Environmental & Public Health

About the segment: Last week a coalition of leading physicians, scientists and health advocates called for tougher regulation of chemicals in common household items — including flame-retardant furniture and food wrapping. We’ll talk with experts about how these chemicals could impact your child’s development, and about how to reduce your family’s exposure. We’ll also discuss the sweeping new federal law on toxic chemicals, which Congress passed last month.

Fellow J. Morgan Grove writes that within some neighborhoods, scientists are documenting a connection between trees and a specific social improvement: a reduction in crime. These studies combine modern mapping technology with spatial and economic statistics to compare crime levels between similar urban neighborhoods in the same city.

Mike Wilson is the Director of the Occupational and Environmental Health program at the BlueGreen Alliance. He joins the BlueGreen Alliance as an expert in occupational and environmental health. He previously served as chief scientist within the California state labor agency, where he worked with a legal and engineering team in the Cal/OSHA program in drafting a new regulatory policy for the state’s 14 oil refineries.

A proposed warehouse facility the size of 700 football fields has prompted at least 10 lawsuits, with critics saying it would mark a major setback in the fight to clean up Southern California’s dirty air – some of the most polluted in the country.

Climate change-related food scarcity can lead to 500,000 deaths around the world by 2050, a new study has found. The research was the first to come up with an estimated number of deaths, based on changes in diet composition due to global warming.

The Port of Los Angeles paid a Chinese government-owned shipping company $5 million in 2005 to equip cargo vessels to plug into electric shore power while at dock to keep their massive diesel engines from polluting neighborhoods near the harbor. The company, China Shipping, used the money to upgrade 17 ships, but the city didn't get all the promised environmental benefits. Most of the vessels stopped traveling to Los Angeles in 2010, a Times review of shipping industry data showed.

Fellow H. Bruce Rinker provides some individual and community actions to reduce the pernicious global problem of marine plastics pollution.

Editor's note: The profile was written by Friends of the Earth, the organization Kendra works for. Next up is Staff Scientist Kendra Klein who supports our agroecology work. She has over 14 years of experience as a writer, researcher and environmental advocate. Her areas of expertise are environmental sustainability, environmental health and food and agriculture. She talks with us today about why she joined Friends of the Earth and the role of women in the environmental movement.