A Very Thirsty Planet

"No water, no life.  No blue, no green."--Sylvia Earle

Of course, Dr. Earle (a prodigious author about all things wet) is not making a novel revelation here; we all need water to survive. But for centuries, mankind has largely taken water for granted, assuming nature would always provide an inexhaustible supply.  We were wrong; massive water shortages are growing every single day. This blog will outline how much water we have, how it's used, and how much we waste.  I will post new blogs focusing on current and future strategies to confront the single most defining question of our time: Can we provide enough food and water for a current world population of 7.4 billion, which, according to the UN, will increase to some 11 billion by 2050?

Some current statistics:   According to the UN's 2014-2015 World Water Development Report (1) Estimates vary, but at least 768 million people still have no access to fresh water. (2) 20 % of the world's aquifers are facing over-exploitation. (3) By 2050, 3 billion people will move out of poverty, and besides water, will also want more of everything (houses, cars, a full belly, etc.). The Journal of Environmental Health has a simple way to describe how much H20 exists: "If you take all the water in the world and put it in a five-gallon bucket, the amount of fresh water would be about two tablespoons. Even then, only about 1% of our fresh water is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and ice fields."  And this shortage of water is exacerbated by a new threat--world wide climate change, which is already negatively affecting the amount and quality of all water sources.

The Earth Island Journal reported last June  about the disappearance of lakes world wide, including:  Bolivia's Lake Poopo (56 miles long and 20 miles wide), Turkey's (135 square miles) Lake Aksehir and Iran's Lake Urmia (2,000 square miles).  Further,  the report noted that a fifth of the ponds in Northern Alaska (there are millions) have disappeared completely while Mongolia has lost 25 % of its lakes since the 1980's. The loss of Russia's Lake Aral was famously chronicled in print and film starting in the 1960's, when Russia began a vast but monumentally stupid effort to divert two rivers which fed the lake, so they could grow cotton in the desert. What was once the 4th largest inland sea in the world (26,000 square miles) is now a poisonous desert.

Historically, water was primarily used for slaking our thirst and growing food.  Water usage mushroomed as a critical component of three revolutions. The First Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century began with the creation of steam energy. A Second Industrial Revolution would occur in the late 19th century and involve the development of steel industry and giant corporations. Now, a Third Industrial Revolution is evolving after the advent of personal computers, creating game changing technologies like  3D printing, robots and countless web-based applications. 

Since the demand for water continues to rise, we must learn how to husband this resource wisely.  How are we doing? I will start with an analysis of California agriculture, the largest source of food production in America, focusing on just how much irrigated water it takes to grow the following specific crops (US Dept. of Agriculture numbers):
One head of broccoli-- 5.4 gallons  one walnut--4.9 gallons a head of lettuce--3.5 gallons  a tomato--3.3 gallons  one almond--1.1 gallons  one pistachio--0.75 gallon  a strawberry--0.4 gallon  one grape--0.3 gallon.

The Smithsonian   has provided an interactive graph which shows how much water is needed to fill your dinner plate. For example, 8 ounces of beef (621 gallons), 6 ounces of pasta (99.6 gallons) and 8 ounces of asparagus (162.6 gallons) for a stunning total of 850.2 gallons. (The food calculations are derived from all US sources, not just California.)  Perhaps it is way past time humans begin to contemplate reducing our intake of animal proteins because continuous meat production will cause an unsustainable use of precious water.
  
California's water use is unique because, unlike other states, 80% of their water is dedicated to agriculture, the rest is for the 20 million, largely urban, residents.  This ratio has created a long history of fights over water rights, but the recent five year drought put such a severe strain on their water, the state was forced to enact emergency legislation to 
conserve water, which includes bans on watering lawns after 48 hours of rain, washing cars without a shut-off nozzle on the hose and cities watering grass on road mediums with potable water. They also have a program of rebates for people who remove grass and install desert landscaping. I certainly applaud these efforts, but I also believe it is time to revisit places like Oregon's famously fertile Willamette Valley, and the Mississippi Delta.  The old Cotton Belt is fading because there is a world wide glut of the white stuff. Why not transition some of that acreage into the rapidly growing domestic market for fruit and vegetables? 

I also feel it is long past due that America dramatically reduce providing egregiously expensive farm subsidies ($20 billion per year, according to the USDA) most of which goes to big, rich farmers, producing staple commodities like corn and soy beans by using vast amounts of water and chemicals. (Sadly, according to the Government Accountability Office, between 2007 and 2012 Uncle Sam paid some $3 million in subsidies to 2,300 farms where no crop of any sort was grown. Another $10.6 million was paid to farmers who had been dead for over a year.)  By reducing fat-cat subsidies, there would be, in my opinion, a growth in small farms.  They would not provide all the food we need, at least initially, but it would be a damned good start.  

On Seeking Scrupulous Sources About Suspicious Supplements

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not." -- Mark Twain

Editor's note;  My last blog also centered around supplements, and would be very useful reading.
It is unfortunate that the old master of humor and  honest journalism is not around to cast a knowing eye on the current dietary supplements that purport to fix any and all ailments of mankind. Instead, I will offer a list of websites that are dedicated to an honest evaluation of supplements and their effects as well as the supplements with ingredients considered dangerous enough to removed from the market by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  For me, the old principle of Caveat Emptor (buyer beware) also applies to purchasing supplements.
Dietary supplements to avoid.  Consumer Reports has repeatedly listed these 11 to avoid:  Aconite (dangers--toxicity, nausea, vomiting, respiratory paralysis, heart rhythm disorders, death)  Bitter Orange (fainting, heart attack, stroke, death) Chaparral (liver damage, kidney problems) Colloidal Silver (bluish skin, neurological problems, kidney damage) Coltsfoot (liver damage, cancer) Comfrey (liver damage, cancer) Country Mallow (heart attack, heart arrhythmia, stroke, death) Germanium (kidney damage, death)  Greater ( liver damage) Kava (liver damage) Lobelia (toxicity, overdose can cause fast heartbeat, very low blood pressure, coma, possibly death) Yohimbe (high blood pressure, rapid heart rates; high doses: severe low blood pressure, heart problems, death).  This list is not complete; check the websites listed for more.  Surprise! Supplements for weight loss and sexual enhancement are pulled from the market in large numbers.
Websites for supplements, drugs and general medical--labeled as s, d, and g.
National Institutes of Health  nih.gov  sdg  Mayo Clinic   mayohealth.org sdg Drugs.com drugs.com d RxList rxlist.com ds
Food and Drug Administration fda.gov sdg  Consumer Reports consumerreports.org  sg  Medicine Net  medicinenet.com g U.S. Department of Health and Human Services hhs.gov  sdg WebMd  webmd.com sdg  Federal trade commission (FTC) ftc.gov sdg.  
I also highly recommend a blog site called Confessions of a Quackbuster for a list of the most unreliable health websites, click here 

It is also important to recognize the impact of the power of faiths, beliefs and placebos. Miracles can and do happen.  They are not to be dismissed simply because neither science or logic can tolerate the impossible.  And it is my firm belief that animals and humans have evolved with a capacity to employ mind over matter.  

The power of the mind is the subject of new, ground breaking research in the April 2017 issue of National Geographic Magazine. GO!


                                       Amur Leopard --Critically Endangered

Supplements: Sources of Salvation or Inspiration for Suckers?

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."  --Hippocrates

The sage advice of "the father of medicine" for centuries, has evolved into the  adage  "You are what you eat."  By now, we all know if your diet includes four bowls of  ice cream, two Porterhouse steaks and a six pack every day, you are likely to suffer from obesity, alcoholism and an occasional heart attack.  We also know damn well that we should mind our mothers who urge us to "eat your vegetables".  Mankind has learned from centuries of consuming food what works to sustain us and scientific analysis has long served to enhance this "common" knowledge with a vast universe of precise information about what is in our food and how it affects our health.

Our newest merger of food and health interests has created a new dietary love affair-- supplements.  Dietary supplements (minerals, botanicals, herbs. minerals, amino acids, concentrates and extracts) have evolved into a new and controversial way to enhance nutritional value.  I seek to shed some light on the size of the industry and how to determine if the supplements lining the shelves of your local pharmacy, grocery store, convenience store or website warehouse are safe to consume.   (The industry is vast and complicated, so I will publish another blog next week to address the efficacy of various products by providing governmental and private websites which are well respected for providing objective information about supplements as well as answering questions about healthy lifestyles, many diseases and how our amazing human bodies function.)

Size:   This industry is tricky to size because there are oodles of privately held companies, endless supply chains, and fuzzy product descriptions.  Detailed reports can cost thousands, so I relied on official US governmental agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and The National Institute of Health as well as respected journals like Nature or magazines such as Consumer Reports.   The last reliable numbers show that in 2006 over half of adults used supplements (usage in 1988-1994 hovered around 24 per cent.)  In 2000, $17.2 billion in profits was reported; in 2017--$36.1 billion.  The boomer generation grew up when the industry was virtually nonexistent.  Many of them had chuckled when people began taking pills for nutrition or weight loss.  They thought it was just a craze; now at least half of adults 65 and older take daily vitamins and supplements. 

Safety:  People should note that the Food Drug Administration does not regulate supplements the same way as prescription medications involving years of tightly controlled clinical trials.  The FDA's role is primarily to investigate supplements which reveal a potential for harm to users and to enforce the FDA's Good Manufacturing Practices which technically ensures production standards and licensing.  Sounds good, but in reality, Consumer Reports reported in 2015 there were 15,000 supplement manufacturers in the US in 2015 and since 2010 the agency has inspected less than 400 of those companies per fiscal year.  To remove a supplement from the market, the FDA must show that it poses a danger to consumers once it is already for sale.  depending on reports from doctors, consumers and supplement manufacturers  to report any issues.  But even doctors might not connect the dots between an illness and the use of a supplement by a patient and call the FDA.  The Government Accountability Office found that 5,000 more supplement related calls were going to poison control offices than to the FDA in 2015.  The Sept. 2016 Consumer Reports magazine reported 23,000 people per year are treated at the ER after taking a supplement and over 1,000 supplements have been found to contain prescription or experimental drugs.

The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) was created by the FDA. It requires supplement  manufacturers to notify the FDA at least 75 days before bringing a new dietary ingredient to market and to provide evidence the new ingredient can reasonably be expected to be safe.  So, how is the DSHEA program doing?  The same 2016 Consumer Reports article paints a rather bleak picture:  90,000 dietary supplements are on the market and over 5,000 are being introduced every year; the agency has been notified of less than 1,000 new ingredient notifications in the past 20 years.  In 2011, a draft of new rules was issued for DSHEA but was shelved after a long and angry debate by stakeholders.   A 2016 draft of rules is still under review by the FDA's new Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) which is charged with oversight of new ingredients into the market. 

Consumer Reports has also noted that 43 per cent of those who regularly take at least one supplement were advised to do so by a doctor.  Little research has centered around interviewing doctors as to why they recommend supplements, but one rationale offered for the recommendations is that doctors realize that if  people are going to take supplements anyway,  many physicians would rather provide a supplement that does not create a health risk when consumed with drugs that they have prescribed for a patient.  That rationale becomes questionable when doctors actually sell supplements. The American Medical Association (AMA) has strongly disapproved the sale of products related to health from a doctor's office, saying "The profit motive can impair clinical judgement and undermine the primary obligation of physicians to serve the interests of their patients before their own." According to a 2014 Gallup Survey of 200 physicians, a staggering 94 percent now recommend vitamins or minerals  to some of their patients; 45 percent have recommended  herbal supplements also.  And 7 percent are actually selling them in their offices.

Some supplement labels carry emblems with lofty, feel-good words such as "verified," "certified," or "approved."  These labels are granted by organizations (NSF International, US Pharmacopoeia, etc.) insuring that the product contains the amount of the ingredient advertised on the label, but they do NOT, repeat NOT, guarantee a product has any therapeutic value whatsoever.  Virtually all manufacturers point to studies which show the positive "scientific"results  of their products.  These studies are conducted with absolutely no-zip-nil governmental oversight.  They are often directly or indirectly funded by a supplement manufacturer using measurements of a large number of things about a small number of people which virtually guarantees a "statistically significant" result. Critics note that ingredients which were submitted for approval as a new dietary ingredient (NDI) by one company but rejected by the FDA, can show up in products sold by other companies.

No discussion about false science claims, in my opinion, would be complete without reading an  article by Cliff Weathers in Alternet e-magazine on July 17, 2014 entitled "4 of the Biggest quacks Plaguing America with False Claims About Science."  Dr. Joseph Marcola is an osteopath who operates an internet site that promotes and sells dietary supplements.  A sampling of his articles includes "13 Amazing Health Benefits of Himalayan Rock Salt", "Learn How Homeopathy Cured A Boy of Autism", and (referring to Vitamin D) "The Silver Bullet for Cancer?"  He sells everything from Organic Sea Buckthorn Anti-Aging Serum to "worry-free" organic cotton tampons.  He has been slapped by the FDA with numerous warning letters for his claims and the Better Business Bureau has given Mercola.com an F rating.  "The Health Ranger," Mike Adams,  has no medical credentials at all but (until recently being delisted by Google) had a Natural News website which Dr. David Gorski of the Science Based Medicine Website calls "a one-stop shop, a repository if you will, of virtually every quackery known to humankind..."  Up next is "The Food Babe", Vani Hari, who has a background devoid of credentials other than a stint as a management consultant.  Some of her most highly implausible ideas on food are: Microwaves kill food and remove nutrients and alter the properties of water.  Water also changes its physical properties when the words Satan and Hitler are spoken nearby.   Gorski says "Her strategy is very transparent...name a bunch of chemicals and count on the chemical illiteracy of your audience to result in fear at hearing their very names." Dr. Oz needs no introduction here, because millions tune in to his TV show.  But he is not a quack per se.  He is a professor at the Dept. of Surgery at Columbia University who has authored 400 medical research reports and as well as directing the Cardiovascular Institute at New York's Presbyterian Hospital.  Weathers noted "Dr. Oz has been exposed as a daytime-television snake oil peddler, while being shamed during testimony before a U. S. Senate subcommittee on Consumer Protection."  Oz admitted to the committee "While there is no such thing as a "miracle" supplement and many he promotes wouldn't pass scientific muster, my job is to be a cheerleader for the audience.  When they don't think they have hope, I want to look and I do look everywhere, including alternative healing traditions, for any evidence that might be supportive to them." Chairwoman Claire McCaskill said that Oz was "giving people false hope."  For me, he is merely a quack with credentials and a mountain of money.

Editor's note.  My apologies for my long absence, but I spent months in 3 hospitals recovering from a severe case of Pneumonia and a  virulent MRSA infection.  I was in a coma for 12 days, but I am in dandy shape now. 
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