The U.S. government is encouraging farmers to dump ash leftover from burning coal into their fields. The government sees this as a way to dispose of these toxic wastes. As usual, the government is not looking out for our health. According to the Wall Street Journal, about 130 million tons of ash and sludge are produced each year from burning coal, enough to fill one million railcars. This ash contains toxins such as arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals. When used for farming, these metals will get into our food and poison us. Lead stays in soil for hundreds of years and accumulates in green produce. The results of such misguided policy, dumping toxic waste onto our food supply, will be even more disease and more cancer than we have now. This is just one more reason to purchase organic foods exclusively.…

. . . it can be challenging How about products that say they're "hypoallergenic," "natural," "herbal" or even "organic?" Sorry, but because this market is unregulated, such product descriptions are meaningless. How about buying products at the health food store? Sorry again, but genuinely non-toxic products are relatively rare, and most health food store products don't pass the test. Now manufacturers do have to list all ingredients on the bottle, so you can become an expert on the particular ingredients to avoid. I've written about many of these in prior Newsclips, and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has done an excellent job in making educational materials about common toxins available on their website. (Also see, "Is Your Bodycare Toxic" by the EWG, at www.shareguide.com/bodycare.html.) However, manufacturers don't have to list unintentional ingredients, i.e., impurities. For example, a Canadian study recently found heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead and others)…