Healthy People Bad for Business-As-Usual Say Legislators

Choosing polluters over children’s health

January 30, 2011

Our guest blogger is Pete Altman, in an NRDC Switchboard repost.

Let’s get straight to the point. When members of Congress choose to support bills that would prevent the EPA from updating Clean Air Act standards, they are making a choice to support polluters over the health of children and adults in America. Some of these bills will increase the amount of mercury, smog-forming, soot, toxic and carbon dioxide pollution that industrial plants will emit compared to if the EPA is allowed to do its job. Some will simply make it a law that we must allow industrial polluters to dump unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.
That’s why NRDC and Health Care Without Harm are teaming up today to make sure that the constituents of the members of Congress that have co-sponsored one or more Bad Air Bill know that their representatives are putting their health at risk:

How serious is the threat to health? Here’s what Brenda Afzel MS, RN, Health Care Without Harm’s Climate Policy Coordinator and member of the Executive Board of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments has to say about it:

“Putting the EPA in a political stranglehold will sentence tens of thousands of people to debilitating, respiratory illnesses such as asthma, adding to the burden of chronic disease in the nation and increasing the financial burden to the health care system. Let’s be clear: If these lawmakers are successful in blocking the EPA from doing its job to cut life-threatening pollution, more asthma sufferers, particularly children, will wind up gasping for breath.”

There are over 7 million kids and over 17 million adults with asthma in the lower 48 states. Since those who suffer from asthma are so vulnerable to air pollution, we thought it would be helpful to show how many kids and adults with asthma live in the counties that are represented by members of Congress who want to block the EPA. Here’s a table of the Bad Air Bill cosponsorswith details on asthma rates in their districts.
Behind the push to stop EPA from updating the Clean Air Act are polluters from the oil, coal and utility industries that don’t think protecting public health is worth the money to invest in cleaning up. So, the table includes polluter campaign contributions to the Bad Air Bill co-sponsors here. Many of these polluting contributors have prioritized blocking the EPA.
Here are the basics on the Bad Air Bills being pushed by members of Congress:

• Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a bill (H.R. 97) that would permanently block EPA from limiting carbon pollution.
• Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Va., introduced a bill (H.R. 199) that would block EPA from taking any action under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon or methane pollution, for two years.
• Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, introduced a bill (H.R. 153) that would prohibit EPA from developing or enforcing standards to limit carbon pollution.
• Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, has a introduced a resolution (H.J. RES. 9) that would permanently block the EPA from reducing the soot, mercury, cancer-causing toxic and smog-forming pollution that cement plants dump into the air.

What’s the link between carbon pollution and asthma? In 2009, EPA scientists determined carbon pollution is a public health risk, including its role in worsening the smog pollution to which asthmatics are particularly vulnerable. Regarding the effects on air quality, agency experts said “The evidence concerning adverse air quality impacts provides strong and clear support for an endangerment finding. Increases in ambient ozone are expected to occur over broad areas of the country, and they are expected to increase serious adverse health effects in large population areas that are and may continue to be in nonattainment. The evaluation of the potential risks associated with increases in ozone in attainment areas also supports such a finding.”
NRDC has also explored the links. My colleague Kim Knowlton has written extensively about the ties between carbon, global warming and health.
In 2004, a multi-disciplinary team of experts showed that warming temperatures will cause more days with unsafe ozone levels. The findings were published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Climatic Change, from which NRDC produced the report “Heat Advisory” that can be viewed here: http://www.nrdc.org/ globalWarming/ heatadvisory/ heatadvisory.pdf.
The 2007 update to the report can be found here: http://www.nrdc.org/ globalWarming/heatadvisory/ heatadvisory07.pdf.
– Pete Altman, in a Switchboard repost.

Env. 'Prevention' Agency Enables Corporate Eco-rapists

It's no accident that factory farms have spread across the country. Weak environmental rules and bad farm policy have allowed factory farms to take over livestock production. Even if you don't live near one, there are things you can do to help get rid of factory farms.
Factory farms are regulated under a patchwork system that leaves communities vulnerable to often indifferent and underfunded state environmental enforcement. Factory farm permitting rules released by the Environmental "Prevention" Agency (EPA) in 2008 only require permits for facilities that declare their intention to release manure directly into waterways. Common manure management practices -- like cesspool lagoons and applying manure to cropland -- don't require any permit at all.

Communities across the country are suffering from water contaminated by manure lagoon failures, waste seeping into aquifers, runoff from oversprayed fields and air pollution from overcrowded livestock operations.

Can you tell the EPA that it is time to regulate factory farms?
Click here. (BTW, sending a letter is not enough.)

Don't pee in our pool...

Our Toxic Waterways: Flushing Away Our Future?

(from Eating Liberally)

Big River Trailer from Wicked Delicate Films on Vimeo.
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Frustrated swimming pool owners in thousands of backyards across this country have posted a sign that pleads "We don't swim in your toilet, so please don't pee in our pool!"
The message is crude but clear. Nobody wants to wallow in somebody else's waste--or our own, for that matter. So why do we treat our seas like sewers? Why do we contaminate our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans with a horrible hodgepodge of chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, plastic debris and waste?
Evidently, the world's waterways are a giant toilet into which we can dump anything and everything, and then simply flush it all "away." As if river currents and rolling waves will pull our pollution into some giant cosmic garbage disposal.
Industrial agriculture's synthetic fertilizers have given us lush green lawns and amber waves of grain. But the run-off from all those yards and farms seeps into our water table and feeds the "red tides", those toxic algae blooms that cause massive die-offs of aquatic plants and animals.
Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the filmmakers who fondly documented their brief stint as Iowa corn farmers in King Corn, explore agribiz's downstream downside in Big River. In this thirty-minute sequel, Cheney and Ellis revisit their Iowa acre and trace its toxic trail all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The film will make its Manhattan debut on March 15th at the Brecht Forum, followed by a panel discussion with Cheney, Ellis, King Corn director Aaron Woolf, Hudson Valley farmer and MacArthur genius Cheryl Rogowski, and Steve Rosenberg of Scenic Hudson.
The screening is a benefit for the Food Systems Network NYC, a non-profit organization whose members (myself included) are dedicated to bringing fresh, wholesome foods to all New Yorkers and supporting our region's farmers, both urban and rural.

Males of All Species Are Becoming More Female

I first learned about endocrine disruptors about 14 years ago. The problems have only grown since then.

Pollution Puts Men in Danger

Thousands of chemicals released into the environment are interfering with animal and human endocrine systems, resulting in physical changes. Comprehensive research indicates that these chemicals, nicknamed “gender-benders,” are causing the males in many species to become feminized.

In British lowland rivers, 50 percent of male fish were found to be growing eggs in their testes, the Independent reported. Other discovered anomalies include hermaphrodite polar bears or deer with abnormal antler growth.

The full report of the Chem TRUST study, “Effects of Pollutants on the Reproductive Health of Male Vertebrate Wildlife—Males Under Threat,” is available on the organization’s Web site. It emphasizes that the study, which focuses primarily on animals, is also relevant for humans, because “All vertebrates have similar sex hormone receptors.” Thus, the feminization of other animals could indicate a similar pattern in humans. The study also lists the symptoms found in each of numerous species tested, some of which include testicular cancer.

The ill effects of these chemicals have in fact been documented for the human male populations as well. A study led by the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester examined baby boys from three different regions of the United States whose mothers had been exposed to substances containing phthalates. Researchers tested expectant mothers for the presence of these chemicals in their urine. Mothers with higher levels of the chemical tended to give birth to baby boys with smaller penises and in some cases, incompletely descended testicles.

Manufacturers of these chemicals, which are used in nail polish, hairspray and perfume bottles, suggested that it was unwise to jump to conclusions based on just one study. However, researchers have also found that male mice exposed to the chemical grow up to have more feminine physical traits, and have found similar results in human boys.