Forget about carbon footprints for a minute.

[Skidmore]

I want to talk about something I don't know what else to call but the "chemical footprint" of people I don't know if there is such a thing as study into this. I see carbon footprint as related to energy production and it's byproducts. When I talk about a "chemical footprint," I want to address something else entirely. Over time, I have talked about my personal pet peeves with products that end up as waste that will never break down, like stick pens and these damned disposable diapers they have now. Let me add disposable razors and batteries to my ever growing list.

I've been thinking more about this and the personal products we use, which are for the most part chemical. All the hair care products, deodorants, housekeeping products, laundry products, disposable razors, cosmetics, and so forth. These products sometimes come in containers which cannot be recycled and are quite often found in landfills. What the hell do you do with a mascara tube, a product we are now told needs to be replaced monthly because it goes bad? How about all those little brushes and one use containers that these things come in? Beyond that when you use person care products, what happens to them as residue? What happens to the cleaning solution you wash down the toilet when you clean it? What about the dyes that leech out of the clothing you launder or the fibers of synthetic materials that get washed out in the rinse water? It goes some where. Where do the chemicals in the soap you bathe with and the shampoo you wash your hair with go when you rinse? How about all that damned toothpaste with seven different capabilities go when you spit it out? How about all those preservatives and chemicals in processed foods and from our handy dandy pharmaceuticals that people are peeing and pooping out? You can't convince me that we even come close to taking care of this in water treatment plants and that it doesn't affect the earth. You can convince me that these landfills don't leak into the groundwater and contaminate the soil around them. You can't convince me that our chemical footprint isn't just as large as our carbon footprint, and that our chemical footprint doesn't contribute to our carbon footprint. It takes energy to produce all these chemicals and many of them are products of the petroleum industry.

So do we have a real movement beyond recycling programs to deal with the chemical footprint we each make? Can it be included in addressing the energy issues?

[mike_c]

1. "Can it be included in addressing the energy issues?"

Short answer: yes. The truth of the matter is that those products you mentioned are all manufactured products, and one's "carbon footprint" is simply a convenient measure of total energy consumption, including the creation, consumption, disposal, and mitigation of impacts from manufactured goods in a fossil fuel based economy. Carbon footprint is just a reasonable bookkeeping device for keeping track of most of our impacts upon the environment. It wraps them all up into a single, easily comprehensible unit.

[Skidmore]

4. Perhaps there needs to be a more specific discussion of

what the "carbon footprint" includes beyond how much energy we burn in our choice of light bulbs and to heat or cool our homes. We need to have a serious discussion about our consumption of throw-away products beyond milk containers and pop bottles.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. I am afraid that your concerns are not all in

your head. Pity that.

http://www.earthisland.org/project/newsPage2.cfm?newsID=758&pageID=177&subSiteID=44
The Flush-Toilet Fallout
Scientists at Brunel University in the UK have been researching the impact of artificial estrogens excreted in urine that is discharged into water bodies by treatment plants. “We discovered that not only can you detect these in effluent and river water, but that they are present in high enough concentrations to cause effects on fish,” said John Sumpter, an ecotoxicologist at Brunel University. “Our fish get feminized basically.”

After examining thousands of wild fish in eight rivers, he and his colleagues found that “100 percent of male fish were feminized in quite a few locations on some rivers.”

The problem is not limited to the UK. “We have very good evidence from across the whole world now that estrogens in effluent is feminizing wild fish,” he said.

Researchers with the US. Geological Survey discovered intersex among male bass in the Potomac River in West Virginia when they were called in to investigate the cause of fish kills and fish with lesions, open sores and places where the skin was missing. In some areas of the South Branch of the Potomac River in West Virginia, they found as many as 80 percent of the male fish were intersex.

“I believe that it’s all tied together because many of these endocrine disrupting hormones also affect disease resistance,” said Vicky Blazer, a pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “The endocrine system and immune system are closely tied. I think it is very possible that the lesions were the first indication that there was some sort of immunosuppression.”



http://www.ehponline.org/members/2005/8068/8068.html
Assessment of Feminization of Male Fish in English Rivers by the Environment Agency of England and Wales

Melanie Y. Gross-Sorokin, Stephen D. Roast, and Geoffrey C. Brighty

Ecosystems and Human Health, Science Group, Environment Agency, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

* Introduction
* The Environment Agency's Assessment of the Widespread Feminization of Fish
* Identification of Causative Substances
* The Environment Agency's Risk Management Strategy

Abstract
In recent years there has been considerable concern over the ability of substances discharged into the environment to disrupt the normal endocrine function of wildlife. In particular, the apparent widespread feminization of male fish in rivers has received significant attention from regulators in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, and Japan. The U.K. and European epidemiological data sets have demonstrated that the occurrence of feminized fish is associated with effluent discharges and that the incidence and severity is positively correlated with the proportion of treated sewage effluent in receiving waters. Although weakly estrogenic substances may contribute to the overall effect, studies have concluded that steroid estrogens are the principal and most potent estrogenic components of domestic sewage. Extensive laboratory data sets confirm that steroid estrogens are capable of eliciting the effects observed in wild fish at concentrations that have been measured in effluents and in the environment. Based on evaluation of the available information, the Environment Agency (England and Wales) has concluded that the weight of evidence for endocrine disruption in fish is sufficient to develop a risk management strategy for estrogenically active effluents that discharge to the aquatic environment. Key words: endocrine disruption, ethinylestradiol, feminization, fish, estradiol, estrone, risk assessment, steroid estrogen. Environ Health Perspect 114(suppl 1) : 147-151 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.8068 available via http://dx.doi

[ret5hd]

3. I think you are developing an incipient case of "The Screaming Man"...

Don't worry, I have my own Screaming Man.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/09/madmen_and_seda.html

[pretzel4gore]

5. magic markers have only a tiny amount of ink...

and they dry up in no time. so you must go buy another. and another. and another. and soon. our whole society is replete with examples of this. sealed units that must become garbage before the ink dries! printers that only print 20 pictures, then need new refills, which cost 1/2 as much as entire unit. throw it away! buy another. and another. and soon....
this mentality is slowly changing (remember mcdonalds once used 'styra phone' containers?) but the tipping point on carbon injection into ther air, at 6 billion tonnes/year is ...well it passed by in 2001 unfortunately (on sept 11th, as matter of fact!) :hide:

[Skidmore]

7. Yes. a good example of what I'm talking about.

[noamnety]

6. All valid and important points

From my perspective, much of the patriarchal system we live in has to do with assuming that body stuff (usually associated with women) is bad, and chemical stuff (associated with men) is good. Breast milk, ewwwww. Formula - clean and modern. Body hair on women? eewwwww. Disposable razors, shaving cream, chemicals that burn hair off a person, all clean and modern. Taking fresh roadkill and gutting it and eating it? Eewwwww. Buying a slab of meat that comes on a foam tray wrapped in plastic? Clean and modern. Composting toilets? ewwwwww. Flush toilets? Clean and modern.

If you're going to talk disposable diapers, throw tampons on the list as well, please. (I know, ewwwww). "Over 12 BILLION pads and tampons are USED ONCE and disposed of annually, adding to environmental pollution. A March-April 2001 E Magazine article states that, according to the Center for Marine Conservation, over 170,000 tampon applicators were collected along U.S. coastal areas between 1998 and 1999." ... "According to a 1998 article in Vegetarian Times, studies conducted by the sanitary product industry have found that lurking within tampons are trace amounts of dioxin, a chemical deemed a probable carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from New York points out that there has been far more testing on the possible health effects of chlorine-bleached coffee filters than on chlorine-bleached tampons and related products." http://www.keeper.com/facts.html


We have chemical air fresheners for ourselves, our homes, our cars, even though we know they cause respiratory problems for ourselves and others. We overuse disinfectants even though we know they harm our immune system. We use hair dyes even though we know some of them are toxic. We use harsh chemicals to clean our showers even though we know vinegar works just as well. We buy lysol, in disposable spray bottles, when a spray combo of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar (sprayed separately, not mixed together) is cheaper, safer, and MORE effective at sanitizing and killing germs than lysol is.

Corporate marketing propaganda is killing us.

[Skidmore]

10. More good examples.

[truedelphi]

15. I agree - I hate to be the one raining on the parade

But I find Seventh Generation to be just as exploitive and what not as any other manufacturer.

Their product (tampons) have this sort of chemical smell - sort of like Pledge furniture polish and sort of like Windex mixed together.

They are EVEN more EXPENSIVE than the traditional manufacturers' tampons. ("Have to be more expensive - right - they are environmental" says they. "But they are PAPER! PAPER!" says I.)

I now use rags that are washed in an environmental soap in my clothes wsher. I simply cannot bring myself to pay like $ 2 or $ 3 an ounce for something that is NOT sanitary and that SMELLS bad (sometimes i break down and I buy towelling - plain white ones please)

If paper towels can be manufactured without any smell - why can't tampons be manufactured that way?

And why can't tampons be the same price per ounce as paper towelling??

We should be encircling our woo-woos with paper made out of GOLD rather than these weird products that are a major way for corporations to rip us off!

[LiberalEsto]

8. I asked similar questions over 25 years ago

Back then I was a newspaper reporter in central NJ - a virtual swamp of toxic waste.

I was interviewing the director of a regional sewerage disposal plant. I asked him why people were allowed to dump certain chemicals into their plumbing even though these were patently dangerous and toxic and potentially corrosive to sewer lines and the treatment plant.

He kept repeating the phrase "dilution factor" like a mantra, no matter how much I prodded him. He believed that all the chemicals were diluted by the volume of liquid in the sewers as well as by all the water in the ocean. Or at least that's what he told himself.

The flood of chemicals, drugs and new materials developed and marketed in our society has overwhelmed our ability to process them safely or restrict their use.

Only in the past few years -- when estrogen-like compounds cause male fish to develop female characteristics, Prozac and mercury saturate the waterways, and dioxins harm creatures at the North and South Poles, has the public even started becoming aware of the disaster being created. We thought DDT was just a one-shot deal and believed stopping its production and use would eliminate the problems it caused. But DDT still has long-term impacts.

Another key factor is that corporations don't want to see the problems or do anything about them, because their only interest is profits. Anything that reduces profits is unacceptable to them.

The only way it's going to change is to make it extremely unprofitable for corporations to manufacture and distribute materials with a negative environmental impact. And that's not going to happen in this corporate-kissin' Misadministration.

[Skidmore]

9. Nothing will happen with Congresspeople worried about

campaign contributors over environmental concerns. There's not a single member of congress that I hear address these issues.

[Skidmore]

11. Kicking for the morning crowd.

[Karenina]

18. And again!

:kick:

[Porcupine]

12. Nobody wants to reduce consumption.....

even here on DU if you suggest that the candidate du jour should have invested a tiny fraction of their millions in reducing their own consumption you get attacked as a republican troll.

Go over to environment/energy and read the view counts and compare them to the kitty pic posts in the lounge. That's the constituancy for a sane environmental policy. About 5% of us.

We are waiting for another few disasters on the scale of New Orleans before we do anything. I'm sure they will be supplied.

[OneBlueSky]

13. included within the chemical footprint is the plastic footprint . . .

the quantity of plastic consumed by individuals in this country is staggering . . . it's hard to find a product that doesn't have some plastic associated with it, from the housings of power tools to kitchen gadgets to computers to fertilizers to you name it . . . and if it doesn't contain plastic, it's probably wrapped in plastic for purchase . . . all of this plastic is oil-based and greatly exacerbates our oil dependence beyond the obvious (fuel) usage . . .

[The2ndWheel]

14. Yeah, that's the problem

It comes down to everything we do. We want to do everything we've been doing, just without having to pay for it. We want the cake, we certainly want to eat it, but we want to throw it back up, repackage it, and sell it at 10x the price. We want everyone to have everything. We can possibly even get to that point. Just don't expect there to be much of a natural habitat waiting for us.

I think we would so far as to destroy the habitat to save ourselves. Granted, it's crazy, but it makes sense. We want perfection. We want predictability. We want chance taken out of the equation. The only way to do that is to do away with the eco-system. Since we hate nature because it eventually kills us, we won't worry too much when it's gone.

[live love laugh]

16. The same thing was on my mind just yesterday--well at least the

part about contaminated water. I kept wondering what happens to the chemicals from all of the prescription drugs people take that are flushed into sewers. I saw a water treatment plant once, on Oprah, and the process involved removing most solid waste and odor from sewage and then funneling it into the oceans for the fish to swim in. Some countries send the treated water back to fresh water lines for immediate drinking. My point is, filtration plants can only remove most solid waste. Nothing can remove the chemicals from the water from pharmaceuticals and it's obvious to me the more drugs we use, the more we are poisoning ourselves and our food supply. At some point, it should become unnecessary to take drugs because we will all be drinking them anyway--of course the mixtures of drugs that were never supposed to be taken together could lead to unfathomable results, but for the time being. Cheers! :sarcasm:

[politicat]

17. Is there a movement? Sure. Environmentalism.

Is it easy? Not so much. But then again, it never has been. Waste has been our bugabear since we first realized that we should dig privies. (There's a reason that archeologists LOOOOVE them some old middens and privies, and our g'g'great grandkids are going to like our landfills just as much.)

It's all about decisions. The makeup/razors/hygiene waste can be reduced and worked around. Old-fashioned double edged blades can be recycled easily, being straight metal; makeup in glass bottles can be recycled; there are about a gazillion subs for Kotex and Playtex ranging from OB (1/4 of the waste of the others) to the Keeper (1/1000 of the waste, but harder for some women to deal with... and real hard to deal with in some situations.) (We humans have been painting ourselves and shaving and staunching for 50,000 years, especially in warm climates or in places where environmental conditions made it a good idea. Beautification and practicality OFTEN go hand in hand, like kohl helping to mitigate against glare, and some preparations having antiseptic properties; shaving mitigating against pests and skin irritation caused by dust or moisture, and skin creams and colorants protecting against sun and wind. And I'm not going to put such in the camp of product of the patriarchy because, having lived in really primitive conditions for longer than a Girl Scout camping trip, practicality is often amazingly similar to beautification, and I don't think that's an accident. Besides, some beautification is always going to be about being attractive to potential mates (and no, I'm not ruling out GLB relationships here) , and as long as we have a genetic compulsion to spread our genes,no matter if we're fertile with our partners, we're going to be looking for partners. Sex isn't a tool of the patriarchy; it predates patriarchy by a lot. ) Some companies (body Shop, for one) take back their empties. Others make sure that they're recyclable. Less packaging helps a lot. Making your own and reusing your containers is an option for some people.

There are alternatives to EVERYTHING, so it basically depends on how much we want or need to make the decisions to use the lowest impact chemical. Some of them are easy choices, like using Dr. Bonner's soap (which is basically an oil and sodium hydroxide from wood ash and some essential oil) or Method stuff (which degrades quickly into very basic chemicals - like water and sodium chloride and such) instead of bleaches and known nasties. Some are tradeoffs, like using baking soda and salt for toothpaste instead of a fluoride-providing one, and as a result, needing to spend more time and money under a dentist's care. Some are more difficult choices, like relocating (and/or changing jobs) so you can walk to work and for your basic needs or giving up the house in the middle of nowhere that provides privacy and space but means lots of oil to get around in exchange for the different privacy of living in a mixed use urban setting. And some changes are going to change depending on where you are. At my family farm, we don't worry much about water consumption because we're on a pretty tight, self-regulating cycle with our well and cistern and the septic field. But we do worry about land use, because we manage our own waste and compost and so have to be vigilant to make sure that what can't go into the biomass generator or the composter goes into the recycling system (like my great-grandfather's hearing aid batteries). (The biomass generator provides power for the barns and the pig sheds. It's emissions tested every 2 years and is cleaner than my Hyundai, which is almost as clean as a Prius.) But when I'm at home, in another biome, I'm really conservative on water because we don't have much, so I'm more willing to accept a discard rather than try to come up with some non-water based way to clean some things.

(On the feminization of fish and amphibians, there's two things going on there -- rising local temperatures lead to feminization in a lot of amphibians as well as the estrogen waste in the water supply. They both have to be reduced, but at this point, fewer babies using fewer products leading to fewer adults on the planet putting less carbon in the air thus bringing water temps down is better than more babies or more non-biodegradable waste like condoms. Estrogens do degrade - they have a half life of a couple months. A condom... a couple hundred years.)

Is there an organized campaign? Yes and no. There are some seriously thoughtful people who spent/spend a lot of time thinking about waste management (E. F. Schumacher, Victor Papanek, Buckminster Fuller, William McDonough and Michael Braungart, among others) and there are actually some pretty interesting conferences on the subject. A lot of it is academic right now, spread over agricultural econ and traditional econ, public policy, earth sciences and sociology. I'd say there are probably people in every community that have expertise and knowledge on chemical waste. Reducing chem waste is one way to reduce some carbon waste and that helps. But it's a babysteps sort of thing because getting people out of their SUVs and walking, getting them using daylight and natural materials (like paper blinds instead of plastic ones; beech, modal or bamboo cloth instead of cotton or polyester; cast iron instead of teflon) instead of artificial light and synthetics as a way of life... that all reduces both the chemical footprint and the carbon footprint.

You may have to start it in your community, and it may be as easy a start as getting a community garden plot and talking to your fellow gardeners, or talking to the other parents in a playgroup. This kind of thing is grassroots, and it is pretty much behaviorally based at heart.

Wish I could give you more concrete go to's, but environmentalism really is a community, small scale project. It's one town at a time saying, "this isn't good for us, so we have to stop doing it."

[porphyrian]

19. Organochlorides permeate everything now - you, me, our food, our water...

At this point, it's difficult to say who's to blame for it (beyond those who make chemicals) or what to do about it.