Please participate in the first annual Naturally Boulder Community Audit. Naturally Boulder is committed to helping Boulder grow as the center of the natural products industry. By knowing the size, shape and make-up of the natural products industry in Boulder, we can better communicate the value and opportunities that exist here. To do this, we need your help.

With a large number of major and minor natural products players in the area, including Wild Oats Markets, Celestial Seasonings, Rudi's Organic Bakery, White Wave and Horizon Organic, New Hope Natural Media, Izze Beverage Co., Aurora Organic Dairy, Whole Foods Market stores, and others, Boulder and the surrounding region has established itself as a central location of preference among businesses involved in the nearly $50-billion U.S. market for natural and organic products. From humble beginnings, annual revenues contributed by these businesses to the Colorado economy are now estimated to total more than $2 billion, according to research conducted in 2005 by Compass Natural Marketing and published in the Daily Camera and ColoradoBiz Magazine.

Switching to organic foods provides children "dramatic and immediate" protection from widely used pesticides, according to a study published in the Sept. 1 online version of the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Levels of malathion and chlorpyrifos, the two most commonly used insecticides in U.S. agriculture, declined substantially in the bodies of elementary-school age children during a five-day period when organic foods were substituted for conventional foods. Average levels of both pesticides in the children decreased to non-detectable levels immediately after the introduction of organic diets and remained non-detectable until conventional diets were reintroduced, says the report.