Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 07/14/2006 / Greenlist Bulletin Archives: 2006 Issues / Greenlist(tm) Bulletin / Library / TURI - TURI

Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 07/14/2006

This is the weekly bulletin of the TURI Library, reporting a selection of recently published titles we have acquired. Our pledge is to keep the bulletin relevant to your work and brief -- no more than 10 titles. You are welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more information on any of the articles listed here.

Titles here, abstracts below them:

Toxic Chemicals and Children's Health in North America: A Call for Efforts to Determine the Sources, Levels of Exposure, and Risks that Industrial Chemicals Pose to Children's Health
Revealed: What Mosquitoes Hate About Humans
ISO: Social Responsibility
Bottom up and top down: analysis of participatory processes for sustainability indicator identification as a pathway to community empowerment and sustainable environmental management
The Ones That Get Away: Particles of toxic lead solder elude detection in some water quality tests
Levi's(r) Brand Launches 100% Organic Cotton Jeans
Toxics Inventory to Begin Using New Business Classification System

1. Toxic Chemicals and Children's Health in North America: A Call for Efforts to Determine the Sources, Levels of Exposure, and Risks that Industrial Chemicals Pose to Children's Health

DATE 2006

SOURCE Commission for Environmental Cooperation

ABSTRACT Almost 120 million children live in North America. Many of them face economic, social and environmental challenges every day. More children than ever need daily medication to control asthma. Others struggle to control aggressive outbursts and understand difficult learning concepts. Too many, particularly in poorer areas, suffer from gastrointestinal disease. Children who live with parents or others who smoke at home are exposed whenever a smoker lights up another cigarette. Many factors are affecting the health of these children. One of the goals of this report is to focus on one of these factors: chemical releases into the environment from industrial activities. Chemical industrial releases are one important part of the puzzle but do not give a full picture of risk since chemicals from industry are only one type of pollutant. Human exposure levels to these chemicals, and other sources of pollution, are beyond the scope of this report. This report also aims to foster increased trilateral action to prevent and reduce children’s exposure to harmful chemicals. Its focus is an analysis of available data on one category of pollutant, toxic chemicals from data obtained from the national pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) in North America, and emphasizes the reporting of chemical carcinogens, developmental toxicants and neurotoxicants. Although at this stage the data are available only for the United States and Canada, this report discusses in specific terms the potential impacts of these substances on the health of children in North America. It also describes the limits of what we know about these impacts based on present data. With its cross-border analysis of selected PRTR data, it provides a unique North American perspective as a basis for trilateral action.

WEB LINK http://www.cec.org/files/PDF/POLLUTANTS/CHE_Toxics_en.pdf

2. Revealed: What Mosquitoes Hate About Humans

AUTHOR Vince, Gaia

DATE 2006

SOURCE NewScientist.com, July 4, 2006

ABSTRACT Some unfortunate people are irresistible to mosquitoes, while the scent of some lucky individuals drives the blood-suckers away. Now the smelly chemicals from the sweat of these lucky people have been identified by researchers, who are testing its effectiveness as a natural mosquito repellent. Everybody produces a mixture of odorous chemicals in their sweat, some of which attract biting insects, such as lactic acid. But people who do not get bitten also produce smelly chemicals that appear to mask the scent of the attractive chemicals. This masking can offer an effective camouflage against mosquitoes, explains James Logan, who carried out the research with John Pickett at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, and colleagues at the University of Aberdeen, both in the UK. These helpful chemicals probably occur naturally in everybody’s sweat but some people have a much higher ratio than others, Logan says. What is more, the same benign sweat chemicals that repel the tropical mosquitoes Aedes aegypti – responsible for spreading yellow fever throughout Africa and South America – appear also to disgust the persistent biting midge that terrorises the west coast of Scotland, the researchers discovered.

WEB LINK http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9479-revealed-what-mosquitoes-hate-about-humans.html

3. ISO: Social Responsibility

DATE 2006

SOURCE International Standards Organization (ISO), May 24, 2006

ABSTRACT ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, has decided to launch the development of an International Standard providing guidelines for social responsibility (SR). The guidance standard will be published in 2008 as ISO 26000 and be voluntary to use. It will not include requirements and will thus not be a certification standard. There is a range of many different opinions as to the right approach ranging from strict legislation at one end to complete freedom at the other. We are looking for a golden middle way that promotes respect and responsibility based on known reference documents without stifling creativity and development. Our work will aim to encourage voluntary commitment to social responsibility and will lead to common guidance on concepts, definitions and methods of evaluation. The need for organizations in both public and private sectors to behave in a socially responsible way is becoming a generalized requirement of society. It is shared by the stakeholder groups that are participating in the WG SR to develop ISO 26000: industry, government, labour, consumers, nongovernmental organizations and others, in addition to geographical and gender-based balance. ISO has chosen SIS, Swedish Standards Institute and ABNT, Brazilian Association of Technical Standards to provide the joint leadership of the ISO Working Group on Social Responsibility (WG SR). The WG SR has been given the task of drafting an International Standard for social responsibility that will be published in 2008 as ISO 26000.

WEB LINK http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/830949/3934883/3935096/home.html?nodeid=4451259&vernum=0

4. Bottom up and top down: analysis of participatory processes for sustainability indicator identification as a pathway to community empowerment and sustainable environmental management

AUTHOR Fraser, Evan D.G.; Dougill, Andrew J.; Mabee, Warren E.; Reed, Mark; McAlpine, Patrick

DATE 2006

SOURCE Journal of Environmental Management, v78 n2, January 2006, pp114-127

ABSTRACT The modern environmental management literature stresses the need for community involvement to identify indicators to monitor progress towards sustainable development and environmental management goals. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of participatory processes on sustainability indicator identification and environmental management in three disparate case studies. The first is a process of developing partnerships between First Nations communities, environmental groups, and forestry companies to resolve conflicts over forest management in Western Canada. The second describes a situation in Botswana where local pastoral communities worked with development researchers to reduce desertification. The third case study details an on-going government led process of developing sustainability indicators in Guernsey, UK, that was designed to monitor the environmental, social, and economic impacts of changes in the economy. The comparative assessment between case studies allows us to draw three primary conclusions. (1) The identification and collection of sustainability indicators not only provide valuable databases for making management decisions, but the process of engaging people to select indicators also provides an opportunity for community empowerment that conventional development approaches have failed to provide. (2) Multi-stakeholder processes must formally feed into decision-making forums or they risk being viewed as irrelevant by policy-makers and stakeholders. (3) Since ecological boundaries rarely meet up with political jurisdictions, it is necessary to be flexible when choosing the scale at which monitoring and decision-making occurs. This requires an awareness of major environmental pathways that run through landscapes to understand how seemingly remote areas may be connected in ways that are not immediately apparent.

WEB LINK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16095806&dopt=Abstract

5. The Ones That Get Away: Particles of toxic lead solder elude detection in some water quality tests

DATE 2006

SOURCE National Science Foundation (NSF), June 28, 2006

ABSTRACT Researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have found evidence that particles of lead solder used in plumbing may have sickened two Greenville, N.C., children, in one case at a child's home and in the other case, at a private daycare center. The research team, from the Materials Use: Science, Engineering and Society (MUSES) collaboration at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, suspects that standard water tests for detecting dissolved lead may not always identify some particles from leaded solder and other materials. The team found that larger particles can get trapped in faucet aerator screens and never make it to test-sample containers. Yet these lead fragments still pose a hazard, particularly if they become dislodged. In addition, the researchers found that lead particles making it past the aerators can stick to the sampling containers. Once again, this removes toxic pieces from the water analysis. The new data demonstrated that the actual water lead content was up to five times higher than amounts determined by the standard testing procedures. According to collaborators Simoni Triantafyllidou, NSF CAREER Awardee Marc Edwards, and Jeffrey Parks, inadequate water testing likely results in misattribution of some lead poisoning cases to paint chips and other sources when tap water is the real culprit. "Unfortunately," said Edwards, "in some very rare and unusual cases where levels of small lead particles in drinking water are high enough to cause lead poisoning, our standard test methods can also 'miss' much of the lead, thereby causing us to wrongly believe the water is more safe than it actually is."

WEB LINK http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=107066&org=NSF&from=news

6. Levi's(r) Brand Launches 100% Organic Cotton Jeans

DATE 2006

SOURCE Levi Strauss & Co., July 5, 2006

ABSTRACT Levi Strauss & Co. has announced it will include jeans made with 100% organic cotton in its fall 2006 product line. Organic cotton will be used in select men's and women's styles. The jeans will be identified as "Levi's(R) Eco" and be available in November 2006 exclusively at Levi's(R) U.S. stores with additional products to be introduced in spring 2007. The jeans made with organic cotton will be marked with a few subtle identifiers. All external packaging will be made from organic fabric or recycled paper and printed with soy-based ink. The fall U.S. introduction is part of a global launch of products made with 100% organic cotton.

WEB LINK http://www.levistrauss.com/News/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?pid=784

7. Toxics Inventory to Begin Using New Business Classification System

DATE 2006

SOURCE WasteNews.com, June 8, 2006

ABSTRACT Businesses filing reports under the Toxics Release Inventory system must begin identifying their principal business activities using North American Industry Classification System codes. The change will become effective with reports due in July 2007 for releases occurring during the 2006 calendar year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the past, businesses used the Standard Industrial Classification codes - better known as SIC codes. The White House Office of Management and Budget plans to update the NAICS system every five years. Information to help businesses convert from SIC to NAICS is available at www.epa.gov/tri/tridata/naics.

WEB LINK http://www.wastenews.com/headlines2.html?id=1149785811

You are welcome to send a message to jan@turi.org if you would like more information on any of these resources. Also, please tell us what topics you are particularly interested in monitoring, and who else should see GREENLIST. An online search of the TURI Library catalog can be done at http://greenlist.turi.org/ for greater topic coverage.

Compiled by the TURI Library, University of Massachusetts Lowell

This page updated Friday July 21 2006

TURI - Toxics Use Reduction Institute

Greenlist(tm) Bulletin 07/14/2006