Home & Garden

Common herbicide atrazine emasculates male frogs in study

African clawed frog (Photo: Columbia University)

Blame lawns. And Big Ag. A new study looking at the effects of the common pesticide atrazine has found that it emasculated three-quarters of the male frogs exposed to the chemical.

It turned one in ten of the male frogs into females.

The study suggests that a key reason for the vast worldwide decline of frogs could be their exposure to atrazine and similar pesticides. “The 75 percent that are chemically castrated are essentially ‘dead’ because of their inability to reproduce in the wild,” says Dr. Tyrone B. Hayes, a University of California-Berkeley professor and lead researcher of the study.

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What you need to know: Household cleaners

Greener cleaners are non-polluting, indoors and out

Not so long ago, Mr. Clean and company were considered the good guys, the go-to-gang for a deep house cleaning. But in the past several years, alarms have been sounding about chemicals used in conventional household products.

Be they phosphates, sulfates, bleach, ammonia or phenols, certain ingredients are causing strong concerns among consumer-protection groups, federal and state governments, and even a few manufacturers. The new conventional wisdom asserts that many household cleaners contain compounds that pose environmental risks and can lead to health conditions such as asthma, nerve damage, reproductive damage, even cancer. (See our GRN guide below.)

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A Clean Air solution to lawn care

By Barbara Kessler

As you get ready for the annual war on weeds in your front lawn this spring, you can choose to load up on conventional weed-and-feed and launch a chemical offensive, or you can call the local lawn service to begin the assault on your behalf.

Clean Air truck with solar panels charging lawn mowers (Photo: Clean Air Lawn Care.)

Or…you can skip the harsh chemicals and the usual services and find an organic lawn service.

Organic lawn care companies are pushing into the market. So much so, that even Chem Lawn, a king of the old guard, now goes by TruGreen and offers an all-organic plan. These days a check for “organic lawn care” will usually pop up someone in your region, if not your exact town. And a search for do-it-yourself organic lawn care products, like corn gluten pre-emergent weed killer or composts for fertilizing, will turn up products at hundreds of online and off-line retailers.

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‘Smart’ meters will help consumers track electricity use

By Bill Sullivan

A sudden cold snap creates a spike in consumption. Christmas lights are fun at the time, but they, too, keep that meter running. Kids routinely leave electronics on, even when they’re not in the room.

Advanced Metering System

Sure, you try to do all those little things that, in a perfect world, can help keep cost and environmental impact down. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and a big number on that electric bill each month can come as a shock to both the system and the budget.

But what if your world was just a little more perfect? What if you could log on to your computer and check consumption down to, say, a 15-minute period? What if you could figure out that your teenager is running the TV, stereo, a game player (or two) and every light in his room — all despite the fact that he’s spending the night at a friend’s house?

That’s the future of the Advanced Metering System (AMS), and that future is closer than you may think.

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Pennsylvania man denied permission to install solar panels

By Barbara Kessler

Robert Caffro found a solar solution for his home, then acquired a problem that’s cast a cloud on his plan.

The front of Bob Caffro's house; solar panels would be on the rear roof.

Caffro’s homeowners association in his neighborhood in Chester County west of Philadelphia denied his request to install the low-profile rooftop solar panels that he’d arranged to buy at Home Depot.

The governing group sent him a letter on Jan. 5 citing this clause in the neighborhood’s rules:

“Any addition, enclosure, garage, appurtenant building, fence, wall, planting or other improvement or modification erected, placed or maintained within a Unit shall be harmonious in design with the single family residential dwelling within the Unit.”

Which left Caffro, 45, scratching his head over the meaning of the word “harmonious.”

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Cash rebates for appliances to begin around the country

By Barbara Kessler

Got a refrigerator that’s not so chillin’ anymore? A washer that’s approaching its last spin? When that appliance goes kaput, or maybe beforehand, you’ll want to check out your state’s federally funded appliance rebate program.

Energy Star Front Load Washer by Whirlpool

That’s right, you may be able to get a federal kickback, courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, just for replacing that old appliance with a new Energy Star one. But you’ll have to check your state’s guidelines.

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Help contain plastics by knowing your plastic containers

By Kelly Rondeau

It’s the holiday season, and along with the many joys that are associated with this fun time of year – cooking, baking, parties with friends and family – comes a lurking environmental problem: Toxic chemicals in everyday plastics. Plastics that seem to be everywhere in our holiday midst — in the packaging of toys, the toys themselves, our food packaging, in our holiday leftover storage containers, in plastic wrap, in water bottles — and the list goes on.

Many valid health concerns have been raised about poisonous chemicals present in our everyday plastics, and the headlines about these toxins leaching into our food are frightening. A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation found, for instance, that food containers labeled as “microwave safe” leached BPA when heated.

Just this fall, a scientific advisory panel set up specifically to review the Food and Drug Administration’s assessment of Bisphenol A (BPA), a plastic additive, concluded that the agency had ignored scientific evidence and used flawed methods when determining that it was safe.

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Don’t let energy vampires suck away your holiday cash

KillAWatt EZ will tell you how much energy your electronics are gobbling

You don’t have to wait for next Halloween to track down energy vampires in your home. Any time of the year will do.

Just follow these Alliance to Save Energy guidelines, which are fun for kids and will surely be enlightening for adults too.

First step, turn off all the lights and appliances in the house. Take a flashlight outside to see if the meter is still running. It probably will be, because you’ve got things on “stand by” all over the house — hair dryers, phones, computers, televisions, DVRs.

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Money from trees — save on utility bills and heal the atmosphere

(Photo: Noofangle Media)

By Diane Porter

Wouldn’t you just love to pick your house up, turn it this way and that way on the lot, and figure out where it really makes the most sense? The spot where it catches the prevailing breeze, has shade in the summer, sun in the winter, and energy savings year-round?

That’s how houses were placed before air-conditioning, when a family’s comfort inside depended on how well the house functioned. But today, we live in tidy rows on uniform blocks that line up in a way that makes more sense for real estate than anything else. The decision as to which way our doors and windows face was most likely made by a developer putting down dozens of homes at once; the placement of our driveways and patios followed suit.

And if the sun bakes us in the summer, or if our living room is freezing in the winter, we tend to focus on things we can do inside the house to mitigate the problem. We turn the thermostat up or down; we dig out the blankets in winter or the fans in summer.

And we pay for all of it, in comfort and utility bills.

What to do?

Tackle the problem from the outside as well. Plant trees.

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Trade in for LED holiday lights at The Home Depot

By Bill Sullivan

Looking to upgrade from your old, often unreliable incandescent holiday lights to those cool, environmentally-friendly LED (light emitting diode) numbers you’ve heard so much about? The Home Depot is offering an incentive to do just that.

Between Nov. 5 and Nov. 15, you can redeem old or non-working Christmas lights and get a $3 off coupon toward the more energy-efficient LED string lights as part of the company’s second annual Christmas light trade-in. Customers are limited to five redemptions, and all of The Home Depot’s US stores are scheduled to participate.

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