Brenda Skidmore's Health Tips

April 7-13, 2008 is a week designated as public health week to help raise our awareness on how important our impact is on the environment, in how our negligent or conscious thinking affects global climate changes.

As time evolves, we are beginning to learn how our heightened understanding of this issue can effect even the weakest or strongest among us. Whether you believe in the proposed 'global warming' threat or not, who wouldn't enjoy looking at a cleaner landscape? Reusing, recycling, and conservation tactics would not only clean up our outdoors, making it a lot more eye-appealing and enjoyable to work and play in, but your health might just actually depend on it.

More people are becoming much more enlightened in how climate change has the very real potential to alter the air we breath, food we eat, and the water we drink and use for nearly everything we do. Diseases too, are affected by climate changes, although most will not equate this with the simple things everyone could be doing to make a difference.

On a national level this week, and in many local communities across the nation NPHW events are scheduled, and your participation is welcomed. A theme has been created for this week entitled, "Climate Change: Our Health In The Balance" to encourage all of us to take part in any small way we can at home such as carpooling, eating more fruits and vegetables, to using more energy efficient appliances.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that changes in the Earth's climate caused by human neglect now leads to at least 5 million new cases of illness and more than 150,000 deaths each year. Rising temperatures in many regions could result in harder times for those who suffer from allergies. Diseases carried by insects such as Lyme Disease and West Nile virus could become more wide spread.

The American Public Health Association is the organization that has organized National Public Health Week (NPHW) and designed a Healthy Climate Pledge, which asks those who are interested to practice 5 behaviors throughout this national awareness week. Hopefully, you may be encouraged, enough, to adopt several of them on a long-term basis. The basic pledge:

1.) Travel differently: Walk, use public transportation, carpool, bike, or telecommute.

2.) Eat differently: Eat less commercially produced meat and more fruits and vegetables, and buy more of your foods from community farmers' markets to minimize cross-country trucking needs.

3.) Be prepared: Prepare for climate-change related emergencies by creating "Climate Kits," and becoming informed about the health impacts of climate change and regional climate change in your community.

4.) "Green" your work: Reuse and recycle paper, print less, use energy saving computer settings.

5.) "Green" your home: Seal and insulate your home or apartment, use water efficiently.

Here are a few add ons I thought of, and I'm sure you can think of several more.

Clean green: Use baking soda to eliminate carpet odors; use white vinegar to clean tile, appliances and discourage ants (spray undiluted outside doorways and windows) and so much more; Hydrogen peroxide is a wonderful laundry brightener for whites; clean copper-bottom pots and pans with lemon juice.

Recycle all materials possible: Aluminum, tin, plastic, cardboard, newspapers, etc.-and reuse all containers you possibly can.

Buy recycled furniture and check food labels: Look for foods marked "organic", "fair trade", "certified naturally grown." Check out the "Organic Food Label Decoder" at the Daily Green web page.

How many of you are thinking the same thing I'm thinking? With harder economic times looming heavily over all of our heads, no matter whether you, now, have the financial resources or not, it is not going to matter much when we have all sealed our fate in polluting the natural resources that have been entrusted to our care. Nowhere is this going to be more evident in the future as we come to understand the vital role WATER plays in all of our lives.