Daily Herald: How going ‘green’ can improve your health
Filed under: Earth 911 - June 4, 2007
Daily Herald
Harvard Health Letters
Monday, June 04, 2007
Aside from pesticide usage and a few other issues, most of us haven’t worried much about the connections between health issues and the environment. For our health, we work on our waistlines and fret over our cholesterol levels. For the environment, we recycle and maybe drive a fuel-efficient car.
But because of accelerating climate change and the havoc it could wreak, it’s not so easy to send environmentalism off into its own separate compartment these days. In February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the evidence for global warming is “unequivocal.” Everything we do now can be measured for its effect on the environment - and greenhouse gas emissions in particular.
There’s always danger in doling out “what you can do” advice. Bite-size solutions sometimes trivialize larger problems. We end up doing easy things because they make us feel good, not because they do much good. Policies set in Washington and elsewhere are far more important.
Still, there’s a place for individual responsibility - and certainly for voting with our dollars.
“The real answers are not going to come from individual action, but I do think that individual actions can have ripple effects,” says Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. “We can educate our friends and colleagues and work to change the practices of employers, schools, even places of worship.
“As individuals, I think we can set in motion new patterns of sustainable consumption and help create markets for clean, efficient technologies.”
For starters, here are some “green” health tips:
1. Walk or bike to work.
At a bare minimum, we’re supposed to get 20 to 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week. The Institute of Medicine says that isn’t really enough and recommends a full hour of moderately intense activity a day (biking and walking at a 4-mile-per-hour clip meet the moderately intense standard).
But the U.S. is a nation of drivers, not walkers or bikers, and almost every driving statistic you can think of is headed in the direction of a hotter planet. The average fuel economy of new cars has declined since 1988 because of the popularity of minivans and SUVs.
Combining exercise and a commute builds exercise into your day, which means you don’t have to summon extra willpower, to say nothing of time, to go to the gym. If you live too far away, consider walking or biking to public transportation or driving only part of the way.
2. Go to bed early.
Americans weigh more and are sleeping less. Average daily sleep time has decreased from about nine hours a century ago to about seven now. Epidemiologic studies have identified a correlation between short sleep and being overweight or obese. Hormones may be why: Lack of sleep depresses the levels of leptin, the hormone that tells the brain we’re full, and increases ghrelin, the hormone that makes us hungry.
Meanwhile, all the lights, televisions, computers, microwave ovens and music players that help keep us up at night use electricity, most of it generated by burning coal and natural gas. Household use of electricity has increased by over 50 percent since the early 1980s. By turning in earlier, we’ll dial down our appetite for kilowatts and maybe food.
3. Turn down the heat and the air conditioning.
Humans, like other mammals and birds, control their body temperature by continually adjusting their metabolisms. When the air is cool, metabolism revs up to produce more heat.
When it’s hot, sweating and other responses also burn up extra energy. But when air temperatures are in the thermoneutral zone (TNZ) - which for humans with their clothes on tends to be in the mid-70s - our metabolisms don’t have to work so hard to maintain body temperature, and we burn fewer calories.
So by adjusting your thermostat, you may keep your metabolism from getting lazy and also use less of another kind of energy.
4. Eat fish, but the right kind.
Fish needs no introduction as a healthful food. As the main food source of long-chain omega-3s, it’s good for your heart and probably your brain. But the sterling health credentials have some environmental tarnish. Some species are contaminated with pollutants - mercury and PCBs are the main concern. Stocks of others have been dangerously depleted by too much fishing. Some groups are working to steer consumers to species that are in good supply.
5. Switch to energy-saving light bulbs, but don’t throw them in the regular trash.
Those curlicue compact fluorescent light bulbs that Home Depot wants you to buy are the real deal. They use two-thirds less energy than a regular incandescent bulb and last up to 10 times longer. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a mainstream environmental group, estimates that each compact bulb keeps half a ton of carbon dioxide out of the air over its lifetime. But all fluorescent bulbs need mercury to work, and the compact versions contain about 5 milligrams of the metal.
That’s not much - an old-fashioned home thermometer contains a hundred times that amount - but if you throw them out in the regular trash, that mercury may end up in the air or water, and, by climbing the food chain, in the fish on your plate.
Call your town or city’s public works department to find out where you can dispose of fluorescent light bulbs safely. A corporate-sponsored Web site, www.earth911.org, lists businesses and local governments that handle household hazardous waste.
6. Learn a lesson from palm oil and good intentions gone awry.
As the tide turns against trans fat, food manufacturers are scrambling for substitutes. Palm oil has emerged as a candidate. Some varieties of trans fat-free Oreos are made with palm oil and another trans fat replacement, high-oleic canola oil. In Europe, palm oil has also been touted as an environmentally friendly renewable “biofuel” alternative to fossil fuels like coal and gas.
But to satisfy the growing demand for the tropical oil, huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest are being cut down and planted with palm trees. Farmers are also draining and burning huge swathes of peatlands, which help offset greenhouse emissions by soaking up carbon.
The moral of the story is not to be dazzled by alternatives in either the environmental or personal health realms. They, too, may have dark sides. As best we can, we need to look before we leap.
7. Eat local fruits and vegetables.
By all means, eat fruits and vegetables. Good health depends on it. But Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” raises some questions about the means by which we get them. Flying kiwis in from New Zealand and grapes up from Chile is an energy-intensive way to fulfill the fruit-and-vegetable imperative. It’s possible only if energy is cheap, and cheap energy in this fossil fuel-era of ours means tons of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
The Pollan book has inspired the buzzword “food miles” - how far food has been transported to reach our plates. “Local and sustainable” is flaunted as a virtue on restaurant menus. Some economists take issue with putting “local” on a pedestal. Their point: Global trade may entail high transportation costs, but it also organizes food production to occur where it’s most efficient. Besides, isn’t it wonderful to have fresh produce out of season?
The reasonable middle ground is to give some preference to locally grown food. Is that shiny Granny Smith apple from New Zealand worth the greenhouse emissions when a Macintosh from a nearby orchard might do? And shopping at farmers’ markets is a good way to reduce your food mileage. You’ll be even “greener” if you walk or bike there.
8. Don’t take more medications than you need to.
In most cases, our bodies use only a fraction of any drug we take. The rest gets excreted but it doesn’t disappear once we’ve flushed. Scientists are still sorting out which drugs are causing significant harm and at what levels. But there’s already evidence that pharmaceuticals in wastewater adversely effect aquatic ecosystems.
9. Get behind the greening of hospitals and medical buildings.
American hospitals are on a building spree that rivals the post-World War II boom. Hospitals aren’t getting bigger; the number of beds is declining. But they’re getting more deluxe, with additional private rooms and more sophisticated technology. Health economists worry that these gold-plated facilities will put further pressure on health care costs.
In some cases, though, hospitals are seizing the opportunity to build “greener” buildings, which have attributes that may also improve the health and well-being of patients.
As individuals, we can’t go build a green hospital the way we can buy an energy-efficient car. But we can encourage their construction by writing a letter (hospitals are very public relations conscious) and supporting policies and programs that encourage energy-efficient construction.
One Response to “Daily Herald: How going ‘green’ can improve your health”
Go Green!!