I love the part where my M.D. said she couldn’t fathom a man my age in so much pain without medication.

If you happen to stop back …

I was diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities in th early 1990’s. I had to change my life and I’m still struggling with anxiety that may have been an underlying spiritual cause of the whole thing. I use almost no cosmetics, personal care, or cleaning products. And everything else from clothing to home renovations are complicated and very restricted. But I’m healthy. I use a pharmacist-made medication for the one that I must take and after being given a medication that contained ASPARTAME last year, I am sworn off even trying any thing big pharma has to offer anymore. I have had to educate my gp and even my specialist in MCS has several perplexing blind spots as well.

I’m so frustrated by the story of a long-time friend’s son who has fibromyalgia and just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ it.

Very encouraged to hear your story: keep up the good work!

The other day I heard that here in Canada an activist group is now looking into silicone-based polutants that are in shampoo!!!! The whole personal care and cosmetic industry is riddled with carcinogens and people are oblivious!

And there is even fragrance in house paint.

I could go on … I really appreciate books like this: I learned things I didn’t know about the ‘bigger picture!’

Been fighting Fibromylgia several years and refusing the plethora of drugs recommended by the M.D.; the diagnosis after several years of suspected heart attack and/or strokes is unusual for a relatively healthy fifty-one year old male in decent shape.

I Googled aspartame one day looking for an artificial sweetener for tea, since I drank A LOT of diet soda.

Donald Rumsfeld and Monsanto end up being instrumental in ramrodding approval of it as a food additive in the early eighties, after which the head of the FDA goes to work for Mosanto or one of their lobbying firms, I can’t remember now.

Long story short, I eliminated aspartame (originally developed as ant poison and 200 times more powerful than sugar) from my diet including no more sugarless gum several months ago and my symptoms are almost in complete remission.

What is the EU position on aspartame and why isn’t it common knowledge in this country that untested (actually tests were doctored – some literally cutting the tumors out of test mice – at the time and since then others have shown cancer occurs in mice) additives were approved for broad consumption in shady backroom deals?

I know, money talks, but we’re sitting ducks for the corporations in the U.S.

I was almost “saved” by Big Pharma though, with anti-depressants, muscle relaxers, and pain pills.

NOT ONE doctor has ever mentioned potential chemical causes for the pervasive daily pain I used to have.

One corporation poisons and the others step in to make money off the treatment. Color me p_ssed.

I’ll be ordering this book and spreading the word, thanks!

the long twisted history of “brownfield” sites supposedly “remediated” for schoolyards – not to mention the schools contaminated by adjacent sites (like the Montrose chemical plant in the LA Basin) gives me the creeps.

you’re also quite correct about the disconnect between disease patterns and any new policy – the policy was only adopted in March of 99, and “today’s” malignancies are often decades in the making….

which means cancer/infertility/birth defect/developmental abnormality rates will climb for a few decades after all this crap is out of our lives – or, more likely, our great-grandchildrens’.

Assuming anyone is there to bear them.

Kirk James Murphy, M.D. @ 95

In LA we have one of the lowest ratios of parkland to people of any US metro area. In LA’s most densely populated neighborhoods (Pico-Union, Midtown, etc) community gardens are so scarce as to be unheard of – and vacant lost (if they exist) are fenced off.

This is the area I work in, and we do have a small student garden at my school. While I am concerned with the students nutrition, I was trying to highlight the more insidious nature of chemical contaminants. I have hectored the District to get info about ‘remediated’ superfund sites that surround the school. They hemmed and hawed and finally buried me in paperwork that only an environmental engineer could understand.

I have filed Williams lawsuit complaints on health conditions only to see them fixed ineffectively so that the problems reappear, and then there are the air conditionong ducts….

But I am most concerened about long-term effects such as cancers and other diseases. As you are probably aware, breast cancer rates for teachers are higher then normal, and at my school there has been a disturbing pattern of diseases affecting teachers who have taught more then a decade at the site.

And yes i know of the great work done by California Safe Schools, and the integrated pest management (IPM) system that LAUSD uses is supposed to be quite good…still…there are those patterns of disease…

If we don’t do something about pollution, nothing else will matter.

lahoma

so true, lahoma -

turns out the climate change models have been wrong – just as industry claimed.

but not in the direction industry claimed.

you see, the climate change models industry tells us exagerate global warmig/climate change?

actually underestimated the changes.

we’re seing this year what wasn’t expected for decades:

Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed.

They have found that emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s. The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast – and the seas are rising twice as rapidly – as had been predicted.

[snip]

The study, published by the US National Academy of Sciences, shows that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by about 3 per cent a year during this decade, compared with 1.1 per cent a year in the 1990s.

The significance is that this is much faster than even the highest scenario outlined in this year’s massive reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – and suggests that their dire forecasts of devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting ice and loss of species are likely to be understating the threat facing the world.

twȝk @ 94

I like the Edible Schoolyard idea :D

In LA we have one of the lowest ratios of parkland to people of any US metro area. In LA’s most densely populated neighborhoods (Pico-Union, Midtown, etc) community gardens are so scarce as to be unheard of – and vacant lost (if they exist) are fenced off.

For kids from those areas, the edible schoolyards may be their only opportunity to see their food growing in the ground.

This connection – before age 10 – between kids and the natural world seems to be seesential for the formatin of biophilia – love for/appreciation of the natural world.

As America’s century of buying useless crap and confusing that with joy appears to be ending, providing young people with the opportunity to feel joy in the living world is all the more precious – and the edible schoolyard program affords one such opportunity.

Glad you liked it – and good on ‘em!

It sure would be an amazing opportunity. Observing and experiencing the growth cycle is not only educational but additionally gives you a greater connection to the earth. Vertical Gardens can also be designed to maximize space.