Green Buckeye RN

The Luminary Project seeks to honor, increase awareness about, and stimulate activity around nurses’ efforts to light the way to a healthier environment. The Charlotte Brody Award recognizes the outstanding commitment and achievements of a Nurse Luminary who has shared her story with The Luminary Project so that other nurses might be inspired to further accomplishments. At CleanMed 2006, the Luminary Project honored Charlotte Brody, RN as the first-ever recipient of the Charlotte Brody Award. The 2010 Charlotte Brody Award will be presented at CleanMed 2010 to be held in Baltimore, MD.

View full guidelines and nomination procedures attached, or by visiting www.TheLuminaryProject.org.

Are you confident that your drinking water is safe? Ever wonder if you should filter it?

These are vital questions that EWG’s new drinking water research and searchable guide will help you answer. We are the only ones who have put together a nationwide database of drinking water test results. The information is so important — and unique — that The New York Times asked to use it in reporting its current series on what’s wrong with America’s drinking water.

EWG spent three years analyzing the results of almost 20 million drinking water tests from water utilities. They detected 316 pollutants in water supplied to Americans since 2004. More than half are completely unregulated, and more than 130 turned up in amounts exceeding official health-based guidelines.

The good news? When the Environmental Protection Agency sets mandatory water quality standards, the tests show that local water suppliers meet them 92 percent of the time. The bad news? The standards need to be much tougher to protect children and pregnant women, and the EPA hasn’t set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Go to http://www.ewg.org/tap-water/home?inlist=Y&utm_source=tapngip&utm_medium=email&utm_content=image&utm_campaign=toxics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its latest assessment of the chemicals we’re all carrying around in our bodies. The biomonitoring study is the most comprehensive in the world, measuring 212 chemicals in the blood and urine of 8,000 Americans. That’s more than 40% more chemicals than have ever been tested for before.

The results: You can find 212 chemicals in the blood and urine of Americans if you look for them.

But what does it mean for your health? The CDC highlighted a few chemicals because they are both widespread — found in all or most people tested — and potentially harmful. Here’s a look at what they are and how you can try to avoid them.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/cdc-body-burden-47121501#ixzz0Zrg4RiUY

NEW YORK – A report out today points to yet another possible harmful effect of exposure to phthalates — a controversial plastics chemical used widely in the manufacture of consumer products.

Researchers from Turkey found higher blood levels of the most commonly used plasticizer, DEHP, in a group of boys with abnormal enlargement of the breasts — a common condition seen in up to 65 percent of adolescent boys called pubertal gynecomastia. The condition usually resolves on its own after boys get through puberty.

 Read the article at http://www.canada.com/health/Plasticizer%20tied%20boys%20breast%20enlargement/2339376/story.html

(Chicago – Nov. 15, 2009) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced today the first set of air toxics monitoring data from Elm Street Elementary School in Wauseon, Ohio, has been posted on the agency’s Web site. 
 
The Schools Air Toxics Monitoring Initiative, which is monitoring 63 schools in 22 states, is designed to help EPA and state environmental agencies understand whether long-term exposure to toxics in the outdoor air poses health concerns for children and staff at the schools, as well as residents in the surrounding community. 
 
The data is posted at http://www.epa.gov/schoolair/schools.html.
 
Based on the best available information about emissions and sources of pollution in the area, the pollutants most likely to be of concern at Elm Street Elementary are 1,6-hexamethylene diisocyanate, methylenediphenyl diisocyanate, 2,4-toluene diisocyanate, acrolein and benzene.
Region 5 is currently monitoring air at 15 schools in the region that were selected as part of the initiative.  The first results show that levels of the key hazardous air pollutants in the Wauseon School are below levels of short-term concern. EPA scientists warn against drawing conclusions at this point as the study is designed to determine whether long-term, not short-term, exposure poses health concerns for residents of the community, school children and staff.  Once monitoring is complete, the full set of results from all of the schools will be analyzed to evaluate the potential for health concerns related to long-term exposure to these pollutants.  EPA will post this analysis to the Web once it is complete.
 
Other schools being monitored in EPA Region 5 are St. Josaphat School, Chicago, Ill; Pittsboro Elementary, Pittsboro, Ind; Lincoln Elementary School, Warsaw, Ind.; Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, East Chicago, Ind.; Jefferson Elementary School, Gary, Ind.; Lincoln Park Elementary School, Muskegon, Mich;  Spain Elementary School, Detroit, Mich.; Minnesota International Middle Charter School, Minneapolis, Minn; LaCroft Elementary School, East Liverpool, Ohio; Whitwell Elementary School, Ironton, Ohio; Life Skills of Trumbull County and the Academy of Arts and Humanities, Warren, Ohio; and The Ohio Valley Educational Service Center and Warren Elementary School, Marietta, Ohio.
 
Outdoor air at each of the schools is being monitored for 60 days, and air-quality monitors will take a minimum of 10 daily samples during the sampling period.  EPA will use the information gathered in the initiative to help determine next steps, which could include additional monitoring or enforcement action where appropriate.

New Legislation to Ban BPA in Children’s Products
By Catherine Yang
Dec 13, 2009

NEW YORK—Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced new legislation to ban Bisphenol-A (BPA) from common products used by children and pregnant women on Sunday, Dec. 13. BPA is a chemical used to make plastics clear and shatter-resistant, also found in the linings of cans and baby bottles. A recent Consumer Reports’ study showed that BPA is now being used in a wider range of products and consumables in higher concentrations than thought before.

“This study adds to the mounting evidence that BPA is not only harmful for our children but for an overwhelming majority of Americans,” Schumer said. “There have been enough warning signs about the dangers of this chemical that we cannot sit idly by and continue to allow residents across New York City to be exposed. We need to keep this dangerous chemical out of the food chain.”

Read the article at http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/26418/

By KEVIN FREKING Associated Press Writer © 2009
Dec. 8, 2009, 5:32PM

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a new national strategy to enforce safe drinking water laws in small, rural communities on Tuesday and pledged to redouble efforts to protect children from toxic water in schools.

The announcement came during a hearing by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held to examine reports of widespread water contamination and unsafe levels of lead and other toxics flowing through the pipes at thousands of U.S. schools.

As part of the new approach, EPA officials said the agency would pay particular attention to chronic violators and said in some cases they would ask small water systems to restructure or merge to improve their safety records.

Read further at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6760078.html

Toxic Matters is new guide that highlights how to prevent exposure to toxic substances at home, in the workplace and in your community. Toxic Matters is a publication of the University of California, San Francisco Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), From Advancing Science to Ensuring Prevention (FASTEP). FASTEP is a project of PRHE and an alliance of academic, government and non-governmental partners spanning the fields of reproductive, environmental, occupational and pediatric health and toxicology. The recommendations in this brochure are designed for women, men and children, and apply to everyone regardless of whether or not you’re pregnant now or are planning to have children in the future.

Go to http://prhe.ucsf.edu/prhe/toxicmatters.html to download the brochure.

(CHICAGO, Dec. 8, 2009) U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 has settled with G & S Titanium Inc., Wooster, Ohio, for alleged violations of the authorized Ohio Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requirement for treatment, storage and disposal facilities. A $33,600 penalty has been set.
The company failed to have a storage permit, conduct daily inspections of and keep records on its hazardous waste tank, provide annual employee training and keep records about it and maintain written job descriptions. G & S, a titanium manufacturer, generates hazardous waste acid and chromium sludge that requires proper management by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Under the RCRA, EPA controls hazardous waste from its production to final disposal.

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/business/energy-environment/08water.html?_r=1

On Thursday, December 10, 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will release its Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, an ongoing assessment of the U.S. population’s exposure to environmental chemicals by measuring chemicals in people’s blood and urine, also calledbiomonitoring.    The Fourth Report presents exposure data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for the civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. population over atwo-year survey period of 2003-2004.In addition to presenting data from 2003-2004, this Fourth Report will also include the data from 1999-2000 and 2001-2002 as reported in the Second and Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.A complete listing of chemicals included in the Fourth Report can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/pdf/NER_Chemical_List.pdfOn December 10, the Fourth Report will be available online at www.cdc.gov/exposurereport.