Friends of the Earth and Environmental Health

Author(s):  
Jennifer Thomson

This chapter discusses the long first decade of environmental organization Friends of the Earth (1969-1984). Founded by David Brower, FOE's central contribution to environmentalism was to move from the Sierra Club's understanding of wilderness as a retreat within which certain individuals' health could be regenerated, to thinking of human health as a litmus test for the health of the environment. Although the more systemic and anti-authoritarian of these approaches faded by the early 1980s, others pertaining to consumption and individual health persisted within mainstream environmentalism. The result was a politics in which the primary subject position was held by an undifferentiated, globalized, non-place-specific consumer in need of governmental protection yet also responsible for ensuring her own health through proper consumer choices. FOE's development during its long first decade illustrates the growing importance of individualized, consumer-based conceptions of health to the consolidation, in the early 1980s, of the environmental lobby in Washington, D.C.

elni Review ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 16-17

Will REACH be a wasted opportunity for making chemicals safe in the EU or will it be a first step towards the protection of human health and the environment from the most hazardous chemicals? This is the political choice European legislators have to make in the coming months. NGOs think that there is little left from the already weak original proposal and call for four points to be safeguarded in the REACH legislation to deliver a minimum level of protection to citizens and the environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 1398-1403
Author(s):  
Neha Prajapati ◽  
Amit Mishra ◽  
Mita Kotecha

Ayurveda medicine exists on the planet for the benefit of humanity. Ayurveda's value is in its ability to maintain individual health and treat a patient's condition. Following the daily routine, seasonal regimen, codes for healthy behaviour, ethical regimen, and so on, one can obtain good health. Plants are the foundation of Ayurveda, an an- cient Indian system of holistic treatment. Mustaka (Cyperus rotundus Linn) is described as ‘Kyambu’ in the Vedic literature, its synonyms like ‘Gundra & Gangeyam’ denotes the hydrophytic nature of this plant. Mustaka can be used to treat a variety of ailments. It is a significant herbal medication that may be utilised in a variety of ways to treat a variety of illnesses, mostly in the Kapha-Pitta dosha. Acharya Charaka has emphasised that each sub- stance on the earth is useful in combating illness when applied with planning and for a specific purpose. Keywords: Ayurveda, Mustaka, Kyambu, Kapha, Pitta.


Author(s):  
Toqeer Ahmed ◽  
Hassaan Fayyaz Khan Sipra

Plastic pollution is one of the prime and alarming issues in developing countries that has vast environmental and human health impacts which need to be addressed as a priority. Unfortunately, limited work has been done on the topic, especially on air and water pollution due to plastics in Pakistan. Informal solid waste management is being done by municipalities, which is not adequate, and the problem will increase with the upsurge in population and industrialization. There is a need to address the knowledge gap and improvements in the existing conditions to manage the issue of plastic pollution separately. In this chapter, causes; impacts of plastic pollution both on human and environmental health, plastic industries, and legislative context; and best practices to manage plastic pollution along with some important recommendations are discussed. It is expected the data presented may help the managers, environmental scientists, and policymakers to manage the problem of plastic pollution.


Author(s):  
Morton Lippmann ◽  
Richard B. Schlesinger

This book provides a broad, in-depth primer on chemicals in the total environment, covering the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. It defines the terminology used in environmental health science related to chemicals, describes the sources of chemical agents in the environment, how they disperse and transform as they travel throughout the environment, their effects on environmental quality and human health, how levels and exposures are monitored and quantified, the technology for control of chemical pollutants, how environmental standards and guidelines are developed, and procedures for human health risk assessment and risk management. It can serve as a textbook for courses taken by advanced undergraduate or graduate university students and may also be a useful reference for practitioners working in environmental and public health areas.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 519-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Engel-Cox ◽  
Bennett Van Houten ◽  
Jerry Phelps ◽  
Shyanika Rose

Performance measurement predominantly consisted of near-term outputs measured through bibliometrics, but the recent focus is on accountability for investment based on long-term outcomes. Our objective is to build a logic model and associated metrics through which to measure the contribution of environmental health research programs to improvements in human health, the environment, and the economy. We developed a logic model that defines the components and linkages between extramural environmental health research grant programs and the outputs and outcomes related to health and social welfare, environmental quality and sustainability, economics, and quality of life, focusing on the environmental health research portfolio of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Division of Extramural Research and Training and delineates pathways for contributions by five types of institutional partners in the research process. The model is being applied to specific NIEHS research applications and the broader research community. We briefly discuss two examples and discuss the strengths and limits of outcome- based evaluation of research programs.


2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1696) ◽  
pp. 20150173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fay H. Johnston ◽  
Shannon Melody ◽  
David M. J. S. Bowman

Air pollution from landscape fires, domestic fires and fossil fuel combustion is recognized as the single most important global environmental risk factor for human mortality and is associated with a global burden of disease almost as large as that of tobacco smoking. The shift from a reliance on biomass to fossil fuels for powering economies, broadly described as the pyric transition, frames key patterns in human fire usage and landscape fire activity. These have produced distinct patters of human exposure to air pollution associated with the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions and post-industrial the Earth global system-wide changes increasingly known as the Anthropocene. Changes in patterns of human fertility, mortality and morbidity associated with economic development have been previously described in terms of demographic, epidemiological and nutrition transitions, yet these frameworks have not explicitly considered the direct consequences of combustion emissions for human health. To address this gap, we propose a pyrohealth transition and use data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) collaboration to compare direct mortality impacts of emissions from landscape fires, domestic fires, fossil fuel combustion and the global epidemic of tobacco smoking. Improving human health and reducing the environmental impacts on the Earth system will require a considerable reduction in biomass and fossil fuel combustion. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.


2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (04) ◽  
pp. 892-919 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Cossman

This article explores the role of anxiety in neoliberal regimes of self-governance, arguing that anxiety has become a technique of governance. Discourses of anxiety produce anxious subjects who undertake a range of self-governing projects to manage and mitigate the experience. I explore anxiety governance in the environmental context of “eco-anxiety,” motherhood, and the controversy over Bisphenol A in baby bottles. Maternal toxic vigilance, in which individual mothers assume responsibility for the environmental health of their children through better consumer choices, is a classic example of this anxiety governance. The regulatory failure of the neoliberal state reinforces this self-governance; governments cannot be trusted to protect children from the toxins that are poisoning them, so mothers must do it themselves. Finally, notwithstanding the depoliticizing tendency of these self-governing projects, I consider the political potential of this maternal toxic vigilance, exploring whether anxiety governance might more productively engage the political.


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