Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we’re re-posting some content from our old site. By Liz Borkowski, orginally posted 12/3/09 Twenty-five years ago, thousands of residents of Bhopal, India awoke in the middle of the night struggling to breathe. A Union Carbide pesticide plant had leaked 40 tons of methyl isocyanate, a highly toxic […]
Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we’re re-posting some content from our old site. By Celeste Monforton, originally posted 4/5/10 The painful and deadly toll that asbestos imposes on families across the globe is a public health problem of growing magnitude. In the U.S., individuals who are diagnosed today with asbestos-related disease may trace […]
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 […]
Environmental Health
Worth Reading: “Chronic Lyme Disease,” Migrant Farmworkers, and China’s Pollution Data
A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Patricia Callahan and Trine Tsouderos in the Chicago Tribune: Chronic Lyme disease: A dubious diagnosis (via Orac, who critiques the backlash against the article) The Economist: Migrant farm workers: Fields of tears Christina Larson in Yale Environment 360: In China, a New Transparency on Government Pollution Data […]
By the end of 2011, the Labor Department’s worker safety agencies expect to issue six new rules to better protect workers from on-the-job hazards. In the Department’s regulatory plan issued yesterday, OSHA projects it will finalize four rules while MSHA expects to complete two new standards. As I’ve written before, these plans quickly become stale […]
Environmental Health
OSHA should undertake an educational campaign on finding and fixing chemical exposures
by Eileen Senn, MS OSHA’s intention to finalize a list of chemicals on which to focus the agency’s efforts to address outdated rules on workplace chemical exposures was officially announced in the December 1 issue of OSHA Quick Takes and described in my November 17 post, “OSHA Poised to Action on Chemical Hazards.” No matter […]
Environmental Health
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Combines Reporting and Epidemiology in Air Pollution Series
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is running a fascinating in-depth series on air pollution in Western Pennsylvania. While it’s got a local focus, I’m sure people from other regions can identify with some of the problems it highlights, like the difficulties in regulating pollution that easily crosses state lines and the frustration of seeing inadequate Clean Air […]
Environmental Health
EPA says dioxin risk from burning BP/Deepwater Horizon oil is low – but what’s the context?
by Elizabeth Grossman On November 30th, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB) released a bulletin reporting on the accidental release of sulfur dioxide at the Murphy Oil refinery in Meraux, Louisiana. The Bucket Brigade tracks these releases as part of its work to reduce refinery accidents, and they explain that the November 30th release is “just […]
It’s been an interesting week of discussing urban issues, and I want to thank Sharon Astyk of Casaubon’s Book and all of our commenters for making it so fun. I learned some interesting things from the comments – especially that vertical agriculture probably doesn’t make sense, even if it sounds like a great idea to […]
Yesterday I mentioned sewer systems as an indispensable part of urban infrastructure, and today I want to focus on the more visible issue of transportation. The efficiency with which people and goods move into and within cities has a huge impact on both energy use and air quality. And the availability of non-driving modes of […]