Although I’m not normally a fan of symbolic actions – the time has passed for turning out our lights for one hour each fall evening, for instance – there is one activity happening next month that I’m fully behind. Author and activist Bill McKibben and his grassroots 350.org team are urging us all to, like McKibben, ”get mad and then get busy” on October 10. That’s the day they’re holding a “Global Work Party.” This one day will be a massive, international opportunity to celebrate climate solutions at the local level – and put the pressure on our leaders while doing so. Organizations in over 100 countries so far have organized local activities that will help solve the climate change problem in their communities, while sending a message to governments that they urgently and quickly need to get serious about the climate crisis.

I urge you to visit the website and get involved in your community’s Global Work Party. If there isn’t one organized yet, what’s stopping you from starting one?

The Food and Drug Administration officials have said the recall stands at 550 million eggs, which originated at two factory farms in Iowa. A team of investigators is still trying to figure out what caused the contamination. An estimated 1,300 people have been made sick and the illness can be life-threatening, especially for those with weakened immune systems.

Eggs can be contaminated in two ways. Hens with infected ovaries can contaminate eggs before they’re laid, and the bacteria can penetrate the shell when a laid egg is exposed to fecal material.

The recall is bound to be good for sales of organic eggs, as well as for the organic and locavore movements in general. Anecdotal reports from farmers’ markets across the country suggest a spike in interest in eggs and other food from small farms as a direct result of the publicity surrounding the recall. And it’s sure to draw more people to the already popular backyard chicken movement.

Buying eggs directly from a farmer, or even growing your own is not a total guarantee that you will avoid contamination and illness. But it’s a good bet that chickens and their eggs (as well as other animal products) will be healthier and safer when they have regular exposure to the outdoors, eat naturally, aren’t cooped up in cages on top of one another, and not dosed with the antibiotics and vaccinations that industrial raised hens require.

We have been publishing articles for years in Natural Life Magazine about the problems with intensive factory farming – including the potential for the spread of diseases like this one, the resulting over-use of antibiotics, and the cruelty involved with caging animals.

But we like to provide positive information for our readers about how to live naturally. So here are a couple of articles from our archives about the positive aspects of keeping chickens – aside from the benefits of fresh, disease-free eggs.

Chickens in Your Backyard

The Multi-Function Chicken

In an article for Natural Life back in 2008, I wrote that the problem could include not just high power transmission lines, but cell phones, cordless phones, wireless internet service, baby monitors, dimmer switches, computer monitors, fluorescent light bulbs, halogen lights, radios, microwave ovens, and regular electrical wiring. These are all things that researchers now say can make some people ill with symptoms that can include nausea, headaches, asthma, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, tinnitus, brain fog, restless sleep and rashes. The illness is sometimes called electrohypersensitivity or EHS. And it may be just the tip of the iceberg, since new research indicates that exposure to EMF may cause damage at the cellular level.

So I was interested to read an article today reporting that some families think their kids are being made sick by Wi-Fi in their elementary schools. Unfortunately, the school board is behaving a bit like I did back in the early ‘70s and disregarding these parents’ concerns. That is in spite of evidence that EMF, like many other harmful things, is a bigger threat to children due to their small size and immature brains and immune systems. At least one of the parents is suggesting he’ll homeschool his children this year unless the Wi-Fi is turned off in favor of regular connectivity.

The anecdotal evidence the parents have presented, as well as the formal research into the problem, should lead the school board to practice the Precautionary Principle: If a policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.

As I wrote in my Ask Natural Life column in 2006, the label has become a disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. And the remedy is often the stimulant Ritalin, prescriptions for which have risen by something like six hundred percent. At best, Ritalin treats the symptoms and not the problem. At worst, it is a habit-forming amphetamine.

I believe that the ADHD diagnosis problematizes and medicalizes the behavior of active, normal children within classroom situations that don’t suit their learning needs. However, researchers have been finding that hyperactive behavior in children can also be caused by nutritional imbalances and environmental pollution.

Research in recent years has focused on prenatal exposures to agents such as lead, cigarette byproducts and alcohol. High levels of lead in the blood are known to cause aggression, poor impulse control and short attention span. Studies have also found links between high levels of copper and aluminum and hyperactivity symptoms. Other research suggests that PCBs may also cause hyperactivity or contribute to the changes in brain function that characterize ADHD diagnoses.

The negative behavior and health effects of synthetic food additives – artificial colorings and flavorings, as well as aspartame and preservatives like BHA and BHT –  on certain sensitive people was documented thirty years ago by the late Dr. Benjamin Feingold in his book Why Your Child is Hyperactive. According to research cited by the Feingold Association, children diagnosed with ADHD are seven times more likely to have food allergies than other children. Foods most likely to cause allergic reactions include food colorings, flavorings, synthetic additives, wheat, dairy products, corn, yeast, soy, citrus, chocolate, peanuts, eggs and foods containing salicylates.

And now, a new study out of Australia published in the Journal of Attention Disorders suggests that our modern junk food diet heightens the risk of ADHD in kids. Scientists from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth looked at the diets of 1,800 teens involved in an ongoing long-term health study. They classified the participants’ diets into two categories, “Western” and “Healthy,” with a “Healthy Diet” being one high in fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and fish. They found the Western diet was associated with more than double the risk of having an ADHD diagnosis, compared to other ways of eating. Foods in the Western diet included takeout and fast foods, processed meats, red meat, high fat dairy products, and candy.

Over one-third of all known plants face extinction. Humans are the main cause of extinction and the principle threat to species at risk. Habitat loss is the leading threat, along with introduction of alien species (this can happen deliberately in the search for pretty plants for our gardens, or unintentionally by organisms “hitch-hiking” in containers, ships, cars, or soil), over-exploitation, pollution and disease, and human-induced climate change (which has many effects, from altering migratory species patterns to causing coral bleaching).

Our youngest daughter Melanie is the conservation horticulturalist in charge of the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Through her work with native plants, I have learned about the great work done internationally on reversing this trend by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI).

BGCI represents over 700 members – mostly botanic gardens – in 118 countries. It supports and is involved in the development and implementation of global policy around plant conservation – specifically the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which it is lobbying all levels of government around the world to write into law. Individuals, businesses and non-profits can pledge their support for the GSPC by signing on at the Plants for the Planet website.

BGCI also maintains a unique PlantSearch database that allows you to search for and locate rare and threatened plant species in cultivation around the world. The database is compiled from lists of living collections submitted to BGCI by the world’s botanic gardens and includes over 575,000 records.

This is the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity, so now is a great time to learn more about the importance of plants and the ecosystem services they provide for all life on earth, and to ensure their conservation.

Natural Life Magazine has published a number of articles in the past about plant conservation and biodiversity. You can find links to some of them at our Organic Gardening article archive index. And you can read every issue as far back as 2003 by taking out a digital subscription.

But wait! It doesn’t have to be like that. Summertime can be simple and fun without exploiting Nature, damaging the environment, worrying about your family’s health and stressing you out. Whether you’re staying home this summer, hiking in the wild, visiting the lake or a big city, our archives is full of ideas and inspiration for having a healthy, energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly summer. So pull up the hammock, pour yourself a glass of iced tea, settle back and explore the possibilities.

• Have a Sustainable, Healthy Summer
• Safely Protecting From Sun and Insects
• The High (Environmental) Cost of Playing Golf
• Plan a Green Vacation
• Respectful Whate Watching
• Home-grown Kids:  Cultivating a Love of Gardening
• We Eat Weeds
• Watermelon Recipes
• Barbequing Veggie-Style
• Summer Salad Recipes

There are lots more articles about enjoying your summer in a healthy, natural way in back issues of Natural Life Magazine. You can access them all with an inexpensive subscription to our digital edition.

According to the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), endosulfan is a persistent, toxic pesticide that travels long distances and impacts communities far away from the place of application. It is used on various crops worldwide, but its largest uses are on cotton, tea, and coffee. An article in Environmental Health News lists melons, cucumbers, squashes, potatoes, apples, blueberries, eggplant, lettuce, and other leafy vegetables, pears, peppers, and stone fruit as crops on which it is also used.

Endosulfan is extremely toxic (some say more so than DDT) and has been banned in the European Union since 2007. Tests on lab animals have indicated that it is toxic to the nervous system and can damage the kidney, liver, and male reproductive organs. Since it is a wide spectrum insecticide, not associated with any particular insect, many non-target species, including humans, also get harmed by its use.

For over a decade, environment and health groups, as well as farm worker advocates, have been fighting to get endosulfan banned. It has been restricted in the US and Canada, but has remained in common use, especially on Florida tomatoes and California and Nevada cotton, according to PAN. It is also still in use in countries like Australia and India. Environmental Health News quotes a 2009 study by British and Canadian researchers that says that, unlike most other organochlorines, which were banned in the 1970s, its concentrations have been increasing in the Arctic and in other remote ecosystems.

Of course, the way to avoid ingesting these toxic pesticides is to grow your own, or purchase only certified organic. But sometimes, that’s easier said than done. If you aren’t able to grow your own organic produce, and can’t afford to buy 100 percent organic – or can’t always locate what you want in a pesticide-free version – here is a guide from Natural Life Magazine that will help you stretch your organic food dollar.

Removing petroleum from our lives would, of course, be very difficult, if not impossible. But, we need to move in that direction. As columnist Daniel Gross, writing at Slate last weekend, pointed out, rather than drilling deeper or finding new ways to liberate oil from the sand or rocks, “we should apply our collective engineering smarts to figuring out ways to use less energy.”

And the path to using less energy doesn’t require just engineering smarts. Individuals can play an immediate role. Do we really need to fly half way around the world for a vacation? Do twenty world leaders and their thousands of buddies really need to converge on Toronto for a photo op later this month? Do we really need to jump in the car to go to the corner store? Natural Life Magazine readers are at the forefront of the move to use fewer hydrocarbons. And the cover feature in our upcoming July/August issue provides great advice about how to replace four wheels with two. Let’s make that a beginning….

Native plants are those which are indigenous or naturalized to a given area. Some native plants have adapted to limited, unusual environments, to very harsh climates, or to exceptional soil conditions. They form a plant community where other species have developed to support them. For instance, a certain insect could pollinate the plant and that insect, in turn, exists because it relies on the pollen from the plant as a source of food. Some native plants rely on natural conditions, such as occasional wildfires, to release their seeds or to provide a fertile environment where their seedlings can become established.

Gardeners and farmers like to move plants to new locations for cultivation as crops or as ornamentals (or transport them by accident). And some of those plants may become what we call invasive species, damaging the local ecology by choking out native plants and interrupting the balance of Nature that depends upon them.

Government agencies and environmental groups are directing increasing resources to addressing these species and their potential interactions with climate change. Gardeners can also help preserve the ecological balance by planting native plants and avoiding species that are locally invasive. There are also opportunities to be a “citizen scientist” and help researchers learn more about these invasive species. One such program is underway this summer, as a group of scientists gathers data about invasive garlic mustard. More information about the project and how to get involved is available on the Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey website.

Some Natural Life Magazine readers may have noticed that whenever we use the word “Nature” meaning universe in which we live, and all its living and non-living things, we capitalize the letter “N.” So I thought I’d let you know why we do that.

Back in 2004, I heard from Chris Adam,  the Executive Director of the Earthvalues Institute asking for our endorsement for their “Putting the capital N back in Nature” campaign. As a writer and editor, I strongly believe in the power of words to make change.  So I was interested to learn that in the 1700s, Nature would have been spelled with an upper case N. But sometime during the Industrial Revolution – the same time that Nature began to take a back seat – that convention was lost. So we agreed with the Earthvalues Institute’s initiative as a way to highlight the need to take the earth and its riches into consideration when making individual and political decisions.