A product can be theoretically green for the environment, but yet completely energy inefficient when compared to other products in its category. Bamboo flooring is a perfect example. It may be renewable and not involve clear-cutting, but it has to come on freighters from across the ocean and then be trucked or train-ed all the way to you. That’s a tremendous amount of embodied energy compared to reclaimed oak flooring that comes from a barn right up the road.

Conversely, spray polyurethane foams (SPF) are shown to be super efficient insulators, but the isocyanate chemicals they use have some of the worst offgassing of global warming potential (GWP) VOCs of almost any chemical made.

So what you’re looking for is that happy middle ground. An insulation product that is acceptably friendly to the environment while still doing a verifiable job of reducing the energy required to maintain your interior temperature.

And what’s the deal with “bio-based” insulation?
The “bio” to which they are referring is soy-based oils vs. petrochemical oil. The problem is that none of them have more than single digit percentages of soy-based oils in their contents.

Compare that with the new FTC-recommended advertising guidelines, which say to claim that your product is “bio-based” it should be AT LEAST 51% of the ingredients. Unfortunately, those guidelines are voluntary, so manufacturers are still getting away with hyping bogus quantities.

1. Radon
You can’t see it or smell it, but radon kills about 20,000 Americans each year. It’s the number two cause of all lung cancers, and the leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers in the United States.

Retrofitting most homes to reduce radon levels isn’t complicated, but you’ll probably want to hire a state-certified radon mitigation contractor. A basic mitigation system consists of a pipe and a fan that pulls radon from below your house and vents it to the outside, typically through the roof. The cost of reducing radon in a home ranges from about $800 to $2,500, according to the EPA.

2. Volatile Organic Compounds
Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, are one of the main sources of air pollution in our homes. VOCs are a huge class of carbon-based chemicals that share a common trait: they are volatile at room temperature, meaning they readily release gases into the air we breathe.

The list of health effects from VOC exposure is enough to scare the daylights out of anyone: nausea; cancer; memory loss; eye, nose, and throat irritation; kidney, liver, and central nervous system damage.

3. Problems with Plastics
Although VOCs are the primary indoor air pollution culprit in our homes, they’re not the only chemical that can compromise human health. Many of the “miracle” plastics developed by science and industry in the past half-century turned out to have hidden health burdens. While completely eliminating harmful plastic items from your home may be next to impossible, you can reduce your exposure.

4. Pesticides and Herbicides
Pesticides and herbicides are biocides: they’re designed to kill living organisms. Makers of these chemicals may claim the products are safe when used properly, but why take the chance? Banning pesticides from your home and garden is an especially good idea if you have young children–their developing bodies are particularly vulnerable to pollutants.

5. Mold
You’ve probably encountered the sensationalist media stories about house-eating toxic molds. The truth is, mold spores are floating everywhere, in the air inside and outside our homes. There’s no way to keep mold spores out of the air. The trick to controlling mold in your home is controlling moisture–mold thrives on moisture.

If mold is allowed to multiply unchecked in a building, it can eventually cause serious damage to the structure. It also has the potential to affect health. Not everyone is bothered by mold but for some people, exposure may trigger allergic reactions, asthma episodes, or other respiratory problems.

6. Other Biological Contaminants
Pet dander, pollen, and feces of dust mites and cockroaches can trigger allergic reactions, asthma episodes, and other respiratory problems. Good housekeeping, especially dusting and vacuuming regularly, will help keep these particles in check.

7. Energy-related Risks
Carbon monoxide and other combustion byproducts
Devices that burn fuel inside your home are potential sources of air pollution. Burning gas, heating oil, propane, wood and kerosene produces many potentially harmful fine particles and gases, including carbon monoxide (CO), formaldehyde, and nitrogen dioxide. The minute quantities emitted by a properly functioning, modern fuel-burning appliance don’t typically cause health problems. However, if an appliance malfunctions it can spew potentially harmful, or even fatal, levels of CO and other chemicals into your home.

Electromagnetic fields
Unlike fuel-burning devices, using electricity won’t create indoor air pollution (although electricity generation is a leading source of outdoor air pollution and CO2 emissions). Does that mean using electricity is healthy?

Despite the lack of evidence that low-frequency EMFs cause health problems, some people remain concerned and try to limit their exposure. Easy ways to reduce EMFs include choosing energy-efficient appliances and equipment (our site gives you lots of tips about this) and eliminating “phantom loads” by unplugging appliances and devices that draw energy even when they’re turned off–that includes anything with a transformer, a remote, a timer, or memory.

8. Banned Building Materials
Millions of homes harbor lead-based paint, asbestos, and toxic wood preservatives. All three have been banned from building products, but they continue to plague building owners and occupants.

9. Emerging Concerns
There’s lots of good news on the home health front. Lead-based paint and asbestos have been banned for three decades. Radon can be a problem in some homes, but it’s not too difficult to take care of. Mold problems can almost always be solved by drying up the source of moisture. More and more people are becoming aware of potential hazards associated with VOCs, vinyl, and pesticides and are choosing alternatives that are safer for their families.

But it’s not as if our homes will soon be completely safe. New products and technologies are being introduced all the time, outpacing the efforts of risk assessment scientists, regulators, and health advocacy organizations to keep up.

Click here for the full article on Sierra Club Green Home.

The article on offshore drilling is particularly relevant these days with Obama announcing plans to expand offshore drilling – and then a month later, the most disastrous oil spill possibly ever occurring in the Gulf of Mexico.

Offshore Drilling: Worth the Oil, or False Hope?
With fuel prices and consumption dominating the news—not to mention our country’s future energy policy—we offer a quick primer on the complex subject of offshore drilling. How much oil do we currently produce from offshore drilling, and how much might we potentially recover? What’s the status of the moratorium banning offshore drilling in various areas? What are the environmental risks? And perhaps most importantly, what is the psychological impact of thinking that offshore oil holds promise as a source of abundant, less-expensive oil when nothing could be farther from the truth?

Offshore Drilling: Background Info
The term offshore drilling refers to the extracting of oil from fields that lie beneath the ocean floor, anywhere from a few hundred feet to 200 miles off the coast. The first offshore well was drilled in 1887 from a wooden wharf off Summerland, California; technology improvements have made it possible to drill in deeper water and farther from shore ever since. Today, some 4,000 platforms operate in the U.S. federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, primarily off the coastlines of Louisiana and Texas, and off the coast of Alaska, producing approximately 565 million barrels of oil per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s overview of offshore activity. U.S. offshore oil production of 565 million barrels per year equates to roughly 1.5 million barrels per day; contrast that figure with U.S. current oil consumption of 21 million barrels per day.

Offshore Drilling: What’s the Fuss
The debate about offshore drilling stems from questions over how much oil potentially could be recovered from underwater fields versus the time and cost, both in dollars and environmental impact, related to that process. Common misperceptions notwithstanding, the debate does NOT stem from notions that offshore drilling could eliminate U.S. need for foreign oil (at current consumption, the U.S. uses 8 billion barrels of oil per year; conventionally recoverable oil from offshore drilling is thought to be 18 billion barrels total ever—not per year). The debate does NOT stem from notions that offshore drilling would guarantee lower fuel prices (oil is a global commodity, and U.S. production is not big enough to influence global prices).

Offshore Drilling: Environmental Risks
Environmental risks associated with offshore drilling include discharges or spills of toxic materials, interference with marine life, damage to coastal habitats, and effects on the economic base of coastal communities. Recent research suggests that transporting the oil poses greater threats than the drilling process itself. In Louisiana, the 10,000 miles of canals dug to transport oil and lay pipelines contribute to coastal erosion because the canals crisscross the state’s coastal wetlands. While technology improvements have lessened the occurrence of oil spills in the last 40 years, the Minerals Management Service, a bureau in the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation’s natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf, projects about one oil spill per year of at least 1,000 barrels in the Gulf of Mexico over the next 40 years. Every three to four years, it says, a spill of at least 10,000 barrels can be expected. Those spills could potentially hit the beaches of western Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.

Offshore Drilling: The Moratorium
Rights to U.S. offshore areas are shared between the states and the federal government according to various acts passed over the years. Specifically, the states have jurisdiction over any natural resources within 3.45 miles of their coastline (except Texas and the west coast of Florida where the jurisdiction extends to 10.35 miles), and the U.S. has rights up to 200 miles off the coastline. Offshore drilling has been banned in various areas thought to be particularly environmentally sensitive over the years. An offshore oil moratorium that had been in effect since 1981 expired October 1, 2008. With the lifting of the ban, areas in the Gulf of Mexico can be opened up for drilling by the federal government. Additionally, areas off the coasts of California, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia can be opened up if those states approve. According to an Nov. 12, 2008, MMS press release, the agency has already begun the process for approving leases off the coast of Virginia. However, offshore drilling in new areas won’t deliver a drop of oil for ten years, according to numbers cited by the Bush administration two years ago. In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration recently did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling for their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, and concluded that increased access would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil production or prices before 2030.

Offshore Drilling: False Hope
It’s too soon to tell what the real impact of the moratorium being lifted will be. But the psychological impact of knowing there is more oil available to be drilled may be a negative for Americans’ energy-mindedness. “Thinking that there is more oil to be drilled offshore gives people a false sense of hope that there’s actually enough oil out there to make us energy independent,” says Jonathan Dorn, staff researcher at the Earth Policy Institute. “Nothing could be farther from the truth. The DOE data shows that there’s an insignificant amount of proven oil reserves, plus it will take five or 10 years to drill the oil given the existing backlog in the offshore fleet and other factors.” A similar view is shared by Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope: “All the debate about drilling this year accomplished nothing other than serving as a distraction from real energy solutions. Every time Congress tries to implement real clean energy solutions, the oil industry and its allies demand a ransom. Once the politically-charged election season is over we will be able to revisit this issue as part of a comprehensive energy bill that moves us away from dependence on oil and invests in clean energy solutions.”

Offshore Drilling: Facts and Figures

• Offshore drilling currently accounts for 30 percent of total U.S. oil production.
• The United States currently produces approximately 1.5 millions barrels of oil per day from offshore drilling, and consumes nearly 21 million barrels of oil per day.
• The United States currently consumes nearly 8 billion barrels of oil per year.
• The Minerals Management Service estimated there were 76 billion barrels of “remaining undiscovered technically recoverable” oil in U.S. offshore regions, but this estimate represents the “potential hydrocarbons of an area that can be produced using current technology, without any consideration to economic feasibility.” Of this 76 billion barrels, 18 billion are considered “conventionally recoverable.” Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration Overview report.
• One barrel equals 42 gallons of crude oil.
• Of the crude oil consumed in the U.S., 66 percent is imported.
• U.S. oil production currently occurs onshore in the lower 48 states (2.9 million barrels per day), offshore (1.4 million barrels per day primarily in the Gulf of Mexico, plus 0.7 million barrels per day off Alaska).
• Lifting the moratoria on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most a few cents—and this would not be seen for at least another decade.
• Oil is traded as a global commodity and its price is set on the world market. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could simply reduce exports to negate even the nominal potential price reduction.

Here are a couple more of our favorite articles:

VOCs: Volatile Organic Compounds, Indoor Air Quality and Respiratory Health
You can’t see them, but they’re all around us. They aren’t listed as ingredients on the objects we bring in our home, but they’re often there. They’re volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, a wide range of carbon-based molecules (organic compounds) used in a wide range of products that find their way into our homes. Under normal conditions, they vaporize, effectively leaving their host and entering the air, where they combine with other airborne compounds to form ozone, which isn’t good to breathe.

Eating Local Food: The Movement, Locavores and More
The local food movement, eating local, being on the “100 mile diet” or being a locavore are all synonymous with local food, an idea that has risen to prominence as an important part of the larger green movement. Local food integrates production, processing, distribution and consumption on a small scale, creating sustainable local economies and a strong connection between farm and table.

Learn the myriad environmental, social, economical and agricultural benefits of supporting small family farms and seasonal food grown right in your own backyard.