Health

"Giving Up Faith": The EPA, Dispersants, and the Commons in Chains

by Steve Horn — July 20, 2010 - 10:02pm
  • Topics: Food Safety, Corporations, Environment, Health

    • The great environmental activist Derrick Jensen, in an article titled "Beyond Hope," published in the May/June 2006 issue of Orion Magazine, lamented,

    Gulf Seafood Chemically Tested for Oil, But Not Dispersant

    by Steve Horn — July 15, 2010 - 4:10pm

    Reporter Miriam Wang of the ProPublica blog points out that although seafood from the Gulf has been tested for oil content, testers at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) neglected to test whether the chemical dispersant applied to the oil in the Gulf could be found in the seafood.

    Main Source: 
    Propublica, July 14, 2016

    Environmental & Health Effects of Oil Dispersants a Mystery to BP and the Government

    by Anne Landman — July 13, 2010 - 2:15pm
  • Topics: Animal Rights, Corporations, Environment, Health, U.S. Government

    • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson questions BP's widespread application of oil dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico, as does everyone else. According to Jackson, the government is "uncharted waters" with the use of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico. "The amount of dispersant being used at the surface is unprecedented," Jackson says. BP is also applying the chemicals in the sub-sea environment. In addition, dispersant is stopping oil from collecting on water surface, where it can be more easily controlled.

    BP's Web site gives the impression that dispersants "clean and control" ocean oil spills by putting the oil in a state where "it becomes a feast for the naturally-occurring microbes that inhabit the ocean." But dispersants do not clean the water, nor do they remove oil at all, but rather re-arrange where it exists, and change where it goes.

    "Toning Shoes" or Phony Shoes?

    by Anne Landman — June 30, 2010 - 2:32pm

    Those roly-poly sneakers you are seeing everywhere -- with rounded soles like a rocking chair -- are marketed by manufacturers like Skechers, Reebok, Avia and New Balance with claims that they promote healthy weight loss, improve posture, fight cellulite, reduce knee joint stress and improve the shape of wearers' thighs and buttocks.

    Main Source: 
    USA Today, June 30, 2010

    Obama’s Patients’ Bill of Rights: One Important Right is Missing, Thanks to Corporate Spin and Fear-Mongering

    by Wendell Potter — June 28, 2010 - 8:41pm
  • Topics: Corporate Campaigns, Ethics, Health

    • President Obama is calling a big part of the health care reform bill he signed into law last March a "Patients' Bill of Rights", suggesting that many of the consumer protections contained in the new law were the same ones the health insurance industry succeeded in killing time and again over many years through a fear-mongering campaign it secretly financed.

    Obama is right -- but only to a point. An important right was missing from his list of consumer protections because, once again, insurers had made sure it would not be part of any bill that reached his desk.

    The insurance industry defeated many attempts to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights in the 1990s and 2000s, despite considerable bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. It did this by funneling millions of dollars through a big PR firm it hired to set up a front group -- the Health Benefits Coalition -- whose sole purpose was to scare people away from the legislation. The industry also had one especially important ally: Obama's predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush. Bush threatened to veto any Patients' Bill of Rights that he (read: the insurance industry and its business allies) didn't like. Lawmakers were never able to agree on a single bill that Senators and House members could agree to (the House approved a weakened version of the bill Bush presumably would sign but the Senate refused to weaken its bill), so they eventually just gave up.

    A New Twist on Cigarette Lawsuits

    by Anne Landman — June 28, 2010 - 4:50pm

    A Massachusetts judge has given the go-ahead to a new kind of tobacco class-action lawsuit being brought against Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro cigarettes.

    Main Source: 
    The Boston Globe (Boston.com), June 25, 2010

    BP Ignoring Health Concerns in the Gulf

    by Anne Landman — June 10, 2010 - 2:09pm
  • Topics: Corporations, Environment, Health

    • One of the first things BP did after oil started gushing into the Gulf was to spray more than 1.1 million gallons of a dispersant with the optimistic name "Corexit" onto the oil. Then BP hired Louisiana fishermen and others to help with cleanup and containment operations. About two weeks later, over seventy workers fell sick, complaining of irritated throats, coughing, shortness of breath and nausea. Seven workers were hospitalized on May 26. Workers were engaged in a variety of different tasks in different places when they got sick: breaking up oil sheen, doing offshore work, burning oil and deploying boom. BP officials speculated that their illnesses were due to food poisoning or other, unrelated reasons, but others pointed out how unlikely these other causes were, since the sick workers were assigned to different locations.

    Big Food's Salty Spin

    by Anne Landman — May 29, 2010 - 8:43pm

    Man tasting a salt-reduced version of Campbell's V8 juice (Credit: Jessica Kourkounis, the NY Times)Big food companies are using well-established public relations techniques to fight bad publicity over the high salt content in processed foods, employing strategies developed earlier

    Main Source: 
    New York Times, May 29, 2010
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