10 Everyday Pollution Solutions

GREEN IDEAS
Here are some easy to incorporate ways to reduce your intake of load of toxins.

1. Use cast iron pans instead of nonstick. Read about Teflon health concerns.


2. To avoid chemicals leaching into food, go easy on processed, canned or fast foods and never microwave plastic. Read about Bisphenol A, a toxic food-can lining ingredient associated with birth defects.


3. Buy organic, or eat vegetables and fruit from the "Cleanest 12" list. Find out more about the "Dirty Dozen."


4. Use iodized salt to combat chemical interference from the thyroid. Read about rocket fuel's effect on the thyroid.


5. Seal outdoor wooden structures. Order a test kit to find out if your wooden deck, picnic table, or playset is leaching arsenic.
   
6. Leave your shoes at the door. This cuts down on dust-bound pollutants in the home.
   
7. Avoid perfume, cologne and products with added fragrance. Search for personal care
   products that are fragrance-free, or check the products you're already using.
   
8. Buy products with natural fibers, like cotton and wool, that are naturally fire resistant.
   Use our list of products and manufacturers to avoid the chemical flame retardant PBDE.
   
9. Eat low-mercury fish like tilapia & pollock, rather than high-mercury choices like tuna &
   swordfish. Check our Safe Fish List to see which fish to avoid and what's safe to eat.
   
10. Filter your water for drinking and cooking. How does your tap water stack up? Search our
    tap water database to see what you're drinking.
    

SOURCE: Environmental Working Group
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Preparing to Garden- The Organic Way

Spring has finally arrived and many of us are itching to get outside and work in the soil...cleaning, clearing and preparing our garden beds for the upcoming season. I love working in the garden, but I am not a gifted gardener. So I wanted to include some great sites I found on organic gardening. If you are not a gardener, take a peek, these just might inspire you to begin some garden designing of your own!

1. Gardening with The Helpful Gardener
This site includes a lot of basic start up information on organic gardening, for those who may just be moving in this direction or who are incorporating more organic processes.

2. Veggie Gardening Tips
Veggie Gardening Tips offers gardening tips and ideas to help you create a vegetable garden that's productive and attractive. The focus is on raised bed gardening, heirloom vegetables and fruits, organic gardening techniques, and information for growing a beautiful garden that's loaded with delicious organic produce.

3. Dave's Garden
The website where friends share their triumphs and dilemmas in their home gardens and their lives. Dave's Garden is also a place for gardeners to share seeds or plants with other gardeners, and has so much to offer, you are certainly going to find something that will have you coming back daily, as well as making you proud to tell your friends and family about your new gardening home on the net

4. 2 Green Thumbs Up
This site was created for the purpose of sharing adventures about gardening and backyard living, reviewing and recommending interesting gardening and backyard living products (green whenever possible), and to attempt to raise awareness of and promote green practices in other areas of everyday life.

5. Gardening Gone Wild
Although this consortium of gardeners is more than occupied with their “day jobs,” they all have chosen to become contributors who have the desire to express our thoughts, ideas, and philosophies about gardening and the world in which we live. I love this blog!

Well, now that you have had a chance to view some of the sites out there on organic gardening, will you be joining the rest of us, as we start digging in the dirt?

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5 Hot Recycling Tips for E-waste

E-WASTE: GREAT SOLUTIONS!

It makes me furious that electronics become obsolete so quickly. Besides the obvious downside of having to shell out more money for a new item because the old one is a dinosaur, it creates the bigger challenge of disposal. What to do with all this stuff? Well here are some great solutions I have found that will really help to keep these items out of the landfill.

This just may be a List you want to keep handy for future reference!

1. Costco's Trade-In & Recycle Program
Costco has paired with GreenSight to give it's members this option for recycling electronics. You provide the site with the details about your equipment. It gives you a trade in-value. If you accept the value, you proceed. Then they give you a free, prepaid shipping label to send the equipment to them. You get a Costco Cash card for the trade in-value. GreenSight salvages any parts that can be used and then works with others to dispose of the remains without using a landfill.

2. Green Phone
GreenPhone helps you transform your drawer full of unused cell phones into something you'd rather have like money! GreenPhone will pay you by check or via PayPal or Obopay - your choice. Check out greenphone.com for more details

3. My Green Electronics
Find Out Where to Recycle. Just want to get rid of your stuff in a responsible way? At this site, My Green Electronics, you plug in your zipcode and you will be directed to recycling sites for your items.

4. Corporate Recycling
Here is a great listing of the various companies and their recycling programs.

5. Earth Share
Now you can recycle your mobile phones, pagers or PDAs through Earth Share's partnership with the CollectiveGood Mobile Phone Recyling Program! It's easy to use, and you will be helping to support a healthier environment. Depending upon the phone model, a fixed amount per phone will be donated to Earth Share.

So next time you are done with your old electronic gadget, check out one of the options on this recycling list. I'm sure there are alot more wonderful programs out there, if you are familiar with one, post your suggestions.

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What Does a Billion Really Mean?

1,000,000,000

Here is part of an interesting email I received recently. Boggles my mind even more when it is put into this kind of perspective!

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective inone of its releases.

A BILLION seconds ago it was 1959.

A BILLION minutes ago Jesus was alive.

A BILLION hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

A BILLION days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

A BILLION dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

INTERESTING, huh?
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Top 5 Alkaline Diet Weight Loss Tips

Thanks to my new friend, Yulia at Great Home Remedies, I found another great website with information about alkalinizing your diet. Here are the top 5 tips they share if you are interested in moving more into this direction.

Although these are really common sense items, how often do we throw common sense out the window when we extremely hungry and ready to eat everything in sight? Just a reminder that being prepared, prepares our being able to handle these challenging moments.

Tip #1 - Drink, Drink then Drink some more!

By far the most important and yet the easiest way to accelerate your alkaline diet weight loss results is to hydrate consistently.

Avoid Coffee, tea, soda and other acidic drinks.

Tip #2 - Avoid Foods with preservatives, food coloruing and additives.

The body wasn't designed to digest these chemical substances, so it must either: eliminate them, neutralize them or park them away where they can't damage your body.

Tip #3 - Avoid artificial sweetners like the plague

If you have been trying to lose weight, chances are you have relied on artificial sweetners to cut calories. You are shooting yourself in the foot on an alkaline diet. They are toxins as in tip #2

Tip #4 - Always have cut veggies and soaked nuts ready in your fridge

How successful do you think you would be in your alkaline weight loss program if you had to fight your craving along the way, every minute of every hour of every day? I bet not too successful.

Well, if you were on an alkaline diet, this would not be an issue because your craving would disappear by themselves over time. I get into that in much more detail in my e-book "Acid Alkaline Diet Simplified"

Optionally, pick up a couple of varieties of hummus to dip the veggies in for added taste.

Tip #5 - Make a huge salad every 3 days

Ever come home so hungry you're ready to eat the first thing that you can get your hands on? Do you regret binging on the junk food, and wish you could have made something better to eat?

If you prepare a huge salad that would last you 3 straight days, you will never come home and wonder what you can eat. With a salad in your fridge - ready to eat - you can eat right away and it's great for an alkaline diet.

Did you know your body can easily return to it's natural weight balance? Click here to find out how an alkaline diet can do this simply. http://acidalkalinediet.com/

SOURCE

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If We Only Had 100 People On Earth

What if...
If we could shrink the earth's population to precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

Read on what our world would look like!
THERE WOULD BE:

57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 8 Africans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south

52 would be female, 48 would be male
70 would be non-white, 30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual, 11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read

50 would suffer from malnutrition, 1 would be near death, 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education, 1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent. The following is also something to ponder:

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation... you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death... you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still alive and still married... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.

If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.

-Author Unknown

I'm not sure when this was written or how accuate it can be considered stastically, but it does give me some very important thoughts to ponder, especially when I am having what seems to be one of those god-awful days where I think everything is going wrong.

Just the other day I was having a fit 'cause I couldn't find my car keys and the delay was making me crazy about possibly being late for an appointment. Reading over this list helps put my very itsy bitsy problems into perspective. I should be glad for these little grains of sand snags that crop up, and be more helpful to those experiencing more difficult times.
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5 Simple Feng Shui Tips

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese science. Some use this science in conjunction with a more New Age approach which centers on obtaining a good flow of chi in your home or office. This has become a popular way of making our homes and other surroundings a positive place to spend our time and to live in harmony with our environment.

There are many interesting but complicated factors that are part of the Feng Shui way of living. There are also some good health ideas that are easier to incorporate into our lives and our homes.

Below are 5 simple tips that can be used to help maintain good health .

1. GET RID OF CLUTTER
Most clutter is negative. It disrupts the flow of chi, which is life energy. It is especially important to remove clutter from the center of your house. This area is considered the heart and/or center of the house. Other areas of the "bagua" (which is a Feng Shui map which divides your house into nine sections) are all touched by the center health area.

This means all areas of your house are affected by what is in your health area and visa versa. This principle then applies to your life, as in all areas of your life are affected by your health, and your health affects all parts of your life. Therefore, it is important to keep the center of your home clutter free to allow positive energy, "qi," to flow throughout your home.

Do not place any heavy objects in this area. Also, your home center is a good place for happy pictures of loved ones, harmonious bells or chimes, a fountain, or any items that mean something special to you.

2. USE THE SENSES TO YOUR ADVANTAGE IN YOUR HOME
Balance and harmony in your home will stabilize and energize you and your family. Use colors to create the appropriate mood. RED will keep you going--it's bright and full of energy--but do not use it in bedrooms if you want rest. ORANGE is refreshing and revitalizing. Use it in the kitchen or playrooms. Its softer shades can be used in family rooms where it promotes fun and relaxing. YELLOW is a happy color that promotes creativity and vitality. Use it in a kitchen or office. GREEN is a healing and calming color. It is great for living rooms or bedrooms. It renews and keeps us in balance. BLUE is also a healing color as well as a mentally relaxing color. Add blue to a room when someone is sick. Blue will keep the room's occupants calm. Indigo is not only relaxing but is also to keep good health in your home. PURPLE is the color of transformation. It is great for any spiritual room or to put here and there for wealth and abundance.

Use natural lighting when possible, and use dimmer switches to change the atmosphere from bright and energizing to low and calming as needed. Remember that touch is an important and often over-looked sense. Softness and warmth can be used to relax. Rough textures and coolness will energize.

Aromas are another way to vary or change the atmosphere or feeling of a room or a home. Essential oils, quality scented candles and fresh air all promote the change of energy in your home. Use lemon for a light, refreshing energy and lavender for a calming, relaxing energy in your home.

3. IMPROVE THE CENTER OF YOUR HOME
As stated earlier, the middle or heart of your house is associated with health. By adding live plants to this area, you will improve the energies for health and balance. Add yellow and earth tones to give your health chi a boost.

This can be accomplished by things like a pot of yellow mums on a table in the center of your home. Adding something that makes you laugh is another way to promote good health for you and your family. By adding square shapes and flat items to this area, you will allow energetic movement, which is an aid to good health. For example, square coffee table made of stone would be perfect for this area.

You can also add religious objects. Reminders of the higher powers in the universe, no matter the style or symbol, will be of benefit to health. What matters is the intention of the person who placed the symbol. If it has meaning, it is positive for you. A symbol made of stone is even better when placed in the center area of the house.

Remove any wooden furniture or objects from the center. In Feng Shui, wood "uproots" earth. Since health is associated with the element wood, keep these objects out of the center of your home. Also remove any column or tree-like shapes. Items shaped like tree trunks have an upward movement of energy and this is not helpful in your health sector. Examples of negative, column-shaped objects would be columns, tall curio cabinets and spiral staircases.

4. MAKE CHANGES OR ADDITIONS TO YOUR BEDROOM
The bedroom is you spend a great deal of your time, so it's an important room for your health. Reducing electromagnetic fields is one of the best things you can do for better health. Remove all electrical appliances from the bedroom if possible. If not, place them at least 8 feet from the bed. Things like electric blankets or waterbeds are the worst offenders, due to the proximity to your body.

Metal objects should also be removed from the bedroom since they conduct electricity. Don't sleep with your feet pointed out your bedroom door. This position is called the "pine box" or "coffin" position and should be avoided due to its negative connotation. Don't face a mirror while sleeping. If you can see in the mirror from your bed, this is like having another person-one who never sleeps-in the room with you.

Also, the water element of the mirror could cause ill health. Mirrors, if not easily moved, can be covered with material hung on a cord or rod. This would allow for use of the mirror when needed, but would keep it covered while you are sleeping. The bed should always be position against a solid wall. This is to symbolize support. If your bed is in front of a window, close the blinds or curtains to give that feeling of solid support.

5. PLACEMENT OF PARTICULAR OBJECTS
Place objects in certain areas of your home for good health and for energizing you and your family. The dragon is a good health symbol but do not place it in the bedroom. He has too much energy, and would make the bedroom restless rather than restive.

Potted plants or wind chimes around your home will disperse negative "chi," which is called "sha." The dragon-headed tortoise is a symbol of steadiness and longevity. If placed at the back of the house, he will symbolize support for you and your family.

Rabbits and tortoises are both symbols of improved health, luck and long life. They both should be placed in your health area. The type of material they are made of is important and depends on your "kua" number and your element. An example would be a kua number of three that means the element is wood. If your element is wood, you would place a wooden rabbit and a wooden tortoise in your health area. To find your kua number and element, search the internet or books on Feng Shui.

These five simple home Feng Shui tips for good health are just the beginning. If you are interested in Feng Shui, there are many helpful books on the subject. Some are specific to health, some give helpful charts and diagrams concerning the elements, kua numbers, etc. Others are filled with information on furniture arranging to achieve a perfect flow of "chi." Feng Shui is growing in popularity and may help you gain better health and happiness.

SOURCE Author: Angela Bartelotte
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Wanna Play?

I've been tagged by my new friend Donald over at Freebie Day, and I'm not sure what exactly to do but will give it a try.

How This Tag Works:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share seven facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

Seven Shared Facts About Myself:

1. My favorite candy as a kid was Mallow Cups...I would save up for 500 points to send away for the free box of candy.
2. I was in first grade when President Kennedy was shot.
3. My scariest vacation adventure was a few years ago when my family talked me into going flying through the jungle in Mexico from tree to tree hooked on by a cable, as I used 4 letter words my kids didn't know I knew.
4. My first job was in 8th grade, at the eye doctor's, I made $7 a week.
5. Lima Beans cause the gag reflex in me as soon as the fork reaches nose level.
6. I gave up smoking, cold turkey, 4 months ago.
7. I secretly sing in the shower, 'cause no one will let me sing in public.

Seven People That I Am Tagging:

1. Robin at Movement for Whole Food Nation
2. Anna at Green Talk
3. Mary K at Becoming Your Stellar Self
4. Recycleholic
5. Jacqueline at On the Journey
6. Spencer at Colloidal Silver Secrets
7. John at Next Giant

Let's see what happens~
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Living Green

Here is my list of 5 Living Green sites I have come across recently that I really enjoyed...each providing alot of resources.

Take a look, get some ideas, add some of your own. As we each make a conscious effort to live more responsibly, the world changes...

1. Big Green Purse At Big Green Purse, we believe that the fastest, easiest, most direct route to a clean and healthy environment is to shift our spending to environmentally-safe, socially responsible products and services.



2. Green Talk This website is all about connection… Me connecting with you about my green experiences, you connection with me about yours, and others connecting with all of us to become more green.



3. How Can I Recycle This? Tons of ideas for recycling all sorts of things...



4. The Green Guide Comprehensive, full of tips, articles and lots of resources



5. You Grow Girl For likeminded gardeners and even self-confessed “black thumbs.” The project's aim has always been to promote exploration, excitement and a d.i.y approach to growing plants without the restrictions of traditional ideas about gardening

Well just stumbled upon another site I would like to add..

• LivePaths LivePaths blogs about the innovative people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.
  
  Have a favorite you would like to add?
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16 Quotes on Drugs By MD's

1. "The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure." Charles E. Page, M.D.

2. "Medicines are of subordinate importance because of their very nature they can only work symptomatically." Hans Kusche, M.D.

3. "If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity" O.W. Holmes, (Prof. of Med. Harvard University)

4. "Drug medications consists in employing, as remedies for disease, those things which produce disease in well persons. Its materia medica is simply a lot of drugs or chemicals or dye-stuffs in a word poisons. All are incompatible with vital matter; all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living; all are poisons." R.T. TraIl, M.D., in a two and one half hour lecture to members of congress and the medical profession, delivered at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

5. "Every drug increases and complicates the patients condition." Robert Henderson, M.D.

6. "Drugs never cure disease. They merely hush the voice of nature's protest, and pull down the danger signals she erects along the pathway of transgression. Any poison taken into the system has to be reckoned with later on even though it palliates present symptoms. Pain may disappear, but the patient is left in a worse condition, though unconscious of it at the time." Daniel. H. Kress, M.D.

7. "The greatest part of all chronic disease is created by the suppression of acute disease by drug poisoning." Henry Lindlahr, M.D.

8. "Every educated physician knows that most diseases are not appreciably helped by medicine." Richard C. Cabot, M.D. (Mass. Gen. Hospital)

9. "Medicine is only palliative, for back of disease lies the cause, and this cause no drug can reach." Wier Mitchel, M.D.

10. "The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine." William Osler, M.D.

11. "Medical practice has neither philosophy nor common sense to recommend it. In sickness the body is already loaded with impurities. By taking drug medicines more impurities are added, thereby the case is further embarrassed and harder to cure." Elmer Lee, M.D., Past Vice President, Academy of Medicine.

12. "Our figures show approximately four and one half million hospital admissions annually due to the adverse reactions to drugs. Further, the average hospital patient has as much as thirty percent chance, depending how long he is in, of doubling his stay due to adverse drug reactions." Milton Silverman, M.D. (Professor of Pharmacology, University of California)

13. "Why would a patient swallow a poison because he is ill, or take that which would make a well man sick." L.F. Kebler, M.D.

14. "What hope is there for medical science to ever become a true science when the entire structure of medical knowledge is built around the idea that there is an entity called disease which can be expelled when the right drug is found?" John H. Tilden, M.D.

15. "The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects; and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned." Charles Armbruster, M. D.

16. "We are prone to thinking of drug abuse in terms of the male population and illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. It may surprise you to learn that a greater problem exists with millions of women dependent on legal prescription drugs." Robert Mendelsohn, M.D


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