Donald Trump, who rolled back rail safety regulations and slashed environmental protections, donates Trump-branded water to East Palestine residents
Erin Snodgrass – February 22, 2023
Former President Donald Trump heads out of the East Palestine Fire Department next to his son, Donald Trump, Jr., as he visits the area in the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023. In the background is a pallet of personalized Trump water he donated.AP Photo/Matt Freed
Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday, following a disastrous train derailment.
The 2024 Republican candidate donated pallets of Trump-branded water to residents.
Trump’s visit raised questions about his administration’s rollback of rail safety regulations.
The former president’s visit to the northeastern village preempted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s arrival by one day, and Trump relished every opportunity to castigate his Democratic successors, saying Buttigieg “should have already been here,” and commanding President Joe Biden to “get over here,” according to local reports.
While assuring East Palestine residents that they had “not been forgotten,” Trump managed to tout his own presence in the besieged community and brush off questions about his administration’s noted history of rolling back regulations on both rail safety and hazardous chemicals.
Trump started his day by briefly visiting with local leaders, according to WKBN-27, before conducting a small press conference at a fire station, where, donning his signature “Make America Great Again” hat, he handed out a flurry of red baseball caps to attendees.
During his speech, Trump pledged to donate thousands of bottles of cleaning supplies, as well as pallets of Trump-branded water bottles to members of the community, many of whom have expressed continued concern over the safety of the town’s water supply following the derailment.
“You wanna get those Trump bottles, I think, more than anybody else,” Trump said, while flanked by state and local leaders, including Republican Sen. JD Vance.
The former president dismissed questions about his administration’s rollback of Obama-era rail safety regulations saying he “had nothing to do with it.”
The Department of Transportation under Trump justified the rollback with a 2018 analysis arguing the cost of requiring such brakes would be “significantly higher” than the expected benefits of the update.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Following his Wednesday news conference, Trump visited a local Ohio McDonald’s where he handed out more MAGA hats and bought meals for firefighters.
San Francisco holds its breath to find out how much it will cost to protect its waterfront from sea level rise
David Knowles, Senior Editor – February 22, 2023
San Francisco’s waterfront. (Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO — On a brisk February morning, a portable orange traffic sign set up near the intersection of Mission Street and Embarcadero shuddered in the wind, blinking a warning to passing drivers: “Caution: King tides.”
Waves from San Francisco Bay now regularly breach the pier and spill into the streets at this spot during tidal surges and helped convince city officials that sea level rise caused by climate change is no longer a problem that can be ignored.
“It was into my second year that I realized that my whole job and the organization was going to do this work,” Port of San Francisco executive director Elaine Forbes, who was appointed to her position in 2016 by then-Mayor Ed Lee, said beneath the Ferry Building’s broken clock tower, its hands fixed to either high noon or midnight as it undergoes repairs. “You’re on the line of defense.”
A semi-independent entity, the port oversees 7.5 miles of the city’s coastal facilities along the bay, leasing out a wide array of properties, including landmarks like Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39, the Ferry Building, a cruise ship terminal and Oracle Park, where the Giants play baseball. Its revenues are crucial to the city’s bottom line, and in 2018 Forbes mobilized her office to help ensure the passage of Prop A, a voter initiative that raised $425 million in taxpayer funds to begin addressing repairs and seismic upgrades to a 3-mile section of the city’s crumbling, more-than-100-year-old sea wall in anticipation of sea level rise.
“We said at the time, this is really a down payment for the problem,” Forbes recounted.
Since then, projections for how bad that problem will get have only become more dire. In 2020, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the nonpartisan fiscal and policy adviser to the California Legislature, issued a report stating that under a scenario of continued high greenhouse gas emissions, San Francisco could see as much as 7 feet of sea level rise by 2100.
A graphic from a 2020 report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.
In response to that grim new estimate, Forbes and the port’s commissioners announced last fall that they were partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a comprehensive yearlong study examining how best to protect the vulnerable waterfront. Doing nothing, everyone seemed to agree, was not an option.
“The increased frequency of flooding that you’ll see as the bay comes up and you have more frequent tidal flooding, the numbers are in the billions in terms of the damages that will accumulate from that,” Brian Harper, a director of planning with the Army Corps, told Yahoo News.
But just as significant increases in sea level will result in monumental damages, adequately protecting communities from the additional rise will also become much more expensive. Complicating San Francisco’s efforts, the pandemic has badly diminished revenues from tourism and financial district foot traffic, forcing port officials to go hat-in-hand to city, state and federal entities in search of money to use to harden the coastline against rising waters.
“We’re not even at a scale to pretend to be able to pay for this project,” Forbes said. “We have a $114 million balance sheet, maybe a little higher. If we’re lucky, we have a $25 million capital budget that we squeeze out of our net revenues.”
While noting that any estimate on how much a fix will cost depends on what the Army Corps recommends in its report, Forbes speculates that the range could end up between $10 billion and $30 billion. Other experts, however, believe that guess could be too low.
Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. (Getty Images)
“Projects like this have never, ever been built for the initial cost estimate,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and the founder of Oakland’s Pacific Institute, which in 1990 conducted California’s first-ever report on how sea level rise would impact the Bay Area. “It’s not just sea level rise. It’s the big storm in addition to sea level rise that’s the issue. Seven feet of sea level rise is devastating, and then on top of that you have the extreme storm and then the king tides on top of 7 feet. That’s when the real damages are felt, and they’re felt long before they reach 7 feet.”
While many Americans still doubt the existence of climate change or whether climate change represents a threat serious enough to spend billions to address, coastal communities across the country have already begun heeding the wake-up call issued by scientists. San Francisco is just one of several U.S. cities to seek help from the Army Corps of Engineers in recent years. Others include Charleston, S.C., Miami and Boston. As the reality of the situation and the costs associated with it continue to sink in, more and more cash-strapped communities will no doubt seek federal assistance.
“Our standard cost sharing for flooding coastal projects is 65% federal, 35% local,” Harper said.
But federal money for projects designed and proposed by the Army Corps is by no means guaranteed.
A king tide washes up along the Embarcadero in San Francisco on Jan. 3, 2022. (Brontë Wittpenn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
“Each step of the way, we need an authorization from Congress and we need appropriation of funding to move to the next step,” Harper said. “Our steps are: Study it, design it, construct it and then operate it. So in each of those stages we would be going back to the Congress with an updated status of where we are and request for appropriation to move to the next stage.”
With the GOP back in the majority in the House of Representatives, it’s unclear how future requests for climate adaptability from the Corps will be received. Not a single Republican, after all, voted in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, and many lawmakers who abhor large federal outlays have already begun looking for ways to kill its climate provisions. Yet much of the funding for hardening ports and waterfronts was allocated in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and Harper notes that the Corps continues to get approval for large projects.
“The administration incorporated authorization for all federal infrastructure agencies to specifically address climate resilience across the country, but [also] in urban settings like San Francisco and other large cities,” Harper said. “Some of this is still evolving and developing as federal agencies and their local and state counterparts figure out how to make those partnerships come together. The climate resilience aspect is continually evolving.”
Seeing the future
Kevin Costner in the 1995 movie “Waterworld.” (Ben Glass/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock)
Of all the consequences of climate change, sea level rise has so far remained something of an abstraction for many in the general public. While the oceans have indeed risen by an average of 8 to 9 inches since the 1880s, that difference can seem laughable when compared with Hollywood’s dystopian portrayal of what the future will look like. “Waterworld,” set in the year 2500, envisioned a world in which the polar ice caps and glaciers have completely melted away and sea levels have risen by 24,000 feet.
Since the 1995 debut of that film, the U.S. Geological Survey has released its own estimate of what an ice-free world would mean, concluding that “global sea level would rise approximately 70 meters (approximately 230 feet), flooding every coastal city on the planet.”
Given the swift transition to renewable sources of energy over the past few years, that outcome may also turn out to be too pessimistic. But until we dramatically slow the burning of fossil fuels, the planet will almost certainly continue to warm, causing the seas to keep rising. Though today’s 8 to 9 inches of sea level rise may not seem headline-worthy, almost half of the amount (3.8 inches) has occurred since 1990, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The pace of that rise, scientists predict, is poised to increase dramatically in the coming decades.
To better understand what multiple feet of additional sea level rise will mean for the nation’s coastlines, NOAA created its Sea Level Rise Viewer tool. When one toggles up to 7 feet of rise in San Francisco, Pier 39, Fisherman’s Wharf, Oracle Park and the $1.4 billion Chase Center, where the Golden State Warriors play basketball, are all shaded light blue, meaning they will be submerged in water. Forbes’s office on Pier 1, the Ferry Building next door and a good chunk of the financial district would also be permanently flooded, with access to multiple underground BART and Muni stations needing to be sealed off.
A screengrab from NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer tool showing the San Francisco area with 10 feet of sea level rise.
But how seriously should people take the Legislative Analyst’s Office upper-end prediction?
“It’s based on very sophisticated model assumptions,” Gleick said. “There’s a range of estimates. We don’t know how fast the big ice masses on Greenland and Antarctica are going to destabilize, but 1 to 2 meters by 2100 is not out of the bounds of reality and what we can expect.”
The same year San Francisco voters passed Prop A with 82.7% of the vote in order to “protect $100 billion of assets and economic activity,” a poll from the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that 84% of area residents said they believed global temperatures were rising and would continue to do so, the highest number of any community in the U.S.
“It does help when they’re able to see the change. With flooding during a king tide they say, ‘Hey, this is different,’” Harper acknowledged. “But that doesn’t really capture the severity of what they’re going to see over a longer time frame.”
Like NOAA, the Army Corps has turned to visual aids to help residents understand what they will be up against, posting its own sea level rise viewer that overlays flooding depictions onto photos of urban areas.
“Here’s your downtown area. Here are buildings you should recognize because they’re in your community, and here’s what that future tidal event is going to look like,” Harper said.
If “Waterworld” was too fantastical, another sci-fi film, “Blade Runner 2049,” offered viewers a glimpse of something less abstract in scenes that featured a massive sea wall that shields Los Angeles from the encroaching ocean. That kind of utility-over-aesthetics approach has, despite the obvious drawbacks, been suggested in San Francisco to replace and dwarf the existing sea wall.
“We don’t just want to build a vertical wall. We could do that and just solve it, but that’s not good for anybody,” saidKevin Conger, president and founding partner of CMG Landscape Architecture, a San Francisco firm the port has hired to begin drawing up ideas for what a fortified sea wall would look like. “In order to adapt and hold the water back we need to elevate portions of the waterfront, but that causes another problem, which is inland flooding, because all the stormwater that’s running down by gravity is no longer going to be able to run out to the coast because you’ve elevated that edge.”
An aerial view of the Port of San Francisco shrouded in fog. (Getty Images)
Conger, Forbes and Harper all agree that whatever the final plan that emerges following the release of the Army Corps report, it should prioritize community access to the waterfront while preparing it for what’s ahead. To address the varying needs and limitations of the waterfront, the designs will include a mixture of solutions, including reinforcing and raising the existing sea wall; creating new parks that will help channel floodwaters; adding pumping stations; upgrading stormwater systems; elevating roadways, light rail tracks and even some buildings, and floodproofing the lower floors of many others; and, quite possibly, retreating from some areas altogether.
“Fundamentally, it’s looking at maintaining the line of defense, managing water, adapting with water or allowing water,” Forbes said. “There’s various alternatives that will work best in different locations along the waterfront.”
Despite the immense scale of the project, Conger stresses the long view.
“We get so sort of locked into a fear of change. But we’re always tinkering with our cities and changing things. For us to work on these projects, it’s not like we build them and walk away and we’re done, especially as landscape architects,” he said. “Our designs change constantly.”
In November, the Army Corps will present its draft to the public, inviting comments from a range of stakeholders before incorporating that feedback. Assuming congressional authorization follows suit, Harper said, the budgeting for design could come as soon as 2026.
“Depending on what the project is, design can be two to five years. Construction, again, can be two to five years. It will depend on what the specific project recommendation is coming out of the report, and it’s all subject to congressional action and administration support,” Harper said.
Calculating the final costs could itself be a years-long project. In surveys conducted by the port, for instance, San Francisco residents have prioritized elevating the 1898 Ferry Building to keep it above the rising waters. But lifting a three-story building that contains more than 200,000 square feet of office and commercial space and a 15-story clock tower won’t be cheap. Nor will be addressing possible groundwater contamination at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, now an 866-acre federal Superfund site. Last June, a civil grand jury released a report that stated, “As the sea level rises, shallow groundwater near the shore rises with it, and can cause flooding, damage infrastructure, and mobilize any contaminants in the soil.” While the cleanup of buried radioactive soils is being overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency and state officials, the city is “poorly prepared,” the report said, for how sea level rise could cause the problem to spread into nearby lower-income neighborhoods.
San Francisco’s Ferry Building. (Getty Images)
All the coastal challenges facing San Francisco could become much more difficult depending on the precarious fate of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. In 2021, a study was published that concluded that the Florida-size glacier was at risk of collapse in the following five years. Already, Thwaites accounts for roughly 4% of global sea level rise annually, and its collapse would, in the short term, translate into 2 more feet of rise. Because Thwaites helps hold other glaciers in place, however, its destruction would result in a cascading catastrophe resulting in an additional 10 feet of sea level rise.
Of course, the contiguous 7.5-mile stretch operated by the Port of San Francisco is just one small part of the Bay Area coastline that will be impacted by sea level rise.
“You’re going to have to build sea walls around the Oakland airport, the San Francisco airport, and sea walls around San Jose,” Gleick said. “When we did our study there were 29 wastewater treatment plants that were vulnerable to a meter of sea level rise.”
Though Gleick notes that San Francisco has plenty of options when it comes to combating rising seas, many poorer and less well-situated places aren’t as lucky.
“I guess the whole point is, this is just a little hint of the huge costs that are going to be associated with climate change in general and sea level rise in particular if we don’t slow these [temperature] changes,” he added.
Climate change is making disasters like hurricanes more devastating and frequent, and Floridians are already being forced to flee.Getty; Marianne Ayala/Insider
The state’s climate exodus has already begun
As many residents will be proud to tell you, the thousand-odd islands that make up the Florida Keys are one of a kind: there is no other place in the world that boasts the same combination of geological, ecological, and sociological characteristics. The islands have a special, addictive quality about it, an air of freedom that leads people to turn their backs on mainland life.
The Keys are also the first flock of canaries in the coal mine of climate change. Over the past few years, the residents of these islands have been forced to confront a phenomenon that will affect millions of Americans before the end of the century. Their present calamity offers a glimpse of our national future.
Nature is changing. Today’s hurricanes tend to be stronger, wetter, and less predictable than those of the last century. They hold more moisture, speed up more quickly, and stay together longer. It’s difficult to tell for certain what role climate change plays in any individual storm, but in the case of Hurricane Irma — which slammed the Keys in September 2017 — there is little doubt that the warmth of the Caribbean Sea made the storm more powerful, allowing the vortex to regain strength overnight as it barreled toward the islands. As global warming continues to ratchet up the temperature of our oceans, we can expect more storms like Irma. The danger to the Keys doesn’t end with hurricane season, either: a slow but definite rise in average sea levels over the past decade has contributed to an increase in tidal flooding, leaving some roads and neighborhoods inundated with salt water for months at a time.
In the five years since Irma, the bill has come due. The hurricane made undeniable what previous floods had only suggested: that climate change will someday make life in the archipelago impossible to sustain. The storm was the first episode in a long and turbulent process of collapse, one that will expand over time to include market contraction, government disinvestment, and eventually a wholesale retreat toward the mainland. Irma may not have destroyed the Keys in one stroke, but the storm ran down the clock on life on the islands, pushing conches (the Keys’ unique name for residents) into a future that once seemed remote. The impulse to stay, which once bespoke a conch’s devotion to his or her adopted home, now looks a little more like denial. The decision to leave, on the other hand, which once signified surrender, now looks more like acceptance of the inevitable.
Florida’s Great Displacement
The term “climate migration” is an attempt to explain why people leave one place in favor of another; it assigns motivation to movements that may be voluntary or involuntary, temporary or permanent. Yet even if the primary cause for migration is clear, there are still countless other factors that influence when, where, and how someone moves in response to a disaster. It’s this messiness that is reflected in the word “displacement”: the migratory shifts caused by climate change are as chaotic as the weather events that cause them.
For some families the decision to depart the Keys was easy. The storm was a traumatic event, more than enough to convince many people that life on the islands was too dangerous to accept. They came back home, fixed up their houses, and got out. That was the case for Connie and Glenn Faast, who left the island city of Marathon for the mountains of North Carolina after spending almost 50 years in the Keys. “It was pretty much immediate,” Connie told me. “It’s just too hard to start over when you get older. We couldn’t risk it.”
The Faasts had lived the kind of life you can only live in the Keys: Connie worked on commercial fishing boats and in a local aquarium, while Glenn owned a boat maintenance company and raced Jet Skis in his spare time. They had stuck it out in the Keys through several major storms, including 2005’s Hurricane Wilma, which brought five feet of water to their little island and totaled three of their cars; Connie still shudders when she remembers the image of her husband wading through the water around their house with snakes climbing all over him, clinging to him for shelter from the flood. The Faasts had second thoughts after that storm, but the Keys were paradise, and besides, they didn’t know where else they would go.
When Irma came 12 years later, though, the choice was much easier. During the evacuation, it took the Faasts a week to find a decaying hotel in Orlando where they could wait out the storm. As the hurricane passed over the center of the state, it knocked out their power, leaving them and their pets to spend the night in 100-degree heat without air conditioning. “That was it for us,” she said. They had to get out — not just out of the Keys, but out of Florida altogether.
When they returned to Marathon, they discovered that their home was the only one in the neighborhood with an intact roof. They put the house on the market as soon as they could, but it took a year for the place to sell, in part because property values had risen so steeply that most people in the area couldn’t afford to buy.
The storm had scared many people off, but it had also destroyed a quarter of the Keys’s housing stock, which drove up prices for the homes that survived. In the meantime, the Faasts saw their friends start to leave as well: one moved to Sarasota, another to Orlando, and a third friend, who had been the first-ever mayor of Marathon, talked about moving to central Florida.
“We thought it would be devastating when we left,” Connie said, “because we love the Keys. But when we pulled out of there, we were so, so relieved.”
No more housing
Hundreds of people like the Faasts left the Keys of their own volition in the years after Irma, deciding one way or another that the risks of staying there outweighed the benefits. But perhaps the more turbulent phenomenon after the storm was the involuntary displacement caused by the shortage of affordable housing on the islands. The storm destroyed not only the massive mobile home parks on islands like Big Pine, but also hundreds of so-called downstairs enclosures, small apartment-style units that sat beneath elevated homes.
It also wiped out dozens if not hundreds of liveaboard boats and older apartment complexes in island cities like Marathon. These trailer parks and apartment complexes had been havens for resort waiters, boat buffers, and bartenders, allowing them to get a foothold in an archipelago that had long ago become unaffordable for anyone who wasn’t rich. Now all that housing was gone, and FEMA’s 50% rule — which prohibits improvements to structures that cost more than 50% of its market value — prohibited most trailers and downstairs enclosures from being rebuilt.
Many of those who had been lucky enough to own small homes or campers hadn’t been able to afford insurance, which meant they missed out on the payouts that went to wealthy homeowners and part-time vacationers. To make matters worse, the government of the Keys couldn’t build enough new homes to fill the gap created by the storm: the state had long ago imposed a de facto cap on the number of building permits Monroe county — which encompasses the islands — could issue, an attempt to make sure the population did not grow too large to evacuate the islands in a single day. Thus it was impossible for most residents either to rebuild their old homes or to buy new ones.
Some of those who lost their homes were able to crash with friends and family, and others got by living in tents or trailers, but others resorted to a forest homeless encampment. The lack of housing made the storm survivors feel as though they were stuck in a permanent limbo: life on the islands became a game of musical chairs, in which only the highest bidders could end up with a seat.
Delaying the inevitable
Debra Maconaughey, the rector at St. Columba Episcopal Church in Marathon, spent the years after Irma trying to forestall this involuntary displacement. When the storm hit, Maconaughey and much of her congregation were in Ireland, retracing the steps of the original St. Columba, and by the time they returned to the Keys it was clear that housing would be the defining challenge of the next few years. “Everybody’s house was destroyed. That’s what people would need the most.”
We were speaking in the church’s open-air pavilion, where Maconaughey had been delivering outdoor sermons even before the coronavirus pandemic. Irma had weakened the timbers that supported the roof of the central chapel, forcing the church to move worship outside.
The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake BittleSimon & Schuster
In the first week Maconaughey was back, she helped transform St. Columba’s campus into a massive shelter for boaters who had lost their homes in the storm, cramming two dozen air mattresses into a loft that had previously been used for an after-school program. The next week, Maconaughey and her congregation installed approximately two dozen trailers around Marathon, giving the boaters a long-term place to stay.
Maconaughey knew there was no chance the county government would restore all the housing that had been lost in the storm, but after a year went by, she found herself shocked at how little had been rebuilt. A nonprofit land trust had erected only a handful of new cottages and a $50 million state program called Rebuild Florida had repaired only two homes, a pittance compared to the thousands of dwellings that had been swept away.
So Maconaughey called up the nonprofits who were funding St. Columba’s relief efforts and made an unconventional proposal: the church, she proposed, would buy some derelict housing and fix it up. She had her eyes set on a leaky, mold-filled apartment complex in Marathon that had been condemned for sewage issues a few years earlier. The apartment complex finally opened in the summer of 2020, providing cut-rate housing to 16 families who had been staying on couches or in trailers since the day the storm hit.
Never coming back
But for every person who found permanent shelter, there were more who could not afford to wait for the islands to recover. This wasn’t only because people didn’t want to return, but also because there were no homes to which they could return. Maconaughey told me with distaste that in several places along Marathon’s beachfront, developers have built single large mansions on lots that once contained three or four small homes each.
The lack of affordable housing in turn created a labor shortage: fire and police departments couldn’t find enough officers to fill their shifts, boat maintenance companies struggled to locate buffers and repairmen, and many hotels went shorthanded through the on-season rush. When employers exhausted their hiring options on the islands, Maconaughey said, they started to hire workers from the mainland towns of Homestead and Florida City, who take a two-hour bus ride in either direction to work for minimum wage.
“I think people are really struggling, and it’s just below the surface,” she said. “We’re a tourist area, so it’s in our best interests to make it look nice from the highway, but there’s hidden pain.”
Maconaughey told me about the church sexton, Mike, who was driven out of the Keys by Irma. Mike showed up after the recession in a homeless shelter in Marathon. He was blind, and when he first arrived at the shelter he couldn’t take a shower or put on clothes without assistance. After a year in the shelter, Mike started attending services at St. Columba, and soon displayed a great talent for weaving wooden canes and chairs, a craft he often practiced on the church pavilion after sermons. He also taught the kids in the after-school program how to play chess.
Mike was on the Keys as the storm approached, not with the congregation in Ireland. He first sought refuge in the massive Miami hurricane shelter, but by the time he got there, that shelter was full. As shelters in Florida all reached capacity, emergency officials herded evacuees from the Keys up toward Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, offering them bus transportation as far as they were willing to go. Mike was unsure when he would be able to return to the Keys, so he asked for a ticket to Minnesota, where he grew up. He was never able to get back.
“We kind of lost him,” Maconaughey said. “He got on a bus to evacuate and now he’s gone. He was a huge part of our community … You have to ask yourself, do you ever recover from something like this?”
Jake Bittle is a climate reporter and staff writer for Grist.
More than 122 million Americans have high blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease and stroke. Here’s how to get your numbers under control
Wändi Bruine de Bruin – February 21, 2023
Stunning as it may sound, nearly half of Americans ages 20 years and up – or more than 122 million people – have high blood pressure, according to a 2023 report from the American Heart Association. And even if your numbers are normal right now, they are likely to increase as you age; more than three-quarters of Americans age 65 and older have high blood pressure.
Also known as hypertension, high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
Our research has found that most Americans don’t know the normal or healthy range for blood pressure – yet strikingly, they think they do. And that is cause for serious concern.
In our new study, published in January 2023, we found that 64% expressed confidence in their understanding of blood pressure numbers – but only 39% actually knew what normal or healthy blood pressure is. A healthy diet, more exercise and less salt and alcohol are all ways to improve your blood pressure numbers.
False confidence, deadly consequences
Such false confidence can be harmful because it may prevent people from seeking care for high blood pressure. After all, if you think it’s normal, why bother talking to your doctor about your blood pressure?
Part of the reason for this overconfidence begins in the doctor’s office. Typically, a nurse brings over a blood pressure cuff, straps it on your upper arm and takes a reading. The nurse may announce the result, remove the cuff and record it for the doctor.
When the doctor arrives, the session may well move on to other matters without a word about the blood pressure reading. This likely happens because your doctor wants to focus on how you’re feeling and why you’re there. But as a result, you may leave your appointment thinking your blood pressure is fine, even if it’s not.
To lower your risk of heart attacks and strokes, it’s critical to understand your blood pressure readings. This is especially true for patients with conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes.
Normal or healthy blood pressure is less than 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) for adults. This is a unit of measurement that stems from early blood pressure monitors, which looked at how far your blood pressure could push a column of liquid mercury. For most patients, lower tends to be better.
Stage 1 hypertension, which is the lower stage of high blood pressure, begins at 130/80. Stage 2 hypertension, which is the more severe stage of high blood pressure, begins at 140/90. Both numbers are critically important, because every increase of 20 millimeters of mercury in systolic blood pressure, or 10 in diastolic blood pressure, doubles a person’s chances of dying from a heart attack or stroke.
10 tips for healthier blood pressure
To avoid false confidence, ask about your blood pressure at every doctor’s visit, and find out what the numbers mean. If your blood pressure is above the normal or healthy range, then the American Heart Association recommends the following 10 tips.
Talk with your doctor. If your blood pressure is high, ask your doctor about strategies for lowering it, and how you can track your blood pressure at home.
Eat a heart-healthy diet. Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, skinless poultry and fish, nuts and legumes, and olive oil are all good for your heart. Red meat, saturated and trans fats and ultraprocessed foods are unhealthy for your heart.
Limit your alcohol use. Whether it’s beer, wine or spirits, alcohol increases your blood pressure. It’s better to not drink alcohol, but if you do, observe the limits recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. For women, that’s one drink per day at the very most. For men, it’s two drinks per day at most. One drink is 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of 80-proof spirits or 1 ounce of 100-proof spirits.
Be more physically active. Just two and a half hours per week of physical activity can help lower blood pressure. For example, that’s a 30-minute walk five days a week. You might also switch up your physical activity by swimming, lifting weights, doing yoga or going dancing.
Manage stress, which is bad for your blood pressure. While stress relief doesn’t always lower blood pressure, bringing down your stress level can help you feel better. The Mayo Clinic recommends several ways to manage stress, including learning to say no sometimes, spending time with family and friends and meditating.
Take medication, which is often recommended for people with stage 2 hypertension, and for some with stage 1 hypertension, including those who also have heart disease, kidney disease or diabetes. Most patients need two to three medications to lower blood pressure to normal or healthy levels. A recent meta-analysis demonstrated that lowering systolic blood pressure by 5 mm Hg through medication reduces the risk of major cardiovascular events by about 10%, irrespective of baseline blood pressure or previous diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.
Track your blood pressure at home. The American Heart Association recommends an automatic, validated cuff-style monitor that goes on your upper arm. A record of readings taken over time can help your doctor adjust your treatments as needed.
High blood pressure is a silent killer. Being proactive and knowing your numbers can be a lifesaver.
In its extreme, obesity reduces life expectancy by an average of three to 10 years, depending on severity, according to the NHS. It is also estimated that obesity and being overweight contribute to at least one in every 13 deaths in Europe.
So, with many of us feeling that we have put on a little weight here and there, and with stubborn tummy fat hard to shift – how can you get back in shape in 2023?
How to get rid of fat in 10 easy steps
1. Drink less alcohol
how to lose weight diet fitness health issues 2022 uk men women struggling to get rid of belly fat new year resolution fit alcohol – iStockphoto
Yes, it can be very tempting to reach for the Merlot at the end of a particularly taxing day, but studies show that alcohol is one of the main offenders when it comes to storing belly fat. Consider this: if you consume just two glasses of wine an evening, that’s an extra 72,000 calories a year, which equates to 20 pounds of fat.
Alcohol contains a very high amount of “empty” calories which don’t have any nutritional value. Women are more likely to store the fat created by these surplus calories on their hips, thighs and arms, whereas men store it on their tummy, hence the “beer belly”.
If you’re keen on reducing your tummy fat quickly, it’s advised that you cut out alcohol from your diet completely. If that sounds too severe, try to at least stay under the NHS-recommended 14 units (spread across three days or more). Aim to cut down your intake by capping your nightly intake to two glasses, and always having several alcohol-free days each week.
2. Eat a high protein diet
protein steak how to lose weight diet fitness health issues 2022 uk men women struggling to get rid of belly fat new year resolution fit – iStockphoto
There’s a good amount of evidence to suggest that protein is key to losing tummy fat. Firstly, it releases the hormone PYY, which helps to send a message to your brain that you’re full. A good portion of protein in a meal should help you avoid overeating.
Many observational studies prove that people with a higher protein intake have lower levels of belly fat. It also raises your metabolic rate, making you more likely to build muscle during and after exercise. Try to get a serving with every meal: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
3. Reduce your stress levels
Stress causes your body to gain fat because it triggers the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn increases your appetite.
How do you relieve stress? To an extent, the answer is entirely personal – we’re all different – but studies consistently show that getting out in nature and regular bouts of meditation work to reduce our anxiety.
4. Don’t eat a lot of sugary foods
Calorie for calorie, sugar is different to other food groups such as protein, complex carbohydrates, and fat, because it confuses your normal appetite controls and causes your body to produce fat.
Refined sugars are often hidden in a plethora of different products that you wouldn’t expect such as fruit juices. Make sure to check the labels before eating the products.
5. Address food sensitivities
People often have food sensitivities that go unaddressed for years. If you think you may be suffering from an allergy, it’s important that you report it to your doctor who may refer you to a dietitian.
Common food sensitivities include dairy and gluten, both of which can result in an inflammation of the gut, making it even more prone to developing more sensitivities. Addressing these allergies can have dramatic impacts on weight loss, and even mood and behaviour.
6. Build up your strength
resistance training how to lose weight diet fitness health issues 2022 uk men women struggling to get rid of belly fat new year resolution fit – MBI / Alamy Stock Photo
Everyone knows that regular exercise is necessary in order to lose weight; however, not everyone knows that resistance training is one of the best ways to do so.
Resistance training, also known as weight lifting or strength training, is important for improving and maintaining muscle mass. It also helps to spike our metabolisms, which means your body burns fat even after you’ve put the weights down.
However, it’s worth saying that the best possible training plan probably combines a variety of exercises.
7. Get plenty of sleep
sleep how to lose weight diet fitness health issues 2022 uk men women struggling to get rid of belly fat new year resolution fit
Sleep is one of the most important aspects of your overall health and wellbeing, especially when it comes to managing your weight. A 2013 study by the University of Colorado found that one week of sleeping about five hours a night led participants to gain an average of two pounds.
Easy ways to improve the quality of your sleep are by making sure you don’t look at screens late at night and by doing some gentle yoga before bed.
8. Eat fatty fish every week
Omega-3 fatty acids are lauded with such attractive qualities as delaying ageing and fighting degenerative diseases. However, it’s less well known that eating fatty fish is also excellent for weight loss (when accompanied by a balanced diet and regular exercise, of course).
Foods such as mackerel and herring are high in protein and “good fats” that help to break down some of the more dangerous fats in your body. Try to eat fish two or three times a week.
9. Replace some of your cooking fats with coconut oil
low fat cooking oils coconut how to lose weight diet fitness health issues 2022 uk men women struggling to get rid of belly fat new year resolution fit
Put aside the butter and olive oil and try coconut oil instead.
According to Web MD – and other medically-led sites – the medium-chain fats in coconut oil boost metabolism and decrease the amount of fat you store in response to high calorie intake.
10. Eat plenty of soluble fiber
Soluble fibre is ideal for aiding weight loss because it forms a gel with the food in your digestive tract, slowing it down as it passes through. This type of fibre promotes gut bacteria diversity, which has been frequently linked to a lower risk of belly fat.
Excellent foods to eat to increase your soluble fibre intake include avocados, legumes (try lentils, peas or chickpeas) and blackberries. In a 2021 study, volunteers ate one meal provided by researchers each day – one group ate an avocado, while a control group ate a meal similar in calories, but with the Instagrammer favourite left out.
“Female participants who consumed an avocado a day as part of their meal had a reduction in visceral abdominal fat,” says study leader Naiman Khan, the Illinois professor of kinesiology and community health. “However, fat distribution in males did not change, and neither males nor females had improvements in glucose tolerance.”
Easy exercises to burn belly fat
The best way to burn belly fat is to add around 30 minutes of cardio or aerobic exercise into your daily exercise routine.
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota ranked a variety common exercises based on information obtained from the US National Institutes of Health. The research calculated the number of calories burned during an hour of each exercise, with surprising results. With this in mind, these are some of the best work-outs to try:
Walking
Picking up the pace of your walk can work wonders for burning fat. When it comes to enjoying a brisk walk (3.5mph), you can burn between 314 and 391 calories.
A 2013 study by the University of Michigan also found that walking on uneven terrain while hiking increases the amount of energy your body uses by 28 per cent compared to walking on flat ground.
Skipping
Similarly to the above, skipping can help burn between 861-1,074 calories per hour, and thus burns fat. It is also a weight-bearing exercise so can help to improve bone density, which helps stave off osteoporosis.
Running
It goes without saying that running is a great way to burn calories. Running at 8mph will burn around 861-1,074 per hour (depending on your weight); you can burn 606-755 calories even running at 5mph, and 657-819 by simply running up the stairs.
Additionally, a 2005 study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that sedentary women who incorporated stair climbing into their daily activities increased their VO2 max, or maximum aerobic capacity, by 17.1 per cent and reduced “bad” LDL cholesterol by 7.7 per cent. (Read our guide to the best fitness trackers to learn how to track your workouts.)
Swimming
Experts agree that “vigorous swimming” is a full-body workout that is great for your joints. (By vigorous we’re sure they don’t mean splashing about in the shallow end.) It will help burn between 715-892 calories per hour of activity.
Breaststroke is the least beneficial stroke for burning calories, but a much better cardiovascular workout than the other strokes.
This guide is kept updated with the latest advice.
What Happens When You Die? Hospice Workers Share Conversations With Patients as They Near the End of Their Life
Lyssa Goldberg – February 19, 2023
Hospice workers share some of their impactful conversations with patients.
Talking about mortality can definitely be a frightening subject. But for some people, like those who work in hospice, discussing what happens when you die may feel like a more natural conversation to have.
So, what does it feel like to be days from death? And what happens to you when you die? While some of these questions may never be answered, we spoke to several hospice care professionals across the U.S. to find out what they’ve learned from their patients in their final days as they prepared to make a transition from life to death.
“Very few people are afraid of death. They’re afraid of dying, the process leading to death,” says Travis Overbeck, National Director of Patient Experience for Seasons Hospice.
Of course, no one truly knows what comes next, but some patients have a very clear idea of what they believe should happen once they die, says Overbeck. Hospice workers like himself get to explore their patients’ belief systems and ask them what they’d like their death to look like.
For instance, in the Buddhist tradition, there’s an expectation of silence at the time of death, according to Overbeck, and there should not be any wailing or grieving at the individual’s bedside so they can make their way peacefully into the next life.
“I’ve seen so many patients at the time of death. Most often, there’s this sense of peace and calm, and it’s really beautiful,” Overbeck says. “That’s why I do what I do. It’s all about bringing that peace and comfort to our patients at end of life.”
Here are some of the most common themes that have emerged from end-of-life conversations with hospice workers.
“Would you mind praying for me?”
Overbeck, a chaplain who sees patients of all faiths and backgrounds but practices Christianity himself, remembers his final conversations with a Jewish patient in her last days of life. She said, “I know you’re Christian, and I know I’m Jewish, but would you mind praying for me?”
“What would you like me to pray for?” Overbeck replied.
“I pray that when I die, it will be peaceful, and I will be comforted,” was the patient’s request.
After some conversation, they prayed together and the two hit it off. When Overbeck returned to the hospital the next day, the patient’s friend found him in the hallway. She told Overbeck that the patient had become unresponsive—but before she stopped speaking, the patient asked her friend to have Overbeck pray for her again if he returned.
Overbeck entered the patient’s room and, knowing that hearing is typically the last sense to go, he reintroduced himself and said, “I’m going to go ahead and pray for you.” He prayed again for peace and a comfortable transition. And at the end of his prayers, suddenly the patient began to talk.
“I’m going on a journey to a place I’ve never been before,” she started, “and everybody is sparkling, and everybody is smiling at me.” The patient died about 45 minutes later.
“I don’t care what belief system you are or aren’t. At the end of the day, that’s real. That was her experience,” Overbeck says.
Much of Overbeck’s work is dedicated to tying up loose ends and bringing his patients’ life to closure, whether that’s reuniting family members that have become estranged or ensuring the patient’s legacy is preserved. “There’s a process in dying,” Overbeck says. “It’s the opportunities to say, ‘I love you,’ opportunities to say, ‘I forgive you,’ opportunities to ask for forgiveness, opportunities to say, ‘Goodbye.’”
Overbeck recalls another conversation with a patient who was the CEO of a very large, well-known company. “Travis, I had it all,” the CEO told Overbeck. “I had the vacation homes. I was able to send my kids to the finest schools. We traveled the world. But at some point, I lost my focus. I began to value my job and my money more than anything else.”
Along the way, it cost him not only his marriage but his relationship with his kids. In fact, the patient had a grandchild he’d never even meet. Overbeck asked the patient for permission to reach out to his family. A few phone calls later, they were flying into town to visit the hospital.
Overbeck helped facilitate conversations between the patient and his family members, and while he acknowledges it wasn’t easy, he was ultimately able to bring them a feeling of closure. Most importantly, the patient was able to meet his grandchild for the first time. The patient died later that day.
“The biggest realization that I’ve had is that we all have a finite amount of time—it’s about how you’re going to live with that time,” Overbeck says.
Cultivating gratitude
Carolyn Gartner, licensed clinical social worker with Visiting Nurse Service of New York Hospice and Palliative Care, began practicing meditation and studying Buddhism around the same time she started pursuing social work.
Working in hospice care, she’s found her patients hold a perspective of gratitude and acceptance that parallels what she’s been taught through her meditation practice. “I feel my older patients really understand the idea of letting go, and not letting small things bother you,” Gartner says. “We get so caught up in the day-to-day, and I see my older patients are a good role model for how those things pass.”
Gartner works with a diverse array of patients throughout Brooklyn, from celebrities to patients in public housing. Recently, she and a chaplain from VNSNY Hospice went to visit a Jamaican patient who loves Bob Marleymusic.
The patient’s daughter told them that her mother had experienced a severe explosion of pain the day before, so Gartner prepared to handle the situation sensitively, thinking perhaps the patient wouldn’t want to listen to music that day.
When they walked in the door, however, the patient was wearing a big smile on her face and said: “Okay, ladies, when are you starting the Bob Marley?’”
“I do think that this work, almost every day, reinforces to me: We are energy. We are light. There is a spirit,” Gartner says.
At end-of-life, people like to reflect on their life story, Gartner says. Patients will take out old photos and share stories of joy and pain all in one session. Having studied screenwriting as an undergrad at New York University, Gartner uses these same storytelling techniques with her patients to learn and listen to their stories.
“My observation is that people will often die the way they live, so it’s really interesting to see how people process what they’ve gone through,” she says.
While the patients may seem ready to accept what comes next, Gartner says it’s the families who often need help coming to terms with it. VNSNY Hospice assists with the pre-bereavement process for family caregivers so they can see beyond the grief and enjoy the time they have left with the patient.
“Patients almost always know what’s going on in their body. It’s the family who doesn’t,” she says.
Over the years, Kalah Walker, patient care administrator for VITAS Healthcare, has seen numerous hospice cases where the patients will call out to their loved ones who’ve passed, as if they’re seeing someone that everyone else cannot.
Often, they look out into the distance, and the hospice worker knows it’s the name of a family member who’s no longer with us. Generally, this happens within the last days of their life, Walker notes.
“You know what they’re seeing when they’re looking off into the distance…,” she said. “Once they do that, they’re able to let go.”
Sometimes, the patients will ask their hospice worker if they can see the family member too. Walker says it’s important to be there in the moment with them, agree, and allow the moment to happen as the patient is experiencing it. “There’s a nurse who gets to be there to bring life into this world, and we get to stand there and hold a patient’s hands or their family’s hands as a life leaves this world,” she says.
Walker says the real work with end-of-life care comes after the patient passes, however. “Hospice isn’t just about death and dying. It’s about learning about what’s really important in life and keeping those memories alive,” Walker said.
VITAS’ staff supports families who’ve experienced loss with programs like gifting them memory bears as reminders of their loved ones or butterfly release ceremonies. At the butterfly release ceremony, families will open a package and release butterflies into the sky, giving them a chance to reflect and experience a feeling of release themselves. “I’ve seen the butterflies sit there in the moment. You notice they kind of hover around, and it’s almost as if that butterfly is the loved one,” Walker says.
50-year-old muscles just can’t grow big like they used to – the biology of how muscles change with age
Roger Fielding, Senior Scientist Team Lead Nutrition Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Team Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Professor of Medicine, Tufts University – February 19, 2023
There is perhaps no better way to see the absolute pinnacle of human athletic abilities than by watching the Olympics. But at the Olympics – and at almost all professional sporting events – you rarely see a competitor over 40 years old and almost never see a single athlete over 50. This is because with every additional year spent on Earth, bodies age and muscles don’t respond to exercise the same as they used to.
I lead a team of scientists who study the health benefits of exercise, strength training and diet in older people. We investigate how older people respond to exercise and try to understand the underlying biological mechanisms that cause muscles to increase in size and strength after resistance or strength training.
Old and young people build muscle in the same way. But as you age, many of the biological processes that turn exercise into muscle become less effective. This makes it harder for older people to build strength but also makes it that much more important for everyone to continue exercising as they age.
The exercise I study is the type that makes you stronger. Strength training includes exercises like pushups and situps, but also weightlifting and resistance training using bands or workout machines.
When you do strength training, over time, exercises that at first felt difficult become easier as your muscles increase in strength and size – a process called hypertrophy. Bigger muscles simply have larger muscle fibers and cells, and this allows you to lift heavier weights. As you keep working out, you can continue to increase the difficulty or weight of the exercises as your muscles get bigger and stronger.
It is easy to see that working out makes muscles bigger, but what is actually happening to the cells as muscles increase in strength and size in response to resistance training?
Any time you move your body, you are doing so by shortening and pulling with your muscles – a process called contraction. This is how muscles spend energy to generate force and produce movement. Every time you contract a muscle – especially when you have to work hard to do the contraction, like when lifting weights – the action causes changes to the levels of various chemicals in your muscles. In addition to the chemical changes, there are also specialized receptors on the surface of muscle cells that detect when you move a muscle, generate force or otherwise alter the biochemical machinery within a muscle.
In a healthy young person, when these chemical and mechanical sensory systems detect muscle movement, they turn on a number of specialized chemical pathways within the muscle. These pathways in turn trigger the production of more proteins that get incorporated into the muscle fibers and cause the muscle to increase in size.
These cellular pathways also turn on genes that code for specific proteins in cells that make up the muscles contracting machinery. This activation of gene expression is a longer-term process, with genes being turned on or off for several hours after a single session of resistance exercise.
The overall effect of these many exercise-induced changes is to cause your muscles to get bigger.
How older muscles change
While the basic biology of all people, young or old, is more or less the same, something is behind the lack of senior citizens in professional sports. So what changes in a person’s muscles as they age?
What my colleagues and I have found in our research is that in young muscle, a little bit of exercise produces a strong signal for the many processes that trigger muscle growth. In older people’s muscles, by comparison, the signal telling muscles to grow is much weaker for a given amount of exercise. These changes begin to occur when a person reaches around 50 years old and become more pronounced as time goes on.
In a recent study, we wanted to see if the changes in signaling were accompanied by any changes in which genes – and how many of them – respond to exercise. Using a technique that allowed us to measure changes in thousands of genes in response to resistance exercise, we found that when younger men exercise, there are changes in the expression of more than 150 genes. When we looked at older men, we found changes in the expression of only 42 genes. This difference in gene expression seems to explain, at least partly, the more visible variation between how young and old people respond to strength training.
Strength training can help maintain overall fitness and allow you to keep doing other things you love as you age. Peathegee Inc via Getty Images
While younger people may get stronger and build bigger muscles much faster than their older counterparts, older people still get incredibly valuable health benefits from exercise, including improved strength, physical function and reduced disability. So the next time you are sweating during a workout session, remember that you are building muscle strength that is vital to maintaining mobility and good health throughout a long life.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Rebecca Fuoco, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz – February 19, 2023
Ms. Fuoco is the director of science communications at the Green Science Policy Institute. Dr. Rosner is a professor of sociomedical sciences and history at Columbia. Dr. Markowitz is a history professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
A black plume and flames rise over East Palestine, Ohio, from a controlled burn of chemicals carried by a derailed train.Credit…Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
Like a scene out of some postapocalyptic movie, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio convened a news conference on Feb. 5 to deliver a stark warning. “We are ordering them to leave,” he said of residents of the small rural community of East Palestine, Ohio, and a neighboring part of Pennsylvania. “This is a matter of life and death.” To emphasize the point, he added: “Those in the red area are facing grave danger of death if they are still in that area.”
In this case, the “grave danger of death” was not a zombie fungus or lethal bacteria but chemicals. The red area was an area one mile by two miles surrounding the town, on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border about 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
Two days earlier, it was the site of a fiery derailment of train cars carrying the gas vinyl chloride and other chemicals. Freight trains typically transport more than two million carloads of hazardous materials each year, including many chemicals. Vinyl chloride is particularly dangerous and increasingly common, used primarily to make polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC, a hard plastic resin used to produce pipes, wire, cable coatings and packaging. We should begin phasing out the use of this chemical.
It was a particular concern in East Palestine after the derailment. Because vinyl chloride is so flammable, it created a risk of an explosion that could launch deadly shrapnel as far as a mile. To avoid such a catastrophe, railroad officials vented the vinyl chloride and burned it off.
But shrapnel wasn’t the only risk. Inhaling vinyl chloride fumes can be deadly. Even people in neighboring towns were at risk. On Feb. 10, seven days after the crash, the Environmental Protection Agency said that chemicals were “known to have been and continue to be” released to the air, surface soil and surface waters.
Residents complained last week of rashes, headaches and a lingering odor. Thousands of dead fish turned up in streams near the crash site.
Vinyl chloride is not just suspected of causing cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers it a Group 1 carcinogen known to cause liver cancer in highly exposed industrial workers. It has also been associated with brain and lung cancers, lymphoma and leukemia.
We need to stop producing and using vinyl chloride and its most important end product, PVC plastics. Increasingly, major businesses are phasing it out. Many European communities have banned or restricted its use, even as the PVC plastics industry is expanding.
The United States should begin eliminating PVC by categories of use. Legislation has been floated in California to prohibit PVC in food packaging — a ban that could be expanded to other nonessential needs. Though PVC is inexpensive, it is replaceable in most cases. Alternatives include glass, ceramics, linoleum, polyesters and more.
Also, discarded PVC should be labeled a hazardous waste. The designation would put the burden on users for its safe storage, transportation and disposal, creating an incentive to accelerate its elimination. The E.P.A. tentatively rejected such an action in January but is still accepting public comment on the proposal.
You might wonder why such a hazardous chemical, among others, is being transported along American railways and through our communities. It’s because vinyl chloride is one of the most produced petrochemicals in the world. Tens of millions of tons of it are manufactured annually. (It was used as an aerosol propellant in household consumer products like hair spray until it was banned in aerosols by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1974.)
Vinyl chloride manufacturers laid the groundwork for the chemical’s proliferation decades ago with cover-ups and disinformation campaigns. Their own research showed that exposure led to deadly cancers in rodents. Numerous studies have found that workers regularly exposed to the chemical during the 1970s developed malignant liver cancers at very high rates. Chemical companies knew early on they were unleashing a dangerous substance into the world.
The extraordinary efforts of the chemical industry to continue selling products it knew were harmful were recounted by two of us in our 2002 book “Deceit and Denial.”
In addition to the manufacturing and transportation risks of vinyl chloride, PVC plastics can release endocrine-disrupting phthalates, used to soften PVC, and cancer-causing dioxins into air and water during much of their life cycle.
Many of the vinyl chloride and PVC production facilities are clustered with other petrochemical facilities along an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in Louisiana between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as Cancer Alley. People in one town in the area, most of whom are Black, are about 50 times as likely to develop cancer as the average American. They face the constant threat of chemical accidents.
The PVC plastics industry is expanding in other parts of the country. Growing plastics hubs in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia could become new cancer alleys.
As long as PVC production continues, the risk of vinyl chloride spills will persist. Worse, more workers and communities will be exposed to the ticking time bombs of cancer and other severe health harms.
Millions of debt collections dropped off Americans’ credit reports
Gabriella Cruz – Martinez – Personal finance writer – February 18, 2023
Tens of millions of debt collections disappeared from Americans’ credit reports during the pandemic, a new government watchdog report found, but overdue medical bills remain a big strain on many households nationwide.
The total number of debt collections on credit reports dropped by 33% from 261 million in 2018 to 175 million in 2022, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, while the share of consumers with a debt collection on their credit report shrunk by 20%.
Medical debt collections also dropped by 17.9% during that time, but still made up 57% of all collection accounts on credit reports, far more than other types of debt combined — including credit cards, utilities, and rent accounts.
Despite the reduction in collections, the CFPB noted that the results underscore ongoing concerns that current medical billing and collection practices can lack transparency, often hurting the credit scores and financial health of those most vulnerable.
“Our analysis of credit reports provides yet another indicator that, due to a strong labor market and emergency programs during the pandemic, household financial distress reduced over the last two years,” Rohit Chopra, CFPB director said in a statement. “However, false and inaccurate medical debt on credit reports continues to drag on household financial health.”
Signage is seen at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) headquarters in Washington, D.C., (Credit: Andrew Kelly, REUTERS)
Having a debt in collections means your original creditor sent your debt to a third-party agency to collect it. According to the CFPB, common items that can slip into collections include medical debt, student loans, unpaid credit card balances and rent, to name a few.
Once in collections, these debts can stay on your credit report for up to 7 years, Experian noted, potentially harming your chances of gaining access to new credit in the future.
While pandemic-era stimulus benefits may have helped families reduce some of their overall debt, the CFPB noted that the decline in collections was mainly due to some debt collectors underreporting data.
According to the report, debt collectors — particularly those who primarily collect on medical bills — reported 38% fewer collection tradelines from 2018 to 2022. Chopra noted this could be troubling.
(Photo: Getty Creative)
The “decline in collections tradelines does not necessarily reflect a decline in debt collection activity, nor an improvement in families’ abilities to meet their financial obligations,” he said, “but a choice by debt collectors and others to report fewer collections tradelines, while still conducting other collection activities.”
Fortunately, a growing share of Americans may see even more medical debt disappear from their credit history this year, helping to improve their creditworthiness.
In the first half of 2023, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion will no longer include medical debts under the amount of $500 on credit reports. That followed the credit bureaus’ move last year to remove approximately 70% of medical collection debt tradelines from consumer reports. Additionally, unpaid medical debt would take a year — rather than the current six months — to show up on a person’s credit report, the bureaus said.
About two dozen people eventually filled the “Debt and Collections” courtroom in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Many of the cases on the docket involved medical debt. (Credit: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Those upcoming changes may still be just a drop in the bucket toward reducing medical debt, Chopra said.
“While this will reduce the total number of medical collections tradelines, an estimated half of all consumers with medical collections tradelines will still have them on their credit reports,” Chopra said in the report, “with the larger collection amounts representing a majority of the outstanding dollar amount of medical collections remaining on credit reports.”
The CFPB analysis builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s aim to strengthen the Affordable Care Act and implement new consumer protections to reduce the burden of medical debt and lower medical costs.
It also follows a string of CFPB reports citing how inaccurate medical debt tradelines could not only unfairly harm consumers’ credit scores, but also create long-term repercussions such as avoidance of medical care, risk of bankruptcy, or difficulty securing employment.
Gabriella is a personal finance reporter at Yahoo Finance.
How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive
Coral Davenport – February 18, 2023
Cotton left over after the harvest in Meadow, Texas, Jan. 19, 2023. (Jordan Vonderaar/The New York Times)
When the Agriculture Department finished its calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products.
In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers abandoned 74% of their planted crops — nearly 6 million acres — because of heat and parched soil, hallmarks of a megadrought made worse by climate change.
That crash has helped to push up the price of tampons in the United States 13% over the past year. The price of cloth diapers spiked 21%. Cotton balls climbed 9%, and gauze bandages increased by 8%. All of that was well above the country’s overall inflation rate of 6.5% in 2022, according to data provided by the market research firms NielsonIQ and The NPD Group.
It’s an example of how climate change is reshaping the cost of daily life in ways that consumers might not realize.
West Texas is the main source of upland cotton in the United States, which in turn is the world’s third-biggest producer and largest exporter of the fiber. That means the collapse of the upland cotton crop in West Texas will spread beyond the United States, economists say, onto store shelves around the world.
“Climate change is a secret driver of inflation,” said Nicole Corbett, a vice president at NielsonIQ. “As extreme weather continues to impact crops and production capacity, the cost of necessities will continue to rise.”
Halfway around the world in Pakistan, the world’s sixth-largest producer of upland cotton, severe flooding, made worse by climate change, destroyed half that country’s cotton crop.
There have been other drags on the global cotton supply. In 2021, the United States banned imports of cotton from the Xinjiang region of China, a major cotton-producing area, out of concerns about the use of forced labor.
But experts say that the impact of the warming planet on cotton is expanding across the planet with consequences that may be felt for decades to come.
By 2040, half of the regions around the globe where cotton is grown will face a “high or very high climate risk” from drought, floods and wildfires, according to the nonprofit group Forum for the Future.
Texas cotton offers a peek into the future. Scientists project that heat and drought exacerbated by climate change will continue to shrink yields in the Southwest — further driving up the prices of many essential items. A 2020 study found that heat and drought worsened by climate change have already lowered the production of upland cotton in Arizona and projected that future yields of cotton in the region could drop by 40% between 2036 and 2065.
Cotton is “a bellwether crop,” said Natalie Simpson, an expert in supply chain logistics at the University at Buffalo. “When weather destabilizes it, you see changes almost immediately,” Simpson said. “This is true anywhere it’s grown. And the future supply that everyone depends on is going to look very different from how it does now. The trend is already there.”
Return of the Dust Bowl
For decades, the Southwestern cotton crop has depended on water pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches underneath eight western states from Wyoming to Texas.
But the Ogallala is declining, in part because of climate change, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment, a report issued by 13 federal agencies. “Major portions of the Ogallala Aquifer should now be considered a nonrenewable resource,” it said.
That is the same region that was abandoned by more than 2 million people during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, caused by severe drought and poor farming practices. John Steinbeck famously chronicled the trauma in his epic “The Grapes of Wrath,” about a family of cotton farmers driven from their Oklahoma home. Lately, the novel has been weighing on the mind of Mark Brusberg, a meteorologist at the Agriculture Department.
“The last time this happened, there was a mass migration of producers from where they couldn’t survive any longer to a place where they were going to give it a shot,” Brusberg said. “But we have to figure out how to keep that from happening again.”
In the years since, the farmland over the Ogallala once again flourished as farmers drew from the aquifer to irrigate their fields. But now, with the rise in heat and drought and the decline of the aquifer, those dust storms are returning, the National Climate Assessment found. Climate change is projected to increase the duration and intensity of drought over much of the Ogallala region in the next 50 years, the report said.
Barry Evans, a fourth-generation cotton farmer near Lubbock, Texas, doesn’t need a scientific report to tell him that. Last spring, he planted 2400 acres of cotton. He harvested 500 acres.
“This is one of the worst years of farming I’ve ever seen,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of the Ogallala Aquifer, and it’s not coming back.”
When Evans began farming cotton in 1992, he said, he was able to irrigate about 90% of his fields with water from the Ogallala. Now that’s down to 5% and declining, he said. He has been growing cotton in rotation with other crops and using new technologies to maximize the precious little moisture that does arrive from the skies. But he sees farmers around him giving up.
“The decline of the Ogallala has had a strong impact on people saying it’s time to retire and stop doing this,” he said.
Kody Bessent, the CEO of Plains Cotton Growers Inc., which represents farmers who grow cotton across 4 million acres in Texas, said that land would produce 4 or 5 million bales of cotton in a typical year. Production for 2022 is projected at 1.5 million bales — a cost to the regional economy of roughly $2 billion to $3 billion, he said.
“It’s a huge loss,” he said. “It’s been a tragic year.”
From Cotton Fields to Walmart Shelves
Upland cotton is shorter and coarser than its more famous cousin, Pima cotton. It is also far more widely grown and is the staple ingredient in cheap clothes and basic household and hygiene products.
In the United States, most cotton grown is upland cotton, and the crop is concentrated in Texas. That’s unusual for a major commodity crop. While other crops such as corn, wheat and soybeans are affected by extreme weather, they are spread out geographically so that a major event afflicting some of the crop may spare the rest, said Lance Honig, an economist at the Agriculture Department.
“That’s why cotton really stands out, with this drought having such a big impact on the national crop,” Honig said.
Sam Clay of Toyo Cotton Co., a Dallas trader that buys upland cotton from farmers and sells it to mills, said the collapse of the crop had sent him scrambling. “Prices have gone sky-high, and all this is getting passed on to consumers,” he said.
Clay said he is experiencing the impacts himself. “I bought six pairs of Wranglers a year and a half ago for $35 a pair. I’m paying $58 a pair now.”
At least 50% of the denim in every pair of Wrangler and of Lee jeans is woven from U.S.-grown cotton, and the cost of that cotton can represent more than half the price tag, said Jeff Frye, the vice president of sustainability for Kontoor Brands, which owns both labels.
Frye and others who deal in denim did point out, however, that other factors have driven up price, including the ban on imports of Xinjiang cotton, high fuel costs and the complicated logistics of moving materials.
Among the cotton products most sensitive to the price of raw materials are personal care items like tampons and gauze bandages, since they require very little labor or processing like dying, spinning or weaving, said Jon Devine, an economist at Cotton Inc., a research and marketing company.
The price of Tampax, the tampon giant that sells 4.5 billion boxes globally each year, started climbing fast last year.
In an earnings call in January, Andre Schulten, chief financial officer for Procter & Gamble, which makes Tampax, said the costs of raw materials “are still a significant headwind” for the company across several products, forcing the company to raise prices.
On a recent Sunday at a Walmart in Alexandria, Virginia, several shoppers said they had noticed rising prices.
“The price of a regular box of Tampax has gone up from $9 to $11,” said Vanessa Skelton, a consultant and the mother of a 3-year-old. “That’s a regular monthly expense.”
Make Way for Polyester
Cotton farmers say that Washington can help by increasing aid in the farm bill, legislation that Congress is renewing this year.
Taxpayers have sent Texas cotton farmers an average of $1 billion annually over the past five years in crop insurance subsidies, according to Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis.
Farmers say they’d like expanded funding for disaster relief programs to cover the impact of increasingly severe drought and to pay farmers for planting cover crops that help retain soil moisture. They also say they hope that advances in genetically modified seeds and other technologies can help sustain Texas cotton.
But some economists say it may not make sense to continue support a crop that will no longer be viable in some regions as the planet continues to warm.
“Since the 1930s, government programs have been fundamental to growing cotton,” Sumner said. “But there’s not a particular economic argument to grow cotton in West Texas as the climate changes. Does it make any economic sense for a farm bill in Washington, D.C., to say, ‘West Texas is tied to cotton?’ No, it doesn’t.”
In the long run, it could just mean that cotton is no longer the main ingredient in everything from tampons to textiles, said Sumner, “and we’re all going to use polyester.”
