The UN has reported that hundreds of thousands of tons of solid waste have accumulated near populated regions of Gaza as humanitarian groups are warning that disease is spreading rapidly through the strip. As of this week, the UN’s Global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Cluster has estimated that there are 330,400 tons of solid waste near places where Palestinians — many of them displaced…
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regulators failed to prevent toxic PFAS in fertilizers from contaminating farmland across the country, alleges a lawsuit filed this week by a watchdog group on behalf of two Texas farm families who suffered health problems after their properties were polluted. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Clean Water Act by failing to identify at least 18 per- and polyfluoroalkyl…
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A Mississippi auto parts company illegally dumped toxic waste for more than 50 years, poisoning workers and sparking a cluster of cancer cases, according to a lawsuit filed this week by a group of former employees. The lawsuit, filed June 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, names EnPro Industries and multiple other corporate entities as defendants in the case…
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PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” for a reason. Originally added to a wide variety of products ranging from firefighting foam to nonstick food packaging, the chemical bonds that make up per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, accumulate quickly and break down slowly over time, making the pollutants extremely persistent in the environment — and our drinking water supply.
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Hundreds of physicians and other health professionals are demanding the Biden administration end the use of solitary confinement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons. The letter comes after multiple suicide attempts by immigrants incarcerated at a privately run ICE facility made national headlines. President Joe Biden pledged on the 2020 campaign trail to end solitary confinement…
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Florida has become the first state to allow doctors to perform cesarean sections outside of hospitals, siding with a private equity-owned physicians group that says the change will lower costs and give pregnant women the homier birthing atmosphere that many desire. But the hospital industry and the nation’s leading obstetricians’ association say that even though some Florida hospitals have closed…
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Documents obtained from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate the agency may have presented false information to the public about testing for harmful contaminants in pesticides, according to allegations being made by a watchdog group and a former EPA research fellow. The claims come almost a year to the day after the EPA issued a May 2023 press release that stated the agency…
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Asunción Mita is a town of roughly 40,000 people in the hills of southeastern Guatemala, near the border with El Salvador. It’s dusty and hot in the dry season — located in the Central American dry corridor, which is particularly vulnerable to climate disasters. And it has become the center of a battle over the future of mining in Guatemala. In January, the outgoing Guatemalan government gave the…
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Across the United States, right-wing legislators are targeting protesters who oppose the genocide in Palestine by resurrecting laws against wearing face masks in public. In North Carolina, the Republican-backed “Unmasking Mobs and Criminals Bill” was approved by the state Senate last week and headed to the state House this week. Fresh anti-mask efforts are also underway in Ohio, Texas and Florida.
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Ahead of Mother’s Day, grieving moms who lost their children to drug overdose are warning that the wave of punitive anti-drug legislation sweeping the country would not have prevented the deaths of their loved ones. In fact, they say, adopting harsh new laws like these only makes the spiraling public health crisis worse by further criminalizing people living with substance abuse disorders.
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In Body and Soul, a pathbreaking examination of the Black Panther Party’s abiding commitment to health activism, Alondra Nelson recounts how Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and other party leaders came to prioritize the pursuit of health and healing as vital to their survival — in more ways than one. As the Panthers’ reputation for armed resistance to police violence and demands for a society that left…
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Katherine Goodlow is only 20, but she has experienced enough to know that people around her are dying too young. Goodlow, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, said she’s lost six friends and acquaintances to suicide, two to car crashes, and one to appendicitis. Four of her relatives died in their 30s or 40s, from causes such as liver failure and covid-19, she said. And she recently lost a 1…
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Nearly a quarter of adults disenrolled from Medicaid in the past year say they are now uninsured, according to a survey released Friday that details how tens of millions of Americans struggled to retain coverage in the government insurance program for low-income people after pandemic-era protections began expiring last spring. The first national survey of adults whose Medicaid eligibility was…
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The Israeli government is restricting access to food in Gaza at the same time as it is destroying healthcare infrastructure. Each process intensifies the lethal consequences of the other.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
As public health experts raise alarm over the prevalence of highly toxic “forever chemicals,” as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS are commonly known, one nonprofit investigative journalism outlet warned Saturday that a recent ruling could further tie up the regulatory process for the chemicals and other harmful substances. “This ruling is likely to impede already excruciatingly slow…
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Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency this week as cases of dengue fever, a potentially deadly mosquito-borne infection, rise precipitously across the United States territory. In the emergency order, the commonwealth’s department of health said it had recorded 549 cases of the disease this year so far, a 140 percent increase over the same period a year ago. The numbers have “surpassed…
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced this month that it has significantly weakened its COVID-19 guidance, reversing course in its recommendation of a five-day isolation period for people testing positive for the disease. The CDC’s new guidance states that people testing positive with COVID-19 only need to isolate for one day if they do not have a fever and symptoms are…
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The slang definition of “unwinding” means “to chill.” Other definitions include: to relax, disentangle, undo — all words that, on the surface, appear both passive and peaceful. And yet in Google searches involving such seemingly harmless definitions of decompressing and resting, news articles abound about the end of pandemic-era Medicaid expansion programs — a topic that, for the millions of…
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In an unusual hearing off the notorious “shadow docket,” the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in a case that threatens to freeze the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan for cracking down on harmful air pollution that crosses state lines and contributes to smog in communities across the country. The EPA updated federal smog standards in 2015 to ensure cleaner air nationwide…
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As Israeli forces raid Nasser Hospital in Gaza, trapping hundreds of patients there and arresting medical staff, we speak with emergency room physician Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who just recently returned to the United States after three weeks volunteering at the hospital. “We’re just asking that hospitals not be targeted, that they not be bombed, and that doctors and nurses can provide for their patients…
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Scientists are increasingly alarmed over the soaring amounts of microplastics (small pieces of plastic less than five millimeters) and nanoplastics (extremely small, sub-micrometer plastic particles) being discovered throughout our planet, our bodies and our food. Just this past January, new studies found huge numbers of plastic particles in bottled water and microplastics in nearly 90 percent of…
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New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) 2022 Census of Agriculture shows that 1.7 billion animals are currently being raised in U.S. factory farms every year – a 6 percent increase from 2016 and nearly a 50 percent increase from 20 years ago. “The largest factory farms that are bad for farmers, the environment and public health keep growing in number,” Anne Schechinger…
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When epidemiologist and parent Rebecca Fielding-Miller heard that California was going to allow asymptomatic, COVID-19-positive students to attend school without quarantining, she was stunned. Under California’s new policy, students (and school workers) can return to the classroom “as long as they are asymptomatic and are improving” and have been free of fever for 24 hours without medication.
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By Claudia Tally in Port Moresby
Sixty four compartments of Papua New Guinea’s main mortuary have been out of service since the festive season while a new refrigerated container has also broken down, leaving the hospital looking for room while another 257 dead bodies lie unclaimed.
Port Moresby General Hospital Chief Executive Officer Dr Paki Molumi confirmed with the Post-Courier that the mortuary is full and that a mass burial is expected in the next three weeks.
The storage issue at the country’s biggest hospital is recurrent despite promises and assistance from the national government, the National Capital District Commission, the NCD Provincial Health Authority, partner agencies and others.
The hospital’s Director of Medical Services Dr Koni Sobi said due to the ageing infrastructure, repairing these compartments was an issue.
“The cooling system of a particular container broke down last week,” he said.
“A contractor was engaged last week but they are unable to get inside and do repair work until we empty that container of all human bodies and body parts.
“The 64 compartments’ chiller in the main mortuary building have also been out of service since the festive season. There is a contractor working to repair it. However, it is a very old unit, needs replacing or a major rehabilitation work, which is undergoing this process at the moment,” Dr Sobi said.
Seven bodies lying in open
When the Post-Courier visited the mortuary on Wednesday, at least seven bodies were left lying outside in the open waiting for relatives to come forward.
Meanwhile, the unpleasant smell from the morgue has affected residents nearby.
Dr Sobi explained that the POMGEN mortuary workers had began shifting the bodies from the container where the cooling system had broken down to five other containers, however the other containers were also full.
“We have bodies in the morgue since September 2023. Currently there are 257 bodies and body parts.
“The smell is evident often when the container is opened to remove body or bodies.
“Preparations for another mass burial have commenced and expected to take place within the next 3 weeks,” he said.
The hospital is now appealing to relatives to come forward and collect bodies of their loved ones for burial.
Claudia Tally is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering a new approval for a pesticide that would be used on Florida oranges and grapefruits despite the fact that agency scientists have repeatedly found the chemical does not meet safety standards designed to protect children’s health, internal agency records show. EPA emails suggest that persistent pressure from chemical industry lobbyists…
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As the United Nations climate talks cast a spotlight on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the U.S. law firm Our Children’s Trust on Sunday launched a constitutional lawsuit against the Biden administration on behalf of 18 California children “growing up with polluted air and a government-imposed and -sanctioned climate crisis.” Filed in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of…
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For the better part of a decade, researchers working at the intersection of climate change and human health have been desperately sounding alarm bells about the significant public health threats lurking in every tenth of a degree of planetary warming. Billions of people are at risk from illnesses linked to extreme heat; malnutrition following crop failure; bacteria and viruses that lurk in…
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Plastic trash produced by the company PepsiCo has become a “persistent and dangerous form of plastic pollution” for residents of the Buffalo River watershed in upstate New York, according to a new lawsuit filed Wednesday. The suit, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, is one of the first legal challenges from a state against a major plastic producer. It draws on a 2022 investigation…
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Throughout the blazing summer of 2023, reporters dutifully marked prior heat records being demolished repeatedly across the nation. New record-setting high temperatures were noted almost daily, and in city after city, a raft of new hottest June, July and August monthlong records were marked in towering fonts. Far fewer stories, however, sought to document what that extreme heat meant for working…
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Hurricane Ian slammed into southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm in September last year, killing 149 people — the most deaths attributable to a single hurricane in the state in nearly a century. But the official death count didn’t include one of the most gruesome ways people died as a result of the storm. A study published this week found that Hurricane Ian led to a spike in cases of vibriosis…
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