Category: Health (Page 4 of 12)

An oil refinery in northern Alberta that started processing oil 22 years ago is facing an enforcement order for operating without regulatory approval.

CBC »

The Enerchem plant was never granted approval under Alberta’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act (EPEA), according to the order issued June 20.
The order states that no approval “has been issued to any person for the construction, operation and reclamation of the plant,” in contravention of the act.
Under the conditions set out in the order, the oil fractionation plant, 250 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, can continue operating while the owner, Calgary-based AltaGas, seeks approval from the province.
Experts in environmental law say the infraction is troubling evidence of cracks in Alberta’s complex regulatory system and undermines its approvals process.

Pollution » Elevated levels of cancer-causing compounds found in Steeltown’s air

The Canadian Press via National Observer »

Air monitors installed on street poles across the city of Hamilton found concentrations of benzo(a)pyrene higher or much higher than health guideline recommendations. Long-term exposure to BaP can significantly increase cancer risk.

Residents of Hamilton, Ontario could be inhaling the BaP equivalent a couple of cigarettes per week, every week.

Hamilton Spectator »

The largest air-monitoring experiment in city history has found unhealthy levels of a cancer-linked contaminant across Hamilton — including in neighbourhoods kilometres away from polluting bayfront industries.
The results suggest coal-fired steelmaking pollutants like benzo(a)pyrene travel far beyond the lower city and pose “an even greater (health) impact than we may have expected,” said Matthew Adams, an urban air-quality expert who is co-ordinating the study alongside city staff.
A promised cut in coal use by Hamilton’s biggest steelmaker should eventually help clear the air — but not before 2028.

A University of Toronto professor says residents of Hamilton, Ont., could be inhaling the chemical equivalent of one or two cigarettes per week — at minimum — due to elevated levels of a cancer-causing compound in the air.

StatCan released an interactive dashboard that allows users to visualize selected Quality of Life indicators for Canadian municipalities

» Centre for Municipal and Local Data

Statistics Canada says the new visualization tool presents the most recent data available from the Census of Population for census subdivisions.

Elon demonstrably does not care who he hurts » B.C. government hit tweet limit amid wildfire evacuations

Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, writing in the NY Times »

This is yet another argument to keep AM Radio alive and vibrant. In times of emergency, they are ubiquitous, signals can travel great distances, they don’t need an internet connection, and best of all their signals are not controlled by self-serving, far-right, maniacal personalities.

Vancouver is Awesome »

A B.C. government Twitter account updating residents about driving conditions reached its tweet limit on a weekend it was sharing information about wildfire evacuations.
The incident, which occurred earlier this month, prompted the Ministry of Transportation’s DriveBC account to issue a warning.
“HEADS UP – As many others have this weekend, @DriveBC on Twitter and its sub accounts have exceeded the temporarily imposed post rate limit,” tweeted the ministry account July 2.

WHO releases reports on artificial sweetener aspartame and cancer risk

2023-07-13 / Downshift

NBC »

The World Health Organization’s cancer research group on Thursday said that it was categorizing the common artificial sweetener found in Diet Coke and other sugar-free foods and drinks as a possible carcinogen, but the agency’s food safety group said that the evidence wasn’t convincing and that the compound could still be consumed safely in fairly high amounts.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it did not agree that aspartame should be categorized as a possible carcinogen.
“Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives in the human food supply. FDA scientists do not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions,” the FDA said in a statement.

Who employs your doctor? If you are in the U.S., increasingly it’s a private equity firm

2023-07-13 / Downshift

A new study by researchers at the Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth finds that private equity firms own more than half of all specialists in some U.S. markets.

In more than a quarter of local markets — in places like Tucson, Ariz.; Columbus, Ohio; and Providence, R.I. — a single private equity firm owned more than 30 percent of practices in a given specialty in 2021. In 13 percent of the markets, the firms owned groups employing more than half the local specialists.
The medical groups were associated with higher prices in their respective markets, particularly when they controlled a dominant share, according to a paper by researchers at the Petris Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. When a firm controlled more than 30 percent of the market, the cost of care in three specialties — gastroenterology, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynecology — increased by double digits.

Russian is again building forced labour camps

2023-07-13 / Downshift

AP » Thousands of Ukraine civilians are being held in Russian prisons. Russia plans to build many more

Article by Lori Hinnant, Hanna Arhirova, and Vasilisa Stepanenko

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained across Russia and the Ukrainian territories it occupies, in centers ranging from brand-new wings in Russian prisons to clammy basements. Most have no status under Russian law.
Continue reading

Half of humanity lives in countries that are forced to spend more on servicing their debt than on health and education

UN »

Last year global public debt reached a record $92 trillion, of which developing countries shoulder 30 per cent – a “disproportionate amount”, the UN chief stressed.
He warned that 3.3 billion people suffer from their governments’ need to prioritize debt interest payments over “essential investments” in the Sustainable Development Goals or the energy transition.
“And yet, because these unsustainable debts are concentrated in poor countries, they are not judged to pose a systemic risk to the global financial system,” the UN Secretary-General added.

Iowa legislature votes to ban abortion after six weeks

Washington Post »

Vermont is flooding » Gov. Phil Scott called it sobering, historic, and catastrophic

WCAX News Team »

Property losses are staggering. The governor said thousands of Vermonters have lost homes and businesses. But with people still being pulled from homes and vehicles, the focus right now is on getting them to higher ground.

Climate disasters daily? Get used to it.

David Gelles, NY Times »

“It’s not just a figment of your imagination, and it’s not because everybody now has a smartphone,” said Jeff Berardelli, the chief meteorologist and climate specialist for WFLA News in Tampa. “We’ve seen an increase in extreme weather. This without a doubt is happening.”
It is likely to get more extreme. This year, a powerful El Niño developing in the Pacific Ocean is poised to unleash additional heat into the atmosphere, fueling yet more severe weather around the globe.
“We are going to see stuff happen this year around Earth that we have not seen in modern history,” Mr. Berardelli said.

Americans are obsessed with industrially produced edible peanut butter

The transition to a zero carbon economy needs psychology as well as technology

2023-07-11 / Downshift

Note » The linked article in The Guardian is paid for by the University of Derby in the UK.

The Guardian »

“We need to appreciate that it can be challenging for people adapting to new technologies and we must consider them as part of the solution as well as just the engineering solution itself,” says Chris Sansom, professor of concentrating solar power at the University of Derby, whose research focuses on finding solutions for cleaner energy across the globe.
Sansom notes that zero carbon research is concerned with many different elements. The University of Derby has a range of leading experts exploring zero carbon in relation to decarbonising manufacturing and business processes, generating low-carbon renewable energy, transporting people by zero carbon means, as well as understanding natural processes for greenhouse gas removal. “While these may provide the scientific solutions we need, a number of things can get in the way of that,” he says – such as the challenges for local residents and other people who struggle to adapt.

Industrially Produced Edible Substances are often gluten free

2023-07-11 / Downshift

Gluten Free Industrially Produced Edible Substance

Temperatures are already off the charts, but more records are imminent

Global sea surface temperatures reached record highs in May, June, and July of this year – and the warming El Niño weather pattern is only just getting started, said experts at the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

UN »

“We are actually at the beginning of that process, so El Niño hasn’t had as much of an effect as it is going to later in the year. So, we’re seeing these high temperatures in the North Atlantic…despite the fact that El Niño hasn’t really got going yet.”
According to the WMO’s Mr. Baddour, the warmest year is expected to be post-2023, when El Niño is expected to pick up. A record year in 2024 is likely, if the strength of El Niño continues to develop in line with forecasts.

Canada opposes global ocean seabed mining

Today, the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources, and the Honourable Joyce Murray, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, released a statement confirming Canada’s position on seabed mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

Electric-Vehicle charging stands outnumber gasoline pumps at a Circle K service station outside Kongsberg, Norway

Bloomberg »

It’s a scene that is steadily being replicated all over the Nordic country, offering a glimpse of what may be in store for drivers the world over in the years ahead.
When it comes to electric vehicles, Norway is very much a trailblazer. It has moved much more rapidly away from the internal combustion engine than its neighbors thanks to generous tax breaks and incentives, which made Tesla Inc.’s battery-powered Model Y cost competitive with a gasoline-burning Toyota Motor Corp. RAV4.
Most countries can’t afford to move quite as fast as wealthy Norway — the nation’s government estimates that various supports measures cost it some $1.8 billion annually in lost revenue. But the International Energy Agency says the rest of the world is going in the same direction, bringing peak oil demand before the end of the decade.

PFAS Chemicals » US outdoor sports retailer REI will ban cancer-causing ‘Forever Chemicals’ from clothes and cookware it retails by 2024