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Styrofoam Ban in our Nation’s Capital

On January 1, 2016 a ban on the use of Styrofoam containers went into effect in the city of Washington, DC.  This new law will prohibit restaurants and local business from using single use Styrofoam (technically speaking, expanded polystyrene foam products) containers to package food and drinks, typically used for take-out orders or to take home leftovers. According to one estimate in a private blog, there are similar bans in effect in more than 70 cities including New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.  In New York City alone, 28,500 tons of expanded Styrofoam was collected in 2012. About 90% of this material was from food and drink related containers.

I couldn’t help but smile when I read this story as a remembered back in the late 1980s when CHEJ (then CCHW) kicked off a national campaign against McDonald’s to get the mega food giant to stop using Styrofoam clam shells for all its food packaging. We called this the “McToxics Campaign” and groups all over the country participated including grassroots environmental health activists, students, churches, annual rights activists and advocates of healthy food. These groups, individually and in coalition, picketed local restaurants, fought for local ordinances banning Styrofoam, launched boycotts and engaged in send-it-back campaigns to send the message to McDonalds that they wanted the company to be a corporate leader for positive change, rather than a symbol of our throw-away society.  And it worked!  After a little over 3 years, McDonalds caved in, marking one of the biggest victories of the grassroots environmental health movement. On November 1, 1990, McDonalds’ announced it would end nearly all Styrofoam packaging use in U.S. restaurants within 60 days.

As anticipated, when McDonalds made its announcement, other companies would follow its lead. Jack-In-the-Box followed suit almost immediately, and soon most other fast food restaurants also stopped using Styrofoam.  Although many small restaurants and local businesses continued to use Styrofoam, the message continues to grow that this toxic plastic has no place in our society. The many toxic substances generated and released during production, the formation of toxic chemicals when it is burned and the difficulties in recycling and disposal of this material is what drove this campaign and continue to be an issue today as restaurants and businesses search for options to deliver food and drinks.

Fortunately there are better options and better alternatives that don’t cause the public health and environmental risks that this plastic does. Cheers to the growing list of cities, towns and municipalities that are deciding one jurisdiction at a time, to move away from this toxic plastic.  May there be many more in the coming years.

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Study Finds Fracking Increases Reproductive Risks

The enormous growth of unconventional natural gas fracturing (also known as fracking) in recent years has come at the expense of knowing little if anything about the health risks associated with this practice. As production as slowed due to dropping gas prices in the past year or so, several studies have come out that raise serious questions about the health impact of this process. A study published earlier this month by a group of researchers at the John Hopkin’s School of Public Health concluded that “expectant mothers who live near active natural gas wells operated by the fracking industry in Pennsylvania are at an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and for having high risk pregnancies.” This paper was published in the journal Epidemiology.

In this paper, the authors examined more than 9,000 births in 40 counties in northern and central Pennsylvania between January 2009 and January 2013. They compared electronic birth outcome data with information that estimated the cumulative exposure to fracking activity in the region. This information included how close wells were to homes where the mothers lived, what stage of drilling the wells were in, the depth of the wells, and how much gas was generated from the well during the mother’s pregnancy. This information was used to generate a cumulative index of how active each of the wells were and how close they were to the women.

They found that living in the most active area of drilling and production activity was associated with a 40 percent increase in the likelihood of a woman giving birth before 37 weeks of gestation (considered pre-term) and a 30 percent increase in “high risk” pregnancies, a designation that can include elevated blood pressure and excessive weight gain during pregnancy. In total, 11 % of the pregnancies were born preterm, with 79% born between 32 and 36 weeks.

Other research in recent years has also shown a connection between fracking wells and low birth weight. “There are now four studies that have looked at various aspects of reproductive health in relation to this industry and all have found something,” Brian Schwartz, the lead author of the Hopkins study, said in an interview. In one of these studies, researchers found an increased risk of congenital heart and neural tube defects in babies whose mothers lived within 10 miles of a natural gas well in rural Colorado.

In a media statement released with the study, the authors made clear that the study can’t pinpoint the specific reason why pregnant women living near the most active wells had the worst pregnancy outcomes. But Schwartz pointed out that every step of the drilling process has an environmental impact. “When the well pads are created, diesel equipment is used to clear acres of land, transport equipment and drill the wells themselves. Drilling down thousands of feet and then horizontally many more thousands of feet requires heavy equipment to break up the shale where the gas sits. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) then involves injecting millions of liters of water mixed with chemicals and sand to fracture the shale. The fluids are then pumped back to the surface. The gas itself also releases pollutants.” Schwartz also noted that living near fracking well results in increased noise, road traffic and other changes that can increase maternal stress levels.

“Now that we know this is happening we’d like to figure out why,” Schwartz says. “Is it air quality? Is it the stress? They’re the two leading candidates in our minds at this point.”

As with many other environmental and public health risks, the more we look, the more we find. We already know that fracking contributes to the impact of climate change because of the large amount of methane that’s released. It’s beginning to look more and more like it also has serious effects on the health of the people who live nearby.

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Environmental Concerns Not Relevant to U.S. Dietary Recommendations, Says Obama Administration

By: Dylan Lenzen

According to the Obama Administration, concerns over the environment are irrelevant to one’s diet. This comes as secretary Vilsack of the Department of Agriculture and secretary Burwell of Health and Human Services decide not to include a section regarding sustainability in the soon-to-be-released dietary guidelines, despite a recommendation from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) earlier this year.

DGAC’s Elements of a Sustainable Diet:

Source:http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/PDFs/10-Part-D-Chapter-5.pdf

The DGAC made the recommendation to include sustainable diets due to pressure from multiple environmental and public health groups and the realization that American diets have an enormous impact on environmental outcomes. According to the DGAC, sustainability must be addressed in order to ensure that future generations of Americans have access to healthy food.

The inclusion of sustainability into the dietary guidelines would have been a step in the right direction in linking the food on our tables to the health of the land, people, communities, and systems that produced it. The DGAC ultimately concluded that, “a diet higher in plant-based foods…and lower in calories and animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with less environmental impact than is the current U.S. diet.”

The news that these sustainability recommendations will not be included in actual guidelines comes despite overwhelming support expressed in the almost 29,000 public comments on the DGAC’s report.

This is only a recent example of the federal government’s failure to create a more socially and environmentally just food system. As Michael Pollan discusses in his recent call for a National Food Policy, the federal government addresses the issues surrounding food and agriculture in a “piecemeal” fashion. “Diet-related chronic disease, food safety, marketing to children, labor conditions, wages for farm and food-chain workers, immigration, water and air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and support for farmers…are overseen by eight different federal agencies,” writes Pollan. The recent decision to excise sustainability from the dietary guidelines is the perfect example of this. It is hard to imagine creating sustainable food systems, if our dietary recommendations do not link the food we eat to issues such as climate change and the contamination of rural communities.

Is it really beyond the scope of U.S. dietary guidelines to mention that consuming great amounts of meat leads to greater greenhouse gas emissions than a plant-based diet, especially as the effects of climate change are increasingly realized? Is it also wrong to recommend purchasing foods that are produced locally, organically, and by farm workers paid a living wage, leading to not only healthier planet, but healthier communities as well. It appears that health of U.S. consumers and communities stand to benefit from better awareness of the implications of their dietary choices.

Read the Recommendations of the DGAC

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FIGO Pushes Against Toxic Environmental Chemicals and Champions Environmental Justice

“Exposure to toxic environmental chemicals during pregnancy and breastfeeding is ubiquitous and is a threat to healthy human reproduction.”

That’s a pretty direct and bold statement. It is also a statement that outlines the stance of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) in a report recently published in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Suffice it to say it is not sugar coated.

The report, titled “International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics opinion on reproductive health impacts of exposure to toxic environmental chemicals” and authored by experts from the US, UK and Canada, makes a strong argument that prenatal exposures to toxic chemicals in the environment such as pesticides, plastics and metals are strongly related to health problems that develop throughout the lifespan of affected individuals. This means that problems like fertility issues, stillbirths, miscarriages, cancer, and attention problems are all strongly associated with exposure to unwanted chemicals during gestation and early child development.

This information is nothing new – the literature on the topic of cumulative chemical exposures during childhood development is comprehensive. But it is a new and powerful statement coming from an organization that is the leading global voice of reproductive health professionals in over 125 countries/territories.

Gian Carlo Di Renzo, leading author of the report, put it quite eloquently: “We are drowning our world in untested and unsafe chemicals and the price we are paying in terms of our reproductive health is of serious concern”. These chemicals account for tremendous losses. According to the report, ambient and household air pollution results in at least 7 million deaths a year, costs of pesticide poisoning in the Sub-Saharan region are estimated to be $66 billion, costs attributable to exposure to only a select few endocrine-disrupting chemicals was conservatively estimated to be on average €157 billion per year… the statistics go on an on.

FIGO takes a strong stance against toxic chemicals, offering health professionals four recommendations: “advocate for policies to prevent exposure to toxic environmental chemicals, work to ensure a healthy food system for all, make environmental health part of health care, and champion environmental justice.” These suggestions are in line with CHEJ’s mission and vision, and we congratulate FIGO for developing and actively pursuing this policy stance

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New Study Highlights Reproductive Risks from Fracking Chemicals

Could pollution from unconventional oil and gas drilling cause reproductive problems? Scientists at the University of Missouri are trying to answer this question. A study published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives assessed the research so far on endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing. The study presented research linking fracking to EDCs, and the authors recommended an increased focus on these compounds in assessing health risks from fracking pollution.

Endocrine disrupting compounds are a class of chemicals that can alter the delicately balanced endocrine system of the human body, interfering with processes involved in development and reproduction. Some EDCs prevent the endocrine system from carrying out normal functions, while others can mimic hormones naturally found in the body and cause increased endocrine activity. As the study authors note, EDCs are of particular concern because they can have effects at very low concentrations, especially during the early stages of development. Small doses of EDCs can cause drastic health changes, some of which can persist across generations.

One section of the study looked at the endocrine disrupting properties of individual chemicals in fracking fluid. Unfortunately, the identities of many of the approximately 1000 chemicals used in the fracking process are kept under wraps by industry, limiting the extent to which scientists can test any of the health effects they present. Of the chemicals the researchers were able to test, many had endocrine-disrupting properties. When the scientists assessed water samples from areas where drilling-related spills had occurred, they also found elevated endocrine disrupting activity. Chemicals involved in fracking processes are associated with reproductive effects, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and cancer, and several epidemiological studies cited in the paper found elevated risks for these problems in drilling-dense areas.

The study also focused on identifying gaps in our knowledge of EDCs in fracking chemicals. While our understanding of the impacts of individual chemicals is growing, we need to develop better methods for predicting and assessing how these chemicals might interact as part of a complex mixture, where the presence of multiple compounds could result in a more potent disruptive effect than that of one chemical alone. By studying concentrations of EDCs and their byproducts in people’s systems, we can determine what chemicals people are actually exposed to, and gather better information on whether these exposures are related to long-term health issues.

Overall, the study concluded that fracking health studies should include a significant focus on endocrine disrupting compounds. Among the many risks presented by fracking, exposure to complex mixtures of EDCs in the environment may prove to have extraordinary longterm effects.

Learn more:  http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/advpub/2015/8/ehp.1409535.acco.pdf

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House Passes GMO Labeling Ban Bill

By: Katie O’Brien

On July 23, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill preventing individual states from requiring labels on foods that contain genetically modified ingredients (GMOs).  This bill bans states like Vermont, which recently passed GMO labeling laws, from labeling grocery items that contain GMOs. Supporters of the bill claim that there is no scientific consensus of the harm GMOs can cause, and therefore felt that the government should step in to regulate. But many studies claim that GMO foods have risks. While the government claims there is no concrete study that proves health harm from GMO ingredients, since they were introduced in 1996; there has been a rise in chronic illnesses, food allergies, reproductive issues and other disorders such as autism. GMOs also increase the use of toxic herbicide, which can harm ecosystems, reducing bio-diversity. According to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, who are supporters of the bill, 80% of packaged foods contain GMOs, and more than 90% or U.S. corn and soybean crops are grown with genetically modified seeds.

The bill known as The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 creates a standard for the voluntary labeling of foods with GMO ingredients. It also created a certification process for companies that want to label their food GMO free, similar to the method of organic food labeling. Thus making it more difficult for companies who choose not to include GMOs in their product.  The bill also allows the term “natural” to be included on labels of food containing GMOs. Democrats tried to amend the bill to stop the labeling of GMO foods as “natural”, but failed. The bill passed even though many surveys and polls, as in one done by the Mellman Group, states that at least 90% of the country does want to know what’s in the food they buy.

People have a right to know what is in the food they consume. Many groups have formed in opposition to the bill, which was nicknamed DARK, Denying Americans the Right-to-Know Act, because it will keep consumers in the dark. In an increasing world of transparency, the food industry is falling behind. Consumers should have readily available information about the food that they and their families eat. Opposition to the bill hopes that the senate will ultimately defeat the “DARK” act.

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Helping can hurt: Complications and consequences of remediation strategies

Environmental remediation often involves a) moving large amounts of contaminated material from one place to another, b) treating the polluted material with chemical compounds, or c) both. The Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council says it best in their guideline document on managing risks during remediation: “Investigation and remediation activities have their own set of risks, apart from the risks associated with chemical contamination.” These risks range from spending time and resources on an ineffective remedy, to the chance of causing adverse ecosystem and health impacts through the cleanup process.

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Project risks - from ITRC document

I recently read a report from a site where engineers were pumping methanol into the groundwater to aid in breaking down the compound of interest, TCE. They soon found that their shipment of methanol was contaminated by PCE – another toxic compound with which they were effectively re-polluting their treatment area. Introducing further contamination through remediation may be less common, but dealing with large amounts of polluted material can potentially cause existing contaminants to become more mobile. Especially when remediation projects deal with contaminated sediments, a question of critical importance is whether to remove the offending substance or to leave it in place. Dredging of contaminated sediment underwater must be done very carefully so as to avoid remobilizing contaminants into the water column.  There are surprises, too; sometimes, the EPA says,  “dredging uncovers unexpectedly high concentrations of contaminants beneath surface sediments.”

When contaminated materials are left in place, or before they are removed, the remediation process often involves introducing new chemical compounds to the polluted material. These “additives” help cause reactions that break down toxic chemicals into less toxic forms. However, Lisa Alexander of the Massachusetts Department of the Environment writes that these additives can cause contaminants to migrate into water, or release potentially harmful gases.

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Gulf Coast cleanup worker - from CNN

The complexities of remediation have been especially apparent in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Dispersants were released to break down oil in the Gulf, but years later the substances are still being found in tar balls washing up on the beach. The combination of oil and the dispersant Corexit has also proven to be more toxic to marine organisms than oil alone. Corexit, encountered primarily by cleanup workers after the tragedy, is also potentially toxic to humans, and its longterm health effects are unknown.

Cleaning up contaminated sites involves taking calculated risks of disrupting or polluting an already-damaged ecosystem. When even our most practiced remediation methods carry with them uncertain outcomes, how can we strike a balance between trying innovative treatment methods for contamination and avoiding unreasonable risk? I’ll explore one case in particular in my next entry: nanomaterials.

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We Are Together & Together We’ll Make Change

As fracking bans and moratoriums or local ordinances become a reality across the country, it would be so powerful for those who are advocating change to one piece of the problem or solution, to include the other parts of the gas and oil industry’s problems, processes, etc. as well. Working together on alternatives, disposal, rights to know, exports and more will provide the holistic approach to the public. That can really make a bigger – deeper difference in how people respond to efforts that go beyond a backyard struggle towards a sustainable communities. It might even bring clarity to the public that is getting so many different messages and become confused.

At CHEJ we just celebrated the next step toward a ban in New York on fracking, but Obama is still pushing regulations. We’ve seen pipelines stopped, at least temporarily and ordinances passed. Most recently two counties in Ohio have passed local moratoriums on injection wells that will force the industry to find other ways to dispose of their wastes. Two other Ohio counties are in the mist of deciding to ban injection wells that activist say have a good chance of passing.

It appears from the “wide view” that our staff and Board can see as a national group, as we look across the country that there are serious efforts and real wins by ordinary people. What isn’t as obvious is a strong message that we are together and supporting other groups who have taken on different parts of the problems, are encouraged and inspired by the wins and share the vision of what could be. It’s not that people aren’t mentioning other segments of the struggle locally or at a higher level of government, but it’s not coming through as a unified struggle for a unified goal. No there will never be absolute agreement on goals but maybe we could get agreement on a unified message that works. At CHEJ we came up with Preventing Fracking Harms to address the different goals around wells, infrastructure and such. That won’t work in the bigger message but I think there are words that might.

As groups join together this fall at events like the one planned for October in Colorado it would be great to find an opportunity on or off the agenda to figure out how all the extraordinary work folks are doing can include a message – not a list serve – not a petition – but a message that gets tagged on everyone’s everything before they close their news release, blog, signs and more. Or maybe we have a massive e-mail conversation. Let me know what you think.

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Chemical Mixtures May Lead to Cancer

A recently published scientific paper came to a striking conclusion – “the cumulative effects of individual (non-carcinogenic) chemicals acting on different pathways, and a variety of related systems, organs, tissues and cells could plausibly conspire to produce carcinogenic synergies.” In other words, exposure to multiple chemicals at low doses, considered individually to be”safe could result in various low dose effects that lead to the formation of cancer. This is a remarkable observation and conclusion. It is also an important advance in the understanding of the risks chemicals pose to society.

Organized by the non-profit Getting to Know Cancer, a group of 350 cancer research scientists came together in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2013 to address the question of continuous multiple chemical exposures and the risks these exposure pose. Referred to as the Halifax Project, this effort merged two very distinct fields – environmental toxicology and the biological mechanisms of cancer – and provided the opportunity for researchers to look at the diversity of environmental factors that contribute to cancer by examining the impact that exposure to very small amounts of chemicals can have on various systems of the body.

A task force of nearly 200 scientists formed at this meeting took on the challenge of assessing whether or not everyday exposures to mixtures of commonly encountered chemicals have a role to play in cancer causation. The researchers began by identifying a number of specific key pathways and mechanisms that are important in the formation of cancer. Then they identified individual (non-carcinogenic) chemicals that are commonly found in the environment that had some potential to disrupt these systems. A total of 85 environmental chemicals were identified.

The authors found that 59% of these chemicals (50/85) had low dose effects “at levels that are deemed relevant given the background levels of exposure that exist in the environment.” They found that only 15% of the chemicals reviewed (13/85) had a dose-response threshold and that the remaining 26% (22/85) could not be categorized due to a lack of dose-response information. The authors concluded that these results help “to validate the idea that chemicals can act disruptively on key cancer-related mechanisms at environmentally relevant levels of exposure.”

This is an incredibly important observation because it challenges the traditional thinking about how cancer forms in the body. It challenges the notion that all cancers share common traits (considered the “hallmarks of cancer”) that govern the transformation of normal cells to cancer cells. The authors also discuss how the results in this paper impact the process of risk assessment which even its most sophisticated model fails to address continuous exposures to mixtures of common chemicals.

The authors point out how surprisingly little is actually known about the combined effects of chemical mixtures on cancer related mechanisms and processes. This effort however seems to be a very positive step forward.

To read the full paper, go to <http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/36/Suppl_1/S254.full.pdf+html>.

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Environmental and Public Health Implications of the TPP

By Dylan Lenzen

This past week, the House of Representatives failed to approve a measure that would provide President Obama with “fast-track authority” in negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and eleven other countries of the pacific-rim including Japan, Vietnam, Australia, Mexico, and Canada among others. The trade agreement has been negotiated in secret for three years, and beyond leaked documents, the American public will likely not be able to view the details of the agreement until after it is approved. While President Obama supports the trade deal, he failed to convince the necessary number of his fellow democrats in order to pass the measure. Many democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have expressed concerns that the deal does not provide adequate protection for American workers. In addition, a number of environmental and consumer-advocacy groups have expressed their opposition to the trade deal for a number of reasons, including threats to the environment and public health.

Particularly alarming are the rights granted to corporations under the “investor-state dispute settlement system”. As a result, multinational corporations would essentially be given the right to sue governments before international tribunals regarding regulations they believe pose a threat to “expected future profits”. In cases where corporations win, the taxpayers of the losing country would be responsible for providing compensation. This has already been observed under past trade agreements such as NAFTA. An example was described by the Sierra Club, in which Lone Pine Resources, an oil and gas corporation, sued the Canadian government for $250 million after a fracking moratorium was passed by the Quebec National Assembly. According to consumer rights advocacy group, Public Citizen, over $3 billion has been paid out to corporations as a result of disputes under past free-trade agreements, a majority being related to environmental and public health regulation. Public Citizen goes on to state, “the mere threat of a case can put pressure on governments to weaken environment and health policies.” These policies represent important protections for the health of communities all over the world.

In addition to the threat posed by the investor-state system, others worry that hydraulic fracturing operations in the U.S. will expand due to increased natural gas exports. Currently, all natural gas exports are subject to analysis by the Department of Energy to ensure that exports do not threaten the interests of the American public. Under the TPP, this authority would be lost and all natural gas export permits would be approved, increasing pressure to expand U.S. fracking operations and infrastructure. This increases the environmental health threats already posed by the industry.

These represent but a small portion of a great number of concerns in regards to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. While the capacity of free-trade agreements such as this to promote economic development and job growth is up for debate, it is clear that these agreements pose significant risk to the health of communities and ecosystems around the world.

To find out more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, please consider the following resources:
http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/trans-pacific-partnership
http://www.citizen.org/TPP