CHE Partnership Calls
Working and Regional Group Updates
Tools, Announcements and Resources
January Science News
Dear CHE Partners,
The first order of this first newsletter of 2008 is to wish you all a fine and happy new year. In the context of the arena of work that CHE Partners tend to be immersed in, optimism can be difficult to maintain. But, as many wise minds have noted, hope, in some form, is essential.
One of the tensions environmental health researchers and advocates work within concerns that between the political and the personal. Among the flood of worthy new books on environmental health issues is Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves by Andrew Szasz, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Szasz raises some uncomfortable issues in tracking how much systemic environmental health energy has been diverted into buying organic, drinking bottled water (!), and otherwise avoiding personal exposure in what he terms a type of consumerist "inverted quarantine." Not that this is necessarily bad, but as he illustrates, many people come to feel that attempting to protect ourselves is enough. But in an uncanny analogy to the fallout shelters of the 1960s, he argues that not only are such self-protective efforts insufficient in themselves, but they could be seen to increase health impacts by allowing the status quo to continue. For another such example, consider the dubious idea of "carbon offsets" as a response to climate change - a useful component, perhaps, but hardly sufficient to address the impending disaster.
Protecting ourselves and working for broader change are not exclusive, of course, and I suspect, happily, that many CHE Partners are among those who do both. So, for the coming year, we hope to continue to provide information and tools to help with such efforts. Read on below for some examples, with much more to come. And again, a healthy and productive 2008 to all.
Steve Heilig, MPH
Founding CHE Partner
CHE Partnership and Working Group Calls
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CHE Partnership Call - Findings from the Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer Report
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008 at 10am PST / 1pm ET
This call will be a discussion of the findings of the recently released 2007 edition of the Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer report, which was commissioned by CHE Cancer. Read the report The report shows mounting evidence that unintentional exposures to toxins in our workplaces and environments contribute to the nearly 1.5 million new cases of cancer in the U.S. each year.
Featured Presenters:
• Richard Clapp, DSc, MPH, Professor, Boston University School of Public Health, Adjunct Professor, University of Massachusetts, Lowell School of Health and Environment, and Cancer Report Co-Author
• Molly Jacobs, MPH, Project Manager, Environmental Health Initiative, University of Massachusetts, Lowell School of Health and Environment, and Cancer Report Co-Author
The moderator of this call will be Michael Lerner, President of Commonweal. We will hear comments from Steve Wing, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Public Health.
Call details
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Resources from Recent CHE Partnership Calls
If you missed any of the following CHE Partnership Calls, you may listen to MP3 recordings and find supporting materials at the following links:
• CHE Asthma, 10 Dec. 2007 - "Diesel, 'Alternatives,' and Our Health"
• CHE EMF, 4 Dec. 2007 - "Findings from the BioInitiative Report on Electromagnetic Fields"
• CHE Partnership Call, 30 Nov. 2007: "The Secret History of the War on Cancer" with Dr. Devra Davis
And of course, you can always explore our archived resources from past partnership calls.
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CHE Working and Regional Group Updates
CHE Fertility ~ coordinated by Julia Varshavsky
julia@healthandenvironment.org
The Women's Reproductive Health and the Environment Workshop successfully took place in Bolinas, California from Jan. 6 - 9, 2008 despite heavy rainstorms and flooding throughout northern California. Fifteen leading scientists in the field, including several rising young female scientists, came together for an intense two and a half days to discuss and debate:
• what the existing scientific literature can tell us about how environmental contaminants impact female reproductive health;
• what we still need to know more about; and
• what strategic future research directions will move the field forward
The issues raised will lead to a scientific manuscript to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, along with a lay companion report.
A CHE Fertility teleconference discussing highlights of the workshop is scheduled for Jan. 28, 2008 at 10am PST / 1pm ET. To RSVP for this call contact julia@healthandenvironment.org.
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CHE Washington ~ coordinated by Aimee Boulanger
aboulanger@iceh.org
CHE Washington 5th Annual Environmental Health Lecture Series: Ecological Economics
This Seattle four-lecture series, organized by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health, will explore the relationships between health, environment and economics. The first lecture is titled "The Principles of Ecological Economics" and will take place on Jan. 23, 2008.
Lecture series details
CHE Washington's biweekly bulletins are now archived and searchable on the website.
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CHE LDDI ~ coordinated by Elise Miller
elise@iceh.org
CHE LDDI's biweekly bulletins are now archived and searchable on the website.
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Tools, Announcements and Resources
Environment and Health: Call for Abstracts
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
June 3-6, 2008
Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Environmental Studies Association of Canada
The aim of this session is to explore the multifaceted dimensions of human, environmental and ecosystem health. Submission of abstracts on all topics related to environmental and ecosystem health, including, but not limited to the following list, are encouraged:
• Diseases, viruses, and other illnesses linked to environmental factors (i.e. cancer, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Gulf War syndrome, West Nile virus, river blindness, etc.)
• Ecosystem health, climate change
• Brownfields and other environmental health case studies
• Risk analysis ([risk] assessment, characterization, management, communication)
• The precautionary principle, alternatives assessment
• Lay/local knowledge, social and community organization
• Environmental racism, environmental justice, popular epidemiology
• Social, economic, and/or political implications
• Legal, scientific, and/or moral proof
• Methodological frameworks pertaining to environmental or ecosystem health
If you have an interest in presenting in this session please contact the session organizer and chair: Ann Novogradec at ann.novogradec@rogers.com or yu173317@yorku.ca.
The deadline for 150-word abstracts is Jan. 30, 2008.
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Toxic Toys database
Michigan-based Ecology Center has released new research on over 1,500 toys in collaboration with the Washington Toxics Coalition and other leading environmental health groups across the country. Parents will be able to easily check how products rank from highest to lowest in terms of lead, cadmium and other chemicals that are associated with reproductive problems, developmental and learning disabilities, hormone problems and cancer. Toys made with PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, were also tested.
http://www.healthytoys.org
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CHE Launches New Community Resources Section on Web Site
We are delighted to announce that CHE has launched a new Community Resources section on the CHE web site, available by visiting our home page or linking directly to http://www.healthandenvironment.org/resources/community.
Developed in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, California, the section serves as a one-stop resource for community-based participants on science and how it relates to community issues, and as a resource for site visitors at large to get a sense of how environmental justice and community sectors process and use scientific information for their issues. The major issue areas covered include:
• What Are Community Resources?
• The Value Of Science: Whose Science?
• Translation Of Science
• Public Reporting Of The Science
• Researching "What's In Your Community?"
• Finding And Creating Alternatives
While the Community Resources section does not include the full breadth of the work being done in the area of community action and environmental health, we hope it will be a starting point for communities, scientists, health practitioners and others to explore how various communities have turned science into action. We encourage visitors to utilize the feedback function on the site so we can improve the content over time.
CHE wishes to thank Christine Cordero from the Center for Environmental Health for her work in developing the Community Resources page.
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National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) blog
NIOSH had introduced a new Science Blog to further communicate the scientific issues related to NIOSH's research and recommendations and to stimulate discussion on those issues. The blog is an online conversation intended as a new way to help NIOSH fulfill its mission of translating research into practice for preventing work-related injuries, illnesses and deaths.
Read the NIOSH blog
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January Science News
Is plastic making us fat?
Beth Daley
The Boston Globe, 14 January 2008
Researchers are exploring whether exposure to common chemicals during early development could set us up for a lifetime battle of the bulge.
Continue reading...
Air pollution causes sperm mutation
Heidi Ledford
Nature Online, 13 January 2008
Air pollution can cause DNA mutations in the sperm of mice reared in an industrial city, researchers have found. The results add to ongoing concerns about the effects of air pollution on human health and fertility.
Continue reading...
Industrial chemical linked to Parkinson's Disease
Sarah Vos
The Lexington Leader-Herald, 9 January 2008
Researchers at the University of Kentucky have linked industrial use of TCE to Parkinson's disease, which Abney has. It was [stricken former factory worker Eddie] Abney, 51, who pointed researchers to a possible connection, leading to a study that was published last month in the online version of Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association.
Continue reading...
Possible lead link to Alzheimer's
Peter B. Lord
The Providence Journal, 11 January 2008
A scientific team headed by a researcher at the University of Rhode Island has found a link between early exposure to lead in the environment and the onset of Alzheimer's disease in old age.
Continue reading...
The baby bottle blues
Anna Kuchment
Newsweek, 14 January 2008
Many parents with young children are wrestling with similar concerns about the safety of plastics. And they're bringing about a major shift in the marketplace. One of the chemicals at issue is BPA, which is used to make polycarbonate plastic. Many popular brands of bottles and sippy cups, including Dr. Brown's and Avent, are made of polycarbonate.
Continue reading...
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New Partners
We welcome the many new CHE Partners who have joined since the December newsletter. To see the list of new CHE Partners and the growing list of all CHE Partners, please visit http://www.healthandenvironment.org/base/partners-recent.
Thank you for taking the time to read the latest about CHE. As always, we welcome your questions and suggestions. Please direct comments to Eleni Sotos, CHE Program Director, at Eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org.
Best wishes,
Eleni Sotos, MA, Program Director
Shelby Gonzalez, Administrative Coordinator
Julia Varshavsky, Program Associate
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