Any pet owner can tell you how comforting their animals are in times of stress, illness or even a lazy Sunday afternoon around the house. But Oscar the cat of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, R.I., is taking this to a whole new level – he not only can sense when patients are about to die, but he curls up with them and keeps them company during their final hours of life.

In today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, David M. Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at the Brown University School of Medicine, shares a story about this special cat that has accurately predicted the deaths of more than 25 patients.

After winning over the center's staff with his uncanny abilities, Oscar's behavior is now an indication that the patient's family members should immediately be notified. He has also prevented patients from dying alone, instead providing a warm, purring escort into the hereafter.

While no one can explain Oscar's abilities, speculations range from an inexplicable sixth sense, to the cat's ability to smell a chemical change on a dying person or detect a difference in their metabolism, or even pick up on the subtle ways in which staff members react around the patient.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, keeping pets in nursing home has been an emerging trend for several years. Oscar has lived at the Steere Center for the past two years after the staff adopted him as a kitten from a nearby animal shelter.

Yet another reason to respect and care for our fellow animals here on Earth!

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, that area of lifeless water where the Mississippi River meets the ocean, has been growing steadily over the past two decades. According to the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, this portion of the Gulf could top out at over 8,500 square miles this summer, up from last summer's high of 6,662 square miles.

A dead zone is an area of water that is experiencing 'hypoxia,' or in other words, is completely devoid of oxygen and unable to sustain life. Also known as eutrophication, this phenomenon is caused by the decomposition of algae, which robs the surrounding waters of oxygen.

While this process is natural and would otherwise be a harmless part of aquatic ecosystem functions, the problem is exacerbated by ever-increasing levels of fertilizers that find their way to the Mississippi from watersheds as far north as the river's source in Minnesota, to its mouth in Louisiana. As the river flows from north to south, the concentration of nutrients increases until it spills out into the Gulf at record levels each year.

Agriculture is the leading source of nonpoint water pollution in the United States. (Nonpoint simply means the source is from a larger, harder to pinpoint area than, say, a factory that's near a body of water.) The increase in intensive commercial farming practices has brought the use of fertilizers containing phosphorus and nitrogen to a level that is sending algal blooms on a growth spurt, which has many extremely worried about the fate of marine life in the Gulf, not to mention the viability of the fishing industry. According to the United States Global Change Research Program, the amount of nitrogen delivered by the Mississippi River basin has tripled over the last four decades!

To make matters worse, recent studies suggest that global warming could be compounding the problem through a change in warm weather wind patterns that alter ocean circulation patterns.

The possible solutions, then, appear to be twofold.

1.)    Increase CRP and riparian forest areas along streams in the Mississippi basin. Let's keep runoff from entering streams that feed into the river. Better yet, transition to organic farming practices that boost soil fertility with little supplemental fertilizer.
2.)    Simultaneously with the first solution, continue to work toward climate change mitigation.

We mentioned aloe vera as a great sunburn remedy awhile back. It also makes a wonderful treatment for other low level burns, as I've recently discovered.

In pulling a baking dish out of the oven last weekend, my finger brushed against a heating coil — ouch! I ran it under cold water and applied some Boiron Calendula cream, which stopped the burning overnight.

The next day at work, Heidi Hunt reminded me that we've got an aloe vera plant here in the office. We cut off about a 1 to 2 inch section of an aloe leaf, sliced it in half vertically, and squeezed some aloe juice onto the burn. Then I wrapped some gauze around it loosely to allow the burn to breathe, and secured it with a little piece of medical tape.

A day later, the burn was noticeably better. I've been reapplying the aloe vera a couple of times a day, changing the gauze each time, then leaving it uncovered at night. 

In his book, The Green Pharmacy, James Duke recommends aloe for burns, citing a study in which it increased the blood flow to burned tissue. He also says aloe contains beneficial enzymes that relieve pain and reduce inflammation and swelling, plus it has antibacterial and antifungal properties that can prevent infection.

Needless to say, I plan to keep an aloe plant at home now for quick emergency fixes, and probably will buy an oven mitt.

As I'm sure you can imagine, working at Mother Earth News has affected my shopping habits — I'm a much savvier consumer these days. After writing the recent tip on Safe Sunscreen, I went home and rooted through my medicine cabinet to check labels on the sunscreens I've accumulated. When I found many scary-sounding chemicals, I decided to invest in some new, safer sunscreen.

So I hopped on the Environmental Working Group's sunscreen database and did some snooping around. Surprisingly, it took me about an hour to find a product that didn't have micronized nano ingredients, benzophenone-3 (BP-3) or parabens, three of the things I was most concerned about.

Ultimately, I decided to try KINeSYS Sunscreen Spray. While this product contains Parsol 1789, EWG rated its hazard factor as a 2, while BP-3 was rated as a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, with higher scores reflecting higher hazards.

It never ceases to amaze me how hard it can be to ferret out healthy personal care products – even with a great resource like EWG at your fingertips. Or say you buy something from your local health food store and assume it's safe, then read the label later and discover parabens lurking in your favorite lotion or shampoo?

We shouldn't have to 'clean' ourselves with chemicals, or unknowingly expose ourselves to things that haven't properly been tested. Since this topic isn't frequently covered in the mainstream, it seems important to spread the word here about things we're hearing at the office.

That's why I felt compelled to write a follow up on sunscreen. I ordered a bottle of the KINeSYS spray, we'll see how it works. A reader posted a comment to the Safe Sunscreen tip recommending shea butter as a natural sunscreen. Another Mother staff member is planning to give it a try, so we'll keep you posted on our results.

Safe sunning!

P.S. On the subject of nanotech, the EPA is inviting the public to comment on a proposal to develop a Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program. They're taking comments for 60 days after the Aug. 2 public meeting, so if you're concerned about nanotech, let your voice be heard!

Breaking news: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says all 300 million Americans are embracing green living, and that 'environmental responsibility is everyone's responsibility.'

No, I didn't read that in The Onion. It was in the EPA's announcement of its new Go Green! e-newsletter, and the sentiment comes directly from EPA Administrator Steve Johnson.

This is great to hear from the EPA. But it does surprise me that Bush Administration's environmental editors didn't mind this statement, both when it was originally made (Earth Day) and again when the Go Green! press release went out (two days before the Fourth of July). Does this mean we'll soon see the White House embrace its responsibility to the environment, especially with regard to global warming? I'm not optimistic, even more so after reading this article from Rolling Stone.

But I digress. Kudos to the EPA for launching Go Green!, which promises 'what you can do' information 'that everyone can use to make a difference.' The July edition covers UV Safety Month, hurricane preparedness, Energy Star products and the Agency's new carbon footprint calculator. Check it out; click here to sign up.

Attention nature lovers: I'm pleased to announce the launch of our Nature, Environment and Community blog. No doubt we'll have lots to talk about with the current worldwide spotlight on all things green.

In addition to environmental hot topics like pollution and the latest findings on global warming, this blog will contain posts about wildlife, endangered species, wilderness, national parks, land stewardship, recycling and more. Mother Nature is quite prolific at providing interesting topics of conversation!  

Not to be overlooked is the community portion of this category. A community whose members understand the value of sustainability is one of our environment's greatest allies. These communities can pool their resources and work together to achieve results that no individual could generate alone.

For homework, I'm assigning a quick history lesson. The Worldwatch Institute has compiled an excellent timeline highlighting the many environmental milestones of recent decades.