June 2018 Newsletter – Walking in the Annapurna Himalaya
Hello!
In December I plan to trek in Nepal where I led the first American ascent of Annapurna I
Happy Summer! I hope you have some fun vacations planned. I don’t have a big adventure for this summer, but in December friends and I will take a hiking vacation near the Annapurna range in Nepal. Forty years ago, I led the first American climb of Annapurna I, considered among the most difficult of the world’s high mountains. We might be inviting a few others to join our Annapurna walking adventure, so get in touch for more information if you’d be interested in joining me in Nepal during the second half of December.
Tom Bruton, our expert on highly fluorinated chemicals (PFAS) nonstick chemicals, and I are back from a productive week in Washington DC. In dozens of meetings with staff from the House and Senate, we were gratified to find that clean drinking water and reduced use of toxic chemicals is of bipartisan concern and that interest in reducing PFAS in water is much greater than when we visited a year ago.
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With Philippe Grandjean, Tom Bruton, and Rob Bilott in DC
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About 70 staff attended each of our briefings in the House and Senate. Speakers were Dr. Philippe Grandjean of Harvard, who spoke about the health harm of PFAS, and Rob Bilott, the attorney who won many suits against DuPont for contamination of the Ohio River Valley, as well as Tom, and me.
We also had productive meetings around reducing the unnecessary use of flame retardants at the Consumer Product Safety Commission and National Highway Safety Administration. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more.
On a personal note: my small downstairs studio apartment in the Berkeley Hills will be available August 15. I prefer to rent to a friend or a friend of a friend. (My house is above UC Berkeley, and the path around it leading to the studio is rugged.) Get in touch if you know someone appropriate for such a rental.
Please read on for some memorable pieces from our recent monthly newsletters and do let me know if you might want to hear from us each month in addition to this quarterly message. Also, you might enjoy my relaunched www.ArleneBlum.com website with dramatic images from my expeditions worldwide that you can enjoy and download.
The Mysterious Gray Fox
I have had the pleasure of seeing a gray fox in our Berkeley neighborhood several times recently. So I started reading about this mysterious animal and learned that it exhibits a very rare tree-climbing behavior and has a more ancient evolutionary lineage than wolves, coyotes, jackals, dogs and all other foxes. The gray fox is genetically around 10 million years old, evolved in Southern California, and spread through the Americas. I also learned about several gray fox families that have been observed for seven years on the peninsula–even on the Facebook campus. Sadly, they all died a couple years ago due to a distemper epidemic.
Nursery School Carpet Study
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Carpets are children’s major source of exposure to highly fluorinated chemicals, and we plan to study their transfer from carpeting to dust to children. If there is carpet in your child’s nursery school, and you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you are invited to participate in our upcoming study of highly fluorinated chemicals in nursery school carpeting. Please write me or Alexa@GreenSciencePolicy.org to participate and learn whether these chemicals are present. We thank you in advance for your possible participation.
Greener Blue Jeans?
Designers at Levi Strauss & Co. are using a surprising new tool to create the oh-so-stylish wear patterns that are a hallmark of their blue jeans: lasers. While traditional denim-finishing requires a laundry list of bleaches, peroxides, enzymes, acids, lubricants, wetting agents, and softeners, the new process produces a vintage look by using lasers to burn away thin layers of fabric and dye. Levi’s expects the technique, known as Project FLX, to reduce the number of chemicals used in jeans production from thousands to just a few dozen! The technology is a key piece of the company’s strategy for eliminating its discharge of all hazardous chemicals by 2020.
In addition to being better for worker health and the environment, the lasers cut the amount of time needed to finish a pair of jeans from about ten minutes down to just 90 seconds. It just goes to show that sometimes the best replacement for a harmful chemical is not another chemical.
Inspiration: 2018 Goldman Environmental Awards
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| The seven inspiring winners of the 2018 Goldman Prize | |
On April 23rd, the Goldman Environmental Prize was awarded to seven environmental activists from six continents. Regarded as the Green Nobel Prize, this year’s recipients included a French woman who ended the very destructive practice of deep sea trawling in the EU, a Colombian woman who stopped illegal mining in her community, a Filipino man who spearheaded a successful campaign to ban lead paint, and an American woman who helped focus the national spotlight on the contamination of drinking water in Flint Michigan.
While the ceremony was joyous, we recalled Berta Cáceres and other environmental leaders who have given their lives to preserve the health of our planet, a somber reminder of how much grassroots activists risk.
Congratulations to the incredible winners, you are an inspiration to all!
Calendar
1:00- 4:00pm, The Banting Theatre, Sir Frederick Banting Research Centre, Health Canada 251 Sir Frederick Banting Driveway, Tunney’s Pasture, Ottawa, Canada.
Miriam Diamond, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto