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Published on Leave a comment on The Senate Votes To Release More Mercury and Lead Into the Air

Uh oh...So many environmental regulations dealing with the environment are being overturned this year. In addition to changing the mission of the EPA (it's no longer to protect us and the environment, but instead to roll back regulations and costs - in other words, pro polluters and Big Business), the Senate is doing its bit to make our air and water dirtier.

The Senate voted last week to overturn EPA rules on 7 toxic air pollutants emitted by industry, with voting along party lines - Republicans voted to weaken regulations, and Democrats voted against it. These are horrible pollutants, including mercury, lead, dioxins.

The scientific names of the 7 pollutants are: mercury, alkylated lead compounds, hexachlorobenzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), polycyclic organic matter (POM), 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzofurans (TCDF), and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin.

How can anyone rationalize weakening regulations on these toxic chemicals and think that allowing more to be released into the air as beneficial? These hazardous chemicals cause death, neurological problems, cancer, and so many more health problems.

This is a huge win for the chemical and fossil fuel industry, and a major loss for people (us!) and the environment.

It is expected that the House will also pass this bill. This will be the first time that the Congress weakens protections passed in the Clean Air Act. So... this will be their legacy - deliberately making our environment more polluted.

From Washington Post: Senate overturns EPA rule on seven highly toxic air pollutants

The Senate voted Thursday to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting the seven most hazardous air pollutants emitted by chemical plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities, reversing one of President Joe Biden’s major environmental regulations.

The 52-46 vote delivers a key victory to major companies and trade groups in the fossil fuel and petrochemical sectors that had lobbied against the regulation. It also marks the first time in the Clean Air Act’s 55-year history that Congress has scaled back protections under the landmark environmental law.

...continue reading "The Senate Votes To Release More Mercury and Lead Into the Air"

Published on Leave a comment on Is This the End Of the Journal Examining Effects Of the Environment On Health?
Credit: Wikipedia

Will the leading environmental health science journal Environmental Health Perspectives lose funding and be forced to shut down due to DOGE budget cuts? It appears this will happen.

This journal publishes high quality research and information on the effects of the environment on human health. It has published research on effects on humans from forever chemicals, endocrine disruptors, flamed retardants, pesticides, air pollution, lead, arsenic, mercury, toxins in skin care products, and so much more.

It is published monthly, and is free to everyone (it is open access). For decades, the journal has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to review studies on the health effects of environmental toxins (e.g., forever chemicals, pesticides) and publish them for free.

However, it now may be shut down due to DOGE budget cuts at NIH. The journal has already announced that it is no longer accepting articles for publication.  Shutting down this journal would be a terrible loss to all of us.

By the way, two other well-regarded journals, both published by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are also on the chopping block: Emerging Infectious Diseases and Preventing Chronic Disease. The first journal has cutting-edge reports on infectious disease threats (e.g., mpox viruses, Marburg virus) from around the world.

From NY Times: Citing N.I.H. Cuts, a Top Science Journal Stops Accepting Submissions

Environmental Health Perspectives, widely considered the premier environmental health journal, has announced that it would pause acceptance of new studies for publication, as federal cuts have left its future uncertain. ...continue reading "Is This the End Of the Journal Examining Effects Of the Environment On Health?"

Published on Leave a comment on Four Baby Foxes Doing Well
Credit: M Silgailis

This week I find myself looking to see if the 4 baby red foxes and their mother have made it through another day. This is day 3 after emerging from their den.

They now stay close to their den at all times. No sign of a father fox. Single parenthood is tough. (photos from first day)

Published on Leave a comment on Baby Foxes
Credit: M. Silgailis

 

 

Last weekend 4 baby red foxes emerged from their den for the first time. They were so exuberant, running all over the yard, and even up to my house. They had no fear that day.

 

 

Credit: M Silgailis
Credit: M. Silgailis

 

 

Baby foxes are also called kits or cubs. They are about 4 to 5 weeks old.

Published on Leave a comment on Silver Supplements Build Up In the Body
Man with argyria Credit: Wikipedia

The use of silver instead of antibiotics is incredibly popular as an alternative medical treatment for various ailments. It can be taken by mouth and swallowed (colloidal silver supplements) or applied to skin wounds. However, when colloidal silver is ingested, it stays in the body and builds up over time - in the skin, the organs, fingernails.

It's not clear how much colloidal silver you can ingest before it's harmful. But in large amounts it can result in a blue-gray tint of the skin, eyes, organs, nails, and gums - this condition is called argyria. Unfortunately, even if a person stops taking silver, the blue-gray tint remains. There have been a number of cases reported in the medical literature of argyria, for example a man who ingested it daily for one year ("to ward off infections").

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that colloidal silver isn’t safe or effective for treating any disease or condition and has taken action against a number of companies for making misleading claims about colloidal silver products.

The following article describes one such case in an elderly man in Hong Kong. Excerpts from Ars Technica: Man turns irreversibly gray from an unidentified silver exposure

When an 84-year-old man in Hong Kong was admitted to a hospital for a condition related to an enlarged prostate, doctors noticed something else about him—he was oddly gray, according to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine. ...continue reading "Silver Supplements Build Up In the Body"

Published on Leave a comment on Years of Education and Life Expectancy in the US

We all want to live a long and healthy life, but what helps accomplish this? A recent study found that the years of education a person has makes a big difference - the more years of education, the longer the average life expectancy. By years!

In the large study (involving 3110 US counties), researchers found that life expectancy differed by about 11 years when comparing college graduates versus high school graduates or only some high school.

Life expectancy in the US was highest among college graduates (84.2 years) lower among those with some college education (82.1 years), lower still among those with a high school diploma (77.3 years), and lowest among those with some high school (73.5 years). When combining everyone (all groups), average life expectancy in 2019 was 80.1 years

Also, between 2000 and 2019, life expectancy increased the most for college graduates, less for the next 2 groups, and stayed the same for those without a high school diploma. Females also had a longer life expectancy than males in all groups, with the biggest difference in the high school groups (about 5.6 to 5.8 years), and the least among college graduates (3.1 years).

From Medical Xpress: US college graduates live an average of 11 years longer than those who never finish high school, study finds

Across more than 3,000 US counties, vast geographic differences with a widening gap were registered between the least and most educated, with a longer lifespan for those with a higher level of education. That's according to the latest analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington's School of Medicine that was published in The Lancet Public Health. ...continue reading "Years of Education and Life Expectancy in the US"

Published on Leave a comment on The Plastics In Our Homes Are Toxic In A Fire
House fire Credit: Wikipedia

We all use plastic products in our daily lives. Our houses are usually full of plastics, especially modern houses. Examples: much furniture (e.g., engineered wood), upholstery fabrics (e.g., polyester), rugs (e.g., polyolefin), flooring (vinyl), foam in mattresses, synthetic fabric clothing, even the acrylic paint on our walls, and outdoor vinyl siding - it's all made with plastics from petrochemicals.

And when it burns in a fire, it's toxic and harmful to breathe.

Watch the video made by the UL Fire Safety Research Institute that show side- by-side burn comparisons between natural and synthetic furnished rooms. Pretty shocking! And yes, the all natural materials (e.g., wood, cotton) burned much slower and the smoke was less toxic than the synthetic materials. Flashover time (when escape becomes impossible) was under 5 minutes in the synthetic furnishing room and over 30 minutes in the natural furnishings room.

The following The Atlantic article sums up the dangers nicely. One vivid example is pointing out that most of our modern sofas are "basically blocks of gasoline". These are good reasons to consider using more natural materials in our homes (cotton, wood, glass, steel, etc.).

Excerpts from The Atlantic: What Happens When a Plastic City Burns

As flames rip through Los Angeles County, burning restaurants, businesses, and whole blocks of houses, it’s clear that the threat of urban fire has returned to the United States. But this time, the urban landscape is different: Modern homes are full of plastic, turning house fires into chemical-laced infernos that burn hotter, faster, and more toxic than their predecessors. ...continue reading "The Plastics In Our Homes Are Toxic In A Fire"

Published on Leave a comment on Patient Experiences Worsen In Hospitals Acquired By Private Equity

Everyone reading this will say: Ah ha...of course. When profits come first, then patient care suffers. A recent study looked at 73 private-equity acquired hospitals compared to 293 hospitals that weren't, and found that the patient care experience and patient-staff responsiveness worsened in hospitals taken over and managed by private equity.

And with each additional year of private equity ownership, these measures further worsened. As the study authors noted: this is due to profit-driven changes made by private equity. One of the researchers noted: "The evidence to date suggests that when private equity takes over a hospital, things generally get worse for patients."

From Medical Xpress: Patient care declines after private equity buys hospitals, study finds

In a paper published in JAMA, health policy experts at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) report that patient care experience worsened after private equity (PE) acquisition of US hospitals, as did patient-reported staff responsiveness.

Rishi Wadhera, MD, MPP, Anjali Bhatla, MD, and colleagues demonstrated that patient care continued to worsen at PE-acquired hospitals with each additional year following acquisition relative to non-acquired hospitals, suggesting that profit-driven changes made by PE may have downstream effects that accumulate over time. ...continue reading "Patient Experiences Worsen In Hospitals Acquired By Private Equity"