Source: Natural Resources Defense Council
Published Dec. 3, 2008

In the latest move by the Bush administration to undo environmental protections, the US Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to relax the conditions under which mining companies -- particularly those engaged in mountaintop removal -- may bury waste. According to experts at the Natural Resources Defense Council, this change, which undermines the Clean Water Act, will weaken environmental standards for mountaintop removal mining operations. The changes to the Stream Buffer Zone rule will bury hundreds of miles of streams with rock, soil, mining sludge and other wastes, contaminating drinking water supplies throughout Appalachia, one of the poorest regions in the country.
 
The following is a statement by Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist at NRDC:
 
“The EPA’s concurrence and approval of this defective rule governing coal mining is ecologically and economically indefensible. Today’s action by the EPA, under Administrator Johnson, threatens the health and environment of thousands of people and hundreds of communities in Appalachia, which is why the governors of Kentucky and Tennessee both urged the Bush administration to reject the rule change proposed by the Office of Surface Mining.
 
“Only a few companies, and bad actors at that, will benefit from this rule change, which makes it legal to use the most environmentally harmful coal mining technology available. This action, once again, solidifies the disastrous environmental legacy of Bush administration.”
 
Background:
 
In 2004, when the Office of Surface Mining first proposed relaxing the buffer rule, NRDC urged the agency to abandon its proposal and to focus instead on better enforcement of the existing rule.  An environmental review of the proposal released last year estimates that over 700 miles of streams in central Appalachia have already been buried by valley fills, and that over 1,200 miles of streams in the region were directly harmed by coal mining activities, including waste disposal, between 1992 and 2002 alone.  That analysis also confirms that mining projects approved between 2001 and 2005 directly affected over 500 miles of streams.
 
Despite these conclusions, and ignoring the pleas of scientists and protests of thousands of concerned citizens, the EPA has offered its approval to the OSM to finalize changes to the rule.

New Report Details Cuts That Hide Health Threats And Leave People At Risk From Toxic Substances
SOURCE: National Resources Defense Council

WASHINGTON (December 4, 2008) – Millions of Americans have been left in the dark about hazardous pollutants being released into their communities, according to a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The new report provides a comprehensive look at the Bush Administration’s systemic cutting of health and environmental programs that monitor toxins across America.
 
“The Bush administration has turned off the tap on data and monitoring, depriving scientists, agencies, and Americans of information crucial to ensuring public health protections,” said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, research scientist at NRDC. “Immediate action is needed by the next administration to restore, strengthen and fund these crucial monitoring programs.”
 
The report, Deepest Cuts: Repairing Health Monitoring Programs Slashed Under the Bush Administration, evaluates the current state of federal environmental and health monitoring programs at the end of the Bush Administration in five key areas – air quality, water quality, food safety, toxic substance and human health.
 
The report demonstrates that during the eight years of the Bush Administration, the federal government has quietly eliminated or crippled more than a dozen essential monitoring programs. Budget cuts, restructuring, program termination, and removal of industry reporting requirements have been steadily undermining or eliminating the information that alerts us to problems in our air, water, food, and communities.
 
Programs that directly track human health have also been slashed, creating information gaps about infectious disease outbreaks, chemical exposures in people, and chronic disease.
 
Some of the worst examples of the program cuts include:
 

• Hundreds of communities near lead polluters will not have air quality testing, and the lead monitoring network has been cut by half over the past decade, hampering the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enforce the new air standard for lead.
• The Bush Administration has proposed to eliminate requirements that “factory farms” and similar facilities report the air pollution from animal waste. This proposal may be finalized before January, even though many such facilities pollute the air more than large industrial factories.
• Budget cuts at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will devastate two programs that test groundwater and surface water for pesticides, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, hormone disruptors, and other toxic chemicals.
• The already tight budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) program that tracks food-related illness was cut by more than $2 million, at a time when some foodborne illness outbreaks have been increasing.

 
The report provides specific recommendations for the government to restore these programs that are critical for setting strong public health protections. The cost of reinstating these programs would total approximately $133 million. According to NRDC experts, these costs could be offset by identifying and preventing pollution and disease problems before they cost our health care system and taxpayers many more millions of dollars.
 

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing.

Source: U.S. Geological Survey

Editor's note: The studies were conducted in Indiana, Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oregon, Nevada and Colorado.

Low levels of certain man-made chemicals remain in public water supplies after being treated in selected community water facilities.
Water from nine selected rivers, used as a source for public water systems, was analyzed in a study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Most of the man-made chemicals assessed in this study are not required to be monitored, regulated or removed from water treatment facilities.

Scientists tested water samples for commonly used chemicals, including pesticides, solvents, gasoline hydrocarbons, personal care products, disinfection by-products, and manufacturing additives.

Fierce price competition is forcing the majority of manufacturers of nutritional supplements to purchase their ingredients from China. Many of these ingredients are just not up to par.

To find out which of the nation’s most popular supplements didn’t make the grade, read on.

Supplements purchased in China means that many formulations have considerably less of the active ingredient in the bottle than is stated on the label. A more significant problem is that many ingredients are contaminated with dangerous compounds and heavy metals.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In just the last year American consumers found that their favorite pet foods made with ingredients from China were killing their pets because of melamine contamination. Children’s toys made in China are contaminated with lead. Now even the pharmaceutical heparin made in China has been linked to the death of thousands of people because of contamination of the Glucosamine sulfate used in its formulation.

This occurs because the FDA is not doing its job. Its cozy relationship with drug and food manufacturing firms mean that we have the best inspections their money can buy – for them. The American people however are left holding the bag.

Short-selling and contamination are not the only problems. Products can remain on store shelves for months or even years. Expired products returned to manufacturers are simply re-bottled with newer expiration dates. Consequently, even if a manufacturer has re-formulated its product to meet new recommendations, consumers may still be buying the older version.

So what is a consumer to do? In addition to selecting a product that appears to have the right ingredients, one should be confident that a nutritional supplement:
•    contains what it claims;
•    breaks down properly once in the body so its ingredients can be effectively utilized;
•    and is free of impurities.

How can the quality of your supplements be assured when neither the U.S. government nor any agency is responsible for routinely testing multivitamins or any other dietary supplements for their contents or quality?

That is where we come in. At Conscious Living Systems we take our responsibility to our customers seriously. We don’t sell the cheapest products we can find. Our mission is to sell the highest quality products it is possible to obtain.

As part of that mission we subscribe to ConsumerLab.com. This organization independently evaluates products that affect our customer’s health and nutrition. They purchase many of the leading multivitamin/multimineral products sold in the U.S. and Canada and test them for their quality.

The only products we offer to our customers are those independently tested by ConsumerLab.com. In fact, our industry-leading nutriceutical products made by Biotics are now recognized as the nation’s highest quality nutritional supplements available anywhere in the world. They are sold only through doctors and other health care professionals like ourselves. Unlike cheaper brands EVERY BATCH of ingredients is tested for quality before being used in any Biotics product.

Wal-Mart, Walgreen’s, and the many catalog companies like Swanson’s and Puritan’s Pride don’t do that. They use products made of cheap Chinese ingredients, and this fact shows up in independent tests.

Quality Concerns and What ConsumerLabs (CL) Tested For In Their Most Recent Round of Testing:
Multivitamins/multiminerals are among those supplements most likely to have quality problems. They contain multiple ingredients and, therefore, more possibility for error. Earlier tests by ConsumerLab.com have found multi’s that were short on ingredients, failed to dissolve properly, or were contaminated with heavy metals.

What CL Found:
Among twenty-one products for adults and children that ConsumerLab.com independently selected and tested, only ten met their claims and other quality standards. Two pet multivitamins were also tested, only one of which passed testing.

Here is what CL Found:

General (Adult):
    Eniva® VIBE™, a liquid sold in packets, had only 54% of its claimed 5,000 IU of vitamin A.
    Healthy Moments™ Mint Cream Flavor Vitamin Strips contained none of its claimed vitamin A. It also contained 180% of its claimed 2 mg of niacin per strip.
    Swanson® Daily Multi-Vitamin & Mineral had only 77.5% of its claimed 400 mcg of folate per capsule.
    The Greatest Vitamin in the World had only 85% of its claimed 800 mcg of folate in its suggested nine capsules per day — although this still meets the adult RDA.
    WEIL™ Andrew Weil, M.D. Daily Multivitamin for Optimum Health had only 73% of its claimed 10,000 IU of vitamin A (as beta-carotene) per tablet — although this still meets the adult RDA. It also had 251% of it claimed 60 mg of calcium — possibly an oversight of the calcium contributed by di-calcium phosphate, a binding agent listed among its inactive ingredients.

Women's:
    Nature's Plus® Especially Yours® Women's Multi-Vitamin failed to break apart properly, requiring more than one hour to disintegrate rather than the 30 minute limit established by the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP). Such products may pass through the body without being fully utilized. It also contained 292% of its claimed 50 mg/tablet of calcium — possibly due to an oversight of the calcium contributed by the di-calcium phosphate in the product.
    The Vitamin Shoppe® Multivitamins Especially for Women was contaminated with 15.3 micrograms of lead per daily serving. This is more than ten times the amount of lead permitted without a warning label in California — the only state to regulate lead in supplements — and several times the normal daily exposure to lead. Lead at this level may not in itself be toxic to adults, but lead is stored in the body and unnecessary exposure should be avoided. This product should not be shared with children, as they are susceptible to lead poisoning at levels as low as 6 micrograms per day. This product also contained only 54% of its claimed 200 mg of calcium in its suggested daily dose of two tablets.

Men's:
    Now® Adam™ Superior Men's Multi failed to break apart properly, taking 40 minutes to disintegrate rather than the 30 minutes set by the USP.
    Win™ Fuel Men's Formula had only 81% of its claimed 4,000 IU of vitamin (although this is still above the RDA of 3,000 IU for men) and only 75% of it claimed 400 mcg of folate.

Seniors:
    AARP Maturity Formula failed to break apart properly, taking 50 minutes to disintegrate rather than the 30 minutes set by the USP.

Children's:
    Hero Nutritionals™ Yummi ® Bears contained 216% of its labeled amount of vitamin A, potentially delivering amounts in excess of those tolerable in children up to eight years old. The product contained 5,400 IU of vitamin A in the retinol form in a daily serving of three bears. The upper tolerable level (UL) set by the Institute of Medicine is 2,000 IU for children one to three years of age and 3,000 IU for those four to eight years old. Children of these ages only need to get 1,000 to 1,333 IU of vitamin A (see RDAs for Vitamin A in the ConsumerTips™ section). Excess vitamin A in the retinol form is of concern as it may lead to bone weakening and other problems.

Pet:
    Pet-Tabs® Complete Daily Vitamin-Mineral Supplement for Dogs contained 1.4 mcg of lead per tablet.

What you need to know is that even these tests represent only a snapshot in time. Quality of Chinese ingredients can vary widely from batch to batch.  One batch of product can be negative for lead, the next batch can be contaminated. Without independent testing of each and every batch there is no way to know. Price competition means that discount and certain brand-name nutritional supplements have to take the word of Chinese vendors for the quality of their products. Trust your health to this process at your own risk!
Pharmaceutical grade supplements may be somewhat more expensive, but there is a reason why. An independent laboratory, no matter where it comes from, rigorously tests each and every batch of every ingredient. In addition, each batch of finished problem is also tested to insure quality. All this testing is expensive, but absolutely necessary for any supplement you take to support your health.

What a surprise! Your lovely Big Pharma has been alleged to have been caught lying, cheating, stealing and killing on a massive scale.

The huge American company Merck is alleged to have been indulging in massive fraud by issuing fake research made up by journalists from it's own in house staff and passing it off as peer reviewed studies by independent scientists. Using these fake reviews they engaged in a massive “campaign of deception” to promote Vioxx, a drug that has caused over 100,000 heart attacks and well over 50,000 deaths!

Lawsuits filed by victims of this fraud reveal that it appears Merck used its own staff as reviewers and then paid fees (bribes) to University researchers to pin their name to Merck’s in-house research. This scheme made the studies appear independent and unbiased, allowing them to carry more apparent credibility to FDA officials, doctors and other scientists.

This alleged fraud was conducted to boost the apparent scientific credibility of the studies backing Vioxx, a drug that has caused well over 100,000 heart attacks and likely killed well over 50,000 Americans according to Senate testimony by the FDA's own senior drug safety researcher Dr. David Graham.

Vioxx earned Merck $2.3 billion in 2003 alone, and was one of the most lucrative drugs ever sold by any company. But since 2004, when some of the real dangers of the drug became known, a tremendous amount of evidence leading to fraud has surfaced.

It is alleged that Merck deliberately lied about the dangers of the drug, misrepresented the results of scientific studies, deceived the FDA to win drug approval, knowingly covered up evidence of the drug's dangers, and now it seems Merck even conducted a deliberate campaign of deceptive ghostwriting designed to attach independent-sounding names to in-house studies that were essentially pro-Vioxx promotional pieces disguised as scientific reports.

If these allegations prove to be true, and the evidence is overwhelming that they are, the threat to Americans' health from Merck far outweighs any threat to national security by terrorists.

Consider this: The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed just under 5,000 Americans. Yet just one drug from Merck has killed over 50,000 (and that's a conservative estimate). That's more than ten times the number of Americans killed in our current war on terrorism!

If you are waiting to see Merck’s management arrested and jailed for the murder of 50,000 Americans, don’t hold your breath. In America it seems that we have the best justice money can buy. Only people who don’t have enough money to afford a good lawyer go to jail for such things.

What's interesting about this latest revelation of alleged Merck fraud is that the documents revealing the depth of this fraud were only made public due to lawsuits filed by citizens who claim they were harmed by Merck's drugs.

What is even more disturbing, is that the television media that profits most from drug advertising has completely failed to cover this incredible story. Only the print media has covered the deception. Of course, given that 40% of our nation’s children are high-school dropouts and half of the other 60% can’t read or write at a third grade level, few Americans are aware of the problem.

This stands in stark contrast to the massive anti-supplement, anti-water, anti-health-food propaganda orchestrated on television during the last several weeks by these same pharmaceutical giants!

Using phony meta-studies that pose as scientific research the pharmaceutical companies have issued “press-releases” widely proliferated on television from supposedly independent sources that discredit about every common-sense health practice people can follow.

By getting people to avoid sunshine out of fear of cancer they boost sales of anti-depressant drugs. By getting people to avoid anti-oxidants they boost sales of pharmaceuticals used to treat cancer. By getting people to drink soda instead of water they boost sales of anti-arthritic drugs, anti-inflammatories, medicines for acid-reflux and more. By discrediting the use of water treatment and promoting the fluoridation of water they get to sell more heart medications, and drugs designed to treat a variety of hormonal and skeletal problems, as well as cancer.

All this happens because the FDA, the American media, our medical schools, and professional organizations like the AMA are not doing their job. Cozy relationships between drug giants and these organizations mean that those American consumers who rely on either government or health-care providers for their safety are left defenseless.

But no worries – your health insurance will take care of you – if you are one of the few Americans who can afford it. Of course we must remember, they won’t pay for wellness related expenses. They only pay for medical bills that happen after you get the cancer, heart-disease, and other major illnesses that are the result of what you have been encouraged to eat, drink, and the highly profitable synthetic chemicals you have been told to take as medicines. Who wins in this scheme? It is Big Pharma - of course. What a deal they have going!

And don’t count on the television newsmedia for straight information. In case you haven’t noticed, the airwaves are drenched with clever ads for drugs. Networks are not going to jeopardize that income stream for the sake of a little unbiased reporting. After all, how long has it been since you have seen some unbiased reporting about anything - whether or not it means profits.

Alas, what is an honest American citizen to do? God forbid we have to return to the days when we depended upon ourselves and not government to take care of us.

Once more we are reminded of the truth of the ancient wisdom known as Ho’ala Huna.

“The person with the consequences IS the person with the responsibility and, the person with the responsibility IS the person with the authority.”

What this means is that those who give their power away to others in the hope of finding safety are those who have the most to fear.

Another Ho’ala Huna saying is in order here.

“Belief is necessary only for that which is not real. That which is Real can be recognized, and it works – reliably and flawlessly.”

In other words a little common sense goes a long way.

What a month for water news!

Recent events demonstrate that your water supply may not be as safe and you think it is.

First we get a report about the "discovery" of the widespread presence of residues from pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in drinking water.

Next, the entire town of Alamosa Colorado was without water for three weeks and hundreds of people became seriously ill and at least one died because of the presence of Salmonella typhi (the cause of typhoid fever) in the community water system.

Then, here in my home town of Woodland Park Colorado, a portion of the community served by a small water supplier was without water for over a week because of dead animals found in a water storage tank.

To top it all off, we have recently discovered another problem that has yet to gain widespread attention from the public.

Years ago the U. S. Forest Service sprayed trees with a chemical called ethylene dibromide (EDB) throughout the national forests to prevent pine beetle infestation. EDB is an extremely toxic chemical that is now banned by the EPA. EDB has permeated many mountain aquifers and is showing up in private wells at levels capable of causing a variety of liver and nervous system disorders as well as some very dangerous cancers for those who consume it over an extended period of time.

There are three things each of these circumstances have in common.

1. Water from supposedly reliable sources turns out to be unsafe.
2. Each problem affects thousands of people who were sure there was no problem with their drinking water.
3. Many of these people either already have, or will become, seriously ill.

What this all demonstrates is that contrary to the public information campaign designed to convince our citizens that our water supply is both dependable and safe - it is not.

No doubt Americans enjoy some of the best drinking water in the world. By and large public water suppliers do the best job they can with the resources they have to provide water to their customers that won't cause acute illness. That said, the truth is that whether your water is provided by a municipal utility or private well - no one in this country can be sure their tap water is always safe to drink in the short run, or even healthy to drink in the long run.

Short term the major problem is equipment failure due to storms or other natural disasters causing power outages and infrastructure damage. Coming in at a close second is the fact that much of our water treatment and delivery infrastructure is either worn out or antiquated. The incidence of equipment breakdowns and cracked or broken water mains is rapidly increasing. Each of these can affect the safety of drinking water supplies at any time. No utility company, no matter how well it is run, can protect you from these kinds of events.

Long-term risks are everywhere. Drug residues, petroleum distillates and additives, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals and industrial as well as mining wastes are increasingly found in water our water supplies.

Chemicals like chlorine and chloramine (the combination of chlorine and ammonia) that are commonly used to disinfect drinking water are now known to create some by-products in water that can cause cancer, liver and nervous system damage, and birth defects.

New studies demonstrate that fluoride - justified by a misguided attempt to prevent tooth decay - creates many health problems including permeable gut syndrome, an increased adsorption of toxic heavy metals, brittle-bone syndrome in the elderly, and links are suspected to Alzheimer's disease.

Everyone agrees that the danger associated with consuming all these things individually increases dramatically over time. No one knows the cumulative effect of consuming many of these things in combination with each other over long periods of time.

In the face of all of this bad news here is the good news. In each recent outbreak of waterborne disease, from hurricanes Isabel and Katrina to the Alamosa problem, there were many families who owned a LivingWaters™ drinking water treatment system. In every one of those cases, no one who relied on their LivingWaters™ system became ill from drinking their water. No one.

Microbiological protection is not where our story ends. When it comes to chlorine and heavy metals like lead, cadmium and mercury, our standard SafeWater Technology removes them better than Reverse Osmosis.

Chloramine (the mixture of ammonia and chlorine) as well as some drug and hormone residues will go right through most water treatment systems including reverse osmosis and distillers. If you or a friend has been relying on this technology to remove these things you should know you are not safe. Faucet mounted filters and water pitchers are absolutely useless against these toxic substances as well. However, our customers with LivingWaters™ systems designed with our LWCAC™ cartridges have nothing to be concerned about. They are among the only water filters in the world that can provide protection against these nasty chemicals.

Fluoride and arsenic are two other common but dangerous contaminants that are best removed from water. While RO and distillers can remove them, most other filters including water pitchers, faucet mounted filters and refrigerator filters are completely ineffective. LivingWaters™ systems configured with our fluoride removal technology handles them easily.

Best of all, with a LivingWaters™ cartridge-based system, the technology is fail-safe, requires no power, does not waste water, and there is no tank to run dry so you can't run out. They even match or beat water ionizers at making alkaline water with improved redox potential yet ionizers cost three times as much, require power to operate, and can't guarantee water safe from microorganisms or toxic cations like lead, cadmium and mercury.

We appreciate our customers who have helped us become the number one provider of microbiologically safe drinking water systems in America. We want you to know that your confidence is us is justified. No other water treatment appliance in the world can come close to matching, much less beat our combination of benefits for delivering SAFE, HEALTHY water. No one! Thank you for your continued support.