Center for Health, Environment & Justice
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All I want for Christmas is a toxic-free Disney

Last Saturday, I stood outside of Disney’s iconic flagship store in Times Square, calling on them to make our dreams come true, by getting poisonous phthalates and vinyl plastic out of children’s school supplies. I organized the action with Penelope Jagessar Chaffer, a mother of two young children (who also came along for the fun), and Director of the fantastic new environmental health documentary, Toxic Baby. With me and Penelope and other concerned NYC residents were the voices and dreams of over 65,000 parents and Disney customers, who had signed

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November 26, 2012

Great Lakes Are Improving from Legacy Chemicals but Fracking May Change That

Environmental Health News recently reported that, “The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. The good news is that legacy contaminants are decreasing more quickly than previously reported in three of the Great Lakes, but have stayed virtually the same in two other lakes, according to new research… Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the pesticide DDT and other banned compounds dropped about 50 percent in fish in Lakes Michigan, Ontario and Huron from 1999 through 2009, although there were no significant changes in Lakes Superior and Erie fish,

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November 23, 2012

Using Blood Lead Levels to Set Cleanup Goals

The creativity of our government regulators never ceases to amaze me. I’ve seen a lot of incredibly stupid and callous decisions in my time, but this one is right up at the top. The US environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 10 and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality somehow thought it was a good idea to use Blood Lead Levels in children to establish a remedial action objective (RAO) at the Bunker Hill Superfund site in Kellogg, ID. According to a recent peer reviewed paper published in the American Journal

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November 17, 2012

It’s The Ground Game That Matters In Politics & Policy

The election is over and the analysis is being done. What worked, what didn’t and how can we learn from this experience? One strategy that everyone agrees worked was President Obama’s ground game; it made a difference. On election night Donna Brazile a democratic advisor/strategist said that when the Obama campaign staff said they were going to re-energize their base and expand it she didn’t think expanding was necessary. She went on to say that she was wrong. Expanding the base was the right move. Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what

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November 10, 2012

Health Effects Associated with Natural Gas Extraction using Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking

Perhaps the most intense public health issue to hit the east coast in the past five years is the extraction of natural gas using hydraulic fracturing, more commonly referred to as fracking. This process involves mixing more than a million gallons of water, sand and proprietary toxic chemicals and injecting this mixture at very high pressure into horizontally drilled wells as deep as 10,000 feet below the surface. This pressurized mixture causes the rock layer to crack creating fissures or passage ways in the rock. These fissures are held open

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November 2, 2012

Halloween's Toxic Troubles

This Halloween, Hurricane Sandy left behind toxic troubles from sewage and flooded hazardous waste sites in the New York City area. Huffington Post reported that, “Left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the toxic stew may threaten the health of residents already dealing with more direct damages from the disaster. “Normally, sewer overflows are just discharged into waterways and humans that generate the sewage can avoid the consequences by avoiding the water,” said John Lipscomb of the clean water advocacy group Riverkeeper. “But in this case, that waste has come

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October 31, 2012
Blog Roll
Greenpeace’s The Witness
Grist
Groovy Green
Healthy Child Healthy World
Inside Prevention
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Moms Rising
Pharos
Safe Mama
Safer Chemicals Healthy Families
The Soft Landing
Treehugger
Zero Waste World