EHS Today tackles Bangladesh factory safety; federal employees get paid for shutdown days, but thousands of contractors don’t; and health ministers from across the Americas pledge funds to address chronic kidney disease that’s killing agricultural workers.
J. Freedom du Lac reports in the Washington Post that Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman, killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on November 14th, was the 4,474th US servicemember to be killed in Iraq. With all the US troops now gone from Iraq, Hickman’s death may well be the last servicemember fatality directly attributed […]
A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked (or, in the case of the first item, found horribly disturbing but important): Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Ringing the Warning Bell: Colistin-Resistant Klebsiella J. Malcolm Garcia in Guernica: Smoke Screen (“In Afghanistan, the U.S. military disposes of garbage–computers, motorbikes, TVs, shoes, even human feces–in open burn pits. […]
Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we’re re-posting some content from our old site. By Liz Borkowski, originally posted 11/6/09 Earlier today, the Senate Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing on the use of burn pits for trash at military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan – a practice that may be exposing thousands of […]
44-year-old Iraq veteran Tim Wymore suffers from brain lesions, a blood disorder, and other health problems that leave him unable to walk unassisted. His wife, Shanna, quit her job to be his full-time caregiver. Wymore is one of several hundred veterans who’ve fired lawsuits related to exposure to open-air burn pits at US miliatry installations. […]