Community Air Monitoring Training: Videos Now Available 

July 9, 2015, EPA’s Community Air Monitoring Training was held at the Agency’s Research Triangle Park campus (RTP). The purpose of the training workshop was to share tools used to conduct citizen science projects involving Next Generation Air Monitoring (NGAM) technology and to educate interested groups and individuals on best practices for successful air monitoring projects.

The videos from the morning presentations are now available on the Community Air Monitoring Training, and are part of the Air Sensor Toolbox for Citizen Scientists and intended to serve as resources for anyone interested in learning more about monitoring air quality. Please feel free to share the link with others: www2.epa.gov/air-research/community-air-monitoring-training. Also, check out the blog announcing the video release.

Direct links to the videos are available here: Air Quality Monitoring and Sensor Technologies by Ron Williams, project Lead for EPA’s Office of Research and Development emerging technology research area. How to Start a Citizen Science Program by Liz Barry, Co-founder and Director of Community Development at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. Citizen Science Study Design by Rachelle Duvall, Research Physical Scientist in EPA’s Office of Research and Development. Data Measurement, Management, Quality, Uncertainty by Bob Judge, Air Monitoring Team Leader in EPA’s Region 1 Office in Boston. Quality Assuranceby Ron Williams, Project Lead for EPA’s Office of Research and Development emerging technology research area. Short Term Measurements and Air Quality Messaging/ Regulatory Requirements for Data by Kristen Benedict, Atmospheric Scientist in EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards.

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Poison Control and Pesticide Information Organizations Collaborate to Strengthen Pesticide Safety and Education

On February 23, 2015, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), which supports the work of the nation’s 55 poison control centers, and the National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC), a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Oregon State University, announced that they have teamed up to focus on pesticide safety and education.

The two organizations will bring their collective expertise and experience to developing bilingual health and safety educational materials for the general public related to pesticides such as antimicrobials, herbicides, and insecticides.

 Newton Committee for Alternatives to Pesticides

To read the joint press release in full, see http://www.aapcc.org/press/41/

Information about Poison Prevention Week 2015, March 15-21, 2015 http://www.poisonprevention.org/poison.htm

Above the fold: EPA, protect bees! 

From GroundTruth, Rooted in Science and Community
Pesticide Action Network North America 1611 Telegraph Ave. Suite 
1200, Oakland, CA 94612 USA 
510.788.9020 community@panna.org Web:www.panna.org

Inaction? Intransigence? Negligence? Whatever the right word, we’re reminded that the U.S. is behind the curve when it comes to protecting bees. Yesterday, Europe’s restrictions on bee-harming pesticides went into effect.

Today, in a full-page advertisement in the New York Times and six other major papers, PAN and over 60 food, farm, faith and investor groups are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take action. Quickly.
Read more »

Hydrogen Fluoride – A Toxic Chemical in Your Neighborhood?
by Leeann Sinpatanasakul, 11/19/2013

http://bit.ly/1bYLxZF 

Center for Effective Government  Across the nation, 167 industrial facilities currently store & use hydrogen fluoride, a dangerous and highly toxic gas. But what is it? And is it in your neighborhood?

...Safer alternatives to hydrogen fluoride exist for use in oil and gas refineries. However, it seems most companies will not adopt these safer alternatives voluntarily, despite the fact that millions of residents could be harmed by explosions. The Center for Effective Government continues to urge the EPA to use its authority to issue new guidance on the regulation of hydrogen fluoride and hundreds of other toxic chemicals stored at facilities situated near residential communities. Concerned citizens should examine our map of these facilities to see if their communities are at risk and advocate for safer alternatives. You can also make your voices heard by signing a petition asking the EPA to issue new guidelines.

Today’s Rachel Carson

Today’s Rachel Carson is a woman I know, admire and love, Dr. Beverly Paigen. I was reminded of how important Dr. Paigen is when asked to present her with an award from the Maine Environmental Health Strategies Center.

When I began to think about what I would say about Dr. Paigen I realized how groundbreaking her research was back in 1978 at Love Canal. How when she presented her theories and her research findings around the Love Canal chemicals and adverse health problems she was dismissed, ridiculed, and harassed by those who wanted to silence her, just like Rachel Carson.

Beverly demonstrated how the chemicals had likely moved out of the dumpsite the Love Canal and into the homes that surrounded the site. Again she was dismissed. Today, there is a name for this movement of chemicals called vapor intrusion and there is even an EPA approved technology to remove the chemicals from homes called vapor intrusion mitigation technologies.

...

Read the whole article: http://chej.org/2012/12/today%E2%80%99s-rachel-carson/

EPA: Sense of Wonder Contest

To honor the late preservationist and ecologist Rachel Carson, the EPA, Generations United, and the Rachel Carson Council, Inc., are holding a photo, essay, and poetry contest "that best expresses the Sense of Wonder that you feel for the sea, the night sky, forests, birds, wildlife, and all that is beautiful to your eyes." In her book The Sense of Wonder (written in the 1950s and published in a magazine in 1956), Carson used lyrical passages about the beauty of nature and the joy of helping children develop a sense of wonder and love of nature. Maximum award: publication on the websites of EPA Aging Initiative, Generations United, and Rachel Carson Council, Inc. Eligibility: entries must be joint projects involving a person under age 18 and a person age 50 or older. Deadline: June 10, 2011.
http://www.epa.gov/aging/resources/thesenseofwonder/index.htm

Consider School Air Quality in Absentee Rates

To the Editor (Education Week, 1 11 2011):

Regarding your articles about absenteeism, including “Early Grades Are New Front in Absenteeism Wars,” (Oct. 20, 2010), the healthfulness and safety of the facilities themselves should also be considered when looking for reasons why students aren’t in school.

The Environmental Protection Agency states: “Studies show that one-half of our nation’s 115,000 schools have problems linked to indoor air quality. Students are at greater risk because of the hours spent in school facilities and because children are especially susceptible to pollutants.” A 2002 review of studies related to school facility condition, commissioned by the 21st Century School Fund, found links to student absenteeism, achievement, and behavior. School buildings can affect student health in many ways.

A Government Accountability Office report from 1995 lists irritated eye, nose, and throat; upper-respiratory infections; nausea; dizziness; headaches; and fatigue or sleepiness as some of the impacts of poor indoor environmental quality.

The health problems resulting from unhealthy school conditions impact students’ educations in a variety of ways: absenteeism due to building-related health problems; “presenteeism,” when children are present, but not able to do their best because they don’t feel well; and use of substitute teachers because classroom teachers are absent for the same reasons as their students.

As the EPA notes in “Tools for Schools”: “The price for neglect is high, but the investment in maintenance need not be.” Although some indoor-environmental-quality issues may stem from problems requiring costly repairs, others can be resolved with cost-neutral measures, such as switching to environmentally preferable cleaning products and practices.

Our investment in our children’s health and academic performance is essential. There is ample evidence that buildings affect people. We need to ensure that school facilities–our children’s compulsory workplaces–are safe, healthful places. Until all schools are safe and healthful, we should include the impact school facilities are having on students in our discussions about absenteeism.

Virginia Mott

Lakeville, Maine

Related:

Press Release: New Data Shows Schools Ignore Children's Health: Groups Urge Action by EPA and States  National Association of School Nurses/Healthy Schools Network, January 11, 2011

Healthy Schools Network
National Healthy Schools Day

America's Children and the Environment

New CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network
http://ephtracking.cdc.gov/showHome.action


Updated EPA website about vermiculite insulation, Protect Your Family from Asbestos-Contaminated Vermiculite Insulation
http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/pubs/verm.html and fact sheet,
http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/pubs/vermiculite_message_to_the_public.pdf


The America's Children and the Environment website http://www.epa.gov/envirohealth/children/index.htm has recently been updated with the most current data available for measures of contaminants, body burdens and illnesses important for children's environmental health.

You can visit the website now to see new data for:

-Percentage of children living in counties in which air quality standards were exceeded (1993-2007)
-Childhood blood lead levels (1976-2006), and
-Percentage of children with asthma (1980-2007).

Overall, updated data are presented for 18 different measures of children's environmental health, including measures for drinking water contaminants, blood mercury levels, and neurodevelopmental disorders. For each of these measures, there is now data up through at least 2006. A complete list of the updated measures is provided below.

America's Children and the Environment Measures updated July 2009

E1 – Criteria air pollutants – time series extended to 2007
E2 – Air quality index – time series extended to 2007
E3 – Criteria air pollutants – time series extended to 2007
E6 – Drinking water contaminants – time series extended to 2007
E7 – Drinking water contaminants – time series extended to 2007
E8 – Pesticide residues – time series extended to 2007
E9 – Land contaminants – time series extended to 2008
B1 – Blood lead – time series extended to 2006
B2 – Blood lead – updated to 2003-2006
B3 – Blood lead – updated to 2003-2006
B4 – Blood mercury – updated to 2003-2006
D1 – Asthma – time series extended to 2007
D2 – Asthma – updated to 2004-2007
D3 – Respiratory diseases – time series extended to 2006
D4 – Respiratory diseases – time series extended to 2006
D7 – Mental retardation – updated to 2004-2007
EI1– Mercury in fish – time series extended to 2006
EI2 – Attention-Deficit/

Hyperactivity Disorder – updated to 2004-2007

The America's Children and the Environment homepage can be found at:
http://www.epa.gov/envirohealth/children/index.htm

Let's Clear the Air

"Let's Clear the Air," by Scott LaFee, "California Schools Magazine, Spring 2009," California School Boards Association.

http://www.csba.org/NewsAndMedia/Publications/CASchoolsMagazine/2009/Spring/InThisIssue/IAQmain.aspx

The article is further referenced in the Editor's Notes for the magazine, and is accompanied by the resource list at

http://www.csba.org/NewsAndMedia/Publications/CASchoolsMagazine/2009/Spring/InThisIssue/IAQtoolkit.aspx

Celebrating Rachel Carson's Centennial (2007)

Remarks by Ellie Goldberg, May 2007

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/v1RE-OlO2cc

I am glad to have the opportunity to honor Rachel Carson during her Centennial Year.  Rachel Carson taught me the most important lesson of my life -- that our health is intimately connected and dependent on the quality of the environment.  Rachel Carson was not really an environmentalist; she was an ecologist.   She understood our world is our life support system and that contaminating air, water and food was a violation of human rights.

Rachel Carson had the courage, the confidence, the reverence for life, and the sense of responsibility to speak out against widespread pesticide abuse and environmental degradation.  In fact, she wrote about global climate change in 1948.

While all of Carson's writings stand the test of time, Silent Spring, published in 1962, deserves special focus because it is a Call to Action.  Now, as the growing evidence continues to make the link between illnesses at every stage of the life cycle and the contamination of our water, air and food, we know that Rachel Carson was right.  Prevention is the imperative.

Rachel Carson inspires me to ask: What would Rachel Say? It is a clear ethic for evaluating our public policies such as the state's continuing permit of the widespread use of pesticides and even aerial spraying as our families and communities experience growing rates of asthma, cancer, reproductive and developmental disorders and in spite of the loss of biodiversity, especially the pollinators.

The National Resource Defense Council calls Silent Spring one of the landmark books of the 20th century.  It points out how Rachel Carson faced overwhelming illness and adversity, and in spite of an orchestrated chemical industry campaign to discredit her work, she "rose like a gladiator …motivated by her unabashed love of nature and sense of responsibility."  Thanks to Rachel, an enlightened public and their legislators eventually created the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

Rachel inspires us to think of ourselves, not as whistle blowers or canaries in the mine, but as guardians, steadfast sentries, and defenders of our community.  Thanks to Rachel we can see ourselves as sentinel lions, the universal symbol of protection at the entrances of cities, buildings, bridges... guarding the treasures of community.

In remembering Rachel, we can work together to foster a culture of sentinel Lions who, like Rachel Carson, is motivated to take responsibility for the health of their communities and to work for sustained political and cultural change to make public health a priority.