Environmental health
cmonforton | July 16, 2013In its short history dating back to 1998, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board has conducted more than 100 investigations of industrial chemical explosions, unplanned toxic releases, spills and other incidents. Some of the disasters made the headlines, such as the 2005 explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City, TX which killed 15 workers, but others garnered much less public attention. Accompanying the CSB's investigation reports are detailed recommendations made to the companies involved, as well as trade associations, consensus standard-setting groups, unions, the US EPA and Occupational…
lborkowski | July 16, 2013In a recent opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press, David Fukuzawa of the Kresge Foundation suggests that improving the performance of Detroit's public school children requires tackling lead poisoning. Federal and state funds to prevent lead poisoning have dropped, and the millions of dollars spent to improve Detroit schools "cannot succeed without improving the public health of the city's children, especially young children." Reducing lead exposure can be costly and complicated, but the payoff is worth it.
Even though the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned lead paint in 1978, housing…
kkrisberg | July 12, 2013In a recent study comparing workers at industrial livestock operations and those employed at antibiotic-free livestock operations, researchers found that industrial workers were much more likely to carry livestock-associated strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly and scarily known as MRSA.
First, it's important to note that both groups of workers had a similar prevalence of S. aureus and methicillin-resistant S. Aureus (MRSA); however, it was overwhelmingly workers at industrial livestock operations, sometimes known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs,…
kkrisberg | July 5, 2013Last year, reported cases of West Nile virus in the United States hit their highest levels in nearly a decade. It's a good reminder to keep protecting yourself from getting bitten, but it also begs the question: Is this just a sign of a much bigger threat? The answer is just as wily as the pesky mosquito.
According to recent data published June 28 in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the federal public health agency received reports of 5,780 nationally notifiable arboviral disease cases in 2012. (Arboviral diseases are those transmitted by arthropods, such as ticks and mosquitoes…
lborkowski | July 3, 2013The Supreme Court's decisions on marriage equality and the Voting Rights Act got a lot of media attention last week, but several of the Court's other decisions also have implications for public health -- and they came down on the side of employers, real-estate developers, and drug manufacturers.
In a Washington Post op-ed, Georgetown University law professor David Cole warns, "the underlying theme of the Supreme Court’s term was not the recognition of rights, but their dilution." He points to two cases involving employment discrimination:
In a pair of less-noticed decisions released the day…
lborkowski | June 21, 2013by Kim Krisberg
When most of us pass by a new high-rise or drive down a new road, we rarely think: Did the builders and planners consider my health? However, a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers evidence that certain types of land use and transportation decisions can indeed limit the human health and environmental impacts of development.
Released in mid-June, the publication is a revised and updated version of an EPA report initially published in 2001. Agency officials said the report was particularly timely as the nation's built environments are quickly changing…
cmonforton | June 10, 2013The way some companies operate, it's no wonder that thousands of workers in the U.S. are lead poisoned each year.
In January, federal OSHA issued 14 willful and 11 repeat violations to Panthera Painting for exposing its employees to lead. The workers were using abrasive blasting equipment to remove lead paint from several bridge structures over the Pennsylvania Turnpike and along Interstate 81. The OSHA inspector described how the Panthera crews didn't have the proper equipment or training to do their jobs in ways to minimize exposure to lead dust. Their exposure to lead exceeded OSHA's…
lborkowski | June 5, 2013When Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) passed away Monday at the age of 89, the Senate lost one of its longest-serving members and the US lost a public-health champion. Brad Plumer at the Washington Post's Wonkblog describes several of Senator Lautenberg's achievements, including banning smoking on airplanes, preventing people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns, and requiring states to raise their drinking ages to 21 and lower the drunk-driving blood alcohol threshold from .10 to .08. The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin writes about Lautenberg's environmental…
egrossman | May 22, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
What constitutes a disease? If the symptoms are sub-clinical and the cause is an environmental contaminant, what is the appropriate public health response? Once an environmental hazard is identified, who is responsible for removing that hazard to protect people from ongoing exposure and to what extent – or is society’s responsibility limited to treating those individuals already harmed?
These are questions central to Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and Fate of America’s Children, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s provocative new book that tells the disheartening…
cmonforton | May 16, 2013The residents of Battlement Mesa didn't want their "Colorado Dream" ---the community's slogan----to turn into their nightmare. The unincorporated 3,200 acre, residential community offers its 5,000 residents high desert mountain views above the Colorado River, and boasts of opportunities for hiking, birding, golfing, fishing and hunting. But in 2009, Antero Resources identified the Battlement Mesa locale in Garfield County as a proposed site for 200 natural gas wells. That move raised concerns among the residents on how hydrofracking projects might change their way of life. They'd read…
cmonforton | May 1, 2013Steve McGraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), told members of the Texas legislature that responsibility for informing residents about the chemical hazards in their communities----such as at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas----falls to local officials. The Dallas Morning-News' Brandon Formby reports from the first public hearing to examine the circumstances that led to the catastrophic April 17 explosion. The inquiry was held by the Texas Legislature's House Committee on Homeland Security & Public Safety.
“It’s a local up,” DPS Director Steve McCraw said…
cmonforton | April 30, 2013I take mine black, but millions of U.S. coffee drinkers love their java beans flavored to taste like hazelnut, buttered toffee, french toast and amaretto. One supplier in Florida boasts of 47 different flavors. Fans of flavored coffee beans pay a premium for them, but some workers in the bean processing plants are paying a steeper price: their health.
This week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report describes cases of obliterative bronchiolitis diagnosed in two individuals who worked at a Texas coffee-processing company. Bronchiolitis obliterans is a rare and serious obstructive lung…
lborkowski | April 26, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Another day, another study that shows investing in public health interventions can make a serious dent in health care spending.
A new study recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that banning smoking in all U.S. subsidized housing could yield cost savings of about $521 million every year. That total includes $341 million in secondhand smoke-related health care expenditures, $108 million in renovation expenses and $72 million in smoking-attributable fire losses. In fact, just prohibiting smoking in public housing alone would result in a savings…
cmonforton | April 25, 2013USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack seems determined to implement a new poultry slaughter inspection system, despite strong calls from the food safety and public health communities for him to withdraw it. At an April 17 congressional hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittees on Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA and Related Agencies, Vilsack indicated that the new regulation would be completed soon, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Opponents say the proposal will do little to improve food safety, at the same time reducing USDA's ranks of poultry inspectors and shifting their food-…
cmonforton | April 23, 2013The funeral services are beginning this week for the 10 volunteer firefighters and the five other individuals who were fatally injured by the horrific explosion at West Fertilizer. The initial call about the fire at the plant was made to the West Volunteer fire department at 8:30 pm. The explosion occurred 21 minutes later. The Dallas Morning News is reporting that the firefighters knew the plant stored chemicals used in explosives, "but whether that knowledge factored into the attempts to put out the fatal blaze near the plant remained unclear." The Texas State Fire Marshall's Office…
egrossman | April 8, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
An anecdote related in Dan Fagin’s compelling new book, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, that tells the heartbreaking and infuriating history of how chemical industry pollution devastated that New Jersey community, points to one of the biggest flaws in our regulatory system’s approach to protecting people from toxics. In 1986, during a public meeting of the Ocean County Board of Health – Ocean County is home to Toms River, where the Ciba chemical company began manufacturing dye chemicals in the 1950s – an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official…
lborkowski | March 27, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
While commercially manufactured polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979 due to concern about their extreme environmental persistence and toxicity – including potential to cause cancer – current EPA regulations allow the presence of limited amounts of PCBs that occur as manufacturing by-products. These by-product PCBs are not created or added to products intentionally but occur as a result of certain manufacturing processes, among them the synthesis of certain pigments that go into dyes, inks and paints.
As I…
lborkowski | March 25, 2013By Polly Hoppin, Dick Clapp, Molly Jacobs, Margaret Quinn and David Kriebel
We all know a woman who has been diagnosed with breast cancer, whether she’s our mother, sister, close friend or neighbor. It’s the most common invasive cancer in women in this country, and we need to get more serious about preventing it. Last month a respected group released a report on breast cancer prevention with a clear and urgent message: “identifying and mitigating the environmental causes of breast cancer is the key to reducing the number of new cases.” The report of the Interagency Breast Cancer and…
lborkowski | February 27, 2013Over the past half-decade, the US has seen a sharp increase in high-volume hydraulic fracturing -- also called hydrofracking, or simply "fracking" -- to extract natural gas from underground shale formations. States' responses to fracking applications have varied, and in general public health concerns seem to have gotten far too little consideration.
The latest issue of the environmental and occupational health policy journal New Solutions is devoted to the issue of high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), and PDFs of all the articles are available for free online. It's a great resource for…
lborkowski | February 22, 2013by Kim Krisberg
For many migrant farmworkers, the health risks don't stop at the end of the workday. After long, arduous hours in the field, where workers face risks ranging from tractor accidents and musculoskeletal injuries to pesticide exposure and heat stroke, many will return to a home that also poses dangers to their well-being. And quite ironically for a group of workers that harvests our nation's food, one of those housing risks is poor cooking and eating facilities.
A group of researchers and advocates recently decided to take a closer look at such facilities among migrant farmworker…