health

Flint: Bitter lessons learned

By Alan Kolok / On March 16th, 2016
Facts about the water quality crisis in Flint, Michigan are in the paper almost every day and the chemistry and toxicology of what went wrong, at first blush, appear to be fairly straightforward and easy to understand.

Mosquitoes and Zika Virus: "We Don't Have to Live in Fear"

By Emily Monosson / On February 24th, 2016
Mosquitoes, along with their disease-causing hitchhikers like West Nile, Equine encephalitis, Dengue, and now Zika, are on the move, finding new habitats and naïve populations ripe for infection. Just as Lyme has made tick experts out of us all (no, that one is just a dog tick), we are on a first-name basis with mosquitoes like Aedes and Culex.

Using DDT to Control the Zika Virus: "A Pandora's Box of Problems"

By Andy Dyer / On February 22nd, 2016
The proposal to bring DDT out of the retired arsenal of chemical weaponry to control mosquito vectors carrying the Zika virus is a Pandora’s Box of problems.  And these are not hypothetical problems.  The mosquitoes and the virus are biological threats that have emerged because of disruptions to the broader environment, all of which are connected to human population growth and simplification of the ecosystems humans live in.  While the Zika virus is a very real threat to human health, the answer to this threat is not DDT.

The Coastal Triple Threat of Natural Hazards

By Jaimie Hicks Masterson / On January 10th, 2016
Have you ever been to a community that was exposed to inland flooding, hurricane surge, and future sea level rise? A community that is exposed to such poor air quality that a 2005 Houston Chronicle report compared it to "sitting in traffic 24/7"? Welcome to the super neighborhoods of Manchester, Harrisburg, and Magnolia Park, adjacent to oil refineries and the Houston Ship Channel in East Houston, Texas.

Life-changing Chemicals

By Emily Monosson / On March 25th, 2015
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), in green, with human cell, grey.

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