Radon Safety Levels Revamped; TheTrouble With (Great Lakes) Tritium

Naturally-occurring but deadly, radon is a radioactive, odourless & invisible gas which boosts the risk of lung cancer in humans. It leaches from the soil and rocks, and can collect in basements and foundations. Radon is believed to be implicated in lung cancer occurring in non-smokers who avoid lung cancer hazards. This month, Health Canada introduced new & improved safety guidelines for exposure to radon.

It used to be that remediation was required by law if exposure exceeded 800 becquerels. The new limit is 200 becquerels. The US limit is lower than Canada's, and set at 150 becquerels. A becquerel is a measurement of radiation.

Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen, and so can binds readily with water and organic matter and therefore easily become embedded in living tissues. From there it can harm nearby cells. Some experts are concerned about this. Others believe that radon which emits larger particles as it decays, is more of a worry.

Here is a paper reviewing the toxicity of tritium.

This month, Greenpeace released a study on the tritium being released from Ontario Hydro's Candu nuclear reactors located on the Great Lakes. Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. Canada's safety standard for tritium is 7,000 Bequerels/Liter. A 1994 Ontario government committee recommeded that the guideline be changed to 100 Bq/l, and decreased over a 5-year period to 20 Bq/l. So far the limit has stayed the same.

This is not unprecedented - here is an earlier Energy Probe study of toxicity of tritium and risk of exposure in the Great Lakes area.

Candu reactors are among the world's largest sources of of the radioactive compound. They can produce up to hundreds of times more tritium than other kinds of fission reactors.

The issue appears to be split down the middle - Greenpeace's report says high amounts of tritium in the Great Lakes and around nuclear stations indicate the energy plants regularly emit it into the environment. Energy Probe's earlier report, above, pointed to tritium as problematic. Meanwhile, Canadian federal and provincial energy regulators claim it is not a danger at lower levels. They say radon is more of a worry as it is more toxic at lower doses than is tritium.

The study's author is radiation biologist, Dr. Ian Fairlie. Fairlie says that Ontario has some of the highest levels of tritium in the environment in the world. Fairlie worked on CERRIE (Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emmitters), a British government committee that reviewed the safety of a number of radioactive substances, including tritium. He also authored a peer-reviewed journal article this year which concluded that the hazards of tritium are underestimated.

Wednesday's Show: Cookies and Space

Today's show features news on NASA's deals with companies on the commercialization of space (specifically orbital transport), as well as the new Canadian-made transfat free shortening that is the brainchild of a University of Guelph lipid chemist, and some early adopter bakeries that are using it to make baked treats healthier. We also examine the effects of spending long periods of time in space.

So tune in and check it out! 9:15 am at http://www.ckcufm.com

Toxic Toothpaste in Some North American Stores

Counterfeit contaminated Colgate toothpaste has been found in North American dollar stores. The tubes say they are manufactured in South Africa. But Colgate does not manufacture any toothpaste in South Africa. The fine print on the tubes is riddles with spelling errors. According to this report in the Globe and Mail says FDA and Health Canada are on the case.

The toothpaste has been found to contain diethylene glycol, or DEG, rather than the non-toxic glycerin it is supposed to contain. Diethylene glycol is one form of antifreeze. Some reports of illnesses have surfaced in New York state. Contaminated tubes were found in a dollar store in Guelph, Ontario.

Colgate has set up a toll-free line to call if you have concerns: 1 800 468 6502.

Here is Colgate's release (N.B., they have a 1-800 number set up).

Counterfeit Colgate Toothpaste Found

New York, New York, June 14, 2007...The Colgate�Palmolive Company today warned that counterfeit toothpaste falsely packaged as "Colgate" has been found in several dollar-type discount stores in four states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. There are indications that this product does not contain fluoride and may contain Diethylene Glycol. The Company stated that it does not use, nor has ever used, Diethylene Glycol as an ingredient in Colgate toothpaste anywhere in the world.

The counterfeit toothpaste can be easily recognized because it is labeled as "Manufactured in South Africa." Colgate does not import toothpaste into the United States from South Africa. In addition, the counterfeit packages examined so far have several misspellings including: "isclinically" "SOUTH AFRLCA" "South African Dental Assoxiation".

Counterfeit toothpaste is not manufactured or distributed by Colgate and has no connection with the Company whatsoever. Colgate is working closely with the US FDA to help to identify those responsible for the counterfeit product.

Consumers who suspect they may have purchased counterfeit product, can call Colgate's toll-free number at 1 800 468 6502.

Canada, US, Oz, Worst of OECD Nations on Ecological Indicators

According to the report of the Eco-Research Chair of Environmental Law & Policy at the University of Victoria, Canada are second from last, just above the United States , on a list of 29 environmental indicators.

We're in the bottom half on 22 of 25 of the environmental indicators measured of all the OECD countries. There are just three indicators on which Canada is not in the bottom half.

These are the percentage of the population connected to sewage treatment (9th), the number of endangered species (7th), and the percentage of land protected by parks (13th).

At last we are doing something somewhat right. I say this because the report states that we're among the the three worst nations in the OECD on a per capita basis when it comes to various forms of air pollution (sulphur oxide, carbon monoxide emissions & volatile organic compounds emissions), water consumption, energy consumption, energy efficiency, creation of nuclear waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and volume of forests logged.

In short, our environmental performance generally sucks, as does that of the United States, when compared to other OECD countries.

The top three countries were Switzerland, Mexico, and Turkey. The bottom three are the U.S., Canada and Australia.

On another 6 ecological indicators we're fourth worst in the OECD. these are:
per capita nitrogen oxide emissions,
hazardous waste,
fertilizer consumption,
consumption of ozone-depleting substances,
kilometres traveled by road and
population growth.

I think kilometres traveled by road is largely attributable to the size of the countries and the amount of commuting and hauling of products that goes on. However, having seen the attitude of many people who would rather have all new everything, all the time, and who feel grievously deprived if they can't buy and toss whatever they fancy, and the general push to consume that is conveyed in most media in North America, I don't think it's just the countries' size and long-distance commutes that's driving this indicator. There is an abundance of natural resources in the US, Canada and Australia that too many take for granted, and so squander.

You can download the report here.

Animal Tagging To Be Required in US + Lab Meat Update

For all of you who are dreading possible National ID tags, and think life might be easier as a chicken, in the US at least, if you were to get your wish, apparently you might still be out of luck. All animals in the US are to be given ID tags through the NAIS legislation, says NoNAIS.org.



Just what is NAIS? The USDA's National Animal Identification System. According to the site's webmaster, Vermont farmer, Walter Jeffries, NAIS is harmful to small farmers, homesteaders, pet owners & consumers. All Americans who own any animals whatsoever will be required to tag them. This includes homesteaders with very small numbers of animals, as well as any and all pets owned by everyone in the US.

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PBS has pictures of lab grown meat (which look huighly unappetizing) plus an online survey to see if people would be willing to eat lab-cultured meat. They say that most tissue that has been engineered is from frog and goldfish stem cells.

Fowl Flavours in Your Meat?

If you think your burger tastes crappy, you might be onto something - some Canadian livestock producers are feeding utter crap to their animals. But the CFIA is on the case.

CFIA is short for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. And the CFIA's fine inspectors are today reminding all livestock producers not to feed of any form of poultry manure (including poultry litter) to livestock as this is still illegal in Canada. (It's legal anywhere else?!?) The Canadian CFIA originally published information on the ban in December of 1998, as "Information Note on the Feeding of Poultry Manure to Cattle". Apparantly that didn't stop some livestock producers and the CFIA has since "successfully prosecuted several producers who kept feeding animals destined for human consumption fowl feces. Yum! Somewhat reassuring is the fact that the agency's follow-up inspections have found a significant decline in the use of poultry manure as a feed ingredient.

ID Protection Entrepreneur in Litigation for Having Stolen Father's ID

LifeLock, a company that offers an anti-identity theft service consisting mainly of calling credit bureaus for you to put in fraud alerts in case your credit cards or other ID gets stolen, may not be as squeaky clean as its ads lead you to believe.

Today on dataloss a reference to the BNN article led me to an investigative article by Ray Stern in the Phoenix New Times about Maynard's shady crooked past.

According to BNN (Blogger News Network) Robert J. Maynard Jr. has a very questionable background, including convictions while he was running a credit-repair company that was was shut down by authorities in the early 1990s for false advertising and deceptive practices.

Forced closure means that a US federal court order banned Maynard from working in the credit-repair industry — forever. He isn't supposed to be running a business like LifeLock, the hot new anti-identity theft company, based in Tempe, Arizona.

Stern also unearthed information showing something interesting: Maynard Jr. is apparently lying about having had his data stolen. But, Stern's article says that Maynard did steal his own father's identity at one point. His dad, understandably, is no longer speaking with him and is litigating.

Nice.

Whatever good things I said in any previous columns about LifeLock - disregard them - get out while you still can - who knows what a guy who'd steal his own father's data will do with yours!

LifeLock has ads in many major mainstream media outlets and a very slick professional looking web presence. I recollect covering LifeLock in this column, at one point. The company's web presence was particularly shiny. Shiny as in too slick.

I figure, get out now and save your data while you still can. and if you're thinking of using the company - read Sterns article, that I've linked above - and see what you think!

I would not be touching this with a ten foot pole. Not even a 100-ft. pole, come to think of it.

Update: Melamine in the Food Chain

A least one North American manufacturer of a pet food ingredient is using melamine in their product. Melamine is a plastic and is not edible but has been used by Chinese manufacturers to jack the apparent protein content of their grain products. Chronic ingestion of melamine can cause kidney and bladder stones lading to bladder cancer. It was found to be recombining with another toxic ingredient,which is a pool additive, cyanuric acid, also being added for the same reason:unscrupulous profit, with no regard to safety. Together, the 2 compounds become toxic synergistically, causing kidney failure in some animals including cats and dogs, through the formation of crystalline structures in the kidneys.



two forms of cyanuric acid



melamine







melamine and cyanuric acid molecules forming bonds







If it is being used by one North American plant, are they the only one? Time will tell, but I do wonder where else the plastic will show up next.

Pork From A Petrie Dish - Brave New Meat

The Globe and Mail's article today about Dutch scientists attempting to plate out meat, the way others plate out microbes, reminded me of this bizarre research which we covered sometime last year or the year before. I'd have to check our script archive to see the precise date this came up. We didn't do much on it - just a mention, and also that the edible mammalian tissue the scientists are growing doesn't have blood vessels.

I've plated out organisms in biology class. You grow the critters on a medium. There are different types of this substrate you can grow things on. Many of you will have heard of agar as a medium. It's a protein rich gelatin derived from seaweed (which isn't having the best time of it, lately). Not every critter can be grown on the same stuff. The medium you use in your petrie dish amounts to food for the growing organisms - usually single celled creatures, but you can grow fungus just as well.

And so I am wanting to know what the culture medium is, what elements go in to produce this so-called meat. What are they putting in to the growth medium?

Will the finished labmeat have the same B-12 content as normal meat? B-12 is a necessary nutrient found only in meat and to some degree in some yeasts. B-12 helps us make blood cells, which you need if you are going to keep breathing - not enough and you can get anemia. Of course the blood cells also carry other nutrients. If it has no blood cells then will it have any B-12 or iron at all? Iron is another thing that is found largely in meat. The heme form of iron is found in animal tissue - the non-heme form is found in vegetables and is harder to access. I know this from bitter personal experience as an anemic. I had tried to cut back on meat consumption but it didn't work - at least for me.

Being curious, I did some poking online and found a very interesting site, called VAT FOOD, which has various articles on growing meat in the lab, in a vat or via plate culture. This last linked article is from Popular Science. The site has articles from all manner of media outlets. It's pro-lab meat, there doesn't seem to be any questioning of what nutrients will be in the chewy in vitro veal etc. but worth a read.

In the scarily named journal Tissue Engineering" there is a paper entitled In Vitro Cultured Meat. It's all about the different ways in which the different kinds of skeletal muscle tissue can be grown. The easiest to culture are myofibres - these are the fibres muscles are composed of. Such a cultured meat product would resemble hamburger.

I'm not so sure this is what the doctor ordered for anyone with celiac disease, (which can cause anemia), or anyone with any other type of anemia.

Of course anything is possible. But how likely remains to be seen.

The work comes out of some of NASA's stuff on providing protein for space travelers. It's not really completely 'cruelty free' they use stem cells form the animals to engineer the meat. Read more about it here. The scientists working on culturing meat in vitroh ave said that nutritional profiles of meats could be improved by tweaking the nutrients that are added. But the stuff still has to come from somewhere - the added nutrients and the myofibre's cultural media. Some of them have formed their own non-profit company, called board members.

I wonder what farmers think of this plan for 'brave new meat' It doesn't look as if it will solve the dilemma of the remaining family farms. How sustainable is this lab meat? There will be nutrients needed. The lab meat does not come out of nothing.

Click here to see more on the problems with factory farming versus family farms and modern heavily profit-driven agricorp processing of meat and dairy production.

Space Shuttle Atlantis Set to Blast Off on ISS Repair Mission

All systems are almost go for Space Shuttle Atlantis to launch. They're off to the International Space Station on June 8th. ARead more about the mission here. There's been some trouble with previous attempts to unfold the all solar arrays panels. They literally got stuck together the last time and failed to unfurl. This meant the cables that are meant to pull the arrays taut came off their pulleys, leaving the solar array hanging.

But this time the astronauts have a backup plan. Two of them will assist the arrays in unfurling.

You can check out the shuttle launch online.

Trans-Fat Free Treats Possible Thanks to Canadian Food Chemist

University of Guelph food scientist Alex Marangoni has come up with a trans-fat free, saturated-fat free shortening. Say hello to CoaVel, the 2003 discovery and invention of the food chemistry professor.

"If you're the type of person who eats a cookie a day, this is going to be good news for you, because at least you're not downing a whole ton of saturated or trans fat that's going to get you in the end", says the food scientist.

Bakers may be able to use CoaVel to eliminate trans fat from commercial baked goods.

Marangoni had heard for years that the amount of artery-clogging trans-fats were increasing in the food supply. he wanted to find a solution. The chemist, who is a professor of food science at U of Guelph, started to experiment by mixing water, a unsaturated vegetable oil, and monoglycerides - which are a thickening agent into a fat substance similar to shortening. Scientists had never tried this before. Marangoni told reporters "To be honest, it's so simple, I don't know why no one else tried it. We started using it in baking and it was incredible, no trans (fat), no saturated fat, and it had baking capabilities.''

Then he took it to commercial bakers who liked the health benefits of the product, but wondered if it would compromise the taste of the foods they were baking.

Tasty Selections, a bakery based in Concord, Ont. sells its frozen baked goods to many of Canada's best hotels. They're launching a premium trans fat-free cookie line this month. There will be eight flavours from triple chocolate, decadent chocolate chunk, and white chocolate macadamia.

The companies president says they taste "very close'' to their full-fat counterparts. The cookies have less sugar, area source of fibre, and, thanks to CoaVal they have no trans fat

Canada banned transfats in 200 Denmark banned them in
A member of the Irish Parliament has recently called for a ban of transfats in Ireland. And several US cities have banned them, including Philadelphia and New York.

Aside from the health problems of trans fats - there are problems with the fats that are being sued to replace them - coconut and palm oils. These fell out of favour when it became known that large swathes of tropical forest were being cleared for

and that these forest fellings were contributing to the largest cause of the rising extinction rate - habitat destruction.

CoaVel has the potential to be the solution to the global trans fat problem, and could spare forests from being cut down for coconut and palm plantations. But the scientist says there was some initial trial and error. The researchers and bakeries have had to deal with exploding muffins started exploding, and cookies wouldn't spread. In response to these changes were made to the CoaVel, and the baking company tweaked their cookie recipe to keep the number of kitchen catastrophes down.

"In a way we're helping them make their product healthy, but at the same time tasty. And that's what this product is targeted towards, increasing the health of the population by changing just the products we eat every day.''says Marangoni.

Soft Drinks and DNA Damage

There are reports now, in the news, that consuming sodium benzoate can damage DNA. Sodium benzoate is a preservative; it's used in a number of foods, for example, soda pop . In North America it's on the GRAS list - an acronym which means substances (could be herbal, addirive, or otherwise) that are Generally Recognized As Safe.

What the news reports aren't mentioning is that the new research by British scientists Peter Piper, shows that sodium benzoate can recombine with another compound to form something which is lethal to mitochondria and their DNA.

Toxicologists speak of "de novo substances". When you eat certain substances they can recombine *in the body* to form a de novo (from new) substance, which you never intended to chow down on. This is not usually an unknown substance - it's usually a known toxin.

This combinataion is what is causing the DNA to be damaged. It's not just the sodium benzoate.

Mitochondria are basically like batteries for your cells - they produce energy in all eukaryotic organisms - believe it, or not, this means YOU. Here is some information on how these microscopic organelles produce energy for all the cells in your bod.

Piper is an expert on aging, and a biochemist. He did his research on how the mitochondrial DNA in yeast responds to the de novo substance produced by eating both of these, which frequently appear in pop drinks. Researchers work on yeast since working on humans is unethical and because yeast are easier and more inexpensive to do DNA damage research on. Mitochondrial DNA is pretty much the same no matter what organisism has it, whether single celled (yeast) or multi-celled (humans), whether fungus (yeast), plant, or animal (eg. you or your Uncle Fred.)

Piper's findings alarmed him so he spoke out - giving an interview to the UK paper, The Independant. That paper also as another piece on sodium benzoate and some other' food additive that have been called into question.

"These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it: they knock it out altogether. The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it - as happens in a number if diseased states - then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously. And there is a whole array of diseases that are now being tied to damage to this DNA - Parkinson's and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of ageing."

So what is the other substance they are combining with to form the DNA damaging compound? Epidemiologist Hsien-Hsien Lei says on her blog "Eye on DNA", that it's Hold onto your hats: Vitamin C, which your body needs, and which is also on the GRAS list.

More Toxic Substitutions

Last year contaminated cough syrup imported into Panama killed 50 people. The medication was contaminated with diethylene glycol, a chemical found in antifreeze and also used as a brake coolant.

Now the killer contaminant is turning up in some toothpaste imported from the same place (which happens to be China) & some authorities around the world are taking action. Nicaragua and Costa Rica are both seizing shipments of toothpaste manufactured in China as a result.

The brands in question, "Mr. Cool" and "Excel" have not been licensed for use in Canada, but Health Canada is checking in case people have brought the products back with them from countries where they are sold. Renee Bergeron, a spokeswoman with Health Canada said "It is possible that these products could ...have been brought into Canada through personal importation, or purchased over the Internet. Health Canada is monitoring this issue and will take the appropriate compliance and enforcement action if the product is found to be on the Canadian market."

The brands are part of a wave of contaminated products hailing from China.

Diethylene glycol is being used in China as a cut-rate substitute for glycerin, which is more expensive, but is safe to consume - unlike brake coolant and antifreeze. Recalls have been launched in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and US food safety specialists are conducting toxin testing of imported toothpaste. The Chinese manufacturers who made the tainted toothpaste claim diethylene glycol is safe to consume in small amounts.

This article points out that according to reports in the Washington Post found the US FDA labeled Chinese fruit as "filthy" and swordfish as "poisonous,", and they also found carcinogenic ingredients in frozen shrimp. 80 percent of ascorbic acid - that's vitamin C, which is also used as a food preservative - comes from China. Less than 1 percent of Chinese food imports are inspected by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. The rejection rate? 25 times that of Canadian products imported to the US.

Environmental Conservationist Targetted, Slain, in Toronto

The Toronto Police Department are seeking clues in the shooting death of an ecological conservation philanthropist.

Glen Davis was shot just after 2 p.m. on Friday, in the underground parking garage of the building where the World Wildlife Fund has its main Canadian offices. The building is located at 245 Eglinton Ave. East, near Mount Pleasant Road. He had just finished having lunch with a WWF associate.

A major wildlife conservation philanthropist, Davis donated millions of dollars to habitat and wildlife conservation causes, including a donation of $2 million dollars to World Wildlife Fund Canada which he and his family made in 2000. Davis and his family also donated to the Sierra Club of Canada, the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation and the Canadian National women's rowing team.

Toronto Police say Davis was deliberately targeted and have opened a homicide investigation.


Security cameras captured these pictures of the man, below, who was in the parking garage around the time of the shooting - the police are calling him a "person of interest' which means he could be either a witness or a suspect. They want to speak with him and are asking the public for help finding him and for any other information or tips that might be useful in solving the case.

This 'person of interest is described by police as being:
* White;
* Between 25 and 30 years old; and
* About 5-foot-8;
* Wearing a black baseball cap, a blue sweater, a waist-length dark jacket
with a hood, dark pants, and white running shoes and a dark-coloured backpack.

If you have information please contact the Toronto Homicide Squad at 416-808-7418, or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477). You can also submit information online.

Lost In Space: Bone Density & Muscle Mass

After 277 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and with 10 spacewalks to his credit and more than 67 hours of total spacewalking time, astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, commander of Expedition 14 to the ISS, set 2 NASA records.

Now he and fellow astronaut Mikhail Tyurin, who was the Flight Engineer, are recovering from their adventure. They returned back to earth around April 21st and are still regaining their lost muscle mass and bone density, as they adjust to Earth's gravity. These tissue losses happen in spite of rigorous daily exercise while on board the ISS. The losses are normal in long duration stays away from earth's gravity field. Commander Lopez-Alegria said he thought that "it takes about a week or two to get back to 80 or 90 percent, and I think it's going to take a lot longer to get that last 10 percent back. But so far, so good." He should know - this is his fourth stay in space. Younger people recover faster, according to previous NASA research.

According to NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research even with rigorous workouts, astronauts return to Earth much much weaker than when they left. After just 11 days in microgravity muscle fibers can shrink up to 30 percent and cause soreness as damaged muscles tear while readjusting to Earth's gravity.

Space medicine researchers and radiologists and other medical researchers and biologists have studied tissue loss due to lack of sufficient gravity at
Texas A & M University as well as this 2004 article (which I just found hours after I came up with this article's title. :) in Radiology Today both if which look at bone density losses.

Devices have been used to study bone density changes for about a decade.

BIOPEER!

Biopeer calls it's a blog for the global life science research community where peers can discuss new biological developments.

I grabbed a widget from their site so you can see the cool new research being done. A fair bit of medical stuff - no big surprise there. New treatments being explored for TB and MS. Very cool!

Computer Code Finds 744 Sex Predators On MySpace, Paves Way for Arrest.

Wired's Kevin Poulsen went undercover online & found some some alarming information about who's lurking on MySpace. Armed with a sheaf of information on convicted sex offenders, and his knowledge of the cimputer language Perl, the reporter confirmed a total of 744 sex criminals with MySpace profiles, after an examination of about a third of the data. Almost 500 of them are registered for sex crimes against children, 6 listed as repeat offenders and at least 243 of the child sex offenders have convictions in 2000 or later.

Poulsen built an automated program, using Perl, to sift through all of MySpace's profiles looking for 385,932 convicted and released sex offenders from 46 states. He says he mined the list from the US Department of Justice's National Sex Offender Registry website which he says is "gateway to the state-run Megan's Law websites". He used first and last names and limited results to a five-mile radius around each offender's ZIP code. Here is the guy that Poulsen's code caught, which enabled him (the sex offender, not Pouslen :) to be busted for trying to solicit sex online with a 14 year-old gay boy.

WiredSafety.org is working with MySpace to fight this kind of thing, according to Poulsen's article.

Wired News published the code Poulsen used last year under an open-source license. It's not a plug and play application however. And it's not perfect. And it's not an excuse, he points out, 'to go vigilante', it only finds matches by name - the person could easily be someone else with the same name who not the offender. Poulsen went through the entire possible list of potential offenders which the program dug up, using his own eyes to verify if the people were the same as the offenders - age, mug shots, etc. He did find false positives. Lots of them. The program cannot find anyone who is using an assumed name, nor anyone who has legally changed their name. Here's Wired's follow-up article about the code. The article has a link to download the gzipped tar file with the program. If you have to ask what a tar file is, you will not be able to use the program. To use it you need to have at least some familiarity with Perl, says Poulsen, who also notes that the program's code could use some cleaning up.

Carrot, Turnip, Parsnip, the Nano-Dream of Economist & Bikers Alike

Fly fishing rods of the new biocomposite, curran - Scots Gaelic for carrot, are now available. Curran is made of resin mixed with nano-sized carrot fibres. The patent for it is here. CelluComp, Ltd. is the manufacturer. Curran exhibits faster damping and has a lower density, than carbon fibre, plus it's moldable.

Meanwhile, over on A Canadian Econoview, an economist's imagination runs wild over the possibilities of getting around in vehicles made of carrots and turnip, and the then potential need for a central carrot governing body and strategic carrot reserve. :) And on the UK site, Bike Biz, they are excited by the potential end of what they're calling a "carbon fibre famine", due to biocomposites made from assorted root vegetables which cellulose fibre could be made of to mix with the resin to form the curran nano-bio-composite. They have added parsnips to the other two veggies. I'd like to add the humble rutabaga to the potential list.

OTOH, this might be bad for world food prices of these comestibles. Look at what's happened to vanilla once the whole aromatherapy-based body product thing took off. The price has gone way up because the demand is so high.

Anti-freeze & Lead in Medicine, Plastic in the Pork Chops

A 7 page special from the New York Times on how diethylene glycol - aka antifreeze, is being substituted for glycerin in medicines and some food products.

This article mentions that vitamins from are adulterated with lead.

And where are these from? The same place as the melamine, cyanuric acid, (a pool stabilizer) and aminopterin laced pet foods and animal feed mixtures: China. Yes, China, supporter of Sudan, stealer of Tibet, harvester of shark fins from live sharks, and organs from live political prisoners and the religious - I'm with this Stoney Creek man who's decided to boycott Chinese goods; given all the toxins that are being purposely added to Chinese exports to make a profit, it's a sensible thing to do for one's own safety.

Here are some sites with information on why and how to boycott Chinese made goods and products.

"Buying the Dragon's Teeth" was published in 2004. It outlines the reasons to boycott.

U.S. State Department info on Organ Harvesting in China

Epoch Times list of all their reports on Trade in Organ Removal from Live Humans.

Boycott 'Made in China'

Don't Feed the Dragon Campaign

Organic Bees Not As Susceptible to Colony Collapse

Some beekeepers are reporting that their organic beehives are not suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder, which is decimating normal hives in North America. The speculation is that this is because of the absence of pesticide fumigation to combat the varroa mite, a parasite which has been attacting hives in North America for the last few years.

Here is a website about organic honey bees.