Peru urged to ban oil firms from isolated indigenous peoples’ land

By David Hill 6 October 2017 (The Guardian) – There are more indigenous peoples living in “isolation” in Peru than any country in the world except Brazil. All live in the Amazon – the majority in poorly-protected reserves, or areas where reserves have been proposed but never established, or “protected natural areas” such as national […]

Hurricane Maria worsens Puerto Rico water woes

By Rachel Roubein 4 October 2017 (The Hill) – Amid the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico, most people can’t drink the water. But even before a Category 4 hurricane slammed the U.S. territory, the island’s water supply was in serious trouble.Some 55 percent of Puerto Ricans still don’t have access to drinking water as of […]

New book warns global warming is making us sick – “There soon may be much more environmental chaos and human suffering”

By Tracie White 21 September 2017(Stanford Medicine) – In 2008, Jay Lemery, MD, an emergency physician in Colorado, read a commentary about the effects of global climate change on human health. The author was Paul Auerbach, MD, professor of emergency medicine at Stanford and one of the world’s leading authorities on wilderness medicine.Published in the […]

The great nutrient collapse – “We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history – an injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply”

By Helena Bottemiller Evich 13 September 2017 (Politico) – Irakli Loladze is a mathematician by training, but he was in a biology lab when he encountered the puzzle that would change his life. It was in 1998, and Loladze was studying for his Ph.D. at Arizona State University. Against a backdrop of glass containers glowing […]

South Asia floods: Estimated 40 million across India, Bangladesh, Nepal affected

By Anne Barker 8 September 2017 (ABC News) – An estimated 40 million people in South Asia are struggling to rebuild their lives after massive floods devastated the region nearly a month ago.Entire villages across Bangladesh, India, and Nepal remained submerged under water since the floods began in mid-August.Authorities have described it as the region’s […]

Thousands hit by malaria, dengue as South Asia’s worst floods in a decade recede

By Mohi Narayan and Ruma Paul; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani 6 September 2017NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Thousands of people are suffering from an outbreak of diarrhoea, malaria and dengue in Bangladesh and Nepal as the waters from the worst floods in a decade recede, officials and aid agencies said on Wednesday.More than 1,400 people have […]

Graph of the Day: Opioid prescription rate for the U.S. in 2016

By Julia Watson 18 August 2017 (NCMI) – It is well known that the US currently faces an opioid epidemic and according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 1999 the rate of overdose death related to opioid, including both heroin and prescription drugs, has quadrupled. According to the National Institute on […]

Coal mining health study is halted by Trump’s Interior Department – “Stopping this study is a ploy to stop science in its tracks and keep the public in the dark about health risks as a favor to the mining industry”

By Lisa Friedman And Brad Plumer 21 August 2017WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Interior Department has ordered a halt to a scientific study begun under President Obama of the public health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which was conducting the study, said in a statement […]

Graph of the Day: Area under control of insurgent groups and area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, 2016

22 June 2017 (UNODC) – Opium production on the increase In 2016, global opium production increased by one third compared with the previous year. Although there was also an increase in the size of the area under opium poppy cultivation, the major increase in opium production was primarily the result of an improvement in opium […]

Super-heatwaves of 55°C to emerge if global warming continues – “Humid-heat waves with these conditions were never exceeded in the present climate, but are expected to occur every other year at 4°C global warming”

8 August 2017 (JRC) – Heatwaves amplified by high humidity can reach above 40°C and may occur as often as every two years, leading to serious risks for human health. If global temperatures rise with 4°C, a new super heatwave of 55°C can hit regularly many parts of the world, including Europe.A recently published study […]

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