The Linus
Pauling Institute at Oregon State University has a site with
useful information about 'micronutrients': vitamins, minerals, other
nutrients (like Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Co-enzyme Q10),
phytochemicals (trace chemicals in various plants), and the foods that
contain all these nutrients. For each nutrient, you can learn its
impact on the body, diseases it can help prevent or treat, where you
can get it, and interactions with other nutrients, foods and drugs. The
entire database can also be sorted by disease instead of by nutrient.
Pauling was known, of course, for his controversial claim that large
doses of vitamins can prevent the common cold and other diseases.
The site is very thorough, quite technical (but still comprehensible),
and makes fascinating reading.
Speaking of health information, Health Central (the Dr. Dean Edell
site) hosts
the full (from what I can ascertain) contents of one of my favourite
books, The People's Pharmacy.
Learn how to make safe, effective treatments from natural, common
ingredients that work better than most over-the-counter remedies. Find
out which alternative remedies work, which are placebos and which are
downright dangerous.
The NYT has
a substantial, and damning, indictment
this week of Denver-based Newmont Mining, a company with a long history
of heinous social and environmental irresponsibility. Armies of
lawyers, denials and stalling tactics have allowed Newmont, like fellow
mega-polluter ExxonMobil, to escape penalties for its egregious
activities for years. The article describes deformities, diseases and
infant deaths attributed to disposal of arsenic and mercury from mining
operations in Indonesia's coastal waters, using a method called
submarine tailing (piping tailings below the water's surface) that is
illegal in the West, but common in the third world. Also released are
toxic cyanides that kill the fish that are the mainstay of the local
economies, and accumulate in greater concentrations as they go up the
food chain.
Protesters from Peru, the Philippines, Ghana, Indonesia and Turkey
demonstrate annually at the Newmont meetings over the company's
exploitation of corrupt government officials and weak social and
environmental laws, inspections and enforcement in the third world.
Issues include strip mining, air and water pollution, destruction of
food habitats, destruction of forest preserves, depletion of scarce
groundwater, and forced relocation of indigenous communities to cities.
These are the real legacies of globalization and 'free' trade to the
third world. Once the cheap minerals run out, the Western developers
abandon the ruined, sickened communities and move on to the next third
world country whose governments are desperate or corrupt enough to ink
deals with these irresponsible corporate colonists, and line their own
pockets in the process. Talisman Energy, a Canadian company, had to be
forced by massive public and government pressure to sell its mineral
interests in the Sudan, which until recently helped finance the
government's ongoing genocide against non-Arabs in its Darfur states.
For more information, download the full Dirty Metals report from the No Dirty Gold
website. Reports of similar devastation by Western countries in the
third world to extract oil & gas, water, forest resources, and
diamonds can be found at the Global
Policy Forum site.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
The Linus
Pauling Institute at Oregon State University has a 
The NYT has
a substantial, and damning, 
