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Showing posts with label Chemicals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chemicals. Show all posts
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
This is an abridged article from Toronto Star of May 2010, "Secret ingredients found in perfumes" by Noor Javed
They make you smell like an exotic flower, but popular perfumes and body sprays may also be dousing you with small amounts of chemicals and trigger allergic reactions and disrupt hormones.
Toronto based Environmental Defence and Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in the US tested 17 popular fragrance products and found they contained a total of 38 secret chemicals not listed on the label. On average, each product had 14 of those chemicals.10 of them are known to cause allergies and 4 have a potential to disrupt the hormone system. Many of them are classified as allergens by the European Union, says Rick Smith of the Environmental Defence. "The problem is that they are listed under a generic name "fragrance" and Canadian laws do not oblige the cosmetic manufacturers to be transparent."
People with chemical sensitivities may suffer from nausea, headaches and skin reactions if exposed to strong scents. That's why they are limited even in staying in places with other people, such as theatres and street cars.
TASK: Check this website and discuss about your findings.
LANGUAGE TASK:
Find the past participles in the text and decide which of them are used as:
1. passive forms
2. adjectives.
They make you smell like an exotic flower, but popular perfumes and body sprays may also be dousing you with small amounts of chemicals and trigger allergic reactions and disrupt hormones.
Toronto based Environmental Defence and Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in the US tested 17 popular fragrance products and found they contained a total of 38 secret chemicals not listed on the label. On average, each product had 14 of those chemicals.10 of them are known to cause allergies and 4 have a potential to disrupt the hormone system. Many of them are classified as allergens by the European Union, says Rick Smith of the Environmental Defence. "The problem is that they are listed under a generic name "fragrance" and Canadian laws do not oblige the cosmetic manufacturers to be transparent."
People with chemical sensitivities may suffer from nausea, headaches and skin reactions if exposed to strong scents. That's why they are limited even in staying in places with other people, such as theatres and street cars.
TASK: Check this website and discuss about your findings.
LANGUAGE TASK:
Find the past participles in the text and decide which of them are used as:
1. passive forms
2. adjectives.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
CATTLEGATE
CATTLEGATE
I learned about this story in the book "Slow Death by Rubber Duck" by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie (2009)
It happened in 1973's on Rick Halbert's dairy farm in Michigan. His 400 cows were becoming increasingly sick. They decreased milk production and they showed some abnormal symptoms, such as hoof growth, hair loss and severe reproductive abnormalities. His veterinarian could not diagnose any disease. Halbert suspected his high-protein feed supplies by Michigan Farm Bureau Services. Halbert was no ordinary farmer – he was a chemical engineer too, and he had worked 3 years for the Dow Chemical Company. He spent $5,000 on his own testing of the feed.
PBB, which is a flame retardant for plastic parts by the Michigan Chemical Corporation, was found in the cow's feed. The same company also sold magnesium oxide to Farm Bureau Services, to add to dairy feed to increase cow's milk production. The PBB was confused for magnesium oxide when the company ran out of pre-printed bags. Between 225 and 400 kg of PBB were accidentally shipped to Farm Bureau Services and mixed with cow's feed.
The source of contamination was identified only 9 months after it entered the food chain. It took another year and a half to track down all the contaminated livestock and poultry. Several thousand farm families and wider public had consumed poisoned meat, eggs and milk in the meanwhile.
A study which has tracked health in Michigan points to the link between the PBB exposure and increased risk of cancers of breast and digestive system and higher rate of reproductive system complications. Five years after the incident about 97% of people in Michigan still had measurable level of the PBB chemical in their bodies.
At that time one of the most popular Michigan bumper stickers read "PBB-Cattlegate Bigger Than Watergate".
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