Human-Health

Featured image: Public Health Watch by Alex Jensen / Local Futures A recent study of air pollution in the western United States made a startling finding: despite a 50 percent drop over the past 25 years in US emissions of smog-producing chemicals like nitrogen oxides (NOx), smog actually increased during that period in the rural US West – even in such ‘pristine’ environments as Yellowstone National Park. Most of this increase was traced to “the influx of pollution from Asian countries, including China, North and South Korea, Japan, India, and other South Asian countries.” [1] That’s because over the same period that NOx emissions declined in the US, they tripled in Asia as a whole. [2] In media reports of the study, China and India are described as the “worst offenders” of this fugitive “Asian pollution”. [3] ...

U’wa struggle against tuberculosis, parasitic worms, climate change and the threats of violent paramilitary repression Featured image: “The U’wa were sent a photo of a sheep in military gear and carrying a rifle, implying that they are associated with the guerrillas. These are very serious accusations, providing a political rationale for violent paramilitary repression against the U’wa.” —Andrew Miller, Director of Advocacy at Amazon Watch. Photo: unknown By Jake Ling / Intercontinental Cry ...

By Jake Ling / Intercontinental Cry This is the first installment of “The Guardians of Mother Earth,” a four-part series examining the Indigenous U’wa struggle for peace in Colombia. On September 23, 2015, in the Palace of Conventions in Havana, Cuba, his excellency Juan Manuel Santos, the President of the Republic of Colombia, and Commander Timoleon Jimenez, Chief of General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, signed an agreement on transitional justice and reparations to the victims of the country’s 51 year old civil war, resolving one of the final points in the country’s peace negotiations. ...

Featured image: An indigenous youth from Kwalikum First Nation sings. Photo: VIUDeepBay @flickr. Some Rights Reserved. By Courtney Parker and John Ahni Schertow / Intercontinental Cry The spiraling rate of suicide among Canada’s First Nations became a state of crisis in Attawapiskat this week after 11 people in the northern Ontario community attempted to take their own lives in one night. The First Nation was so completely overwhelmed by the spike in suicide attempts that leaders declared a state of emergency. Crisis teams were soon deployed by various agencies to help the community cope with the horror. Meanwhile, as news coverage of the shocking situation spread, activists occupied the Toronto office of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to demand the federal government provide immediate and long-term support to properly address the situation in Attawapiskat. ...

Featured Image: Gold miners have been invading Yanomami land for decades. © Fiona Watson/Survival International By Survival International Mercury poisoning is devastating tribal peoples across Amazonia, Survival International warned the U.N today. In a letter to the U.N Special Rapporteur for Health, Survival International highlighted the failure of South American governments to address the contamination. The unmonitored use of mercury, such as in illegal alluvial gold mining, often takes place on tribal peoples’ lands. Discriminatory attitudes towards tribal peoples mean that little action is taken to control it. ...

Featured image: A huge proportion of the Nahua tribe have been affected by the poisoning, which causes anemia and acute kidney problems © Johan Wildhagen By Survival International Up to 80% of a recently-contacted tribe in Peru have been poisoned with mercury, raising serious concerns for the future of the tribe. One child has already died displaying symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning. The source of the Nahua tribe’s poisoning remains a mystery, but experts suspect Peru’s massive Camisea gas project, which opened up the tribe’s land in the 1980s, may be to blame. The project has recently been expanded further into the Nahua’s territory, prompting fierce opposition from the tribe. ...

Featured image: Figure from EPA Pacific Southwest Region 9 Addressing Uranium Contamination on the Navajo Nation By Courtney Parker / Intercontinental Cry Recent media coverage and spiraling public outrage over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan has completely eclipsed the ongoing environmental justice struggles of the Navajo. Even worse, the media continues to frame the situation in Flint as some sort of isolated incident. It is not. Rather, it is symptomatic of a much wider and deeper problem of environmental racism in the United States. ...

Featured image: A bereaved Guarani family waiting beside a coffin. The wave of suicides that has struck the Guarani Indians in the last 20 years is unequalled in South America. Suicide is often seen as the only option by people forced from their land and into a way of life they did not choose. Photo © João Ripper/Survival By Survival International A new report published by Survival International reveals that the appalling suicide rate among the indigenous Guarani Kaiowá people of southern Brazil is the highest in the world. ...

By Institute of Physics Over two million deaths occur each year as a direct result of human-caused outdoor air pollution, a new study has found. In addition, while it has been suggested that a changing climate can exacerbate the effects of air pollution and increase death rates, the study shows that this has a minimal effect and only accounts for a small proportion of current deaths related to air pollution. ...

By Carla Salazar / Associated Press More than 100 rural Peruvians have been sickened by the spill of a toxic copper concentrate produced at one of the Andean country’s biggest mines, authorities said Friday. The Ancash state regional health office said 140 people were treated for ‘‘irritative symptoms caused by the inhalation of toxins’’ after a pipeline carrying the concentrate under high pressure burst open in their community. Most of the injured had joined in efforts to prevent liquid copper slurry from reaching a nearby river after the pipeline linking the Antamina copper mine to the coast ruptured last week in the village of Santa Rosa de Cajacay, said the community’s president, Hilario Moran. ...