Special AnnouncementTo members of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment - Washington: The staff of the Institute for Children's Environmental Health have been pleased to create and send these weekly bulletins to you during the last year and a half. However, as in most nonprofits, our staff time is both our greatest asset and a limited resource. We have recently had to do some re-examination of the use of our staff time, and we've decided to simplify the format we have been using -- a weekly publication with summaries of upwards of 20 pertinent articles. Instead, you'll see that from now on the bulletin will come to your inbox every other week. We will publish upcoming events happening further in the future, and we will send interim messages if needed about events that we learn about after a bulletin has been published. Another change is that we will no longer include full summaries of news and research articles. Because most of our news stories are available through the "Above the Fold" news feed, we will simply provide their introduction and links from those articles that we think will be of most interest to this membership. We will continue to provide highlights of news and events within CHE-WA. We trust this bulletin will continue to serve to keep you informed about news and activities in environmental health. We also welcome your feedback. Elise Miller, Executive Director, and Nancy Snow, Editor |
These bulletins are now archived and searchable on the CHE-WA website: http://washington.chenw.org/bulletins.html. If you would like to join the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) and the CHE-Washington regional group, please complete the application at http://www.healthandenvironment.org/roles/register?&phase=registerform. Joining CHE means receiving up to four email messages a month from the CHE National listserv. CHE costs nothing to join and the benefit is shared information and opportunities for further engagement, if you choose. Be sure to mark that you want to join the Washington State Regional Group at the bottom of the application.
1) CHE-WA has recently launched an online searchable calendar of meetings, lectures, trainings, teleconferences and other events related to environmental health and justice. The calendar on the CHE-WA website lists events accessible without leaving the Pacific Northwest: http://www.chenw.org/cgi-bin/searchevents.cgi. Events during the upcoming three weeks or so are usually listed in this bulletin; to learn about future events, please visit the online calendar. For environmental health events from around the world, please see the companion calendar on the ICEH website: http://www.iceh.org/cgi-bin/searchevents.cgi. To submit an event to either calendar, please send details to ICEH: iceh@iceh.org
2) The next quarterly CHE-WA meeting will be held Friday September 14th from 10:00 a.m. to noon at Antioch University Seattle. Michael Lerner, PhD, founder and president of Commonweal and co-founder of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, will be our featured guest speaker.
Thursday and Friday, July 19 - 20, 2007
Portland, Oregon
at the Oregon Convention Center's Portland Ballroom 251
The conference will provide a dynamic forum for exploring issues related to community-based research partnerships, methods, funding and project planning, and the dissemination of findings. Effective models of CBPR from the northwest and throughout the country will be showcased. The conference will provide a forum for examining the role of CBPR in improving health and eliminating health disparities -- highlighting the voices of community members, researchers, funders and others working with underserved and underrepresented populations; build upon the knowledge and skills of participants interested in the application of CBPR for social change and improved health; explore the multi-faceted process of CBPR -- including partnerships, methods and ethics -- and to learn from partnerships that have addressed these challenges and opportunities; and explore local, state and national funding sources, including opportunities to hear directly from grant seekers and funders.
Website: http://www.nwhfevents.org/
Thursday July 26, 2007
6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Seattle, Washington
2326 Sixth Avenue, Room 100
If you or someone you know is interested in finding out more about the graduate degree and certificate programs offered by the Center for Creative Change, please come to our Open House where students, faculty and alums will talk about their experiences and work. Grounded in Antioch's tradition of working for social justice, the Center equips students to become leaders for health and sustainability, social and economic equity, and positive social change. At the Open House we will be talking about our graduate programs in Environment & Community, Management, Organizational Psychology, Strategic Communication and Whole Systems Design. Light refreshments will be served.
Website:http://www.antiochsea.edu/about/creativechange/index.html
Contact: Wendy L. Olsen, MA, Admissions Advisor, 206-268-4208 or 888-268-4477 ext. 5208 or wolsen@antiochseattle.edu
Thursday July 26, 2007
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Seattle, Washington
at the Camp Long Environmental Learning Center Main Building, 5200 35th Ave. SW
Amy Goodman will speak on "Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders...". Lois Gibbs will present "25 Years of an Inspirational Journey: From Love Canal to the Nation." The legendary grassroots champion of environmental justice describes how society is moving away from counting the bodies resulting from bad industrial and pollution policies, to prevention, precaution and other winning strategies for a healthy, safe and economically sound future. Tzeporah Berman will speak on "Corporate Campaigns and the New Environmentalism: Places, People and the Fate of our Last Great Forests" and Paul Hawken will address "Biology, Resistance and Restoration: Sustainability as an Infinite Game." The brilliant author/entrepreneur/changemaker encourages us all to embrace a new type of "infinite game," one without losers that supports the future of life and a reimagined world of growth without inequality, wealth without plunder and work without exploitation.
Website: http://www.nweec.org/ea.htm
Contact: sluoma@nweec.org
Tuesday August 14, 2007 (rescheduled)
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EDT
This lecture will present new evidence that ethanol impairs brain development by interfering with how proteins move in the cell and offers a technique for identifying infants who've been exposed to ethanol in utero. The speaker will be Cynthia F. Bearer, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics, neurosciences, and environmental health sciences at Case Western Reserve University and an attending neonatologist at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital.
Website: http://www.ehinitiative.org/Projects/tele_con.htm
Contact: Laura Abulafia, Laura@aaidd.org
Most of the articles below come from Environmental Health News feed, http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/.
Grapefruit link to breast cancer. Eating grapefruit every day could raise the risk of developing breast cancer by almost a third, US scientists say. BBC, United Kingdom. 17 July 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6900482.stm
Traffic pollution may raise heart risks by hardening arteries. The closer people live to roads with heavy traffic and high air pollution, the greater their risk of developing hardened arteries, which may lead to heart disease and stroke, according to a study. Bloomberg News. 17 July 2007.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aqR7xRO4FT5Y&refer=india
Doctor who sparked vaccine scare faces UK hearing. The British doctor who sparked a health scare by suggesting a childhood vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella is linked to autism faces a hearing on Monday into charges of professional misconduct during his research. Reuters. 16 July 2007.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL1529355320070715
Perfect lawns, environmental hazard. The shimmering green of the finely groomed Long Island lawn may trigger an owner's pride and neighborhood envy, but it also could pose a serious health risk. New York Newsday, New York. 15 July 2007.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lilawn0715,0,3680551.story?coll=ny-top-headlines
Want a safer home? Throw a party. Safer Home Parties are a new approach Clean Water Action is using to provide information about making homes safer by using fewer chemical-based products. Saginaw News, Michigan. 15 July 2007.
http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/grpress/index.ssf?/base/features-0/1184481966115060.xml&coll=6
Concerns over genistein, part II. Researchers now report finding a range of perplexing effects attributable to the soy phytoestrogen genistein in experiments with male mice. Science News. 14 July 2007.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070714/food.asp
Rail yard neighbors holding breath. Studies released earlier this year by the California Air Resources Board show that, in theory at least, thousands of south Stockton residents face a greater risk of cancer depending on how close they live to the Union Pacific or Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail yards. Stockton Record, California. 14 July 2007.
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070714/A_NEWS/707140322
China exports jewelry made with toxic U.S. waste. On the other side of the world, discarded US electronics fill foreign slums with toxic metals that are hand-removed by unprotected workers. Seattle King 5 TV, Washington. 14 July 2007.
http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_071307ENB_china_toxins_KS.713c7f2b.html
New advice on plastic baby bottles. In what could be a first among mainstream parenting books, the updated version of "Baby 411" tells readers to stop using polycarbonate plastic baby bottles, which contain the chemical Bisphenol A. Chicago Tribune, Illinois. Opinion, 13 July 2007.
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2007/07/popular-parenti.html
Toxins in humans go unrecorded. Researchers at Simon Fraser University have found methods used to calculate chemical levels in humans may seriously underestimate our true toxic loads. Vancouver Province, British Columbia. 13 July 2007.
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=9872a1b2-b3c5-48e7-ac38-852a985c10f8
Organic farming could feed the world. A switch to organic farming would not reduce the world's food supply and could also increase food security in developing countries, say the authors of a new study. New Scientist, England. 13 July 2007.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn12245-organic-farming-could-feed-the-world.html
New class of chemicals accumulating in people, land animals. Pesticides and fragrances are accumulating in people and Arctic land animals, part of a class of thousands of chemicals that need to be assessed for the potential to collect in the food chain. Bloomberg News. 13 July 2007.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=a9c4Vhv7Ou8o&refer=canada
E-waste recycling spews dioxins into the air. Air around e-waste recycling areas in Guiyu, China, contains the highest levels of dioxins ever recorded. Environmental Science & Technology. 12 July 2007.
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/july/science/rc_ewaste.html
Treated sewage still contaminated. Chemicals suspected of interfering with hormone systems in humans and wildlife are leaching out of consumer products and into wastewater, where they end up in the Bay and beyond, according to a report released Wednesday. Oakland Tribune, California. 12 July 2007.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_6351058
Nanonano. Nanotechnology can be found in everyday products like sunscreen and may even someday cure cancer. But what do we really know about it? It is one of today's most promising avenues of research, but experts say it could also be one of the most perilous. Baltimore Sun, Maryland. 12 July 2007.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-to.hs.nano12jul12,0,5122236.story
From the mouths of babes. As you read this, your young child may be chewing on a toy that would be banned in 14 countries because of safety concerns with one of its chemical ingredients. San Francisco Chronicle, California, Editorial, 12 July 2007.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/12/EDG6QQ4VOP1.DTL
New weapon in the battle against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Putting bacteria on birth control could stop the spread of drug-resistant microbes, and researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found a way to do just that. News-Medical.net. 11 July 2007.
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=27365
Toxics in Packaging. A new national study released today found for the first time ever that over 60% of PVC packaging tested contains toxic heavy metals that violate state toxics in packaging laws in 19 states -- including Washington's law. Of the packages tested, 16% exceeded the screening threshold of 100 parts per million for the presence of one or more of the restricted heavy metals (cadmium, lead, mercury, and hexavalent chromium) and may be in violation of state toxics in packaging laws. Cadmium and lead were the most frequently detected of the four regulated metals. The average cadmium concentration detected in the samples that failed the screening test was 449 ppm while the average lead concentration was 1,740 ppm. The two types of packaging that most frequently failed the metals screening test were Flexible polyvinylchloride (PVC) packages and inks/colorants used on plastic shopping/mailing bags. The study was conducted by the Toxics In Packaging Clearinghouse, a network of nine state environmental agencies coordinating toxics in packaging legislation. Press release from Center for Health, Environment and Justice, 10 July 2007.
http://www.toxicsinpackaging.org