April 2024 Networker: Interrupting Industry Interference |
| Volume 29 (4), April 2024 |
| Our largest problems won’t be solved by heroes. They’ll be solved, if they are, by movements, coalitions, civil society. —Rebecca Solnit
The nationwide carbon capture and storage (CCS) coalition that SEHN Executive Director Carolyn Raffensperger launched and convenes continues to be a remarkable journey of connection. All of us at SEHN participate at various levels; for example, I’m on the “Messaging Committee,” a working group strategizing and carrying out pithy communications campaigns. We’re all continuously absorbing new technical information and details of industry’s new plans, conceptualizing new policy avenues to stop CCS, and finding ways to support frontline communities. No less important are the connections and relationships forming and growing through this work.
The SEHN Board of Directors—past and present, a who’s who of incredible minds and changemakers—is now benefitting from the coalition. We welcome our newest member, Jade Woods, the Louisiana CCS Campaigner for the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Jade is immersed in frontline responses to CCS in Louisiana. As quoted late last year in a media report, |
| “I wanted to note to you all how quickly communities are mobilizing against carbon capture and sequestration,” said Jade Woods, a representative of the Center for International Environmental Law. “We have had communities educating themselves in Cameron, in Calcasieu, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. James, St. John, East Baton Rouge, West Baton Rouge, Ascension, and more, as well as Orleans Parish.”
“No community that I have engaged with in the past year leading these community meetings and attending them has supported carbon capture and sequestration,” she said. |
| It’s an invaluable connection for our Board. As Carolyn Raffensperger says: |
| We at SEHN work to fulfill Arundhati Roy’s promise that “another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Over the past couple of years as I have watched Jade bring a consummate grace to her work on behalf of the community and the Earth, I too can hear that world, full of beauty, health and justice, exhale a big sigh of relief: “Jade is here.” I am thrilled that Jade agreed to join our wonderful board. |
| We can’t express enough gratitude to Bhavna Shamasunder, Occidental College professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Public Health, who recently stepped down after many years of service on the Board. Bhavna’s work on chemical exposures faced by low-income communities and communities of color has long been and continues to be an inspiration for me (and source of data for my work). Her approach exemplifies the critical endeavor of linking scholarly work with on-the-ground environmental justice communities and movements. If I were a professor, I’d want to be just like Bhavna. SEHN will always be in touch!
In this issue of the Networker, SEHN Science Director Ted Schettler and I each provide a brief look at how two new studies on different types of micro- and nanoparticle pollution relate to two contemporary and vibrant policy campaigns: a Global Plastics Treaty and building electrification. On behalf of SEHN, we bring our public health expertise to amplify the science and help lead it to actions that protect all beings. In her column, Sandra Steingraber talks about a new report that gives an “F-” to cancer organizations that employ fossil fuel lobbyists. All three pieces touch on industry interference with the progress we need. But, our coalitions are strong.
We hope you are having a beautiful Spring, even while bearing witness to the darknesses of this time and working so hard to better this world. Carmi Orenstein, MPH |
From Macroplastics to Microplastics: Worldwide Environmental, Wildlife, and Human Contamination
Real Solutions Urgently Needed |
| By Ted Schettler, Science Director |
| Sailing through the North Pacific gyre many years ago was like wandering through a poorly-curated community yard sale with few treasures and lots of trash—mostly plastic. It’s worse now. In the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, several oceanic currents deposit enormous amounts of debris into this expansive sea. Most of the garbage originates on land, although mixed in is some lost or abandoned fishing gear. Estimates of the amount of plastic entering the oceans annually are highly uncertain and vary widely—from 500,000 metric tons to ten times that amount. Regardless, it’s a lot. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature determined that plastic makes up 80 percent of all marine debris from surface water to deep sediments. According to a 2017 report from the Ocean Conservancy, most of the debris originates in several Asian countries where waste management frequently includes dumping plastic waste into rivers. But this is a misleading analysis that focuses on Asian countries and diverts attention from a major contribution of the United States. In the United States, we generate more plastic waste per capita than any country in the world. According to the EPA, plastic waste in the United States grew from less than ten million metric tons (MMT) in the 1980s to nearly forty MMT today. Only 5-6 percent is recycled. As much as half was historically shipped overseas where it often ended up in rivers. But those exports decreased when China and several other countries stopped accepting them. Today, about 85 percent of plastic waste in the United States is landfilled and 10 percent incinerated. Exports are considered “recycling.” Continue Reading |
Need Another Reason to Support the Transition Away from Gas Stoves? Nanocluster Aerosols. |
| By Carmi Orenstein, Editor |
| For more than a decade, Concerned Health Professionals of New York has had our heads down in the research focused on the impacts of fracking: underground, on the surface, and in the air, in and around the fracking fields of the world. And we have brought the research results to the public, in support of the fights to stop or at least slow down this destructive practice. Meanwhile, in our own state we welcomed a ban ten years ago, and, cognizant of New York’s continued dependence on fracked gas piped in from elsewhere, joined ongoing efforts to entirely move New York to safe, renewable energy. In recent years we’ve recognized the stubborn role that household gas stoves have played in this policy challenge. At the same time, gas stoves continue creating toxic exposures to linked to public health scourges like asthma. Indeed, gas stoves are the fracking tailpipe in our kitchens. The basics of these exposures and impacts have been documented in the scientific literature for a long time. For example, research from the 1970s through the 1990s showed associations between nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emitted into residences, including from gas stoves, and acute respiratory infections. Subsequent studies ironed out the details and expanded the scope, demonstrating troubling asthma impacts by a range of measures, as well as links to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. One of the more recent studies put the contribution of gas stoves to childhood asthma into sharp focus, finding that New York state’s kids suffer an especially high burden, with 18.8 percent of their asthma cases attributable to living with a gas stove (compared to 12.7 percent nationally). Continue Reading |
RePercussion Section: “Now It Get You When You’re Young”: Update on Rising Rates of Early-Onset Cancer |
| by Sandra Steingraber, SEHN Senior Scientist |
| Performing under the mononym Welles, rising star folk singer and songwriter Jesse Welles is just 23 years old. With a voice like Bob Dylan, the lyricism of John Prine, and a passing resemblance to Jim Morrison, Welles brings a jester’s approach to the social issues of the day. If the jester were heartbroken. His new release “Cancer,” for example, starts like this: Cancer's getting meaner, and it ain't never been fun
Supposed to get you when you're old, and now it get you when you're young
Cancer's always been depressin', cancer's never been pleasant
It don't care if you're royal, don't care if you're a peasant [pre-chorus] Well then, what causes it?
Everything you ate, the sleep you didn't get
Your job and the air and the water and your bed
The sun and red meat, all the fishes in the sea
Thеy're all a bunch of cantankerous cancer-causin' carcinogеnic S.O.B.s
It's like them apocalyptic folks off the newer Mad Max
Monsanto Clause delivered all the cancer in your ass In what might be the only mention of the polycarbonate ingredient bisphenol A in popular music, Welles goes on, managing to rhyme microplastics and metastatic: But it’s from the purple ketchup, the BPAs and microplastics
Just hope it don't go metastatic.
It's meaner than the meanest, meaner than the rumors
It's your own personalized "Bam! Pizza Hut", home-grown little tumor
Take it. *** The statistics behind the lyrics reveal their truth. Cancer rates are indeed rising among young adults, ages 18-49. As the most recent data reveal, this increased incidence is apparent across the board, striking both men and women and involving more than a dozen different cancers, including big-ticket malignancies, such as colon, prostate, and breast cancers, that we commonly think of as old-people problems. Worse, young adults are more often diagnosed with more aggressive forms of the disease.
Continue Reading |
Science Director Ted Schettler recently presented as part of the Commission Shift’s “CCUS Deep Dive Webinar Series.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KrjisiE5_Y These are the most recent SEHN-hosted Carbon Capture and Storage Plenary presentations:
February 23, 2024: Enhanced Oil Recovery, Part 1, overview of EOR and CO2 fracking, with Paul Blackburn and Sandra Steingraber. https://vimeo.com/showcase/10996664 March 8, 2024: Enhanced Oil Recovery, Part 2, the public health, environmental and climate impacts, with Ted Schettler and Sandra Steingraber. https://vimeo.com/showcase/11026744 March 22, 2024: Carbon Offsets, Carbon Capture and Dirty Ag/Energy, with Jim Walsh, Food and Water Watch, Antonio Tovar, National Family Farm Coalition, Tamra Gilbertson, Indigenous Environmental Network, and Ben Lilliston, Institute for Agriculture and Trade policy. https://vimeo.com/showcase/11062665
April 26, 2024: The April 3, 2024 CO2 pipeline leak in Sulphur, Louisiana, with representatives from Louisiana Against False Solutions (LAFS), the Vessel Project/Texas Campaign for the Environment, Micah 6:8 Mission, Healthy Gulf/Vote 337 Project, and For a Better Bayou. https://vimeo.com/showcase/11130725 |
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