Parabens (they're also creepy)

Another thing that I found out about relatively recently is that personal care products (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, deodorant, etc.) most often contain preservatives called parabens. The problem is that they mimic estrogen in the body, and some researchers have tied the use of deodorant that contains parabens with higher rates of breast cancer. No more parabens for me! For more detail and a list of parabens to watch for on your ingredients list, go to: http://www.seventhgeneration.com/making_difference/newsletter_article.php?issue=105&article=584

Why Plastic is Creepy

I just read a book called "The World Without Us", by Alan Weisman. The idea behind the book is to imagine what would happen if humans instantaneously vanished right now. How would the rest of nature reclaim what we've left behind, and what impact would all of the things that we left behind have? One of the most interesting but also most unsettling trains of thought in the book was about what would happen to plastics, the various synthetic polymers that we create from a variety of chemical processes applied to petroleum. As it turns out, since they are not biodegradable (that is, since they are human-made and not something that any current living thing can digest), they will basically stick around indefinitely. Right now, a large bulk of them are blowing or being dumped into bodies of water, floating away, swirling into the middle of the ocean, and invading and wreaking havoc on the bodies of ocean-dwelling animals who mistakenly eat them. Over time, plastic bits in the ocean will get broken down into tinier and tinier pieces, until they reach the tiniest they can be (particles called "nurdles"), at which point even miniscule plankton will eat them. And when you mess with the bottom of the food chain, you mess with everyone and everything alive. Since reading about this, I have been more conscious of my plastic consumption, and while there are decisions I can make that avoid the scourge, what I have also found is that plastic is insidious and everywhere. I'm still trying, though...