Environmental Health News

Updated: Wednesday, January 02, 2008

We're walking, talking toxic waste dumps May 24th, 2006 -- Eight months ago, 10 Washingtonians volunteered blood, urine and hair samples to the Washington Toxics Coalition to be tested for eight classes of chemicals.

The results are in, and they are not pretty.

It wouldn't be kind to say that these 10 are walking toxic waste dumps, but their levels of phthalates (found in such diverse products as shower curtains and fragrances), PBDEs (found in flame retardants, mattresses and furniture), mercury, pesticides, lead and other chemicals were high enough to make both scientists and subjects sit up and take notice.

All 10 tested positive for five to seven of those eight categories. Their profiles and test results have been published in a Pollution in People report, a project of the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition of Washington State. Seattle Post Intelligencier

Risks of cleaning house disclosed:  May 23rd, 2006 -- One manufacturer promotes its pine-scented cleaning products as providing a ``Clean you can smell. A clean you can trust.'' But a groundbreaking new study suggests that household cleaners and air fresheners -- particularly those with pine, orange and lemon scents -- may emit harmful levels of toxic pollutants.

Exposure to some of these pollutants and their byproducts may exceed regulatory guidelines when used repeatedly or in small, poorly ventilated rooms, researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded after a four-year study. MercuryNews.com

For the Kids: Since government agencies often ignore or dismiss disease clusters, parents and scientists are taking matters into their own hands  May 17th, 2006 -- In 2002, the Arizona Department of Health Services declared a leukemia cluster in Sierra Vista, a booming military and ranching town 90 miles southeast of Tucson (see "Cancer Wars," Feb. 12, 2004). Between 1997 and the end of 2003, 12 children with ties to Sierra Vista were diagnosed--three times the expected number for a town of 40,000. Two of those children have died. Another Sierra Vista resident, a 23-year-old woman who'd lived in the town for 21 years, also died of leukemia in 2003, after being sick for about a year. Only children under the age of 14 are included in Arizona's childhood leukemia statistics, so her case is not counted in the cluster.

The National Disease Cluster Alliance, (http://www.clusteralliance.org/) a nonprofit formed last year, already has many tools for concerned laypeople online, and plans to roll out a Community Toolbox, a set of peer-reviewed protocols for collecting usable data on clusters, this July.

"On one CD, we'll have surveys, questionnaires and advice on dealing with the government, media relations and so on," Sands says. "We take them through everything they need: case definition, identification, verification. And we'll tell them that the first thing they do, on day one, is get an environmental snapshot of their community.

"What we want to do is empower communities, and help them eliminate that two- or three-year escape window the government agencies always leave hanging open for the black cats to escape through. We're going to finally slam that window shut and nail it tight."

Children's health study fights for funding  May 15th, 2006 -- Lead-free paint. Lead-free gasoline. Pesticide levels lowered tenfold.

Credit Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a pediatrician whose work helped to bring about all three.

He has been trying to protect children from environmental threats for more than 30 years — whether by documenting the dangers of lead and pesticides or these days advocating for the National Children's Study, an ambitious $2.7 billion project that had its funding scrapped by the Bush administration.

"First of all, it's the morally right thing to do," said Landrigan, the head of Mount Sinai's Center for Children's Health and the Environment in New York City and a professor at its School of Medicine. "A study that improves children's health would be a good investment for the country."

The study, for which President Bush included no money in his budget for the 2007 fiscal year, would follow 100,000 children across the country from before birth to age 21, tracking all of the factors in the environment that affect their health. The hope is to cut the rates of childhood diseases the way the Framingham (Mass.) Heart Study begun in 1948 reduced the rate of heart disease and strokes. Heart disease remains a killer in this country, but it is down by 50 percent among white men and women, Landrigan says. The Journal News

9/11 SUCKS 12 YRS. FROM BRAVEST LUNGS May 15, 2006 -- FDNY rescuers who sucked in toxic air while working at Ground Zero lost the equivalent of 12 years of lung function after the World Trade Center attacks, a bombshell health study shows.

"World Trade Center exposure produced a substantial reduction in pulmonary function in New York City Fire Department rescue workers during the first year following 9/11/01," according to the analysis of 12,079 fire and EMT workers conducted by Montefiore Medical Center-Einstein College and the FDNY.

The respiratory loss "equaled 12 years of aging-related decline," the report said.

The study compared the health conditions of the FDNY responders who worked on rescue and recovery efforts with their medical test results from the previous five years. New York Post

Tracing Lung Ailments That Rose With 9/11 Dust May 13th, 2006 -- As they push their investigation into the health risks to workers in the recovery and cleanup operations at ground zero, medical detectives are focusing on a group of lung diseases that can lead to long-term disabilities and, in some cases, death.

After nearly five years, it is still too early for these doctors, scientists and forensic pathologists to say with certainty whether any long-term cancer threat came with exposure to the toxic cloud unleashed by the trade center collapse. But there are already clear signs that the dust, smoke and ash that responders breathed in have led to an increase in diseases that scar the lungs and reduce their capacity to take in and let out air.

The Fire Department tracked a startling increase in cases of a particular lung scarring disease, known as sarcoidosis, among firefighters, which rose to five times the expected rate in the two years after Sept. 11. Though that rate has declined, doctors worry that the disease may be lurking in other firefighters. Experts who regularly see workers who were at ground zero in the 48 hours after the towers' collapse expect monitoring to show many more cases of lung- scarring disorders among that group. New York Times

What EPA doesn't want you to know, could kill you  Editorial, May 13th, 2006--In 1984, an accidental release from a chemical plant in Bhopal, India, killed thousands and permanently injured tens of thousands more. That next year, a smaller chemical release in the United States showed that virtually no one, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, had any idea what chemicals were used at U.S. industrial facilities.
In response to the growing number of questions and glaring lack of answers, in 1986 Congress established the Toxics Release Inventory program, leading to annual industry reports on the release of more than 600 hazardous substances. And all the information is available to the public.
The Bush administration, however, recently proposed to drastically and dangerously scale back TRI's reporting requirements. And adding insult to injury, the EPA just slammed the door on community health advocates and others attempting to engage the agency in a dialogue about why this could endanger the health of countless Americans. Fortunately, Congress has the opportunity to stop this rollback and rebuke EPA's know-nothing attitude.  Salt Lake Tribune

 

Contact ACCERT A mighty oak was once a little seed that held it's ground.