Are Fire Retardants Putting Us at Risk? (Part 2)

  • Fire retardant chemicals can be found in an array of household items, and the federal government doesn't require companies to reveal which chemicals are in their products. (Photo CC-licensed to Back_garage on Flickr)

You have flame retardant chemicals in your body. They’re toxic. Americans have the highest levels of anyone in the world. The chemicals are in the dust in our homes and offices and schools. And they’re showing up in our food. In the second of our five part series… Rebecca Williams takes a look at what these exposures might mean for our health:

Transcript

You have flame retardant chemicals in your body. They’re toxic. Americans have the highest levels of anyone in the world. The chemicals are in the dust in our homes and offices and schools. And they’re showing up in our food. In the second of our five part series… Rebecca Williams takes a look at what these exposures might mean for our health:

They’re called PBDEs. That’s polybrominated diphenyl ethers. They help keep foam and plastics from catching on fire.

They are absolutely everywhere.

They’re in your car. They’re in your couch, your office chair, your TV, your drapes, the padding beneath your carpet, your hair dryer, your cell phone. The problem is, they don’t stay put. They leach out of products and they get into us. They’re in dust and soil and the wastewater sludge that’s spread on farm fields.
The chemicals are in fish and meat and dairy. They’ve been found in the Arctic and Antarctic. They’re in peregrine falcons and killer whales and polar bears and salmon. They’re in cats and dogs.

Babies come into the world with flame retardant chemicals in their bodies.

The chemicals have also been turning up in breast milk.

Six years ago, Meredith Buhalis had her breast milk tested as part of a study of new moms. And PBDEs turned up.

“I had a brief moment of oh my gosh, ew, that’s terrible!”

Her levels were not much above the average American. And she says she kept nursing her baby because it was the best thing for her. But it did make her think.

“I guess I just thought proactively after that we need more legislation and research about what these chemicals do and how we can control the ways they get into our bodies.”

Scientists and doctors are worried because hundreds of peer-reviewed studies are suggesting links to problems with brain development, changes to thyroid systems, and fertility problems.

“If you’re looking at developmental exposure then these are very toxic chemicals.”

Linda Birnbaum is the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She studies the health effects of flame retardants. She says there are hundreds of studies in animals showing negative effects from PBDEs. Now, human studies are coming out.

“Depending how high they were exposed in utero we’re seeing associations with some lower IQ and some behavioral deficits. There are also some effects beginning to be reported on other reproductive endpoints in the human population. All of these kinds of effects have been reported in animal studies.”

Birnbaum says the average American has about 30 parts per billion of these flame retardants in his or her body. But some people have levels as high as 10-thousand parts per billion. Those are levels where in animal studies scientists are seeing problems.

One thing the experts say you should keep in mind is that just because you’re exposed to a chemical does not mean you’ll get sick and die.

Dr. Arnold Schecter studies our exposure to flame retardants. He’s a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health.

“What we’re talking about is not something like cyanide where if you get some in your body you’re going to drop dead immediately. We’re talking about something more like asbestos or cigarette smoking where you have effects on a population basis. 80 % of lung cancers are from smoking but the majority of smokers are not going to get lung cancer so there’s some genetic roll of the dice.”

Dr. Schecter says you really should try to keep your levels as low as you can. But it can be really tough because these chemicals are everywhere. And despite government policies to reduce our exposures, there’s no evidence levels are going down.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Are Flame Retardants Putting Us at Risk? (Part 1)

  • PBDEs are used in a lot of our products, including couches, to make them resistant to flames. (Photo by Fastily from Wikimedia Commons)

Flame retardant chemicals are used in hundreds of products in our homes and offices and schools. The chemicals can slow the spread of fire. But certain kinds of these chemicals leach out of our couches, our TVs, our carpet padding and many other things in our homes. And they’re getting into our bodies. In the first of our five part series, Rebecca Williams tries to find out what’s in the products in her own home:

Transcript

Flame retardant chemicals are used in hundreds of products in our homes and offices and schools. The chemicals can slow the spread of fire. But certain kinds of these chemicals leach out of our couches, our TVs, our carpet padding and many other things in our homes. And they’re getting into our bodies. In the first of our five part series… Rebecca Williams tries to find out what’s in the products in her own home:

A few months ago, I never really thought about flame retardants. I knew some of these chemicals were probably in my house, but I kind of just shrugged it off.

But then I had a baby. And that made me want to take another look.

The chemicals I’m talking about are called PBDEs. That’s polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

Some of these PBDEs have been phased out. But there’s a good chance your couch and chairs and carpet padding still have these chemicals in them. You’re probably surrounded by PBDEs and you will be for a long time.

That worries some scientists and doctors. That’s because hundreds of peer-reviewed studies in animals are suggesting exposure to PBDEs might be linked to problems with brain development, changes to thyroid systems, and fertility problems. And recently, human studies are coming out and they’re showing some of the same things. Public health experts are especially worried about babies and young kids because they grow so fast… and they are constantly exposed to dust. That’s where PBDEs tend to collect.

The American Chemistry Council did not want to be recorded for this story. But in an email response to my questions, a spokesperson said:

“Flame retardants have been rigorously tested and have saved lives.”

Two of the big chemical companies also responded to me by email. Chemtura and ICL Industrial Products both say they stand by the safety of their flame retardant chemicals.

But many independent scientists and public health experts say it’s a good idea to reduce your exposure to PBDEs.

So all of this made me wonder. How can we know what’s in the stuff we buy? It seems like a simple question. But there are no labels at the store.

You can write to the companies that make your furniture and TV. But I wrote to a half dozen companies to ask them about flame retardants… and only heard back from one, Fisher-Price.

But I have a lot of stuff that’s not made by Fisher-Price. So… I thought I’d call in some experts. The guys at the Ecology Center test consumer products for chemicals. Jeff Gearhart volunteered to come up and test my home to see if we could find flame retardants.

(door opening sound)

“Hey, come on in!” “Hello!”

He brought along a device that looks like a little gun. It can tell you the chemical makeup of products.

“We’re going to look at baby products, toys, furniture, some of your flooring… these chemicals can be transported into your carpet, your child crawls on the carpet, they put their hand in their mouth or there’s just dust in the overall environment. So that’s the mechanism of how we get exposed to these chemicals.”

As Jeff went around my house… he found flame retardants in my TV, the padding under the carpet, three chairs, a car seat, a baby play mat, and our cable box. When PBDEs were phased out of furniture, a lot of companies replaced them with other chemicals.

I wanted to find out more about those chemicals. So I cut samples of foam from some things from my house… and sent them to Heather Stapleton. She’s a chemist at Duke University. The sample I sent her from my baby’s changing table pad totally stumped her.

“I was a little bit surprised honestly because we’ve seen most of the major chemical flame retardants in foam products. This one I’ve never seen before. You mentioned this was made in China. So it could be the Chinese companies are using something different than what we use in the United States.”

She couldn’t tell me whether or not it was safe.

She says it’s next to impossible to know what’s in the things you buy. That’s because the federal government doesn’t require companies to reveal the chemicals in their products… or require proof that the chemicals are safe.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Home Weatherization Gets Snagged

  • It was thought that putting insulation in older homes was one way to help jump start the economy. (photo courtesy of the US Department of Energy)

The Recovery Act called for a multi-billion dollar home weatherization program. It was thought that putting insulation in older homes was the ultimate “shovel ready” project to help jump start the economy. But as Mark Brush reports, so far, it just hasn’t worked out:

Transcript

The Recovery Act called for a multi-billion dollar home weatherization program. It was thought that putting insulation in older homes was the ultimate “shovel ready” project to help jump start the economy. But as Mark Brush reports, so far, it just hasn’t worked out:

The Department of Energy’s Inspector General found the data alarming.

Of the ten states receiving the most money for home weatherization – eight of them weren’t even at two percent of their goal.

One reason for the hold-up is bureaucracy. There’s a law that says if you get federal money – you have to pay workers a “prevailing wage” or a fair wage. And there was confusion over how much to pay people.

Don Skaggs is with Ohio’s Office of Community Services. He says most states waited until the issue was resolved – but Ohio didn’t wait:

“So we decided to go ahead and do production. And then once we understood what the requirements were, we would go back and retroactively adjust those wages for those staff, which is what we did.”

So Ohio’s on track – but most states are not. The Department of Energy said it’s working on these problems – and expects things to ramp up soon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Financing Energy Efficiency

  • More than half the houses in the U.S. were built before 1970. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laborator)

Reducing your carbon footprint
by using less energy can cost
money. Efficient cars, energy
efficient homes, and energy-saving
appliances all take money. That’s
why some states are testing whether
homeowners would be willing
to borrow money to upgrade their
homes and, in turn, save a few
bucks in energy costs. In one
state, the plan is to get private
banks and credit unions to finance
energy efficiency. Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

Reducing your carbon footprint
by using less energy can cost
money. Efficient cars, energy
efficient homes, and energy-saving
appliances all take money. That’s
why some states are testing whether
homeowners would be willing
to borrow money to upgrade their
homes and, in turn, save a few
bucks in energy costs. In one
state, the plan is to get private
banks and credit unions to finance
energy efficiency. Peter Payette reports:

When you hear green building, you might think of a fancy new house with solar panels. But most homes are not new, so reducing the amount of energy communities use means doing something about old houses.

Max Strickland owns a business in Michigan that certifies green homes and buildings. He says more than half the houses in the U.S. were built before 1970.

“We had very little energy code requirements previous to that.”

But upgrades cost money that many homes owners don’t always have. And a lot of people saw whatever equity they had in their house disappear during the past couple of years.

Now, the State of Michigan is trying to help people find the money to make their homes more energy efficient. The program is called Michigan Saves. The state launched the pilot project in a rural area of the state. The pilot is a collaboration of a local credit union, an electric cooperative and a building supply company.
Borrowers will have their new payment tacked onto their monthly utility bill.

Trevor Williams is with Brown Lumber, the building supply company involved in the pilot. Williams says it’s likely most of the improvements will be in heating costs. He says to begin with, home owners will be encouraged to have an energy audit.

“The audit it would say things that need to be done, the top three things that are recommended. Furnace replacement, ceiling ducts and weatherizing the house those going to be the three most common items.”

But homeowners can also borrow money for new energy efficient appliances like refrigerators and hot water heaters. Sometimes loans like this are promoted as immediately paying for themselves. That is, it’s suggested the money you save on your utility bills will fully cover your new payment. That’s not necessarily the case.

Marc McKeller is with Members Credit Union which is financing the project. He says after a few years, people will be able to break even on the costs. Government tax incentives and other rebates will help that happen. But McKellar says people shouldn’t expect to take out a loan, retrofit their house and not have more to pay each month.

“The only way it could be was if a government was to give zero percent loans out and that they received tremendous rebates from the utilities and that they received a tremendous government credit.”


But, McKellar says it’s still a good deal. The interest rate for project’s loans will be a little bit better because the state is backing the loans.

And tight credit means not many banks are loaning people money to make their house energy efficient and not many people are putting money into a home that’s lost value because of the housing market bust. That’s one of the reasons they need to run a pilot project.

“They’re trying to determine through this study, how do you get a consumer to actually do this and what are the benefits?”

The directors of Michigan Saves hope to roll out a statewide program later this year. So far no banks have agreed to participate but there are other credit unions interested in the concept.

For The Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Fixing Up Foreclosures

  • Megan McNally in front of her home in Buffalo. She purchased the house for $3,800. (Photo by Emma Jacobs)

In many older cities, some
neighborhoods are known for
their abandoned houses. A
lot of these will decay beyond
repair and end up as debris
in landfills. Emma Jacobs
takes us to one hard-hit
neighborhood, where one house
has become a laboratory for
doing green construction:

Transcript

n many older cities, some
neighborhoods are known for
their abandoned houses. A
lot of these will decay beyond
repair and end up as debris
in landfills. Emma Jacobs
takes us to one hard-hit
neighborhood, where one house
has become a laboratory for
doing green construction:

(sound of climbing steps)

Last year, at age 20, Megan McNally bought a house.

”This is the front room. Um, this is gonna be the bathroom. Doesn’t look like much now. It’ll get there.”


Not just any house. She wanted to find a project in this neighborhood to tie to the environmental science she studied during the year.


While home from college for a summer, McNally had been working with a nonprofit, Buffalo Reuse. It works in a neighborhood of East Buffalo with rows of abandoned homes. She paid $3800 dollars at the city’s foreclosure auction for a small, wood-frame house that had been vacant for three years.

“I really wanted to help some effort in Buffalo and so I was trying to brainstorm and I sat down with Michael and we sort of came up with this idea of buying a house.”

(sound of truck)

Michael is–Michael Grainer, who runs Buffalo Reuse. We make a coffee run and he tells me this neighborhood is part of a city whose population has shrunk by half.

“What we’re trying to do is to build a base of projects that are undergoing some kind of transformation and also lots that are undergoing a transformation.”

McNally’s house looks like it’s in good shape, but it had also taken a lot of abuse.

“On the outside, it looks really great. You could move in tomorrow. But as I came in here the first weekend it was leaks that people didn’t take care of. There was…this floor we had to cut out because it was all rotted from black mold.”

McNally had no prior knowledge of home repair. Transforming this house soon escalated as she found she would be replacing the plumbing and heating. But in some way, she’s also found her lack of experience to be an asset in recruiting help.

Ken Hicks is helping to measure out a part for a radiator in the front room. He turned up near dusk one day last winter. McNally was under the house checking the foundation, and Hicks, a construction worker was helping out the owner next door. He saw her feet sticking out from underneath. When she crawled out they started talking.

“It was a big joke, you know. We went back and forth and I said, you know, it was just so weird to see you in that situation and that situation and that predicament. And we just started from there,”

Slow work during a down economy means Hicks spends more time on volunteer jobs. He’s become one of the main people McNally turns to with questions about plumbing and carpentry.

“Being really young, you can ask a lot of stupid questions, and people go, ‘Oh man, this girl,’ but then go on and like, answer it in a way where maybe they wouldn’t be so open with somebody else.”

“Anything you can possibly do wrong has been done has been done in this house. But all those things that I’m talking about are now corrected, and there’s so much more knowledge here.”

There’s still months of work left, but McNally knows she will be living here soon. She has learned both a lot of construction skills and a lot about teaching, herself. She holds workshops to help the neighbors who are left take on their own properties. Her house, still unfinished, is a good training ground for beginners. McNally also realized people are less afraid to approach her with their questions than the experts she first had teaching.

“It’s hard putting things together. And, I don’t know, there’s been times where you just want to sit down and you get so frustrated that you don’t know how to do something that I think it’s really important to have people there who say, whatever, it’s ok and it’s ok that you don’t know everything, because you know, once you figure it out or ask questions, or just do it (laughs) and hope that things work out for the best, they usually do.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Emma Jacobs.

Related Links

Biofuels in Europe: Part 3

  • Jühnde’s biomass power plant runs 24/7 and gets fed manure and grains every day. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

People fed up with hearing
about an energy crisis talk
about going off the grid.
In the US, the solution is
to install solar panels on
your roof or put up a wind
turbine. But a village in
Germany has taken a different
approach. In the final part
of our three-part series on
biofuels in Europe, Sadie
Babits explains:

Transcript

People fed up with hearing
about an energy crisis talk
about going off the grid.
In the US, the solution is
to install solar panels on
your roof or put up a wind
turbine. But a village in
Germany has taken a different
approach. In the final part
of our three-part series on
biofuels in Europe, Sadie
Babits explains:

The village of Juhnde sits between rolling farmland and woods. The first buildings went up more than a thousand years ago. It looks like a lot of German villages – narrow streets, terra cotta roofs, and a towering church steeple. But talk to anyone here and they’ll tell you Juhnde is no ordinary town. It’s the first community in Germany to be powered and heated by cow manure and grain.

“This is the biogas power station on this side.“

That’s Gerd Paffenholz. He’s lived here in Juhnde for 20 years. He volunteers to show visitors, like me, the village’s bio-energy plant.

“This is the wood heating system and what you don’t see is the network that deliver the hot water in the ground.”

Paffenholz stands on top of an underground storage tank. The liquid manure in here gets pumped over to a massive green tank. That’s the anerobic digester. There, micro-organisms have a hay day eating manure and grains supplied by farmers in Juhnde. The bacteria create biogas, which then gets combusted into heat and electricity. It’s pretty silent outside the power station but open the door…

(engine sound)

That’s the sound of 700 kilowatts of power being generated. The electricity gets sent to the public network. It provides this village of 750 people with renewable power. There’s an added bonus – energy that’s normally lost while making biogas gets captured and is used to heat water. That hot water gets delivered through a series of underground pipes to heat most of the homes in Juhnde.

The village’s bioenergy plant went live five years ago. The price tag? Nearly 8 million dollars. The money came through a government grant and from residents who each ponied up thousands of dollars to join the plant cooperative. The village has also cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half already meeting targets set by the European Union for 2050.

“It shows you what some wise investments and collective thinking can make happen.”

That’s Jim McMillan. He researches biofuels at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. He says Juhnde has created an attractive model that could work in the Northern US and Canada where people are more remote and winters are long and hard.

“It’s a good model but Europe, I mean, they’re built out much more than we are and they are doing a lot more in building. They’re density of building, the size of their square foot of their homes are much more right size and so these solutions are easier to implement there than they are here I mean we have a lot more big homes that require a lot more heat.”

Our attitudes are different too. It took several years to get Juhnde’s residents to buy into the idea of going off the grid but now most everyone is on board. Here in the U.S. we’re a lot more individualistic. But McMillan still sees a lot of promise in what Juhnde accomplished.

“So one village is a good example but we need to apply it across the board.”


Other villages in Germany are building bio energy plants. In the U.S. a few towns are attempting parts of Juhnde’s efforts. Reynolds, Indiana replaced the town’s vehicle fleet with cars and trucks that run on bio fuel. It’s now working with a company to turn algae into power. And in Grand Marais, Minnesota, they want to build a central heating system for the town that burns wood chips from the local saw mill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Time to Eat the Dog?

  • Meredith Mull loves dogs. She owns five and works as a groomer. She's not getting rid of any of her pets to help the environment. (Photo by Julie Grant)

We’ve all heard about the
environmental problems our
gas-guzzling cars and trucks
cause. But some researchers
say our vehicles aren’t the
biggest energy hogs. The biggest
energy users actually live
in our homes. Julie Grant
reports about the new book
‘Time To Eat The Dog?’ about
the wasteful ways of our pets:

Transcript

We’ve all heard about the
environmental problems our
gas-guzzling cars and trucks
cause. But some researchers
say our vehicles aren’t the
biggest energy hogs. The biggest
energy users actually live
in our homes. Julie Grant
reports about the new book
‘Time To Eat The Dog?’ about
the wasteful ways of our pets:

Robert Vale is sorry. He didn’t set out to incriminate Fido. He and his wife Brenda Vale specialize in sustainable living at Victoria University in New Zealand. And they just wanted to see how much of the world’s resources it takes to do things like eat, work, play sports, and own pets.

“The thing that most surprised us, and was the most unexpected was the scale of the impact of pets – which was really, really high.”

Vale says a big dog, like a German Shepard, actually has a bigger ecological footprint than an SUV.

To measure the ecological paw-print of pets, the Vales looked at the ingredients in common brands of dried pet foods. Based on recommended portion sizes, they calculated that a medium sized dog would consume more than 3 ounces of dried meat a day. To get that much dried meat, the Vales found, it takes nearly a pound of fresh meat. Add that up each day, and they concluded a medium sized dog eats about 360 pounds of meat a year!

Robert Vale says raising that meat – beef, lamb and chicken – has an environmental impact.

“And we did the calculation based on a dog eating chicken, which is a fairly low footprint meat, rather than say beef, which is a fairly high footprint meat. So, we tried to bias it in favor of the dog. But it still came out really big. It was a big surprise, really.”

Vale says the dog takes more than 2 and a half times more energy and resources than building and driving an SUV 6000 miles a year.

These numbers aren’t just coming from the Vales.
The New Scientist Magazine asked the Stockholm Environment Institute in England to calculate a dog’s paw-print, and the findings were almost exactly the same.

But none of this really computes with dog-lover Meredith Mull. She doesn’t understand why Robert Vale would even look into this.

“He must not have a pet. He must not know what it’s like to be loved by an animal and take care of it and have it give you nothing but respect and loyalty and love. He must not know what it feels like.”

The Vales don’t have any pets. They used to have cats and other animals. But when they died, Robert Vale says they felt they shouldn’t replace them and use more of the world’s resources just to give themselves a little more comfort.

“We are increasingly pushing up to a question of limits. What can we have, what, everything. I think to some extent, that’s why it’s unpopular. We’ve all been brought up to believe that not only can we have more of everything, but it’s our right to have more of everything.”

But some people think the Vales are barking up the wrong tree.

Chetana Mirle works on global warming issues at the Humane Society of the United States. She says instead of blaming dogs, people should look at what they, themselves are eating – and how that contributes to environmental problems.

“So to me, I felt like, ‘are you kidding me?’ Um, we’re worried about our pets, and what our pets are eating instead of what we’re eating, and what our consumption is about – which has such a huge disproportionately large impact on climate change and the environment in general.”

It’s not that the researchers want people to blame dogs and cats instead of themselves. They say they just want people to understand that each choice we make – right down to whether we have pets – has an environmental impact.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Interview: Amory Lovins

  • Amory Lovins is the Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. (Photo courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Institute)

There’s a lot of talk about
conserving energy, but many
homeowners are not taking
advantage of the tax credits
being offered to tighten up
their homes. Many are more
intrigued about solar panels
and generating their own power.
Amory Lovins is an inventor,
author, and the chief scientist
at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Lester Graham talked with him
about conserving energy at home:

Transcript

There’s a lot of talk about
conserving energy, but many
homeowners are not taking
advantage of the tax credits
being offered to tighten up
their homes. Many are more
intrigued about solar panels
and generating their own power.
Amory Lovins is an inventor,
author, and the chief scientist
at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Lester Graham talked with him
about conserving energy at home:

Lester: When I talk to some of my friends about energy consumption, they immediately jump to installing backyard wind turbines or solar panels; just getting off the grid. And I always ask, well, have you added insulation your attic? It seems like some of us are really into those gee-whiz aspects of renewable but we tend to overlook conservation, that’s something you’ve stressed. Why?

Lovins: Well, efficiency, which I use instead of conservation cause it unambiguously, means doing more with less is faster, cheaper, easier, than any kind of supply. Look, if you can’t keep your bathtub full of hot water because it keeps running down the drain the first thing you do is get a plug before you go looking for a bigger water heater. Then when you get a water heater, it will be a lot smaller and cheaper and work better. So efficiency first is a wonderful adage, most people live in houses with a square yard of holes in them. Of course if you live in a sieve, it’s hard to stay warm. So, first, you start with stuff like weather stripping and caulk, and if you can you get a house doctor to come do a house call with diagnostic equipment and diagnose you houses chills and fevers. But uh, even in our house which is one of the most efficient in the world, uh, we still need to the blower door test and caulking every few years because with changes in humidity the wood works in and out and you have to renew this stuff occasionally. But the benefits are huge.

Lester: How far can we really go in saving energy at home?

Lovins: If you’re really conscientious about it, most people can save around half to two-thirds of their energy. That’s partly by draft proofing, insulation, and perhaps, although they’re often costlier, uh window improvements. I’m sitting under some windows now that insulate like fourteen sheets of glass but look like two and cost less than three. Then also it means whenever you get lights or appliances, you get the most efficient you can, so after some years you’ve turned over the stock and if you’re ever going to buy an appliance, go to aceee.org. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy posts their list of the most energy efficient appliances. Of course, a minimum, you should get energy star, that at least knocks the worst stuff off the market. But within the energy star category, there is quite a lot of variation and it is worth shopping for the best ones.

Lester: What about the upfront costs of new appliances, new windows, new furnaces, things like that?

Lovins: For many kinds of appliances, there isn’t even any correlation between efficiency and price, but if there is, it’s probably still a very good deal; a much better return than you can get in any other form of investment and with much less risk. Think of it as money very well spent and of course, if you had first done the very cheap stuff like stopping up that square yard of holes in your house, the wind doesn’t whistle through, it saves so much upfront that it helps pay for everything else. The whole package is really quite an enticing return.

Lester: Amory Lovins consults on energy issues and he’s the chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Thank you for your time.

Lovins: Thank you.

Related Links

Greenovation: Eco-Certified

  • When doing home improvement projects, WaterSense, EnergyStar, GREENGUARD, and FSC certifications are some to keep an eye out for. (Photo by Michelle Miller-Freeck, courtesy of FEMA)

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Transcript

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Julia Weinert and her boyfriend like the idea of making their place nice, but even something as simple as painting causes concerns.

JW: “We want to support environmentally friendly options and we just don’t want to be smelling it for three days out and have to be running the fans. We just want it to be convenient and we think it would be an easy thing to do.”

LG: “Well, you’re in luck. We’re at the local Home Depot and we just happen to have Greenovation.TV’s Matt Grocoff here. Matt, you’ve got some advice for her.”

MG: “And it’s really, really simple. When you’re trying to find a paint that’s healthy for you or another product, you shouldn’t have to be a chemist when you go to the store. There’s a really simple thing you can look for. Just look for the simple GREENGUARD label. GREENGUARD is an independent organization that lets you know with a simple label that that product is safe for you.”

So, none of the really strong paint smells that mean polluting chemicals are being released. GREENGUARD Environmental Institute sets indoor air standards for products and buildings. Julia and I sniffed a can of paint WITH the GREENGUARD label, and then one without.

LG: “I’ll let you sniff first.”

JW: Okay. Oh! Yeah! Oh my gosh! That is ridiculous. I mean, it smells so much stronger than this one. You can’t even smell that one compared to this one.”

A gallon of paint with the GREENGUARD label DOES cost a few dollars more, maybe as much as ten bucks.

Matt then herded us to another part of the store, the plumbing section, where Julia and I were confronted by all kinds of shiny chrome and brass faucets.

JW: “There’s a whole wall, a whole aisle of faucets here and I just don’t know which ones to look for.”

LG: “So, Matt. You got any fancy labels here?”

MG: “Absolutely. Again, if you’re looking for that eco-friendly option, a way to save yourself some money and some water, it’s simple. Just look for the WaterSense label. The EPA does EnergyStar labels for appliances. The EPA also does WaterSense label for plumbing fixtures.”

WaterSense means the fixture – whether a faucet, shower head or toilet – will use less water but still works well.

As we wandered over to the lumber section of the store, Matt told us the last label he wanted to show us is the most ignored label – and it might just be the most important one.

MG: “FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. And what that means is they’ve made a commitment that they’re not going to be tearing down forest and clear-cutting them in order for you to build some bookshelves in your home. This is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases is that we don’t have these forests capturing this carbon any more. Instead of having to have a PhD in forest management, you can just simply look for a piece of wood that has an FSC label on it.”

So, labels. Julia says, works for her.

JW: “It’s going to be great, taking my boyfriend around the store and showing him all these cool things I can get to make our home improvements a little more cheap and environmentally-friendly.”

LG: “Alright remind me, go over this again. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

MG: “It’s very simple. If you’re looking for paint, look for GREENGUARD. For plumbing, WaterSense. For lumber, FSC, Forest Stewardship Council certified.”

LG: “That’s Matt Grocoff, Greenovation.TV. Thanks again, Matt.

MG: “Lester, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you.”

For The Environemnt Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Shutting Off the Heat

  • Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year. (Photo by Elizabeth A. Sellers, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)

Millions of families had their heat
or electricity shut off this year.
Rebecca Williams reports that happened
even though government assistance
for energy bills doubled:

Transcript

Millions of families had their heat
or electricity shut off this year.
Rebecca Williams reports that happened
even though government assistance
for energy bills doubled:

Record numbers of Americans are having trouble paying their heating or power bills.

Mark Wolfe is with the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. He represents the state agencies that help people pay their energy bills.

He says when families use up their allotment of energy assistance, things can get tough.

“It’s pretty awful – they go to payday lenders, pay high interest rates to get extra money, they borrow from relatives, they cut back on medicine, they turn the heat down to dangerous levels. These are families that’ve already gone from steak to chicken to rice. They don’t have a lot of choices.”

Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year.


Wolfe says unless the economy improves next year, the number of families needing help with their bills could be even greater.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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