I am alarmed this week. The Herald reported that autism is found in a staggering 1 in 100 births way above the estimate of 1 in 150 they expected and they also reported on a suspected cancer cluster (brain tumors) in Palm Beach. There will be 192,370 new cases of breast cancer in 2009 according to the American Cancer Society. I reported yesterday that proximity to power lines is now suspected in cases of Alzheimer's and dementia. Alzheimer's is growing in numbers, every 70 seconds someone develops it according to the Alzheimer's Association that provided the graphic above. Florida is expecting between a 49% to 8l% increase in Alzheimer's between 2000 and 2025.
In a back page of the Miami Herald a few weeks ago they reported an AP story that said: one out of five male black bass in American River basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become.
What is it going to take to get us to take action on reducing environmental factors? Each and every thing I mentioned has an environmental component and each is getting much worse.
1 comment:
It is clear that cumulative effects-- from combinations of impacts-- go mostly unstudied in the U.S. That, plus a bias against regulation that could otherwise protect health and welfare. We live in corrupt times. The Romans had lead. We have too much aluminum. That autism number has been 'out there' for a long time, but dismissed by the corporate flacks for polluters. So far Obama has been a disappointment on many fronts, but the one place there very well could be a sea-change under way is in this area of science policy related to human health. Bush couldn't care less. Obama seems to have some people on board who got as frustrated in their own way during the Clinton years as did Reagan's foot soldiers in the war against regulation did, in their day. Don't be surprised to see some very meaningful movement on regulation of pollution, and expect that it will be fought furiously as it always is, by you know who.
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