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Health
According to the Lancet’s 2019 Countdown report, the worst effects of climate change will fall to the youngest, and most dire for them lie ahead.
Bottom Line: Children alive today stand to experience significant public health risks unless we take drastic action on climate change.
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The New York Times reported on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to issue a new draft of a controversial rule they floated once before, but have now expanded, that would request raw data for nearly every study the EPA considers in preparing regulatory rulemakings, including confidential medical records.
Why This Matters: Scientists and public health groups believe that this proposal will not increase the reliability and public accountability of the rulemaking process. Instead, this rule will make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies linking pollution to health problems rely on patient information provided under confidentiality agreements.
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Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the makers of baby powder and many other baby and beauty products, was forced to recall 33,000 bottles of baby powder in the United States after the Food and Drug Administration found trace amounts of asbestos, a known carcinogen, in samples taken from a bottle purchased online. The recall caused retailers like Target and CVS Drug Stores to remove all 22 oz J&J baby powder products from their shelves, even those not covered by the recall, and stock prices for the company took a hit.
Why This Matters: J&J has maintained that its powder products do not contain asbestos — but now that the government testing revealed traces of asbestos, the company is at even greater risk of losing the public’s trust.
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According to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, the climate crisis will bring a 1.75 to 3.2-fold increase by 2070 in the rate at which the deadly Ebola virus spreads from animals to humans and the risk that it would spread to the U.S. also increases.
Why This Matters: The estimates of global deaths that will be attributable to climate change just keep going up. The climate crisis could, in fact, “halt and reverse” all the progress made in human health over the past century.
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There have been eight locally-transmitted cases of dengue fever in Florida confirmed this year according to the Department of Health in Miami-Dade County, part of a global surge in the virus. Similarly, nine Americans have died this year of a virus called Eastern equine encephalitis, or “Triple E,” which is also spread by mosquitos and causes swelling of the brain.
Why This Matters: Experts believe the surges in these mosquito-borne viruses are caused by climate change.
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According to a new study conducted by Healthcare Without Harm, if the global health care sector were a country, it would be the fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet. Not only are doctors, nurses and health facilities all first responders to the impacts of climate change, but hospitals and health care systems paradoxically make a major contribution to […]
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Daytime highs across much of the Southern United States have been breaking records this past week but a stifling combination of high heat and humidity is preventing nights from cooling off, creating dangerous heat situations in cities like Houston (also neighboring Galveston where the heat index remained above 100 for 40 straight hours). As the […]
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A new Defense Department report on the security impacts of climate change provides startling evidence of the impacts of climate change on military readiness and the welfare of servicemembers — Health impacts from heat have already cost the military as much as nearly $1 billion from 2008 to 2018 in lost work, retraining and medical care, according to a new report by NBC News and Inside Climate News.
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Climate change often compounds natural disasters such as fueling wildfires and increasing the risk for catastrophic flooding. While this results in billions of dollars of damage new evidence has revealed that these disasters are also stirring up toxic chemicals and making Americans sick. As the New York Times reported, “By knocking chemicals loose from soil, […]
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by Miro Korenha and Alexandra Patel When you visit your doctor it’s usually to remedy something that’s bothering you or a routine preventative visit, but during those visits has your doctor ever talked to you about climate change and how it might be affecting your health? Even if your doctor hasn’t, a growing number of […]
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In 2018, then EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt promised to designate a toxic firefighting chemical called Per/Polyfluorinated Substances, also known as PFAS, as a hazardous substance that could be regulated, but since then has done nothing about the 610 sites in 43 states contaminated by PFAS, including 117 military sites, and the nearly 500 industrial sites that are potentially discharging PFAS into the air and water, according to a recent study by the Environmental Working Group.
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The study in Nature’s Scientific Reports surveyed people about how they felt and how much time they had spent out of doors, and the study’s authors found that the participants were more likely to report feeling well if they had spent more than 120 minutes out of doors over the past week, with little difference between key groups (such as the elderly) or how the outdoor time was spent (longer versus shorter outdoor activities). The benefits peaked between 3 and 5 hours, with no further reported well-being gain after that.
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