Public Health

Million-Liter Cyanide Spill In Argentina Highlights Mining Crimes

September 26, 2015 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Argnetina, Canada, Chemical Spill, Environment, Public Health

By Deirdre Fulton in Common Dreams - Highlighting how corporate extractivism and lack of accountability is driving the destruction of Latin American communities, a Canadian mining company has now confirmed that more than one million liters of cyanide solution spilled from the Barrick Gold Veladero mine in San Juan, Argentina this month—making the spill more than four times larger than originally estimated. The Toronto-headquartered mining company initially said it had spilled just 224,000 liters of the toxic liquid, used to leach gold from processed rocks, into the Potrerillos River. On Wednesday, the corporation amended its statement (pdf) and said that in fact 1.072 million liters of a cyanide and water solution were spilled due to a failure in one of the valves in the mine's pipes.

Monsanto’s Documents Reveal Truth Of Toxicological Dangers

September 25, 2015 Richard Gale and Gary Null in Organic Consumers, www.organicconsumers.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, Monsanto, Public Health

By Richard Gale and Gary Null in Organic Consumers - Over the years a large body of independent research has accumulated and now collectively provides a sound scientific rationale to confirm that glyphosate is far more toxic and poses more serious health risks to animals and humans than Monsanto and the US government admit. Among the many diseases and health conditions non-industry studies identified Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and autism since Roundup has been shown to instigate aluminum accumulation in the brain. The herbicide has been responsible for reproductive problems such as infertility, miscarriages, and neural tube and birth defects. It is a causal agent for a variety of cancers: brain, breast, prostate, lung and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Other disorders include chronic kidney and liver diseases, diabetes, heart disease, hypothyroidism, and leaky gut syndrome.

Single Payer Health Care Groups Converge On Chicago

September 21, 2015 David Johnson, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Chicago, Public Health, Single payer health care

By David Johnson - On Friday Oct. 30th until Sunday November 1st in Chicago Illinois, the largest ever national conference of single-payer / Medicare for All healthcare advocates will convene. The conference is jointly sponsored by the LABOR CAMPAIGN FOR SINGLE PAYER, HEALTHCARE NOW, ONE PAYER STATES, and the PHYSICIANS FOR A NATIONAL HEALTH PROGRAM. The conference will begin Friday afternoon with a demonstration in front of a ( not to be named ) office building of a notorious healthcare company profiteer. That evening presentations will be made by the national president of the Steelworkers Union ( Leo Gerard ) and the National President of the National Nurses Union ( Jean Ross ). Musical entertainment will be provided by Labor singer / songwriter Anne Feeney.

The Teflon Toxin Goes To Court

September 21, 2015 Sharon Lerner, www.theintercept.com Educate! Big Pharma, Law, Public Health, Science

By Sharon Lerner in The Intercept - As The Intercept reported in a three-part series last month, Bartlett’s is the first of some 3,500 personal injury and 37 wrongful death claims stemming from the 2005 settlement of a class-action suit filed on behalf of people who lived near the plant. Another trial over the chemical, which for decades was used in the production of Teflon and many other products, is scheduled for November. Together, the “bellwether” cases, six in all, are expected to give attorneys on both sides a sense of whether the rest of the claims will proceed or settle — and for how much. Bartlett’s attorneys, including Robert Bilott, who has been working on C8 since takingthe case of a West Virginia farmer named Wilbur Tennant in 1999, argue that DuPont is guilty of negligence, battery, and infliction of emotional harm for exposing Bartlett to C8 in her drinking water.

Gas Compressors And Nose Bleeds

September 19, 2015 Jessica Cohen, www.utne.com Educate! Environment, Oil & Gas, Public Health

By Jessica Cohen in UTNE - In rural Minisink, NY, air contaminants from the Millennium Pipeline gas compressor now exceed what would be found even in a big city, says environmental health consultant David Brown. After dozens of Minisink residents found they were beset by similar ailments immediately after the compressor station was built in 2013, a two-month study of air contaminants and residents’ symptoms was conducted by Brown and his cohorts at Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project. The nonprofit group of public health experts, based in McMurray, PA, have been investigating a comparable pattern of symptoms near gas drilling sites in Pennsylvania and other states. In the Minisink study, recently released, they found that spikes in air toxins around the compressor coincided with residents’ adverse health symptoms.

No Health Insurance Mega Mergers – Healthcare Is A Right!

September 11, 2015 Health Care NOW!, www.change.org Petitions and Online Actions Health Care, Human Rights, Law, Public Health

By Health Care NOW! - The country's five largest for-profit health insurers are trying to merge into three mega corporations, creating an oligopoly that will drive up premiums for patients and employers, cut payments to doctors, and pocket the difference as profits. The health insurance industry is a national embarrassment that is costing patients their income and sometimes their lives. High deductibles and limited networks are becoming the norm, making healthcare inaccessible even for the insured. Tell Attorney General Loretta Lynch to block the health insurance mergers, since healthcare is a right and shouldn't be controlled by "too big to fail" insurance profiteers. All of the powers that make single-payer healthcare so effective - the ability to negotiate low prices for drugs and medical devices, and set fair rates for providers - are deadly in the hands of for-profit insurers, who pocket savings instead of passing them along to patients, and squeeze providers until the quality of care plummets.

The Truth On The Distribution Of HSAs

September 10, 2015 Lorens A. Helmchen, David W. Brown, Ithai Z. Lurie and Anthony T. Lo Sasso, www.pnhp.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Public Health

By Lorens A. Helmchen, David W. Brown, Ithai Z. Lurie and Anthony T. Lo Sasso in PNHP - Between 2005 and 2012, the share of employers whose employees had health savings accounts (HSAs) and the share of employees working at these employers grew more than tenfold. High-income and older tax filers both established HSAs and fully funded their HSAs at least four times as often as did low-income and younger filers. Although suggestive, the evidence to date on the take-up of HSAs has been limited to surveys, which rely on modest samples of several thousand individuals or employers that have chosen to participate. In this study we examined US tax records to offer a definitive depiction of the growth and ownership patterns of HSAs.

Medicare Diverting Money From Safety Net Hospitals To The Affluent

September 8, 2015 Physicians for a National Health Program, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Medicare, Public Health

By Physicians for a National Health Program - Medicare’s pay-for-performance incentives, which financially reward or punish hospitals depending on whether they hit specific numerical targets in matters such as curbing inpatient readmissions, are having the unintended side effect of taking dollars away from the nation’s historically cash-strapped safety-net hospitals and boosting the revenue of wealthier hospitals that serve an economically better-off patient base. That’s one of the conclusions of an evidence-based editorial in today’s [Tuesday, Sept. 8] Annals of Internal Medicine. The article, titled “Collateral Damage: Pay-for-Performance Initiatives and Safety-Net Hospitals,” is written by two leading health-system researchers, Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David U. Himmelstein, professors at the City University of New York School of Public Health and lecturers in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Russell Mokhiber: Why Should W.Va. Help Coca-Cola Peddle Obesity?

September 7, 2015 Russell Mohkiber, www.wvgazettemail.com Organize! Coca Cola, Public Health, West Virginia

By Russell Mohkiber in West Virginia Gazette Mail - The West Virginia School of Public Health Should be taking the lead. Instead, according to a report in the New York Times last month, “Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets,” Coca-Cola has given money to Dr. Gregory Hand, now the dean of the West Virginia School of Public Health, to fund a non-profit group — the Global Energy Balance Network — to promote the view that “weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise.” Health experts contend that Coke is “using the new group to convince the public that physical activity can offset a bad diet despite evidence that exercise has only minimal impact on weight compared with what people consume,” the Times reported.

Lebanon – What If It Fell?

August 31, 2015 Andre Vltchek, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Lebanon, Protest, Public Health

By Andre Vltchek in Information Clearing House - 24 hours after the concert, a crowd clashed with the Lebanese security forces in the center of Beirut, near the government palace. Dozens were injured and on 24 August, it was reported that one person died in the hospital. The “You stink” movement first organized the protests. Thousands of people hit the streets in response to an ongoing garbage crisis, which, according to many, has made the already difficult life in Beirut almost unbearable. “You Stink”! For 18 years, the government was unable (or unwilling) to build a permanent garbage-recycling site. For 18 years, poor villagers near the “provisory” garbage dumping grounds were suffering, getting poisoned, dying from unusually high level of cancer and from respiratory diseases. Then, finally, they said “Halas! Enough.”

Spate Of Oil Field Deaths Prompts Study Of Workplace Hazards

August 27, 2015 Jennifer Golan, www.revealnews.org Educate! Oil & Gas, Public Health, Worker Rights and Jobs

The oil boom in North Dakota and elsewhere has helped the U.S. become the world’s leading energy provider and has captured the attention of Hollywood producers. It also has claimed the lives of dozens of oil field workers. Now, that fallout from the boom is drawing renewed attention from government scientists. In the largest study of its kind, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, said it intends to examine the factors that cause injuries and accidents in the oil fields in an effort to improve safety. Scientists from the institute will distribute questionnaires starting next year to 500 oil field workers in North Dakota, Texas and one other state that will be determined in the coming months.

Hawaii’s Spike In Birth Defects Puts Focus On GM Crops

August 24, 2015 Christopher Pala, www.theguardian.com Educate! Environment, Hawaii, Pesticides, Public Health

By Christopher Pala in The Guardian - In Kauai, chemical companies Dow, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont spray 17 times more pesticide per acre (mostly herbicides, along with insecticides and fungicides) than on ordinary cornfields in the US mainland, according to the most detailed study of the sector, by the Center for Food Safety. That’s because they are precisely testing the strain’s resistance to herbicides that kill other plants. About a fourth of the total are called Restricted Use Pesticidesbecause of their harmfulness. Just in Kauai, 18 tons – mostly atrazine, paraquat (both banned in Europe) and chlorpyrifos – were applied in 2012. The World Health Organization this year announced that glyphosate, sold as Roundup, the most common of the non-restricted herbicides, is “probably carcinogenic in humans”.

Study: Fracking In The Delaware River Basin Would Threaten Health Of 45,000

August 13, 2015 Natasha Geiling, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Delaware River, Environment, Fracking, Public Health, Study

By Natasha Geiling in Think Progress - Encompassing the longest free-flowing river in the eastern United States, the Delaware River Basin also happens to sit partially on top of the Marcellus Shale, the second largest gas field in the world. To date, a moratorium put in place by the Delaware River Basin Commission has kept gas companies out of the Delaware River Basin — but environmental groups worry that without a permanent ban, the basin could be opened to fracking at a moment’s notice. Now, a new study seeks, for the first time, to quantify the environmental impact of opening the Delaware River Basin to fracking — and what natural gas extraction could mean for the communities that call the region home. The Delaware River, which begins its flow from springs tucked away in New York’s Catskill Mountains, winds for nearly 400 miles before emptying into the Delaware Bay and, eventually, the Atlantic Ocean.

Push For Healthcare Justice As Medicare Turns 50

August 5, 2015 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Public Health

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of Medicare, advocates for universal healthcare rallied at the Lincoln Memorial, saying that the private insurance industry is raising costs for millions of Americans while worsening the quality of care. Key speakers included Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Robert Zarr, M.D., president of Physicians for a National Health Program, and Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-founder of Popular Resistance. Since privatization of U.S. healthcare accelerated in the 1980s, millions have been left without care. Even under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), over 30 million remain uninsured. And for those with insurance, high medical costs are linked to sixty-two percent of all personal bankruptcies.

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