New regulations from the US FDA will make sunscreen product labels more accurate: watch for the all important critical wavelength value, which must be 320nm or more to qualify as "broad spectrum" protection.

Lots of sun in the forecast for this long weekend, and the weather people are saying Canada’s summer will be hotter than average right across the country. That means plenty of opportunity for sunbathing. And while it probably does no good at all to remind people, as the Canadian Cancer Society frequently does, that getting a suntan is bad for you, we hereby remind you anyway: suntanning is very bad for you. It causes your skin to age and it causes skin cancer. Skin cancer is the most common form of the disease worldwide, with one in five people getting it. Among young people, aged 15–29, melanoma is the most common and deadliest cancer.

So there’s not much that’s positive to say about sunbathing, especially in tanning salons. The UVB radiation, the kind that causes sunburn, is as much as five times stronger in tanning beds than what flows from the sun itself.

When you venture out in the sun, your best bet remains to use an effective sunscreen, the operative word being “effective.” In the US, new Federal Drug Administration labeling regulations will soon take effect in an effort to make sunscreen product labels easier to understand and more truthful in their claims. The use of the word “sunblock” will not be permitted because that word overstates the protection offered.

Other regulations have to do with terms like “broad spectrum.” Sunscreens that claim to offer it will have to prove it, and that means proving they protect against UVA and UVB. This is indicated on the label by the “critical wavelength” value of the product.…

Banking and insurance industries already use e-commerce technology. Electronic real estate transactions would be protected by law under proposed amendment to Ontario's Electronic Commerce Act.

Ontario enacted legislation in 2000 under which documents required for some legal purposes could be submitted in electronic format, so long as the electronic document—a PDF, say, sent by email, or a Word doc.—could be retained by the person who needed it and accessed in the future if necessary. Even if the said document has to be signed to be legally binding, an electronic signature is acceptable, subject to its reliability. No problem, in today’s wired world.

But the legislation, known as the Electronic Commerce Act, 2000, explicitly did not apply to wills and codicils, trusts created by wills, power of attorney for an individual’s financial or personal care, and real estate transactions—agreements of purchase and sale. 

Now that could be about to change. Two MPPs at Queen’s Park have introduced a private member’s bill to amend the act so that it includes real estate transactions. If it passes, we’ll be able to use electronic agreements of purchase and sale with the protection of the law.

The Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA) is in favour of the proposal.

"Enhancing legal protection for electronic agreements of purchase and sale will allow consumers and REALTORS® to benefit from technology that makes real estate transactions more efficient, accessible and secure," said Ron Abraham, OREA president. 

The main issues are convenience and security, of course. Buyers, sellers, realtors and lawyers would all be able to access the relevant documents through an Internet portal from anywhere in the world. No longer…

This smart-looking little apartment-sized composter from Nature Mill gets high marks for performance and style. 

With the gardening season well under way, the subject of composting naturally comes up. All gardeners know the value of nutrient-rich compost, and serious backyard gardeners usually keep an active compost pile going. Out go the table scraps, the egg shells, coffee grinds, orange peels, rejected lettuce leaves and other organic stuff, and what you get in return is gorgeous, black soil for growing more food and flowers.

But even if you aren’t into gardening, composting is a great way to keep stuff out of landfill. You can always give the compost to friends who can use it. Even if you live in a condo that doesn’t provide green boxing, there are plenty of composters designed for the urban apartment dweller.

One of the most highly recommended of these is an automatic compost bin from Nature Mill. It has won awards and garnered much praise in the press. This model does not use worms, but relies on  “natural compost cultures” to break down the organic material into fertilizer. The manufacturers claim that 70 per cent of all the material you put in it disappears “into thin air” as the cultures convert it to water, which evaporates.

Another one that doesn’t use worms is the Red Dragon, a small, electric composter about the size of a kitchen waste bin, the kind with the flip top. This one works fast, turning kitchen scraps into rich fertilizer in 24 hours, according to the product description here. This site, Green Mama, has a great introduction to the whole subject of composting for urban and apartment dwellers.

Proponents of worm…

Not everyone thinks that living small is bad. A growing number of urban eco-idealists are seriously re-thinking the space they live in, and one of the most prominent of these is Canadian Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger. Hill, an architect by training, is also the inventor and main proponent of LifeEdited, a philosophy of living in which all but the essentials is stripped out of one’s personal environment. One of its objectives is to get back to basics, surround oneself with only those possessions that truly matter, and have less to worry about. It’s an approach to living that’s almost monastic in its simplicity, and Hill has just finished applying its principles to his new Manhattan apartment.

The apartment is just 420 square feet, but it’s so configured that, according to Hill, you get the functionality of an apartment almost triple the size, though you can only use one space at a time. His original design challenge—he held a competition which attracted more than 300 entries, according to the New York Times; the winner was an architecture student from Hungary—was to provide room for a dining table that seats twelve and a guest “bedroom” for overnighters.

The result, which was not cheap at $365,000 (more than the cost of the apartment in the first place: he paid $287,000 in 2009) has a moving wall that recedes to create a largish living space, and moves forward to create the guest bedroom behind it. There are lots of other design tricks and efficiencies that combine to give the small space that extra functionality Hill boasts of. With the moving wall and the transformable furniture, the snug apartment has several different configurations. 

What strikes us about all of this is that there’s a great idea here but it’s unworkable at present for the average…

Whether justified or not, that strangely dark-tanned woman from New Jersey, the one who allegedly had her five-year-old daughter hopping into the tanning beds at her favourite tanning salon, has become the weirdly pathetic poster mom of bad parenting, at least when it comes to UV rays. The Canadian Cancer Society warns us again to be careful in the sun.

Specialists in the field of sun protection advise that the delicate skin of babies and young children can be more vulnerable to the sun's harmful rays. Unprotected exposure is a concern to all parents, especially when their little ones discover that the true adventures of summer are all outdoors.

The Canadian Cancer Society warns that the risk of skin cancer is greater than it was 20 years ago and continues to increase. Ultraviolet rays can break through clouds, fog and haze and among other cancer risk factors, blistering sunburns as a child, must be avoided for skin health later in life.

“Kids don't have to be at the pool, beach, or on vacation to get too much sun,” says Beth-Ann Ivany, Senior Brand Manager at Aveeno, a leading brand name in the field of nature-based skin care. “Children need protection from UVA and UVB rays whenever they are outside.”

Since that is likely to be any time, all the time, it is highly recommended that parents add a thorough application and reapplication of sunscreen every day to their children's morning routine. Indeed, getting them to sit still for it each day might still be a challenge – and many parents also struggle with concerns about the quality of the product they are putting on their…

The presentation centre at Tridel’s One Old Mill. Condos remain the most affordable housing option in Toronto.

Once again, sales of real estate in the Toronto market in the first half of May were higher than in the corresponding period one year ago. The Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) reports that 5,142 transactions occurred through its MLS system during the first two weeks of May, an increase of 14.5 per cent over last year.

The growth in sales was spread across all major home types, with the strongest growth, no surprise here, in the condo sector. In spite of much discussion of over-supply in the condo sector, TREB president Richard Silver said that demand was still high enough to exert “moderate” upward pressure on average selling prices for condos.

Overall, the average price of a home in Toronto was up 6 per cent compared to May 2011 and stood at $517,242.

As Toronto’s housing market continues to grow, Vancouver’s has slowed markedly. Prices dropped nearly 10 per cent in April, the largest drop since the recession and the fourth drop in the last five months. One reason given for the slowdown is that fewer Asian buyers have been active in the market.

But in Toronto, where there has been much “bubble mongering” for months, some analysts believe that rising prices just reflect limited supply and ever-increasing demand. With the population growing at about 100,000 every year, the housing market is bound to be active.

Still looking south

Torontonians,…