Monday, October 24, 2011

'Ecokosher' is finding a place at the table

New dietary standards commit to treating workers, animals, and Earth with care.

By Dianna Marder
Inquirer Staff Writer

For centuries, rabbis have taught that the kitchen table is an altar.

By this they mean that drawing food from the Earth, preparing it for the table, and eating it is part of a covenant with God - an understanding that we must not defile the Earth or ourselves.

But a growing number of Jews are questioning whether the traditional Jewish dietary laws go far enough and are spawning a national, distinctly Jewish, food movement, with roots in Philadelphia, known as ecokosher.

"The kosher laws actually have nothing to do with sustainable agriculture, treating workers fairly, protecting the air and the water - any of that," says Robin Rifkin, a member of Kol Ami Congregation in Elkins Park. "And that's what we're concerned about."

A small but increasing number of Jews across the usual denominational lines of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform are feeling an obligation to confront these ethical issues in a variety of ways.

And, in a revolutionary effort, like-minded Jews nationwide are launching a new uber-kosher symbol that could appear on food products as early as next year - a symbol of ethical responsibility demonstrating a manufacturer's commitment to treating workers, animals, and the Earth with care.

"The emphasis now is on what it really means for a particular food to be fit to eat," says Mark Kaplan, a Reform Jew who does not keep kosher but who helped Rifkin start a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program with weekly produce deliveries from local farms to their synagogue in Elkins Park.

Main Line Reform Temple in Wynnewood hopes to form a CSA with its neighbor Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, and Rabbi David Straus recently told his congregants that they face a moral and spiritual responsibility to be proper stewards of the environment - an idea he calls eco-theology.

As the Jewish community marks the new year 5770 with a 24-hour fast that begins at sunset, the People of the Book are sounding more like the People of the Land.

Rooted in the '70s

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi coined the term ecokosher - building on the significance of Jewish dietary laws - in the 1970s. A quirky rabbi who started his career as an ultra-Orthodox, he had become versed in Jewish mysticism, the American Indian Shundahai Network, and Chinese feng shui by the time he retired to Boulder, Colo.

All that only served to make him more respected, and now Rabbi Arthur Waskow carries on at the Shalom Center in Mount Airy, bringing spiritual-based ecological teachings to the masses.

The message has resonated much more widely in recent years as it has played off the secular fresh-food movement heralded by Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food).

Estimating the size of the Jewish food movement is nearly impossible, Waskow says. But it is likely to expand on or after Oct. 24, which is designated worldwide as Climate-Healing Sabbath, a day of prayer and education devoted to ecological issues on the day the Torah portion concerns Noah and the flood.

That event, too, is Philadelphia-centric, as the idea sprang from the Germantown Jewish Center on Lincoln Drive.[Actually sprang from The ShalomCenter; Rabbi Leonard Gordon of GJC took it into the Conservative movementand got it endorsed by them. -- AW]

In recent years, ecokosher thinking has sprouted at least a half-dozen national programs, among them the Jewish Farm School in West Philadelphia, which has classes for adults and Philadelphia schools on organic gardening and sustainability.

Some people in the movement are members of synagogues and some are not, Waskow says. But all seem to agree that the adage "you are what you eat" has never been more accurate, more essential, or more in need of a faith-based perspective.

Shamu Fenyvesi Sadeh, director of Adamah, a three-month Jewish farming fellowship in Connecticut for college grads, says food and agriculture are entry points, "a gateway to Jewish values."

That's the driving force, too, behind Hazon, which hosts an annual Jewish food conference and a blog called "The Jew and the Carrot" (jcarrot.org), and supports CSA programs.

John Edgar belongs to the Hazon-affiliated CSA at Temple Kol Ami, which is in its third year. (CSAs - in which members prepay for the growing season and get weekly baskets of fruits and vegetables from a local farm - help ensure survival for small farms.)

Every Thursday evening, Edgar, with his 2-year-old son, William, in tow, collects his share. One week, his baskets are filled with corn, tomatoes, and spaghetti squash; another week, carrots, beets, red peppers, and lettuce.

While this CSA sees itself as part of the Jewish food movement, it does not necessarily promote keeping kosher. And Edgar, who is pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Elkins Park, is proof that one need not be Jewish to join.

Founded by Kol Ami members Kaplan, Rifkin, and Shelley Chamberlain, this CSA distributes recipes in weekly newsletters, holds cooking demonstrations on the use of unusual vegetables, and hosts free education sessions.

"These [ecokosher] issues are relevant to us as Jews because so much of our heritage is based on the fact that Jews were originally farmers and shepherds," Rifkin says. "So many of our holidays are based on the agricultural season."

'Shield of Justice'

The most tangible and perhaps controversial element to come out of the Jewish food movement was revealed Sept. 9. It is a seal of ethical responsibility - a Magen Tzedek, which translates as "Shield of Justice" - for kosher products that meet additional standards of workplace and environmental responsibility.

Project developer Rabbi Morris Allen of Mendota Heights, Minn., says he was motivated by the May 2008 raid on the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Postville, Iowa, where federal officials found that untrained illegal immigrants made up almost half the workforce.

Technically, kosher certification refers to how meat is slaughtered and prepared and has nothing to do with workplace practices. Still, Postville was an embarrassment.

Shira Dicker, a spokeswoman for the Magen Tzedek project, calls it "the God-Housekeeping Seal of Approval." The symbol is a stylized Star of David, designed "not to look too Jewishy."

Thousands of non-Jews buy kosher products. Some do so because they are Muslims, Buddhists, or vegetarians; have food allergies; or, in an era of E. coli and salmonella outbreaks, have come to trust a kosher symbol on a product more than, perhaps, FDA or USDA approval. Others buy
unintentionally, because, in the $225 billion kosher-food business, even Coke and Oreos are kosher-certified.

The Magen Tzedek project is in its infancy; guidelines were released Sept.9, and it is unclear how many companies will apply for approval.

Still, Nati Passow, founder of the Jewish Farm School, says this effort and others are necessary:
"We need to raise the level of awareness in the Jewish community and beyond
to issues of food justice."

http://articles.philly.com/2009-09-27/news/25267609_1_kosher-laws-jewish-mysticism-jewish-community-marks

Greenhouse Gases: Where's The Beef?

India offers no-beef climate solution

November 23, 2009 - 12:00AM

India's Environment Minister suggests the world adopt vegetarianism if it is to tackle the greenhouse emission problem, writes Matt Wade in Delhi.

AS THE international community struggles to come up with a climate change deal, India's Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, has come up with a solution: don't eat beef.

He challenged the world to follow the example of millions in his country and eschew beef in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Ramesh, a vegetarian, said: ''The single most important measure that can be taken in the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to stop eating beef.''

He has strong support in his campaign against beef-eating from R. K. Pachauri, the leading Indian climate change scientist who headed the UN's influential panel on climate change.

''I'm happy that the minister is agreeing with me on this,'' Dr Pachauri said.

''If you look at the beef cycle today, you first clear forests, which increases emissions, then you feed cattle all kinds of food grain, which is energy intensive, and then you kill and refrigerate these animals, and then they are transported long distances. Then you buy it and refrigerate it. If you count all the emissions associated with this entire cycle, it is huge.''

Last year, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation study found that meat production accounted for about a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Ramesh's comments come days before the Copenhagen summit on climate change, where the positions of India and China will be crucial to any international deal.

India has argued consistently that the main responsibility for reducing greenhouse gases must be taken by wealthy Western countries with high per capita emissions. It has resisted pressure to adopt binding targets for limiting its own greenhouse emissions. Indian officials say any climate change treaty must be equitable.

Dr Puchauri said the Indian Government was well within its rights to expect more from rich countries. ''The developed world has just not lived up to its obligations or responsibilities,'' he said.

''The concentration of these gases in the atmosphere is entirely the result of 150 years of industrialisation and so-called economic development in the developed world, as a result of which we have the problem we have today.''

But he also said India needed to do more to project what it was doing domestically to mitigate emissions.

India's position on climate change is liable to come under fresh scrutiny this week when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Washington for talks with US President Barack Obama.

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/india-offers-nobeef-climate-solution-20091122-isrd.html

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Carbon Footprint Of Food

October 23, 2009

By Degrees

To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of product.”

“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.

But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.

People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.

“We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said Ulf Bohman, head of the Nutrition Department at the Swedish National Food Administration, which was given the task last year of creating new food guidelines giving equal weight to climate and health. “We’re used to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”

Some of the proposed new dietary guidelines, released over the summer, may seem startling to the uninitiated. They recommend that Swedes favor carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. (Unlike carrots, the latter two must be grown in heated greenhouses here, consuming energy.)

They are not counseled to eat more fish, despite the health benefits, because Europe’s stocks are depleted.

And somewhat less surprisingly, they are advised to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising cattle.

“For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr. Bohman acknowledged. “You are getting environmental advice that you have to coordinate with, ‘How can I eat healthier?’ ”

Many Swedish diners say it is just too much to ask. “I wish I could say that the information has made me change what I eat, but it hasn’t,” said Richard Lalander, 27, who was eating a Max hamburger (1.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions) in the shadow of a menu board revealing that a chicken sandwich (0.4 kilograms) would have been better for the planet.

Yet if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, some experts say, Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 percent. An estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized nations can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research here. And foods vary enormously in the emissions released in their production.

While today’s American or European shoppers may be well versed in checking for nutrients, calories or fat content, they often have little idea of whether eating tomatoes, chicken or rice is good or bad for the climate.

Complicating matters, the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.

Earlier studies of food emissions focused on the high environmental costs of transporting food and raising cattle. But more nuanced research shows that the emissions depend on many factors, including the type of soil used to grow the food and whether a dairy farmer uses local rapeseed or imported soy for cattle feed.

Business groups, farming cooperatives and organic labeling programs as well as the government have gamely come up with coordinated ways to identify food choices.

Max, Sweden’s largest homegrown chain of burger restaurants, now puts emissions calculations next to each item on its menu boards. Lantmannen, Sweden’s largest farming group, has begun placing precise labels on some categories of foods in grocery stores, including chicken, oatmeal, barley and pasta.

Consumers who pay attention may learn that emissions generated by growing the nation’s most popular grain, rice, are two to three times those of little-used barley, for example.

Some producers argue that the new programs are overly complex and threaten profits. The dietary recommendations, which are being circulated for comment not just in Sweden but across the European Union, have been attacked by the Continent’s meat industry, Norwegian salmon farmers and Malaysian palm oil growers, to name a few.

“This is trial and error; we’re still trying to see what works,” Mr. Bohman said.

Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic.

Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV.

For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.

Next year KRAV will require hothouses to use biofuels for heating. Dairy farms will have to obtain at least 70 percent of the food for their herds locally; many previously imported cheap soy from Brazil, generating transport emissions and damaging the rain forest as trees were cleared to make way for farmland.

The Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions. Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions — two metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.

The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more toward chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering emissions generally could have an enormous impact.

Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce emissions. It has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for electricity by 2020 and cars that run on gasoline by 2030.

To arrive at numbers for their company’s first carbon dioxide labels, scientists at Lantmannen analyzed life cycles of 20 products. These take into account emissions generated by fertilizer, fuel for harvesting machinery, packaging and transport.

They decided to examine one representative product in each category — say, pasta — rather than performing analyses for fusilli versus penne, or one brand versus another. “Every climate declaration is hugely time-intensive,” said Claes Johansson, Lantmannen’s director of sustainability.

A new generation of Swedish business leaders is stepping up to the climate challenge. Richard Bergfors, president of Max, his family’s burger chain, voluntarily hired a consultant to calculate its carbon footprint; 75 percent was created by its meat.

“We decided to be honest and put it all out there and say we’ll do everything we can to reduce,” said Mr. Bergfors, 40. In addition to putting emissions data on the menu, Max eliminated boxes from its children’s meals, installed low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.

Since the emissions counts started appearing on the menu, sales of climate-friendly items have risen 20 percent. Still, plenty of people head to a burger restaurant lusting only for a burger.

Kristian Eriksson, 26, an information technology specialist, looked embarrassed when asked about the burger he was eating at an outdoor table.

“You feel guilty picking red meat,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/world/europe/23degrees.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Friday, October 14, 2011

College Radio Going Strong

Posted at 03:37 PM ET, 10/13/2011

10 great college radio stations

By Daniel de Vise

In yesterday’s paper, I marked College Radio Day, a celebration of campus radio and an appeal to universities to hold on to their FM radio licenses.

Colleges are selling their FM stations for cash and pushing student radio onto the Internet, where the music plays on, but to a much-diminished audience. Streaming college radio still functions as a laboratory for artistic expression and broadcasting education, but without that crucial connection to the outside world.

(When I was a college DJ, there was nothing quite like playing Captain Beefheart and knowing his voice was, at that very moment, croaking forth from the speakers of someone’s BMW.)

Locally, the universities of Maryland and Virginia still operate FM stations; Maryland’s is run by students, Virginia’s by adults, but U-Va. students frequently get the mic. Students at American, Georgetown, George Washington and Johns Hopkins universities, among others, make do with Internet stations. Most of those schools once had student-run radio stations.

Colleges seem to have consigned campus radio to the Internet. But as a platform, it lacks the reach of FM radio. As Candace Walton, president of the industry group College Broadcasters Inc., put it the other day: “The big schools aren’t broadcasting their college football games online. Why is that?”

With that thought in mind, here is a list of 10 college radio stations that still occupy the FM dial and are still run by students.

1. KALX, Berkeley: Founded in 1962. Its first mixing board was built inside a cigar box.

2. KJHK, the University of Kansas: Founded in 1975. When the station played Van Halen and Culture Club one day as an April Fool’s joke, a listener threatened to blow up a campus building.

3. KUPS, University of Puget Sound: 24/7, 100 percent student-run and recent winner of an MTV “Woodie” for best college radio station.

4. KVUM, University of Miami: Started as a pirate station in 1967; operates on an FM dial that could only be termed eccentric.

5. KZSC, UC Santa Cruz: Started broadcasting in 1967 out of a dormitory basement.

6. Radio K, University of Minnesota: This morning’s playlist ranged from Acid Baby Jesus to the Who.

7. WCRX, Columbia College: Part of a crowded and surprisingly tasteful Chicago FM dial.

8. WGRE, Depauw University: Founded in 1949; claims to be first “10-watt educational FM radio station in the country.”

9. WICB, Ithaca College: Founded in 1949; first operated out of a prefabricated steel hut.

10. WKDU, Drexel University: Programs include “I Speak for the Trees” and “Music that Kills Puppies.”

By Daniel de Vise | 03:37 PM ET, 10/13/2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/10-great-college-radio-stations/2011/10/13/gIQAvRM2hL_blog.html

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Farming In The New Country

From the New York Times -

October 9, 2011

When the Uprooted Put Down Roots

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

SAN DIEGO — At the Saturday farmer’s market in City Heights, a major portal for refugees, Khadija Musame, a Somali, arranges her freshly picked pumpkin leaves and lablab beans amid a United Nations of produce, including water spinach grown by a Cambodian refugee and amaranth, a grain harvested by Sarah Salie, who fled rebels in Liberia. Eaten with a touch of lemon by Africans, and coveted by Southeast Asians for soups, this crop is always a sell-out.
Among the regular customers at the New Roots farm stand are Congolese women in flowing dresses, Somali Muslims in headscarves, Latino men wearing broad-brimmed hats and Burundian mothers in brightly patterned textiles who walk home balancing boxes of produce on their heads.
New Roots, with 85 growers from 12 countries, is one of more than 50 community farms dedicated to refugee agriculture, an entrepreneurial movement spreading across the country. American agriculture has historically been forged by newcomers, like the Scandinavians who helped settle the Great Plains; today’s growers are more likely to be rural subsistence farmers from Africa and Asia, resettled in and around cities from New York, Burlington, Vt., and Lowell, Mass., to Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego.
With language and cultural hurdles, and the need to gain access to land, financing and marketing, farm ownership for refugees can be very difficult. Programs like New Roots, which provide training in soil, irrigation techniques and climate, “help refugees make the leap from community gardens to independent farms,” said Hugh Joseph, an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts, which advises 28 “incubator” farms representing hundreds of small-scale producers.
Cameroonian peanut plants are growing at Drew Gardens in the Bronx, chronicled on the Facebook page of Angela Nogue, a refugee farmer. Near Phoenix, a successful goat meat farm and store was begun by Ibrahim Sawara Dahab, an ethnic Sudanese from Somalia. “In America, you need experience, and my experience was goats,” he said.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement in Washington formed a sustainable farming program in 1998, financing 14 refugee farms and gardens, including one in Boise, Idaho, where sub-Saharan African farmers have gradually learned to cope with unpredictable frosts.
Larry Laverentz, the program manager for refugee agriculture with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said inspiration came from the Hmong, Mien and Lao refugee farmers of Fresno County, Calif., who settled in the late 1970s and now have 1,300 growers specializing in Asian crops.
These small plots of land can become significant sources of income for refugees, with most farmers able to earn from $5,000 to more than $50,000 annually, as the Liberian refugees James and Jawn Golo do on their 20-acre organic farm outside Phoenix, including sales to five farmers’ markets, restaurants and chefs.
In Burlington, a four-acre farm started by Bhutanese-Nepali, Somali Bantu and Congolese farmers is still reeling from the flooding of the Winooski River after Hurricane Irene, which ruined crops at the height of the season and caused an estimated $15,000 in losses.
“This is a significant supplement to our diet, and budgets are geared to it,” said Yacouba Jacob Bogre, 38, executive director of the Association of Africans Living in Vermont and a lawyer from Burkina Faso. “Emotionally, we lost a lot, along with fresh vegetables for our households.”
New Roots in City Heights, which Michelle Obama visited last spring, is a model for today’s micro-enterprise. (It is also a culinary education, where a Zimbabwean grower can discover bok choy.) It was started at the request of his Somali Bantu community, said Bilali Muya, the effervescent trainer-in-chief. “There was this kind of depression,” he said. “Everyone was dreaming to come to the U.S.A., but they were not happy. The people were put in apartments, missing activity, community. They were bored.“
They were also homesick for traditional food, grown by hand. In City Heights, where half the residents live at or below the federal poverty line, the three-year-old farmer’s market was the city’s first in a low-income neighborhood, a collaboration between the nonprofit International Rescue Committee and the San Diego County Farm Bureau.
One can hear 15 different languages there, amid the neat rows of kale, rape and banana plants — but body language is the lingua franca.
“If I see a weed, I pull it, shaking my head,” said Mrs. Musame, the Somali farmer. “We understand each other.”
The hub of refugee life, City Heights was largely home to African-Americans and Mexican immigrants until the fall of Saigon in 1975, when thousands of Southeast Asian refugees arrived to a massive tent city at nearby Camp Pendleton.
From 1980 through 1990, the population almost doubled with immigrants and refugees (most recently from Iraq). The changing demographics of the neighborhood resemble an electrocardiogram of international conflict.
But the exquisite fruits and vegetables for sale, lovingly grown, belie the life experiences of the growers. Mrs. Salie, the Liberian, was raped by rebels and hid for two years in the bush after reporting the crime, she said. Mrs. Musame, a Somali Bantu, came to San Diego as a widow after her husband and three of her sons were gunned down.
And Mr. Muya said Somalis had taken his father, who dug irrigation trenches for a local banana farm, and tortured him, his screams echoing through the village. His grandfather went to help and was beaten with the butt of a rifle. Many hours later, Mr. Muya said, the villagers were told: “Come pick up your dogs.”
“As a Somali Bantu, you don’t go to sleep really deep,” Mr. Muya continued. “You sleep awake.”
In addition to accepting food stamps, the market offers $20 a month to low-income shoppers to buy more produce (financing comes from Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit based in Connecticut, and a $250,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
“Especially in tough times, farmers are becoming pharmacists — providing healthy fresh local fruits and vegetables to vulnerable families,” said Gus Schumacher, a former under secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture and now an executive vice president of Wholesome Wave.
Their produce is sold to restaurateurs like George and Samia Salameh, who buy the farm’s tomatoes and mint. Mr. Salameh, a former airline pilot, came to the United States from Lebanon 37 years ago. “This product is absolutely fitting for me,” he said.
The country’s pioneering refugee farm program, in Lowell, Mass., was founded by Tufts University and continues to thrive.
Visoth Kim, a Khmer refugee from Cambodia, now 63, farms land in Dracut, Mass., owned by the widow of John Ogonowski, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Mr. Ogonowski, whose ancestors were Polish immigrants, made land available to Hmong and Cambodian refugees, teaching them modern irrigation techniques in exchange for fresh vegetables.
Mr. Kim, who witnessed mass starvation in Cambodia, losing a brother, refers to his two-acre plot as “my plenty.” His fellow farmer Sinikiwe Makarutsa grew up in Zimbabwe and now grows maize on land rented from a local church. She made enough money to buy a tractor and rototiller.
Ms. Makarutsa was inspired to farm, she said, after tasting supermarket tomatoes. She uses the Zimbabwean phrase “Pamuzinda” to describe her seven-acre plot.
Roughly translated, she said, “It means ‘where you belong.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/us/refugees-in-united-states-take-up-farming.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=PATRICIA%20LEIGH%20BROWN%20REFUGEES&st=cse

Monday, October 10, 2011

Unaccounted For Costs Of An Aluminum Can

The cost of an aluminum can......................

St Ann residents say bauxite company has made their lives hell

BY KARYL WALKER

Online news editor walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, October 09, 2011

HERMAN Webb is an angry man.The 65-year-old says that Noranda Bauxite Company has been giving him, his neighbours and hundreds of residents in districts neighbouring the community of Stepney in South East St Ann a raw deal.

"If somebody don't come to we rescue it's going to be a bloody revolution around here. I have been farming this land for 42 years and they want to give me little or nothing," Webb fumed in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

President of the Nine Miles United Districts Association Gerald Lawrence (right) and an unidentified resident view a mined-out crater at Down Lodge in South East St Ann. (Photos: Karyl Walker)

Webb's outrage, and that of his neighbours, has its genesis in Noranda's mining operations in the districts which, the residents claim, have been having a negative effect on their lives.

"The dust is terrible," said Webb. "It affects everybody, but the company don't pay anybody who is more than 300 feet from the mining site. It is unfair, because the breeze blow the dust for miles."

Webb's frustration was shared by Gerald Lawrence, president of the Nine Miles United Districts Citizens' Association.

"We want the whole Jamaica to know what we are going through. Our lives have become hell," said Lawrence.

The association represents the districts of Prickly Pole, Glasgow Lodge, Eight Miles, Nine Miles, Stepney, Hessen Castle, Murray Mount and Grants Mountain.

Most of the residents in the bauxite-rich section of the parish are farmers who live on land owned by Noranda.

In recent times, the company served notice that the residents need to clear their crops from designated plots and has been paying compensation to the displaced farmers.

But this has been a bone of contention for the residents who claim that their crops are being grossly undervalued.

"They want to give me $700,000 for my six-and-a-half acres worth of crops. I had a big farm with 3,000 coffee plants valued at $2 million, and 2,000 roots of banana. They valued the coffee at $300,000. That can't be fair after 42 years," Webb said.

He said he has written to the minister of mining and the Jamaica Bauxite Institute about his plight but has so far not received a reply.

The residents produced documents bearing the letterhead of Noranda which gave them six months to clear the land. However, they allege that the company has not honoured the agreement and has been bulldozing crops before the six-month grace period expires.

Percival Cross and Diedre Lewis, whose plots have already been mined, said bulldozers came and destroyed their crops without notice.

The notice letter which Lewis showed the Sunday Observer stated that she had until October 30 to clear the land. However, she showed the newspaper the land that has already been mined.

Cross said his farm was cleared after only three months.

"One day we just wake up and them start clear the land — crop and all. Them say them give me six months, but the tractor come after only three. Them deal with me cold, and now me crop gone and me no have no way to feed my children. What we going do?" he said.

When the Sunday Observer contacted Kent Skyers, public relations officer at Noranda, he denied the residents' claims, saying that clearing land before the notice period expires was not in line with the company's policy.

"Our operations are not like that. We would not be giving notice and then go and push off crops before the time. We don't normally take off crops," Skyers said.

His response, however, ran counter to what was shown to this reporter. Other questions in relation to the residents' claims, sent to Skyers via e-mail on Friday, were not responded to up to press time last night.

In sections of Eleven Miles, Down Lodge and Ballintoy large craters, some more than 100 feet deep, littered the landscape.

Under the Mining Act, bauxite companies must adhere to land reclamation regulations set out by the Jamaica Bauxite Institute. Deep craters must be refilled and the miners must restore the land by placing at least six inches of top soil in mined-out areas.

But the residents of Dry Harbour Mountains complained that the company has not been strictly adhering to the land reclamation requirement.

At Down Lodge a huge crater remained unfilled and although sections of the land have been replanted with grass and cassava, other sections are bare and limestone is visible.

This reporter took at least 100 steps before reaching the base of the crater.

"This can't be right. They have ravaged the land, gone with all the precious nutrients and have left some dust on top of stone," Lawrence said, shaking his head slowly.

While some land had been sold to big money interests decades ago, other residents sold their land to the bauxite miners only recently.

Alvin Hall of Stepney is one such former land owner.

Hall lives in a modest dwelling perched on a mound bordered by a deep crater on one side and another plot of land which is being mined on the other side.

Hall said he sold his land and will be relocated by the company to another section of the island that has already been mined.

The Sunday Observer saw tractors and other heavy equipment being used to load tonnes of red dirt in the backs of tipper trucks as Hall's two sons romped on the little space that was left of their once-sprawling yard.

The mining was taking place almost 30 feet from his house.

Hall said he had signed a deal with Noranda in which the company promised not to disturb a family plot where the remains of his ancestors rested.

Less than 30 feet to the back of his house is a gaping crater stretching for more than 200 metres.

The residents have also complained that the miners have been filling sinkholes in the area, placing them at risk of flooding during heavy rains.

Sinkholes, which are found in many rural communities, are nature's way of providing drainage for rainwater to flow into rivers and eventually the sea.

Janet Smith, a respected resident of Sterling district, was critical of bauxite mining, claiming that it brought more problems than good to communities.

"It has destroyed the topography of many farming communities in the Dry Harbour Mountains. We do not need bauxite mining," she said. "They leave huge craters everywhere they mine and they don't seem to care that people's lives are being turned upside down. The land cannot be farmed after it is mined out. The dust and noise are hazards. This is wrong."

A section of a mined-out crater in Stepney.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/St-Ann-residents-say-bauxite-company-has-made-their-lives-hell_9869046

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Cell Phone Risks?

Some call the views in the first article "alarmist". Personally, holding a receiver/transmitter next to my head has never made sense to me so the point of keeping the phone away from your body resonates. Simple enough, change how you use the phone.

The second article gets into areas that, to me, lead to an easy way out - once won't kill you. But it is an amazing amount of "once's" that have gotten us where we are. So it will also take a lot of one time events - like putting the bottle into recycling, choosing glass over plastic - to change our situation.

Wake Up Call: The Story of One Woman's Quest to Save Lives

by Ellen Marks

At age 56 my husband was diagnosed with a malignant and lethal brain tumor. Before his diagnosis we had no idea that some researchers had linked prolonged cell phone use with brain tumors. I couldn’t stand idly by—the world needed to know what I had discovered.

On the night of May 5, 2008 I awoke to the sight of my husband’s arms flailing, face contorting, eyes rolling back in the head.Alan was having a grand mal seizure. Unable to wake him, I called 911. When he finally opened his eyes Alan couldn’t speak or understand anything the paramedics asked of him. At 4:00 AM in a cold emergency room I was told he had a mass in his right frontal lobe, the part of the brain that allows us to differentiate between right and wrong, to control our impulses, and to relate to those we love. For years he had been exhibiting unexplainable behavior that caused emotional chaos in our family. Now we knew the cause. At age 56 he was diagnosed with a glioma—a malignant and lethal brain tumor.

Six weeks later, Alan underwent a seven-hour craniotomy and resection of the glioma. Today, with titanium holding his skull in place, he is able to walk and talk. Deficits nonetheless remain, and the prognosis is that the tumor will almost certainly grow back—much more aggressively than before.

Coincidentally, our son Zack had interned for Senator Ted Kennedy, whose seizure occurred just 10 days after Alan’s. At the time there was speculation in the media that the senator’s tumor might be related to his frequent cell phone use. I’d also heard on CNN a suggestion by Dr. Keith Black, chairman of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, that Attorney Johnnie Cochran’s tumor might have resulted from the same cause.

All of this got me thinking. For about 20 years, Alan’s cell phone was a vital part of his work, always on, always ringing, always next to the right side of his head—the same side as the tumor.

I began researching cell phone risk studies. While I found much disagreement among scientists about the risks associated with cell phone use, the research on glioma by oncologist and cancer epidemiologist Dr. Lennart Hardell et. al. at University Hospital in Örebro, Sweden (2009) seemed particularly relevant to what had happened to my husband. Dr. Hardell found “a consistent pattern of an association between mobile phone use and ipsilateral [on one side of the head] glioma and acoustic neuroma [a benign tumor of the hearing nerve] using ≥ 10-years latency period.” According to Dr. Hardell, the heaviest users of cell phones have doubled the risk of brain tumors after a decade.

I sent my husband’s medical and cell phone records to Dr. Hardell and asked him if he thought there might be a connection to Alan’s brain tumor. He responded that, in his professional opinion, “It is more probable than not that [Alan] Marks’ glioma was caused by his long-term mobile phone use according to current literature.”

I also sent my husband’s medical and cell phone records to Dr. Elihu Richter, head of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Medicine, whose research calculates risk assessment of occupational exposure to radiation, including cell phones. Dr. Richter offered a similar assessment: “The weight of evidence suggests it is more likely than not that there is a cause/effect relationship between [Alan’s] heavy cell phone use and his brain tumor. The fact that a brain tumor appeared after a 10-year latent period and on the right side, where he held the phone, is consistent with the emerging body of knowledge on exposure, latency, and laterality of cell phone use.”

What was I to do with this alarming information? As a Jew I considered it my sacred duty to inform others how responsible cell phone use might possibly spare them and their loved ones from the suffering my family had endured. To save a life, our tradition teaches, is to save the world.

But with a sick husband, did I have the energy to take on this struggle? And if I did, exactly how far was I prepared to go?

Shortly thereafter, during a Shabbat service at my congregation, Temple Sinai in Oakland, I read these words in Mishkan T’filah—A Reform Siddur:

When justice burns within us like a flaming fire,
When love evokes willing sacrifice from us,
When, to the last full measure of selfless devotion, we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness,
Then Your goodness enters our lives and we can begin to change the world.
And then You live in our hearts, and we, through righteousness, behold our truth.

My decision was made. I couldn’t stand idly by in the face of what I saw as an injustice, for “Who can protest and does not is an accomplice of the act” (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 54b).

Several international scientists and doctors who studied the relationship between cell phones and cancer personally embraced and supported our family. Dr. Richter of Israel, for example, spent hours on the phone with me explaining how he could help Alan regain some of his cognitive, physical, and behavioral abilities. Dr. Devra Davis, an epidemiologist and cancer researcher who founded the Environmental Health Trust and authored the book Disconnect on the cell phone controversy, called me often to meditate on the Sh’ma and pray together. My new friends had become a blessing.

On September 24, 2008, I testified before a congressional committee in Washington, DC. My public activism had begun.

After telling the lawmakers what had happened to Alan, I urged them to “demand that warnings about cell phone usage and the radiation they emit be stated on every cell phone. By doing so you will protect our most precious resource of all—human life.”

Wanting to learn more, in 2009 I attended an Environmental Health Trust Expert Conference on cell phones and health. Experts from 10 nations reported on their scientific findings. Martin Blank, Ph.D., professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, reported that microwave radiation has the potential of changing bonds in DNA strands which could lead to cancer. Dr. Leif Salford, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, Lund University, Sweden, reported a positive correlation between gliomas and mobile-phone exposure, which he attributed to DNA damage caused by cell phone radiation occurring at non-thermal levels. Dr. Salford’s finding called into question the belief widely held among scientists that cell phone radiation could not cause cancer because it is non-thermal.

Yet Dr. Michael Thun, vice president of the American Cancer Society, reported that when looking at all the studies to date, the data on brain tumor risk had been reassuring. A heated discussion ensued. Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, an Israeli epidemiologist and physician who drafted the Israeli government’s official warning on cell phones, asked Dr. Thun in astonishment, “How can you say such a thing?” Another attendee commented, “[It’s] tobacco all over again, only worse.”

Dr. Thun’s position is consistent with those of the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, the National Cancer Institute, and the Federal Communications Commission. These agencies consider cell phones safe, though they acknowledge that more research is needed. The 2008–2009 President’s Cancer Panel’s “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk” (an annual report of the U.S. Department of Health and Homeland Services, National Institutes of Health, and National Cancer Institute) did acknowledge, however, that epidemiologic studies “have been able to assess only short lag periods [of use] and focused on a small number of cancer types. Thus while considerable research has been conducted on cancer risk due to RF (radio frequency radiation) from cell phones…the available data are neither consistent nor conclusive….” Subsequent studies on the potential dangers of cell phone use have not produced a consensus among scientists in different countries.

Most recently, on May 31, 2011, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans based on increased risk for glioma associated with wireless phone use. IARC Director Christopher Wild said, “Given the potential consequences...of this classification and findings, it is important that additional research be conducted into the long-term, heavy use of mobile phones. Pending the availability of...information, it is important to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure, such as hands-free
devices or texting.”

While I was still in Washington I appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and on Fox News with Shepard Smith. Alan, our children, and I appeared on The Dr. Oz Show , during which Dr. Mehmet Oz declared, “I’ve heard enough to make me rethink my cell phone use and that of my children.”

In December 2009, I began working with the San Francisco Department of Environment and the mayor’s office on a “Right-to-Know” ordinance that would require posting at point-of-sale (in addition to within user guides) the amount of radiation (Specific Absorption Rate or SAR) a cell phone emits. San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, however, was not yet fully on board.

One night, my husband, his brother, sister-in-law, and I were having dinner in a San Francisco restaurant when our waitress mentioned that Mayor Newsom was sitting near us. My sister-in-law looked me in the eye, gave me the thumbs-up, and said, “You go, girl!” Timidly I approached the mayor and, after introducing myself, told him I would be testifying at the cell phone hearing Monday night. The mayor said he knew who I was, and, gripping my hand, assured me, “This is going to be just fine.”

When I arrived at the hearing, Debbie Raphael of the San Francisco Department of Environment approached me and asked, “Just what did you say to the mayor at dinner the other night?” Mayor Newsom had endorsed the cell phone legislation, and the committee voted to move it forward! Six months later, despite strong opposition from CTIA, the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, the bill passed 10–1. Similar legislation is being considered in other California cities.

I am not opposed to using cell phones. But it angers me that the U.S. government and national health agencies do not do a better job of warning people of the potential risks, especially to young children, whose brains absorb more radiation than adults and who, the President’s Cancer Panel acknowledges, “have ahead of them a lifetime of RF [radio frequency] and other radiation exposures and, therefore, special caution is prudent.”

Other nations have gone much further in alerting the public. The Israeli government, for example, has banned the marketing of cell phones to children and requires manufacturers to display the SAR on every cell phone. And in France, cell phones are not allowed in schools, and every cell phone is required to be sold with a headset.

Trying to effect change on this issue has not been easy. There are great obstacles, such as the love people have for their devices and people’s resistance to acknowledging the potential dangers. Many times I’ve wanted to give up my advocacy out of despair—such as when I see my own niece holding a cell phone against her head. But my fear that, without action, we will face a pandemic of brain cancer within the next 20 years prevents me from keeping silent.

Thankfully, I have the support of my rabbi, Steven Chester, who believes, “Anything that might be detrimental to one’s health, but might get buried…becomes a Jewish issue.” At his invitation, I addressed our congregation on the subject. Reciting the prayer from Mishkan T’filah—A Reform Siddur that had inspired me to take on this challenge brought me back full circle:

…When, to the last full measure of selfless devotion, we demonstrate our belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness,Then Your goodness enters our lives and we can begin to change the world.

Ellen Marks is a member of Temple Sinai in Oakland, California; a past president of Women of Temple Sinai and of the Sisterhood of Temple Israel in Stockton, California; co-founder with her son Zack of the California Brain Tumor Association; and lead author of the Cell Phone and Brain Cancer Legislative Briefing Book, which has been translated into eight languages, including Hebrew. She is also director of Government and Public Affairs for the Environmental Health Trust.

Ellen Marks' Recommended Cell Phone Precautions

Given the potential dangers of improper long-term cell phone use, the following steps can limit your radiation exposure:

Read the fine-print advisories in your user guide.
Use your cell phone less and a corded landline more often.
Keep a cell phone in “on” mode away from your head or body.
Do not sleep with a cell phone near your head (i.e., under your pillow or on a nightstand).
Avoid cell phone use in elevators, moving vehicles and rural areas, as the weaker the signal the stronger the radiation emitted.
Use a plastic tubed headset or speakerphone.
Do not allow children to use a cell phone, except in an emergency.
Text often (but not while driving)

http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=2885

And a different approach -

Will Your Cell Phone Kill You?
by Daniel Eisenberg, M.D.

A Jewish approach to risk evaluation.

According to a recently released statement by the World Health Organization, radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer in humans. According to Jewish law, does that mean it is time to throw away your cell phone and return to using only landlines?

Every day, we face a myriad of potential health hazards, some certain and some questionable. We drive cars, play sports, eat junk food, and speak on cell phones. Some activities, such as pregnancy and childbirth are commonplace, but certainly present a component of significant risk. It is impossible to avoid some risk in our daily lives, but how much risk does the Torah permit one to take?

From a secular perspective, autonomy dictates that one may take as much risk as one wishes (so long as no one else is endangered and society will not have to care for the orphans created by one’s risky behavior). But the Torah instructs us to guard our health because the individual does not hold title to his body.

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