That’s why we listened when  Justin Hall-Tipping told us that in the future, all energy could be sustainable, green, and free.

Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of Nanoholdings, gives a TED talk about the energy applications of carbon nanomaterials.  It’s worth a watch, [...]]]>

Being a green builder is a constant search for more ecological ways of doing things.

That’s why we listened when  Justin Hall-Tipping told us that in the future, all energy could be sustainable, green, and free.

Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of Nanoholdings, gives a TED talk about the energy applications of carbon nanomaterials.  It’s worth a watch, if you have ten minutes.

A few key points:

• Carbon nanotubes are 100 times more conductive than copper wire.
• Transparent sheets of carbon nanomaterials, when paired with a polymer, can be applied to windows (or any surface, really) and convert light into energy.
• Collected energy can be fed into systems of batteries that store it for later–or be turned back into light and beamed to the next house over.

Widespread applications of this model has mind-boggling implications: free sustainable energy, for everyone, for as long as the sun shines.

The downside is that we couldn’t harness the collaborative powers of the network until the model goes mainstream.  And why would the model go mainstream, when just about every house in a developed nation is already hooked up to a grid and paying into the existing system?  We have the technology to do this.  We also have the technology to make hovercars.  We could be zooming everywhere, but we wouldn’t, because we already have roads and cars that get the job done.  The prohibitive cost and arguably unnecessary risk of replacing entire infrastructures holds us back.

Consumption is already ingrained in our lifestyle to the degree that stepping away from it would take a massive amount of willpower.  Ec0 Br00klyn’s Zero Building method minimizes consumption by using 100% salvaged materials in our projects.  We install green roofs, solar panels, and water recycling systems that help homeowners wean themselves off the official lines.  We help one determined homeowner at a time move beyond consumption, toward a future of free energy.

It’s not easy.  Pushing against “normal” ways of doing things is a daily struggle against our own habits and those of the structures around us, but we can’t NOT fight it, so we forge on.

Justin Hall-Tipping’s research and ideas are very inspiring. We are keeping a keen eye on his developments since it would be a huge leap forward for green building.

Green builders understand this naturally. We build homes that may last hundreds of years, protecting families for many generations. Each nail, each brick is a respectful nod to our ancestors who taught us the wisdom of sustainable [...]]]>

The Native American concept that all our actions today will effect seven generations to come is profound.

Green builders understand this naturally. We build homes that may last hundreds of years, protecting families for many generations. Each nail, each brick is a respectful nod to our ancestors who taught us the wisdom of sustainable building and a gift to our children who will inherit whatever we build, for good or for bad.

Here is a beautiful song to wish upon our children and our children’s children. We build for them.

May god bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every run
May you stay, forever young

May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

BOB DYLAN – FOREVER YOUNG LYRICS

Here’s to every immigrant worker in the world. Did you ever think that countries were created to create cheap immigrant workers?

Here at Eco Brooklyn we love immigrant workers. Not because they are cheap labor. Eco Brooklyn pays based on talent alone, not nationality, race or sex. And if you have a family [...]]]>

Here’s to every immigrant worker in the world. Did you ever think that countries were created to create cheap immigrant workers?

Here at Eco Brooklyn we love immigrant workers. Not because they are cheap labor. Eco Brooklyn pays based on talent alone, not nationality, race or sex. And if you have a family to support we might even pay more, regardless of whether that family is in Brooklyn or Guatemala.

We welcome people who come to America and send their profits elsewhere. Heck, America has been doing that to other countries for ages. We are happy to balance the playing field however small the contribution.

For us immigrants bring great traditional green building skills to New York. and we eat that shit up.

Clay walls, earthen floors, brick work, stone work, wood work and countless other skills are all old world techniques that people have been doing for thousands of years.  These are valuable skills to a green contractor in New York. These techniques are sustainable earth based skills not dependent on high embodied energy but rather on base elements like earth, clay, stone and water.

Here’s to you Jesus!

The world probably won’t end with a bang, but might just crumble beneath the accumulated consequences of our actions.

Meanwhile, American politicians’ opinions of science, especially climate science, are at an alarming low.  Sometimes TV makes me wonder if [...]]]>

First 2000, and now 2012: Years in which people think the world might possibly end.

The world probably won’t end with a bang, but might just crumble beneath the accumulated consequences of our actions.

Meanwhile, American politicians’ opinions of science, especially climate science, are at an alarming low.  Sometimes TV makes me wonder if there are people who think a 2012 apocalypse is more plausible than global warming.

Watching GOP candidates in debate is a bittersweet experience.  On one hand, the stupid things they occasionally blurt out invariably wind up on YouTube for my amusement.

You-becky-becky becky-becky-stan-stan, anyone?

On the other hand, these guys have a fair shot at becoming arguably the most powerful person in the world.   That’s where the bitter comes in.  They speak in a  sober, defiantly ignorant voice, with the seeming expectation that what they don’t know doesn’t matter.

Sometimes it does matter (a combination of egregious dumbness and sexual sketchiness shamed Cain off the stage) but what scares me is when it doesn’t.

Take Rick Santorum, for example.  Here’s a short excerpt and transcript from a Q&A session he did in New Hampshire last week.

Someone asked how he integrated recent findings of climate change into his policies.  He waved away the whole issue by using scientists, icebergs, and tail-wagging dogs in a meandering metaphor to demonstrate why climate science is not worth considering.

And when he was done talking, people clapped!  Kind of half-heartedly, but still! That stopped The only thing more frightening than ignorance is ignorance with power.

Basically, he argued that there are so many factors so we can’t know for sure what’s causing any changes.  Nevermind that just about anybody with a lick of sense agrees that we’re making a lot of CO2, which gets stuck in the atmosphere.

Nevermind that nobody knows the perfect method for, oh, say, oil mining, but they rough through it anyway because the result is valuable.  Not knowing something doesn’t mean that we should give up; it means we should devote more resources toward finding the answer.  Santorum using ambiguity as a reason to disregard the question only draws attention to how his party has utterly failed at giving climate science the support it needs.

Around Christmas, a short piece showed up in the New York Times about how climate science is stagnating, despite 2011 being one of the most extreme weather years on record.

In May of 2011, 100% of Texas was abnormally dry.  48% was officially in exceptional drought conditions–that’s even more extreme than “extreme drought.”

At the other extreme, New Jersey had an extreme winter: 50.7 inches (more than four feet) fell in my hometown of New Brunswick.  I’ve lived there for 15 years but can count the white Christmases we’ve had on one hand.

These are quick and dirty examples of extreme weather conditions with immediate effects at home.  Objective truths about global warming will emerge as trends in data analysis performed by climate scientists, and I’d like these truths to emerge before they show up as three feet of snow on my car every other week.

It’s true that there are hundreds of factors that contribute to climate change, but it’s stubbornly naive to claim as Santorum does that CO2, as a byproduct of industrial processes, is not the primary actor.  It’s true that climate science and efforts to change energy use in major industries can incur significant costs, but so can bad weather.  The final cost of this year’s weather extremes is still being tallied, but will likely surpass $50 million.  That’s in comparison to a typical year that costs the U.S. $3 or $4 billion.

Making sense of these changing weather patterns will require scientists to analyze large amounts of data, integrating trends over years and millions of square miles.  They need personnel, and concerted support from the Federal government, not half-assed pooh-poohing from a man who could well become President.

The GOP in general sets a bad example by blocking efforts to organize and increase funding for climate research initiatives.  Republicans overwhelmingly deny the general consensus on global warming,  disparaging it instead as a “propaganda attempt” by the Obama administration.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy still finance climate research, but many scientists find that there’s not enough to go around.

This research also has valuable practical applications.  Our company, for example, depends on climate data to calculate things like insulation thickness, heating and cooling loads, and gutter sizes.  We’re a green contractor, so energy efficiency is more crucial to our calculations, but every building depends on this information being accurate.  The more efficient our homes, the more money clients save.

Global change affects everyone, not just Americans, so hopefully other governments will have more sense than Congress and fund this crucial research.   Passive houses, for example, have greater momentum in Europe than in the U.S., so more resources are available to passive builders and passive houses are cheaper to build.

And what does all this have to do with Eco Brooklyn, beyond normal climate calculations?  As green contractors, we obviously take the local environment of each home into consideration when designing a plan for energy efficiency.  Compare that with, say, a large non-green building company like Toll Brothers, who may build the same exact house in Texas as in Nebraska.

Now that the environment is hitting higher record temperatures and precipitation levels than ever, Eco Brooklyn is venturing into what we call “Survival Building.”

We’ve started taking examples from extreme climates and integrating them into New York’s brownstones, in order to prepare them against heat waves, snap freezes, and flash floods.  We take inspiration from the “Earthship” and “Passive House” movements, which focus on installing tight insulation and maximizing solar gain to reduce heating and cooling needs.  These homes remain naturally cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  We put up a blog post recently that explains these concepts in detail.

Our our buildings consider rainwater runoff seriously.  We build green roofs, dry wells, rain gardens, and other water harvesting systems to reduce flooding.

We use clay walls in our houses that work like adobe walls in Pueblo architecture.  If they can endure the New Mexico heat, they can handle New York heat waves, with the benefit of retaining heat in winter.  Our passive houses are sealed tight against energy loss, but the envelope also protects against extreme wind or rain.

Eco Brooklyn’s brownstones are green fortresses.

So even if we see the beginnings of a climate apocalypse in 2012, we’ll be ready, and if Santorum gets elected, at least we’ll be insulated against his hot air.

The Rockaway Beach Branch Committee is petitioning the New York City Council to turn an abandoned 3.5 mile stretch of the old Rockaway Beach Branch railroad into a green [...]]]>

Check out this petition on change.org.  We think their proposal to turn an abandoned tract of land into green space will benefit many New Yorkers.

The Rockaway Beach Branch Committee is petitioning the New York City Council to turn an abandoned 3.5 mile stretch of the old Rockaway Beach Branch railroad into a green space.

Rail service ended 60 years ago, and the city and MTA have indicated that they have no intention of reactivating the rail line due to financial and logistical concerns.  The land has sat there as a dumping ground, a waste of a large unused tract of land in an area populated by hundreds of thousands.

The proposed green space connects nearby communities, recreational areas, and public transportation lines.   The project echoes the recently completed High Line park in Manhattan, which recycled old railroad into an urban park.  In addition to cultural benefits, urban parks have economic perks: turning the unused space into a green gathering place has stimulated real estate development along the 1-mile strip.

The High Line’s southern end in 2005, before renovation.

Completed central portion of the High Line in 2010

In addition to greening New York through construction, Eco Brooklyn also does ecological gardening. We use native plants and local resources like stones, tree trunks and rain water to recreate natural native landscapes. We are a big fan of the Manhattan High Line as a successful example of using an abandoned space to increase community and nature with native plants.

Sign the petition, and help recycle wasted space into a green zone today!

What the land looks like now.  Read and sign the petition here.

Image courtesy of LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch Virtual Tour.

Earthship building is best for non-urban parts of the [...]]]>

The two best building systems I know of right now are the Earthship and Passive House methods. Right now Eco Brooklyn is lucky enough to be involved in two jobs that involve both systems, one a NY earthship and the other a NY Passive House.

Earthship building is best for non-urban parts of the world. The footprint of the Earthship makes it prohibitive for city buildings. And as the name implies, Earthships don’t work for buildings more than two stories high. An Earthship relies on the temperature of the earth and thus needs to be nestled in the earth to work.

An Earthship building Eco Brooklyn is currently involved in on the Lower East Side of Manhattan

Passive House building is a good choice for city buildings. Here in NY there are many Passive House jobs going on and I predict that Passive House will become the standard for city, multy level buildings.

The one flaw with Passive House is that even if the whole world built by Passive House standards we would still have wars over resources. This is because Passive House is all about energy efficiency but does not focus on reducing embodied energy in the construction phase. The reasoning is that over the life of the building a Passive House saves so much energy that the initial consumption of high embodied energy – insulation, windows etc – is justified.

I don’t think we have that luxury. That is why our Passive House house in Manhattan is built with almost 100% salvaged materials.

For me salvaged materials is the answer, especially in the city. In the countryside, a place conducive to Earthship building, there is very little salvaged materials available. Lucky for the Earthship, you basically only need vehicle tires as a salvaged material. The second most needed material for an Earthship is, duh, earth, which is plentiful on our planet. After that you need some wood, some cement, some glass and some plumbing and electric materials.

These are things you can salvage but they are not needed in abundance so even buying them new isn’t going to burden the planet hugely.

In the city you have a whole different story. The city is full of very valuable trash. Here in NY I know for a fact that you can build a luxury condo with the trash that is thrown away from the job sites of other, uh, luxury condos. I know because that is what we did for our Manhattan Passive House three family building.

NY may be the elite of valuable trash, but every city is full of good garbage. Right now it is legal to throw that garbage away and it shouldn’t be. The NY DOB should have a team of people inspecting peoples’ dumpsters. If it has old wood, insulation, bricks, cinder block, and windows the contractor should be fined a hefty sum.

Why are contractors paying good money to throw away good materials?

The reason is simple economics. It costs less to throw it away and buy it when you need it than store it until you need it. This is a capitalistic flaw not a moral one.

The solution for cities across the globe is a top down program that subsidizes the extraction and storage of valuable materials instead of throwing them out. It would work very much like current city recycling programs work. When a contractor needs materials they would have the choice to go to a storage area and buy salvaged materials. The material is there, the demand is there. The only thing lacking is a restructuring of how things are done.

Here at Eco Brooklyn, being a NY green contractor, we don’t do that many Earthships despite our deep respect for the system and for Jonah and Michael Reynolds the founders of Earthship building.

But we do Passive Houses. We solve the problem of Passive House high embodied energy by salvaging as much as physically possible. To do this we have a storage area where we put the wood, insulation and other items needed to build NY brownstone.

A Passive House job Eco Brooklyn is building in Manhattan

When the job comes we pull whatever we need from the storage area. The way we make it work financially, since storage is not cheap, is we get the stuff from dumpsters or at half price from other contractros looking to get rid of overstock.

When you factor in labor to collect and clean up the salvaged materials we may not be getting the stuff any cheaper than what you pay at the store, but for us that is good enough. Same price, zero embodied energy, zero mountains clear cut, zero rivers polluted. Sounds like a great deal to us.

That is the problem with current building. They all build on credit. The hidden costs of badly paid workers and ecological destruction across the globe is not factored in when you buy a 2×4 at the hardware store. Our future generations will pay for that dearly.

The goal of Eco Brooklyn is to build with cash, symbolically speaking. When we salvage a 2×4 from a dumpster no tree was cut down for us using it, no worker was badly paid, no ecology across the planet was destroyed. So what if it costs us a little more than a new piece of wood when you factor in labor and storage. Hell, if we factored in all the hidden costs that 2×4 should cost ten times what it does. If our labor to collect and repair the salvaged 2×4 costs the same as a new one we feel we have gotten the deal of a lifetime.

We ar Eco Brooklyn feel that for NY building a combination of 100% salvaged materials and Passive House techniques is by far the best way to build.

Unfortunately most contractors can not build this way because they do no have the infrastructure of salvage that Eco Brooklyn has. We have a team of guys devoted to dumpster diving and a network of contractors who know to call us if they have valuable garbage to give away.

But hopefully this will change as the city gets more hip to the importance of salvaging the valuable NY construction garbage. Contractors don’t feel good about throwing away 100 year old hard wood beams, but what can they do? They are not educated to the importance of saving it and they don’t have the storage.

This is where the city can help. With time hopefully they will.

For now Eco Brooklyn continues in what we call guerrilla construction – dumpster diving and contractor connection – a grass roots solution to a deep seated need.

But Bloomberg could have been a lot worse. His plan NYC is an acceptable plan, the bare minimum [...]]]>

I have tolerated Mayor Bloomberg because he has done some good things for New York’s ecology. He isn’t the mayor of Copenhagen, Denmark. Now that is a city worth looking at in terms of ecology and social planning.

But Bloomberg could have been a lot worse. His plan NYC is an acceptable plan, the bare minimum any city should be doing.

But I stopped trusting Bloomberg when he used his power to extend his term. That was a Machiavellian and arrogant move that showed he thinks he knows better than the people who elected him.

So it comes as no surprise that he does not understand the importance of Occupy Wall Street. The movement isn’t a group of freaks living homeless in a park. The movement stands for something profound, it is a voice of the people.

Unfortunately Bloomberg, for all his intelligence, is a man of the 1%.

I mean this not only financially but morally. Bloomberg is one of those people who is always on the side of the law because he makes the law. With a phone call he can get a judge to sign, whether that be extending his term or squelching the voice of Occupy Wall Street.

A leader needs to make tough choices and sometimes minorities will not be happy. But I believe Occupy Wall Street is the first real voice of the majority in a long time. Just like you support things like the arts, community events, sports events and all other things that make a city vibrant, you also support things that give the citizens a voice.

This has a direct impact on the ecology of the city. As a New York green contractor I understand that the largest ecosystem here is the human one. If we are not healthy as a community then there is no chance in hell we will make room for the health of plants and animals.

By taking a stance against the Occupy Wall Street movement Bloomberg is not respecting the natural ecology of the city. Things change, things grow. And right now Occupy Wall Street has grown into being. You don’t cut something like this down. You let it grow. It is an organic development of the city that I believe will make our ecology better.

Bloomberg is full of benevolence as long as things are growing in the direction he wants. But now things are not going his way and he is showing his true colors. Being mayor is not about staying in control. It is about listening to the people and doing their will, even if you don’t personally believe in it.

I’m surprised Bloomberg’s serious conflict of interest has taken this long to surface. How can a media mogul also be the mayor of the media capital of the world. The financial ties between the two posts are irrevocably in conflict.

Occupy Wall Street and Bloomberg’s Dynasty have some serious differences and they are coming to a head. He has to be Mayor first or resign. The ecology of the city depends on it.

Check out this clip. Pure genius.

Mushrooms are some of the most beneficial human foods available. But you eat the wrong one and you will die.

Not good, not bad. Powerful, yes.

So the [...]]]>

As a New York green contractor you learn very quickly that “natural” does not mean “good”, nor does it mean “bad”. Case in point: the mushroom.

Mushrooms are some of the most beneficial human foods available. But you eat the wrong one and you will die.

Not good, not bad. Powerful, yes.

So the next time somebody says something is natural, and therefor good, offer them a bowl of black mold. It’s natural too.

Nobody understands this dualistic power of nature, and more specifically of mushrooms than Paul Stamets.

I just finished his game changing book Mycelium Running, How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.

In this book Paul lays out in clear detail how Mycelium, commonly known as mushrooms, are the building block upon which all other life grows.

The mushroom we know, say the Portabello, is just the outward form. What is actually more important is the “root” structure of the mushroom, something that resembles a vast carpeted web that can span thousands of miles of space and is constantly communicating within it’s span. As Paul says, “Mycelium is nature’s internet.”

The awe inspiring power of Myceluim is vast and I strongly suggest you read the book.

But in short Mycelium’s power to both give life and destroy is an underutilized element that Paul is only beginning to scratch the surface of.

For example he shows how in a matter of weeks a couple scoops of Mycelium can turn a pile of toxic deisel and oil earth into a verdant little green garden. It quickly becomes clear that Mycelium could decontaminate all sorts of toxic situations, such as radiation, heavy metal, oil spills, and sewage to name a few.

Paul has discovered how to turn the destructive power of Mycelium into powerful tools against insects like termites and carpenter ants, essentially creating natural pest control that is more effective than your most toxic chemical.

For green contractors in NY this is good news. Termites are a big problem. We have had more than a couple jobs where the wood in a brownstone was infested with termites.

Another interesting thing is using mycelium as soil remediation for those toxic New York gardens. How about the Gowanus Canal? Newton Creek? Mycelium would eat that up!

Check out this short clip to see what I mean:

Dropping natural bacterial granules by helicopter to marshes and other large natural areas to kill mosquito larvae before they grow into adult mosquitoes. [...]]]>

This NYC government web page lists the times, zip codes and dates that helicopters will spray pesticides over the city. They call it the “Aerial Larviciding Schedule”, and define Aerial Larviciding as:

Dropping natural bacterial granules by helicopter to marshes and other large natural areas to kill mosquito larvae before they grow into adult mosquitoes. Does not take place in the residential areas of NYC.

Unfortunately their definition is misleading and omits important facts. I’m not a chemist but as a New York green contractor I’m very sensitive to green-washing. The main lie is their reference to “natural bacteria”. What the hell is that? Are they dropping yogurt on us? It sounds so wholesome unless you think about the absurd vagueness of the statement and see that is says absolutely nothing except create a false sense of safety.

They are playing on the common misconception that “natural” is good while not giving any real facts.

Lets look at some examples of natural bacteria.

Of course you have yogurt. You have the billions of bacteria growing on your kitchen counter which is harmless enough. But there is just as much harmless as lethal natural bacteria.

Anthrax, that substance that kills people, is a natural bacteria. E coli is another effective natural bacteria if you want a painful death.

Maybe you have heard of biological warfare? That’s when you expose your enemy to natural bacteria.

From Wiki:

Biological warfare (BW) — also known as germ warfare — is the deliberate use of disease-causing biological agents such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, or biological toxins, to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons (often termed “bio-weapons” or “bio-agents”) are living organisms or replicating entities (viruses) that reproduce or replicate within their host victims. Entomological (insect) warfare is also considered a type of BW.

You may remember Sadam Hussain. He used natural chemicals to kill a whole bunch of Kurds.

As you can see, natural has no bearing on how harmful something is.

The city says they are dropping pesticides to keep the mosquitoes, and thus West Nile Virus, in check. The only natural bacteria I know of that is harmful to mosquitoes and harmless to most other life forms is called Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (BTI), and it is commonly sold in granule form.

BTI is great because it is harmless to fish and other small animals. You can put it into a pond and remove the mosquito larva without hurting the other animals.

BTI defined:

This naturally occurring bacteria is used as a larvacide in ponds and other areas where mosquitoes are breeding. The larvae die when they feed on it in the water.

BTI is commercially produced by companies that grow it in fish meal or soy flour and sell it in pellets. The pellets are sold at home and garden stores, usually by the brand Mosquito Dunks. The pellets can just be dropped into water, where they will float and slowly release Bti.

Once the larvae eat the bacteria, it develops into several toxic substances in their stomachs, quickly killing them.

BTI is not harmful to animals, birds or even most other insects. It is effective against larvae only and has not effect on adult mosquitoes.

However the city web page states that they are dropping a pesticide called Anvil 10+10, also known as Sumithrin, and this does not contain BTI. Is the city confused because there is absolutely nothing natural about Sumithrin?

Anvil 10 + 10 is comprised of 10% sumithrin and 10% piperonyl butoxide (PBO) as the two “active” ingredients. Sumithrin is the trade name and it’s common chemical name is Phenothrin (d-Phenothrin). Sumithrin is usually the one people refer to as the main active ingredient. PBO is there to boost Sumithrin’s effectiveness. The remaining 80% consists of white mineral oil and polyethylbenzene.

Pesticides such as su­mithrin are not natural and are not made from chrysanthemum flowers as is often claimed. Sumithrin, resmethrin and permethrin belong to a class of pesticides known as pyrethroids, which are synthetic analogs of chrysanthe­mums (Anvil) and dandelions (Scourge). Pyrethroids are not natural! These pesticides are often promoted as “safer” than malathion, an unrelated organophosphate, but this is not true.

Pyrethroids are toxic to the thyroid and immune system, among other concerns. No safe exposure level has been scientifically established for avoiding hormonal and other ad­verse effects, nor has the Occupational Safe­ty and Health Administration (OSHA) set an exposure limit. Source

Sumithrin and its other chemicals are highly toxic to other life forms, especially insects and fish. For us humans it isn’t that great either. Lets start with the standard pill bottle list of symptoms from exposure:

headache, nausea, vomiting, cramps, weak­ness, blurred vision, pin-point pupils, tightness in chest, labored breathing, nervousness, sweating, watering eyes, drooling or frothing of the mouth and nose, muscle spasms, coma, coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, runny or stuffy nose, chest pain or difficulty breathing, mental confusion, frequent urination, stomach cramps, diarrhea and seizures, delayed neurological effects including chronic pain, numbness and weakness in the extremities, which may persist for months or years, central nervous system damage (memory, mood, motor coordination, etc), delayed long-term neurotoxic effects, including optic and peripheral neuropathy, as well as rashes, itching or blisters. Source (although I read this elsewhere too)

Those are the “minor” issues with this pesticide. The main concerns are it’s connections to cancer and neurological disorders. Read more on that here. On that page you will learn lots of good facts, one being that one of the pesticide’s ingredient, organophosphate malathion, is­ a derivative of nerve gas, and thus causing concern that this pesticide causes neurological damage to humans, especially developing babies. Autism anyone?

The cancer concern is that this pesticide is part of the Pyrethroids family. Pyrethroids disrupt the endocrine system by mimicking the effects of the female hormone estrogen. This in turn can cause breast cancer in women and lowered sperm counts in men…

Sumithrin also kills bees. The “mysterious” bee die off that is occurring across the globe (aka Colony Collapse Disorder) may not be so mysterious unless you are a large pesticide producing corporation very eager to continue selling your chemicals to farmers who spray the stuff all over bees’ natural habitat. But that is another tangent down the vary large road of capitalism gone terribly wrong.

What is of concern to me and many other beekeepers right now is how to keep our roof top bee hives, located in full exposure to spraying helicopters, from being killed. And if we succeed what solace do we have from the bees ingesting the chemicals and passing it on to the honey we will eat?

My mail box has emails from bee groups with headings like, “URGENT ALERT: PROTECT YOUR HIVES – DOH IS SPRAYING FOR MOSQUITOES WITH SHORT NOTICE”. Great, another thing to worry about.

According to the EPA, an agency not noted for their strict chemical protocol, has a lot to say about one of this pesticide’s main ingredient Sumithrin (aka Phenothrin). One snip from their 54 page review of the chemical:

In the year 2005, flea and tick spot-on products with phenothrin as the active ingredient were cancelled for use on cats and kittens due to incident reports and companion animal studies which indicated apparent neurotoxicity symptoms resulting from treatment, including excessive salivation, tremors, and/or seizures.

The same EPA paper lists the “Target Pests” as:

Phenothrin targets ants, aphids, bed bugs, bees, beetles, billbugs, box elders, borers, cockroaches, cadelles, caterpillars, centipedes, crickets, daubers, earwigs, fleas, flies, gnats, hornets, crawling insects, flying insects, grain insects, lace bugs, leafhoppers, leaf miners, lice, moths, mites, mealy bugs, midges, millipedes, mosquitoes, rust, scab, scales,  scorpions, silverfish, spiders, sow bugs, thrips, ticks, wasps, waterbugs, weevils, worms, and yellow jackets.

If these Target Pests are the “bad” bugs, what about all the other “good” bugs. Do they have a “Get out of jail free card”? Does this pesticide magically discriminate between “good” and “bad” bugs? You bet your ass it doesn’t. And do you know what is ten times worse than “bad” bugs in your garden? No bugs in your garden. That is called an ecological wasteland and is a ripe environment for one plant or animal to grow out of control and kill everything else in its wake.

More from the EPA on how Sumithrin kills:

Mode of Action: Phenothrin works upon physical contact with an insect or after ingestion. Phenothrin is a nerve stimulant which forces the sodium channels of insects to remain open beyond their normal timing thresholds, causing repetitive action inside the nerve channels and eventual paralysis.

So basically apart from respiratory and cancer concerns the main issue with the pesticide being sprayed on us New Yorkers is its neurological damage, part of a list of human related suffering way too long to list here.

The pesticide’s “non-active” ingredient,  polyethylbenzene is also very toxic to people and animals. Again from the tame EPA here is what they say about polyethylbenzene:

toxic to freshwater fish.

very toxic to aquatic plants.

chronic toxicity hazard to invertebrates.

Basically, although the studies did not show much damage to people, the chemical decimates water life. And where are they spraying this chemical? From their definition above we see they spray “on marshes and other large natural areas.”

As some sort of assurance they note that spraying “Does not take place in the residential areas of NYC.” That is small consolation to our water friends. And it is also the height anti green building mentality: the belief that we are not interconnected and thus the toxins will not get to us. As if you can isolate the wind and water of New York so that those chemicals will only stay in the “natural areas.”

These chemicals will not kill us tomorrow. They will add to the toxic soup of human made chemicals we surround ourselves with daily. Along with the “harmless levels” of formaldehyde in our furniture, the “imperceptible” toxins leaching from out plastic drinking cups, the smog in the air and the millions of other stressors in our life, this pesticide will be yet another toxic substance our bodies have to fight against.

This layering of “low level” stressors creates a toxic cocktail called the Synergistic Effect, aka Additive Effect or Antagonistic Effect:

A biologic response to multiple substances where one substance worsens the effect of another substance. The combined effect of the substances acting together is greater than the sum of the effects of the substances acting by themselves. Source

So even though this pesticide may be “perfectly harmless”, it is yet another straw on the camels back that further antagonizes our normally dormant genetic predispositions such as heart attack, addiction, mental illness…etc. And even worse, when combined with all the other toxins we are subjected to what may have been perfectly harmless alone becomes lethal when combined with something else.

Do you know anyone who was happily on anti-depressants and who killed themselves when they added another medication to their diet? I do. Alone the anti-depressants were helpful but when combined with the other drug they became toxic.

Try mixing milk and lemon juice, two delicious drinks that together turn bad. This is the problem with willfully adding another chemical to our already toxic mix, especially if that chemical is highly dubious to the health of humans and obviously tragic to the health of aquatic animals.

What are we trying to avoid? West Nile Virus? How harmful is that really compared to the harm of this pesticide?

And are we really addressing the problem? Is the mosquito abundance not simply the result of us destroying the natural habitats of mosquitos’ predators – fish, birds, dragonflies, bats etc. – and of us chopping up the natural waterways of New York so that normally healthy self cleaning bodies of water are now laying immobile and perfect for larvae?

Spraying chemicals on the New York ecosystem will only further increase mosquitoes since the pesticide destroys the natural aquatic habitats and in its place leaves dead bodies of water free of any mosquito predator. And this doesn’t even touch on the human damage caused by the pesticide.

The solution to our mosquito problem is to increase the health of the New York waters by fostering fish, insects and plants. We also need to increase environments friendly to birds and bats.

Instead of acting like neanderthals the city of New York needs to wake up to the multiple layers of ignorance their spraying efforts reflect and start addressing the real message that the mosquitoes are sending: our ecosystem is out of balance and dying. Baring a mass human exodus of New York, only us humans can bring the ecological balance of New York back.

I expect more from NY. Spraying is a 1950′s solution, back when we thought the modern marvels of chemistry could solve all our problems. It’s like that quote from the Graudate: “Plastics, it’s the future” Well, we all know that isn’t true. Most people now realize that a can of bug spray causes more problems than it solves.

Each time those morons send helicopters out to spray they are making the job harder for green building companies like Eco Brooklyn who are focused on turning NY green.