Another Mercury Source

I'd have to say people shouldn't worry nearly as much about the shots their babies are getting - they need to worry about Corn Syrup. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

This report sent to me by Kevin M.

The following is merely excerpts of the entire article, as it is incredibly dry reading. However, it's an area that has never been looked at by the US.

Mercury - in various forms, is used to make HFCS last longer - longer shelf life, lower spoilage rate. There are 8 plants in the US that use mercury to produce the chemicals that are used to make HFCS - it's not just a matter of squeezing sweet corn and letting it dry. It's a very complex process.

The US does try to keep track of the mercury itself, but when shortages - of TONS - are reported, nothing is done to track where it may have gone. Anything that has a corn product, food grade or otherwise, most likely has the mercury in it. This just happens to be what an arm of the FDA tested thus far - and have been banned from doing anymore.

The paper was written and submitted June of '08. Was published Jan of '09.
For the whole thing:
http://www.ehjournal.net/content/pdf/1476-069x-8-2.pdf

In 2004, several member states of the European Union reported finding mercury concentrations in beverages, cereals and bakery ware, and sweeteners [14] – all of which may contain HFCS. FDA does not currently have a mercury surveillance program for food ingredients such as added sugars or preservatives manufactured with mercury grade chlor-alkali products.

With the reported average daily consumption of 49.8 g HFCS per person, however, and our finding of mercury in the range of 0.00 to 0.570 μg mercury/g HFCS, we can estimate that the potential average daily total mercury exposure from HFCS could range from zero to 28.4 μg mercury. This range can be compared to the range of total mercury exposure from dental amalgam in children reported by Health Canada [20]. In the report issued by Canada, daily estimates of total mercury exposure from dental amalgam in children ages 3-19 ranged on average from 0.79 to 1.91 μg mercury.

Current international food processing standards allow 1.0 μg mercury/g caustic soda [21, 22] and there is no standard for mercury in food grade hydrochloric acid. Both of these chemicals may be used to make HFCS. The FDA has approved HFCS for use as an added sugar in food products but a review of food product labels reveals that it is often added to a product in addition to sugar presumably to enhance product shelf life.

Regardless of its intended use, it is imperative that public health officials evaluate this potential source of mercury exposure, as HFCS is presently ubiquitous in processed foods and therefore significantly consumed by people all over the world.

Mercury in any form – either as water-soluble inorganic salt, a lipid-soluble organic mercury compound, or as metallic mercury- is an extremely potent neurological toxin [23]. Mercury contamination of food products as a result of the use of mercury contaminated HFCS seems like a very real possibility.

With daily per capita consumption of HFCS in the US averaging about 50 grams and daily mercury intakes from HFCS ranging up to 28 μg, this potential source of mercury may exceed other major sources of mercury especially in high-end consumers of beverages sweetened with HFCS.

Food products that contain a significant amount of HFCS should be tested for mercury contamination in the end product and the public should be informed of any detections. Clearly, more research is needed to determine the extent of mercury exposure in children from mercury contaminated HFCS in food products.

Testing Yourself

The first two can be used with body fluids or clear liquids (can have color to it, just not cloudy in nature)
http://www.vivagen.net/tests_distillers.htm

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220349844606&category=67589&refid=store

The third is to check surfaces
http://www.leadcheck.com/MercuryCheckSwab.shtml

This final is to send in a sample of your hair
http://www.sierraclub.org/mercury/get_tested/

(From my herbal studies)

Getting the Mercury Out

If you are concerned that you might have a high level of mercury in your body, there are things you can do at home to assist in getting the mercury out. All 3 herbs are completely safe, have no side effects, even in massive doses, and 2 are probably in your cupboard right now.

If you can't find the mullein, use the other 2 anyway.

2 oz mullein leaves
2 oz fennel seed
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (per tea pot)

Mix first 2 herbs together. Keep in glass container. Take 1 heaping teaspoon of mixture, put in tea pot (If only fennel, half a teaspoon). Pour 1 cup of boiling water over mixture - steep for 15 minutes. Add the 1/4 teaspoon cayenne to the liquid. Strain before drinking. Drink 1/3 of this 3 times a day, between meals. Reduce by half for children (It's a volume thing for kids, they aren't going to want to drink it and don't need the entire volume to work, so why make them?)

Use 3X daily for 1 week, 1X daily for 1 week, retest - if you feel the need. For maintenance - once a week should be good. But won't hurt you at all if you choose to do it more often.

Watering Light Bulbs

Water Used For Making Electricity

It takes me forever to read things of interest to me - the vertigo thing gets in the way. So, I just read this article from the August 2008 inssue of Mother Earth News titled The Intertwined Tale of Energy and Water

The authors are from Virginia Tech, and have crunched the numbers for how much water is needed in creating our electricty. They've even broken it down as to how much each energy source uses water with both high and low values. I've taken a median approach to come up with my numbers.

Making A Lightbulb

So then, I went on a search for how much energy it takes to actually produce a light bulb. Then I looked for both incandescent bulbs and CFLs. I haven't looked for LED's and doubt highly I'll find the numbers I'm looking for. It was difficult enough to find them for the first 2 light bulbs.
This gent took his numbers from a Dutch study , and I've taken many of my numbers from him - along with making a few more assumptions - LOL - scary, but in reality, it doesn't add up to much.

Where am I going with the and the title? Here it is: We don't think about the amount of water it takes to produce all of the little things in our lives. Nor do we think about the amount of water it takes to keep them running. Well, these two articles focus on the light bulb. The lowly light bulb.

Water For Energy

It takes 1600 gallons of water to produce 100 kWh of energy. Roughly. It depends on the energy source. However, for NYS, we'll go with 1600 since we have such a mix of energy sources. You can do your own figures.

A Light Bulb's Life Cycle

The Dutch study went through the entire life cycle of regular and CFL's - from production to disposal. The CFL takes far more energy - and thus water - to produce, but in the end, even if you only get half the life-expectancy the manufacturers claim it has, it takes only 1/4 of the energy.

The CFL - uses about 1974 gallons of water over its life (1000 hours).
The incandescent - uses about 960 gallons of water over it's life (125 hours)
At first blush, it looks like a no-brainer. Why are we switching to CFL's? Because you'll go through about 8 regular bulbs in that same socket that you could have the CFL. Even if you only went through 4, you're still using far more energy and WATER to create/use/dispose of that regular bulb, compared to the CFL.

It Adds Up

And why is this so important? Well, take a look at the number of light sockets you have in your house. Someone came up with an average of 30 per house. I think that's under estimated. I just did a mental list of our house - which is smallll - and came up with 42. If you have even that average of 30 (if all the bulbs blew at once, how many would it take for you to replace them all?), and if you only replaced 1/3 of them with CFL compared to standard bulbs, You'll be saving a huge chunk of water.

Granted, not every socket can take a CFL and not every light should have one. Short duration lighting is better left to incandescents - they last longer and actually use less energy when turned on for 4 minutes or less - compared to the CFL. But there are many throughout the house that can very effectively be changed to CFL's. 5 of the fixtures are already flourescent or CFL. 13 have been converted to CFL and the rest are very short duration use.

Those 18 CFLs are using 35,500 gallons of water.

In contrast, going with the 4:1 ratio since I have yet for a CFL to work as long as they say, incandescents that would be in those sockets would use 142,000 gallons of water. I'm guessing no one has ever figured this water use into how much an average household uses per day.

Further Reading On Our Water Problems

Here's an article that showing how we are putting ourselves into states of drought.
Here's one about Lake Superior shrinking. And no one really knows why. This might be part of the answer.

Mercury

And - a tidbit of an aside regarding mercury in CFL's - it doesn't match what is spewed out of power plants using coal (54% percent of our electricity is produced by coal, nationwide). The number? 48 tons of mercury per year from our coal electricity .

Toxic Mercury Article

Excerpts From The Article

As many as 600,000 babies may be born in the U.S. each year with irreversible brain damage because pregnant mothers ate mercury-contaminated fish, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Medical researchers are just beginning to explore the effect of mercury exposure on adults that leaves some in a disorienting "fish fog."

Nationwide, more than 8,000 lakes, rivers and bays are compromised by mercury's toxic effects.

Where is all the mercury coming from, and can something be done to stop it?

A partial answer can be found in the nearly 500 coal-burning power plants that supply about half the nation's electricity. The $298 billion electric utility industry is the nation's largest source of mercury air emissions and the latest target of federal and state clean air regulations.

The EPA's new Clean Air Mercury Rule, effective in 2010, gives energy companies until 2018 to cut mercury emissions to an industrywide 15 tons.

Mercury also has been removed from products such as thermometers and paint, batteries and toys. Most childhood vaccines no longer contain thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury. Many dentists have discontinued the use of metal amalgams to fill cavities

Test kits
http://www.heavymetalstest.com/mercurytest.php - for house
http://www.sierraclub.org/mercury/get_tested/ - for body
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/get-tested-for-mercury-contami - for body