Author Archives: Norm Benson

Make America Plate Again. (Sunday Talk Show Edition)

[Voiceover] Welcome to FFN’s (Food Fetish Network) Sunday talk show, Plate the Nation; where we discuss current food issues on the nation’s plate with movers and salad shakers in the news. And here is the host of Plate the Nation, Bob Sheep-Sheerer. A Photo of Food By Unknown [Camera focuses on  Sheep-Sheerer: a man inContinue reading “Make America Plate Again. (Sunday Talk Show Edition)”

Ramazzini Institute at center of EPA FOIA request

Today the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to force the Agency to begin turning over documents it promised to release under a May 2016 FOIA request. E&E Legal is a 501(c)(3) organization engaged in strategic litigationContinue reading “Ramazzini Institute at center of EPA FOIA request”

Barkbook & Twigger? German Forester Claims Trees Have Social Networks

The Wood Wide Web is in the news. A New York Times article tells of a German forester, Peter Wohlleben, who believes that trees communicate intimately. That they have social networks. What? Barkbook? Twigger? SapChat? Pineterest? Wohlleben wrote a best-selling book in Germany, “Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — DiscoveriesContinue reading “Barkbook & Twigger? German Forester Claims Trees Have Social Networks”

How do experts determine the safe level of a chemical?

Ames points out that our test for carcinogenicity of feeding animals near-fatal doses of the chemical is flawed because, “High doses can cause chronic wounding of tissues, cell death, and consequent chronic cell division of neighboring cells, which would otherwise not divide.”

Don’t Drink Yellow Tap Water

California, chemaphobia, and the ‘Erin Brockovich chemical’ (Chromium-6) Chromium 6 found in elementary school’s drinking water On March 11, 2016, Coyote Valley Elementary School near Middletown, California (north of San Francisco), started handing out bottled water following reports that the Hidden Valley Lake municipal water supply had levels of chromium-6 higher than were allowed byContinue reading “Don’t Drink Yellow Tap Water”

Flint: In Loco Parentis Knows Best

The troubles with lead in Flint, Michigan’s water grabbed the media’s attention in early 2016. Flint’s switch from using Detroit’s water to drafting from the Flint River changed the pH of the water being treated to the acidic side. Its logarithmic scale goes from 0-14 (0= high acidic and 14 = highly basic). A pHContinue reading “Flint: In Loco Parentis Knows Best”

Clear Lake Jar Test

I have heard that there is only one place that is more difficult to produce drinking water in California than Clear Lake, and that is the Sacramento Delta. Those poor bastards. Clear Lake has never been clear; a fact to which Livingston Stone, a fisheries biologist attested to in an 1873 report: It is aContinue reading “Clear Lake Jar Test”

Don’t Fear That GMO Ear (of corn)

Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy. – Paracelsus I had a conversation on Twitter a while ago about genetically engineered crops. One of the last tweets said, “It’s not the genetically modified food that worries me … it’s the poisoning ofContinue reading “Don’t Fear That GMO Ear (of corn)”

EWG (Yawn) Trots Out Their Decades-Old List

From a media release by the Alliance for Food and Farming As they have done for the last 20 years, today the Environmental Working Group (EWG) issued its annual  so-called “dirty dozen” list concerning pesticide residues and produce. In an attempt to re-spark interest in its list, EWG debuted a new fruit in the numberContinue reading “EWG (Yawn) Trots Out Their Decades-Old List”