Kiera Butler

Senior Editor

Kiera answers your green questions every week in her Econundrums column. She was a hypochondriac even before she started researching germ warfare.

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Kiera has written about the environment, arts and culture, and more for Columbia Journalism Review, Orion, Audubon, OnEarth, Plenty, and the Utne Reader. She lives in Berkeley and recently planted 30 onions in her backyard.

Classy Hardwood Floors Tied To Sex Abuse in the Amazon

—By Kiera Butler

| Wed Apr. 11, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Sawmills line the banks of the river to receive raw lumber from the forest. Here it is processed to rough planks before conditioning and further export. Toby Smith/Environmental Investigation Agency

Cedar and mahogany are woods known for their ability to class up a living room. Both woods are common in high-end furniture; cedar is often used in flooring, and mahogany makes for some fine moldings. But it doesn't come cheap: The wood from one mahogany tree costs about $11,000 on the lumber market; a cedar tree runs about $9,000. The Peruvian Amazon is a major source of these woods for the American market, and a new report from the Environmental Investigation Agency found that between 2008 and 2010, 35 percent of inspected shipments from Peru contained wood from illegal logging operations; the researchers say that the overall figure (including non-inspected shipments) is estimated to be as high as 88 percent.

The report's authors point out that because of lack of oversight, illegal logging is widespread in Peru—despite the fact that it received $150 million yearly in international support for its forest conservation programs. Although timber operations cash in on the dodgy practices, the overall effect is detrimental not only to the environment, but also to the economy and local people. Researchers in Loreto, where much of the activities take place, estimate that illegal logging losses (due to "tax evasion, non-payment of required fees, and devaluation of standing timber") cost Peru $250 million annually, 1.5 times more than the country earns from all its timber exports combined. The humanitarian cost of logging is also considerable. Consider this moving testimony from one former logger:

Maria, a single mother nearing 50 years of age, had no job. thus, when a neighbor told her about temporary work available as a cook in a logging camp, she thought she had been presented with a good opportunity. The pay seemed good to her: 300 soles per month (approximately US $110), above the average pay for a cook in the city of Iquitos. She would have to leave her children and move to the camp, but it would only be for three months. Unfortunately, things did not turn out as planned. Six months later, she ended up fleeing.

In order to convince her to move to the jungle and leave her children, the habilitadores gave her 250 soles (approximately US $90) as an advance payment. She left Iquitos and traveled one day by river to join up with other people who knew how to get to the camp. From there, days to the middle of the jungle.

Getting there was not the most difficult part. Maria was the only woman in the camp and was surrounded by approximately 25 men, most of whom were between the ages of 20 and 30, and all of whom were strong enough to fell trees measuring more than one meter in diameter. Maria's nightmare began when she realized that the men expected her to not only cook them breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but also provide them with sexual favors.

Maria remembers each night as being a nightmare. "I was there for six months. I barely slept from my fear, always worried that something was going to happen. when I knew they wanted to attack me, I couldn't sleep. thinking they were coming, I would wake up. so that they would think I was awake, I would move, I would get up, I would light my lantern, that is the way I was there, I would sleep on my side. And suddenly it was time to wake up."

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America's Top 10 Most-Polluted Waterways

—By Kiera Butler

| Mon Apr. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

If you are a fly-fisher, a rafter, or heck, just a person who drinks water, here is some troubling news: Our waterways are in rough shape. An eye-opening new report (PDF) from Environment America Research and Policy Center finds that industry discharged 226 million pounds of toxic chemicals into America's rivers and streams in 2010. The pollution included dead-zone-producing nitrates from food processors, mercury and other heavy metals from steel plants, and toxic chemicals from various kinds of refineries. Within the overall waste, the researchers identified 1.5 million pounds of carcinogens, 626,000 pounds of chemicals linked to developmental disorders and 354,000 pounds of those associated with reproductive problems.

In the report are a few goodies (or baddies, really) that are worth ogling. First up, there's this map of the most heavily polluted waterways in the United States, broken down by state:

And if you're curious about which waterways suffer from the most pollution, here's the top 10:

Finally, a list of the top 20 polluters—composed mostly of steel manufacturers, chemical plants, and food processing operations:

It's important to note that the vast majority—if not all—of these releases are perfectly legal. I reached out to all of the companies on the list above and received a response from several. They all basically told me the same thing: "All discharges meet permit requirements," Cargill said. "This is a natural process that is fully licensed, and included as part of our wastewater discharge reporting," echoed McCain Foods.

We'll have to take their word for it, since the companies are not required to release the results of their chemical safety testing to the public, nor do they have to reveal how much of each chemical they are releasing. The Clean Water Act doesn't even apply to all bodies of water in the United States; exactly how big and important a waterway must be to qualify for protection has been the subject of much debate. Rivers get the big conservation bucks; they're the waterway equivalents of rhinos and snow leopards. But pollutants in oft-neglected ditches, canals, and creeks—the obscure bugs of the waterway world—also affect ecosystems and our drinking water quality. Sean Carroll, a federal field associate in Environment America's California office, estimates that 60 percent of US waterways aren't protected. "The big problem," he says, "is that we don't know how big the problem is."

The situation has gotten slightly better since the last time Environment America conducted a study; overall waterway pollution decreased by 2.6 percent from 2007 to 2010. There's still a lot of room for improvement, Carroll says. Environment America is calling on Obama to extend the protections offered by the Clean Water Act before the end of his first term. A list of the group's specific recommendations is here.

Great News for Whiskey Drinkers!

—By Kiera Butler

| Fri Mar. 16, 2012 11:59 AM PDT

Celtic Renewables founder Martin Tangney does his best mad whiskey scientist. Image by Celtic Renewables.

A confession: When I wrote about the environmental footprint of various kinds of booze a while back, I was really hoping that whiskey would turn out to be the greenest. That's because it's far and away my favorite alcoholic beverage, whether served on the rocks in a comfy bar or sipped from a flask, campfire-side. What I found, though, is that the production of whiskey and other spirits requires much more energy than wine or beer. This is especially true in boutique distilleries that use old-fashioned pot-style stills, which make delicious whiskey but are pretty inefficient when it comes to energy use. The distilling process also makes a lot of waste. I found myself ruing the day I ever looked into all this. Who wants to feel guilty about booze, for goodness sake?

Imagine my delight, then, when I learned about a Scottish startup that is poised to make whiskey production greener. Celtic Renewables has figured out how to ferment whiskey waste and turn it into biofuel, along with two other useful products.

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

Do Multivitamins Really Work?

Sure, taking your multi is healthy—for a lucrative industry's bottom line.

—By Kiera Butler

| March/April 2012 Issue

I didn't start taking vitamins until a few years ago, after Target began selling adult multivitamins in the form of gummy bears. I've been dutifully popping two bears a day ever since, getting my daily candy fix while ostensibly improving my health. After all, to hear the $28 billion supplement industry tell it, the gummies could be all that stands between me and scurvy. "Some people, like if you're eating kale for breakfast or something, get all their nutrients from food," says Duffy MacKay, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the industry's leading trade group. "But in this complex world, that's getting increasingly rare."

According to a survey by the National Institutes of Health, nearly a third of Americans take multivitamins regularly. The Vitamin Shoppe, a chain with more than $700 million in annual sales, has been growing by double digits year after year. Yet mounting data suggests that multivitamins aren't the nutritional wonders the industry would have us believe. "There is virtually no evidence that they make healthy people healthier," says author Marion Nestle, one of several nutritionists who told me that vitamin deficiency is quite rare in the United States. (Her latest book, Why Calories Count, is due out in April.)

[Read the full article]

California Government Has No Idea Fracking Is Happening

—By Kiera Butler

| Wed Feb. 29, 2012 10:00 AM PST

Gas well drilling in Sutter or Colusa County, California: CalWest/Flickr Gas well drilling in Sutter/Colusa County, California CalWest/FlickrThere isn't supposed to be much fracking in California. In the past, the state's Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) has said that it "does not believe that fracking is widely used" in the state. More recently, the division allowed that the practice is "used for a brief period to stimulate production of oil and gas wells," but added (PDF) that "the division doesn't believe the practice is nearly as widespread as it is in the Eastern U.S. for shale gas production."

Californians, then, should be able to breathe a sigh of relief, since the controversial practice of fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, has been linked to a host of environmental problems, including air pollution, groundwater contamination, and possibly even earthquakes.

But according to a report (PDF) just released by the Environmental Working Group, fracking is much more common in California than the regulators would like you to believe. A team of EWG investigators has unearthed dozens of industry documents and academic papers indicating that the practice has been going on in at least six California counties for 60 years or more. And evidence suggests that it's still going strong: "We asked Halliburton, 'What percentage of wells are you fracking in Kern County, for example?,'" says Bill Allayud, EWG's California Director of Governmental Affairs. "And they said 50 to 60 percent of oil wells." A 2008 paper by the Halliburton subsidiary Pinnacle Technologies detailed the widespread current use of fracking in California.

The DOGGR didn't respond to the multiple emails I sent asking for comment, and EWG says that in a meeting earlier this month, division officials claimed again that it did not have any information about fracking in California. But the really strange thing is that the practice is clearly on the agency's mind: In 2010, the DOGGR requested funding to broaden its regulatory program to include new oil extraction technologies like fracking. It received more than $3.2 million for that very purpose in its 2010-11 budget, but according to the EWG report, so far it has not used the funds to regulate fracking. "They told us that regulating fracking is not on their plate," Allayud says. "Until they see manifest harm, they won't act."