combined sewer overflow
kkrisberg | September 23, 2015For years, scientists have described climate change as a slowly emerging public health crisis. But for many, it’s difficult to imagine how a complex planetary phenomenon can impact personal well-being beyond the obvious effects of natural disasters, which climatologists say will happen more frequently and intensely as the world warms. That disconnect is what piqued my interest in a new study on old infrastructure, heavy rainfalls and spikes in human illness.
Drinking water quality is among the many adverse effects that climate change is expected to have on human health. But what exactly does…
lborkowski | September 1, 2011Pictures of Hurricane Irene's destruction are circulating and making many of us realize we're lucky to still have our homes and power lines intact. There's also one Irene-related problem that's invisible to the naked eye: raw sewage in waterways. Here's the Washington Post's Darryl Fears on local contamination:
DC Water officials estimate that 200 million gallons of rain mixed with raw sewage overwhelmed pumping stations and poured into waterways around the city during the downpour from Hurricane Irene.
The sewer overflow contributed to a flood of wastewater into rivers and streams over the…
lborkowski | December 8, 2010In Monday's post I mentioned how much I loved London when I visited - but London wasn't always such an appealing place. During the Industrial Revolution, it was filthy and polluted. The stench was appalling, and an episode of particularly foul smells from the Thames River in 1858 was known as the "Great Stink." Life expectancy in England's urban areas was markedly lower than in the countryside.
This filthy environment was the site of a public health breakthrough. During the 1854 cholera epidemic in London, the physician John Snow mapped the cholera cases from an outbreak in the Soho district…