After dinner last night at a local tavern, I asked the waiter for a container to carry home our leftovers. He promptly returned with a No. 5 plastic container (damn!). Have you ever looked at the carry-out containers you receive from your local restaurants? Are they made of a recyclable material? Are they made of a recyclable material that the city you live in will actually recycle?
by David Egilman, MD, MPH
I just finished watching the Waxman hearings on FDA preemption and must comment on Christopher Shays’ (R-CT) comments. Christopher Shays is the last remaining Republican congressman from New England. Hopefully the November elections will result in the extinction of this last remaining
remnant of the age of the dinosaurs.
He repeatedly stated that he “had no dog in this hunt” concerning the impact of preemption and torts suits on drug safety. This is a peculiar position for a Congressperson who must decide whether or not the FDA’s actions are appropriate. It’s one thing to have no opinion; it is in another to imply that there is no reason to have opinion.
For the Christian Science Monitor, Marilyn Gardner writes about pregnant women who stay on the job until the day their babies are due (or even until the minute they go into labor) and start working again soon after their babies’ births, because they’re unable to take more time off. The Family Medical Leave Act allows new parents 12 weeks of leave - but it’s unpaid leave, and the requirement only applies to companies with 50 or more employees. Gardner explains:
Call it the American way of maternity. Eighty percent of pregnant women who work remained on the job until one month or less before their child’s birth, according to newly released Census data for 2003. In 1965 that figure was 35 percent.
Most women work until close to their due date for two reasons: They need the income and they want to use their maternity leave after the baby arrives. …
Europeans take a different approach. In France, expectant mothers receive six weeks of maternity leave before the birth and 10 weeks after. They are required to take at least two weeks before and six after. In Finland, women receive 17.5 weeks of maternity leave. They can begin as early as eight weeks before their due date or as late as two weeks before the expected date. Other European countries offer similar policies.
And speaking of the Family Medical Leave Act, this year is its 15th anniversary. The Washington Post’s Nancy Trejos looks at some of the changes to the law that workers and employers are pushing for.
In other news:
An op-ed in the Baltimore Sun introduced me to a new use for the term “Iron Triangle,” this one pertains industries and organizations involved in food aid. In “It’s Time to Stop a Tragic Waste,” David Kohn writes how hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. food aid is squandered on subsidies to “corporate agribusinesses, shipping companies and large aid agencies.” Unlike other wealthy countries, he writes, the U.S.
“insists on buying 99 percent of its food aid from U.S. farmers, at U.S. market prices, and then sending this food overseas.”
There are a multitude of reasons why this arrangement is impractical and inexpensive. Setting that aside, we undermine local farmers by not buying food locally—as other wealthy countries do as part of their food aid programs. When U.S. food aid shipments hit a local market at cheap (subsidized prices), farmers from the local region can’t compete; ultimately, our food aid destablizes local agricultural efforts, damaging local food security and food sovereignty.
In the final leg of a long and costly lawsuit against the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), U.S. district judge Hugh Lawson ruled in favor of ACGIH, dismissing claims by the National Mining Association and others* that the non-profit, scientific organization violated Georgia’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. (A complete case study on this matter appears at DefendingScience.org.) The court also rejected the industry-plaintiff’s attempt to resurrect related claims against the Department of Labor, reprimanding them with:
“The Court disagrees with the Plaintiffs’ asssessment that this case somehow breathes life into expired claims and will not entertain any discussions towards a count already dismissed.”
The Court defended ACGIH, saying it is:
“a non-profit association comprised of a group of scientists…more like an entity designed to promote ideas than one that engages in deceptive advertising in an effort to derive a financial benefit.”
A few days ago, researchers at West Virginia School of Medicine who are involved in the C8 Health Project provided some initial results from the 69,030 participants who live in the vicinity of DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, WV. The information was presented at a May 7 public lecture entitled “The C8 Health Project: How a Class Action Lawsuit Can Interact with Public Health: History of Events” (Slides here), and was reported in the Charleston Gazette (here).
By Olga Naidenko
After lead, asbestos, aromatic amine dyes, Minamata disease, Bhopal, and fluorochemicals, we presumably have learned something about worker safety, especially when it comes to large-scale production in cutting-edge chemical industries. So here comes the test: can we use this knowledge to ensure worker safety in the up-and-coming nanotechnology industry?
An international survey published in the May issue of Environmental Science and Technology addressed precisely this question: are nanomaterials firms and laboratories installing adequate, nano-specific environmental health and safety (EHS) programs, engineering controls, personal protective equipment, exposure monitoring and product stewardship programs?
Bloggers are keeping us up to date on some of the many proposals for spending federal dollars on health and environmental issues:
- Tom Philpott at Gristmill brings us the latest on the farm bill, which has been delayed due to disputes over subsidy reform.
- Hank Green at EnviroWonk explains why and how the Department of Energy will be spending $60 million over the next five years on solar thermal technology.
- Elizabeth Cooney at White Coat Notes conveys advice from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute President Dr. Edward Benz on improving cancer research; increasing NIH funding levels is a crucial step.
- DrugMoneky rails against the NIH grant-revision process, saying it wastes researchers’ time and NIH dollars.
- Ed Silverman at Pharmalot reports on a new bill that would provide $200 million annually to research new treatments for nervous system disorders and injuries.
Elsewhere:
The Weinberg Group is one of the product defense firms I write about in my new book “Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.” These firms help polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products avoid regulation – only now the Weinberg Group is not a product defense firm, it’s transformed itself into a “product support” firm.
Past roundups have emphasized the many things wrong with veterans’ health and safety, so this week seems like a good time to highlight some of the efforts that the military and the Veterans Administration are making to address the problems.
- The WSJ’s Theo Francis reports that the Defense Department is giving the Brain Trauma Foundation $4.6 million to develop a device that can assess traumatic brain injuries in seconds on the battlefield.
- For the Associated Press, Pauline Jelinek and Lolita Baldor describe a new Pentagon campaign that aims to get troops with mental health problems into counseling; one important change is that mental health treatment will no longer count against them in future applications for security clearance.
- NPR’s Joseph Shapiro explains the changes the Army has made at military hospitals to prevent accidental drug overdoses like the one that killed Sgt. Robert Nichols.
In other news:
