Al Gore Reacts to Climate-Gate

March 1, 2010

New York Times

By Al Gore

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing — much less reduce them.

And in spite of President Obama’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to “take note” of an intention to act.

Because the world still relies on leadership from the United States, the failure by the Senate to pass legislation intended to cap American emissions before the Copenhagen meeting guaranteed that the outcome would fall far short of even the minimum needed to build momentum toward a meaningful solution.

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Green Technologies Dependant on Old Technologies

February 15, 2010

Natural News

By Ethan A. Huff

The advent of new “green” technologies may seem like a perfect remedy to many former methods that caused heavy pollution and environmental destruction. The only problem is that many of these new technologies require the mining of rare earth metals which often leads to the destruction of land, farms, and water supplies.

Coming primarily from China, rare earth metals like dysprosium and terbium are mined largely by criminal gangs who dominate the heavy metal mining industry. Because nearly all of the world’s supply of these metals is contained in China, the industry lacks any significant regulation. Gang owners are known for savagely tearing apart large swaths of land and leaving behind destructive acid solvents that ruin farmland and pollute rivers, streams and lakes.

The alternative energy industry is gaining popularity at breathtaking speed as nations strive to restructure their energy policies to use clean energy. Because China has a near monopoly on the mining operations that make these technologies possible, many nations including the U.S., are already investing in studies about alternatives to the existing alternatives.

The way it typically works is miners will gather the topsoil from a piece of land, move it into large dirt pits, and filter out the metals using acid washes that separate the metals from the soil. Once exhausted, large areas of barren, acid-tainted land remain where rice fields once lived. The heavy rains come and wash the acid residue downstream to other fields, contaminating them as well.

Even after mining operations are finished, cleanup is typically never done; workers simply move to the next site to begin the process again, extracting as much as possible with no consideration given to protecting the environment. Roughly half of the mining operations are legal and only a fraction of these operate responsibly; those operating illegally often use and abuse the land without providing any compensation to the farmers whose livelihoods are destroyed.

There is currently no effective way to identify which rare earth metals come from legitimate companies and which come from illegal, thug-controlled fly-by-nights. All of it simply gets imported together where it gets refined for use in military gear, wind turbines, electric batteries, and other technologies. In order to avoid detection, illegally derived rare earth metals are often mixed with steel and smuggled in order to hide them from customs agents, later to be extracted and sold.

Many experts believe that tougher regulation on the industry is necessary in order to make clean energy a reality. Otherwise the developed world might as well return to the old ways.

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Britain Faces Oil Crunch Within 5 Years

February 11, 2010

Telegraph

It said the challenges facing the UK would exceed those presented by the financial crisis and said the poorest in society were most vulnerable to potentially significant increases.

The report said Government must acknowledge the risks to the economy and to produce contingency plans for transport, retail, agriculture and alternative power.

‘Unless we do so, we face a situation during the term of the next government where fuel price unrest could lead to shortages in consumer products and the UK’s energy security will be significantly compromised,” it said.

The report was compiled by the Industry Taskforce for Peak Oil and Energy Security, a group of private British companies whose members include Sir Richard, Brian Souter, chief executive of Stagecoach, Scottish & Southern Energy boss Ian Marchant and Philip Dilley, chairman of consultancy firm Arup.

Virgin Group founder Sir Richard – whose airline and rail businesses are sensitive to volatility in the cost of crude – said businesses and Government should work together to prepare the economy.

”UK competitiveness will be hampered unless we can develop viable, affordable and secure long term sources of alternative energy,” he said.

While the report did not address climate change directly, it stressed ”massive areas of overlap” between the issues of depleted resources and pollution.

It said transportation was particularly vulnerable to rising oil prices, with businesses from supermarkets to manufacturers reliant on delivery networks.

The group said alternative methods of powering vehicles – for example electrification of the railways – should be explored and infrastructure developed.

It recommended removing the current £9 billion tax break on fuel for domestic airlines and using the money for public transport investment, while also encouraging a shift away from car travel.

”The UK’s freight network, cars and public transport systems are almost entirely dependent on oil,” Mr Souter said.

”The twin threats of the oil crunch and climate change make that unsustainable.”

Mr Marchant warned economic growth ”will be endangered” as price rises hike the cost of raw materials and deplete consumers’ spending power.

”There is the danger of creating a social recession as the poorest households get hit the hardest by higher prices,” the Scottish & Southern Energy boss said.

Government was also urged to plan for food price hikes, as agriculture relies on oil-related products like fertilisers.

The report comes amid general fears about future energy security and costs in the UK.

Energy watchdog Ofgem has warned electricity and gas may become unaffordable for an increasing number of households unless drastic action is taken to secure power supplies.

Oil prices have been particularly volatile in recent years, spiking at $147 a barrel in July 2008 before plummeting to $32 a barrel that December amid the financial crisis and onset of the economic downturn.

It climbed again to around $70 to $80 late last year and has stayed relatively static as many world economies remain under pressure.

Global economic woes have pushed the ”oil crunch” point – when global demand will use up stocks faster than they can be replaced by new production – back by two years and given governments and firms more time to work out how to act.

But oil prices are still predicted to climb to a sustained level above $100 a barrel within the next five years.

And the UK is seen to be particularly vulnerable to price fluctuations as it increasingly relies on energy imports.

Sudden supply shocks would ”quickly reverberate throughout the UK’s supply chain”, according to Dr Robert Falkner of the London School of Economics, who compiled part of the report.

”Air travel and road haulage are now the key reasons behind our dangerous addiction to oil,” he said.

The widely expected de-coupling of gas and oil prices should ease the pressure on household energy costs.

”Nevertheless, a rise in living costs – in the form of higher travel and transport costs and consumer prices – is firmly on the agenda,” he added.

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Air Pollution Can be Detrimental to Child’s IQ

February 5, 2010

Natural News

By David Gutierrez

Exposure to air pollution in the womb can significantly reduce a child’s IQ, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Mailman School of Public Health in New York and published in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers conducted the experiment on pregnant, non-smoking black and Dominican American women between the ages of 18 and 35 who were living in the New York City neighborhoods of Harlem, South Bronx or Washington Heights. The participants wore personal air monitors during pregnancy, providing the researchers accurate data on the women’s exposure to a class of air pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The participant’s children were then subjected to standardized IQ tests at age five.

“These results provide evidence that environmental PAHs at levels encountered in New York City air can affect children’s IQ adversely,” the researchers concluded.

PAHs are produced by the burning of fossil fuels and other organic materials, including tobacco. The major source of PAH pollution in urban areas is automobile exhaust.

The researchers found that after adjusting for other factors that might affect IQ, children of mothers who had high PAH exposure during pregnancy had IQ scores an average of 4.31 points lower than children of mothers with lower exposure. The difference in verbal IQ scores was even higher, with children of high-exposure mothers scoring an average of 4.61 points lower. This IQ difference is equivalent to that seen in children with low-level lead exposure.

“These findings are of concern because these decreases in IQ could be educationally meaningful in terms of school performance,” lead author Frederica Perera said.

High PAH exposure was defined as higher than the participants’ median exposure level, 2.26 nanograms per cubic meter. It was a comparative measure used for the purposes of the study only, and not linked to any health recommendations.

Previous research has already suggested that PAH exposure can cause cancer and damage the neurological and reproductive systems.

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Mountain Top Coal Mining – Environmental and Health Threats

January 11, 2010

Los Angeles Times

By Tom Hamburger

Mountaintop coal mining, which involves blowing up mountain peaks to get access to coal seams below, should be halted immediately because of growing evidence of its environmental and health threats, scientists urged Thursday in the journal Science.

The paper, by a group of hydrologists, ecologists and engineers, presents a new and difficult challenge to the Obama administration, which has upset environmentalists by continuing to approve such permits even as it has promised to rely on scientific expertise in deciding whether to grant permits for the controversial practice.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently released a permit for a large mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia, which raised objections from environmental activists.

Coal companies say the practice is more efficient and safer than traditional deep-shaft mining, and that steps are taken to mitigate damage. Environmentalists say it degrades the landscape, destroys habitat and pollutes streams that get filled with debris from explosions.

The issue is politically touchy for President Obama, who won his election with the support of environmentalists but also needs support from voters in coal states, such as Ohio, where he won by a narrow margin.

The authors of the paper urged the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reject all new mountaintop mining permits.

“The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable,” said lead author Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

The paper, which analyzed findings from previous studies along with new water-quality data from West Virginia, outlined environmental degradation at mining sites and downstream, “including harmful consequences for both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.”

The authors also described health effects associated with surface mining for coal in the Appalachian region where most of this mining takes place. The problems include elevated death rates, lung cancer and kidney disease in coal-producing communities.

The EPA said in a statement Thursday that the article “underscores EPA’s own scientific analysis regarding the substantial environmental, water and health impacts that result from mountaintop mining operations.”

But environmentalists said the EPA’s efforts to regulate mountaintop mining have been inadequate.

“The permit that the EPA just released this week is not consistent with what the scientists are saying,” said Joan Mulhern, counsel to Earthjustice, which has taken legal action to halt the practice.

“The Obama administration has pledged in general to . . . do what the science dictates. This unequivocal new study has got to drive them to phase out the practice,” Mulhern said.

She and other environmentalists had been mystified and confused by the administration’s approach, which blocks some permits but approves others. She said the administration has not responded to requests for clarification.

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Ethanol Burns Dirtier Than Gasoline

December 28, 2009

Natural News

By Mike Adams

A recent study conducted by researchers at Stanford University has revealed that ethanol fuel produces more ozone that regular gasoline. When ethanol is burned through combustion, it produces emissions that are substantially higher than gasoline in aldehydes, the carcinogenic precursors to ozone.

Much of the fuel dispensed at pumps in America today is a blend of both ethanol and gasoline. E85, a typical gasoline blend that is 85 percent ethanol, was found to emit more ozone pollutants than gasoline, especially during warm, sunny days. Diana Ginnebaugh, a doctoral candidate who worked on the study, explained that even on cold days when ozone is typically not a problem, E85 could result in problematic levels of ozone.

When a car is first started on a cold day, it takes the catalytic converter a few minutes to warm up in order to reach maximum efficiency. During the warmup period, the highest proportion of pollutants escape the car’s tailpipe, resulting in increased pollution. According to Ginnebaugh, even a slight increase in pollutants could cause places like Los Angeles and Denver, cities that already have smog problems, to have significantly more days when ozone limits are exceeded and public health is at risk.

E85 emissions contain several other different pollutants including ones that cause throat and eye irritation and lung problems. Crop damage may also occur from the aldehydes emitted from the burning of ethanol. In the worst-case scenario, E85 was found to potentially add 39 parts per billion more ozone into the air a day than normal gasoline.

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
This study exposes yet another angle on the scam of ethanol — a fuel that has been pushed as “green” by corn growers who obviously benefit from the increased demand for their crops. But ethanol is largely a scam: It takes nearly as much fuel to grow and process ethanol as you get back out of it, making it an extremely inefficient plant-based fuel.

At the same time, as this study shows, ethanol is also causing more pollution than regular gasoline. So it’s not cleaner and greener; it’s actually dirtier and wasteful.

As with everything involving fuel, ethanol has become a highly politicized issue where real science gets abandoned. Rather than focusing on real energy solutions, the U.S. government remains focused on things that give the appearance of clean energy when, in reality, they are quite the opposite.

What we should really be pursuing as a nation is a high-priority project to enhance battery technology so that the next generation of vehicles could all run on electricity gathered from the sun via solar panels. Why burn up corn as fuel when you can collect your fuel from the sky for free?

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Overfishing, Pollution Pushing Oceans into Ecological Collapse

December 23, 2009

Natural News

By E. Huff

Many experts believe that the world’s oceans are at a crucial tipping point in which major ecological collapse is imminent. Overfishing, pollution, and general destruction of sea life is putting the oceanic system and its delicate ecosystems in dire straits.

Brian Skerry, an undersea photojournalist interviewed by a journalist from The Boston Phoenix, elaborated on what he was witnessing in the oceanic system. Decaying coral reefs, endangered species, and the massive reduction in population of certain sea creatures are among the devastating realities that has caused this diver to avoid eating seafood.

Every year, over 100 million sharks are killed. The North Atlantic right whale population, which was once a highly populous species in the region, is down to about 400. Atlantic cod is said to be about 10 percent of what it once was. Most commercial fish populations have been reduced by 90 percent or more. The Atlantic Ocean is becoming highly acidic and the Pacific Ocean is becoming a giant garbage dump. And all of these things have occurred in about 50 years.

Some scientists believe that if things don’t change and current practices continue as they are, the ocean will be barren of all sea life by 2048. Others believe this notion is drastic and unrealistic, but the point remains that the careless treatment of the world’s oceans is likely to have catastrophic results if not curtailed.

Overfishing in certain areas has led to increases in coral reef decay and death. Catching shrimp, for instance, involves dragging a net along the bottom of the ocean floor which catches all sorts of other ocean wildlife. Only a small portion of the catch is actually shrimp, leading to the dumping of the rest of the then-dead by-catch back into the ocean.

Some of the ocean damage has also been inflicted by severe hurricanes and tsunamis which are outside of man’s control. Yet there is no denying that ruthless ocean harvesting practices are causing problems that would otherwise not occur if proper ocean stewardship practices were followed.

While some suggest that international regulations should be mandated, the consequences of giving control over natural resources to an international global government would likely prove disastrous for American sovereignty. Many current regulations are actually harming the waters more than they are helping them. Incentives that encourage proper stewardship are one possible option that would preserve freedom and liberty while avoiding totalitarian restrictions over the waters.

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UN Document Reveals Climate Brainwashing

December 1, 2009

Prison Planet.com

By Paul Joseph Watson

With the reverberations of climategate still echoing, it has now emerged that children are being greenwashed in public schools by being forced to sing climate cult ditties and hate their parents as part of a United Nations propaganda program aimed at capturing young minds, as the UN itself officially acknowledges the global warming mantra as a new religion.

A shocking new UN strategy document also reveals how elitists are recruiting members of academia from all over the globe in an effort to hide the “end-run” around national sovereignty that their program represents.

“When did global warming turn into a forced religion?,” asks the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser as she tells the story of how her daughter came home from school singing the words ” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . “.

“All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called “The Warming Song,” at a concert for parents. Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees,” writes Peyser.

That’s right, in the spirit of the Club of Rome’s 1991 resolution to make humanity the enemy in creating the contrived threat of environmental armageddon, children have been turned against their own parents in the service of a new gaia religion.

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.,” they wrote in a report entitled “The First Global Revolution”.

“Our children are on the front lines of the warming hysteria, a place where “experts” from Al Gore to the president leave no room for dissent or even the slightest skepticism, despite claims that are no more provable than the Earth is flat.,” says Peyser.

A newly uncovered document sheds some light on the genesis of how such brainwashing found its way into our schools.

A strategy paper for the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world’s would-be environmental watchdog, reveals how the global elite in charge of the green takeover resolved that, “Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion “as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,” according to a Fox News report.

This approach follows a similar tack to the new methods adopted by Al Gore, who in his recent presentations has delivered his message as a kind of religious sermon, acknowledging, “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”

The UN planning paper outlines a program of implementing a global system of governance based around environmental regulations and laws, stressing the agenda for the “evolutionary nature of strengthening international environmental governance.”

Participants included Janos Pasztor, currently head of the team pushing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s unprecedented Seal the Deal lobbying campaign to pressure U.N. member governments into signing a new environmental agreement at Copenhagen, Dominic Waughray, currently head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum; and Maria Ivanova, and Bulgarian academic Maria Ivanova, director of the Global Economic Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

A core element of the program includes, “an extensive propagandizing role for UNEP that reaches beyond its member governments and traditional environmental institutions to “children and youth”.

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Oceans in Crisis – Are We Doing it?

November 23, 2009

ENN

ByMike Millard

I meet world-renowned undersea photojournalist Brian Skerry at Legal Seafoods, across from the New England Aquarium, where he’s the explorer in residence.

He orders a chicken Caesar salad.

“I refrain from eating much seafood due to environmental concerns,” he explains, before launching into a depressing litany of problems facing the world’s marine ecosystems.

“I have to remain optimistic, because I do believe there’s always hope,” says Skerry, who spends more than half of every year underwater, diving with harp seals in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and green sea turtles in Kiribati. “That said, it’s very discouraging what I’m seeing.”

What he’s seeing are oceans in crisis, their health potentially at a tipping point: gratuitously destructive overfishing, endangered underwater “big game” (100 million sharks killed each year), dying coral reefs, and subtle but potentially catastrophic shifts that are almost certainly due to climate change.

It’s not just ruthless whaling and foolhardy fishing practices that are plaguing the world’s oceans. Underwater, things are bad all over — from the acidifying Atlantic to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A perfect storm of climate change, pollution, and rapacious global fishing practices has the potential to gravely imperil Earth’s oceans and their intricate, highly sensitive ecosystems.

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Clean and Toxic – School Cleaning Supplies Contaminating California Classrooms

November 23, 2009

Environmental Working Group

Air pollution testing conducted for the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reveals that cleaning supplies used in 13 key California school districts can cloud classroom air with more than 450 distinct toxic contaminants, including chemical agents linked to asthma and cancer. EWG released its findings today in Santa Monica during a news conference where attendees, again, called on the State legislature to adopt a measure that would encourage school districts across California to use less toxic cleaning supplies.

The 13 school districts included in the study were chosen for their geographic diversity and diversity of size. Several districts have already begun moving to green cleaners, while others have pilot programs underway at various stages.

Most of the 450 chemicals identified have never been assessed for safety; six are identified with increasing the risk asthma, and eleven are known, probable or possible human carcinogens.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at present, nearly 1 in 10 children have asthma in the U.S., up from 7.5 percent in 1996, and just 3.6 percent in 1980. One in six California children will develop asthma at some point during childhood or adolescence. Asthma is a major source of absenteeism in California schools. In 2001, 136,000 children with asthma ages 12-17 missed at least one day of school per month, costing schools $40.8 million in state funds.

“Classroom cleaners can deliver harmful fumes to millions of school children each day, and parents have no way to know about it,” said Rebecca Sutton, Ph.D., an EWG senior scientist and author of the study. “Cleaning products aren’t required to list ingredients on the label, leaving school systems and everyday consumers without critical information to make the smart choices.”

Chemicals found in school cleaning products included:
6 that can lead to asthma: formaldehyde, styrene, methyl methacrylate, ethanolamine, alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (ADBAC), didecyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride. Childhood asthma prevalence has more than doubled since 1980, and today nearly 10 percent of children have asthma.

11 that have been tied to increased cancer risk: formaldehyde, styrene, chloroform, trichloroethylene, benzene, 1-chloro-2, 3-epoxypropane, acetaldehyde, N-ethyl-N-nitroso-ethanamine, 2-butoxyethanol, ethylbenzene, quartz. Incidence of childhood cancer rose 28 percent from 1974 to 1998, with especially significant increases in leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and several brain and nervous system cancers.

What about H1N1?
School and health officials are rightly concerned about controlling the spread of the H1N1 virus. This report analyzed air contamination from school cleaning products and does not make any specific recommendations in relation to H1N1 except to follow the advice of the government health officials.

“The H1N1 virus presents a unique situation that requires special precautions. We recommend that all schools follow the official guidance of the CDC and their local health authorities,” said Sutton.
Popular Household Brands are also a Big Problem:
The 20-plus cleaning products EWG tested included a handful of popular brands such as Comet Disinfectant Powder Cleanser, which produced 146 air contaminants when used as directed, more than any other product tested. Comet fumes included formaldehyde, benzene, chloroform, and four other chemicals identified by the state of California as causing cancer or reproductive harm.

Among the others tested were the general purpose cleaner Simple Green and the air freshener Febreze Air Effects, which produced 93 and 89 air contaminants, respectively.

Tests that compared cleaning a model classroom using three ordinary cleansers with three “certified green” products showed that “green” cleaning supplies released less than one-sixth of the air pollution produced by conventional cleaning. Tests did find low levels of chemicals tied to cancer and asthma in some of the green products. But overall, certified green cleaning supplies produce lower pollution levels and fewer chemicals than conventional products.

“Green cleaners could be greener,” said Sutton, “but our test show that they are consistently more environmentally friendly than their conventional counterparts.

Last spring, California Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-41st District) introduced legislation that would require public schools to adopt the use of certified green cleaning products if they could do so at the same cost. The Clean and Healthy Schools Act (AB 821) is currently before the Assembly’s appropriations committee for consideration.

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