And, no offense meant Lori. You're dad sounds very awesome — and like a lot of fun! It's just when you learn the horrible toll it takes on the environment, you can't not pass on the knowledge. Green Gracious is a great resource and I thought it was a good place to try to call attention to this issue.
Here's a sample from the site. The woman's name is Judith Helfand:
My father’s answer to rotten wood…
Everyone assured me vinyl siding was safe, and would only let off toxic gas in the rare event of a house fire. But after my experience with cancer caused by DES [a synthetic estrogen and anti-miscarriage drug prescribed to my mother and millions of other women], I figured any material so loaded with synthetic chemicals had to pose some kind of risk. Later I asked my dad, "If you had known that over the course of its lifecycle, from the factory to the incinerator, vinyl produces a wide array of deadly pollutants that threaten our future with a global toxic crisis, would you still have put it on the house?" "I hope not, honey," he said. "But they didn't write that on the box." So, with a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand (a remnant from my parent’s house) I took off – on a journey to re-write the outside of the box.
(I see I didn't remember exactly how the story began in my previous post.)
On a similar subject, there was a bit of good news about an attempt to clean up the gigantic plastic island that's floating about in the North Pacific yesterday. This article actually uses the word "sinister" to describe this thing!
