Environmental and occupational public health challenges

• Up one level
• Agents of Change in Environmental Justice
  Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Environmental Health News. Our mission is to empower emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.
• Our Movement Starts Here
  Documents the history of the Environmental Justice movement created in response to the dispersal of PCB-contaminated waste in rural North Carolina in 1982. Producers / Co-directors: John Rash & Melanie Ho (82 min., 2024).
• *Oliver Houck,Tales from a troubled marriage: science and law in environmental policy
  *Tales from a troubled marriage: science and law in environmental policy, Oliver Houck, Science 12 Dec 2003;302:1926-1929
• AP - Russia's nuclear nightmare flows down radioactive river
  Katherine Jacobsen, Associated Press, April 29, 2016 Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) upstream from Dambaev's crumbling village lies Mayak, a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country's biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility's decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations.
• As Quakes Rattle Oklahoma, Fingers Point to Oil and Gas Industry
  Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Michael Wines, NY Times, April 3, 2015
• Association between air pollution exposure and mental health service use among individuals with first presentations of psychotic and mood disorders: retrospective cohort study
  Joanne B. Newbury, Robert Stewart, Helen L. Fisher, Sean Beevers, et al. British Journal of Psychiatry. Published online 19 August 2021
  Abstract
  Background: Growing evidence suggests that air pollution exposure may adversely affect the brain and increase risk for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and depression. However, little is known about the potential role of air pollution in severity and relapse following illness onset.
  Aims: To examine the longitudinal association between residential air pollution exposure and mental health service use (an indicator of illness severity and relapse) among individuals with first presentations of psychotic and mood disorders.
  Method: We identified individuals aged ≥15 years who had first contact with the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust for psychotic and mood disorders in 2008–2012 (n = 13 887). High-resolution (20 × 20 m) estimates of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) levels in ambient air were linked to residential addresses. In-patient days and community mental health service (CMHS) events were recorded over 1-year and 7-year follow-up periods.
  Results: Following covariate adjustment, interquartile range increases in NO2, NOx and PM2.5 were associated with 18% (95% CI 5–34%), 18% (95% CI 5–34%) and 11% (95% CI 3–19%) increased risk for in-patient days after 1 year. Similarly, interquartile range increases in NO2, NOx, PM2.5 and PM10 were associated with 32% (95% CI 25–38%), 31% (95% CI 24–37%), 7% (95% CI 4–11%) and 9% (95% CI 5–14%) increased risk for CMHS events after 1 year. Associations persisted after 7 years.
  Conclusions: Residential air pollution exposure is associated with increased mental health service use among people recently diagnosed with psychotic and mood disorders. Assuming causality, interventions to reduce air pollution exposure could improve mental health prognoses and reduce healthcare costs.
  
• Biological Invasions as Global Environmental Change
  Peter M. Vitousek, Carla M. D'Antonio, Lloyd L. Loope and Randy Westbrooks American Scientist. 1996 (Sept-Oct);84(5):468-478 "The human species is noteworthy for its ability to forge into new environments and drastically alter them.... In the course of our global travels, we don't merely bring the material trappings of our cultures, we also carry other species with us ... Unfortunately, the redistribution of the earth's species is proving to be ecologically and economically damaging, and the costs will continue to worsen."
• Chicago Tribune - EPA tosses aside safety data, says Dow pesticide for GMOs won't harm people
  GMO corn and soybeans tolerate higher doses of pesticides, but weeds have become more resistant naturally. What levels of which pesticides are safe to use?
• Coal ash - the mess we created
• Code 9 - Officer Needs Assistance - the documentary
  The Code 9 Documentary is Produced and Directed by Deborah Louise Ortiz. Deborah is the wife of a retired State Trooper who served 22 years in Law Enforcement. Michael has PTSD due to all he has seen on the job and the Code 9 film tells the stories of First Responders and families who are left to deal with the effects of stress and trauma of the careers they chose.
• Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs): Assessment of Impacts on health, local economies, and the environment wIth suggested alternatives
  Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa 52556, 641-472-1200, caforesponse@ISTPP.org
• Corporate actions related to lead exposure
• Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution
  By Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner
  
  In Fall, 2002, our book, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, was published jointly by the University of California Press and the Milbank Fund as one in a series that addressed a variety of aspects of health policy. Briefly, the book looked at questions regarding how two industries, the lead industry and the chemical industry, reacted when faced with information regarding the potential dangers of their products to human health during the twentieth century.
• Fighting Environmental Racism in North Carolina
  Vann R. Newkirk II, The New Yorker, Jan. 16, 2016 More than four decades later, the landfill has been expanded and there is no recreation area. A manhole cover near the site of the agreement serves as a symbol of services not rendered; many of the original residents of the community still lack sewer connections. “The most disgusting thing that I have with Chapel Hill was that it did not follow through with what I thought was an honest commitment,” Lee, who is now retired from public life, told me recently. “Unfortunately, when I left, they had amnesia.” Local residents have been fighting continuously to see Lee’s promises realized, first under the auspices of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association (RENA), then with the Coalition to End Environmental Racism (CEER). The movement has spanned generations. David Caldwell, Jr., the son of the man under whose tree the original meeting took place, and who was present there as a boy, is one of today’s activists. “We had to learn how to fight,” he said.
• Fresh Air - America's 'Lead Wars' Go Beyond Flint, Mich.: 'It's Now Really Everywhere' (37 min)
  NPR Fresh Air, March 3, 2016 "Though the health crisis in Flint has highlighted the use of lead in water pipes, author David Rosner tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that lead, which is a neurotoxin, can be found throughout the U.S. on walls, in soil and in the air. "'The problem with lead is that it's now really everywhere, and we've created a terribly toxic environment in all sorts of ways,' he says. "Lead is particularly dangerous to young children. In their book, Lead Wars, Rosner and co-author Gerald Markowitz describe the ways in which even small exposures can interfere with a child's brain development and cause lasting learning challenges."
• New Solutions, A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy
  Quarterly journal with articles by scientists, policy-makers, unionists, environmentalists, and activists.
• NY Times - Garbage Incinerators Make Comeback, Kindling Both Garbage and Debate
  Garbage Incinerators Make Comeback, Kindling Both Garbage and Debate By Timothy Williams, Jan. 10, 2015, NY Times
  Releasing mercury and lead in urban communities
• Recycling Electronic Waste Responsibly: Excuses Dwindle
  Molly Wood, NYTimes.com, Dec. 31, 2014
• Revealed: Monsanto predicted crop system would damage US farms
  Carey Gillam, The Guardian, 30 Mar 2020
  The US agriculture giant Monsanto and the German chemical giant BASF were aware for years that their plan to introduce a new agricultural seed and chemical system would probably lead to damage on many US farms, internal documents seen by the Guardian show.
• School haze
  NPR, Reveal, Feb 18, 2017 CPI reporter Jamie Hopkins recounts how many schools operate near busy roads – and how her team was able to figure that out. Next, Reveal reporter Amy Walters takes us to El Marino elementary school in Los Angeles next to the busiest highway in America, but parents and teachers got together to install air filters at El Marino. Finally, Reveal producer Ike Sriskandarajah visits Chicago – where hospitalization rates for asthma are twice the national average.
• Seal Meat, Gold Mining: How Lower-Income Women Are Exposed To Mercury
  Greta Jochem, Goats and Soda - Stories of Life in a Changing World, NPR, Oct 3, 2017 ... "Mercury in Women of Childbearing Age in 25 Countries," from IPEN, a nonprofit devoted to issues of global health and toxic chemicals, and Biodiversity Research Institute, an ecology research organization. The groups studied 1,044 women from lower-income countries and found that 42 percent had average mercury levels exceeding the EPA reference dose in their hair samples. The potential harm to the development of the fetal brain is of special concern, says Joseph Graziano, professor of environmental health sciences and pharmacology at Columbia University. "You get just once chance," he says. "When the damage is done, the damage is done and there's no going back."
• Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Condemns Destruction and Desecration of Burial Grounds by Energy Transfer Partners
  Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Indian Country, Sept 4, 2016 Sacred places containing ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe were destroyed on Saturday September 3 by Energy Transfer Partners, Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said.
• Sustainable Pulse
  Sustainable Pulse provides the general public with the latest global news on GMOs, Sustainable Food and Sustainable Agriculture from our network of worldwide sources.
• The Racial Ecology of lead poisoning: Toxic Inequality in Chicago Neighborhoods, 1995-2013
  Robert J. Sampson and Alix S. Winter Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race Published online: 15 August 2016 Abstract: This paper examines the racial ecology of lead exposure as a form of environmental inequity, one with both historical and contemporary significance. Drawing on comprehensive data from over one million blood tests administered to Chicago children from 1995-2013 and matched to over 2300 geographic block groups, we address two major questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship between neighborhood-level racial composition and variability in children’s elevated lead prevalence levels? And (2) what is the nature of the relationship between neighborhood-level racial composition and rates of change in children’s prevalence levels over time within neighborhoods? We further assess an array of structural explanations for observed racial disparities, including socioeconomic status, type and age of housing, proximity to freeways and smelting plants, and systematic observations of housing decay and neighborhood disorder. Overall, our theoretical framework posits lead toxicity as a major environmental pathway through which racial segregation has contributed to the legacy of Black disadvantage in the United States. Our findings support this hypothesis and show alarming racial disparities in toxic exposure, even after accounting for possible structural explanations. At the same time, however, our longitudinal results show the power of public health policies to reduce racial inequities.
• The risky chemical lurking in your wallet
  The risky chemical lurking in your wallet. New research finds that the BPA in cash register receipts can be absorbed through skin. Published: March 29, 2014 08:15 AM