Back in August, our New Solutions: The Drawing Board partnership with the journal New Solutions featured a post by Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson about the situation in Cananea, Mexico, where miners have been striking against the Asarco/Grupo Mexico copper operation for more than three years. The miners are demanding improvements not only to unsafe […]
[Update 4/22/2011: see CDC’s NIOSH corrects asbestos statement] It was almost too much to believe. Here I was attending the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization’s (ADAO) annual meeting, mingling and learning from patients and researchers about asbestos-related disease, and I hear that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and […]
Environmental Health
Who’s exposed – and what can they do about it? Biomonitoring for consumer products and workplaces
by Elizabeth Grossman “If I say pollution, the images that first come to mind are likely to be smokestacks, waste pipes, an accident or a disaster. But increasingly, environmental health researchers are focusing on sources that are much closer to home, like toys and beauty products and food packaging and cleaners and furniture. These are […]
I was delighted to be a guest on the Skeptically Speaking radio show/ podcast recently – I spoke with host Desiree Schell about why toilets (and other related forms of sanitation) are so great. In fact, the whole episode is dedicated to the topic of “Sewer Science,” and also features University of York’s Alistair Boxall […]
Environmental Health
As world watches Japan’s nuclear plants, damage to manufacturing infrastructure poses chemical risks
By Elizabeth Grossman After posting yesterday’s story, I began to learn what a hub of chemical-intensive industry the region of Japan most directly affected by the earthquake an tsunami is. Hit with varying degrees of damage from the earthquake and tsunami are more than a dozen major petrochemical plants, most, according to a March 14 […]
by Elizabeth Grossman Even before news of the crisis at the Fukushima and other Japanese nuclear power plants damaged by Friday’s massive earthquake and tsunami arrived, raising public health concerns to an alarming level, the scenes of destruction prompted many questions about how public health – and that of first responders – would be protected […]
Environmental Health
Will Gulf Coast ecosystem restoration include restoring the health of its people?
By Elizabeth Grossman It’s now almost eleven months since the BP/Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers, and almost eight months since the damaged well was capped. While the emergency phase of this disaster is over, the assessment of and response to its long-term impacts are just now getting underway. On February 28th, the […]
Given how many complaints we’ve been hearing lately about wasteful government spending, I thought this might be a good time to highlight some lesser-known, worthwhile government-funded programs that promote public health. (Core agency functions, like EPA’s Clean Air Act enforcement, are also crucial for public health, but I trust this audience is already fairly familiar […]
Earlier this week, the EPA released a report that quantifies costs and benefits of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments – and, surprise, surprise, the benefits substantially outweigh the costs: $2 trillion vs. $65 billion in 2020. Specifically, The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act from 1990 to 2020 evaluates the costs and […]
By Dick Clapp An ambitious paper was released in Boston last week, with subsequent media coverage in local, national and international outlets (see, for example the New York Times’ Green Blog and Reuters). The first author, Paul Epstein, was interviewed on the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise, which was anchored in the Boston Harbor as […]