The Toxicity of Oil

This is the eighteenth in a series of posts about recovering from the Gulf oil disaster and from oil dependency overall. The first introduces the series.

In the last couple of months, Gulf-area poison control centers have received 651 "exposure calls" related to crude oil toxicants. Symptoms reported by callers have included headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, throat irritation, eye pain, coughing or choking and dizziness. According to the Gulf Oil Spill page of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, most exposures have occurred via inhalation, with dermal contact also reported.

You can see some graphic documentation of crude oil’s effect on skin in a photo of some rash-afflicted legs posted yesterday with commentary by Riki Ott on the Huffington Post.

I viewed the rashy-legs picture after finishing yesterday's write-ups on the toxic petroleum byproducts contained in perfume, one on this blog and the other at the North Coast Holistics blog. At the same time, I discovered a fabulous piece by Stacy Malkan – ironically, or maybe not so, with the same title I had just given one of mine, "Petroleum in Perfume" – which eloquently relates toxic petrochemicals in fragrances to the Gulf spill disaster. It's a must-read, emphasizing the need to move away from past toxic practices and adopt new, greener approaches in all spheres of industry and life. Let's rethink petrochemicals, Malkan writes, and "move the entire economy toward renewable energy, clean production and green, safe chemistry."

As author of Not Just a Pretty Face:The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry and cofounder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Malkan advocates that approach on a regular basis. The Campaign calls for elimination of toxic ingredients -- chemicals linked to birth defects, cancer, and other health issues -- in body care products. A recent analysis by the Campaign shows that top-selling perfumes contain hazardous compounds and secret petrochemicals.

That's not unlike the dispersant Corexit 9500 now being used to "clean up" in the Gulf. A few weeks ago, an article by Elana Schor in the New York Times (originally from Greenwire) reported that Nalco, producer of Corexit, had issued press releases noting that the dispersant's ingredients also occur in several common household products. Apparently fashioned to reassure the public, the release I found at Nalco's website noted that various unnamed ingredients in Corexit are also used in beverage mixtures, skin cream, body shampoo, and baby bath liquid.

This was not reassuring to me -- in fact, it had the opposite effect. It’s another indicator that the use of potentially harmful petrochemicals in common products has been undisclosed and unregulated for far too long. It's also another good reason to support the goals of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, as well as all campaigns working to reduce our use of oil.

To tie this back to transportation, we also get plenty of personal exposure to toxic petroleum byproducts from cars. We're exposed at gas stations, in garages, and from tailpipe exhaust. Studies have consistently found higher cancer rates among people living closer to busy roads, where exhaust reaches highest concentrations. Inside cars, exposures might be even worse. Some studies have found pollution levels within cars to be higher than outside them. In addition, "new car smell" is loaded with endocrine disrupters, compounds that off-gas from petrochemical auto interiors, get into our bodies, and mess with hormone function.

We have some big reasons compelling us to end our dependence on oil, with the Gulf disaster, climate change, and the huge military cost of procuring oil all on the list. Petroleum toxicity is one more, and with the ever-increasing incidence of cancers and chronic illnesses linked to petrochemical exposures, it is no less important.

Petroleum in Perfume

This is the seventeenth in a series of blog posts about recovering from the Gulf oil spill and from oil dependency overall. The first introduces the series.

Yesterday I wrote about author Lynne McTaggart’s new lyrics for Paul Simon’s old song, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” McTaggart’s stanzas for her “50 Ways to Leave Crude Oil” focus almost entirely on transportation, with good reason. In the U.S., close to 70% of all the oil we guzzle goes to moving us around, 60% of it to moving around on highways. Transportation is thus by far the biggest contributor to our oil addiction.

Still, there are many other ways in which petroleum spills into our daily existence. As McTaggart writes, “All of our modern-day lives are utterly intertwined with petroleum use.” Another author, Paul Blanc, MD, sheds light on why petroleum byproducts became ubiquitous as he tells a story of benzene in his book How Everyday Products Make People Sick:

• "Shortly after World War II, the petrochemical industry discovered an effective way of ‘cracking’ gasoline to yield a number of by-products, including benzene. …. As postwar refining for automobile gasoline expanded exponentially, benzene was ever more abundant. In fact there was an awful lot on the market to be unloaded."

The petrochemical industry went on to develop numerous uses for benzene, despite its link with leukemia and fatal cases of anemia. Benzene can be found today in many consumer goods, including some perfumes and body care products. This pattern repeated with other petroleum byproducts, to the point that today, the website of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association features a chart boasting how many common products come from crude oil.

About ten percent of the crude used in this country feeds the manufacture of plastics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and a variety of other goods including cosmetics and perfumes. That’s why Lynne McTaggart’s post mentioned above goes on to suggest avoiding use of such products, including artificial fragrances. As Dr. Louisa Williams points out in her excellent volume Radical Medicine, 95% of the ingredients used in fragrances are synthetic chemicals derived from petroleum.

That makes eliminating artificially fragranced products from your life a great way to step a little further out of the petroleum economy. It’s also critical enough for health that I’ve written a separate post on my North Coast Holistics blog to delve more deeply into the dangers of using petro-based perfumes, and what we can do instead.

To cut the quantity of petroleum-based perfumes wafting into your life, here are some quick tips:

• Generally, avoid products with the word “fragrance” in the label. It usually indicates the presence of synthetic and variously toxic chemicals in the product formulation.
• Look instead for fragrance-free products or those that use ONLY true essential oils for scent (although even those can stimulate allergies or asthma in some people).
• Apply this guideline not only to body care products, but also to cleaning products such as laundry detergent. More companies now make household cleaning products without synthetic fragrance; for instance, Seventh Generation has a complete line of unscented cleaners called “Free and Clear.”
• Just say NO! to air fresheners, which must have the most oxymoronic name of any product on the planet as they are actually major indoor air polluters.

Following these tips can help cut petroleum use and protect your health. For further details, check this post. Thanks again to Lynne McTaggart for the inspiration, as well as to all the authors whose books provided information for this post.

There must be more than 50 ways .... Lynne McTaggart's new lyrics and list of ways to leave crude oil

This is the sixteenth in a series of blog posts about recovering from the Gulf oil spill and from oil dependency overall. The first introduces the series.

Yesterday my dear friend Jill Nussinow (a wonderful cook, writer, and vegetarian nutrition expert, aka The Veggie Queen) sent me a great link. It seems that Lynne McTaggart, journalist and author of top-selling books The Field and The Intention Experiment, has also blogged lately about the Gulf oil disaster and the importance of cutting our use of petroleum. In her post of July 2nd, she unveiled lyrics to a new song fashioned after Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover."

McTaggart's version, called "50 Ways to Leave Crude Oil," includes this chorus:

"Just take the train back, Jack
Get rid of the van, Stan
You don't need a new toy, Roy
Or an SUV
Hop on the bus, Gus
Or ride your bike like the Dutch
Just turn off the key, Lee
And set us all free."

I love this! I'm not sure I could find a better lyrical representation of what Divorce Your Car! is all about, even down to specific sections of the book: "Just take the train back, Jack" – see pp. 167-169; "Hop on the bus, Gus" – see pp. 169-170; "Or ride your bike like the Dutch" -- see Chapter 12; "Just turn off the key, Lee, and set us all free" – the whole book, really, and especially Part 3.

"Hop on the bus, Gus -- Or ride your bike like the Dutch"

In her post, McTaggart also lists ways we can "leave" crude oil. She suggests, for instance, "Whenever you go to use your car, think first: do I really need to drive?" This is a great question, and another topic touched on in Divorce Your Car! It came up in Chapter 17, which suggests developing a transportation menu – a term I first heard from Phil Smith, at that time the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator in Missoula, Montana.

A transportation menu is essentially a list of all the ways you might get from point A to point B. A simple thing, but useful because we need reminders of how many petroleum-free or car-free ways we have to get around. Just making such a list can help us snap out of the "married-to-the-car" mindset, the idea that any time you take a trip it means getting into a car. Can you bike? Walk? Take transit? Share a ride? Access what you need by phone or Internet? Kayak to work like commuters in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and probably other locales? Maybe use inline skates? For long-distance travel, take Amtrak? These options can all go on the list.

"Just take the train back, Jack"

A transportation menu, then, helps remind us of all our non-car transportation choices, and it can be used in conjunction with the question above. Here's a version of how to do that (adapted from Divorce Your Car!, p. 225):

When it comes time to use your transportation menu, ask a few key questions:

Do I really need to take this trip? This question is made more necessary because driving can be a little too habitual. One man who wanted to break his driving habit decided to tape a note to himself on his driver's side door: "Do you really need to take this trip?" Dianne Patrick of Marquette, Michigan, has done something similar with her annual New Year's resolution to drive less. "Every day I get up and ask myself if I have to use the car, and if the answer is no, it stays in the garage," she says. If you ask: "Is this trip necessary?" and the answer is no, great! You don't have to go anywhere. If the answer is yes, move on to the next question.

How can I get where I want to go without using a car? Your transportation menu should give you a variety of ways to answer this question. Still, there might be times when you ask it and come up with no other way to get somewhere without driving alone in an internal combustion car. It happens, sometimes more often because our current system caters so much to cars and oil. Then ask:

What changes would allow me to take this trip without using a car? Some of these changes might be collective, in the realm of advocacy and policy changes. Better land use, safer and slower streets, more support for transit, carfree city centers, fewer subsidies for highways and oil: these can all help us win a collective divorce and move beyond the problems of auto/oil addiction. But you might also be able to respond to this question with individual changes – location and lifestyle changes that you can make on your own.

The book goes on to talk about moving to locations that support carfree living, as well as simplifying and slowing down to drive less and consume less oil. Add this to Lynne McTaggart's list, and you have many more than 50 ways to leave behind crude oil and our whole dysfunctional marriage to cars and oil. Seeing the number of writers and thinkers now chiming in on this theme gives me hope we are nearing a tipping point. These ideas may well be infusing the fields McTaggart writes about in her books, swelling our collective intent to truly change. My hope is that as more of us embrace the simple but beneficial ways of living better with less petroleum, they will gain power, leading us to recover from oil addiction and heal our way of life.

World Carfree Network: Moving Towards Carfree Cities

This is the fifteenth in a series of blog posts about recovering from the Gulf oil spill and from oil dependency overall. The first introduces the series.

I’m listed as an advisor to the World Carfree Network. It’s a group with a terrific mission: promoting carfree communities as a cornerstone of sustainable society, a goal that can do a terrific amount toward helping us recover from petroleum addiction and all its ill effects, including the Gulf oil disaster.

I have to admit I’ve been not-so-terrific as an advisor. Aside from a modicum of financial support and maybe a couple of occasions on which I did proffer actual advice, I have done very little in my advisory role. Fortunately, WCN has not needed my active assistance to persist, and for that I’m grateful.

An international network based in Europe, WCN serves as a carfree information clearinghouse. The group grew out of the organization Carbusters, and continues to publish the ground-breaking Carbusters magazine, a thoroughgoing collection of news and views about carfree issues, actions, events and communities around the world.

Every year or so, WCN also holds the seminal Towards Carfree Cities Conference. This year’s meeting, the Ninth (IX), just wrapped up in York, England. Titled “How Do We Get There?” the conference focused on various ways to bring carfree communities to life and included an actual carfree conversion of a commercial street for one evening. If you want to see how much fun carfree can be, check out this report on the street conversion and party that the Towards Carfree Cities Conference helped to organize.

WCN also coordinates World Carfree Day every September 22nd. Around the world on this day, communities host events to encourage people to get out of their cars. With World Carfree Day, WCN hopes to showcase how cities might look, feel and sound if they were carfree all the time. Turning more city spaces into carfree areas has great potential to help cut oil dependence and make cities better, healthier places.

The WCN website includes a slew of useful links and resources, including a Carfree Green Pages. It also archives information from past Towards Carfree Cities Conferences. Both Carbusters and WCN have pages on Facebook. For great advice about all things carfree, check them out!

Policy Pathways to Oil Freedom

This is the fourteenth in a series of blog posts about recovering from the Gulf oil spill and from oil dependency overall. The first introduces the series.

Happy Independence Day! As we celebrate freedom from one kind of tyranny, I'm focused on paths to freedom from another: from the tyranny of oil/auto dependence.

As I wrote in Divorce Your Car!, oil/auto dependence keeps us shackled in numerous ways. We spend huge amounts of money and time on cars and oil, and even sacrifice lives to the oil/auto system – in wars, in crashes, and in industrial catastrophes like the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

I'm far from the only one to point this out. Most recently, the book Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on our Lives, by Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez, does an excellent job of exploring and documenting the many ways we sacrifice ourselves to oil/auto tyranny.

I highly recommend the book, and for a sense of the wit and wisdom of its authors, check out the chat we did not long ago at the Firedoglake.com Book Salon.

The tyranny of oil has now cost us large swaths of the Gulf Coast ecosystem and an entire way of life. How do we shake off this kind of tyranny? Uncoupling from our cars has to be a huge part of that, since a big percentage of the oil we use fuels our driving. In the U.S., highway vehicles consume about 84% of the petroleum we use for transport and close to 60% of all petroleum we use for any purpose.

Government policy has played a major role in shackling us to oil; a shift in this policy can play a major role in freeing us. In previous posts, I've touched on approaches individuals can take to move toward oil independence. Today, I list a selection of government policies that can support greater freedom from oil and cars. Such as:

• Stop all subsidies for oil companies. The same oil companies that make billions in profits each year still get tax breaks from the U.S. government. What's wrong with this picture? Ten years ago, an estimate of these subsidies that I cited in Divorce Your Car! quantified them at $2.5 billion per year. Now, reports the New York Times, these subsidies amount to $4 billion per year. While a 2007 attempt to end oil company tax breaks failed, there is again legislation in Congress that would cut handouts to the oil industry. Eliminating them would at least put these costs back in the marketplace, improving the competitiveness of cleaner fuels and non-motorized travel.
  

• Use the revenue gained from ending oil subsidies to support walking, cycling and transit. We can go beyond ending oil subsidies and make up for some of the damage they've done. See the next few suggestions.
  

• Invest more money in foot-friendly infrastructure. The website for Walkable Communities, Inc. has an excellent list of qualities that make communities walkable. Compact town centers, low traffic speeds, public spaces with interconnected walkways, and other measures that create more traditional, walkable neighborhoods all encourage people to travel on foot. In traditional neighborhoods in Chicago, for instance, residents walk for 37% of trips, compared to only 3% in suburbs. This adds to quality of life as it cuts oil dependence.

• Fund more bicycle facilities. When the German city of Erlangen improved its bicycle facilities, bike trips rose from 10% to a whopping 30% of travel in 12 years. An interconnected system of bike routes, lanes and paths; secure, convenient, covered bike parking; bike racks and spaces on buses and trains; and safer roads can go a long way to support cycling and cut oil use.

• Expand transit and intercity rail. We still suffer from a massive imbalance in the amount of funding that goes to roads (gargantuan) versus the amount going to urban transit and intercity passenger rail (paltry). This is a major contributor to our dependence on oil. Investing in transit has huge benefits even beyond cutting oil use, including job creation and promoting quality of life. For a taste of this, check out this morning's very good story about the Paris Metro from NPR. It captured how much this wonderful transit system enhances the city, and how much people love it. Give the story a listen or a read, and see if you agree: all urban areas should have such superb transit amenities.

• Expand support of programs like Safe Routes to School. We all know parents who feel enslaved by chauffeuring their kids to and from school. When I wrote Divorce Your Car!, ¾ of all U.S. kids were driven to school, and in the U.K., parents shuttling students accounted for 1/5 of rush hour traffic. With a combination of education, engineering and enforcement, Safe Routes to School has addressed a primary reason parents feel compelled to drive their kids: safety. Since a few years ago, SRTS has received federal funding in the U.S., but the level of funding for walking and biking routes, walking school buses, bicycle trains, and other SRTS programs should be increased. SRTS cuts oil consumption and oil dependence, reduces weight gain in kids by allowing them safe exercise, improves air quality, aids community cohesiveness, and frees time up for parents all at once.

• Support and spread laws like California’s AB32. This is the landmark California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which establishes limits to carbon emissions. Already, the law has accelerated the shift in California to cleaner, greener energy production and manufacturing, helping to reduce oil dependence. Yet now there's an insidious attempt to overturn AB32 through the California initiative process, funded and supported by – who else? – oil companies (including Tesoro, Valero Energy, Occidental Petroleum and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association). Using slick PR and spinning their proposal as "The California Jobs Initiative," these mostly Texas-based companies claim AB32 hurts job growth in California, but in fact, the opposite is true. For instance, data shows that since passage of AB32, California has attracted a dramatic increase in venture capital for clean technology companies, more than all other leading states combined. And for every $100 million in venture capital, 2,700 new jobs are created – at a rate faster than federal stimulus spending, and much more cost-effectively. If California voters are smart, they'll see through this cynical ploy and vote down the challenge to AB32. Meanwhile, more states would do well to adopt their own versions of the law.

• Use feebates and rebates to encourage efficiency when cars are purchased. A system of high purchase taxes on big gas-guzzlers, paired with credits on fuel-efficient or cleaner-fuel vehicles, could be revenue-neutral – taxes on the guzzlers could be set to cover the cost of the credits. Over time, this would reduce oil consumption by highway vehicles. To keep the total miles we drive from rising to the point that they negate the efficiency gains, this policy has to be combined with others that support car-free travel.

• Establish a carbon tax. Have I said this before? Even many business leaders agree that we need a consistent financial signal to move us off oil and toward cleaner energy. As we phase in such a tax, revenues can be used to support mass transit as well as bike and pedestrian facilities. In addition to raising state and national gas taxes, we can allow local and regional governments to levy gas and auto use taxes. In Montreal, such taxes supply significant revenue for the city's Agence Metropolitaine de Transport.

I could list more, but I hope what I've included here will demonstrate that we have a wealth of policy options to help free us from oil dependence, if we have the will to pursue them. I invite you to add your own suggestions in the comments section below. And may you find many ways to enjoy independence on this 4th of July holiday!