Environment Page
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EXTERNAL LINKS to Environmental Sites The Story of Stuff Environment
Canada: Climate Change |
February 2009 Want a cheap way of lowering your heating bill without buying fancy programmable thermostats? Open the case and place a screw at the 20 oC position, as shown below:
When someone tries to move the thermostat past that temperature, the needle will not be able to slip past the screw! Most municipalities are presently overwhelmed with the amount of recyclable materials they have collected. In fact, since recycling programs started, plastics have always been a problem because of the solvents needed to pour plastics back into new molds. The solution? Reuse Before
Recycling! Here's another example by Nihat Ostundag: Issue of the Month: February 2008: Tap Water Versus Bottled Water “Our
"snapshot" testing of more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of
water by three independent labs found that most bottled water tested was of
good quality, but some brands' quality was spotty. About one third of the
bottled waters we tested contained significant contamination (i.e., levels of
chemical or bacterial contaminants exceeding those allowed under a state or
industry standard or guideline) in at least one test.” “Making water bottles to
meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than
17 million barrels of oil last year – enough fuel for more than 1 million (source http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/exesum.asp
(National Resources Defense Council)
January 2008 Effect of Feeding Corn to Cattle (from New York Times Magazine. March 31, 2002 (by Michael Pollan) Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with feeding a ruminant (example,cattle)corn is feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which is normally expelled by belching during rumination. But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage, rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the animal's lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure (usually by forcing a hose down the animal's esophagus), the cow suffocates. A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick. Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio. Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate. ''I don't know how long you could feed this ration before you'd see problems,'' Metzen said; another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually ''blow out their livers'' and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall, bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13 percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers. What keeps a feedlot animal healthy -- or healthy enough -- are
antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to
prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection. Most of the
antibiotics sold in December 2007 Trans Fats in French Fries. If you must have French fries, which fast food restaurants offer the lowest amount of trans fats? (Eating trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease. They are prepared commercially by partially hydrogenating oils. This not only increases the shelf life of foods but makes them more appealing by changing their taste and texture.) The data comes from the labs of Consumer Reports(2007). We have calculated the mass percents.
For more health related material from our web site, go to the nutrition page. |
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