22 MayBarbara Brenner, breast cancer iconoclast, dies at 61.Barbara Brenner, who led the group Breast Cancer Action and shaped it in her own combative image, pillorying the medical establishment, industrial polluters and even other cancer research advocates, died May 10 at her home in San Francisco.New York Times.
22 MayA survival plan for America?s tornado danger zone.It?s worth beginning a conversation about ways to live safer in hazard zones and that big regions of America?s tornado hot zone have deep vulnerability resulting from runaway growth and a human tendency to discount threats that have a low probability but disastrous potential.New York Times.
22 MayGMO labeling is the right thing to do.Food labels already reflect hundreds of ingredients, from trans fat, preservatives, food coloring, and allergy information on nuts, wheat, dairy, and soy. GMOs are no different.Danbury News Times.
21 MayPollution risks worse for developing world women.Environmental factors are responsible for 23 percent of the overall global disease burden, according to World Health Organization research. Addressing such pollution could save the lives of 6 million women a year.United Press International.
Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative Working Group (LDDI)
LDDI is an international partnership fostering collaboration among learning and developmental disability organizations, researchers, health professionals and environmental health groups to address concerns about the impact environmental pollutants may have on neurological health. LDDI currently has over 400 organizational and individual participants engaged in educational and policy efforts.
If you are interested in joining this group, please sign on as a CHE Partner, and indicate your interest in your application. If you are already a CHE Partner and would like to join the listserv for this group send an email request to LDDI's listserv.
LDDI WORKING GROUP NEWS
9/7/12: New Article on Exposures and Disability Published by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
“Protecting Brain Development: How Toxic Chemical Exposures Interact With Nutrition and Genetics to Put Children at Risk” has been published in the August issue of Perspectives on School-Based Issues, one of the journals from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The article describes recent findings of interactions of toxic exposures with nutritional factors such as high fructose corn syrup, iodine, and eating breakfast. Co-authored by Maureen Swanson of the Learning Disabilities Association of America’s Healthy Children Project and Nancy Hepp of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, the article concludes with actions that communication sciences and disorders (CSD) professionals can take to improve health outcomes for their students and their communities.
See the article abstract.
11/22/11: New Article on Neurodevelopment and Toxicants
Nancy Hepp, CHE's Research and Communications Specialist, published "Protecting Children from Toxicants" in the ASHA Leader, a journal of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Read the article
9/13/11: CHE LDDI/ASA Workshops
Two workshops in November 2011 and one in January 2012 will feature national experts from diverse sectors highlighting the latest research on associations between environmental exposures and early neurodevelopment as well as the implications for prevention-based public health policy. Visit the workshops page
5/10/11: PAH Column Published
A new Practice Prevention column on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) has been published in English and Spanish. See our webpage with columns and fact sheets.
3/28/11: Practice Prevention Column Updates and Translations
With the assistance of intern Kelly Quinn, several of LDDI's Practice Prevention columns have been updated and translated into Spanish.
2/9/11: LDAA Forum
On January 24th, the Learning Disabilities Association of America, with support from the John Merck Fund, Kaiser Family Foundation and the Ceres Foundation, convened a forum to present the state-of-the-science on toxic chemicals and health as well as related policy updates and training. Read more »
11/17/10: AAIDD Environmental Health Initiative Aging, Environmental Health, and IDD Teleconference Series
The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD)'s Environmental Health Initiative (EHI) organized a distinguished panel of guest speakers to present a groundbreaking series of webinars on aging and environmental health with a focus on disability. This series was sponsored by the John Merck Fund and organized in conjunction with the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) of Greater Boston, and supported by LDDI and the new Healthy Aging and the Environment Initiative and of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE).
The series included five webinars that approached aging from an ecological health perspective and addressed the food, chemical, built, and psychosocial environments. An audio and visual archive of the seminars is now available. We encourage you to access these free resources on the AAIDD web site, share this information with your colleagues, and disseminate through your networks. For more information, please visit the EHI Teleconference webpage
The Collaborative on Health and the Environment
c/o Commonweal, PO Box 316, Bolinas, CA 94924
For questions or comments about the website, email: info@healthandenvironment.org
