Climate change is making us sick
By Praveen Buddiga, Katrina Peters / On May 3rd, 2016
Climate change is hurting our health — right here and right now. As practicing physicians, we see the impacts on our patients.
Raisin Hell (And Dogs)
By Emily Monosson / On May 2nd, 2016
We were closing in on the end of a glorious spring weekend when my husband discovered the bag.
This Earth Day, Focus on 21st Century Conservation
By Joe S. Whitworth / On April 21st, 2016
April 22 is not a moment to celebrate the wonder of this unique planet. It’s an opportunity to recognize what next steps we need to take to secure a better future.
Anti-Vaxxed?
By Emily Monosson / On April 18th, 2016
In light of the fuss over Robert Di Niro and the movie Vaxxed; if anyone needs reminding of the value of vaccines, take a look at this diagram of 20th Century Death. These are estimates as they say but even so the numbers are humbling. I won’t go into the story behind the movie and its writer, director and one-time (now unlicensed) doc, that has been covered plenty (instead here is an interesting NYT article about the developer of the measles vaccine, Dr. Maurice Hilleman.
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.
Saved by Soils?
By Emily Monosson / On September 3rd, 2015
This post originally appeared at Emily Monosson's blog: Evolution in a Toxic World
We live in an age of pesticide and antibiotic overuse. One outcome is resistance, increasing pesticide use and contamination and fears that we are entering the “post-antibiotic era”. We are addicted to all sorts of commercial chemicals.