Pay more attention to canned food. That’s the message that I want to deliver today. Do you know that the canned foods could contain dangerous chemical called BPA? BPA stands for Bisphenol A. It is contained in plastic linings in food cans. You can also find BPA in containers made of hard plastic. Many studies have found that this substance is very dangerous to our health. If you continue reading this article, you will find that there is another study that proves that there is potential link between BPA and heart disease.

Heart Disease

Hearth disease is a very dangerous disease. Sometimes people doesn’t realize its existence in their body, and once it attacks, it could be fatal. Generally, heart disease can be detected by these five major symptoms:

• Pain or discomfort in the jaw, neck, or back
• Feeling weak, light-headed, or faint
• Chest pain or discomfort
• Pain or discomfort in arms or shoulder
• Shortness of breath (source: www.cdc.gov)

Heart attack happens when the blood supply to the heart muscle is cut off. Since the cells in the heart muscle do not receive enough oxygen, they begin to die. Heart attack shall be immediately treated to avoid greater damage of the heart.

The statistic about the heart attack is quite scary. Based on the data from American Heart Association, about 785,000 Americans have an initial heart attack and another 470,000 have a recurrent heart attack each year (Source: www.cdc.gov).

Urine Samples

NHANES (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) has collected urine samples of thousands of adult and children to observe the exposure of the BPA. They have published a new analysis data on 13 January 2010 to add more evidence for an association between heart disease and higher exposures to BPA.

It was David Melzer, an epidemiologist at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom and his colleagues who did the observation. He took the NHANES data collected from 2003 and 2004. The result was published in 17 September 2008, and it showed an association between higher levels of BPA metabolites in urine and adverse adult health outcomes, including heart disease. He analyzed the NHANES data from 2005 and 2006 to once again show us that there is an association between coronary heart disease and higher urinary BPA.

Surprising Result?

Although the result was quite surprising for me, but there are some opinions that question the method of the study.

While this study may help inform future research, such cross-sectional studies “should not be used to demonstrate that a particular chemical can cause a particular effect,” said Steven G. Hentges of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council in a 13 January 2010 press release. Source: Environmental Health Perspectives.

The Best Thing to Do

Whatever the experts say, there is one clear important message for us. The food that we eat, whether we realize it or not, could have adverse effects to our health. The introduction of new substances, new packages, and new process, might bring another threat to our health. So, start to pay attention to what you eat, keep reading the latest news and issues and start protecting your health and environment now!

I’ve been working for my company for 4 years. It’s not very hard to understand that a performance of a company now is also influenced by its environment performance. The world has started to be more aware of the environment issue. I can tell you that if you have a big company that sells the best products in the world, it would mean nothing if you don’t have a good environment performance.

Just One Example

One of the industrial sector that strive to have a good environment performance is Cement Industries. One of the leading player in this sector is CEMEX. It’s one of the largest cement companies in the United States. Founded in Mexico in 1906, they now have 370 ready-mix plants, more than a dozen cement plants, 50 distribution facilities and more than 100 aggregate quarries. I believe that it’s the most popular cement company in the world. CEMEX USA was founded in California, and the President is Gilberto Perez.

As one of the leading company in the world, CEMEX has put more attention to improve its system, and they didn’t worked for nothing. In 2004, CEMEX received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for efficient use of information technology. Their environment efforts are also great. One of their efforts is to use alternative fuel to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. To improve CEMEX Air Quality, they have recently began using a 6.5 million (in British pounds) dust abatement system which cuts emissions by 80 percent.

Go GREEN Company

If you work as an employee of a company, whatever your position is, encourage your company to go green is a very good idea. The hardest thing to do is to encourage your colleagues to have better environment awareness. Start doing small thing, like using used paper for your printer, recycle your waste and save the electricity. The world has become more clever now, a company which have better environment performance will have better image for the public.

Living green is not as hard as you think; there are some steps that can be done very easily that could help protecting the earth. Protecting the earth also means protecting your health, protecting your family and protecting your money. What could be better than that? Follow these five simple steps and start protecting the earth now.

Use less Plastic

I wrote a post about The Reasons Why I Don’t Like Plastic. Plastic is a nasty thing that can’t be degraded naturally. I remember when I was giving a presentation about waste management to the employees, I asked the audition whether plastic is biodegradable or not. Most of the answers were “no, it’s not biodegradable”. Then there was one guy who said, “Yes, it could be degraded naturally, but within 500 years”. That was exactly the answer that I was looking for. You can imagine, 500 years. Do you still want to make the world a worse place for your children and grand children? Start using less plastic now.

Use Public Transportation

Using a bus or a train is good for the environment. You can imagine, there are hundreds of people that can be on a train in the same time and to the same destination. Can you see how effective it is? One machine is used to transport many people in the same time. The Green House Gas (GHG) emission per person would be much less than using your own car.

Buy Local Food

Buy local food is certainly something that you can do every day. You can go to the closest market in your area and start shopping there. You will use less energy and money rather than have to go to your favorite market but located farther and takes longer time. Don’t forget, you need energy to distribute your food from an area to the other area. This energy means that you also produce emission to the atmosphere. This emission in the end will cause.. yes you know, the Global Warming. I would like to emphasize that buying local food looks simple, but actually, it can make a difference for the world.

Use Electricity Wisely

I bet that you’ve heard many times before that unplugs your electronic equipments when you don’t use it can reduce your electricity usage. Put your TV on standby mode would also use the energy. My wife knows better than me on how to save the energy J My biggest advise that I can give you is to think that the energy that we use is not free. Don’t forget that you pay every time you watch your television. If you’re working so hard to get some money, then you don’t want to spend it carelessly.

Save More Water

“Five minutes is enough to take a shower”, that’s exactly what we wrote for our water saving campaign in our company. We put the sticker in the bathroom so everyone that takes a shower would read it directly. You can do the same thing for your bathroom. Put colorful reminder on your wall, just near your kitchen sink to remind your husband to save the water while he’s washing the dishes.

Of course there are many things that you can do to help protecting the earth, but those five simple steps would certainly help you to start. What’s important is not the result that you get from your own action, but it’s about the spirit and how you spread the words to others.

I just did a presentation this morning. It was about the environment performance of the company, including the Green House Gas(GHG)  emission. Our performance were quite good on November and December 2009 and we could achieve our target for 2009.

I browsed the internet this afternoon just to read articles about the global warming. I wanted to know what other people think about it. The result is that I was quite surprise that there are still some people that think that global warming is the biggest scam in the history. How could they think anything like that?

I calculated the  GHG emission of the company for 2 years. I know exactly that some gas create more global warming effect than others. We know that the air pollution is always increase as human population increase, and it is impossible if we say that the air pollution doesn’t have any effect at all to the global warming.  I’m not a scientist, but I know that the global warming does exist. It is very selfish to think that it’s not the human that cause the global warming. I always believe that human is the leader on this world. We are the one who take decision on this blue planet. It is our activities that impact the environment.

So, the question is, do you believe that Global Warming is a Scam?

One thing that I don’t really like from having a car is the maintenance. I remember one day, I drove my car to the garage to repair the brake system. Ok.., I left my car there and went home. Five hours later, I got a phone call from the garage told me that the repair had finished. So, I asked how much it cost. I was really surprise to know that the cost was very very expensive. I didn’t have the money at that time. I argued with the garage, I didn’t like the system because I’ve had told them to consult to me first about the repair method before they did anything, and in this case, I was not informed before. Finally, I could drive my car back and paid the bill the following month.

From my experience above, we know that one of the problem of having car is the high cost maintenance. Is there any other choice for this condition? Yes, there is. You can use used auto car parts for your car. It would be less less expensive than buying a new parts. I put the list of used auto car parts that you can contact, especially if you live in North America.

1. Used Car Parts Virginia

Cunningham Brother’s Auto Part Network is perfect for those who live in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina because they provide local deliveries to those area. This is definitely the place that you want to visit if you want to find the foreign and domestic auto parts.They even provide warranty for some parts and labor.

2. Used Auto Parts Killeen

The Synder’s Recycled Auto and Truck Parts is located at Texas. What’s interesting about the website is that it provides the search system for retail part. You can put the year, the manufacturer, the model, the part type, and the system will directly show you the product that you are looking for.

3. Used Auto Parts New England

If you have a late model wreck or junk car, drive it to Bill’s Auto Parts and sell it there. You can even donate your car for charity here. Have a wreck in your backyard is really not a good idea, so you better sell it for some cash. Another service that they provide  is the used auto parts and batteries. You can try to visit it, it would certainly save you money and you can find the product that you’re looking for.

I hope that the car recycling industry will grow rapidly in the next few years. The concept of 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) is well implemented by this industry. The best thing is that you can take some parts that are useful for you, you have what you want and you’ll also get cheaper price.

Are you worried about the effects of all chemicals that you use to your health and you want to know how to solve it?

Are you tired paying your expensive bill every month?

You want to live healthy lifestyle, but don’t know where to start?

Imagine that you would wake up tomorrow morning and stop worrying about the above conditions because you have all the answers and motivation to solve them?

Well, today is your lucky day because all the answers are packed in this amazing ebook.

Keep Your Health and Save Money is downloadable ebook to help giving you inspiration and knowledge to have Healthier and Greener Lifestyle. The Going Green and Healthy Lifestyle is not just a trend now, but it has become a need for us. Make sure that you’re not left behind by others, because you know that the world is tough and you need all your strength and motivation to face all the challenges.

Don’t want to be left behind, start living Healthier and Greener today.

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The World is changing

Health is our number one priority and we would do anything to maintain it. I believe that when you’re sick, you would spend your money just to get your healthy life back; no matter how much it would cost you.

What if I told you that you could save your money just by implementing the healthy and green lifestyle?

But come on.. It’s not only about the money. Your productivity would decrease when you’re sick. It would definitely slow you down from getting all the achievements that you want to have.

On the other hand, I can tell you that the world is changing. Many chemicals are introduced to our daily products. More emission is produced and pollutes the air that we breathe every day. There are more threats to our health and environment that we have to handle now.

To face this situation, we need to be more vigilant. We need to have broader knowledge on the health and environment. This ebook contains the most important knowledge that you should know to live healthier and greener.

About the Author

I have been working as Environment Specialist in an Oil and Gas Industry for 4 years. I have been helping people and motivating them to have better and healthier life. I listened to their questions. I shared the information as much as I could. I would be very happy if there’s anything I can do to help them.

In this ebook, I am going to be a personal consultant for you. I have spent my time to really focus on the most important thing to have healthier and greener lifestyle. The ebook is designed to be very communicative and of course, would be easily understood. It’s not the old boring textbook, but it’s me who’s really talking to you.

The latest research on health and environment is also included in the ebook, because we know that awareness doesn’t come from nowhere. We need to have the knowledge and trusted information to be able to develop the awareness.

Money-back Guarantee

If you’re not satisfied with Keep Your Health and Save Money for any reason, simply send me an email to henry@timeaswine.com and I’ll refund your money. That’s how confident I am that this is a resource that will help you have better and healthier life. You have 60 days to try out Keep Your Health and Save Money.

Get the Keep Your Health and Save Money by clicking the following button:

I saw an air pollution indicator in my town, it was located just in front of the biggest shopping center in town. I was always wondering, “OK, we have the indicator, but what does it mean?” Is it threatening our health or the environment? The answer could be yes for both. It depends on the type of the pollution. If it’s carbon dioxide, yes, it will make the rate of global warming going faster, but if it’s PM10 (particulate matter with size less than 10µ), then it is your respiratory system that could be in danger. One of the latest research have shown that early exposure to air pollution is associated with Childhood Asthma.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), asthma is a major cause for emergency room visits, hospitalizations and school absences. A large population based study has shown an association between higher exposure to air pollution in utero and during the first year of life and a higher risk of asthma in preschool-aged children. The result is quite shocking, since before I knew that asthma is caused by genetic factors. Besides that, another risk factors for developing asthma are diet and exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke and allergens.

The researchers compared the administrative and health care data for nearly 3,500 children born in southwest British Columbia, Canada, in 1999 and 2000 who were diagnosed with asthma by age 4 years and estimated the air pollutant exposures. Nine pollutant exposures were evaluated: carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), ozone, sulfur dioxide, black carbon and wood smoke.

The research concluded that the highest risk of asthma was associated with exposure to the traffic-related pollutants carbon monoxide, nitric oxide, nitrogen oxide and black carbon. It makes me realize that the traffic pollution really has detrimental effect to our health, especially to our babies. They are very vulnerable to the air pollution, so it’s very important to live where you have less air pollution. A continuous exposure in the first year of a baby is very dangerous.

The association between air pollution and asthma were generally greater in girls than in boys, although asthma was significantly more common in boys. The research didn’t explain why, and I guess it can’t answer that question. However, it gives us a clear information that girls are more vulnerable than boys in this case.

This research has given us another proof that environment and health are really connected. We emit pollution to the air, but in the end, it’s us who should take the consequence.

Reducing 30% of electricity consumption means to spend 30% less money every month. Money is an important factor in everybody’s life but besides that, reducing the electricity consumption gives the mother nature more chances to breath, since we reduce the amount of emission into the air. I have managed to reduce the electricity bill by 30% at my home. I want to share the story with you.

We had 2 Air Conditioner (AC) in our home, one AC was 1/2 Pk and another one was 1 Pk. It wasn’t a simple decision for me to change my old 1 Pk Air Conditioner (800 watt), we wanted to change it to an AC 1/2 Pk. The consideration was of course about the money. The price of the new AC 1/2 Pk (320 watt) was about $250-350. Of course the electricity consumption of AC 1/2 Pk is less than 1 Pk, but it was like investing some money but we didn’t know how much the profit that we could get from that investment. Finally, we changed the AC. We sold the old one and installed the new AC 1/2 Pk.

We were very curious to know the electricity bill. It was funny, usually paying the electricity bill was something that we wanted to avoid, but at that time, we were waiting for that magic moment.  I don’t know the price of electricity in your country, but usually we paid about $35 per month. When the bill came, we were quite happy when we saw that bill was $22. Hurray.. our investment was not too bad.  It means that we can save $13 per month from the electricity bill.

It is a proof that investing your money to buy energy-efficient appliances is worth it. The good news is that the new model of appliances don’t use as much as energy as the older model. The market is very competitive now, especially for the electronic appliances. Energy efficient appliances will of course be one of the attraction for the customers. Another thing is that the new model should meet the minimum energy efficiency standards. These standards have always been tightened over the years. The better the appliances the less they use electricity.

So, what are you waiting now? Start looking  to replace your old appliances and reduce your electricity bill.

It has been more than 2 weeks that I didn”t write any new post for the blog. The first reason is I was on duty for the last 2 weeks. You know that when I was working on site, the internet connection was not good at all. It took more than 2o minutes to open the email, you can imagine that. The second one, which is the worst, is that I was hospitalized for a week. It was the first experience for me to be hospitalized. I will tell you the story here.

I arrived on site on Thursday. Since the first day I was there, there was one of my friend who has a fever. He came to the office every day, and I met him for two days, Thursday and Friday. He is a trainee for safety supervisor on site. I told him that if he has a fever, he should rest on his bed. I never thought that it was a contagious disease.

At the third day, Saturday, I didn’t met him, he rested in his room all day long. I had a meeting and a presentation on that day, the morning was OK for me. The office hour finished at 5 pm, and we usually do some sport every Saturday. But when the sport hour came, I felt that my body was not very fit. I felt that my body temperature started to increase. And finally, I couldn’t sleep since the fever was quite high. When I woke up in the morning, I saw small red spots on my skin. “My God, I have a dengue fever”, I talked to myself at that time.

The doctor did a quick check on me, and he concluded that it was the morbilli virus that attacked me. I was directly evacuated to the nearest city, Balikpapan, to be hospitalized. I was going to go home when I knew that I had to be evacuated. But when I called my wife, she told me that I couldn’t go home since the virus could be really dangerous for her pregnancy. So, as I told you, I was finally evacuated to the hospital. In the end, there were 6 person who had the same disease with me and four of them was evacuated to the hospital.

I was treated in the hospital for a week, in an isolation room. Do you pay attention to the name of the room? It was an “Isolation Room”. I can imagine that  every people who saw me in that room would think that I had a bird flu. Well yes, however, Morbilli is a contagious disease too.

The lesson learned from the story is that Morbilli is a very contagious. You can imagine, I met the infected guy only for 2 days, perhaps it was only 10 minutes per day, but I got infected immediately. The virus enters the body via respiratory system, multiplies there and circulates in the blood, so it spread very rapidly.

You have to ensure that you give the proper immunization for your children. The immunization by injection has proven effective to give long term, probably lifetime immunity.

The last lesson learned is that you need to maintain your body at optimum condition. It will give you more opportunity to avoid any virus and disease that may attack your body. Choose healthy food and nutrition, have enough time to sleep and avoid stress are the key to your healthy life.

I’ve read once in some articles about carbon trading. It intrigues me, because carbon trading -or some would call it as emission trading or cap-and-trade, could support government funding on reforestation and land rehabilitation. Either way, as I browse the net, in Wikipedia, I learn that carbon trading works as follow;

1. A central authority (usually a governmental body) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted.
2. Companies or other groups are issued emission permits and are required to hold an equivalent number of allowances (or credits) which represent the right to emit a specific amount.
3. The total amount of allowances and credits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level.
4. Companies that need to increase their emission allowance must buy credits from those who pollute less.
5. The transfer of allowances is referred to as a trade.
6. In effect, the buyer is paying a charge for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions by more than was needed.

Thus, in theory, those who can reduce emissions most cheaply will do so, achieving the pollution reduction at the lowest cost to society.

In Indonesia, carbon trading is a government program called: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). From the Department of Forestry and Agriculture, I found out that CDM is a mechanism regulated under the Kyoto Protocol/UNFCCC. CDM is intended to help industrious country cut their Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and to help developing nation on their continual development and to contribute in achieving Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) goal. For Indonesia, CDM was a chance to acquire foreign funding to support priority programs, creation of jobs and to support:

1. Land rehabilitation on forests
2. Rehabilitation on land damage by forest fire
3. Mangrove and peat moss rehabilitation
4. Agro-forestry
5. Reduced impact logging application
6. Natures rejuvenation
7. Forest reserve protection from over use
8. Forest protection from fire

Not to mention other benefits such as; technology transfers, capacity building, environment quality enhancement and competency improvements.

Even so, Indonesia does not have to oblige to the program because CDM is merely a chance for foreign investment. Indonesia’s obligation is not in CDM context, but as a nation that ratifies UNFCCC; oblige to give periodic reports on GSG inventory (energy or non-energy sectors) and in the effort to suppress the negative effect of climate change. While Indonesia is still a non-annex I (developing nation), Indonesia is not entitled to lower its GSG emissions and have the right for funding (i.e. from GEF, etc) used for capacity building and technology transfer in suppressing the negative effect of climate change.

There are terms and condition for CDM; first, it must be voluntary cooperation (between governments, between private sector, and between government and private sectors); second, it must be approved by both government and; third, the program must be measurable, have long term benefit, and improve several factors from its original state – such as GHG reduction, growing investment, funding, technology and regulations.

CDM is indeed a good chance for investment; however, since not all developed countries ratify the Tokyo Protocol, the law has yet been able to be implemented. Moreover, there are still issues concerning rules, procedures and methodologies for CDM implementation. There’s also a need for coordination between the involving parties –Department of Forestry & Agriculture with The Office of Ministry of Environment, the experts, and other agency & departments.

With the growing concerns on our environment, I believe that we should start preparing for all the supporting aspect regarding CDM. So when the time comes, we’ll be part of the solutions.