Environmental health
sb admin | April 21, 2008The front page of yesterdayâs Washington Post provided a stark reminder of the cost of powering the DC region: a scarred and denuded landscape once graced by mountains and wildlife. Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) in West Virginia feeds coal-powered plants that have been demanding more and more of the fuel; in the DC area, demand for electricity grew 18% since 2001. The Postâs David A. Fahrenthold explains the process and its effects:
Starting in earnest in the 1980s, mining companies began extracting the region's coal by removing the mountains on top of it. At these sites, the top 100 feet…
sb admin | April 16, 2008Today the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other news sources report that the National Toxicology Program has issued a draft brief stating concerns about the effects of low levels of bispehnol A on fetusus and children. Exposure to bisphenol A can interfere with the development of children's brains and reproductive organs, including alterations to breast and prostate tissues that can incrase the risk of developing cancer later in life. Bisphenol A is used in many plastics and in the liners of some food and beverage containers, and most of us have measurable concentrations of it our…
sb admin | April 14, 2008by Emilie Hedlund
A recent article in the New York Times ("Flooded Village Files Suit" 2/27/08 ) focuses on the Alaskan village Kivalina, which is disappearing because of flooding caused by the changing climate. The residents are accusing five oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the countryâs largest coal company of creating a public nuisance. Similar suits which blame major companies for adverse effects caused by their emission of green house gases (GHG) have been seen for some time now, but this particular suit is unique in that it accuses the defendants of conspiracy. The…
sb admin | April 11, 2008Weâve written before about how the beryllium industry â and Brush Wellman in particular â staved off OSHAâs attempt to revise the beryllium exposure limit (blog post here, article here). Their chief tactics were denying the validity of evidence showing the existing standard was insufficiently protective, and then, when that was no longer credible, insisting that more research was needed before the limit could be changed.
Now, CBS News Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian raises the question of whether CDC officials caved to political and corporate pressure in dramatically downscaling aÂ…
revere | April 6, 2008About a month ago (March 1, 2008) we brought you the story of how a highly reputable and knowledgeable scientist, Dr. Deborah Rice of the Maine Department of Maine Department of Health and Human Services, was bonced off of an EPA scientific advisory committee because the chemical industry trade group, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), objected that she had a bias. How did they know? Dr. Rice, as part of her duties as toxicologist for the State of Maine, testified before its legislature that on the basis of a review of the scientific evidence she believed the deca congener of the…
sb admin | April 4, 2008No, not V-8 the vegetable drink, but C8, the common name for ammonium perfluorooctanoate, an ingredient in Teflon and other non-stick products. Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette reports today on the levels of perfluorooctanoic acid in the blood of about 69,000 residents living near the DuPont Co.'s Parkersburg, WV plant where C8 was manufactured. The results are posted on the West Virginia University's Health Science's center website.  The median C8 blood-level was
"more than five times the U.S. general population."
The highest median blood-concentration levels (i.e., 132 ppb…
sb admin | March 31, 2008By Vera ToulokhonovaÂ
Over spring break, my family and I traveled to spend a weekend in New York City. One of our expeditions included a visit to the Statue of Liberty and, naturally, to the large restroom located on Ellis Island.  The first thing I noticed about this notably modern facility is the proliferation of green signs all over its walls.  Each had a large, bold, green heading, which read âGreen Restroom.â I was curious to see exactly what constitutes a restroom that prides itself on being âGreen.â
 Each green sign included the following text:
As part of our GREEN-…
sb admin | March 26, 2008The Palm Beach (Florida) Post is reporting that Ag-Mart has settled a civil suit filed by a migrant farmworker family who alleged their son's serious birth defects were associated with the company's improper handling of pesticides. Earlier reporting in March 2005 by the PB Post exposed the working and living conditions of this family and other farmworkers, and birth defects among some of their children. Â
At the same time this settlement was reported, another Florida newspaper wrote that violations against Ag-Mart for failure to comply with the State's pesticide use rules had…
revere | March 24, 2008If you want to know what advances in public health and medicine in the last 150 years have done the most for the overall health of the community a major contender for the top spot would have to be the provision of safe and abundant drinking water. The first piped water supplies for major American cities date to shortly before the Civil War (mid nineteenth century) and disinfection with chlorine didn't start until the end of the first decade of the 20th century. The results for major waterborne infectious diseases like typhoid fever and various maladies just categorized as diarrhea and…
sb admin | March 20, 2008In a welcome contrast to the disappointing ozone rule the agency announced last week, EPA has issued tougher air-pollution standards for diesel locomotives and marine engines. When fully implemented in 2030, the new standards will reduce particulate matter pollution by 90% and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%. The new standards only cover ships traveling on inland waterways and between U.S. ports â which means that LA and Long Beach residents will still be breathing lots of pollution from international cargo ships â but EPA estimates that its benefits will still be substantial:
When fully…
sb admin | March 18, 2008Just a heads-up for our DC readers: the Environmental Film Festival is going on right now. On Saturday, the last day of the festival, there's a special World Water Day tribute at the Carnegie Institution (1530 P St. NW, DuPont Circle Metro) featuring the following:
Welcome by Peter O'Brien, Managing Director, Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital. Opening remarks by Guest Curator Linda Lilienfeld, followed by: AGUAS CON EL AGUA; UMBRELLA; WATER FIRST; TIROL - LAND OF WATER; THE STAVE WEIR IN LUCERNE; RIVERGLASS; VILLAGE OF DUST, CITY OF WATER; and SWITCH-OFF. The World Water…
sb admin | March 17, 2008Thereâs plenty of worrying environmental news out there, but over the weekend bloggers and reporters highlighted a few glimmers of hope, too:
EnviroWonk: Seattle, following San Franciscoâs lead, has banned city purchases of bottled water. Planners figure the switch from bottled to tap water will save $58,500 as well as reducing plastic waste.
Triple Pundit: The Beluga Skysailâs completion of a 12,000-mile journey proves that ships can use towing kites to reduce their fuel requirements â in this case, offsetting an estimated 20% of the engineâs power and saving $1000 per day on fuel.
The…
sb admin | March 13, 2008EPA has set the limit for pollution-forming ozone in the air to 75 ppb, despite the unanimous advice of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee to set it between 60-70 ppb (more here on the health effects of ozone). This is hardly a surprise, given the Bush Administrationâs record. But in this case, itâs apparently not enough to make a single standard insufficiently protective; administration officials have decided to take on the rulemaking requirements of the Clean Air Act. The Washington Postâs Juliet Eilperin explains:
Administrator Stephen L. Johnson also said he would push Congress…
sb admin | March 12, 2008In the largest Superfund cleanup settlement ever, W.R. Grace has agreed to pay $250 million to cover government investigation and cleanup costs associated with the asbestos-laden ore the company mined in Libby, Montana.
EPA has already spent roughly $168 million removing asbestos-contaminated soils and other dangerous materials, EPA Emergency Coordinator Paul Peronard told the Missoulian. He estimates that it will take another $175 million to get to the point where cleanup efforts are considered a success â which doesnât mean that the town will be entirely clean. EPA cleanup efforts started…
sb admin | March 11, 2008The Associated Press has another following up on yesterdayâs investigative report about pharmaceuticals found in drinking-water supplies. They delve into the issue of whoâs studying water supplies, and whether theyâre revealing their findings. Accompanying the article is an alphabetical list of cities, so you can see whether your areaâs water has been tested, and whether traces of drugs have been found; here in Washington, DC, for instance, tests have turned up carbamazepine, caffeine, ibuprofen, monensin, naproxen and sulfamethoxazole.
Itâs nice that AP is supplying this list, because water…
sb admin | March 10, 2008The Associated Press conducted a five-month investigation and found that drug residues have been detected in the drinking water of 24 major U.S. metropolitan areas, which serve roughly 41 million Americans. Concerns about these drug residues have largely focused on wildlife, as estrogen from birth control pills and other hormonal drugs has been interfering with fish reproduction (see past post here). Now, though, the AP is highlighting the number of people exposed and the potential for human health effects:
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in…
revere | March 10, 2008I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you occupy a country you also assume responsibility for its public health. That's both international law and it's the right thing to do. In Iraq we haven't done that. So while I am about to say it once more, after I've said it I have something else to say, too, something that underscores my point in triplicate.
But first the main point:.
It is the kind of news that everybody had been dreading. An outbreak of cholera in Iraq, which started in two Northern provinces, has already reached Baghdad and has become Iraq's biggest cholera outbreak in…
revere | March 9, 2008
(Source unknown)
It's a lousy disease, but Radio New Zealand's headline has to be one of the more amusing headlines I've seen in ages: "Listeria sandwiches on sale at hospital cafe":
Listeria has been found in packaged sandwiches sold by a cafe at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland.
Food contractors to Counties Manukau District Health Board, Spotless Services, informed the DHB of the situation on Friday.
The contamination was found in Naturezone Thai chicken sandwiches, sold by the Aviary Cafe on Monday, 3 March. (Radio New Zealand)
So what's this Listeria stuff about, anyway? This material is…
revere | March 6, 2008We don't especially like being anonymous on this blog but we feel it is prudent given the retributive nature of this administration. We don't care that much ourselves as we are pretty well established. But we worry that our students, our colleagues and our institution will become collateral damage in retribution for things we say here. It's not just that we read about this stuff in the news. We know the people involved personally. Last week we posted about Deb Rice, a scientist in the State of Maine health department who is also one of the world authorities on the health effects of the…
sb admin | March 6, 2008Some good news on endangered species, for a change (via Dateline Earth): the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will retain existing critical habitat currently designated under the Endangered Species Act for marbled murrelet populations on the West Coast. This is a reversal from the Bush Administration, which had been trying to reduce the habitat in order to allow more logging in the old-growth forests where the bird nests. The APâs Jeff Barnard explains:
The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994 by the federal government to comply with federal court rulings, cut logging on national forests in…