The dirty dozen and the clean 15...

http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/

Dirty Dozen Buy these organic 1) Apples 2) Celery 3) Strawberries 4 ) Peaches
5) Spinach 6) Nectarines– imported 7) Grapes – imported Sweet bell peppers
9) Potatoes 10) Blueberries – domestic 11) Lettuce 12) Kale/collard greens

Clean 15-Lowest in Pesticide:1- Onions 2- Sweet Corn 3- Pineapples 4- Avocado
5- Asparagus 6- Sweet peas 7- Mangoes 8- Eggplant 9- Cantaloupe - domestic
10- Kiwi 11- Cabbage 12- Watermelon 13- Sweet potatoes 14- Grapefruit 15- Mushrooms

Very interesting. I never knew that. Good to know.

I want my equal rights.

Agrichemical companies make huge profits. Some of this money is spent to lobby the agencies that have been tasked with protecting our health. These big corps use their own industry favoring studies, that they fund, to sell their products to the EPA.

In this way huge corps like Syngenta and Monsanto are able to poison us with their latest and greatest pesticides for years before the facts come out about how they negatively affect human health and the health of our planet.

We don't have the money or power to balance these huge corps assertions (lies mostly) with our own unbiased studies, and then wine and dine the EPA to help sell the results better, so we're forced to trust the EPA to protect us. And even after that trust is clearly broken, we still live and die by their decisions. I want my equal rights. I beg our government to hear this plea. Please don't poison us, please don't let others poison us. I want my right to life. Corporations are not being held responsible for these acts. When will they be forced to remediate the enviornmental damage they have caused? Never, eventually we the tax payers will.

http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/201 ... cancer-epa


Atrazine is the 2nd most widely used pesticide on US farms. The EPA operated under the assumption it was not a carcinogen. Then in '09 they launched "comprehensive new evaluation of the pesticide atrazine to determine its effects on humans."

Last week, the EPA released the minutes of the panel's final meeting, which took place July 26-28. Its conclusions were stark. The panel criticized the EPA for lumping all forms of cancer together in its atrazine assessment, noting that "it would be useful and appropriate to make conclusions for individual cancers as opposed to making a blanket determination for cancer in general." It then gave a list of cancers for which there is "suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential": ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer. For other cancers—prostate cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancers, and childhood cancers—the panel found that "there is inadequate evidence" to determine whether or not atrazine is a cause.

At another point in the minutes, the panel pointed to "strong" epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to thyroid cancer and "suggestive" evidence linking it to ovarian cancer. "Many on the Panel believed that the epidemiology data failed to provide compelling evidence that atrazine is not carcinogenic," the minutes stated.

The panel's takeaway message:

The Panel recommended adjusting the conclusion that atrazine is unlikely to be carcinogenic to humans to "inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential."

To put the panel's conclusion in plain English, the agency had been understating the cancer risk posed by atrazine. That can bring no comfort to hundreds of thousands of people who live in the agriculture-intensive regions of the Midwest and South (ah, cali to, no?). That's because, as this 2010 analysis of US Geological Survey data by the Natural Resources Defense Council shows, surface water and drinking water there are "pervasively contaminated with atrazine." What's worse, levels often spike during times of year when farmers apply the chemical. (Thanks EPA)

Is it time to review US history? We have the right to assemble, we have the right to free speech. What do we want to do with these rights. How can we fix the problems our country is in by excercising these rights.

Do any of these words from Thomas Jefferson apply here?...

( the () = my attempts to update and help apply TJ's words to the present mess)

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another (the 1% vs the 99%?), and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation (or massive overhaul in this case).

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies (99%); and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The (recent) history of the present King of Great Britain (US gov et al) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States (99%). To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. (insert supporting facts here)

Is it treason to ask for equal rights?