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John Krigger
Saturn Resource Management

Most families could trim their energy bills significantly without sacrificing any quality of life. Using the following easy ­energy savers could cut as much as 40% from home energy-expenses.

HEATING
Use an electric space heater when everyone in the home is gathered in one room. Turn the home’s thermostat down to 55°F or 60°F so that the vacant sections of the house are not heated unnecessarily.
Savings: This could trim your heating bills by 10% to 30% if done regularly. Some families in cold climates, who pay as much as $5,000 per year for heating, could save $500 to $1,500.
Unblock heating registers. Move furniture, rugs and drapes clear of your system’s vents. Impeded airflow can undermine a system’s efficiency.
Savings: Depends on your overall system and how badly airflow was blocked. You might save very little, or you might save hundreds of dollars a year.
WATER HEATING
Set your water heater to 120°F. Most household water heaters are set between 130°F and 145°F, but 120°F is hot enough for washing dishes and showering.
Savings: It’s been estimated that every 10 degrees of temperature reduction can reduce water-heating costs by 5%, so lowering the water heater temperature by 20 degrees could save the typical family $30 to $50 per year.
Install a modern low-flow showerhead. Most showerheads use about three gallons of hot water per minute. The best low-flow showerheads offer equally enjoyable showers using just 1.5 to two gallons per minute. Quality varies, so read product reviews on shopping Web sites such as Amazon.com. Helpful: A low-flow shower may initially feel less satisfying than a three-gallon-per-minute shower, but give it a week or two. After an initial adjustment period, most people agree that it’s fine.
Savings: Varies greatly, depending on how much time your family spends in the shower — but it has been estimated at as much as $150 a year.
Wrap your water heater in an insulated blanket. Do-it-yourself wrap kits are available at hardware stores for less than $25. The blanket pays for itself in less than a year and offers savings after that. It is worth wrapping any water heater that does not carry a label specifically warning against this.
Savings: Usually around 4% to 9% of total water-heating costs, according to the US Department of Energy. That translates into an annual savings of $12 to $45 for most households.
REFRIGERATOR
Replace your refrigerator if it is more than 15 years old. Avoid models with through-the-door ice and water dispensers. They detract from energy efficiency.
Savings: A new refrigerator could save you about $80 per year in electricity costs compared to a similarly-sized refrigerator made in the early 1990s or earlier.
Clean your refrigerator’s coils at least once a year — every six months if there’s a dog or cat that sheds heavily in the house. Dirt, dust and pet hair on refrigerator coils can impede airflow and make heat transfer less efficient, forcing the appliance to work harder. Refrigerator coil brushes are available at home centers and hardware stores.
Savings: The Sacramento Municipal Utility District estimates that coil cleaning can cut a refrigerator’s energy use by 6% — a yearly saving of about $15 on an old fridge and $5 on a modern one.
Set your refrigerator’s temperature to between 30°F and 40°F. Set your freezer temperature to between 0°F and 10°F. Colder temperatures increase your electricity bills without significantly improving food freshness.
Savings: Setting your refrigerator 10 degrees higher and freezer five degrees higher has been estimated to cut the appliance’s electricity consumption by at least 20%. This could save you $50 a year with an old fridge and about $10 with modern one. If you don’t have a temperature dial in your refrigerator, place an ordinary household thermometer inside for 10 to 15 minutes. Read it the moment you open the door.
DRYERS
Replace your dryer’s flexible plastic-vent ducting material with a four-inch rigid (not corrugated) metal duct. This creates less airflow resistance, allowing your dryer to dry more efficiently.
Helpful: It might be necessary to use a small section of flexible ducting material to connect the back of your dryer to this smooth metal duct so that you can move the dryer away from the wall for cleaning or service.
Savings: As much as 20% of drying costs, or $10 to $40 per year for the average household.
Clean lint from your dryer vent at least once a year by disconnecting the vent from the dryer and the wall and reaching in as far as you can to pull out lint. Clean lint from the dryer’s lint trap before every load of laundry. Lint buildup can increase drying time and energy consumption by more than 50%.
Even better: Hang clothes from a clothesline outside, weather permitting.
Savings: Serious lint congestion could cost you more than $50 per year if you do a lot of laundry. Hanging laundry from a line could save you as much as $200 per year.
LIGHTBULBS
Use name-brand compact fluorescent bulbs. Compact fluorescents consume one-quarter to one-third as much electricity as incandescents. Stick with brand-name bulbs — store-brand or no-name-brand bulbs might be cheaper but are likely to burn out sooner.
Savings: Your annual savings might be less than $20 if you typically have just one or two bulbs burning — but more than $150 if your house tends to be lit up like a jack-o’-lantern.

interviewed John Krigger, founder of Saturn Resource Management, an environmental consulting, training and publishing company based in Helena, Montana. He has served as a consultant to the US Department of Energy and is coauthor of The Homeowner’s Handbook to Energy Efficiency (Saturn Resource Management). http://www.homeownershandbook.biz

Last spring I covered new findings on how antibiotic overuse continues to spur the emergence of “superbugs,” drug-resistant microbes, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), that seem to defy modern medicine.

Now we have another one to worry about — Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), a toxin-producing bacterium long associated with elderly folks in hospitals and nursing homes that has now morphed into a virulent epidemic strain, threatening people of all ages.

C. difficile can range from an annoyance, causing mild symptoms such as watery diarrhea, fever, nausea and cramps, to more severe troubles including inflammation of the colon, sepsis (blood poisoning), kidney failure and, in the worst cases, death.

As its name suggests, C. difficile can be difficult to treat. It is a real challenge to control in hospitals, since it produces spores that are difficult to eradicate and are easily passed from one person to another. And, as with MRSA, its antibiotic resistance has led to the selection of more virulent strains of C. difficile, leading to hospital outbreaks all around the United States.

IS IT AN EPIDEMIC?

For insight into C. difficile and how we can protect ourselves, I spoke with Cliff McDonald, MD, chief of the Prevention and Response Branch in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“C. difficile has been known about as a cause of human disease for 30 years,” said Dr. McDonald. “It was previously uncommon, but it has now reached epidemic proportions.” He estimates the number of C. difficile cases may reach 500,000 annually (including up to 30,000 deaths), reflecting approximately a five-fold increase since 2000.

The cause of the C. difficile epidemic is a newly identified strain called NAP1, which, when tested in the laboratory, produces 16 times more toxin A and 23 times more toxin B than other common strains. NAP1 is more resistant than other strains to the fluoroquinolones, a group of antibiotics that are commonly used to treat pneumonia in hospitals.

“The overuse of antibiotics and the general resistance to fluoroquinolones has given NAP1 C. difficile a one-up on other strains,” said Dr. McDonald. “Because it had a selective advantage over susceptible strains, it quickly spread and became epidemic in health care facilities.”

ARE YOU A CARRIER?

About 3% to 5% of healthy people actually carry C. difficile in their large intestines, Dr. McDonald explained, but typically without symptoms — it is held in check by the “good” bacteria that we also harbor, at least optimally. Ironically, this is often disturbed by the use of antibiotics, leaving some people vulnerable and allowing C. difficile to flourish.

Typically cases of C. difficile originate in hospitals, spread unwittingly by healthcare workers as they handle infected patients and then touch other patients and medical equipment or other surfaces.

C. difficile spores are unaffected by most hospital disinfectants… nor are they inactivated by alcohol-based hand sanitizers commonly in use. Special measures are required in hospitals to keep C. difficile infection from spreading.

Making matters worse is that C. difficile has a high recurrence rate. One out of five (20%) patients who get sick with it experience a recurrence and the chances increase following subsequent recurrences.

Some cases are so severe that the only option has been removal of the affected part of the colon. “People can actually have a mild infection the first time and then die of a recurrence,” said Dr. McDonald.

TIPS FOR CONSUMERS

We can do our part, suggested Dr. McDonald, by keeping our antibiotic usage to a minimum. “As a society we need to rethink the way we approach antibiotics,” he cautioned.

“People need to understand that antibiotics are not vitamins and they are not sugar pills — they can carry some very significant risks, and C. difficile is one of them. Don’t push for a prescription when you don’t really need one.” In addition…

Wash hands after using the bathroom and before eating or touching your face — C. difficile must be ingested in order to cause disease. Dr. McDonald notes that it’s important to remember that alcohol-based sanitizers don’t work against C. difficile, so it may be better to wash with soap and water at these times.

Keep your household clean. If you are exposed to C. difficile, or indeed to any individual with diarrhea, scrupulously clean all exposed surfaces in the room and/or that you or that person may have touched. Use a solution that is 1/10 household chlorine bleach, 9/10 cold water… made fresh daily… and scrub thoroughly to effectively kill C. difficile spores.

Realize that not all cases of diarrhea are C. difficile. However, if you have severe diarrhea that occurs several times a day for two or more days, see your doctor immediately. A stool test can confirm the presence of the disease.

Remember, the drugs many people take in order to feel better — including antibiotics and, as DHN readers have heard before, proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) — alter the natural composition in the body in many different ways, making it vulnerable to disease. Though drugs can play an important role in medicine, in the end, less medicine is often the best medicine.

Source(s): ??Cliff McDonald, MD, chief, Prevention and Response Branch, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. McDonald is a former officer in the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

And you send a poem to a married woman.

What the hell is going on? What are we single women to do?

I could smack your silly face.