Last weekend before comps...

OK, I'm ready. I think.

Ogodogodogodogodogod!!!!!!!!

my orange morning

Simple Green: Not simple, DEFINITELY not green!

Warning:  this is gonna make you really mad. At least I hope so.

Taking a break from studying for comps, I decided to Google: Is Simple Green safe for washing dishes?

I had run out of dish soap (I use the natural stuff, the stuff you get in the Organics section of Fred Meyers), and I thought: why not make a simple solution of baking soda, water, and Simple Green?

I did, and it was fantastic. With my limited supply of funny-colored water, I have to say my dishes never looked cleaner.  The solution was much thinner than dish soap, however, so I ran out after a week or so. No problem: I have a gallon of Simple Green under the sink. It will be months until I run out!

I bought this jug of Simple Green from our local Home Depot about a year ago, and I’ve been using it in an old spray bottle to clean my countertops, walls, etc. It does an amazing job of removing grease. Some time ago, I’d heard that SG is not all that great for the environment.

But I kind of pushed that aside and went on with my life.

The other day, looking at the late afternoon sun winking on a perfectly sparkly water glass sitting in my dish drainer, I felt a wave of X-Files skepticism: This stuff was cleaning my dishes really well, AND kind to the environment? Too good to be true.  

I googled “Simple Green MSDS”, and downloaded it (you know, the Material Safety Data Sheets: the comprehensive label for any chemical product listing its reactivity, flammability, and of course its ingredients).

Simple Green is a mixture of 78% water, and 5% each of the following:

2‐butoxyethanol


Ethoxylated Alcohol

Tetrapotassium Pyrophosphate

Sodium Citrate

It also has 1% or less each of “fragrance” and “colorant”

OK, so what is this first one, this 2-butoxyethanol?

It’s a type of synthetic chemical known as an organic compound. Organic because it’s made with carbon, not because it’s harmless to the environment. It’s composed of 6 parts carbon 14 parts hydrogen and 2 parts oxygen (and when I say MADE, I mean this molecule does not occur in nature, it was made in a lab). It’s mainly used as a solvent in a variety of industrial applications because it’s great for removing oily substances. Ironically, it’s used in fracking as well as in oil spill cleanups: 

(Hey Bernie, I got an order for 50,000 gallons for the Alberta Tar Sands, and another 50,000 for Prince William Sound--Hooters tonight, my treat)

It’s made from butanol, itself a very toxic 4-carbon alcohol that's widely used in a bunch of commercial applications (Hey Joe, the Simple Green people just gave us another order for 500,000 gallons of butanol--Hooters tonight, my treat)

The molecule is a sturdy-looking little thing, but don't let that fool you. If you made a 2-butoxyethanol using balloons, it would look like a dachshund with many bumps along its back and sides (the C-H bonds) and a big head made out of oxygen and hydrogen (the reactive part).

Once this stuff hits the air, it forms a bunch of different peroxides (molecules with reactive oxygen - oxygen bonds), many of which are very flammable if not downright toxic.

But, it degrades in a few hours into presumably harmless compounds. Thus, the Simple Green people are allowed to label it “biodegradable.”

Furthermore, it takes a relatively high amount to kill lab animals. This is known as the LD-50 test. LD stands for “lethal dose,” 50 refers to 50% of the test population.  They basically give the animals enough of the stuff until 50% of them die. We do this in the US for every chemical substance used in industrial, medical, commercial, and home purposes (exceptions are products that specify not tested on animals). For rats and rabbits, that comes out to 5g of 2-butoxyethanol per kg of body weight (5g is about a shot glass). Since your average laboratory rat weighs about half a kilo, that's about 1% of its body weight; presumably it would act pretty quick and painless. For a rabbit (2-6 kg) a bit slower. And probably squirmier.

Thus, the Simple Green people are allowed to label it "non-toxic.” 

In other tests it wreaks biological havoc. If it doesn't kill them, it effects their neurological systems, causing loss of equilibrium and coordination. It causes skeletal defects in their litters, it reduces their red blood cell counts, and causes lesions in their livers, spleens, and bone marrow. And it causes cancerous tumors in the forestomachs of rodents.

It enters the body via inhalation or absorption through the skin (all those times I washed my dishes bare handed, OMG!!), and once there, it breaks down into substances called metabolites that clog up our biological filters, including my favorite filter, the liver. Concentrations of these metabolites are toxic.

Should I skip my glass of wine tonight?

I am sure I’ve poured at least a shot glass of concentrated Simple Green into my dish soap bottle, and added water to make a nice, foamy detergent for my dishes, counter tops, and dish cloths, which I’ve rinsed liberally in the stuff, over and over and over.

Needless to say, I never made it to the other ingredients.  I threw away the bottle of “dish soap” and the tainted sponge, wrote in big black magic marker on the jug of Simple Green “DO NOT USE, CONTAINS CARCINOGENS” capped it tightly and stuck it in the farthest corner of my cabinet where it sits from now on, lurking like an evil green time bomb.

How THE FUCK were we supposed to know, especially if they slap a label on that says “Simple Green is a safer alternative to toxic cleaners, bleaches, and solvents”

One website says that OSHA does not regulate this product as carcinogenic to humans because humans lack forestomachs.

Another website says the US EPA classifies the chemical as a Group C, Possible Human Carcinogen.

New Jersey by the way. They’re not taking any chances. They’ve got pages and pages for you to read.

----

I consider myself pretty savvy—I research lots of things (it’s kind of my default mode as a student)—but I’m really angry. This company has deliberately deceived millions of unsuspecting people by saying their product is safe, simple, and green.

You have to ask yourself: why do they put this horrible chemical in their product?

Simple: Green.

It costs very little green to manufacture, it cleans really well, and it makes them lots of green.

Lots.

Look around at your friends and family. Count how many have/have had cancer.  Are you really surprised cancer is so common? Don’t argue with me it’s because modern medicine allows humans to live longer and diseases of old age like cancer are a natural consequence of longevity. Bullshit. Cancer is getting children, teens, adults, the elderly, men, women, black, white, fat, skinny, athletic, sedentary, rich, poor, you name it. Like it or not, we eat, sleep, breathe and absorb these manmade poisons day in and day out. These and hundreds more.

OK, I admit this is not a very scientific thing to say. I'm reacting more as a human being than as a scientist. But...I lost my mom and my aunt to cancer. I was told I have to be very careful because of my family history. Yes, Blah, Blah Blah....

And, I’m fucking sick of it. Yes, I drive a car. I fly in planes. I live and participate in a fossil-fueled world. But can’t I at least have a say in what I decide to use in my home?

Physicians for Social Responsibility says cancer is the SECOND leading cause of death in the US.  And—news flash--it’s largely preventable. 75 to 80% of cancers diagnosed in this country are believed to be from exposure to carcinogens in the environment.

Where's that (sparkly, sparkly) glass of wine. Sorry liver.

Q: why do flies always drown themselves in my water glass?

A: Murfleas Law


Click here to see delightful images of dead flies having fun

how to save water

A hard, steady rain fell earlier this month, and when I thought I couldn't take the sound of rain pounding on the roof anymore, I had the presence of mind to run out in the pouring rain and drag my clean 30-gallon bin next to the wood pile to catch the runoff from the tarp. It helps to have a new tarp, but an old one will get nicely power-washed by that much rain.

You can bottle and drink fresh rainwater right away. I filled three 2.5 gallon jugs that way, and stored the rest in the bin.

After a few days I knew debris would begin to affect the water quality, so I skimmed off the leaves, poured it through a colander to catch smaller particles, boiled the water, cooled it, and Brita-filtered it before decanting into the jugs. It took all afternoon, but I got another ten gallons of drinking water and did some laundry with the rest.

Why do I bother? Because I have to buy water. My main water supply comes from a one thousand gallon tank buried in the ground, and an electric pump that draws the water from the tank.  At least once a year, I have a water hauling service come and fill it up (at eight cents a gallon that's about $80). The tank is fairly old, and has about an inch of sediment at the bottom, which affects the water's color. I consider my water tinted rather than tainted: the water has no odor, and is kept at a fairly constant temp of about 40 F due to the insulating effect of the ground.  It's fine for doing the dishes or showering, but I won't drink that water unless I boil it. So I take my portable jugs to the local fill-up place, and I go through ten gallons of drinking water every seven to ten days--another $40 a year.

This is the deal if you live on permafrost-ridden ground: you can't have a sewer system delivering water to outlying areas--so most people here in Goldstream Valley just dig outhouses and leachfields and buy their water, either by the jug or by the tank. We do our dishes using as little water as possible (having a dog or two helps with the prewash stage, so I've been told) and we toss our dishwater from slop pails out on the ground. My sinks and shower drain into a leachfield (when Simon built this cabin two decades ago, he used a backhoe to bury a bus filled with river rocks in the yard, and connected the sink and shower drains to it), but by midwinter the drain reliably clogs up with ice so I just don't use it very much.  I can still take a shower in the winter as long as I stand inside my 30 gallon bin like Oscar the Grouch and catch most of the water before it backs up from the drain all cold and foul smelling. Those who have no such setup must take their showers in town. Tinted water or not, I'm grateful to have my very own hot shower in a place where I can still see moose from my window.

Just keep doing it

Many moons ago, in a past life as a young artist in Chicago, I knew a guy, a friend of my roommate, a cinematographer and experimental filmmaker, well-liked and well-respected in the artist community.  We'd gone to a screening of a film he'd recently completed, and everyone we knew was talking about it. The film was a three-part portrait of the filmmaker's grandfather. 

There's a scene where the grandfather suggests they pray together. The filmmaker admits to his grandfather, rather sheepishly, that he doesn't know how to pray, and then begins to weep uncontrollably.  As a young art student I had seen plenty of people reveal their own naked bodies in their art, but never their raw, naked emotions, and I was impressed with the humanity of this artist.

We hung out only one time that I can remember: my boyfriend and my roommate and I met him and his girlfriend somewhere near Maxwell Street; they invited us to their loft to watch films. They lived in a huge, old warehouse; I remember washing my hands at their bathroom sink and looking up thinking I’d never seen so many cobwebs in my life. But their life wasn’t about housework, it was about following your vision by making art.  At one point he asked me what I was working on, and I told him I wasn’t working on anything at the moment.  I had recently graduated and was working full-time in an office, and found myself too tired at the end of the day to do much else. He practically stuck his face in mine:

“Why?”

“I can’t; I just don’t have time.”

“Yes you can. Just keep doing it: keep filming, keep working on your stuff. Promise me you’ll do that.”

I hadn't expected such a strong reaction.  His manner was confrontational, yet kind and encouraging. Then he smiled as if to say: I dare you!  He was a few years older than we were, and we looked up to him as an elder brother figure/journeyman artist showing support for his newly-fledged artist brethren.

Over the years I lost touch with him, and I left art-making altogether. Then one day a friend sent me a newspaper article. Our friend had gone missing, and nobody seemed to know where he was.

When I met him he had been a film editor for Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and then got hired as a cinematographer working with a German documentary filmmaker. That was as far as I knew.

Apparently in the early 90’s he'd left Chicago and gotten married.  Several years had passed by the time I received the article about his disappearance. There were rumors he'd joined a satanic cult and was buried somewhere out in the desert. It sounded so ridiculous I dismissed it as a load of crap. He was an experienced, globe-trotting filmmaker; he could be anywhere.

A few more years passed, I got my Master’s and left town myself.

Then one sleepless night, I thought of him and googled his name. There he was: tall, skinny, intense and quirky, just as I remembered him.

Every posting said the same thing: in 2000, his body was found in the basement of a house in Wyoming.  He had been murdered five years earlier.

There had been a documentary about his disappearance, made by his friend and colleague, but it was unavailable.  Besides written articles--including an online archive of the one my friend had mailed me several years ago--the only videos I could find were a short clip from NBC news and a 43-minute made-for-TV episode for a true murder mystery series that I had to rent in order to see.  I expected it to be a repetitive, over-dramatized affair, but when you lose touch with someone you once knew--only to learn bad things happened to them--you take pretty much any scrap of news you can find.

The story was centered on the woman he left Chicago to marry: a charismatic but mentally unstable leader of a religious cult who preached dowsing by swinging a pendulum. Her teachings were initially positive but grew increasingly darker as she began to believe she and her flock were surrounded by demons and zombies. In 1995, when things were at their weirdest, he decided to leave.  In the heat of an argument, she shot him in the head at close range, and buried his body in the basement with the help of another cult member.  By the time it was discovered and a formal investigation was launched, the leader had died, and the other woman was charged as an accessory.

Of all the people I've known, however briefly, he is the last person to have deserved such a fate.  He was a good, kind person, with many friends, and had he lived, one wonders how great his mark upon the world might have been.  Some artists become more renowned in death than in life, and I think it sad that more people got to know of him as a murder victim than as an artist.

When we read stories about people who ended their lives this way, we usually don’t stop to think about how it must feel for their loved ones.  The murder mystery genre is a form of entertainment for everyone but them. 

I wish he could have written his own story. But I’m so glad to have known him and for receiving his message:

Keep doing what you love.  Don’t give up.

My friend's name was Allen Ross.  A really cool guy.

A guy walks into a dentist's office...

Receptionist:  Do you have an appointment?

Guy:  Tooth-hurty.

----

Shortly after I learned to fish, I learned I have two impacted wisdom teeth. It was so long ago I had my wisdom teeth out, I'd assumed they were all pulled.  Not so, alas...one of them has partially erupted in my lower jaw like an ancient, long-forgotten volcano.

http://en.wikipedia.org

In a short amount of time, thanks to the internet, I've learned an awful lot about wisdom teeth and student health insurance.

I won't bore you with health insurance. It is the tangled jungle we all walk through.

Wisdom teeth are much more interesting. In dentist-speak they are known as 3rd molars. We typically have four of these things: two upper and two lower, although some people have less, and some people have more, known as supernumerary teeth (which makes me think of sharks for some reason).

http://www.funcage.com

Wisdom teeth are a relic of our bygone days as apes, when we were all--sadly--a bunch of raw-food vegans. Back in those days we needed bigger, stronger jaws and extra molars to grind plant fiber.  Over time, as we developed a taste for easier-to-chew foods, our jaws got smaller. But for some reason we still have those extra molars hanging out in our heads--as backups?  Evolution does have a thing for redundancy. And leftovers.  Maybe in a few generations the raw vegans will happily chomp away again on three sets of fully functional molars? Until then, think of your wisdom teeth as a completely useless gift from your monkey ancestors.

ook ook OOK, thanks Lucy!

Ah now, why do we call them wisdom teeth? Compared to most teeth which come in when we're children, wisdom teeth typically appear in young adulthood, when we're supposedly wiser.

Which might explain why only half of my wisdom teeth came up.

Regardless of whether they come up or stay impacted, they're far easier to extract from a younger jawbone, because the roots have not reached their full length and the jawbone is a bit more flexible. As we age, the roots grow longer and become more firmly attached to the jaw (just in case, people!) and our bone loses its flexibility.

So why remove them?

There are two schools of thought: some experts argue impacted wisdom tooth surgery is far more traumatic and costly than necessary (it often requires surgical removal of bone, and can end in fractures and nerve damage)--so if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Apparently many people live out their lives with their wisdom teeth intact, pain-free and just fine. On the other hand, plenty of people develop problems: pain and swelling from gum and tooth infections, compounded by all kinds of weird angles of impaction. These are the people whose wisdom teeth are like rotting time bombs for whom surgery is not optional.

This is not to say it's all black and white...

My case falls somewhere in the not-too-bad zone: a partially erupted tooth at a slight angle that caused a mild gum infection. There were a few days of swelling and pain and a yucky discharge that gave me much anxiety until I saw my dentist. Thankfully it cleared up with the help of oral antibiotics and lots of rinsing.  My dentist showed me the xray and said I did a good job: neither the monkey molar nor its neighbor show any signs of decay. He referred me to an oral surgeon in case I want it removed.  Apparently for me it is still optional.

He did suggest it might be a good idea, because infection can re-occur.  New teeth are sharp before they've had a chance to wear against the opposing tooth, and until that happens the gum is vulnerable to infection (in babies that's called teething).  In my case the part of the crown that is aboveground, so to speak, may remain trapped in the soft tissue because the back end of the crown is firmly nestled under the curve of my jawbone.  Caught between a rock and a hard place, you could say.

Armed with this new information, a flurry of emails to the student health office ensued. My university's student heath office is nothing if not awesome, prompt, informative and professional.

I made an appointment for a consultation with an oral surgeon to discuss my going under general anesthesia to have Monkeytooth removed as I watched online videos and read all I could. Tooth-hurty indeed.

"Don't read about oral surgery. Especially on the internet," was Jojo's sage advice. I ignored it.

Besides the sheer gaggyness of watching a surgeon digging a crowbar-like thingie into this gaping, bloody hole that is supposed to be some poor person's mouth, issues related to this surgery include (but are not limited to):

Loss of muscle function in tongue and jaw

Slurred speech

Drooling

A fractured jaw

Bone loss in the jaw

Resorption of heathy teeth (your body basically eats your good teeth to get calcium lost from the surgery)

And last but not least:

paresthesia in the mouth (numbness and tingling) which can make things like eating and kissing less pleasurable.

Drooling scares me. Fractures scare me. But no kissing? Really?

It really makes you stop to realize how little we value or understand the complexity of our body's basic functions, and how much they contribute to the joy of living. Take any one of them away for good, and I guarantee we become fully aware of what we have lost.

My plan is to see the surgeon, ask lots of pointy questions, make my decision, and live with it.

If there's no reason to have it done then I will be mindful and grateful of the sheer beauty of eating (and kissing) and life will be good.

If the doctor says it's a problem and it must come out, I hope I don't end up drooling in class. Then I'll have to run away and join the circus.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk