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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #927

"Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide?"

Thursday, October 4, 2007...............Printer-friendly version
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Featured stories in this issue...

Study Suggests DDT, Breast Cancer Link
  Women in the top third of DDT concentrations who were exposed
  before age 14 were five times as likely to get breast cancer as the
  women with the lowest levels
Americans Consider Global Warming An Urgent Threat: Poll
  Nearly half of Americans now believe that global warming is either
  already having dangerous impacts on people around the world or will in
  the next 10 years. A surprising 40 percent of respondents say a
  presidential candidate's position on global warming will be either
  extremely important (16 percent) or very important (24 percent) when
  casting their ballots. "These results indicate a sea change in public
  opinion."
447 Cosmetics on U.S. Shelves Unsafe When Used as Directed
  Cosmetics do not have to be approved as safe by the Food and Drug
  Administration before they are sold. As a result, many contain
  dangerous ingredients banned in Europe and Japan or chemicals deemed
  unsafe for specific uses by their own industry scientists.
Why Are We Still Mixing Carcinogens in Our Children's Lemonade?
  No regulations exist for thousands of contaminants that make their
  way into our drinking water. These unregulated contaminants include
  industrial byproducts, agricultural chemicals, drugs and even most of
  the toxic compounds that are formed when we add chlorine for
  disinfection. The combined effect of these contaminants has never been
  evaluated.
Chronic Illness Costs the Economy More Than $1 Trillion a Year
  More than half of Americans suffer from chronic disease, including
  the most common forms of cancer, hypertension, mental disorders, heart
  disease, diabetes, stroke, and pulmonary conditions such as asthma.
  The number of cases diagnosed in those seven disease categories is
  expected to increase by 42 percent in the next 15 years. Prevention
  is the only affordable approach.
Small Harvest Expected for Chesapeake Blue Crabs
  The Chesapeake's blue crab population has always come in cycles,
  rising and falling. But what concerns scientists now is that the stock
  doesn't seem to be cycling out of a steep decline that began in the
  mid-1990s. Despite new crabbing regulations and the expansion of a
  sanctuary for spawning females in recent years, the population is not
  turning around.
Standing on Principle: The Global Push for Environmental Justice
  Organizations in the environmental justice movement across the
  globe are discovering that although each case has its own particular
  circumstances, there are many common experiences that can inform each
  other's struggles for environmental justice.

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From: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 30, 2007
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STUDY SUGGESTS DDT, BREAST CANCER LINK

Exposure in childhood is key, quintupling the risk among women with
high levels of the pesticide, researchers say.

By Marla Cone

Women heavily exposed to the pesticide DDT during childhood are five
times as likely to develop breast cancer, a new scientific study
suggests.

For decades, scientists have tried to determine whether there is a
connection between breast cancer and DDT, the most widely used
insecticide in history. The UC Berkeley research, based on a small
number of Bay Area women, tested a theory that the person's age during
exposure was critical, and provided the first evidence of a
substantial effect on breast cancer.

"There was very broad exposure to this pesticide, and with this study,
we have evidence that women exposed when young were the most
affected," said Barbara A. Cohn, director of UC Berkeley's Child
Health and Development Studies, who led the study of 129 women. "If
this finding holds up, those who were young and more highly exposed
could be the women at greatest risk."

Women born between 1945 and 1965 were most likely to have been heavily
exposed as children to DDT, which was sprayed throughout the United
States to kill mosquitoes and other insects. DDT use began in 1945,
peaked in 1959 and was banned nationwide in 1972 because it was
building up in the environment.

"This does speak to a generation of us, the baby boomer generation,"
said Peggy Reynolds, an epidemiologist at the Northern California
Cancer Center and consulting professor at Stanford University School
of Medicine. She was not involved in the study.

"There's nothing we can do now about the exposures we may have had
back then," Reynolds said. "But it's prudent to say that we should be
mindful of the fact that we may have higher risks by virtue of those
environmental exposures back then."

Because the pesticide was ubiquitous, the authors wrote, "the public
health significance of DDT exposure in early life may be large."

If the early-exposure theory is true, breast cancer rates could rise
as the DDT generation ages. Two-thirds of women with invasive breast
cancer are 55 or older when they are diagnosed, according to the
American Cancer Society.

"A single study doesn't necessarily translate into truth, if you
will," Reynolds said. "But a study like this -- which has such
dramatic and provocative findings, and is consistent with what we have
suspected about early life exposures -- does call for careful
examination of the results."

Several larger, earlier studies found no evidence that DDT caused
breast cancer. The largest, a 2002 study involving more than 3,000
women in Long Island, N.Y., concluded that the breast cancer rate did
not rise with increasing DDT levels in their blood. To some, that
seemed to put the question to rest.

However, those studies were based on amounts found in the blood of
middle-age and older women, after they had contracted cancer and
decades after DDT was banned.

The new study looked for the first time at DDT concentrations in women
when they were primarily in their 20s, closer to when their breasts
developed and during a time of widespread spraying. The UC Berkeley
team measured DDT in blood collected between 1959 and 1967 from 129
women who had just given birth in Kaiser Permanente hospitals in the
Oakland area.

Their study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, will be
published Monday in the October edition of the journal Environmental
Health Perspectives.

The women in the top third of DDT concentrations who were exposed
before age 14 were five times as likely to get breast cancer as the
women with the lowest levels, according to the study. No relationship
between cancer and the insecticide was found in the women born before
1931, who would have been older during any exposure.

The Berkeley study "is very compelling and important and addresses a
question about timing of exposure that many of the existing studies
could not address," said Mary Beth B. Terry, an associate professor of
epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
She co-wrote the Long Island study.

"Their findings in general support their hypothesis that the earlier
you were exposed, the stronger the effect," Terry said. "We think with
organochlorines and other exposures, the timing may be more important
in terms of breast cancer."

Scientists said the study was particularly important because the blood
was drawn when DDT was still heavily used, so it offered a snapshot of
women with levels an order of magnitude higher than today.

"It really turns back the clock in a very unique way," said Steven
Stellman, a professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University
who has studied DDT and breast cancer.

A fivefold increase in breast cancer -- 400% -- is considered very
high. Most traditional risk factors, such as late menopause, obesity
and older age at first pregnancy, increase risk by 50% to 100%.

However, because relatively few women were involved, the study is
prone to statistical weakness, which may mean the result is partly
attributable to chance, Stellman said.

Terry agreed: "Certainly if you have a larger study, the estimates you
get are more stable. No one study can be definitive. It would be good
to try to replicate the finding in another population of girls who
were highly exposed."

But it is rare to find blood stored for 40 years, so replication would
be difficult.

Exposure to DDT for the Bay Area women was probably no more extensive
than elsewhere in the country at the time. Most of the 129 women did
not live on farms, so they would have been exposed through food or
urban spraying.

DDT is prohibited today in most of the world, though it is used in
small volumes in some malaria-plagued African nations.

But virtually everyone on the planet still carries residue because the
pesticide persists in the environment and in tissues, breaking down
slowly.

Many environmental toxicologists and epidemiologists have in recent
years altered their thinking about toxic exposures. They used to focus
on lifetime exposure. But now they suspect that chemicals may activate
genes or damage DNA in the womb or during early childhood, resulting
in diseases decades later.

Other evidence suggests that breast cancer can be triggered early in
life. In lab animals, prenatal doses of chemicals can trigger
cancerous cells in fetal mammary glands. Also, Japanese females who
were younger than 20 in 1945 developed the highest breast cancer rates
among those exposed to radiation from the atomic bombs.

The new study does not indicate the age of greatest vulnerability to
exposure. Breast development is most critical in the womb and at
puberty.

Whether or not DDT promotes breast cancer, there are many other risk
factors, including alcohol consumption, hormone therapy and age at
menstruation.

The known risk factors are believed responsible for up to half of
cases.

"We truly believe it's not one exposure that's going to determine
whether you get breast cancer or don't get breast cancer," Reynolds
said.

"While it's true that our generation may be more at risk from those
exposures, there are a whole lot of other things involved too."

marla.cone@latimes.com

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

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From: Yale University, Oct. 1, 2007
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AMERICANS CONSIDER GLOBAL WARMING AN URGENT THREAT: POLL

New Haven, Conn. -- A growing number of Americans consider global
warming an important threat that calls for drastic action, and 40% say
that a presidential candidate's position on the issue will strongly
influence how they vote, according to a national survey conducted by
Yale University, Gallup and the ClearVision Institute.

"One of the most surprising findings was the growing sense of
urgency," said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on
Climate Change and the study's principal investigator. "Nearly half of
Americans now believe that global warming is either already having
dangerous impacts on people around the world or will in the next 10
years -- a 20-percentage-point increase since 2004. These results
indicate a sea change in public opinion."

The survey's findings include:

Sixty-two percent of respondents believe that life on earth will
continue without major disruptions only if society takes immediate and
drastic action to reduce global warming.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans support a new international treaty
requiring the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90
percent by the year 2050. Yet, Leiserowitz notes, the United States
has yet to sign the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that would
require the United States to cut its emissions 7 percent by the year
2012.

A surprising 40 percent of respondents say a presidential candidate's
position on global warming will be either extremely important (16
percent) or very important (24 percent) when casting their ballots.
"With the presidential primaries and general election near,"
Leiserowitz said, "candidates should recognize that global warming has
become an important issue for the electorate."

Eight-five percent of those polled support requiring automakers to
increase the fuel efficiency of cars, trucks and SUVs to 35 miles per
gallon, even if it meant a new car would cost up to $500 more; and 82
percent support requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20
percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources, even if it
cost the average household an extra $100 a year.

Majorities of Americans, however, continue to oppose carbon taxes as a
way to address global warming -- either in the form of gasoline (67
percent against) or electricity taxes (71 percent against). -- .

Finally, 50 percent of respondents say they are personally worried --
15 percent say a "great deal" -- about global warming. "Many
Americans, however, believe that global warming is a very serious
threat to other species, people and places far away," said
Leiserowitz, "but not so serious of a threat to themselves, their own
families or local communities. Nonetheless, they do strongly support a
number of national and international policies to address this
problem."

The survey was conducted July 23-26, 2007, using telephone interviews
with 1,011 adults, aged 18-plus. Respondents came from Gallup's
household panel, which was originally recruited through random
selection methods. The final sample is consideredto be representative
of U.S. adults nationwide, with a margin of error of + or -- 4
percentage points. Survey results are available online.

==============

The Yale Project on Climate Change at the Yale School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies supports public discourse and engagement with
climate-change solutions.

Gallup, Inc., headquartered in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's
leading research companies focusing on studying human nature and
behavior. The Gallup Poll has been monitoring U.S. public opinion
since 1935, and Gallup now tracks public opinion in over 100 countries
worldwide on an ongoing basis.

The ClearVision Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to
applying entertainment education as a social-change strategy to
address climate change through U.S. commercial television.

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From: Environment News Service, Sept. 28, 2007
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447 COSMETICS ON U.S. SHELVES UNSAFE WHEN USED AS DIRECTED

Washington, D.C. (ENS) -- As officials from the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration, FDA, and the cosmetics industry traveled to Europe to
discuss regulatory obstacles to the cosmetics trade between countries,
a nonprofit research organization released the results of a new
investigation that found hundreds of cosmetics sold in the United
States contain chemicals the industry itself has determined to be
unsafe, even when used as directed.

Many of the cosmetic products on the shelves of U.S. stores contain
chemicals that other countries have banned, the Environmental Working
Group, EWG, report shows.

These banned chemicals include hydrogen peroxide in contact lens
cleaners sold in the United States, formaldehyde in mascara, selenium
in shampoo and moisturizer, and lead acetate in hair coloring.

The EWG was prepared to present the results of its investigation to
the meeting held Thursday in Brussels, but was excluded from that
meeting along with all public health, consumer and environmental
organizations.

On August 30, the FDA denied a request made by the Campaign for Safe
Cosmetics -- of which EWG is a founding member -- to attend the
Brussels meeting.

The agency stated that, "Everyone has agreed that we should stick with
our current Terms of Reference that provides for an industry
association-regulator dialogue. If that changes at any point, we will
certainly let you know."

In a letter to Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD, the head of the federal
agency, EWG Executive Director Richard Wiles says the Food and Drug
Administration "misrepresented" the Terms of Reference to exclude the
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

"Instead of precluding attendance by anyone but regulators and
industry representatives," Wiles said in the letter, "the Terms of
Reference states, 'it is recognized that successful implementation
requires the input of a constructive dialogue with the cosmetics'
industry trade associations and potentially other stakeholders," and
that the second day of the meeting can include dialogue with "in
certain cases, interested parties.'"

Wiles wrote, "Contrary to the exclusion asserted by FDA, the document
provides ample leeway for public health, consumer and environmental
groups to attend; the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, EWG and other
groups who research and advocate for the safety of personal care
products certainly qualify as "interested parties" and "other
stakeholders" in this process."

"It's an outrage that the FDA would shut consumers out of this
important process," said Janet Nudelman, coordinator of the Campaign
for Safe Cosmetics, "especially since they've set a place for the
cosmetics industry at the table."

Cosmetics do not have to be approved as safe by the Food and Drug
Administration before they are sold. As a result, they may contain
dangerous ingredients banned in Europe and Japan or chemicals deemed
unsafe for specific uses by their own industry scientists, said Jane
Houlihan, EWG vice president for research.

Nearly 90 percent of ingredients in personal care products have not
been assessed for safety by anyone, so we are not sure what regulatory
obstacles the FDA and industry need to minimize, said Houlihan.

In its analysis of the ingredients in more than 23,000 products, EWG
discovered that 751 different products -- one of every 30 products
sold in the United States -- do not meet one or more industry or
governmental cosmetics safety standards.

The analysis found that 383 products contain ingredients that are
prohibited for use in cosmetics in Canada, Japan, or the European
Union.

The EWG found 447 products that industry safety panels have found
unsafe when used as directed.

Among these products are 86 that were found unsafe for all product
applications by the U.S based Cosmetic Ingredient Review, CIR, an
industry-funded panel, and the International Fragrance Association.

The FDA has no authority to require that cosmetics be tested for
safety before they are sold, although the agency does have the
authority to test drugs and food additives before sale.

While the Cosmetic Ingredient Review is funded by the industry and is
not a government health agency, EWG research shows that this "self-
regulated industry routinely fails to adhere to their own safety
panel's advice and to heed the health warnings in cosmetic safety
standards set in other countries," the group said.

The EWG is calling on the federal agency to ensure that all personal
care products on store shelves are safe for consumers and to guarantee
that meetings regarding cosmetics safety policy are open and
accessible to the public.

The results of EWG's investigation are online at: http://www.ewg.or
g/node/22610.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007

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From: New York Times, Oct. 3, 2007
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OP-ED: PIPE DREAMS

By Robert D. Morris

Seattle, Washington -- In a time when we endlessly scrutinize the
ingredients of our food and insist on pesticide-free peaches, why are
we still mixing carcinogens into our children's lemonade? From
herbicides to arsenic, the Environmental Protection Agency has set
standards for 80 different chemicals, specifying how much of each
should be allowed in our drinking water. Yet no regulations exist for
thousands of other contaminants that make their way into our drinking
water.

These unregulated contaminants include industrial byproducts,
agricultural chemicals, drugs and even most of the toxic compounds
that are formed when we add chlorine for disinfection. The combined
effect of these contaminants has never been evaluated.

There is nothing we ingest in greater quantities than water. In light
of this, here's a radical concept. Our drinking water should be water.
Nothing more. Paradoxically, the best way to make that happen is to
purify less of it. Here's why.

The technology exists to remove all of these chemicals from our water.
But the E.P.A. balks at insisting on the elimination of all hazardous
chemicals and microbes from the 10 trillion gallons of water we use
every year because the cost would be so great.

Merely maintaining our water systems will cost $274 billion over the
next 20 years, according to the E.P.A. Upgrading our water supply to
eliminate all public health risks from chemicals and microbes in our
drinking water would be far more expensive.

But money is an obstacle to clean drinking water only because the
E.P.A.'s assumptions rely on old ways of thinking. Our water
infrastructure is old and decayed, and so are the fundamental ideas
behind it.

Every drop of water produced by water treatment plants must meet
E.P.A. standards for drinking-water quality. But we drink less than 1
percent of that water. Most of it goes down toilets, into washing
machines, onto our lawns or down the drain.

The largest single consumer of water in most cities is not a consumer
at all. Water pipes, often more than 100 years old, leak millions of
gallons per day in every major city in the United States. Because of
damage from Hurricane Katrina, the water pipes in New Orleans alone
now leak 50 million gallons each day.

Right now, improving the quality of the water we drink requires
extraordinary expense to improve the quality of the water we flush.
This adds enormous costs to any effort to improve the quality of our
drinking water and forces us to tolerate the presence of chemicals in
our water that we would ban if they were food additives. It forces New
Yorkers to drink unfiltered water even though 114 wastewater treatment
plants dump treated sewage into the city's water supply.

The underlying systems for our water supplies were laid out more than
100 years ago. Over the past century we have made incremental
improvements to these systems, adjusting their design and operation as
new threats to our health were identified. We now have terrific water
for irrigating lawns and washing cars. Our drinking water, however,
falls short.

To improve the quality of our drinking water, we need to rethink our
entire approach to providing it. Our drinking water should have a
different status from the water used to flush toilets.

Pure water will require filters in restaurants and workplaces and at
the tap where children fill their glasses. Millions of homes already
have these filters, but they are installed haphazardly. To avoid a
two-tiered water supply in which safe water goes only to those who can
afford it, these filters must become a universal, integral part of the
water supply system.

Utilities should select, install and maintain point-of-use water
filters. Design improvements can make the filters more effective.
These changes are possible and affordable. Americans already spend
more than $15 billion each year for bottled water.

The need to replace aging pipes and equipment over the next two
decades offers an opportunity to reinvent the way we deliver our
drinking water. We cannot allow the water we don't drink to prevent us
from purifying the water we do.

Robert D. Morris is the author of "The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster
and the Water We Drink."

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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From: San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 3, 2007
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CHRONIC ILLNESS COSTS THE ECONOMY MORE THAN $1 TRILLION A YEAR

By Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer

Americans who have common chronic health conditions cost the U.S.
economy more than $1 trillion a year, a figure that could jump to
nearly $6 trillion by 2050 unless people take steps to improve their
health, a study released Tuesday found. [Total U.S. gross domestic
product (GDP) in 2006 was about $12 trillion.]

According to the report by the Milken Institute, a Santa Monica
think tank, the economic impact of chronic illness goes far beyond the
expense of treating disease. It takes an even greater toll on economic
productivity in the form of extra sick days, reduced performance by
ill workers and other losses not directly related to medical care.

But veering onto a path that emphasizes changing lifestyles along with
prevention and early detection of disease could reduce the number of
illnesses by 40 million cases and save $1.6 trillion by 2023, the
report said.

"The public is telling us the No. 1 domestic issue is health," said
Dr. Richard Carmona, former U.S. surgeon general and now chairman of
the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, in a news conference in
Washington on Tuesday releasing the report. "The disease burden is
mounting, the economic burden is mounting and the trajectory we're on
is unsustainable."

The study looked at seven of the most costly chronic illnesses: the
most common forms of cancer, hypertension, mental disorders, heart
disease, diabetes, pulmonary conditions such as asthma and stroke.

"More than half of Americans suffer from chronic disease. Every year,
millions of people are diagnosed, and every year millions die of these
diseases," said Ross DeVol, the Milken Institute's director of health
and regional economics and principal author of the report.

Treatment for those diseases, based on 2003 data, cost $277 billion.
But lost productivity cost far more: $1.1 trillion.

Combined, the economic impact of the diseases added up to more than
$1.3 trillion. Cost calculations, which are based on various studies
of companies, also included economic losses generated by caregivers.

The study found some conditions create a greater economic burden than
others, regardless of the number of diagnoses or cost of treatment.

For example, far fewer people suffer from cancer than pulmonary
conditions. But the overall economic impact of cancer is greater
because, while treatment is expensive, cancer patients also tend to be
more debilitated and lose more work time than those suffering from
many other chronic conditions, researchers said.

If the country does nothing to address the problem, the number of
cases diagnosed in those seven disease categories will increase by 42
percent by 2023 for a total economic impact of $4.2 trillion, the
report said.

"The data to stay the course is not a particularly attractive option,"
said Ken Thorpe, executive director of the Partnership to Fight
Chronic Disease and a professor at Emory University.

The country needs to shift its focus from trying to reduce health
expenses to lower rates of illness, Thorpe said.

Lifestyle changes could have a major impact on our country's price tag
for chronic disease, the report said.

Curbing obesity alone by close to 15 million cases could translate to
a savings of $60 billion by 2023 and improve the country's
productivity by $254 billion, the report said. Other changes include
lowering smoking rates and increasing early detection and disease-
management efforts.

The report looked at the impact of geographical differences on chronic
illness, which varies by habits, age and other demographic issues.

California generally is healthier than much of the rest of the
country, ranking sixth in a score of all states for percentage of
chronic disease by population. The lowest levels of disease were found
in Utah, followed by Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The
sickest states in the survey were West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas,
Kentucky and Mississippi.

Despite California's relative health ranking, the state's large
population means it has both a lot to lose and a lot to gain in future
costs.

"For many of the chronic diseases, California has a lower prevalence
than other states, but we're such a large state -- the largest state
in the country -- we have a lot to be gained in avoiding treatment of
these disease as well as improving the quality of the workforce," said
DeVol, the study's author.

California has the opportunity to prevent about 4.2 million cases of
avoidable chronic disease by 2023, which would increase productivity
by $98 billion and lower treatment costs by $18.9 billion, DeVol said.

"The cautionary tale, when I look at California, is looking at our
children and obesity rates," DeVol said, adding that the rising
obesity levels are especially dramatic among young Latinos. "If we
don't address the rising obesity problem, we have a huge potential
problem in the future."

The study was funded in part by a grant from the Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers Association of America, the drug industry's
trade group. The Milken Institute declined to reveal the amount of the
grant.

E-Mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver@sfchronicle.com.

Copyright 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.

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From: Newport News (Va.) Daily Press, Oct. 3, 2007
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SMALL HARVEST EXPECTED FOR CHESAPEAKE BLUE CRABS

A panel backs up a VMRC decision to evaluate existing regulations.

By Patrick Lynch

Watermen likely pulled in one of the smallest harvests of blue crabs
in more than 60 years from the Chesapeake Bay this year, and signs
continue to point to a depressed number of mature, spawning females in
the bay.

The three smallest harvests since 1945 have all come since 2000. It
appears 2007 will join that group; a new report estimates that this
year's catch will total 48.7 million pounds, down slightly from 2006.
The average since 1945 tracks closer to 80 million pounds.

The Chesapeake's blue crab population has always come in cycles,
rising and falling. But what concerns scientists now is that the stock
doesn't seem to be cycling out of a steep decline that began in the
mid-1990s. Despite new crabbing regulations and the expansion of a
sanctuary for spawning females in recent years, the population is not
turning around.

Earlier this summer the Virginia Marine Resources Commission put
together a panel of scientists from up and down the East Coast to
review the state's blue crab regulations and determine if they are
adequate.

The new report, from the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee,
recommends doing just that: Taking a look at what's on the books now
and, if necessary, revamping with an aim toward "rebuilding a
depressed stock, for promoting sustainability, and for ensuring blue
crab do not become overfished."

Copyright 2007, Newport News, Va., Daily Press

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From: Environmental Health Perspectives, Oct. 1, 2007
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STANDING ON PRINCIPLE: THE GLOBAL PUSH FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

By Luz Claudio

Climate change, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, species
extinction -- all of these issues point to one thing: environmental
health is a global issue that concerns all nations of the world. Now
add environmental justice to the list. From South Bronx to Soweto,
from Penang to El Paso, communities all over the world are finding
commonality in their experiences and goals in seeking environmental
justice.

Environmental justice was defined by Robert Bullard, director of the
Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, in
his seminal 1990 work Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental
Quality as "the principle that all people and communities are entitled
to equal protection of environmental and public health laws and
regulations." In countries around the world, the concept of
environmental justice can apply to communities where those at a
perceived disadvantage -- whether due to their race, ethnicity,
socioeconomic status, immigration status, lack of land ownership,
geographic isolation, formal education, occupational characteristics,
political power, gender, or other characteristics -- puts them at
disproportionate risk for being exposed to environmental hazards. At a
global scale, environmental justice can also be applied to scenarios
such as industrialized countries exporting their wastes to developing
nations.

In either case, "environmental and human rights have no boundaries,
because pollution has no boundaries," says Heeten Kalan, director of
the Global Environmental Health and Justice Fund of the New World
Foundation in New York City. "Environmental justice organizations are
starting to understand that they are working in a global context."

Global Awareness

The history of international efforts in environmental justice
parallels the series of agreements and conventions held around the
globe to address environmental issues. Bullard recounts that during
the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, there was not much
official discussion about environmental justice in the context of
human health. "Most of the official discussion centered around saving
the Amazon and other ecosystems. Human health and urban centers were
not considered part of the 'environment,'" he says.

However, Bullard and other U.S. environmental justice leaders had
already met in Washington, DC, at the First National People of Color
Environmental Leadership Summit a year earlier, where they drafted the
Principles of Environmental Justice, a document to guide grassroots
organizing. "When we went to Rio in 1992 we found that some groups had
translated the Principles into Portuguese and were circulating the
document to local community leaders at the summit," remembers Bullard.

Ten years later, during the World Summit on Sustainable Development
held in Johannesburg, South Africa, the issue of environmental
inequity was formally recognized by the leadership of the summit. "By
the time we went to Johannesburg, environmental justice had really
caught on across borders as part of the whole idea of sustainable
development," says Bullard. Just two years earlier, the eight UN
Millennium Development Goals that resulted from the UN Millennium
Summit held in New York City had encompassed environmental
sustainability as a goal that would require a reduction in inequality.

International organization around environmental justice issues takes
several different forms. Broad networks of community-based
organizations can work on different issues affecting the
disenfranchised and come together on matters related to the
environment. Other groups may organize a particular labor sector to
improve worker health. On an international scale, community-based
groups in different countries who find themselves fighting similar
environmental problems can unite in order to synergize their efforts.

"The issue of globalization is one of common concern to the
environmental justice movement in many developing countries," says
Michelle DePass, program officer of the Environmental Justice and
Healthy Communities Program at the Ford Foundation. Concerns about
globalization can bring together a wide range of stakeholders
including workers, academics, and community leaders for whom increased
industrial development is a common denominator.

Into Action

The Brazilian Network on Environmental Justice is an example of how
groups can come together to address common concerns. This network
brings together about 100 varied organizations including unions,
academic centers, associations, ethics groups, community-based
organizations of indigenous peoples, and descendants of enslaved
Africans brought to Brazil, all with the common goal of improving the
conditions for vulnerable populations in that nation.

Utilizing the Principles of Environmental Justice, the Brazilian
network serves as a forum for debate, strategic planning, and
mobilization by organizations and affected populations. Network
meetings include members from other South American countries with
common interests.

Marcelo Firpo, a network organizer and senior researcher at the
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, sees that what unites these
varied organizations is their concern for issues of human rights and
the effects of globalization on health and the environment. He offers
the example of Petrobras, a Brazilian oil company that has become a
major player in the global market. Because the current government in
Brazil does not permit oil exploration in the Amazonian native
reservations, Petrobras has begun exploration in Ecuador, where there
are no such restrictions. "This kind of situation necessitates
international collaboration," says Firpo.

Throughout the world, disadvantaged communities typically suffer the
highest burdens of environmental degradation. One group that is often
threatened by environmental hazards in developed and developing
countries alike is rural farmworkers. These workers often suffer from
the effects of disproportionate exposure to pesticides and other
chemical agents as well as lack of access to health and education
services, among other hindrances.

In Brazil, for example, 10% of the urban population over 5 years of
age is illiterate whereas in the rural population this rate is as high
as 30%, according to Frederico Peres, a researcher at the Center for
Workers' Health and Human Ecology at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. So
workers often cannot understand the written technical information
about pesticides provided by chemical manufacturers. Protective gear
is often ineffective or nonexistent, and government protections
regulating use and disposal of pesticides may not be consistently
applied to these vulnerable populations.

Peres has mobilized farmworkers and created educational materials on
the safe use of pesticides that do not require literacy to be
understood by the workers. In conducting this work, Peres connected
with similar organizations in Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Panama, and
Argentina and observed that comparable situations take place in these
countries. "The problems are the same: illiteracy, lack of government
support, the strong influence of chemical industries to promote
pesticide use -- all of these are the same throughout Latin America,"
says Peres.

Farmworkers in South Africa face similar situations as those in
Brazil. Labor conditions on South African farms are among the poorest
of all employment sectors in that country, and until recently farm
work was effectively unregulated. Similar to Brazil for Latin America,
South Africa is the largest importer of pesticides in sub-Saharan
Africa, so pesticide exposure is a significant hazard for South
African farmworkers. Leslie London, a professor of public health at
the University of Cape Town, has collaborated with South African
farmworkers for many years to address their environmental justice
concerns. But as he noted in the January/March 2003 issue of the
International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, "The
legacy of apartheid for the health and the dignity of farm workers has
proved to be so deep-rooted that efforts towards redress in the new
democracy have had only limited success.... [I]t is the underlying
powerlessness of farm workers that is both at the root of violations
of farm workers' human rights and also responsible for the substantial
burden of mortality and morbidity suffered by farm workers and their
families."

Going International

Upon interacting with each other, some organizations in the
environmental justice movement across the globe are discovering that
although each case has its own particular circumstances, there are
many common experiences that can inform each other's struggles for
environmental justice. For example, members of the Farmworker
Association of Florida have been exchanging visits with citrus farmers
in Brazil to trade ideas on how to address environmental justice
issues. They found that some of their local circumstances were
different, primarily the fact that in the United States most of the
farmworkers are immigrants, whereas in Brazil they are mostly
nationals. "This makes a huge difference since in Brazil [workers]
have the right to unionize to seek better working conditions," says
Tirso Moreno, general coordinator of the Farmworker Association of
Florida.

Yet, during these exchanges, the workers from both countries
discovered that they had been facing similar working conditions
established by the same multinational agrobusiness companies. "Some of
the information that we had [was of use to] the Brazilians and vice
versa because many of these multinational companies are the same ones
with different names," says Moreno. "That is why there is a lot more
interest in collaborating internationally. While the details may be
different in each country, the struggles are the same."

Organizations like Via Campesina, an international organization of
small and medium-sized agricultural producers based in Indonesia with
members in 56 countries, aim to organize farm workers throughout the
world who are affected by similar issues. Jose Adilson de Medeiros,
president of the São Lourenço [Brazil] Rural Producers Association,
says of these groups, "If [other environmental justice groups] know
how to solve a problem, they can tell us how they did it. We learn
from each other's mistakes so we don't have to make a mistake again to
get there."

Another issue-based environmental justice network is the Global
Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). This organization,
headquartered in the Philippines, aims to coordinate efforts to reduce
waste and stop incineration around the world with a particular focus
on representing disadvantaged communities in both developed and
developing countries.

With members from 77 countries and expanding, GAIA can mobilize
quickly and globally to take coordinated actions. Its approach
includes sharing information electronically, coordinating regional
meetings, developing joint strategies for community organizing, and
hosting international training sessions where skills can be shared.
One effective strategy the group has used is letter-writing campaigns
that include signatories representing organizations from many
countries. GAIA is current mobilizing Asian members in opposition to
an effort by the Japanese government to enter into bilateral
agreements allowing the export of waste for burning in less-developed
countries in the region.

Another approach taken by the environmental justice movement is to
address the international bodies that support projects that may affect
disadvantaged populations. For example, GAIA has launched a campaign
to stop the World Bank from funding incinerators around the world. To
achieve this goal, GAIA locates expert researchers who can share
needed information on the health effects of incineration with members
near the proposed incinerator where the information may not be readily
available. They also facilitate linkages between members who may be
campaigning against similar technologies or against the same
incinerator vendor. In this way, environmental justice organizations
can share strategies and information quickly and effectively.

The flow of information is highly bidirectional in the international
environmental justice movement, providing models for both North-to-
South as well as South-to-North exchange. For example, community-based
organizations in the Philippines, where the government passed a
national ban on incineration in 1999, are able to share with others
around the world how they were able to achieve this in their country.
And in Kenya, lawyers are required to train in environmental law
through continuing education programs such as those managed by the
Institute for Law and Environmental Governance (ILEG). "In the United
States, we can learn a lot from organizations like ILEG," says DePass,
who is herself an environmental lawyer who will be leading a
delegation of U.S. lawyers to visit ILEG for consultation on
environmental justice strategies.

A Common Cause

Increasingly, due to globalization and the advance of multinational
corporations, communities around the world find they are fighting the
same battles. One such example began in Diamond, a black community in
Norco, Louisiana, which is home to 130 petrochemical facilities,
incinerators, and landfills in what is known by some as the Chemical
Corridor and by others as Cancer Alley. There, a local school teacher
named Margie Richard and other neighbors founded Concerned Citizens of
Norco in 1990 and began demanding that Shell Corporation, the owner of
the nearby petrochemical facilities, take responsibility for its
pollution by relocating affected residents to a cleaner area.

To achieve this, the group engaged in highly visible campaigns at the
state, national, and international levels, culminating with Richard's
presentation in 2001 at the international headquarters of Royal/Dutch
Shell in the Netherlands. Shell agreed to relocate those in the
community who wished to leave the area and to reduce its emissions by
30%. This unprecedented victory won Richard the 2004 Goldman
Environmental Prize (considered the Nobel Prize for environmental
activism). With this increased visibility and recognition, Richard
began traveling abroad to talk about the environmental justice
movement and likening this experience to the wider issue of
international human rights.

Communities in other parts of the world are now utilizing tactics
similar to those used by Concerned Citizens of Norco. For example,
Desmond D'Sa, a resident of South Durban, South Africa, and
chairperson of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, has
engaged the leadership of Shell Corporation directly to deal with
environmental issues similar to those in Norco. Other communities in
Texas, the Philippines, Nigeria, Brazil, Curaçao, and Russia have
brought similar complaints to Shell's annual General Meetings.

Friends of the Earth International, described as the world's largest
grassroots environmental network with 70 national member groups and
approximately 5,000 local activist groups, serves as an umbrella
organization under which many of the communities organizing for
environmental justice can find common ground for action. In a 2003
report titled Behind the Shine, Tony Juniper, executive director of
Friends of the Earth in the UK, states that shareholders and investors
in large corporations have rights established in law through which
they can hold companies accountable; however, this cannot be said for
the people who live next door to polluting facilities. Joining forces
therefore helps these communities have their voices heard at the
corporate table.

In recent months, attention has been focused on environmental justice
issues within Europe, where poor and ethnically marginalized peoples
in Central and Eastern Europe often face harsh environmental health
conditions. "With the recent enlargement of the European Union to
include countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the need for
environmental justice across a more stratified society, especially as
it relates to the promotion of human health, is increasingly evident,"
says Diana Smith, director of communications at the Health and
Environment Alliance (HEAL), headquartered in Brussels. The alliance
mainly addresses environmental justice within the context of the 1998
Aarhus Convention, which specifically links environmental rights and
human rights.

HEAL and its member organization, the Centre for Environmental Policy
and Law, produced the groundbreaking August 2007 report Making the
Case for Environmental Justice in Central and Eastern Europe to raise
awareness and advocate policy action against the deleterious
environmental and human health conditions of poor and otherwise
marginalized groups in Central and Eastern Europe. The report cites
the case of a displaced persons camp sited near a mine complex in
Northern Mitrovica, Kosovo. A 2005 WHO study visit to the camp showed
that 88% of the children aged 6 years and younger had lead poisoning
severe enough to require immediate medical intervention.

The global push for environmental justice can only be expected to grow
-- and the time for action is ripe. As Bullard summarizes, "if you
live on the wrong side of the tracks and you are denied a good
environment, then you need environmental justice. It is the same
struggle everywhere."

Return to Table of Contents

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