Eye Opener: Environmental Working Group

The product that I use is Crest Fluoride anticavity toothpaste, whitening plus scope extreme.

Ingredients in this product are linked to:
Cancer
Developmental/reproductive toxicity
Violations, restrictions & warnings
Allergies/immunotoxicity

I found this very surprising. I wouldn't have ever guessed that there would be chemicals linked to cancer in my toothpaste. I looked at the list of chemicals in this product and some of them were rated at a 9 out of 10. Even with these chemicals, my toothpaste was still only a 5 out of 10 on the scale. It's hard to imagine what's in the products that are rated a 10. Something else I find scary is the the warning on the lable says "Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age". This is the stuff we're putting in our mouths. It also says that if you swallow more than what you use for brushing, you should contact poison control. Can't we find something better to clean our teeth? I think that I will probably use this site for some research before I buy any new cosmetic products.

Eye Opener: Review of Reading 28 "A Forest Path out of Poverty"

Summary

The reading started out talking about a man named David Andi. He is a man from Equador who was having a hard time making a living. To make money, he could either log the rainforest or trade with Columbia. He knew that logging was bad for the rainforest, but if he traded with Columbia, it would spread the Columbian civil war into Equador.

The reading then talked about a project taking place to stop deforestation. The project is called the Callari Project. It was started by a woman named Judy Logback. While she was visiting Equador, she tried to persuade some of the communities to stop cutting down the rainforest. one of the local teachers told her, "If you want to save the rainforest, help us find a way to make a living without destroying it."

She saw some of the things that the villagers were making and started selling them to tourists. the villagers were used to getting only about $1 per item from intermediaries, were surprised when they received the full amount of what is was sold for from Logback. within two years there were products being shipped to 10 different countries.

The Callari Project has received many grants because of its reputation for doing the most with the least. It has the highest results per dollar spent.

Just How Much Is A Rainforest Worth?

Eye Opener: CSPI

For this post, we were supposed to pick an activity from the calander. I choose to tour the food supply. This website had a bunch of facts about food. I told where it came from, how it was made, and even had other health facts. It was actually very interesting.

After "Touring the Food Supply", I should probably be one of the least healthy people in the world. All of my meals consist mainly of meat because I really don't like vegtables. I have recently been trying to squeeze more vegtables into my diet, but I still don't enjoy them.



One thing that shocked me the most is the amount of animals being slaughtered. Where is all of this meat going? I'm preatty sure I don't eat half of an entire cow every year. Who is making up the differance?



One thing I not sure about is that vegitarians are less sick, and get sick less often. All I eat is meat, and I am almost never sick. I think what they were saying is that it's more long term types of illnesses. I can believe that with all of the fat in the meat and eating everything deepfried.



I have already been trying to eat healthier, but reading this makes me really want to cut back on the amount of meat that I eat. If I keep up the diet that I have now, I don't think it be too good for me.

Eye Opener: Ecological Footprint

The ecological footprint is the measure of the amount of land and sea needed to regenerate what we consume. Currently it would take about 1.3 earths to keep sustaining life.

I used the Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator, and found that it would take 4.1 Earths to sustain a lifestyle like mine. This is quite surprising to me. I had an environmental health class when I was in high school, and since then I have tried to conserve more resources. In other ways this doesn't surprise me. Although I drive a motorcycle that gets about 50mpg, I can only drive that for half of the year. The rest of the year, I drive a 1992 Buick Century. I don't think that any of the exhaust even makes it through the catalitic converter. I have also tried to recycle, but it is very hard to do when none of the people I live with will do the same. The quiz did have some helpful tips to reduce waste. One of the tips was to buy Energy Star rated appliances. This is actualy something I try to do. The quiz also told what would happen if everybody followed these tips.

I did a few other quizes and didn't really like them as much as the Earth Day Network footprint calculator. I found some of them confusing to read and understand.

Intro Post

Hi, my name is Randy Reiter. I am a sophmore at UMD and created this blog for my environmental health class.

There are 5 possible types of posts on my blog. They include:

Advocacy Project
Eye Openers
Reflections
Reviews
Share and Voice

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2.Derek
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