I appreciate E Magazine very much and read every issue front to back. This is especially true of your review of environmental education ("The Learning Tree," September/October 1999), since I have been asked by the editors of Grolier Encyclopedia to write an article on environmental studies for their forthcoming Encyclopedia of American Studies.

I think you did an excellent job on the story. One of the problems that I have observed over the years derives from theoretical classroom environmentalism, which many professors practice. That helps stimulate awareness, but personally I encourage student activism in real issues. You are performing a valuable service, and more power to you for it.

Michael Frome, Ph.D.
Bellingham, WA

As a longtime fan of and subscriber to your magazine, I want to thank you for the great information you put out, a valuable tool for the much-needed environmental education described in E's September/October 1999 cover story. As an environmental biology and marine science teacher, I use your data in class often and the kids (juniors and seniors) love it. During my unit on human population, I used data from the November/December 1998 issue of E, especially the "conversation" with Bill McKibben. It is essential, and I cannot stress that term enough, essential, that we provide sound, scientifically reliable data to students. Why? Because they are not getting it. While there are some fine teachers out there providing wonderful information, more and more educational material is being put out by industry and corporations. Thanks again.

John F. Borowski
environmental science teacher
Philomath, OR

PRIME TIME

I was thrilled to read Kivi Leroux's article about the influence of the Environmental Media Association (EMA) on television programming ("Subliminal
Messages," Currents, July/August 1999). It should be obvious to anyone living in the U.S. that TV is the way to reach the masses, and that its power has long been misused.

I recently made a contribution to a major environmental organization, and was promptly bombarded with piles of paper mail from dozens of eco-groups, asking
among other things that I give money to eliminate logging in our national forests. Am I the only one who sees the irony here? I applaud the EMA's efforts and hope that the rest of the conservation community will get the message that using paper equals cutting down trees, and that TV and the Internet are much more efficient means of getting the word out.

Jason White
Nashville, TN

BUYER BEWARE

I commend Julie Monahan for recognizing an important issue that has not been adequately discussed in the media ("The Green Scale: A Househunter Checklist," House & Home, July/August 1999). Monahan did, however miss some important points.

A typical home uses a voluminous variety of resources. Furthermore, a home is the largest financial investment most Americans will ever make and a contaminated property will not only endanger its residents, it will also carry an environmental stigma, lowering its market value. A thorough investigation of environmental factors is important. The article under-reported opportunities to conserve forests, a precious resource threatened by wood consumption. A myriad of safe and far from "bizarre" alternatives to wood are used for walls, roofing, insulation, paneling, countertops, and flooring. Homes may be built of adobe, stone, rammed earth and straw bale and may include recycled materials and non-wood plant fibers to replace wood.

The article also neglected a through discussion of potential toxins. Aside from radon, mentioned in the article, a home may contain a host of other toxins, such as asbestos and lead, causing dangerous indoor air pollution. Proper ventilation, under a house and through the attic, reduces moisture problems and toxic fumes. A home buyer should also test the property's soil and water, examine electromagnetic fields and locate neighboring potential polluters.

All buyers should investigate environmental factors, but particularly in cases where residents will include children, elderly and those with suppressed immune systems. They should hire a reliable inspector, undertake additional tests, and consider hiring a firm which can identify neighboring toxic sites. While none of these steps will expose all of the environmental hazards, they will help to inform.

Finally, home buyers should be aware that "professionals," including real estate licensees, may minimize hazards, to ensure that the sale goes through, and that builders, contractors and salespeople often know little about building toxicity.

Leda Gawdiak Huta
Outreach Director
Resource Conservation Alliance
Washington, DC

CHEMICAL REACTION

The article "Brain Storm" (Your Health, July/August 1999) was excellent. Toxic chemicals are threatening the intelligence of our children. Every child has the right to be born perfectly normal from healthy parents who are physically and mentally ready and able to care for it. Reproductive health is very important and will eventually determine our level of mental intelligence and emotional well being. The Food Quality Prevention Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate pesticide residues in food to protect children. Under the law, the EPA will review the tolerance levels of pesticide residues in many different kinds of food, determine the safety of each pesticide and set new tolerances that provide reasonable certainty that no harm will come to children. The law requires the agency to review a third of the 10,000 tolerances by August, starting with the worst and most hazardous pesticides that are known to cause birth defects and cancer in children and adults. Unfortunately, the EPA is dragging its feet and has fallen far behind.

We are all at risk; that's every family member. The organophosphates and carbamates are some of the oldest and nastiest pesticides of all. The preliminary review of methyl parathion showed the existing tolerances could lead to exposure levels that are hundreds of times higher than what's safe. We need action now to remove these dangerous and toxic chemicals from the marketplace with regulation. It's time to get the job done. Thank you, E, for making a difference in the health of our children and future generations.

Donald Dyall
Mt. Pleasant, IA

HUNTING FOR ANSWERS

As someone who comes from a family of hunters, I found your "Fair Game" article (Currents, July/August 1999) both interesting and balanced. What seemed a little ironic given your cover story, though, was that there was no mention of how our population has created animal-related problems. As our urban areas expand into former wilderness areas, we leave these animals with little choice but to pay us visits. When they do, people complain that javelinas munch on their gardens or their cars hit deer and demand something be done. Thus, the concept of "wildlife management" was born. While such management is a lot better than the wholesale slaughter of years past, what would make a bigger difference is human management. Your population article hints at the key problem, but buries it under a lot of discussion of family planning. Lack of such planning isn't the key cause of our ecological crisis--it's distribution of food. As you quote in "Now We Are Six," "global food production will continue to increase faster than consumption." Any species will grow until it runs out of food, then it will stop. But by farming, we've altered our environment to suit us, enabling our population to grow out of balance with the rest of Nature.

I'm not advocating letting people starve. What we can do, though, is stop INCREASING yields and better distribute what we do have. Then, over time, we can gradually reduce yields and let the population decrease slowly. This would ease a lot of the tensions we see in today's world and give animals more space to live.

Gus Steeves
Tempe, AZ

As an ethical hunter, I had my hopes up when I saw that E Magazine had an article on ethical hunting. The gap between the hunting community and the environmental movement in this country is unfortunate and unnecessary, as these two groups have a great many common goals. Unfortunately, your article serves only to act out and deepen the cultural gap between the two cultures.

As in all widely practiced human endeavors, hunting has its share of bad actors, its poachers, slobs and louts. However, responsible opponents of hunting must concede that by far the majority of hunters are good, ordinary people, who want to comply with the law and be ethical hunters. Ethical hunters are not thrill killers and do not ordinarily view their game as "pests"; rather, they have a great deal of respect and even reverence for the animals they pursue.

Committed hunters have a deep knowledge of their prey's biology and habits, an
intimate knowledge of their habitat, and spend hours in still, silent communion with the wild, passing up opportunities to merely kill in order to assure a clean kill, to maintain a healthy herd structure, to wait for a trophy, and at times for deeper, less cerebral reasons. Hunters and other environmentalists have much in common. Both have an abiding interest in the preservation and expansion of the wild, clean places and the creatures who live there. Both have a lot to talk about, from public lands policy to their adventures in the wild. We can help each other, but articles like "Fair Game" only hurt both sides. I hope that in the future serious
journals like E can provide a respectful forum where both sides can explore their common ground.

Tim Hartin
Mt. Horeb, WI

SPEAKING YOUR MIND

It is crucial to get the word out on the possibility of mad cow disease coming to the U.S. ("Brain Drain," Currents, July/August 1999). Thank you for presenting this alarming problem that seems to rarely get press coverage in the media. I watched my 65-year-old aunt go from someone who would jump rope a thousand times a day to a totally incapacitated person. At first the doctors thought she might have Lyme disease, but that proved incorrect. After many weeks of testing, doctors from the University of Pennsylvania diagnosed my aunt with Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD).

My aunt was a meat eater, including pork, beef, fish and seafood. Who knows if the meat she ate was tainted with CJD? To watch her suffer over a period of two years was a nightmare to all who knew her. It is an extremely rare disease and, because of that, very little money is set aside for finding a cure. I believe the best way to avoid this horrific degenerative brain disease, in face of cover-ups by the meat industries and lack of funding for medical research, is to become a vegetarian.

Dennis Paige
Schaumburg, IL

ALL WASHED UP

This is to set the record straight in your article "Our Beleaguered Beaches" (Currents, May/June 1999 ). It states, "Only seven states and Puerto Rico currently have systems in place to comprehensively monitor their beaches and notify the public when pollution levels become unsafe." The U.S. flag Pacific island of Guam established its recreational beach monitoring program in 1974, adopting the latest U.S. EPA standards for bacteriological analysis of indicator organisms. In 1997, the Guam Environmental Protection Agency adopted the enterococcus indicator for marine waters because epidemiological studies demonstrated that these indicators provide the most valid readings on whether enough disease-causing bacteria and viruses are present in the water for concern. In addition to adopting such standards, Guam EPA continues to perform its monitoring program of 34 recreational beaches.

Guam's beach monitoring program has been recognized by U.S. EPA, academia, non-government and research organizations as one of the most intense and comprehensive beach programs in the nation.

If Guam EPA finds that the water quality of any of the 34 recreational beaches does not meet the island's water quality standards, the Agency will issue an electronic and facsimile advisory of the beach's water quality.

Grace O. Garces, Public Information Officer
Guam Environmental Protection Agency

MORE OR LESS

Your magazine is great! All the articles (and even the advertisements) are interesting and informative. However, I'd like to see more emphasis on not having and using and disposing of so much stuff in the first place than on eventually having to recycle all that stuff! I'm sure you have already stressed this, but it can't be mentioned too much. I know these days there are too many things out there to want and to buy, which makes resisting them hard to do. Children especially are lured by advertisements and peer pressure to have everything available. One thing to do is buy at secondhand stores - careful shoppers can find many necessary items. Thanks for what you do print and remember to stress: use less in the first place, recycle less later!

Gail Powell
Polo, IL

LITTLE HANDS, LITTLE WONDERS

Greetings from the children's community gardens! A parent showed your interesting magazine to me and I thought I would write and thank you for it. Children enjoy gardening and the children in this garden double-dig and sell herbs to Whole Foods Market and Sun Harvest Farms here in Austin, Texas. They grow eight different kinds and have won blue ribbons from the Men's Garden Club of America. The children, from two to six years of age, each have two gardens: a pleasure and a market garden, which are certified organic. Thanks again for your great magazine!

Ronda and children who love to get their hands dirty
Austin, Texas