public health

EPA Rejects States’ Health Concerns Over Upwind Coal Air Pollution

EPA Rejects States’ Health Concerns Over Upwind Coal Air Pollution

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice Friday denying petitions by the states of Delaware and Maryland for it to recognize that upwind state pollution sources are interfering with their ability to meet ozone standards. The states had used a provision of the Clean Air Act to petition for reduced nitrogen oxide emissions […]

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    Fight Against Glyphosate Could Reignite Push for Agent Orange Justice

    Fight Against Glyphosate Could Reignite Push for Agent Orange Justice

    A jury’s verdict in California that a groundskeeper got cancer from repeated exposure to Monsanto‘s Roundup weedkiller is offering new hope for justice for millions of plaintiffs an ocean away. During the Vietnam War, Monsanto was one of the primary companies that supplied Agent Orange to the U.S military, which sprayed 44 million liters (approximately […]

    Air Pollution Shortens Human Life by One Year, on Average

    Air Pollution Shortens Human Life by One Year, on Average

    In a summer marked by air quality alerts as wildfires rage in the western U.S., a study has been published finding that air pollution lowers the average lifespan by one year worldwide. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters Aug. 22, was the first to assess the impact of particulate matter pollution smaller […]

    Fire Chief: Verizon Throttled Data Speed, Endangering Firefighting Efforts

    Fire Chief: Verizon Throttled Data Speed, Endangering Firefighting Efforts

    A Northern California fire chief said in a court filing (pdf) Monday that during its efforts in battling the Mendocino Complex Fire—the largest in state history—that one of the department’s trucks, equipped with Verizon wireless service, had its connection speeds significantly slowed and made communication effectively impossible. “This throttling has had a significant impact on […]

    Why Asbestos Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S.

    Why Asbestos Is Still a Major Public Health Threat in the U.S.

    Reports surfaced this month that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had proposed a significant new use rule (SNUR) for asbestos in June, requiring anyone who wanted to start or resume importing or manufacturing the carcinogenic mineral to first receive EPA approval. Advocates and some EPA employees raised concerns that the SNUR could pave the […]

    Baby Food Tests Find 68 Percent Contain ‘Worrisome’ Levels of Heavy Metals

    Baby Food Tests Find 68 Percent Contain ‘Worrisome’ Levels of Heavy Metals

    Testing published by Consumer Reports (CR) Thursday found “concerning levels” of toxic metals in popular U.S. baby and toddler food. The consumer advocacy group tested 50 nationally-distributed, packaged foods designed for toddlers and babies for mercury, cadmium, arsenic and lead. They found that every product they tested had measurable amounts of cadmium, inorganic arsenic or […]

    Pesticide Food Poisoning Suspected as 10 Die After Funeral in Peru

    Pesticide Food Poisoning Suspected as 10 Die After Funeral in Peru

    Tragedy struck a funeral in Peru when 10 guests died after eating food that the health minister suspected had come into contact with insecticides, BBC News reported Wednesday. Fifty-two guests were sickened at the funeral, which took place Monday in the southern Andean region of Ayacucho, CNN reported. “People were poisoned by the food,” Health […]

    New Tick Species Spreads in U.S. for First Time in 50 Years

    New Tick Species Spreads in U.S. for First Time in 50 Years

    An invasive tick species was found to have spread to an eighth state Tuesday, when the Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced one was found on a deer in Washington County, The Washington Post reported. The tick, known as the Asian long-horned tick, scientific name Haemaphysalis longicornis, is the first new tick species to enter […]