EPA’s proposed repeal will make Americans sicker

CNN

EPA’s proposed repeal will make Americans sicker

By Harold P. Wimmer and Stephen C. Crane       March 13, 2018

Source: CNN

(CNN) Right now, the Environmental Protection Agency is in the midst of a process to repeal the Clean Power Plan, adopted in 2015 as the first national strategy to reduce carbon pollution from existing power plants. Taking steps to reduce carbon pollution, as outlined in the Clean Power Plan, not only limits this major driver of climate change, but reduces other toxic air pollution from power plants at the same time.

The EPA’s analysis that was published to support the proposed repeal outlines a flawed approach to evaluating the risks of pollution — specifically particulate matter, which is a mix of very tiny particles emitted into the air. When inhaled, this pollution can cause asthma attacks, lung cancer and even early death.

The EPA has cherry-picked data to conceal the true health costs of air pollution. Its revised calculations diminish and devalue the harm that comes from breathing particulate matter, suggesting that below certain levels, it is not harmful to human health. This is wrong.

The fact is: There is no known safe threshold for particulate matter. According to scores of medical experts and organizations like the World Health Organization, particle pollution harms health even at very low concentrations. Attempting to undercut such clear evidence shows the lengths the EPA, and by extension the Trump administration, will go to reject science-based policy that protects Americans’ health.

The EPA’s attempts to argue the contrary come as more medical reports affirm that climate change, at large, remains an increasingly dire threat to human health.The Clean Power Plan would result in significant reductions in carbon dioxide, which drives climate change, and an array of other dangerous pollutants, including particle pollution.

Across the globe, there is a resounding consensus among the health and medical community that climate change is already harming human health. This isn’t just a matter of seeing the looming future disaster; human health is suffering now as a result of damage to our climate caused by human activity — and some people are paying the ultimate price.

EPA cuts could risk a public health emergency

Health and medical professionals nationwide are seeing the effects of climate change on their patients. As far back as 2014, an American Thoracic Society survey of physicians found that 89% of respondents said climate change is happening, and 77% said they have seen increases in chronic disease severity from air pollution in their patients.

The EPA’s own analysis finds that repealing the Clean Power Plan could result in up to 4,500 premature deaths every year in the United States. How is this deadly outcome acceptable to President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, whose agency’s mission is to protect public health and the environment?

The EPA has a special responsibility to protect those who are most vulnerable, including children, the elderly and people with respiratory diseases — not increase their suffering. Instead, with the proposed Clean Power Plan repeal, the EPA appears to be granting power plants a license to pollute, at the expense of Americans’ health.

Simply put, America will measure the cost of repealing the Clean Power Plan in asthma attacks, emergency room visits and premature deaths that should have been and can still be avoided.

Unfortunately, the EPA has demonstrated its willingness to manipulate scientific evidence in such a way that benefits polluting industries, despite the negative consequences to Americans’ health. With relentless pressure from these industries to block, weaken or delay clean air safeguards, it is unlikely this will be the last time it tries this.

For the public, our doctors and our patients, the urgency of this issue cannot be emphasized enough. We urge the EPA to stand up for the health of all Americans and enforce, rather than repeal, the Clean Power Plan.

Harold P. Wimmer is the national president and CEO of the American Lung Association. Stephen C. Crane, Ph.D., MPH is the executive director of the American Thoracic Society. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

 

Eating Highly Processed Foods Linked to Increased Cancer Risk

EcoWatch – Food

Environmental Working Group

Study: Eating Highly Processed Foods Linked to Increased Cancer Risk

By Dawn Undurraga     March 12, 2018

The more highly processed foods you eat, the higher your risk of cancer.

That’s the takeaway from a new study that followed more than 100,000 French adults for eight years. It found that a 10 percent increase in consumption of foods like soda, sugary snack cakes, processed meats and breakfast cereals corresponded with a 10 percent increase in cancer risk.

The study, published last month in the London-based medical journal BMJ, is the first of its kind to link increased cancer risk to all “ultra-processed” foods, not just processed meats. Ultra-processed foods are defined as foods that undergo multiple physical, biological and mechanical processes to be highly palatable, affordable and shelf stable.

According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, cancer is estimated to affect more than 1.6 million Americans each year, causing nearly 600,000 deaths. Dietary links to cancer have long been established, with about a third of cancer cases estimated to be preventable through more healthful diet and lifestyle choices.

Diets high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes are known to reduce the risk of cancer, while those high in processed meats increase cancer risk. Learn about EWG’s Cancer Defense Diet here.

According to the study, ultra-processed foods make up a significant part of modern diets, contributing one-fourth to one-half of the calories of an average diet. Ultra-processed are often high in chemical additives and preservatives, and low in fiber, beneficial vitamins and minerals, and cancer-preventative plant compounds called phytonutrients.

In a podcast discussion of the study, the researchers said they really don’t know the full impact of ultra-processed products on health. They hypothesized that these foods’ low nutritional quality, coupled with the high calorie, sodium and sugar content, could contribute to the increased risk of cancer.

But those factors alone didn’t account for the entire cancer burden. The researchers said that other contributing factors could be the prevalence of food additives in ultra-processed foods and the presence of other compounds created during food processing.

See EWG’s Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Additives to learn which ones to avoid.

The science on the health effects of ultra-processed foods is just beginning to emerge. In the meantime, EWG’s Food Scores can help you to steer clear of ultra-processed foods by revealing the degree of processing for more than 80,000 food products.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Judge Says Public Doesn’t Need Cancer Warning Label ›

EWG’s Healthy Living Tips | EWG ›

EPA Considers Allowing Bee-Killing Pesticide to Be Sprayed on 165 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland

EcoWatch -GMO-

EPA Considers Allowing Bee-Killing Pesticide to Be Sprayed on 165 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland

Center for Biological Diversity       December 19, 2018

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will consider allowing the bee-killing pesticide thiamethoxam to be sprayed on the most widely grown crops in the U.S. The application, if approved, would allow the highly toxic pesticide to be sprayed directly on 165 million acres of wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, alfalfa, rice and potato.

The proposal by the agrochemical giant Syngenta to dramatically escalate use of the harmful neonicotinoid pesticide came last Friday, on the same day the EPA released new assessments of the extensive dangers posed by neonicotinoids, including thiamethoxam.

“If the EPA grants Syngenta’s wish, it will spur catastrophic declines of aquatic invertebrates and pollinator populations that are already in serious trouble,” said Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program. “You know the pesticide-approval process is broken when the EPA announces it will consider expanding the use of this dangerous pesticide on the same day its own scientists reveal that the chemical kills birds and aquatic invertebrates.”

Neonicotinoids have long been known to pose serious harm to bee populations. But the new EPA assessments found the commonly used pesticides can kill and harm birds of all sizes and pose significant dangers to aquatic invertebrates.

Western bumblebee by Steve Amus, USDA.

Thiamethoxam is currently widely used as a seed coating for these crops. This application would allow it to be sprayed directly on the crops, greatly increasing the amount of pesticide that could be used.

The just-released aquatic and non-pollinator risk assessment found that the majority of uses of the neonicotinoid on currently registered crops resulted in risks to freshwater invertebrates that exceeded levels of concern—the threshold at which harm is known to occur.

The EPA did not assess risks associated with spraying the pesticides on the crops it announced it was considering expanding use to on Friday. But it is likely that increasing the number of crops approved for spraying would dramatically increase that risk.

In January the EPA released a preliminary assessment of on-field exposures to thiamethoxam that found all uses of the pesticide—on foliar, soil and seeds—result in exposures that exceed the level of concern for acute and chronic risk to adult bees. But the agency has taken no steps to restrict use of these products and is now considering expanding their use.

The EPA will review a proposal to spray a bee-killing pesticide that works by attacking the bee’s central nervous system. NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Despite growing scientific and public concern about neonicotinoids, the application for expanded use of thiamethoxam was not announced by the EPA but quietly posted in the Federal Register.

“For years the EPA and pesticide companies bragged that by using treated seeds they were avoiding spraying insecticides, and despite the science showing that these treated seeds were deadly to birds, claimed that they were environmentally beneficial,” said Burd. “But we can expect the Trump EPA to now ignore the risks to birds and bees and approve these ultra-toxic pesticides to be sprayed across hundreds of millions of U.S. acres.”

Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides known to have both acute and chronic effects on aquatic invertebrates, honeybees, birds, butterflies and other pollinator species; they are a major factor in overall pollinator declines. These systemic insecticides cause entire plants, including pollen and fruit, to become toxic to pollinators; they are also slow to break down and therefore build up in the environment.

A large and growing body of independent science links neonicotinoids to catastrophic bee declines. Twenty-nine independent scientists who conducted a global review of more than 1,000 independent studies on neonicotinoids found overwhelming evidence linking the pesticides to declines in populations of bees, birds, earthworms, butterflies and other wildlife.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

The evidence points in one direction – we must ban neonicotinoids … ›

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Assisted Living Facility for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

Good Housekeeping
March 12, 2018

The nostalgic layout helps Alzheimer’s and dementia patients feel more at home.

More about the facility: http://ghkp.us/bprJXMM

This Assisted Living Facility Is Designed to Look Like a Small Town From the 1930s

The nostalgic layout helps Alzheimer's and dementia patients feel more at home.More about the facility: http://ghkp.us/bprJXMM

Posted by Good Housekeeping on Monday, March 12, 2018

Anti-Opioid Protest

CNN
March 12, 2018

These anti-opioid protesters gathered to throw pill bottles in a pool at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Their goal was to call attention to the link between the donors of the museum’s Sackler Wing and the ongoing opioid crisis in America. http://cnn.it/2tBYxI8

Anti-opioid protesters throw pill bottles in pool at New York museum

These anti-opioid protesters gathered to throw pill bottles in a pool at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Their goal was to call attention to the link between the donors of the museum's Sackler Wing and the ongoing opioid crisis in America. http://cnn.it/2tBYxI8

Posted by CNN on Monday, March 12, 2018

This gel is as flexible as jello, but stronger than steel.

CNN

March 10, 2018

This gel is as flexible as jello, but stronger than steel. It might be the future of joint replacements. http://cnn.it/2Fg8ssh

This gel is stronger than steel

This gel is as flexible as jello, but stronger than steel. It might be the future of joint replacements. http://cnn.it/2Fg8ssh

Posted by CNN on Friday, March 9, 2018

WTF Happened to the NRA?

MoveOn.org
March 12, 2018

Did you know the NRA used to work with the federal government to limit gun traffic and regulate machine guns? So how did they turn into the gun lobby they are today? (via act.tv)

How Did The NRA Turn Into The Gun Lobby They Are Today?

Did you know the NRA used to work with the federal government to limit gun traffic and regulate machine guns? So how did they turn into the gun lobby they are today? (via act.tv)

Posted by MoveOn.org on Monday, March 12, 2018

How Betsy DeVos Faceplanted on 60 Minutes

Esquire

How Betsy DeVos Faceplanted on 60 Minutes

From guns to race to school choice, Trump’s Secretary of Education failed on national television.

By Jack Holmes      March 12, 2018

Getty Images

Betsy DeVos was referred to as “the most hated cabinet secretary” by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes Sunday night. That was based on the Secretary of Education’s rough-and-tumble confirmation hearings—Vice President Mike Pence’s vote was required to break a Senate tie—and the constant protests that follow her on her visits around the country.

“Most hated” is quite an honor in this administration, which also features the climate-denying Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator. But DeVos is emblematic of Trumpism in its governing form: a member of the plutocratic class with limited expertise but unlimited, entrenched ideology, who attracts the suspicion that she simply bought her influence. At least, that was the opinion of Parkland survivor-turned-activist David Hogg on CNN yesterday.

Stahl’s questioning on 60 Minutes was an effective proving ground for DeVos. On a number of issues, but most prominently school choice, the secretary failed to convince the country of her qualifications. Often, it seemed like she’d just never thought about this before.

Stahl and DeVos started with guns, an issue that still enjoys a sense of urgency despite the NRA and its Republican allies running their post-massacre playbook. DeVos was asked to weigh in on her boss’ plan to arm teachers, which she first grappled with in her confirmation hearings. Back then, she suggested there would be a gun in a school in Wyoming “to protect from potential grizzlies,” which doesn’t seem like a universal issue facing America’s schools. This time was little better:

STAHL: They want gun control.

DEVOS: They want a variety of things. They want solutions.

STAHL: Do you think that teachers should have guns in the classroom?

DEVOS: That should be an option for states and communities to consider. And I hesitate to think of, like, my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Zorhoff, I couldn’t ever imagine her having a gun and being trained in that way. But for those who are—who are capable, this is one solution that can and should be considered. But no one size fits all. Every state and every community is going to address this issue in a different way.

STAHL: Do you see yourself as a leader in this—in this subject? And what kind of ideas will you be promoting?

DEVOS: I have actually asked to head up a task force that will really look at what states are doing. See there are a lot of states that are addressing these issues in very cohesive and coherent ways.

That “task force” is a commission established by President Trump. As an activist with Everytown USA, a gun-violence prevention group, illustrated on Twitter, the commission is probably not an honest attempt to find solutions to the gun violence epidemic in this country:

Trump yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania: “We can’t just keep setting up blue-ribbon committees. They do nothing but talk, talk, talk.”

Trump today: A new commission run by Betsy DeVos will look into raising age limit to buy long guns. There is no set timeline for findings.

But DeVos’ most glaring professional shortcomings were laid bare on more traditional issues facing the education system. DeVos is unshakably committed to the concept of “school choice,” which involves using public, taxpayer money to get public-school students into private charter or parochial schools. When asked her basis for that ideology, DeVos seemed to be short on the facts:

DEVOS: We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars from the federal level, and we have seen zero results.

STAHL: But that really isn’t true. Test scores have gone up over the last 25 years.

Things got significantly worse when Stahl asked about DeVos’ home state of Michigan. She and her family have spent huge sums of money to lobby for school choice in Michigan, but DeVos claimed not to know how the state’s public school system was doing.

STAHL: Now, has that happened in Michigan? We’re in Michigan. This is your home state.

DEVOS: Michi—Yes, well, there’s lots of great options and choices for students here.

STAHL: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?

DEVOS: I don’t know. Overall, I—I can’t say overall that they have all gotten better.

STAHL: The whole state is not doing well.

DEVOS: Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where this– the students are doing well and–

Getty Images

STAHL: No, but your argument that if you take funds away that the schools will get better, is not working in Michigan where you had a huge impact and influence over the direction of the school system here.

DEVOS: I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.

STAHL: The public schools here are doing worse than they did.

DEVOS: Michigan schools need to do better. There is no doubt about it.

STAHL: Have you seen the really bad schools? Maybe try to figure out what they’re doing?

DEVOS: I have not—I have not—I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.

STAHL: Maybe you should.

DEVOS: Maybe I should. Yes.

That’s right: when asked if she visits underperforming schools, the U.S. Secretary of Education’s answer was: never on purpose. This is an advertisement for what the Trump administration is all about. The data, the studies, even in-person observation—any way that we have of verifying whether a policy has worked or will work—are all irrelevant.

DeVos believes, deeply, that privatizing public education is the solution to all our problems. That she believes this, and is rich and influential enough to put her ideas into practice, is all that matters. The president’s thought processes are frequently an inversion of the scientific method, where his staff’s resources must be marshaled to find evidence to justify his ideology. It appears that ethos extends to his cabinet. DeVos championed school choice for years in her home state, and public schools there are now doing worse, but that has not impacted her calculus at all. The solution remains more school choice, just as the solution to gun violence is more guns.

The interview also exposed further downsides to having a (white) billionaire who never visits poorly performing schools as Education Secretary. One is that DeVos seems almost completely oblivious to the fact that whites and students of color are disciplined differently in schools—particularly, that misbehavior from black students is more frequently met with punishment that’s escalated to suspensions or even the criminal level, which then serves as a blemish on their record as they seek higher education or employment.

STAHL: That’s the issue: who and how the kids who disrupt are being punished.

DEVOS: Arguably, all of these issues or all of this issue comes down to individual kids. And—

STAHL: Well, no. That– it’s not.

DEVOS: —it does come down to individual kids. And—often comes down to—I am committed to making sure that students have the opportunity to learn in an environment that is conducive to their learning.

STAHL: Do you see this disproportion in discipline for the same infraction as institutional racism?

DEVOS: We’re studying it carefully. And are committed to making sure students have opportunity to learn in safe and nurturing environments.

This idea that racism is about individual interactions is foundational to modern conservative thought. It is also wrong. As Stahl points out, institutional racism is the more pressing issue in our society, as it is responsible for unequal treatment by law enforcement, the courts–and yes, schools. It’s not about an individual teacher’s prejudice, it’s about training and social conditioning that leads to subconscious bias. And it’s not about an individual kid’s behavior—as Stahl mentioned, this is about different punishments for the same offense. Like it or not, the color of the misbehaving kid’s skin matters. This might be lost on someone like Devos, who in a speech called historically black colleges “pioneers” of “school choice.” Historically black colleges were established because black students were shut out of other schools because of their race. There wasn’t much choice involved.

Devos never attended nor worked in any public school herself, and the evidence is fairly conclusive that she does not even believe in the concept of public education. In fact, she once called public education “a dead end.” Why else would she propose massive cuts to her own department? One answer, of course, is that she is a member of Donald Trump’s cabinet—which does not necessarily involve making sure your department is delivering better services to the public. But it does involve putting your pet ideology into practice, consequences be damned—if they’re even acknowledged at all. Long live the kakistocrats.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos doesn’t know a whole lot about schools

Fusion is with Splinter.

March 12, 2018

This is PAINFUL.

Turns out, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos doesn’t know a whole lot about schools—or anything else having to do with her job.

Betsy DeVos Is a Piping Hot Mess

This is PAINFUL.Turns out, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos doesn’t know a whole lot about schools—or anything else having to do with her job.

Posted by Fusion on Monday, March 12, 2018

The government is close to finishing a climate change report. President Trump won’t like it

The Mercury News

The government is close to finishing a climate change report. President Trump won’t like it

By Chris Mooney, Washington Post March 12, 2018

A traffic jam fills Interstate 880 in Milpitas in November. A new report says there is “no convincing alternative explanation” for climate change other than human activities such as fossil fuel burning. Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group

The country’s top independent scientific advisory body has largely approved a major climate report being prepared by scientists within the Trump administration — suggesting that another key government document could soon emerge that contradicts President Donald Trump’s skepticism about climate change and humans’ role in driving it.

The U.S. National Academies on Monday released a public peer review of a draft document called the U.S. National Climate Assessment, a legally required report that is being produced by the federal Global Change Research Program. The document, which is in its fourth installment, closely surveys how a changing climate is affecting individual U.S. states, regions, and economic and industrial sectors. The final version is expected later this year; the last version came out in 2014 during the Obama administration.

The process highlights how despite the changing political context — and even hints that the Trump administration may try to subject federal climate science to additional, adversarial reviews — technical government studies of climate science continue.

The report, 1,506 pages long in draft form, says U.S. temperatures will rise markedly in coming decades, accompanied by many other attendant effects. It predicts that Northeastern fisheries will be stressed by warmer ocean waters, that the Southeast will suffer from worsening water shortages, that worse extreme-weather events will tax water and other types of infrastructure, and far more.

For the most part, all of this has received a check mark from a panel of scientific referees at the National Academies.

“We had 16 experts review it, go through it in detail, see if it meets the congressionally mandated requirements, and we agree that it did,” said Robin Bell of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, head of the committee that reviewed the report.

The draft document lays out the current and future effects on the United States at a higher level of resolution than before, Bell said, focusing closely on the Caribbean, looking separately at the northern and southern Great Plains, examining air pollution, and more.

“Coastal ecosystems are being transformed, degraded, or lost due to climate change impacts, particularly sea level rise and higher numbers of extreme weather events,” the document states.

“As the pace of coastal flooding and erosion accelerates, climate impacts along our coasts are exacerbating preexisting social inequities as communities face difficult questions on determining who will pay for current impacts and future adaptation strategies and if, how, or when to relocate vulnerable communities,” it continues.

Regarding agricultural communities, the draft states that “reduced crop yields, intensifying wildfire on rangelands, depletion of surface water supplies, and acceleration of aquifer depletion are anticipated with increased frequency and duration of drought.”

When it comes to the fundamental science of climate change, the National Climate Assessment is based, in significant part, on another report, dubbed the Climate Science Special Report, that was finalized and released by the Global Change Research Program late last year.

That document found that there was “no convincing alternative explanation” for climate change other than human activities such as fossil fuel burning. It also said a sea-level rise as high as eight feet is “physically possible” as an extreme by the year 2100, though there was no way to say how probable that is.

Many scientists initially feared that the Trump administration would in some way suppress or otherwise interfere with the release of the Climate Science Special Report, given that it so thoroughly appeared to undermine the president’s personally expressed skepticism of climate change and his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate change agreement. But the report was released as expected, and there were no significant cries of censorship or political meddling.

Now, the question is whether the same will occur with the longer National Climate Assessment, which goes beyond the Climate Science Special Report to locate the climate problem within specific U.S. communities and industries, describing both how they will suffer and how they are coping. The National Climate Assessment arguably has more potential for political ramifications, in that it exhaustively describes effects in specific places in the country.

“There are many stories about the change, and that’s the beauty of this, you can go to the document and find stories in your community no matter where you live in the U.S.,” Bell said.

Granted, the current review is not a 100 percent endorsement — for instance, it states that when it comes to discussing different types of scientific uncertainty, “improved differentiation and more standardized treatment is needed across the draft report.” The document also contains more than 40 pages of line edits to the longer report.

But this is not a fundamental undermining of the document — it just means more work has to be done for it to be improved before publication.

“They are meant to provide clarification and ease of use by the readers but not direction-changing sorts of recommendations,” said Daniel Cayan, a professor at UC San Diego and one of the peer reviewers.

Like our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.

The report will be revised in light of these critiques by its federal authors — and move toward anticipated final-form publication later this year.

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“There’s a tremendous interest and demand for updated information and also examples of how various communities are approaching climate issues,” Cayan said. “So, I believe that there’s a community of consumers that really are depending on the National Climate Assessment, and I would be very surprised if it does not continue and it is not sustained.”