Human-Health

By Isabell Zipfel In Jharia, in the federal state of Jharkhand, around 600,000 people live in the middle of one of India’s biggest coal mining areas. There’s nothing in it for most of them. Quite the opposite: the soil, the water and the air are now contaminated, of all things in an area that was previously rich in woodland. The story of Jharia is the story of how the greed for profit, vested interests and the thirst for power have prevailed and led to one of the areas richest in minerals in India remaining so economically backward. For the mining marginalises the poor and deepens social inequality in the name of economic development, from which mostly only metropolises like Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai profit. ...

By Stephen Leahy / Inter Press Service Rising temperatures are drying out northern forests and peatlands, producing bigger and more intense fires. And this will only get much worse as the planet heats up from the use of ever larger amounts of fossil fuels, scientists warned last week at the end of a major science meeting in Vancouver. “In a warmer world, there will be more fire. That’s a virtual certainty,” said Mike Flannigan, a forest researcher at the University of Alberta, Canada. ...

By Richard Schiffman, TruthOut In a match that some would say was made in hell, the nation’s two leading producers of agrochemicals have joined forces in a partnership to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2,4-D, one half of the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which was used by American forces to clear jungle during the Vietnam War. These two biotech giants have developed a weed management program that, if successful, would go a long way toward a predicted doubling of harmful herbicide use in America’s corn belt during the next decade. ...

By David Ferguson / The Raw Story Speculation has long abounded that overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers has been a major contributing factor in the development of so-called “superbugs” like MRSA or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Now, according to a report from Mother Jones, there is scientific proof. According to a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter mBio, researchers have sequenced the genomes of 88 closely-related strains of Staphylococcus aureus. They have concluded that one “particularly nasty” strain, CC398, began as a fairly harmless human bacterium known as MSSA, but evolved after colonizing the systems of pigs, chickens and other livestock. ...

By AFP When dead sea mammals started washing ashore on Canada’s west coast in greater numbers, marine biologist Andrew Trites was distressed to find that domestic animal diseases were killing them. Around the world, seals, otters and other species are increasingly infected by parasites and other diseases long common in goats, cows, cats and dogs, marine mammal experts told a major science conference. The diseases also increasingly threaten people who use the oceans for recreation, work or a source of seafood, scientists told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held this year in this western Canadian city. ...

By Social Science and Humanities Research Centre Indigenous people around the world are among the most vulnerable to climate change and are increasingly susceptible to the pathogen loads found in potable water after heavy rainfall or rapid snow melt. These are the preliminary findings of Sherilee Harper, a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Aboriginal People’s Health at the University of Guelph, who says that there has been a significant increase in the incidence of diarrhea and vomiting following these weather events. ...

By iLoveMountains.org More than 1,200 people are gathering in Frankfort, Ky. on Feb. 14 to celebrate I Love Mountains Day and call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining—a destructive practice that has shortened lifespans and caused illnesses in Central Appalachia for decades. The iLoveMountains.org team has just launched an innovative new web tool to illustrate the overwhelming amount of data that shows the high human cost of coal mining, and we invite you to check it out. See it live now by clicking here. ...

By Maura Stephens Pennsylvania’s state legislature has effectively signed a death warrant for some number of residents, who knows how many. Corbett’s about to make it official. Pennsylvanians: Fight back — or suffer the consequences. The fracking industry has written a bill that gives itself legal permission to poison Pennsylvanians-and keeps doctors who treat them once they’re poisoned from telling anyone else what poisoned them. The bill also essentially permits all gas drilling and processing activities anywhere, including in residential areas. ...

By Bernice Yeung / Huffington Post Southern Californians are among those at highest risk of death due to air pollution, according to recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research published in the journal Risk Analysis. The study, published last month, was conducted to “provide insight to the size and location of public health risks associated with recent levels of fine particles and ozone, allowing decision-makers to better target air quality policies,” the federal agency said in a statement responding to California Watch inquiries. ...

By Reuters A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides. In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois, 47, says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller in 2004. He blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label. ...