Environmental health
revere | December 11, 2007One of the most effective environmental regulations that wasn't a command and control item was something called the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Program. Here's EPA's description:
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities reported annually by certain covered industry groups as well as federal facilities. This inventory was established under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA) and expanded by the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990.
That…
revere | December 11, 2007Concern about cutting down the rain forests is not just a conservationists hobby horse. As more and more trees are cut down for their wood and the land cleared for agricultural use the unplanned consequence is that more an more mobile and traveling humans come in contact with animals for the first time. These animal populations are reservoirs for many viruses, some, like Ebola and AIDS, make their way into new homes, human bodies. The rain forest is no more than an incubation period's travel from major cities.
But this isn't the only way animals and humans are thrown together in intimate and…
sb admin | December 10, 2007The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act (H.R. 2262) would revamp the 1872 federal law governing hardrock mining (mining for metals and gems, not for coal), and a new article from Business Week reports that the Act has the support of many local officials who worry about miningâs effects on air, water, and tourism.
Industry officials donât like the House bill â which isn't surprising, because theyâve been getting such a sweet deal for more than a century. The General Mining Law of 1872 was intended to create incentives for settling the West, and it let miners take minerals from public lands…
sb admin | December 7, 2007A quick look at two papers and an editorial on the effects on lung function of exposure to levels of air pollution below current EPA standards, published in this weekâs New England Journal of Medicine.
Epidemiologic studies of the health effects of air pollution keep improving, with scientists designing studies able to measure small but important effects of relatively low levels of exposure. There are implications for policy: our pollution current standards are not sufficiently protective, especially for individuals who already have lung disease or are otherwise more sensitive or susceptible…
revere | December 4, 2007
If you need the antibiotic ciprofloxacin ("cipro") (famous for its use as prophylactic agent for those potentially exposed to weaponized anthrax in 2001), I know where you can find a lot of it. In Patancheru, India, near Hyderabad, one of the world's centers for production of generic drugs. Most of the cipro made there is shipped out, but it turns out a lot of cipro stays behind, in the sewage of Patancheru. A paper by Larsson et al. (Journal of Hazardous Materials 148 (2007) 751-755; hat tip SusieF) found the highest levels in sewage effluent of pharmaceuticals of any yet reported. The…
sb admin | December 2, 2007A quick look at Blood Lead Concentrations Less than 10 Micrograms per Deciliter and Child Intelligence at 6 Years of Age by Todd A. Jusko, Charles R. Henderson, Jr., Bruce P. Lanphear et al., published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The current CDC definition of elevated blood lead in a child is 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood (written as 10 μg/dL). However, there is increasingly compelling evidence that lower blood lead levels are associated with decreased performance on intelligence testing. At the same time, it has just been reported that the EPA has just…
revere | December 2, 2007It's been a while since we pressed this particular button but it seems it's time:
Baghdad is facing a 'catastrophe' with cases of cholera rising sharply in the past three weeks to more than 100, strengthening fears that poor sanitation and the imminent rainy season could create an epidemic.
The disease - spread by bacteria in contaminated water, which can result in rapid dehydration and death - threatens to blunt growing optimism in the Iraqi capital after a recent downturn in violence. Two boys in an orphanage have died and six other children were diagnosed with the disease, according to the…
revere | November 30, 2007If you are like most people you probably aren't alarmed about the dangers of nanotechnology. In fact if you are like most people you probably don't even know what nanotechnology is. I'll resist the temptation to say general knowledge of the emerging technology of the very small is even smaller. Despite the fact most of us have no clue, there is a surprising amount of nano products already in the marketplace, incorporated in products from food containers to golf clubs. But there remain doubts about safety. Nanoparticles are so small they don't act in ways we understand, either physically or…
sb admin | November 26, 2007Dr. Lynn Goldman, former EPA Assistant Administrator For Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances and current Chair of Johns Hopkins's Indepartmental Program in Applied Public Health, will be at George Washington University tomorrow (Tuesday, 11/27) to give a talk entitled "Chemicals: Making Public Health Policy in the Face of Uncertainty." The event will run from noon until 1:30pm at the GWU Hospital Auditorium, as part of the GWU School of Public Health and Health Services Public Health Grand Rounds.
UPDATE: Transcript and video now available from Kaisernetwork
sb admin | November 20, 2007The Center for American Progress has been running some new TV ads in Midwestern media markets as part of âa pilot experiment to begin defining progressivism in the publicâs mindâ (hat tip to Common Sense). Here are two that are styled after the Mac/PC ads â but in these, the two guys wear stickers identifying them as âProâ and âConâ:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/Ee_WGmMmeTw]
Ad 1:
Pro: Hi, I'm a progressive.
Con: And I'm a conservative.
Pro: I've done things like create Social Security, establish the eight-hour work day and pass civil rights laws.
Con: I was against every single one of…
revere | November 19, 2007Air pollution exists in two physical forms: as a gas (molecules) and as particles (usually heterogeneous agglomerations of huge numbers of molecules stuck together). Particles in the air are also called aerosols. Depending upon their size (really their aerodynamic behavior), their abundance and their composition, they can affect our lungs, vegetation or visibility. They can come from anywhere. Sometimes they are formed "in place" by secondary chemical reactions of precursor pollutants. Photochemical oxidant pollution ("smog") is of this type. Sometimes it is of natural origin and can be…
revere | November 16, 2007The blogosphere is pretty crowded these days and one might think there's no need for less, not more. But in public health, that's not the case. There are a lot of Doctor/Medical blogs but not many public health blogs. So yesterday marked a significant milestone in the public health blogosphere, the First Blogiversary of The Pump Handle. As Jordan Barab, lately of Confined Space fame, notes in a congratulatory comment over at TPH, first year blog mortality is extremely high, so just making it at all is a significant accomplishment.
But TPH didn't "just make it" but made it in real style. They…
sb admin | November 15, 2007Somehow, I missed Devra Davisâ powerful essay Off Target in the War on Cancer which appeared in the Washington Post last week. Davis, a well known environmental epidemiologist, is the author of the just published The Secret History of the War on Cancer. In the Post essay, she makes a very convincing case that there is much we can do to reduce cancer risk. While we donât know all the answers, from a regulatory point-of-view its better to be safe than sorry:
Consider the icon of American cancer, the cyclist Lance Armstrong. He's hardly alone as an inspiring younger survivor. Of the 10 million…
sb admin | November 13, 2007At last week's annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the organization adopted more than a dozen new policy resolutions which will guide its work into the future. Included among them was a call for "Congress to fundamentally restructure the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA)" so that more attention is paid to the toxic and ecotoxic properties of chemicals in commerce.
 APHA's policy resolution on TSCA* describes the limitations of the existing law, echoing assessments made by other groups. In 2005 and 2006, for example, the Government Accountability…
sb admin | November 2, 2007Devra Davisâs The Secret History of the War on Cancer is getting some wonderful, well-deserved reviews. Davis is a well-known an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh. Robin Mejia, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, writes
The book is a must-read for those concerned about their own health or that of their loved ones. It's also fascinating.
Mejia is right - the book is filled with fascinating historical material, linked with a focus on cancer prevention right now. To Davis, this means more than just promoting healthier lifestyles,…
sb admin | November 1, 2007Mondayâs edition of the On Point radio show (a production of WBUR in Boston) focused on the issue of the chemicals that surround us, and the movement for âgreen chemistry.â The first guest was Pete Myers, who produces the indispensable Environmental Health News and co-authored the book Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?; John Warner, president and CTO of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, joined the show part way through.
Myers gave concise, easy-to-understand explanations of the concerns surrounding phthalates and bispehnol A; the…
revere | October 31, 2007Pesticides are one of the few kinds of chemicals specially designed to kill living things that we intentionally put into our environment in high volume. A large class of pesticides are the organophosphates (OPs), agents that affect the normal process of nerve impulse transmission.
What we call pests are one kind of organism they can kill, but OPs are unaware of our human categories like "pest." They are also adept at killing and sickening other organisms. Like us. They do it frighteningly often in the developing world, and they do it in the developed world as well. There is a nice Jack…
sb admin | October 29, 2007The US Dept of Justice (DOJ) announced last week an agreement with British Petroleum (BP) on three outstanding criminal cases, with monetary penalities totaling more than $370 million. Included among the settlement were violations of the Clean Air Act associated with the March 2005 explosion at the firm's Texas City refinery, which killed 15 workers and injured 170 others.  BP agreed to pay a $50 million fine---the largest ever assessed under the CAA---for failing to ensure the mechanical integrity of the "blowdown stack," which resulted in the release of hydrocarbon liquid and…
revere | October 29, 2007Bruce Schneier, the security guru at Wired's Danger Room blog, reminds us of something important:
It's not true that no one worries about terrorists attacking chemical plants, it's just that our politics seem to leave us unable to deal with the threat. (Wired)
The chemical security problem is as urgent as it is obvious. Chemical plants are potentially static weapons of mass destruction: large volumes of ammonia, chlorine, highly flammables like propane, large repositories of chlorinated organic solvents and chemical feedstocks like phosgene and more. It's not just targeting the facility for…
sb admin | October 29, 2007On both sides of the Atlantic, new research into lead and crime is attracting attention. The New York Times and The Independent both reported on a new study by Amherst College economist Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, who found a correlation between blood lead levels and violent crime rates. Jascha Hoffman explains in the New York Times:
After moving out of an old townhouse in Boston when her first child was born in 2000, Reyes started looking into the effects of lead poisoning. She learned that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less intelligent and, in some cases, more…