The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

I guess it’s a testament to my recent clean-livin’ lifestyle that I’ve been tripping for 12 hours from a single cup of Starbucks coffee. Coffee - this stuff makes you want to stay up all night and blog about your grandmother. Coffee - why didn’t I think of joining the NBA before? Coffee - is that a neighbor’s pet barking at 5 in the morning or is an angry dog waking up in my head? Coffee - is that a bird hurling itself into my window pane at 7 in the morning or is a flock of seagulls colliding with my skull? Also, I should install a pull-up bar in my office doorway and do somersaults around it forever.

You know how there are dirty islands of non-biodegradable plastic floating in our oceans? Well a former carpenter made his own tropical island buoyed by empty plastic bottles, and it looks like paradise. Spiral Island currently lives off the coast of Mexico but Richie Sowa plans to float it around the world. You have to watch the Ripley’s Believe It or Not video on the Ecoble site. It is awesome. And the English narrator manages to dodge both t’s in the word bottle.

Stole the link from Snarfd, a website that has officially taken the last hour of my life.

The Environmental Working Group is offering a superior gift bag equipped with a chemical-free water bottle and a cast iron pan for a charitable donation of $135. Get the bags while supplies last.

PS Did anyone else hear that Toys “R” Us accidentally printed an ad for Aqua Dots in their annual Christmas newspaper insert?

They won’t post today’s program until 6 p.m.! It’s so near and yet so far! I feel like I’m waiting to take Terry Gross’s virginity!

I am anxiously awaiting the online broadcast of Terry’s interview with Mark Shapiro, a reporter who has written a book called Exposed that investigates the prevalence of toxic chemicals in America. I only heard about ten minutes of the show when it was on this afternoon, when he very sheepishly admitted to being a smoker. He gave Terry a great interview though. He spent a lot of time comparing the American government’s regulation of toxic chemicals (whenever I say “toxic chemicals” I think of the Joker in Batman) to the European Union’s. Europe is so progressive on this issue, and the rest of the world is taking note. In a few years foreign countries will be exporting all their mercury, lead, flame retardant, and phthalate-laden electronics and toys to Americans, while they are sitting pretty on their organic sofas watching televisions made out of unbleached yarn.

Shapiro said there were two main reasons why the industrial lobby in the European Union has been so weak compared to the cosmetics/chemical manufacturer lobby in the US, which has effectively prevented the public from knowing what toxins they’re exposed to everyday. Shapiro said that:

a) In Europe, corporations aren’t allowed to give campaign contributions, and;

b) In Europe, the government pays for health care. How interesting! The European Union actually has an investment in keeping its people healthy, whereas in America we pay privately for health care. Who gives two shits if we all get sick in ten years from toxic chemicals (Batman?)? We’ll pay out of our own pocket for the medical nightmare and the cosmetic companies will still be rich and stuck in their benighted ways.

Whoa…this Diet Doctor Pepper is making me wild. It’s probably full of cancer! Somebody help me get off my soapbox and stop using exclamation points!
My show’s almost on!

I know it hurts.

You already know that the biological legacy of our chemical supply is my pet cause. Here’s more from a CNN article today:

Michelle Hammond and Jeremiah Holland were intrigued when a friend at the Oakland Tribune asked them and their two young children to take part in a cutting-edge study to measure the industrial chemicals in their bodies.

[The] tests revealed that their children — Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 — had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.

“[Rowan’s] been on this planet for 18 months, and he’s loaded with a chemical I’ve never heard of,” Holland, 37, said. “He had two to three times the level of flame retardants in his body that’s been known to cause thyroid dysfunction in lab rats.”

The technology to test for these flame retardants — known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) — and other industrial chemicals is less than 10 years old. Environmentalists call it “body burden” testing, an allusion to the chemical “burden,” or legacy of toxins, running through our bloodstream. Scientists refer to this testing as “biomonitoring.”

As usual, some defenders of the chemical legacy say that presence does not equal proof. But wouldn’t we rather err on the side of caution, especially considering how sensitive our bodies are (especially our hormones) and how these same chemicals have been proven to cause cancers and reproductive problems in lab animals?

I hate it when the news makes me preachy. I wish there were more excuses to write about funny stuff, like gay wizards. Quit screwing things up, world!

1. Website that makes the correlation between multi-vitamins and acne.

2. Website about how our contaminated water supply is making babies gay.

3. www.eatingpiewithcelebrities.com - Photoshopped pictures of me binge-eating with famous people.

Those are the only ones I have been wanting to launch for a while now. Lengthening the list would just be being facetious.