July 2024 Networker: The Long, Winding Road |
Editor's Note from July 2024 Networker |
| We at SEHN are, like sentinels, watching the multiple, interacting crises that characterize these days. This past fall, SEHN executive director Carolyn Raffensperger and I both referred to the polycrisis in missives to you, our readers and supporters. We quoted the historian credited with the term: |
| In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts. At times one feels as if one is losing one’s sense of reality. |
| It’s clear that those concerned with health, climate, peace, and justice are experiencing the polycrisis acutely, personally, and in our case, professionally. But rest assured we’re not losing our sense of reality. On the contrary, we’re engaged in a continuous, vigorous conversation that includes how our vision… |
| Fulfilling our responsibility to govern ourselves and our communities wisely, to create and sustain a just and healthy world now and for future generations |
| …is ready-made for the present crises. In fact, we are actively reflecting on, refining, and applying the methods by which SEHN long ago set out to accomplish our mission (“In service to communities, the Earth and future generations, the Science and Environmental Health Network forges law, ethics, and science into tools for action”):
Translating law and science for the public and decision-makers. Providing the scientific and legal tools needed to protect and restore justice and ecological wholeness. Serving environmental, public health and environmental justice coalitions and grassroots campaigns with legal and scientific expertise. Lifting up women’s voices and leadership to address the challenges before us. This month in our newsletter we have four articles that reverberate with these commitments, as they also reflect on—as our science director Dr. Ted Schettler says in the title of his piece—“the long, winding road” to success. Part of that long, winding road toward accomplishing our mission are the processes that we at SEHN work to strengthen and improve. These processes aim to, for example: increase public involvement; enable the defense of human and ecological rights, democracy, science; and develop and expand fruitful collaboration and mutual empowerment. Our July articles showcase these pathways. We show how we and/or our allies find a myriad of ways of sharing data and tools with frontline communities and decision-makers, and working alongside them. Ted Schettler traces the frustratingly slow route to a ban of one phthalate chemical, DEHP, about which Healthcare Without Harm, an organization in which he serves as science advisor, sounded the alarm decades ago. Real progress may finally be imminent. Nancy Piñeiro, English-Spanish technical and scientific translator with whom we have a longstanding partnership, lays out the need for language access and translation in our shared quest for socio-environmental justice. (Plus we feature a sneak preview of a forthcoming Spanish edition of our fracking science Compendium, being translated by Nancy’s feminist translation collective.) I describe an in-progress series of community-situated events around New York State focused on the harms of gas appliances presented alongside the action-steps individuals and communities can take to mitigate those harms. In her column, Sandra Steingraber tells the story of classes of chemicals we’ve come to call forever chemicals, for which policy has undeniably failed. She bears witness to the toxic legacies born of 1940s-era American industry. Chronicling these histories is essential for moving forward. Though absolute “success” is not guaranteed, we are developing and strengthening various muscles for navigating the polycrisis. Thank you for sharing our commitment to making it through. Carmi Orenstein, MPH, editor |
The Long, Winding Road to Market Reform: A Case Study of a Phthalate |
| by Ted Schettler, SEHN science director |
| The California State Legislature is considering a bill that would ban the use of one chemical in the phthalate family from use in intravenous (IV) fluid bags and tubing, after a phase-out period of several years. The bill, which concerns di-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), passed the Assembly overwhelmingly and is now in the Senate. If it passes there and is signed by Governor Newsom, California will be the first state to limit exposure to this toxic chemical during medical care—a step that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and medical device manufacturers have failed to take despite being urged to act for over 25 years. DEHP is added to the polymer polyvinylchloride (PVC) to add flexibility to what is otherwise a rigid plastic. Plasticized PVC has many applications, from shower curtains to raincoats to IV bags and tubing. The chemical does not covalently bind to the plastic polymer which means it can leach out during use. Since DEHP can comprise 40 percent or more of the final product, exposures can be high enough to be of concern. In the case of IV bags and tubing, DEHP flows directly into patients’ bloodstreams. DEHP is an endocrine disrupting chemical. Extensive laboratory animal testing shows that it has anti-androgenic effects, particularly when exposures occur during fetal and neonatal development, resulting in abnormalities in reproductive tract development and long-term lower sperm counts. Similar findings have been reported in humans. Continue Reading |
The Risk Right Under Your Nose: Shifting To All-Electric Appliances through Coalition Work |
| by Carmi Orenstein, editor, the Networker, and program director, CHPNY |
| I’m delighted to share information on the launch of a series of in-person community gatherings in which my colleagues at Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) and I play a part. We are the health voice in a coalition effort to educate, connect, and involve people across New York State in a transition we see as urgent: ridding our homes of gas appliances and “decarbonizing” (or electrifying) buildings. |
| We know that systemic change is required to move New York (and everywhere else) off of the harmful but deeply entrenched fracked gas energy system. CHPNY has thoroughly documented the risks and harms of fracking, even as it became the primary method for extracting gas in the United States. Though New York banned the practice over a decade ago, the state still heavily relies on fracked gas piped in from elsewhere—mostly Pennsylvania—to generate 47 percent of its electricity. In addition, three out of every five households still heat with so-called natural gas. And, at 60 percent of households or higher, gas stove use (versus electric) in New York is far above the national average of 38 percent (gas stove use in California, Nevada, Illinois, and New Jersey also clock in well above 38 percent). We have many new, hard-won laws in New York that push along the transition to fully electric (rather than fossil-fuel) powered buildings, with some important pieces of legislation still pending. As for the grid from which a building’s electricity comes, our Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act requires the state’s electricity system to have a 70 percent renewable-sourced grid in 2030, and become greenhouse gas-free by 2040. CHPNY, a program of SEHN, has consistently supplied a public health-focused, science-based rationale for decarbonizing buildings and other policies that will protect communities and decrease the amount of methane—a powerful greenhouse gas—put out by our energy systems into the atmosphere. We have documented the risks and harms that household gas-powered appliances, especially gas stoves, present. Continue Reading |
Let Me Say My Word, Let Me Understand Yours: Language Access and Translation for Socio-Environmental Justice |
| by Nancy Piñeiro, English-Spanish technical & scientific translator, PhD student of Sociology (SUNY Binghamton); Cofounder, Territorio de Ideas |
| A few weeks ago I was shocked to hear a Spanish-speaker from a low-income community in southern Texas who lives only a few meters away from two fracking waste pits repeatedly state that they have almost no information about what is going on with the fracking sites nor what these pits hold. All she was certain of was the constant smell of gas and the numerous cases of respiratory diseases and cancers. She emphasized that neither the government nor the companies provided any information to the community. As I was translating her words into English during a phone interview conducted by investigative journalist Justin Nobel, I realized that my shock was due to the connections I was able to make with the lack of access to information in countries like Argentina. In the Argentine Patagonia region, the struggle against hydraulic fracturing currently involves an unprecedented lawsuit against a waste disposal company in the province of Neuquén. According to the province’s chief prosecutor, “the only thing that separates the waste from the population that live just about 500 meters from the plant is a concrete wall that is practically in ruins.” He added, “the number of affected neighbors is beyond calculation.” We know that communities in the Global South—together with low-income, Latinx, Indigenous and Black communities in the Global North—are the most affected by pollution and the scourge of the climate crisis. But they are also a fundamental part of frontline struggles. The importance of a science that serves people, precisely for those directly affected, and not corporations, cannot be overstated. Almost all of us have ‘limited proficiency’ in the scientific complexities of public and environmental health issues. This is why the work of intra-linguistic translation that organizations like SEHN carry out is crucial to bring science to the public and decision-makers. There is another type of translation, the inter-linguistic, which is also a key aspect of environmental justice. There is another type of ‘limited proficiency’ that comes into play in many of the communities in the United States that have been mentioned above. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States; therefore, for official purposes, those who do not speak and write it fluently, or do so “less than very well,” are described as having LEP (Limited English Proficiency). The determination and aims of this classification are certainly debatable but discussing them exceeds my purposes here. For our purposes, then, let us see why LEP should be taken into account by everyone involved in socio-environmental justice and health. Continue Reading |
RePercussion Section: Still Here. Nobody Remembers. |
| by Sandra Steingraber, SEHN senior scientist and writer-in-residence |
| 1. What’s the opposite of Gone but not forgotten? It must be Still here but nobody remembers. 2. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are slick molecules that like to repel things: water, oil, stains, dirt, heat, friction. They are seemingly everywhere, and they are found in ordinary, undangerous-sounding places. Dental floss. Saucepans. Umbrellas. Shampoo. Recycled paper towels. Your couch. Also, firefighting foam and fracking fluid, which are, okay, not undangerous sounding. First synthesized in the 1940s, their production proliferated in the 1990s even after one of its leading manufacturers—3M, maker of Scotchgard and Scotchbrand—undertook a series of secretive tests that found perfluorooctanesulfonic acid in the blood of both the workers in their factories and members of the general public. Other secret tests, conducted by industry in the 1970s, had already shown that this substance was toxic to lab animals. Their collective acronym isn’t easy to say, so PFAS are mostly known as forever chemicals because once fluorine atoms swap places with hydrogen atoms on a hydrocarbon platform (derived from, let’s say, coal tar), they simply don’t let go, and no living organism has subcellular tools to break carbon-fluorine bonds apart. Hence, for all intents and purposes, PFAS molecules are immortal. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that, as a chemical family, PFAS represents a group of about 15,000 different synthetic substances. Forever chemicals don’t suffer from lack of diversity. Continue Reading |
Dr. Madeleine Scammel, SEHN board member and Associate Professor of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, was quoted in the Boston Globe about risks to New England’s outdoor workers during extreme heat. SEHN’s science director Dr. Ted Schettler spoke with Transportation Today about the toxic exposures and health impacts created by the release and burn off of chemicals following the February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Acting on her own behalf, Sandra Steingraber took part in New York City protests under the banner of #SummerOfHeat.
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