Environmental & Public Health

When you ask Switzer Fellow Sue Chiang (2007) about what drives her passion to expose the hidden dangers of fracking, her answer is straight and to the point. “We’re looking at a new California Gold Rush, only this time the frenzy is nationwide, and now we have technology that’s capable of leaving an environmental footprint exponentially more harmful than what was possible in the past," says Chiang.

Most of the time, wind-borne dust and sand seems just a nuisance, but it can present real risks to our health and safety. Read more

It was from routine community outreach trips to local nail salons in Oakland that Ms. Liou and her colleagues from Asian Health Services, as well as Thu Quach, a research scientist, became alarmed: Almost all of the manicurists interviewed had health complaints; some were terribly ill. Dr. Quach, with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, set out to conduct a health survey of nail salon workers in Alameda County, which includes Oakland. The stories poured in.

From The Wall Street Journal: West Virginia lawmakers approved a measure on Saturday to roll back strict water-protection rules enacted last year after a chemical spill contaminated drinking water for 300,000 people in West Virginia’s capital. ... Environmental groups fought the measure. "It reduces the regulation of tens of thousands of above-ground storage tanks, some of which have the potential to contaminate drinking water," said Evan Hansen, president of Downstream Strategies, an environmental consulting company based in Morgantown, W.Va.

The Honest Company, a leading lifestyle brand whose mission is to empower people to live a healthy life, today [February 12, 2015] revealed its new social goodness platform and committed $3 million in 2015 to build healthy, safe families. The multi-faceted effort focuses on critical life stages for families, including the whole child development of children ages 0-3 and educational support to help young people pursue their dreams.

Nail salons offering “manis” and “pedis” have become a booming business in the United States, setting up shop on seemingly every corner and approaching $8 billion in annual sales. “You have numerous chemicals being mixed, new products coming out all the time, limited available data on health effects and weak accountability for the manufacturers,” says 2008 Fellow Thu Quach, who is a research scientist with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and research director for Asian Health Services. “That would make it difficult for the workers to protect themselves even if there weren’t language barriers.” She is part of a grassroots effort that empowers low-wage, Vietnamese immigrant-dominated nail salon workers to fight for healthier conditions.

Africa needs more food. And to get more food, you need more farmland. There's a relatively simple solution — it's called "land conversion," and it can mean creating new fields to grow crops next to fragments of forest. Only there's a catch. The rats of the forest are drawn to the crops of the farmland — and to the grains that farmers often store outside their homes. And those rats can carry the bacteria that causes plague — the very same plague responsible for claiming millions of lives during the Middle Ages.

Under the new bill, the number of tanks regulated by the act would shrink considerably, said Evan Hansen, president of West Virginia think tank Downstream Strategies. The bill exempts storage tanks that store oil or any other liquid associated with the oil or natural gas industry, and it also exempts tanks that hold less than 10,000 gallons.