Enviroblog

A change at the top

2008-11-21T15:22:47Z

As has been widely reported, California Representative Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will replace Michigan???s John Dingell as chair of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce in the next Congressional session.

While the gavel race between these two environmental and public health champions was clearly tough, someone had to win. We congratulate Rep. Waxman, who has long stood shoulder to shoulder with EWG and others as we???ve fought to reform the federal government???s lax chemical laws. With Rep. Waxman at the helm of Energy and Commerce, we may finally see our years of hard work and partnership pay off with the passage of the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act, which Rep. Waxman is co-sponsoring.

We also want to thank Rep. Dingell for his tireless work to improve the lives of Americans, both in leading the charge to investigate the use of the toxic chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in infant formula containers, and his leadership in enacting of the landmark Food Quality Protection Act of 1996.

With both Reps. Waxman and Dingell in leadership roles on the committee and allies in the fight to protect our children from the dangers of toxic chemicals, EWG pledges our support as they begin to reverse eight years of the Bush administration???s failed policies.

'Tis the season of giving...to EWG, of course!

2008-11-20T15:19:03Z

It's never easy or fun to ask people for money. But. At least in our case we know how well we use it and how important our work is in the fight to protect environmental health. And we're not the only ones who think, that, which is good news. We've earned 4-star status from Charity Navigator for years now.

So please, think of us this year, and how the work we do affects your family. Plus, you'll get our fabulous safer products bag, and these days, just about everyone (on your holiday shopping list!) could use one, don't you think? Here's what's in it:

A 27 oz. Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottle -- the perfect solution to using less plastic and avoiding contaminated bottled water
Jumbo Enviro-Tote made from 100% recycled plastic, printed with EWG's pollution solutions
6-piece Pyrex glass container set (no more Tupperware!)
Crummy Brothers organic chocolate chip cookies
$25 in free product coupons, plus...
EWG's most popular tools for healthy living

As a special incentive, the first 500 donors who order the gift bag will also receive a complimentary copy of the book Green Goes With Everything by Sloan Barnett.

Why support EWG? Because we research, expose and inform you about toxic chemicals and hidden contaminants in everything from your shampoo to your kitchen cupboard. Then we offer "pollution solutions" to help you make healthier choices every day. Take our fight against bisphenol A (BPA). EWG helped expose the risks of BPA - a potent hormone disrupter that's been leaching toxic chemicals into countless everyday items. BPA is found in baby bottles, water bottles, infant formula and even our canned foods. We've been fighting non-stop to make sure BPA is banned from consumer products.

]]> As consumers, it's hard to know how to avoid BPA. That's why we filled our 2008 Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag with BPA-free goodies to keep you healthy and also reduce waste.

When you make your first-time donation to EWG of $135 or more, your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar by generous donors and we'll send you a Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag.

Donating to EWG is a great investment. We pride ourselves on staying lean and stretching your donations to the limit -- so your money goes toward groundbreaking research and sweeping environmental change. And with a more environmentally friendly Congress and Presidential administration on the way in, EWG will have even more opportunities in 2009 to push for the kind of change we need to protect our health and our environment.

Go ahead, do it! Just click here to make your donation and get your 2008 Pollution Solutions Holiday Gift Bag today. You can get started on your holiday shopping with a great deal, and you can rest assured that your donation will have a big impact on the work we do in 2009 and beyond.

PS - Feeling torn between keeping the gift bag for yourself or giving it to a friend? We'll send you two for just $245 (that's a savings of $35) and your donation will still be doubled.

Got funds for that research?

2008-11-19T15:14:39Z

Even though I spent most of my school years trying to avoid science classes as much as possible, I have to acknowledge the importance of science in the lives of people. We need science to help us understand the world around us and how things function and relate to one another.

That???s why the thought of political involvement in scientific research scares me. In the ideal world, there would be no connection between the research and politics. But we all know we don???t live in an ideal world, and very often science and politics are connected. In addition, the last 8 years have been less then ideal as far as government support of the science research is concerned.

The problem is big. Within last few years, there were major budget cuts at the federal agencies dealing with issues such as environment, public health and consumer safety. Many Bush administration policies have jeopardized research on those issues.

]]> Also concerning is the recent investigation of Joanna Kempner, sociologist at the Rutgers University in New Jersey. According to ABC news, she

???Questioned 157 scientists who found their work at the crux of a 2003 political clash between several members of Congress, a Christian lobbyist group called the Traditional Values Coalition and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Of the 112 scientists who responded to the survey and interviews, 51 percent said they have since self-censored their grant proposals to remove "red flag" words, such as gay, lesbian, AIDS, needle-exchange or anal sex from their titles or abstracts. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they either modified their studies to seem less controversial or abandoned controversial grant proposals. ???

The political clash occurred in July 2003, when former congressman Patrick Toomey (R, PA) argued that National Institutes of Health grants funding studies on certain types of sexual behavior were less worthy of taxpayer dollars than those on devastating diseases. He proposed an amendment, to the 2004 NIH appropriations bill to revoke funding for five grants four of which examined sexual behavior. The amendment was later defeated.

NIH is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary government agency responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Should I mention tit is financed by the taxpayers? And that would be all taxpayers, not just heterosexual, AIDS- free and healthy ones.

It is hard to say what was lost with the practice of self-censoring at the NIH. But even though limited, the Kempner study shows the concern that scientist might have with the political climate. Peter Bearman, a sociologist at Columbia University, agrees in this Nature News article:

???The study shows that perceptions of the ideological climate lead scientists to try to avoid research projects that they think will not be funded, or which will stop them from receiving funding in the future.
The study also reveals how the NIH ??? an institution supposed to be insulated from political interference ??? has been "tarnished by the Bush administration's pursuit of ideological purity instead of effective science", says Bearman. It shows that scientists whose studies fall under political scrutiny "fail to engage in the best science they can, for fear that proposing to do so will result in no support". This can lead to suboptimal science and the propagation of pseudoscience in its place, he says. ???

Photo by Tracy O

Gulf War Illness: As clear as the nose on your face

2008-11-18T00:11:35Z

If you follow environmental health policy, then you're well aware that there are more than a few folks out there who continue to assure us that low-dose exposures to toxic chemicals don't harm human health, despite a whole lot of (rapidly mounting) evidence to the contrary. Of course, this "there's not enough proof" and "if I can't see it I won't believe it" attitude is hardly limited to environmental health.

Right off the top of my head I can think of several other issues where some people's refusal to acknowledge and/or fully explore cause-and-effect continue to cause human suffering and delayed action at great cost. Gulf War illness is one of them.

Just yesterday, 17 years after the Gulf War began in 1991, a Congressionally-mandated Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses issued a 450-page report stating what has long been suspected but not fully accepted: it's real. Or, in the Committee chairman's own words, "When you look at all the studies, it's as clear as the nose on your face that this is real." How real? The report's press release says more:

The new report says that scientific evidence ???leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition,??? and it cites dozens of research studies that have identified ???objective biological measures??? that distinguish veterans with the illness from healthy controls.
Those measures relate to structure and functioning of the brain, functioning of the autonomic nervous system, neuroendocrine and immune alterations, and variability in enzymes that protect the body from neurotoxic chemicals.

And to make it even more difficult for veterans, the Committee's Science Director explains how sufferers have been treated:

"Veterans of the first Gulf War have been plagued by ill health since their return 17 years ago. Although the evidence for this health phenomenon is overwhelming, veterans repeatedly find that their complaints are met with cynicism and a 'blame the victim' mentality that attributes their health problems to mental illness or non-physical factors."

]]> It's hard to know whether to be glad it's finally been said, or incredibly frustrated that at least 1 in 4 of that war's 697,000 veterans have been in medical limbo for so many years, their bad health doubted. I feel both. And not solely because these honored citizens suffer without credibility or the appropriate medical attention. But because history is repeating itself. It took 20 years to admit that Agent Orange caused illness, and here we are again. And again, the chemicals are toxic and the health effects serious. The Washington Post summarized the report yesterday in a piece titled Toxic Chemicals Blamed for Gulf War Illness.

It is incredibly important to see these links between toxic exposures and adverse human health supported and confirmed. While in this case it is pesticides and the drug pyridostigmine bromide that are to blame, there are many others. But more to blame is our government's slowness to connect the dots. There is a rapidly growing body of respected evidence that tells us we are using chemicals with known and unknown adverse health effects that we don't fully understand, won't acknowledge, and can't remedy. It is high time that we protect public health from known toxic chemicals as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.

[photo courtesy of flickr commons]