Collaborative on Health and the Environment

UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment Announces Visionary Leadership Awards

5/20/13: The UCSF PRHE program has announced Teresa Woodruff, President-elect of The Endocrine Society, Linda Giudice, President of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and Jeanne Conry, President of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists will be awarded PRHE’s Visionary Leadership Award on June 14th at the start of The Endocrine Society Meeting in San Francisco. The award is given to visionary leaders working to improve reproductive health by preventing harmful environmental exposures. For more information on the awards reception see the invitation to attend the event.

CHE Quarterly Top 10 List

4/30/13: For our third quarterly Top 10 list, we again selected from several dozen candidate news articles, journal articles, policy decisions and reports that have had a significant impact or are likely to have a significant impact on thinking and action in the field of environmental health. We consider these selections to be the biggest contributors toward new insights, toward changing the conversation or expanding the scope of the conversation on a topic to a new audience or awareness, or toward defining a new trend. Comments are welcome.
See the list

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

CHE regularly highlights the work of our Partners here in our Partner Spotlight.

The Rise of the US Environmental Health Movement: An Interview with CHE Partner Kate Davies, MA, DPhil

Kate Davies is in on the core faculty at the Center for Creative Change, Antioch University Seattle, and is a clinical associate professor at the School of Public Health, University of Washington. She is also the author of The Rise of the US Environmental Health Movement, the first book to offer a comprehensive examination of the environmental health movement with a focus on the ways toxic chemicals and other hazardous agents in the environment effect human health and well-being (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2013).

What first brought you into environmental health work?

In 1965, when I was 8 years old, my mother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer. She was given less than a year to live. By some miracle she survived, only to be diagnosed with breast cancer some

20 years later. She survived this too, but in 1995 she developed a rare T cell lymphoma. She died in 2007, after fighting three different types of cancer for over forty years.

My mother’s illnesses influenced me profoundly. As a child, I wanted to become a doctor so I could make her better, but as the physicians failed to cure her, I became more interested in how cancer could be prevented. To find out more, I decided to study biochemistry. After completing a bachelor’s degree in 1978, I went on to earn a doctorate at Oxford University. During this time, I became convinced that toxic chemicals and radiation played a role in this terrible disease - a realization that led me to join the environmental health movement.

24 May How pesticides pushed cockroaches into rapid evolution. In the 1980s, manufactures began making cockroach baits that combined sweet glucose with deadly insecticides. By 1993, many cockroach populations somehow developed an aversion to the bait. Now, 20 years later, scientists finally understand how the roaches beat these traps. io9.

24 May Hurricane outlook: Another busy Atlantic season. Get ready for another busy hurricane season ? maybe an unusually wild one, federal forecasters say, with a 70 percent chance that this year will be more active than an average hurricane season. Last year was the third-busiest on record with 19 named storms. Associated Press.

24 May German beer brewers foaming over fracking. The fight over fracking in Germany has taken an unexpected turn: German breweries are now warning that the controversial method of extracting natural gas from rock layers deep in the earth would affect their ability to brew the best beer. Der Spiegel.

24 May FracFocus drillers? registry to create chemicals database. FracFocus, the website drillers use to disclose chemicals in hydraulic fracturing, is revamping its system next week to let regulators for the first time search and aggregate the information. Bloomberg News.

24 May Racing the clock and a storm: A way of life in tornado alley. In this breeding ground of Oklahoma tornadoes, people prepare for the season. They develop family plans, hang on the words of meteorologists, and, in places like Moore, become accustomed to the Saturday noontime testing of emergency sirens. New York Times.

24 May Supporters of efficiency measure fear amendment backed by chemicals group could be fatal 'Trojan horse'. A long-simmering feud between the chemical industry and a leading green building certifier could boil over next month when the Senate is expected to debate a marquee energy efficiency bill. E&E Daily.

24 May How Sens. Lautenberg and Vitter found common ground on chemical law reform. They say compromise legislation leaves nobody happy. And that's pretty much true about the surprise chemical management bill released yesterday by near-opposite Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and David Vitter (R-La.). E&E Daily.

24 May Coal train supporters decry 'stall tactics.' A coalition of environmental groups is asking the federal government to step in and combine the environmental studies for three different coal export terminal proposals into one. Everett Herald.

24 May Chicken fight: Study backs farmer in pollution battle with EPA. West Virginia poultry farmer Lois Alt didn't chicken out when the Environmental Protection Agency threatened her with fines of $40,000 per day, and even though the federal regulators eventually backed off, she's taking them on in a legal case that could benefit thousands of small farmers. Fox News.

24 May Despite reduced dog poisonings from slug baits, concerns exist of new hazard. Stronger warning labels on slug and snail baits containing metaldehyde may have led to a huge drop in calls to a national pesticide hotline about possible dog poisonings, according to a study from scientists at Oregon State University. Albany Tribune.

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