Tag Archives | Tapped

Think Plastic Bottles Are Toxic? Try Canned Food

By on November 24, 2011 in News 11

Here at disinformation we long ago dispensed with plastic water bottles in the wake of our film Tapped, but now it seems that canned foods are way more dangerous in terms of their delivery of BPAs into our bodies. Via CBS News:

Talk about stirring up controversy. A new study shows that the urine of people who consume canned soup can contain surprisingly high levels of bisphenol A (BPA), a hormone-disrupting compound linked to health problems including heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.

People who consumed one serving of canned soup a day for five days had a more than 1,000 percent increase in urinary BPA over people who consumed fresh soup for five days, the study showed.

“We’ve known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase…

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Did Coca-Cola Trash The Grand Canyon’s Plastic Bottle Ban?

By on November 11, 2011 in News 8

It’s good to see the mainstream media calling foul on some corporate dirty work. Karin Kline writes in the LA Times:

240px-The_Coca-Cola_Company_logoGrand Canyon National Park was just about to impose a ban on single-use plastic water bottles — the most common form of trash found along its trails — when the plan was suddenly put on hold, the New York Times reported. The paper raises the possibility that Coca-Cola Co. was able to get a sympathetic ear at the National Parks Foundation because the company, which bottles Dasani water, is a major donor.

This isn’t a radical new idea. Zion National Park already has a ban. The park provides “hydration stations” for people to refill their reusable bottles, as the Grand Canyon park would have.

The story included a strange comment from a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, who said that bans on single-use plastic bottles are never the answer, and that recycling would resolve the problem.

… Read the rest

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The World Of Water Filtration

By on April 14, 2011 in News 10
The Big Berkey

The Big Berkey

About a year ago we met filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig, director of the documentary Tapped, which outlined the ills of bottled water so effectively that we quickly decided to forgo those five-gallon jugs of water in favor of tap water at the disinformation offices, and I did the same at home.

However, while New York City’s tap water isn’t bad compared to some municipalities, it still contains plenty of chemicals that I have no intention of knowingly ingesting (fluoride, chlorine, various VOCs, etc.), so we decided to install water filters.

At the office we installed a plumbed-in filtered water dispenser from local company Cure Water Systems, and it works well in an office environment, proudly sporting one of Stephanie’s “Get Off The Bottle” stickers.

banner_tapped_home

At home I installed an under-sink filter from Aquasana on the advice of super-informed science writer Terri Mitchell, who contributed a great article to the disinformation anthology You Are Still Being Lied To.  The water tastes good and it is one of the most effective filters available, but the filters allow less and less water flow over time until you change them, so it’s not perfect.… Read the rest

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Erin Brockovich Where Are You? Hexavalent Chromium Found In 31 American Cities

By on December 20, 2010 in News 1
Animation by Chris 73 (CC)

Animation by Chris 73 (CC)

This is the best advertisement for reverse-osmosis walter filters that I’ve seen yet. Mind you, the intentionally-added fluoride in many public water systems is just as bad — although interested parties would have you believe otherwise. Don’t think that bottled water is the answer, either — many bottled waters contain chemicals too because 40% of bottled water is drawn from municipal supplies. From the Washington Post:

A new analysis showing the presence of a probable carcinogen in the tap water of 31 cities across the country, including the District and Bethesda, has raised questions about what consumers in those communities can do to reduce their exposure.

The chemical, hexavalent chromium, got public attention via the 2000 film “Erin Brockovich” and has been deemed a “probable carcinogen” by the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Although basic water filters such as those made by Brita and PUR do not remove hexavalent chromium, several reverse-osmosis systems designed for home use can take the chemical out of water.

… Read the rest

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Want To Lose Weight? Simple – Drink Water!

By on August 24, 2010 in News 19
Photo: Matthew Bowden (www.digitallyrefreshing.com)

Photo: Matthew Bowden (www.digitallyrefreshing.com)

Can it really be this easy? It certainly won’t cost much to try it out (just don’t use bottled water!). From Business Week:

Close the diet books and skip the pills. The latest weight-loss trick may be as simple as gulping a couple of glasses of water before you eat.

A new study found that middle-aged and older adults who drank two cups of water before each meal consumed fewer calories and lost more weight than those who skipped drinking water.

Researchers divided two groups of overweight and obese men and women aged 55 to 75 into two groups: one group was told to follow a low-fat, low-calorie diet; the other group was told to follow the same diet and to drink two cups of water before breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After 12 weeks, those who drank water before meals had lost 15.5 pounds, compared to 11 pounds for the non-water drinkers, a nearly 30 percent difference.

… Read the rest

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I’m Done With Celebrity Endorsements

By on August 12, 2010 in News 21

banner_tapped_homeStephanie Soechtig, director of the disinformation documentary Tapped, writing at Huffington Post:

At the risk of career suicide I’m calling bullshit on the hypocrisy of Hollywood and its celebrity endorsements. From Reese Witherspoon endorsing Avon — a company that loads its products with phthalates and parabens (chemicals linked to breast cancer) — to Jennifer Aniston, a woman who says she cares about conserving water resources and then endorses bottled water.

You can’t turn around these days without seeing a Hollywood A-lister endorsing a product. Here’s my problem with the whole situation: often they are endorsing products that aren’t good for us and aren’t good for the environment.

Seriously people, WTF? Am I the only one who saw Spider-Man? You know, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility?”

Take Reese Witherspoon and her colleagues Jessica Alba, Halle Berry, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymoore, Jessica Biel, et al — all these women endorse various brands of cosmetics that contain parabens, phthalates, and other endocrine-disrupting, cancer-causing ingredients.

… Read the rest

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The Fluoride Fraud

By on August 10, 2010 in News 10

By Abby Martin for Mediaroots.org:

When was the last time you stopped to think about the one thing you can’t live without? I don’t mean the Internet – I’m talking about water. Without clean drinking water, life could not go on. This is why it’s so important that we know what is in our water. For the past sixty-five years, city governments nationwide have been adding a controversial substance called fluoride to municipal water supplies.

You probably recognize the word fluoride from the back of your toothpaste tube or from your visits to the dentist. But the fluoride added to our water is not the same as that in our toothpaste. The chemical added to our water is a fluorine compound called hexafluorosilicic acid that is generated as a by-product from the phosphate fertilizer industry.

Phosphates are minerals that are used to make fertilizer, and phosphate mining industry is a giant moneymaker.

… Read the rest

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Tracking The ‘Evolution’ Of Nanoparticles As They Decontaminate Groundwater

By on June 18, 2010 in News 0

Kurt Pfitzer reports that engineers are usimg advanced imaging techniques to examine bimetallic materials that have remediated more than 50 toxic waste sites, for PhysOrg.com:

Iron nanoparticles 1,000 times thinner than a human hair have demonstrated an unprecedented ability to clean contaminated groundwater since they were invented 10 years ago at Lehigh.

The palladium-coated particles have remediated more than 50 toxic waste sites in the U.S. and other countries in one-tenth the time, and at a much greater economy of scale, than traditional “pump and treat” methods.

Now, thanks to Lehigh’s unrivaled electron microscopy and spectroscopy facilities, researchers have gained unmatched insights that could improve the efficiency and extend the applications
of the powerful nanoparticles.

The researchers used scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS) to capture, for the first time, the evolution in the nanostructure of the bimetallic particles as they remove contaminants in water.

… Read the rest

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