Environmental damage kills children

1 10 2019

Yes, childrenairpollutionit’s a provocative title, I agree. But then again, it’s true.

But I don’t just mean in the most obvious ways. We already have good data showing that lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children (especially in developing nations), that air pollution is a nasty killer of young children in particular, and now even climate change is starting to take its toll.

These aspects of child health aren’t very controversial, but when we talk about the larger suite of indicators of environmental ‘damage’, such as deforestation rates, species extinctions, and the overall reduction of ecosystem services, the empirical links to human health, and to children in particular, are far rarer.

This is why I’m proud to report the publication today of a paper on which I and team of wonderful collaborators (Sally Otto, Zia Mehrabi, Alicia Annamalay, Sam Heft-Neal, Zach Wagner, and Peter Le Souëf) have worked for several years.

I won’t lie — the path to publishing this paper was long and hard, I think mainly because it traversed so many different disciplines. But we persevered and today published the paper entitled ‘Testing the socioeconomic and environmental determinants of better child-health outcomes in Africa: a cross-sectional study among nations* in the journal BMJ Open.

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Inaugural Environmental Arsehat of the Year

9 01 2017

2016-environmental-arsehat-of-the-yearAs you recall, I asked both for your nominations and your votes for the inaugural Environmental Arsehat of the Year. Nominees could be a person or an entity who stood out in 2016 for his/her/their egregious attacks on environmental integrity. There were many fine nominations, and so now I’m elated to announce the results of the voting. Drumroll …

In 4th place with 13.7% of the votes, Matt Ridley. He is Conservative hereditary peer in the British House of Lords, and a flack for the coal industry who has championed global-warming denialism.

In 3rd place with 14.9% of the votes, Gautam Adani. The multibillionaire is a major coal baron in India and elswhere who has made a lot of splash recently in Australia for trying to build the biggest coal mine in the world that will likely finish off the Great Barrier Reef once and for all. Nice one, Gautam.

In 2nd place with 17.7% of the votes, The Liberal-National Party of Queensland. The (former) State Government ushered Queensland into 2016 by making the state one of the world’s deforestation hotspots, yet again!

And now, for the winner with a whopping 30.3% of the popular vote; please put your virtual hands together for the 2016 Environmental Arsehat of the YearRead the rest of this entry »








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