Environmental health
sb admin | January 6, 2009by Carole Bass (posted with permission from the On-Line Journalism Project, New Haven (CT) Independent)
Black lung disease used to be nearly as common as dirty fingernails among American coal miners. Roughly a third of them got the fatal illness. Starting in the 1970s, a federal law slashed that rate by 90 percent. But now it's back.
When Anita Wolfe and her co-workers discovered that the rate of black lung has doubled among U.S. coal miners in recent years, she took it personally. The daughter and granddaughter of West Virginia miners, Wolfe watched her father die of black lung disease…
revere | January 3, 2009Seventeen days left in the Bush administration. With the fiscal crisis it isn't clear some urgent matters will be attended to right away by the Obama folks, but one can hope. Urgent matters like getting the Food and Drug Administration back on track protecting our food supply. Consider this FDA Press Release from yesterday:
FDA Prevents Two Dairies from Adulterating Animal Drugs and Food
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that the District Court for the District of New Mexico has enjoined Do-Rene and Clover Knolls Dairies and their owners, Douglas B. Handley and Irene…
sb admin | December 23, 2008Updated below ( 12/24/2008 )
Here are just some of the reports coming out of Harriman, Tennessee:
"Millions of yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at the TVA's (Tennessee Valley Authority) Kingston coal-fired plant, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation, and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that might be seeping into the ground and flowing downriver. One neighborhing family said the disaster was no surprise because they have watched the 1960's era ash pond's mini-blowouts off-and-on for years."  [The Tennesseean, here]
Jim Bruggers…
sb admin | December 22, 2008Recently, USA Today published a series of alarming articles about air pollution near schools. It plotted school locations against results from an EPA model, and found that 435 were likely to have dangerous levels of pollution; then, it took air samples near 95 schools and found elevated levels of toxic chemicals outside 64 of them.
Although the series doesnât contain all of the details I was looking for about how USA Today made its determinations, one key point is clear: EPA is not using its chemicals-release information to see where schoolchildren might be exposed to dangerous levels of air…
sb admin | December 22, 2008Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel were awarded last week the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism from Columbia University. The three journalists close-out their excellent year of reporting with "EPA Veils Hazardous Substances" explaining how the U.S. EPA allows chemical manufacturers to skirt around disclosure requirements with claims of 'confidentiality' and 'trade secret'---even though the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) expressly prohibits manufacturers to withhold information when it pertains to health and…
sb admin | December 19, 2008The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) is thrilled by President-elect Obama's selection of Cong. Hilda Solis to serve as Secretary of Labor.
"Rep. Solis has been a leader in fighting for healthier communities, a cleaner environment, and economic justice for the most vulnerable in society. We believe that she will have the vision and political will to oversee a much needed overhaul of the nation's system for ensuring worker safety, which has failed to provide adequate protections to America's workers over the past eight years." (See full News Release)
There…
sb admin | December 18, 2008On December 12th, the Washington Post reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would not be altering their current stance on the usage of the plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA) in food and drug products. Â
"The agency has been reviewing its risk assessments for bisphenol A, a chemical used to harden plastic that is found in a wide variety of products, from baby bottles to compact discs to the lining of canned goods. The chemical, commonly called BPA, mimics estrogen and may disrupt the body's carefully calibrated endocrine system."
This is astounding given that the Post…
sb admin | December 17, 2008In late November, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard oral arguments on the two petitions for review of OSHA's health standard on hexavalent chromium (CrVI).  The transcript of the proceeding (52-page PDF) reveal that these judges did their homework. They knew the history and content of the final rule.  I was heartened to read one judge interrupt the Labor Department attorney with:
"Well, one thing that concerns me [about this final rule] is the requirement for notifying employees at the action level of the risk. And I'm not certain why…
revere | December 13, 2008Whether they are called the White House Press Secretary or the regime's Information Minister, they seem to have in common one characteristic: they are professional liars. It goes without saying that all of Bush's press secretaries have been blatant liars, but it's also true of Clinton's and virtually very one of their predecessors. Some of them have been much more likable than others and when they lied made my hackles rise less, but they were still professional liars and why anyone believes what they say is one of the big mysteries. I have to keep reminding myself that our "Information…
sb admin | December 12, 2008The Washington Post obtained a copy of a draft report on mercury that Food and Drug Administration sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget, and reports that it contains advice that alarms scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency. At issue is advice about fish consumption for women of child-bearing age, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children. All of these groups can benefit from fishâs omega-3s, but the mercury that contaminates many fish can interfere with neurological development in fetuses and young children.
FDA regulates mercury in commercially…
sb admin | December 12, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
Energy may be the topic du jour but it's been the 800 lb. gorilla in the room for, oh, a couple of centuries. In a sense it's responsible for one of the greatest occupational health catastrophes of the 20th century, and a new report from CDC demonstrates once again it's still with us and killing working people. I'm talking about asbestos-related disease. Asbestos and the asbestos industry is a creature par excellance of the age of energy in the 19th century. Its primary uses were for insulating steam pipes and boilers, where heat loss was measured in…
revere | December 7, 2008I vaguely remember a medical school lecture about dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea Worm Disease. Also called the "fiery serpent" these are very long worms that grow in people and then the females get hungry and start to burrow out of them, sort of like Alien but not quite as quickly or as dramatically nor out of their chest. Usually out of the tops of their feet. Here are the basics of the life cycle:
When I first heard about dracunculiasis the world had many millions of people suffering this debilitating horror. In 1986 the Carter Center, the creation of former President Jimmy Carter,…
sb admin | December 3, 2008From the President who brought you "Clean Skies (cough)" and "Healthy Forests (not)" comes a slashing of the "Buffer Zone" rule which is supposed to prohibit mining companies from dumping waste rock---created by mountaintop removal to extract coal---within 100 feet of streams. As we all know from 3rd grade science class, these small streams flow into larger streams, then creeks and rivers. They are the underpinning of the natural ecosystem---locally and regionally.  Clogging up the headwaters with boulders, rocks and soil, ruins the local ecology and creates havoc downstream.…
sb admin | December 2, 2008Itâs nice to finally be able to report that the Bush administration EPA has issued what appears to be a strong pollution-curbing rule on medical waste incineration. Although medical waste incinerators account for a relatively small amount of overall air pollution, they can have significant effects in the 57 communities where theyâre currently located.
EPA estimates that if incinerators meet the new requirements, theyâll reduce mercury emissions by 637-682 pounds each year, and lead emissions by 361-420 pounds annually â good news the neurological functioning of children growing up near these…
revere | December 2, 2008Cholera is a vicious disease. It can take a healthy person and kill him or her in a day by rapidly dehydrating them from a massive, watery diarrhea. The resulting electrolyte imbalance can lead to vascular collapse or cardiac arrest. Cholera is usually spread by fecally contaminated drinking water, and hence is completely preventable. It is also easily treatable by keeping the patient hydrated with the oral rehydration therapy, basically minimally fortified water. Yet this preventable and treatable disease is now epidemic in the country of Zimbabwe. Government sources admit to over 400 deaths…
sb admin | December 1, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
A story on the wires about a paper in the journal Epidemiology this month (November) confirms what other work has shown: those beautiful flowers we buy in American florist shops have an added price attached to them, paid by the children of Central America. Epidemiology is one of the top tier journals in the field of epidemiology, but I don't have access to my copy, which is at work (and I'm not), so I'm working off wire service copy (Reuters Health). From what I know of the subject, however, the account is likely accurate. Here's the gist:
In a study…
revere | November 21, 2008The trouble with National Parks for a city boy like me is too much wilderness. I am only able to stand up on asphalt. So it is comforting to find out the Bush administration is looking out for folks like me, should by some quirk of fate we find ourselves outdoors in a National Park with no Starbucks within blocks. Soon we'll be able to see the soul satisfying outline of a huge coal fired power plant, an oil refinery or some other familiar polluter to make us feel at home. It's just too bad that the EPA's own administrators can't get onboard:
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing…
revere | November 21, 2008John Dingell (D-MI), longtime Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has done some good things in his time, but overall he's been a net minus. When Henry Waxman (D-CA) toppled him from his perch today my feeling was an uncharitable, Good Riddance. The vote in the Democratic Party caucus was close but not very close: 137 - 122. Dingell has not been representing the people of his District as much as he has been representing the US Automakers. He he got the sobriquet Dirty Air Dingell the old fashioned way: he earned it:
The Energy and Commerce panel is one of the most important House…
revere | November 19, 2008A congressionally mandated independent panel of scientists has just issued a report verifying what many of us have know since the early 1990s. Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) is real:
Gulf War syndrome is real and afflicts about 25 percent of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict, a U.S. report said Monday.
Two chemical exposures consistently associated with the disorder -- one to a drug given to soldiers to protect against nerve gas and the other said to protect against desert pests -- were cited as causes in the congressionally mandated report presented to Veterans Affairs…
sb admin | November 17, 2008by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The team of investigative reporting team of Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel just keeps rolling along, this time with an amazing story about how microwave safe plastics are leaching bisphenol-A (BPA) at potentially unsafe levels. We are saying potentially unsafe because we really know little about the effects of hormone mimics like BPA except that at levels currently found in BPA containing plastics in contact with food and liquids produce biological effects in test systems and a recent analysis of a representative…