 What perfume did you wear as a teenager? I went through a lot of Poison -- and now I find out that toxic stuff contained four different phthalates!
This I discovered reading "Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry," a new book by Stacy Malkan, cofounder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The reason for the book? Many of the personal care products people use on a daily basis contain lead, formaldehyde, phthalates, parabens, and other carcinogenic chemicals. Why? Because cosmetics companies are allowed to use the stuff -- and the stuff is cheap.
Instead of taking a precautionary approach as many European countries do, the U.S. goes by a "prove harm" approach. Writes Malkan: "The Environmental Protection Agency must prove a toxic substance 'presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment' before regulating it -- which roughly translates to 'show us the dead bodies.' "
Nor does the Food and Drug Administration require manufacturers to demonstrate that cosmetics products are safe. This means that the cosmetics industry regulates itself -- meaning products are only tested for short-term obvious health effects (rashes, eye irritations and the like). "Most chemicals in cosmetics have not been tested for their potential to cause long-term health problems such as cancer or reproductive harm," Malkan writes.
To prove its point, "Not Just a Pretty Face" covers a lot of ground, from scientific studies to the history of the Environmental Working Group (including its popular consumer cosmetics database, Skin Deep) to the inner workings of the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Assn. And while there's much to be distressed about, Malkan also points to some positive signs -- most of which is actually happening in California!
For example, the California Safe Cosmetics Act, which mandates that companies let the state know if the ingredients used in products are linked to cancer or birth defects, went into effect January 2007. More recently, the California Toxic Toys Bill passed. That bill, which goes into effect January 2009, bans phthalates from children's toys sold in California. In addition, the California Green Chemistry Initiative was unveiled early this year, with three fundamental policies: "creating a new regulatory and enforcement system, strengthening consumer protection laws and better informing consumers about toxic substances in products," according to the L.A. Times.
"Not Just a Pretty Face" in fact, is also an encouraging and empowering story -- in which most of the heroes are women! Jane Houlihan of EWG, Jeanne Rizzo of the Breast Cancer Fund, and of course, Malkan herself, are all leading the fight to make consumer products safer. Even new beauty innovations are being done by women. "Not Just a Pretty Face" tells the story of Amy Cannon, the world's first PhD in green chemistry, who's used UV light to shrink-wrap hair into a non-toxic perm.
You too can be part of the effort to ensure the products on store shelves all become safe products. Until that happens, read "Not Just a Pretty Face" to get educated and get tips on making wise consumer choices. And when purchasing products, use the Skin Deep database to help you pick the safest and greenest products on the market.
Earlier: Simplify your beauty routine for your health and the environment's, says Stacy Malkan.
>> Santa Monica's Green Business Certification is getting popular, with beauty shops, hotels and consulting firms all going after the green sticker. Earlier: Office eco-audits and certifications.
 >> Want a Green Business Certification for the city of L.A.? City Councilman Richard Alarcon's expected to introduce a motion to fund a $200,000 pilot certification program with city money. Call your council member to show your support for it.
>> What to expect from a home energy audit. Anh-Minh Le gets her home audited, then details the process and offers tips in the San Francisco Chronicle. (via Re-Nest)
>> D.J. Waldie on why you should take the bus and support public transit funding, even if it sucks sometimes. "All of us should know that we are actually making a new citizenry for a different city." I've actually rarely found the 720 or 704 to be as crowded as Waldie describes, but I guess I generally ride during off-hours. Earlier: D.J. Waldie and going green at Antioch College.
>> Some compromises between environmentalists and big business are beneficial, say Audubon California and Natural Resources Defense Council people as they tout the deals they helped broker between conservationists / environmentalists and oil / development companies.
Your eco-questions answered:
 Question: I was reading your blog and noticed that you've been hanging out in the 818 (the Valley). I recently just got rid of my car (long story, but it was a lemon) and have been somewhat car-less for the last couple of weeks and enjoying it. I freelance, so I commute only about twice a week and for those occasions I carpool with my husband (he still has his car, hence the "somewhat" car-less).
Anyway, I was curious how you traveled to the Valley from Santa Monica. I ask only because I'm trying to gather other recommended modes of transportation from fellow car-less folks. Did you cab it or do that hourly car rental thing (forgot the name)? I live in the Valley and I love to hear the best way you've found to travel between the Valley and Santa Monica. Cheers, Liza
Answer: First of all, congrats on the de-car'd lifestyle! Second, it's car-free, not car-less :)
Third, to say I've been "hanging out in the Valley" is not quite accurate, especially as I have many readers who get angry because I allegedly don't give the Valley enough attention or because I make fun of it (my ribbing's just jovial teasing, people).
In any case, I only go to the Valley a few times a year! It's simply that I happened to make two trips last month. Once in a blue moon, I have to rent a car for the weekend -- and when I do, I make a trip to a relatively faraway L.A. spot and hit all the places there I've been meaning to visit. That's why I have a buncha recent posts highlighting places in the Valley -- all of those were from one trip.
The second trip was to a party at my friend's who'd just moved to the Valley. I did that by bus, and it wasn't a happy trip due to the buses not showing up or being late.
This also answers your main question: No, it is not easy getting from Santa Monica to the Valley sans car, IMHO. However, I did notice that the Valley itself has gotten somewhat nicer, with lively shopping and arts districts, colorful sidewalks, etc. The main concept of de-car-ing isn't so much about taking public transit to far-off places, but being able to avoid having to travel far at all because you have everything you want and need near you. For ex., lots of people in less-than-lively places in the Valley (and the O.C.) drive into Santa Monica and spots in L.A. because they have no good shopping/restaurants/bars near them -- at least not more than 1 or 2 (which one can get tired of relatively quickly).
What I'm saying is, if you really need to get to Santa Monica or environs relatively often, not having a car may not work so well right now, unless you have a masochistic streak. (Though I'd say any driver who fights traffic to cross that distance on a regular basis also must have a high threshold for pain.) A cab ride between the Valley and Santa Monica's gonna be quite pricey -- and Flexcar, the car-sharing service you were referring to -- has pulled all the cars out of its L.A. locations except at USC and UCLA.
So what I'm wondering is if you live in a part of the Valley where you have easy access to important amenities. If so, definitely stay car-free and just borrow your hub's car once in a while when you need it.
Part of the de-car-ing effort might simply be an adjustment in your habits, i.e., finding more fave restaurants in the Valley instead of sticking to the tried-and-true ones you may have in the Westside. It may take a lil more effort at first, but over time, you are likely to derive more satisfaction from discovering nice neighborhood spots that become your new favorites that you can walk or bike to.
Lastly -- If you bike and can do the bike-plus-bus thing, you may very well be able to travel between the Westside and the Valley with relative ease. Zach Behrens, editor of LAist, lives in the Valley and manages to get all over L.A. sans car. He does, however, still own a car...
Earlier: Freeways have failed us -- Valley girls
Photo of Sherman Oaks' gas station by Gregg Moscoe
 Sure, you've heard your shampoo might have unhealthy synthetic chemicals in it. But scary stories about one chemical or another -- contained even in supposedly "green" personal care products -- hits the news so often that many people throw up their hands and just keep using what they've been using, health scares be damned.
Now L.A.'s getting a green beauty event based not on fear, but around organic fun. Organized by Opportunity Green, "Beauty and Sustainability: An Eco-Evening of Networking, Pampering and Discovery" brings enviro-health education together with a fun night of pampering, complete with organic appetizers and wines, manicures from water-based nail polish company Acquarella and mini-facials from paraben-free beauty company Jurlique.
When: Tuesday, May 13, 7:30 to 10 pm
Where: lululemon athletica, 334 N. Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills
Cost: $20, of which an unspecified portion will be donated to the Breast Cancer Fund. RSVP online.
The night will feature a panel of experts, including Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of the "Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry." (Read her recent interview with Grist here). Joining Malkan will be Rachelle Carson (a.k.a. Mrs. Ed Begley Jr.), Jolene Anello of Jurlique, Renata Helfman of Venice's Vert beauty store, and Mark Deason of Acquarella.
I'm most curious about the Acquarella nail polish, having recently read Sarah van Schagen's review of "less toxic" nail polishes from major companies. Van Schagen's conclusion: "The chemical smell from all of these suggests that pursuing your polish habit may not be the best bet for your health." However, she stuck to the major brands, none of which are water-based, as Acquarella's line is. Will Acquarella nail polish work as well as the "regular" stuff? RSVP online to attend the event and find out.
Opportunity Green, originally an annual green business conference, is keeping busy lately. Its launch party last night for Room 367, a green business networking event for young professionals, brought out a diverse crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings to talk enviro-biz over organic wine and appetizers (above). No news yet, however, on when the next Room 367 event will take place.
Bottom photo by Siel
 Want a free buck? GreenDimes, a service for reducing the junk mail you receive, will now pay you to join their service. In fact, GreenDimes is offering $1 to the first 5 MILLION people who sign up for its FREE service.
Too good to be true? Well, sort of. The free subscribers won't get the full service that GreenDimes offers. What freeloaders will receive: Do-it-yourself removal from common junk mail and catalog lists. If you want GreenDimes to do the work for you -- for ex., auto-removing your name from lists and monitoring your junk mail -- you'll need to fork over $20.
You may ask how exactly GreenDimes is providing a free service when you have to, you know, do the work yourself. That's a fair question. In fact, the "service" GreenDimes is offering for free now is already offered free by Catalog Choice and ProQuo (reviewed here).
However, no company besides GreenDimes will actually PAY you to reduce junk mail, to my knowledge. Even if you're not that impressed by the free "service" GreenDimes is offering, you can still sign up to get that dollar. If you prefer, you can elect to have a tree planted on your behalf, or get a free trial issue of Plenty magazine, in lieu of the buck.
Perhaps that dollar incentive will entice some people who wouldn't have bothered to reduce junk mail otherwise. If all of them seriously take advantage of even just free service, we'd reduce paper waste fairly significantly.
I guess GreenDimes is betting some people will come on the site to sign up for the $20 or $35 services they offer, instead of just taking their free buck. I just hope this green company doesn't just end up $5 million in the red...
Earlier: Get the 'Do Not Mail' registry started
That's Katie Ricketts, community/market organizer at Southland Farmers' Market Assn. and contributor to Emerald City, giving out bags of yummy, farm-fresh produce in front of the Santa Monica Main Public Library!
Stop by between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. today and you can meet her in person -- and sign up for the Santa Monica Market Basket Program. Want in-season strawberries but don't want to fight the crowds at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market? If you join the Basket Program, all you'll have to do is choose a pick-up location -- either the SM Main Library or the parking lot at the SM City Hall -- and a pre-packed bag will be waiting for you between 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. every Wednesday.
Cost: $25 for a "classic" bag, which'll contain 8 to 10 pieces of produce. You can opt for a $30 "specialty" bag that includes a few items with higher price points or a $38 family bag. Yes, prices have gone up a tad because some of the summer produce costs more.
To sign up, just stop by either location during the pick-up time on a Wednesday -- or contact Katie at katie@sfma.net or (310) 740-7544. After prepaying (credit card, check or cash), you can start picking up your bag o' goodies every week! Eating local's never been easier.
I believe the Basket Program's still trying to implement a viable bag reuse program, but having a hard time making the process simple and feasible for produce buyers. Got suggestions?
Photo by Siel
>> Ousted from the South Central farm 2 years ago, some South L.A. farmers are commuting via an old bus to farm at Buttonwillow, Calif., west of Bakersfield. "The group sells weekly at farmers markets in Watts, Leimert Park, Atwater and Hollywood, as well as at a monthly tianguis, or marketplace, set up outside the 14 acres they once farmed at 41st and Alameda streets."
>> How to haul things on a bicycle -- coffee mugs, flasks, boxes, etc. "Once you find the right gear for your particular bike needs, biking becomes a whole lot easier and more enjoyable."
>> How to whiten your teeth naturally -- and cheaply! Organic strawberry plus baking powder will do the trick, according to health.com (via lifehacker).
>> How to be healthy: Save other species. "That's the message from Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein from Harvard Medical School in Boston, who say that human health depends crucially on biodiversity."
>> Congress is looking into why the FDA relied on two studies funded by American Plastics Council to decide that the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is safe -- in the face of more than 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories that have raised health concerns about the chemical. BPA is often present in plastics marked #7, such as some Nalgene and Camelbak bottles. (via grist)
Photo by Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times
Eco-advice columnists are all over the web now. There's Grist's Umbra, Salon's Pablo, Slate's Green Lantern - and even me with my Q&As. But Sierra magazine's Mr. Green -- a.k.a. Bob Schildgen -- is the first of all of these to have his own book out.
Published earlier this year, "Hey Mr. Green" is a compilation of the advice Mr. Green's doled out since Feb. 2005, when his column launched. The Q&As, loosely organized into sections like "At Home" and "Food for Thought," are humorously informational -- not the least because Mr. Green takes on even the oddest and rudest of questions.
Seriously, Sierra magazine appears to attract some strangely angry readers (vegans?) -- many who are unnaturally attached to their air conditioning. (David: "You really ticked me off with your condescending attitude about air-conditioning." Mary: "I'm supposed to sit at home sweating it out? ... Don't make us don sackcloth while our corporate friends wear silk!") Who knew people could get so passionate about AC?
The random questions mean that the columns go anywhere from the big picture -- i.e. changing one's quality of life by spending time to cook healthy meals, instead of spending time "working to pay for processed, instant, plasticized food" -- to the almost inconsequential -- i.e. paper or plastic? Mixed in there is a passionate argument pro eating meat -- in condiment-style moderation, of course -- as well as recipes for yummy chili and salsa, and a number of money-and-energy saving tips.
Mr. Green even gets poetic sometimes -- especially when talking about lawns, which he seems to have a mild obsession with. "Lawns make the landscape look bleak, like a cemetery without tombstones," he says, then adds in another column:
Lawns are a type of death denial, in that they're replicas of cemeteries where the owner glides on the mower, godlike and immortal, over the pristine green, enjoying the illusion of immunity from burial and decay below.
I'll never look at a grassy lawn the same way again.
Of course, there were times in the book when I laughed at, not with, Mr. Green. One avid knitter wrote complaining that her daughter refuses to wear the handknit acrylic sweaters, the girl's argument being that acrylic's bad for the environment. Mr. Green dutifully points out that acrylic yarn may not be any worse than conventional cotton or wool (he neglects to mention there are organic cotton, bamboo, hemp, and eco-wool yarns) -- never considering that the reason this poor girl doesn't wanna wear her mama's handiwork probably has nothing to do with the environment at all....
Photo by Adam Drewes via Flickr
Locavoring and freeganism tends to get all the attention these days, but when it comes down to reducing carbon emissions, eating less meat will produce more dramatic results than picking local lettuce over greens shipped from China.
That's what the recently-debuted Low Carbon Diet calculator tries to illustrate. Put together by eco-conscious food company Bon Appétit Management, the Low Carbon Diet calculator aims to show consumers the environmental impact of their food choices.
Would-be eco-conscious eaters can calculate roughly how much carbon dioxide emissions are created by their meals by dragging and dropping food items onto a pan. The LCD calculator assigns a number of points to each food item, with roughly 450 points equaling a pound of CO2 emissions.
Planning to eat a 4 oz. steak? That'll cost you 6977 points. Swap that out for 4 oz. of grilled tofu, and you can bring your score down to just 367 points.
Of course, BAM isn't suggesting that choosing to eat local doesn't matter at all. In fact, BAM plans to phase out out-of-season produce flown in from faraway places from the menus of the 400 or so cafes it serves, including The Getty Center. But BAM's first move for its low carbon menus is cutting back on beef and cheese, not obsessing over which tomato farm is closer to the locations it serves.
In a way, the Low Carbon Diet calculator encourages consumers to first focus on the food items that'll create big changes instead of sweating the small stuff. Die-hard locavorians might be peeved by the calculator though, because it doesn't distinguish between beef from locally-raised grass-fed cows and factory farm cows pumped full of antibiotics, even if the resulting CO2 emissions are bound to be quite different.
My breakfast (above), I found out, wasn't quite as green as I'd hoped -- though I'd like to think that the actual carbon footprint of my meal is smaller than calculated here, partly because the food was all organic, but mainly because the milk in my cereal was made from soybeans, not by cows.
Still, I found using the calculator an informative exercise. We can often lose sight of the big stuff because of the details in the little things. Meaning that yes, everyone should bring their own bags to the grocery store -- but there is a certain irony in watching a Whole Foods customer rant about how plastic bags are made of oil and create pollution -- before loading up her SUV and gas-guzzling her way home.
>> Top 10 ways to go green in the ghetto. "stop driving that SUV? i don't even know how to drive.... everything that's green -- from the houses to the organic food and everything inbetween -- is so expensive. the question persists: how do you go green in the ghetto?"
>> 20 free ways to save energy, from Consumer Reports. For those with a few bucks to spend, check out four more energy-saving tips that require a little investment at the end of the article.
>> Companies: Save money and the environment by ditching the annual report. In Slate, Daniel Gross writes about why those glossy annual reports sadden him.
>> Bridging the "green gap" between black and white Americans. "While whites express more concern about climate change, wilderness preservation and endangered species, African Americans express more concern about pollution, locally undesirable land uses and human health outcomes. Asthmatic children are far more likely to turn African Americans into environmental activists than disappearing polar bears."
>> Ed Norton on plastic's many dangers.
"Obviously plastics have served very important purposes and been
incredibly convenient but as we begin to witness the long-term
consequences of the chemical components leaching into our water and our
bodies, we're going to be forced to look for alternatives to how we
package goods and food."
>> Bottled water's many dangers, both big and small. "This rampant commodification of water, while in one sense a terrible thing, does make it impossible to ignore a future reality: The fact that we probably are going to end up paying for water." Earlier: Bring Your Own week: Bottle up.
>> GreenYour.com: A searchable green wiki with a good compliation of facts and tips to help you live green.
Photo by Mike Innocenzi via Flickr
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What perfume did you wear as a teenager? I went through a lot of Poison -- and now I find out that toxic stuff contained four different phthalates! 
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