Environmental Health on Planet Earth

05/12/2024

Happy Mother's Day...
Mother Earth, image cropped from: Mario Rosales Ramírez's "Ponle un Alto al Calentamiento Global" (2009)

02/28/2021

..."The study, published in the journal Chemosphere, advances the understanding of the interaction of chemicals, both pollutants and pharmaceuticals, on gene expression and the impact on human health.

"When we identified all the sensitive genes, we were very much surprised that almost every well-known molecular pathway is sensitive to chemicals to a certain degree," says lead author Alexander Suvorov, associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences...
The researchers split their database of chemicals into two parts - pharmaceutical chemicals, which are designed to target known molecular cascades; and other chemicals such as industrial, agricultural, cosmetics and pollutants. When the sensitivity of genes to pharmaceutical chemicals was compared to the sensitivity of genes to the other chemicals, the results were the same. ..
"These findings for the first time prove that current epidemics in metabolic and autoimmune disorders may be partly due to a very broad range of chemical exposures," Suvorov says."..
Told You So

A University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental health scientist has used an unprecedented objective approach to identify which molecular mechanisms in mammals are the most sensitive to chemical exposures.

10/08/2020

..."From oven cleaners, air fresheners, toilet bowl cleaners, laundry detergent and softeners, to chemical wipes and mildew sprays, the drive to make your home, office buildings, schools and shopping areas sparkling clean and eliminate germs has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Cleaning products and disinfectants are among the most toxic products sold today...
Researchers have shown health effects in both animal and human studies for several classes of cleaning ingredient chemicals. Phthalates, a class of chemicals added for fragrance or 'perfume', are intended to increase the shelf life of the product's odor. Research shows that phthalate exposure during pregnancy has been associated with developmental abnormalities in both animal and human studies...
General rules for ‘safe cleaning’

The 'less is more approach' is always best. Buy and use fewer products. Dispense with the use of fabric softener, dryer sheets, and air fresheners and any scented product. This is the first step to eliminate hundreds of undisclosed chemicals that may be harmful to your health. Clearly, you cannot rely on statements on product labels to assess the safety of these products, since they are essentially unregulated. Look for products with the fewest number of ingredients, and with most ingredients you can recognize.

In general, it's wise to avoid products that contain ammonia, chlorine bleach, quaternary ammonium or "quats", and non-chlorine bleach substitutes such as oxygen bleach, which are corrosive and irritating to skin. Avoid use of air fresheners, carpet powders, cleaning products with bleach and other lung irritants, and products containing fragrance or perfume. Limonene and other citrus fragrances are often added to cleaning products and should be avoided because of their ability to form formaldehyde with ozone in the air."..

(Dr. Cohen and vom Saal's new guidebook, Non-Toxic: Guide to Living Healthy in a Chemical World, published by Oxford University Press is available now, in stores and online.)

COVID-19 has all of us cleaning more—but the products designed to kill viruses and bacteria can have dangerous health impacts. Here's how to scrub safely.

10/08/2020

..."Product types included hand sanitizers, air disinfectants, multipurpose cleaners, and handwashing soap. All products were fragranced.

The analyses found the products collectively emitted 399 VOCs with 127 VOCs classified as potentially hazardous. All products emitted potentially hazardous compounds.

Comparing regular products and green products, no significant difference was found in the emissions of the most prevalent compounds. Further, among the 399 compounds emitted, only 4% of all VOCs and 11% of potentially hazardous VOCs were disclosed on any product label or safety data sheet.

This study reveals that pandemic products can generate volatile emissions that could pose risks to health, that could be unrecognized, and that could be reduced, such as by using fragrance-free versions of products." ...

The recent pandemic (COVID-19) has seen a sweeping and surging use of products intended to clean and disinfect, such as air sprays, hand sanitizers, and surface cleaners, many of which contain fragrance. However, exposure to fragranced cleaning products has been associated with adverse effects on hu...

08/28/2019

In the blog post it states:
"There may be a few other steps that can be taken, but these are critical".


Image is of a public washroom with sinks on the left side, a cleaning cart in the middle, and garbage cans holding open the stall doors on the right. There are purple bars across the image with the following lines of accessibility tips text:

– increased ventilation

– NO air “fresheners”

– fragrance-free signs on door and mirrors

– fragrance-free, plant based hand soap

– fragrance-free, plant based cleaning products

– pesticide-free

– scent-free, biocide-free garbage bags

…

How many washrooms are you able to go into?
How to Basics: Accessible Washrooms for People With MCS/ES
http://seriouslysensitivetopollution.org/2019/06/28/how-to-basics-accessible-washrooms-for-people-with-mcs-es/




not
unless people have to change a product???

07/16/2019

New from The Canadian Committee on Indoor Air Quality and Buildings (CCIAQB)

(note that chemical "sensitivities" fall under the term environmental "sensitivities" and that "susceptible" individuals include everyone - very few were born with MCS/ES... also, remove the barriers, and if done early enough, we don't become disabled for life from exposures to unnecessarily toxic to everyone products and materials)

The purpose of this Module is to inform building operators, managers, occupants and visitors about the complex medical condition known as chemical sensitivities, and potential role(s) that indoor air quality (IAQ) may play.

The goal is to prevent the development and subsequent triggering of symptoms in susceptible individuals. The guide includes information and tools to assess, address and prevent potentially problematic indoor air contaminants.

Communication is important, to accommodate individuals with chemical sensitivities.

IAQ & Chemical Sensitivities
Guide for Indoor Air Quality

This document is part of a series of modules forming the CCIAQB Guide for Indoor Air Quality available at www.IAQForum.ca

Module 13 - Addressing Chemical Sensitivities | Indoor Air Quality Canada | IAQ Buildings,

06/13/2019

...
"She conducted her own tests, and narrowed down possibilities by comparing renovations in various classrooms. Early on, she suspected the floors, and possibly the adhesive, were causing the illnesses.

The new rubber floors in the classrooms, and the new carpet in the atrium, were installed to reduce noise in the building because it originally had concrete flooring.

While conducting her own scientific testing, Tweedy said, she found formaldehyde in places where the school district said there wasn’t any.

“They seem to have found nothing, but the data they collected lends to another test,” Tweedy said. “Most of the formaldehyde was in the physics classroom. How did they not find it in the other classrooms? It’s not realistic.”

It’s unclear what chemicals were used in the flooring and its adhesive to begin with, because per the guidelines of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, safety information was not required for the new floors, according to documents from the district. The flooring manufacturer, Nora Systems, was able to exempt the floors from a thorough safety description because it says there were no hazards or health risks in the types of material used.

But in the same documents, the company acknowledged that the adhesive used in the building’s flooring could potentially cause a wide range of health issues, including skin irritation, allergies, fertility damage or harm to an unborn child."..

A teacher at Bella Vista High School in the Sacramento area says she was forced to transfer to another school after she became sick while teaching in a new science building. Officials insist the building is safe.

05/14/2019

..."Studies of this length are rare and valuable, because they can reveal associations between environmental exposures early in life and health problems years later. And the mix of threats that kids face changes over time. “Twenty years ago, what we were studying is not the same as what we’re studying today,” says Ruth Etzel, a paediatrician at the EPA who specializes in children’s environmental health. “We have to study children now, in their communities.”

Many environmental-health researchers see the EPA's decision to cut funding for the children’s centres as part of a push by President Donald Trump’s administration to undermine science at the agency, which is responsible for the safety of US air and water. “It works out perfectly for industry,” says Tracey Woodruff, who runs the children’s centre at the University of California, San Francisco. When weighing the harms of a chemical against its benefits, she says, “if EPA doesn’t know, it counts for zero”.

The EPA did not respond to multiple requests for comment on its plans for the children’s centres, or on its work on children’s environmental health more generally.
Hidden links

The 13 facilities supported by the EPA and the NIEHS are scattered in cities across the country and employ hundreds of researchers in disciplines such as toxicology, genetics and brain development. Their ability to follow people from before birth to adulthood has revealed surprising connections between common chemicals and health."..

(when they won't look for the evidence, they can say 'there's no evidence of harm" with a straight face)

The Environmental Protection Agency's decision leaves fate of more than a dozen decades-long projects in doubt.

04/23/2019

Canadian Human Rights Commission
Policy on Environmental Sensitivities:

http://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/sites/default/files/policy_sensitivity_0.pdf

CHRC Environmental Sensitivities:

http://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/eng/search/node/environmental%20sensitivities

04/23/2019

The (Ontario Human Rights) Code protects people from discrimination and harassment because of past, present and perceived disabilities. “Disability” covers a broad range and degree of conditions, some visible and some not visible. A disability may have been present from birth, caused by an accident, or developed over time.

There are physical, mental and learning disabilities, mental disorders, hearing or vision disabilities, epilepsy, mental health disabilities and addictions, ***environmental sensitivities***, and other conditions.

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/code_grounds/disability

Relevant policies:

Policy on ableism and discrimination based on disability (2016)
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-ableism-and-discrimination-based-disability

Policy on environmental sensitivities (Canadian Human Rights Commission)
https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/sites/default/files/policy_sensitivity_0.pdf

04/23/2019

If you want to learn a few things about environmental "sensitivities" and what it's like living as a person with MCS/ES in this disabling society, you can currently get these articles for free instead of paying around $50 each for them...

Special Issue!
Environmental Sensitivities: Chemical, Electrical, and Beyond

Introduction to the Special Issue on Environmental Sensitivities: Living on the Margins with Access Denied
Pamela Reed Gibson

The Many Faces of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
Alison Johnson

Invisible Barriers, Invisible Disabilities, Invisible People
Linda Sepp

History of the Rise and Fall of Environmental Medicine in the United States
William J. Meggs

Displaced by Chemical and Electrical Hypersensitivities
Jerry Evans

The Role of Neurogenic Inflammation in Chemical Sensitivity
William J. Meggs

A Comparison of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity with Other Hypersensitivity Illnesses Suggests Evidence and a Path to Answers
Laurie Dennison Busby

A Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network–Based Model for Predicting Subjective Health Symptoms in People Living in the Vicinity of Mobile Phone Base Stations
H. Parsaei, M. Faraz, S. M. J. Mortazavi

An Underworld Journey: Learning to Cope with Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
Scott Eberle

MCS and EHS: An Australian Perspective
Diana Crumpler

https://www.liebertpub.com/toc/eco/9/2

12/10/2018

Did you know about CERA and the helpful info they have for people who rent and for property managers?

The image is from CERA's 2 page pamphlet “Creating Healthy Apartments: What You Need to Know”
http://www.equalityrights.org/cera//wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CERA_HH_pamphlet_eng.pdf

There's more info here:

Property Manager’s Guides to MCS
From the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA)
https://seriouslysensitivetopollution.org/2014/03/16/property-managers-guides-to-mcs/

From CERA's 2 page pamphlet “Creating Healthy Apartments: What You Need to Know”
http://www.equalityrights.org/cera//wp-content/uploads/2010/06/CERA_HH_pamphlet_eng.pdf

Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA)
CERA is a charitable non-governmental organization founded in 1987 to promote human rights in housing.