Environmental health
cmonforton | June 14, 2011When I decided yesterday to watch the Republican candidates debate, I created a scorecard to use while I observed the two-hour event. I was interested particularly in exchanges related to public health topics, such as access to health care, and clean air and safe drinking water. Within minutes of first tuning in, I remembered how these multi-candidate debates are heavy on rhetoric, but light on policy details. I heard the participants harp on "ObamaCare," and "burdensome regulations," as well as make promises to "de-fund," and "repeal," but there were too few substantive points on public…
cmonforton | June 13, 2011Seven Republicans will meet tonight at St. Anselms college in Manchester, New Hampshire for a Presidential debate. The participants include both the declared candidates (Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santoroum) and likely candidate, Michele Bachman. Given that the event will take place in the St. Anselm Hawk's hockey venue, I'm going to keep a scorecard on the candidates' responses to issues affecting public health.
Since the breath of topics relevant to public health is wide, during tonight's debate I'll focus my attention on domestic policy…
cmonforton | June 3, 2011In Hawk's Nest Redux, Ellen Smith reports that an apalling number of the 29 deceased Upper Big Branch coal miners had black lung disease. The autopsy evidence was reported at the end of one chapter of the investigation report prepared by an independent panel of investigators commissioned by the Governor of West Virginia.* Smith compared the shocking prevalence of lung disease in these men in the year 2010, to the 1930's Hawk's Nest tunnel/Gauley Bridge disaster in which a thousand workers developed acute and progressive lung disease within just a few weeks of work breathing air thick with…
lborkowski | May 31, 2011by Ellen Smith
For those who don't know the history of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel, from 1930 to 1935, approximately 3,000 workers carved a 3 mile tunnel through the Gauley Mountain in West Virginia in order to divert the New River for an electrical station at a Union Carbide plant. Ventilation was limited at best. The miners were not given modest protections like masks or breathing equipment. Quartz dust from cutting into the mountain invaded their lungs. Signs of the deadly lung disease, silicosis, began for some within eight weeks of employment. It's estimated that up to 1,000 miners who…
lborkowski | May 18, 2011By Kim Krisberg
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air, water. In the face of this challenge, we need champions throughout the world who will work to put protecting human health at the centre of the climate change agenda.
-- Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, director-general, World Health Organization, 2008
Human health may not be the first image that pops to mind when it comes to climate change. People often envision melting icebergs or desperate polar bears…
cmonforton | May 13, 2011That's the question posed by Jon Stewart's Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi in his "Ored to Death" segment broadcast on May 12. Mandvi interviews G. Bernard Coulombe, the general manager of the proposed Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec, Canada, who reports the mine will produce 200 TONS annually of chrysotile fibers. In the segment, Mandvi really asks:
"does asbestos mean something different in French than it does in English?? Because in English it means it means a SLOW, HACKING DEATH."
The fact that this five minute "news" segment appears on Comedy Central doesn't take away from the…
egrossman | May 13, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Far-reaching and ambitious recommendations laid out at a meeting of the United Nations Strategic Approach to International Chemical Management (SAICM) could significantly reduce occupational exposure to hazardous chemicals in the electronics industry - and do so at every stage of product life, from component design and manufacturing to recycling. If implemented, these recommendations would reduce health hazards for the thousands of workers employed at electronics production plants worldwide and begin to reduce environmental health hazards for those involved in…
lborkowski | May 11, 2011Good data isn't just important to researchers; it's also essential for people who want to participate in the governmental processes that affect our environment. The US government makes a lot of environmental data available to the public and provides many opportunities for public participation, but both the information and the engagement opportunities need to improve if we're going to effectively address the many threats to our health, from air pollution to climate change. The nonprofit OMB Watch has just released an action plan that contains many specific recommendations for doing exactly…
lborkowski | April 22, 2011While much of the Earth Week news coverage has dwelt on the lasting effects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster, two other events have highlighted a separate but related issue: water supply.
Drought conditions in the Plains and Southwest have damaged winter wheat crops and fueled the spread of wildfires in Texas. Two volunteer firefighters, Elias Jaquez and Eric Finley, have died in Texas; 1,800 firefighters from more than 30 states have been fighting the blazes. As global climate disruption continues, we should expect to see the frequency and severity of extreme weather events like floods…
lborkowski | April 11, 2011Back in August, our New Solutions: The Drawing Board partnership with the journal New Solutions featured a post by Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson about the situation in Cananea, Mexico, where miners have been striking against the Asarco/Grupo Mexico copper operation for more than three years. The miners are demanding improvements not only to unsafe working conditions, but to the local environment.
Fischel and Nelson were part of a group that visited Cananea last year through a tour arranged by the United Association of Labor Education and hosted by an organization of the Mexican Miners Union…
cmonforton | April 5, 2011[Update 4/22/2011: see CDC's NIOSH corrects asbestos statement]
It was almost too much to believe. Here I was attending the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization's (ADAO) annual meeting, mingling and learning from patients and researchers about asbestos-related disease, and I hear that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has just issued its treatise on asbestos. That document, called a "current intelligence bulletin" is supposed to convey the most up-to-date scientific information on a hazard and risk of harm…
egrossman | April 4, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
"If I say pollution, the images that first come to mind are likely to be smokestacks, waste pipes, an accident or a disaster. But increasingly, environmental health researchers are focusing on sources that are much closer to home, like toys and beauty products and food packaging and cleaners and furniture. These are now sources of chemicals of interest," said Julia Brody, director of the Silent Spring Institute introducing a session on biomonitoring at this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting held recently in Washington, DC. "The…
As world watches Japan's nuclear plants, damage to manufacturing infrastructure poses chemical risks
egrossman | March 15, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
After posting yesterday's story, I began to learn what a hub of chemical-intensive industry the region of Japan most directly affected by the earthquake an tsunami is. Hit with varying degrees of damage from the earthquake and tsunami are more than a dozen major petrochemical plants, most, according to a March 14 Goldman Sachs memo to investors, built in the 1970s. In addition, numerous factories that manufacture agrochemicals, silicon wafers, semiconductors, photovoltaic cells, and other high-tech items have all suffered damage as have warehouses and shipping container…
egrossman | March 14, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Even before news of the crisis at the Fukushima and other Japanese nuclear power plants damaged by Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami arrived, raising public health concerns to an alarming level, the scenes of destruction prompted many questions about how public health - and that of first responders - would be protected during immediate rescue efforts, and later as clean up and restoration get underway. The awful loss of life demands much of our attention, but it's also essential to consider future health issues for those working on rescue and recovery.
Right now…
egrossman | March 8, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
It's now almost eleven months since the BP/Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers, and almost eight months since the damaged well was capped. While the emergency phase of this disaster is over, the assessment of and response to its long-term impacts are just now getting underway. On February 28th, the Gulf Ecosystem Restoration Task Force held the second of its five planned meetings - this one in New Orleans - and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) launched its long-term study to evaluate health effects of the oil spill…
lborkowski | March 8, 2011Given how many complaints we've been hearing lately about wasteful government spending, I thought this might be a good time to highlight some lesser-known, worthwhile government-funded programs that promote public health. (Core agency functions, like EPA's Clean Air Act enforcement, are also crucial for public health, but I trust this audience is already fairly familiar with them.)
One example - which comes immediately to mind because we have one affiliated with our department here at the George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services - is pediatric environmental…
lborkowski | March 4, 2011Earlier this week, the EPA released a report that quantifies costs and benefits of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments - and, surprise, surprise, the benefits substantially outweigh the costs: $2 trillion vs. $65 billion in 2020.
Specifically, The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020 evaluates the costs and benefits of programs implemented pursuant to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, comparing today's outcomes with what would've been expected had control programs remained only as stringent as they were before the 1990 changes took effect. The figures cover not only the…
lborkowski | February 23, 2011By Dick Clapp
An ambitious paper was released in Boston last week, with subsequent media coverage in local, national and international outlets (see, for example the New York Times' Green Blog and Reuters). The first author, Paul Epstein, was interviewed on the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise, which was anchored in the Boston Harbor as part of its month-long "Coal Free Future Tour." The paper, which was just published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, was the result of a two-year collaborative effort that I participated in, as did Celeste Monforton, other academics from…
egrossman | February 22, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
As I've watched the hearings House Republicans have been holding over the past couple of weeks on the economic impact of environmental and occupational health and safety regulations, I've been thinking about what I've learned about and seen of the working and environmental conditions in places that are now the hub of world manufacturing. I've been picturing the smog that hangs over Chinese cities. I've been thinking about the fatal despair of young high-tech workers at Foxconn and Samsung factories in China and South Korea, about the depressed wages and severe working…
lborkowski | February 16, 2011By Elizabeth Grossman
Since release of its Final Report to the President on January 11th, the National Oil Spill Commission has released five additional papers (called "working papers") reviewing aspects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil disaster - three on February 3rd and two on February 8th. On February 11th, National Oil Spill Commissioners Don Boesch and Terry Garcia testified before two House subcommittees. The final report, the working papers, and the Commissioners' prepared testimony all take a critical look at the industry's preparation for such a disaster, examine the policies and…