Our guest blogger is Mary Gant, Program Analyst, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences


Mankind is totally dependent on the Earth's natural systems for the essentials of life-air, water, food, and shelter. Over the coming decades, global climate change will have a significant impact on our atmosphere and our marine and terrestrial ecosystems and their ability to provide these essential elements. For some, e.g., the millions of people who live less than a meter above sea level or who eke out a living in already arid environments, the impact may be catastrophic.

The health consequences of climate change include disease (both physical and mental), injury, and the misery of poverty and dislocation:

• An increased frequency or severity of heat waves would cause an increase in cardiorespiratory diseases and mortality. The elderly and very young children would be most at risk.


• Extreme weather events (hurricanes, torrential rains, tornados, etc.) would occur more often and with greater intensity resulting in disruptions in locally available food, clean water, and shelter, in serious injury and death, and in devastating economic loss.


• Some regions of the world will become drier and plagued by serious drought forcing changes in agricultural, animal, and fisheries productivity and overall water usage. Drought may also increase the risk of meningitis in some regions.


• Sea level rise above various thresholds in different parts of the world will result in adverse impacts on economy, infrastructure, and resources, especially fresh water, and may force migrations and crowding with an increase risk of disease, psychological disorders, and injury.


• Increases in temperature and longer warm periods without frost will increase the ranges, numbers, and seasons for vectors that carry diseases, such as dengue, malaria, West Nile, Lyme, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and encephalitis. When temperatures rise, mosquitoes breed and mature more rapidly.


• Increased air pollution, especially ozone, would increase asthma and other acute and chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.


• Increases in pollens and spores would exacerbate allergic disorders, especially asthma.


• The production and use of alternative fuels (methane, ethanol, biomass, etc.) calls for understanding the health effects of their emissions and exposures and other economic and environmental consequences.


• New technologies to mitigate or adapt to climate change may entail exposures during their manufacture, use, and disposal to materials and compounds whose health effects are little understood.


• The health consequences of the loss of biodiversity could be enormous. The alteration of the Earth's ecosystems and declines in species diversity could result in an irreversible loss in human well-being.

All of the impacts of climate change demand the attention of federal, state, and local officials and the public to provide the research to understand more fully these impacts and to develop the strategies to cope with them.

Learn how you can start preventing climate change today by taking simple steps in your home.

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• Report: Climate Change Threatens Health
• Health eHome
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• Get great tips from the Parenting & Children's Health newsletter

Labels: climate change, environment, global warming, green, health and wellness, pollution

You may be surprised...

by Healthy Child Healthy World

Are you familiar with what household hazardous waste is? Sounds like a vat of bubbling green goo, but it actually comes in much more benign packaging. Most of what makes up household hazardous waste are products we casually purchase on a regular basis, like conventional cleansers, paints, pesticides, batteries, medication, antifreeze, glues, lighter fluid, even nail polish and perfumes. All of these unassuming products (and many others) are risky for human health and the environment and should be handled and disposed of with great care.

Quick Facts

• Hazardous products will have one or more of these characteristics in varying degrees: Ignitability, Toxicity, Corrosivity, Reactivity


• Hazardous products currently are labeled with signal words: Danger, Warning, Caution, Poisonous, Flammable (older products may not contain signal words)


• The term "inert ingredients" on product labels is highly misleading because it may convey the impression that these ingredients are nontoxic or otherwise not hazardous. Some inert ingredients are quite toxic or can make the active ingredients more toxic.

Quick Tips

• Buy only what you need. Try to find safer alternatives to common hazardous materials by looking for non-toxic, natural products. If you do buy a hazardous product, buy only as much as you need.


• Never pour pesticides, flammable materials, or solvent-based products down the sink drain.


• Never pour anything down the storm drain. Storm drains are directly connected to the nearest stream, lake, or ocean. There is no treatment of any kind before water is emptied into a natural body of water.


• Never put liquids or any toxic, corrosive, flammable or chemically reactive materials in the trash. No liquids - not even soda. Use up hazardous products according to label directions or dispose appropriately - not in trash! Triple rinse empty containers and pour/apply the rinse water to the same area you are treating. Do not use banned pesticides, outdated medicines, lead paint or old chemistry sets.


• Recycle. Bring leftover products to someone else who will use it. (Does not apply to banned pesticides, outdated medicines, lead paint or old chemistry sets.) Motor oil - call your local health department for recycling information.


• Take it to a household hazardous waste collection program. Call your Department of Health or Department of Sanitation for advice, dates & locations. Also, visit Earth 911 (www.earth911.org), or call 800-CLEANUP for more information on proper disposal or recycling of household hazardous products. Enter your zip code for local information.

Any additional questions? Visit the US Environmental Protection Agency's Household Hazardous Waste information page.

Labels: environment, green, household waste, pollution

by Janelle Sorensen

If you would have asked me to draw a picture of pollution fifteen years ago, it would have been something along the lines of a factory with smokestacks billowing and litter strewn around the surrounding grounds. Pollution was outside, over there. I was not a part of it.

According to a new study, it's a pretty typical perspective. "People more readily equate pollution with large-scale contamination and environmental disasters, yet the products and activities that form the backdrop to our everyday lives - electronics, cleaners, beauty products, food packaging - are a significant source of daily personal chemical exposure that accumulates over time," said sociologist Rebecca Gasior Altman, the lead author of the study, Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal: Women's Experience of Household Chemical Exposure.

"Pollution at home has been a blind spot for society," said Altman. Still, chemicals in our everyday environments are increasingly making media headlines. From BPA in baby bottles to phthalates in toys, pollution is starting to get really personal. But, is it really helpful at all to know all these dirty little secrets, especially when we don't really know the health impacts of many exposures?

Some government officials and scientists worry that widespread access to information about chemicals in everyday products and personal body burdens will provoke fears and generate misleading hype. Yet, according to Altman, "This study documents that an important shift occurs in how people understand environmental pollution, its sources and possible solutions as they learn about chemicals from everyday products that are detectable in urine samples and the household dust collecting under the sofa."

The participants in this study who learned about chemicals in their homes and bodies were not alarmed, but eager for more, not less, information about how typical household products can expose them to chemicals that may affect health. (Hey, un-named participants! Visit HealthyChild.org!) According to Dr. Linda S. Birnbaum, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, "Understanding that the indoor environment may be one of the largest sources of exposure is extremely important as we move forward - not only in getting appropriate regulation of sources, but in altering individual behaviors."

Ask me to draw a picture of pollution today and I'll draw a picture of the inside of a house, with brightly colored cleaners under the kitchen sink, a plug-in air freshener quietly doing its business in an outlet, and an elementary figure of a pregnant woman with a tainted womb. Pollution is inside, in our comfort zones and sacred spaces. It is in me and I am a part of creating more pollution every time I buy something or turn on a light. Like the women from the study, this new picture has changed my behavior dramatically. I am not afraid and I want to learn more. I recognize my role in the problem and I am empowered to be a part of the solution.

How about you?

Related Topics:

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• Going Green: Eco-Friendly Tips & Advice
• Get the Parenting & Children's Health newsletter in your inbox weekly

Labels: chemicals, environment, pollution