally, a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that cola intake (all kinds, not just diet) was associated with low bone-mineral density in women.
Attention Deficit Disorder Diagnosis Soars
Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990.
“The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it’s not. It’s preposterous,” Dr. Conners, a psychologist and professor emeritus at Duke University, said in a subsequent interview. He questioned the rising rates of diagnosis and called them “a national disaster of dangerous proportions. This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.”
The disorder is now the second most frequent long-term diagnosis made in children, narrowly trailing asthma, according to a New York Times analysis of C.D.C. data. Behind that growth has been drug company marketing that has stretched the image of classic A.D.H.D. to include relatively normal behavior like carelessness and impatience, and has often overstated the pills’ benefits.
Profits for the A.D.H.D. drug industry have soared. Sales of stimulant medication in 2012 were nearly $9 billion, more than five times the $1.7 billion a decade before, according to the data company IMS Health. Even Roger Griggs, the pharmaceutical executive who introduced Adderall in 1994, said he strongly opposes marketing stimulants to the general public because of their dangers. He calls them “nuclear bombs,” warranted only under extreme circumstances and when carefully overseen by a physician.
Tainted ADHD Research?
Many of the scientific studies cited by drug company speakers involved Dr. Joseph Biederman, a prominent child psychiatrist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2008, a Senate investigation revealed that Dr. Biederman’s research on many psychiatric conditions had been substantially financed by drug companies, including Shire. Those companies also paid him $1.6 million in speaking and consulting fees. He has denied that the payments influenced his research.
You can read more about ADHD in an article I wrote for a peer review journal and posted to my website, ADHD Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.