By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Squint and you can’t see them. Try a standard microscope. They’re still not there.
And yet, they’re everywhere. Nanoparticles are in hundreds, if not thousands, of consumer products, from sunscreen to child car seats to sports socks.
So the EPA has decided to take a closer look at these eensy particles, to investigate their potential to harm humans and the environment.
Nanos, which are about 1/100,000 of the width of a human hair and have been aggregating in consumer goods faster than E coli at a feed lot, have raised concerns among environmentalists, public health officials and others. These guardians of the environment want to know more about how nanos act in water. air and soil, and also whether they can invade and damage human tissue.
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Study links diabetes to banned chemical pesticide DDT
By Melissa Segrest
Green Right Now
Diabetes is one of the most prevalent and deadly diseases in the U.S. — and its cause, or causes, is subject to debate.
Millions of dollars in research funding and many studies have linked both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes to a cornucopia of causes or triggers: genetics, obesity, viruses, lack of exercise, breastfeeding, excessive hygiene, climate,
age, ethnicity, high blood pressure, immunizations, lack of vitamin D and more.
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Tags: · DDT, diabetes, diabetes and contaminants, diabetes and DDE, diabetes and pollutants, diabetes causes, diabetes research, environmental hazards, Great Lakes, Public Health, study diabetes and DDE
Meatless Mondays: A way to reduce your carbon output and sat fat intake
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Veggie advocates want American omnivores to adopt a day without meat. Well, some of them want us to just give up meat totally, but I’m talking about the Meatless Monday campaign here, which argues that if we’d cut out the steaks and pork chops on just this one day, we’d reduce the saturated fat that we consume and make a big dent in the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the livestock industry.
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Tags: · BarbaraKesslerBlog, beef, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Carbon footprint, Johns Hopkins, meat, Meatless Mondays, obesity, pork, poultry, Public Health, vegetarian
Countries to reduce reliance on DDT to fight malaria
From Green Right Now Reports
For decades, relief work in Africa has fought a deadly disease with an environmentally deadly chemical, spraying with DDT to quell malarial outbreaks, even though world health agencies know that DDT has a devastating effect on the environment, killing wildlife and contaminating water supplies.
Today, the UN Agencies announced they will try to move 40 countries in Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia, away from reliance on the persistent, toxic chemical by using other methods to fight mosquito-born malaria, which infects more than 250 million people a year, claiming 880,000 lives annually.
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Tags: · DDT, insects, malaria, mosquitoes, pesticides, Public Health