Just wash your hands March 11, 2020

 

Afraid of contracting or passing Coronavirus 19?

JUST WASH YOUR HANDS.

Often.

For inspiration, check out the results of this science experiment, done at an elementary school in 2019:

 

 

“We took fresh bread and touched it. We did one slice untouched. One with unwashed hands. One with hand sanitizer. One with washed hands with warm water and soap. Then we decided to rub a piece on all our classroom Chromebooks,” adding that the school normally sanitizes their computers but didn’t for this experiment.

“Each slice of plain white bread — which was taken from the same loaf on the same day — was placed and sealed in a freezer Ziploc bag. Due to preservatives, they waited three to four weeks for results and found that most of the bread slices were full of mold. “This is so DISGUSTING!!!” wrote Metcalf. But there were two exceptions: The bread that hadn’t been touched and the bread touched by hands washed with soap and water looked fine.”

 

Soap and water is the best deterrent for spreading illness.

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has guidelines that back up that statement, adding, “Handwashing is a win for everyone, except the germs.”

The guidelines are to scrub our hands for 20 seconds. That’s long enough to sing a couple rounds of Happy Birthday, or 1/47th of an Irish ballad about love and death.

Hand sanitizer is useful, but mainly as backup when you can’t get to soap and water.

The average person doesn’t need disposable gloves, which will carry the horrific side effects of 1) making them harder to get for those who actually do need them, and 2) after they’ve been discarded and made their way to the Pacific Garbage Patch, killing sea turtles when they try to eat them.

On behalf of the earth and all of our health, thanks for doing the simplest thing that turns out to be the most powerful, and also carries the least long-term environmental consequences.

Stay healthy out there, friends. And peaceful.

 

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Image source: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/the-school-science-experiment-that-will-make-you-want-to-wash-your-hands-this-is-so-disgusting-213514712.html

 

Thoreau’s town bans single-use plastic bottles! January 30, 2013

Some very excellent news! Here we see a political action in service of the health of both people and our environment. And what a perfect place to do it: the hometown of Henry David Thoreau.

Thank you, Concord, Mass, for carrying on his legacy of visionary activism.

This action will mean less plastic building up the Pacific Garbage Patch, an island of garbage floating in the sea; cleaner groundwater in Massachusetts’ landfills, and healthier people who won’t be drinking water out of these as much, or breathing air polluted by manufacturing and transport of these unnecessary plastic bottles.

For a link to a Huffington Post article that provides more details, click the picture (the admirable work of missionpraxis).

Manufacturers of reuseable bottles, now is your chance! Sales will be increasing. Please make your wares sturdy, non-toxic, and beautiful. It’s nice to own such possessions worthy of long-term respect, instead of those intended from their birth for thoughtless insto-disposal.

Ah, it’s a good day.

Toxic to Bees; Not So Great For Us Either January 18, 2011

You have undoubtedly heard about the trouble honeybees are facing – every year, entire hives of them are suddenly found dead. And the numbers are mounting.

Their loss would mean much more than the obvious downer of no longer having delicious honey to eat. Bees are essential pollinators that much of the food chain depends upon. In other words, if we want to keep eating the way we do now, we need the bees to keep working with our plants.

Scientists struggle to understand what’s behind the sudden death of bee colonies. It’s likely that there is no single cause – no “point source” but rather a more complex matrix of sources that, blended together, create a toxin. This is quite common in systemic diseases – and that very complexity makes it difficult to prove any single source dangerous enough to ban. Thus we get weird cancers, allergies, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Graves’ disease and chronic fatigue syndrome and Alzheimers.

I’m talking about bees, yes, but our health is dependent upon the same clean system as theirs is – plus we humans are also partially dependent upon the bees.

According to Credo action network, there is mounting evidence suggests that one critical factor may be a particular, widely used, class of pesticides.

“One such chemical, called clothianidin, is produced by the German corporation Bayer CropScience. It is used as a treatment on crop seeds, including corn and canola, and works by expressing itself in the plants’ pollen and nectar. Not coincidentally, these are honey bees’ favorite sources of food.”

Chemical pesticides like this were invented for war. They are violent, so it’s not surprising that they have unexpected side effects that affect the health of many species – including us. The precautionary principle should be applied to all human-made chemicals (prove they DON’T harm before use, rather than the reverse – otherwise known as the “Duh principle”).”

If you are so inclined, click on the “save the bees” to sign their petition to the EPA.  It calls for “the E.P.A. to immediately prohibit the use of clothianidin and conduct a full scientific review to determine its impact on honey bee populations.”

You might also write a letter to Bayer telling them you will no longer purchase their products until this pesticide is withdrawn and they stop the nasty practice of covering up real impacts with their own sketchy, in-house, so-called “scientific” studies.

Really, can you think of anything closer to evil than a company that manufactures health-care products also knowingly manufacturing something that instead creates widespread death – and then covering up that fact so they can continue to make more money on it? We must raise our voices and our wallets against such unethical corporate practices. Such practices must be stopped – before it’s too late.

If you feel bad about seeming confrontational, remember this: the corporate people will benefit too. All beings need a healthy planet more than anything else, even CEOs.