4/26/24: Live-stream baby owls, banned fishing method, and toxic nail polish

Planet Health

🌊 BOTTOM TRAWLING BANNED: Greece is the first European country to ban harmful bottom trawling outright in all Marine Protected Areas. "We are increasing the size of our marine protected areas by 80%, banning harmful fishing practices and using new technologies to monitor and enforce the commitments we make here," says Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. €780M is committed by the government to aid in protection measures. 

☀️ CALIFORNIA MILESTONE: During 30 days (out of the last 5 weeks) California's hydro, solar, and wind power has supplied the state with 100% of energy demands for anywhere from 15 minutes to 6 hours per day. "This has never happened before in history" said a representative for the non-profit Rewiring America.

🌿 NATURE ON SPOTIFY: Projected to raise more than $40M for conservation efforts over the next few years, this exciting new project on Spotify grants "Nature" as a new artist on Spotify. New (and old) songs incorporating sounds of rainforests, oceans, and rainfall will be remixed to "Feat. NATURE" by artists like Ellie Goulding, Brian Eno, David Bowie, and more.

Human Health

💅 NAIL POLISH STUDY: Is your nail polish messing with your hormones? A study detected many common drugstore nail polishes were found to increase TPHP (a toxic flame retardant or plasticizer chemical) in urine samples by 7x just 10-14 hours after nail-painting occurred. "The primary exposure route is dermal," and "alters endocrine function and impacts reproduction; altered thyroid hormone levels and decreased semen quality were both observed with increasing TPHP exposure." See how it enters the body, in the study here.

🍵 GREEN TEA BENEFITS: A recently published study about green tea reveals that "even small daily servings of green tea or roasted green tea may significantly improve task performance and mental well-being." Roasted green tea, known as a houjicha, is roasted over charcoal to produce a unique smoky flavor, and "aromatic stimulation" may play a role in reducing stress response and fatigue.

😳 MICROPLASTIC MIGRATION: Scientists are uncovering how microplastics near the "upper particle size limit" for crossing the gut epithelial layers can migrate to distant organs like the brain, liver, and kidneys. After microplastic exposure, they also found that specific metabolic changes occurred in the colon, liver, and brain, "linked to various metabolic and immune disorders, including changes in amino acid, lipid, and hormone metabolism.”

 **If you want the cleanest green tea with NO microplastics get the Earth Conscious Life sampler HERE from Wild Orchard. The world’s first ever Regenerative-Organic Certified tea farm!

Creature Feature

🦉 BABY BARRED OWLS: High in a hickory tree, three baby owlets are nesting… and it's being live-streamed 24/7. CEO of Wild Birds Unlimited, Jim Carpenter, has carefully kept this owl box in his backyard since 2006, and right now, this season's babies are getting fluffy, and quite active. (My fiancée refreshes the livestream daily because she loves owls, and maybe you do too!) Watch them in their owl box now.

Nutrition 101

🧠 RHODIOLA: This cold-weather growing arctic plant's root has traditionally been used medicinally as an adaptogenic herb to treat poor attention span, fatigue, and memory issues, as well as depression. Best taken as an extract, the key nutritional components of the plant are rosavin and salidroside. Learn more about rhodiola here.

Last poll’s results

Will you attend an organized Earth Day event of some kind?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes! 🌎 (55.8%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Nothing in my community that I'll participate in (44.2%)