Center for Health, Environment & Justice
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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

When our children are sent off to day care – are they breathing in toxic phthalates?

When considering day care, more than a few related topics could come to mind: children, toys, play, and a safe environment are probably some to just name a few. However, although children at day care may be under the supervision of responsible adults and having a great time with their playmates, they may be at risk for a danger most parents would have no idea about — toxic chemicals in the day care environment. A new study of day care centers found a toxic cocktail of chemicals lurking in the

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October 26, 2012

Halloween Nightmare

I dreamed that just as I entered a Halloween haunted house the first monster I ran into was Frackenstine.  Just like the book Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment I noticed that the Frackenstine that stood before me was also made up by combining many parts.  Frackenstines legs turned out to be the Ohio legislature that gave the monster his legs to make his way around Ohio, his torso was made of the Ohio oil and gas industry, his arms were the

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October 25, 2012

Let's Debate the Real Facts Tonight-When Jobs Are Raised

Tonight’s debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney is about foreign policy. However, the issue of jobs is going to be injected because that is THE talking point for both candidates. Yet green clean jobs and economic growth is almost never mentioned as if it were a curse word. Neither candidate is likely to mention the fact, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institute, that sectors like clean energy, green building, and efficient transport employ 2.7 million workers — more than the biosciences and fossil fuel sectors. Furthermore,

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October 22, 2012

Pioneering Green Carpeting Manufacturer Interface Ends its Defense of PVC

After years of defending PVC as an ecologically sustainable industrial material, Interface, one of the world’s largest carpet manufacturers and a pioneer in sustainable business, has announced that it will be eliminating virgin PVC from its entire product line by 2020. The announcement comes as a welcome end to a long-standing conflict between the company and its core constituency of ecologically-minded consumers and businesses. In recent years, other major carpet manufacturers including Shaw and Milliken have phased PVC out of their product lines, but Interface had not followed suit. In

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October 20, 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