The late Steve McQueen—the King of Cool—will be honored later this year by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) with its “Keep Me in Your Heart” memorial tribute award. McQueen starred in dozens of films including the The Great Escape (1963), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Bullitt (1968), and Papillon (1973). He died in November […]
Washington State becomes the first in the nation to adopt specific workplace safety rules to protect healthcare workers who are potentially exposed to anti-neoplastic drugs and other hazardous medications. The new rule, issued earlier this month by the State’s Department of Labor & Industries, stems from legislation passed in April 2011 and signed into law […]
While we’re on vacation, we’re re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 12, 2011. By Liz Borkowski For many years, the public health and environmental communities have been calling for reform of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which governs the use of chemicals in US commerce. […]
Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency’s new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which will reduce emissions of heavy metals and acid gases from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The approximately 1,400 units that EPA expects to be affected by the rule (because they aren’t already meeting the standard) will have up to four […]
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 […]
by Mark Pendergrast This is my third and final post about the state of Japan’s renewable energy efforts and other measures that are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In my first post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate change and explained why […]
by Mark Pendergrast This is my second post in a series of three about the state of Japan’s renewable energy efforts, which are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In the previous post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate change and explained why […]
The UN climate talks going on in Durban aren’t likely to lead to any major breakthroughs, but it would be nice if the US could at least avoid backsliding on the better-than-nothing steps it’s taken on emissions. One important step for controlling emissions is ensuring the availability of affordable public transportation. Congress has helped make […]
Environmental Health
Japan’s Tipping Point in Response to Climate Change: Will the Canary Survive the Coal Mine?
by Mark Pendergrast I’m going to talk about Japanese renewable energy in a minute, but first let me explain why. In 2010, I published a book on public health (Inside the Outbreaks), and as a follow-up, I concluded that the overarching threat to the world’s public health that we face in the coming decades is […]
By Elizabeth Grossman We have learned from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and released by the Center for Public Integrity earlier this month that there are currently about 465 United States industrial facilities on what the EPA calls its “watch list.” The list is made up of […]