Keep our water safe from toxic fracking chemicals

Keep our water safe from toxic fracking chemicals

Stop the rush to frack in New York without review of the health impacts!

Demand Toxic-Free Baby Products!

Demand Toxic-Free Baby Products!

Tell Target's CEO: Get Flame Retardant Chemicals Out of Baby Nap Mats!

Tell Congress: Pass the Safe Chemicals Act!

Tell Congress: Pass the Safe Chemicals Act!

Urge your Senators to support safer chemicals

Stop Organic Greenwashing!

Stop Organic Greenwashing!

Tell Hain CEO: Stop Mislabeling Personal Care Products

Ten Reasons NOT to Use Pesticides

Ten Reasons NOT to Use Pesticides

Learn more now!

Our Kitchenware, Ourselves

Our Kitchenware, Ourselves

Keep your kitchen and food safer from toxic chemicals

Do your child’s toys contain lead?

Do your child’s toys contain lead?

Learn more now!

I Won the Cancer “Lottery” and How it Changed My Life

May 6, 2013 – 9:47 am Lawrence Tsai
LawrenceT

By CEH Intern Lawrence Tsai

How did you live your life during your early 20s?  What were your focuses?  Your significant other? School? Job? Figuring out ways to beat the beer chugging record at the local bar?  How about health?

Like many young adults, health was hardly a priority for me.  I almost routinely ate hotdogs for lunch, I stayed up until the morning hours, and the activity that came closest being an exercise involved clicking several hundred times a day on a computer mouse.  Health wasn’t a concern to me, meh, that was an issue for later on.

All that changed when I was diagnosed with Stage I Testicular cancer at age 23.  Initially I didn’t believe it –I thought, isn’t cancer for old people?  Sure, young people can get cancer, but that’s rare, nope, can’t be me!  A few hours after being told I “won” the cancer lottery, I came to realization and accepted the fact.  Being a nerdy guy, I searched the internet universe for answers as to why I contracted cancer, but it’s very likely I will never know the cause.

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A Master Class on Fracking (and earn CME credits)

April 11, 2013 – 10:57 am Ansje Miller

pseYou have probably heard a lot over the past couple years about fracking and natural gas. Proponents of fracking say:

• The natural gas boom will make the US energy independent.

• Natural gas is the bridge fuel that will help us stop climate change and fracking helps us get there faster.

• Fracking is so safe and clean that you can drink the fracking fluids.

Health advocates, environmentalists and community groups reply:

• Fracking is dangerous and must be stopped.

• The methane releases from fracking are speeding up climate change.

• Fracking makes your water catch on fire.

• Ever since fracking started in my community, my daughter’s nose keeps bleeding and I have been having trouble breathing.

With all of these conflicting statements, how do you know what’s true? Now you can take a master class from expert geologists, toxicologists, and physicians to give you all the information you need to understand this hot topic and make your own decisions. As a bonus, if you are a physician, you can earn Continuing Medical Education credits through the Medical Society of the State of New York (MSSNY).

The nonprofit Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy (PSE) has gathered the nation’s leading experts from institutions including  Cornell and Stanford Universities to present the information about this issue in an easy to understand 7-part series that you can watch on YouTube. Divided into three modules, the series starts with an introductory course on geology and fracking and takes you all the way through to how it can affect human and animal health.

Once you have taken the course, tell all your friends, and then tell us. Then take action to keep New York safe from fracking.

Amy Brenneman, Actress and Mom, Takes on BPA Labeling

April 9, 2013 – 1:03 pm Caroline Cox

AmyBIs BPA (bisphenol A) just one more acronym in the alphabet soup of chemical names that we all hear about from time to time?

Well, yes it is. But it’s also one of the scarier parts of the alphabet soup. For starters, it’s one of the most widely used chemicals in the world – two billion pounds used every year in the U.S. And it has enough health and safety problems that parents forced companies to stop using it to make baby bottles and sippy cups.

But BPA is still used to make lots of things that all of us are likely to use. CEH has recently found big on-line retailers selling plastic wine glasses, plastic tumblers, plastic pitchers, and plastic 5-gallon water jugs made from plastic that contains BPA. BPA is also used to make linings for food cans, cash register receipts, electronics, DVDs, and flame retardants.

California recently proposed to identify BPA as a chemical known to cause developmental problems. Developmental problems are health problems in kids that result from exposure before birth – exposure moms receive during pregnancy. If it’s listed, products that can expose consumers to BPA would have to carry warning labels. But the state proposal doesn’t go far enough – scientists say that tiny amounts of BPA can harm us, so the state should lower the proposed threshold that would trigger labeling.

You can support this call for stronger BPA labeling, but we have just until 5pm tomorrow to take action! Join actress and mom Amy Brenneman in this petition calling for a stronger rule on BPA labeling!

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Dodgers, Angels May Contain High Levels of Flame Retardant Chemicals

April 1, 2013 – 4:39 pm Matt Nevins

April 1, 2013

Oakland, CA – According to a recent study, players on both Los Angeles Major League Baseball teams, the Dodgers and the Angels may contain high levels of toxic flame retardant chemicals usually found in furniture, including most couches in American homes.

“We fear for the health and safety of the LA ball club players, who spent the entire month of October sitting on their couches watching the San Francisco Giants,  the Oakland Athletics, and other teams in the playoffs,” said Matt Nevins, Research Assistant at CEH.  “As fans of the game, we want to nurture rivalries of fairness – not ones in which our competitors have reduced baseball IQ due to increased exposure to harmful chemicals.”

When approached for comment, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said, “This is a problem that, fortunately, we have the monetary resources to buy ourselves out of. We intend to import high-end upholstery and make Dodger couches stuffed with dollar bills, which as we know contain no chemicals other than some green ink I think.”

A 1975 California flammability standard called Technical Bulletin 117 (TB 117) has prompted decades of widespread use of flame retardant chemicals. But a recent analysis by the Office of the Commissioner has found that the state’s focus on chemical flame retardants does not protect people from fires and that non-chemical methods are better suited to achieve fire safety benefits.

“It presents an unfair playing field issue,” said Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, upon hearing news of the study.  “Teams without the resources to compete at the highest level are left to wallow on their killer couches throughout the month of October.  We urge the State of California to adopt the updated TB117-2013 standard, resulting in better fire safety without the use of harmful chemical flame retardants.”

The Houston Astros, who lost 107 games last year and apparently had players spending much of their time on couches during and after the season had no comment on the recent findings.

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Happy April Fool’s & Opening Day!

Michael Green Talks Flame Retardants on “On the Green Front”

March 26, 2013 – 8:00 am Chelsea Smith
flame retardants

Michael Green talks flame retardants

CEH Executive Director Michael Green was recently a guest on the radio talk show “On the Green Front” hosted by eco-pioneer Betsy Rosenberg. In the interview, Michael discusses the “toxic shell game”–in which the chemical industry conducts unplanned science experiments on consumers by replacing toxic chemicals in consumer products with other untested chemicals that have similar or worse health effects. One example of the “toxic shell game” is displayed in a recent CEH study. CEH’s study found alarmingly high levels of toxic flame retardant chemicals in children’s nap mats. Tris, the flame retardant chemical used in nap mats was banned from children’s pajamas in the 1970s, but is now showing up in children’s nap mats and household furniture. Tris has been linked to a wide array of health problems including cancer, obesity, reduced fertility, hormone disruption, and allergies. Government studies and fire experts have found that flame retardants are ineffective as they are used in furniture and products like nap mats. Michael discusses the steps CEH is taking to protect families from harmful chemicals like Tris and end the “toxic shell game” for good.  Michael also informs consumers about easy steps they can take such to avoid chemical exposures and how they can become involved in supporting the end of this harmful experiment. Listen to the complete interview here.

 

 

 

Firefighters and Flame-Retardant Chemicals

March 25, 2013 – 2:04 pm Michael Green

Crossposted from Huffington Post

Tony Stefani is an American hero. Not just because of his 28 years of service as a captain with the San Francisco Fire Department. Not just because he’s a cancer survivor who started a non-profit to prevent cancer among firefighters. All of that would make him hero enough, but not enough for Tony.

For years Tony has been a tireless advocate for better fire safety standards without harmful flame-retardant chemicals. His battle against these risky chemicals began after he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that his doctor said was usually only seen in chemical industry workers. Then he learned that two other firefighters from his station developed a more common version of the same cancer.

We are all exposed to risky flame-retardant chemicals every day. Most of the furniture sold in the U.S. is doused with these toxic chemicals — in some cases as much as two pounds of flame retardants are used in a single couch. In our recent work, CEH found flame retardants in baby products and nap mats used in daycares nationwide. Some flame retardants are known to causecancer, and others can interfere with hormones, reproductive systems, thyroid and metabolic function, and neurological development in infants and children, among other health hazards.

But firefighters face a double burden. In addition to these everyday exposures, firefighters can be dosed with massive amounts of these chemicals, and the cancer-causing dioxins and furans that are produced when the chemicals burn, when they work in and around burning buildings. A recent study found that the levels of a common flame retardant in the blood of 12 firefighters studied was 2-3 times higher than the levels found in the general population. One firefighter in the study had 11 times more of this flame retardant in his blood than average. Women firefighters face particular risks: A recent survey found that 10 of 117 women firefighters in San Francisco between ages 40 and 50 had developed breast cancer, nearly six times higher than the rate for women of that age in the general population. more »

Hormones Out of Whack: The Global Threat From Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals

March 13, 2013 – 10:44 am Michael Green

Crossposted from Huffington Post

In Ruth Ozeki’s heartbreakingly funny novel My Year of Meats, narrator Jane Takagi-Little reflects on her journey through fertility challenges and miscarriage while producing a documentary series for Japanese television on behalf of the American corporate meat exporter Beef-Ex. About midway through the novel, Jane realizes that a synthetic hormone once used in livestock production, diethylstilbestrol (DES), was also for decades widely prescribed to millions of pregnant women. Confronting her mother, Jane asks,

“Mom, when you were pregnant, did your doctor tell you to take any medicine? Any pills?”"I don’t remember … It was a bad time. Doctor say I am so delicate.”

… Doc must have subscribed to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, seen the [DES] ads. So he gave her a prescription, probably about 125 milligrams of diethylstilbestrol, otherwise known as DES, to take once a day for the first trimester of me. To keep me in place, floating between her delicate hips.

Sadly for Jane and millions of real-life women, DES didn’t prevent miscarriages — in fact, just the opposite was true. In a chapter on DES for a 2002 report by the European Environment Agency, the authors note the higher rates of pregnancy problems among women who took the drug and further reproductive health problems among their offspring. Incredibly, the ineffectiveness of DESwas known by the early 1950s, and early warning signs about health problems were also overlooked. The authors state, “Had the data [about DES] been properly analyzed in 1953, nearly 20 years of unnecessary exposure to DES might have been avoided. The fact that this drug was prescribed for two decades after its lack of efficacy was clearly demonstrated illustrates a massive failure of the system.”

I’ve recently written about synthetic chemicals that can mimic and alter our bodies’ natural hormones, chemicals like DES that can lead to harmful effects at even very tiny doses. Two decades ago, when researchers first documented these kinds of chemicals it seemed almost like science fiction. But 20 years later the evidence is stronger than ever, and now a team of 16 scientists from ten nations has released a decade-long research report on the global evidence of health hazards from these hormone-mimicking substances. Unlike DES, we are not exposed to these chemicals as prescription drugs, but through hundreds of everyday products, like food packaging, plastics, cosmetics, baby products, furniture and other products containing flame-retardant chemicals, and many other common products. Our risk of diseases related to exposures to these chemicals may be significantly underestimated, especially since there has been little attention to the exposure our children and families typically receive to the mixtures of the many hormone-altering chemicals in our homes, schools, and workplaces. more »

Moving to Safety First, for Our Children’s Health

March 1, 2013 – 2:50 pm Michael Green

we need flame-retardant free furnitureCrossposted from Huffington Post

When is a flame retardant not a flame retardant?

When it is no more effective in retarding flames than, well, nothing.

Since fire safety experts and government studies say that chemical flame retardants as they are used in many products are not effective, maybe we should stop calling them flame retardants.

Recently nonprofits from seven states announced that nap mats used in daycares nationwide contain harmful flame retardant chemicals, including a flame retardant that has been linked to cancer and others linked to hormone disruption and other serious health problems.

Maybe we should stop saying “flame retardant chemicals” and start calling them what they are: hidden time bombs.

Since most daycares don’t allow the kids to smoke at nap time, flame retardants are not only ineffective in nap mats, they’re also completely unnecessary. One of the unnecessary flame retardants found in several of the nap mats we tested is chlorinated Tris, a chemical linked to the development of cancer that was removed from children’s pajamas more than 30 years ago.

How did this happen? How could we allow chemical companies to put these useless and harmful chemicals in products our children and families use every day? more »

In New York, the 11th Hour in the Fight Against Fracking

February 12, 2013 – 10:11 am Ansje Miller

Natural_Gas_Fracking_0It is an anxious and exciting time here in New York. We are in what health advocates are calling the 11th hour in determining the fate of New York and whether natural gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) will take place in the state.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Department of Environmental Conservation have a late February deadline to decide whether to lift the moratorium on fracking that has been effect in New York for the past 4 ½ years. Recently, media attention and public scrutiny has focused on fracking because of concern over toxins, sediment, and natural gas being released during the process and contaminating our air and groundwater.

Fracking has been banned by other places, including France (which banned fracking in 2011), but this method is still widely used in the U.S. In New York and elsewhere, CEH is concerned that we don’t know enough about the health and environmental consequences of fracking, and that in the rush to produce profits for the natural gas industry, protections for our health will be overlooked.

On Monday, February 4th anti-fracking groups rode in the early hours of the morning, making the long bus ride to Albany for a state legislative hearing on fracking. The hearing was the opportunity for the state legislature to question the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) on the agency’s proposal to permit future fracking and drilling projects in NY State.

NY State is faced with a February 13th deadline when the revised Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) will or will not appear in the DEC’s Environmental Notice Bulletin. The SGEIS legally has to be posted for 10 days in order to issue the final Findings Statement and final regulations by Feb 27th.

Additionally, the DEC, state Department of Health, and outside experts are currently working on a health review of fracking. Despite legal requirements for a full assessment of the health impacts from fracking, the agencies instead decided they would simply conduct review of the existing literature.

CEH and others have criticized this decision, which we believe could fail to adequately provide New Yorkers the information on health impacts that we need to inform decision making. Furthermore, the entire health review process has been shrouded in secrecy with no transparency or opportunity for public comment.

We have joined other New York health advocates in urging the Governor to open up the health review process and allow for public participation. We are calling on DEC to stop the finalization of the SGEIS, let the current regulations expire, and extend the moratorium on fracking. more »

With Liberty and Healthy Environments for All

February 5, 2013 – 3:08 pm Michael Green

Michael250pxMost Americans are taught in grade school about the Declaration of Independence and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But even those elitist Americans with a college education don’t learn anything about the concept of a human right to a healthy environment. So it is not surprising when news headlines completely overlook an international environmental treaty that moves us closer to the notion of a right to environmental health.

As published on Huffington Post.

Earlier this month, the first-ever legally binding global treaty to protect people and the environment from mercury pollution made history when 140 nations reached agreement after four years of talks. The Minamata Convention on mercury pollution was hailed by Human Rights Watch, which has been battling to protect children in small scale gold mining communities from inadequate child labor protections and the severe health threats from mercury pollution related to mining.

Most Americans have also never heard of the Minamata mercury disaster. In the 1950s, in the town of Minamata, Japan, the Chisso Corporation began dumping large amounts of mercury into Minamata Bay and Minamata River. As a fishing and fish-eating community, when mercury moved up the food chain, the toxic chemical affected virtually everyone, killing 700 people, crippling as many as 9,000 others, and poisoning up to 50,000 who lived within 35 miles of the bay. Children born with mercury pollution suffered for decades more.

Like Monsanto’s years of dumping PCBs in Anniston, Ala., or DuPont’s dumping of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8) in Wood County, W. Va., company documentsshow that Chisso knew about the health effects from its mercury dumping, yet continued the practice for years as thousands of people suffered. Today, fracking companies are still allowed to use mass amounts of undisclosed toxic chemicals that can cause serious air and water pollution.

When I founded the Center for Environmental Health in 1996, one of our first efforts successfully helped close California’s last medical waste incinerator, a polluting plant in a low-income community just a stone’s throw from San Francisco Bay. At the time, medical waste incineration was known as the fourth leading source of mercury pollution. Community-based groups pointed to the environmental injustice of incinerators and other polluting industries that are disproportionately sited in their neighborhoods. We joined with the community-based groups working to shut the incinerator in support of environmental justice and because we believe that everyone has the human right to an environment free from chemical health threats. more »