health

And New York City is the healthiest of all

As rural and suburban areas have grown, they have become more car dependent. Meanwhile, cities have reduced air pollution. As a consequence, the old urban health disadvantage has disappeared. City dwellers have higher life expectancies and better health on average [PDF] than people in suburbs or the country. And according to New York Magazine, New York City, probably the most urban of U.S. cities, has the greatest health advantage.

The difference seems to boil down to walking. People in urban areas walk more than people in rural or suburban areas (on average).

Why do New Yorkers do better than, say, people in Portland or Seattle, which are also pretty walkable cities? Apparently people in New York walk faster. The people who promoted the whole power walking thing got it right. Walking quickly is healthier than walking slowly.

On Edit: one other relevant difference between rural/suburban and urban: city dwellers, by driving fewer miles, are less likely to be invovled in auto accidents.

Environmental scientist Theo Colborn warns about the chemicals all around us

This guest essay comes from Theo Colborn, an environmental health analyst, professor of zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX). She's one of the experts featured in Leonardo DiCaprio's new eco-documentary The 11th Hour, which opens in L.A. and New York on Aug. 17 and in other spots around North America on Aug. 24.

What a crazy world we live in when almost everyone knows what the acronym ED stands for. Millions of dollars have been poured into creating awareness of ED, erectile dysfunction, because it is profitable. This 21st-century sales-pitch strategy -- "disease mongering" -- has proven to be good for the bottom line. The irony of all this is that there is another ED out there into which millions have also been poured -- to keep it a secret. That ED is endocrine disruption, and if the public were to learn about it, bottom lines could shrink instead of grow.

Endocrine disruption should be right at the top of the list of most critical technological disasters facing the world today, up with climate change. With little notice, vast volumes and combinations of synthetic chemicals have settled in every environment in the world, including the womb environment. Synthetic chemicals at very low concentrations in the womb change how genes are programmed, cells develop, tissues form, and organs function, and thus undermine the potential and survival of developing animals, including humans. The chemicals threatening the integrity of future generations are derived from the processing of crude oil and natural gas, the same processes that are driving climate change. This is an integral part of the climate change story.

Cats are the canaries of PBDEs

This is my cat, George. He is fat and grouchy, but I love him. He likes to sun himself on the patio.

This is a link to Sightline's research on PBDEs, toxic flame retardants. A couple of years ago, we conducted a study of PBDEs and found high concentrations in the breast milk of nursing mothers throughout the Pacific Northwest. It was bad news.

And what's the connection to George? Well, new scientific research shows that PBDEs are making house cats sick. (Major hat tip here to Lisa Stiffler, ace environmental reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who covers the story in her blog today.)

From a summary of the study:

PBDE concentrations in blood serum of the 23 house cats participating in the study were 20-100 times higher than the median levels of PBDEs in people living in North America, who have been shown to have the world's highest human PBDE levels.

PBDEs are long-lived. They're found in foam cushions, TVs, computers, carpet pads, curtains, you name it. It's thought that we humans get our exposure to PBDEs through house dust, which often includes crumbled bits of foam and other goodies. Same goes for cats: researchers believe that felines, with their obsessive-compulsive grooming, are literally lapping up the toxic compound. And many cats (George included) eat a lot of fish, which tends to have high concentrations of toxics, too.

Global warming …

… will eat your flesh!

But what about the economy?

According to David Pimentel and his team of researchers, water, air, and soil pollution cause 40% of all deaths worldwide. (via Hugg)

The energy of crowds

My first reaction to this story was, well, if you suck energy out of people’s movements, the people themselves will just need more energy, in the form of food, which is energy-intensive to make, so you’re really not getting any net gain. Conservation of energy and all that. But then I remembered that Americans are, […]

And then you die

According to a new report released this week by the Natural Resources Defense Council, there were 25,000 beach closings or “swimming advisory days” in 2006. That’s 28 percent more than in 2005, and the highest number since they started keeping records on that sort of thing. Some 1,300 days of closings were attributed to sewage […]

Umbra on refrigerator downsizing

Dear Umbra, Two of our favorite Brit-coms are Keeping Up Appearances and As Time Goes By. It is hard for an American not to remark that in both households, which seem quite affluent, the refrigerator is short, and fits beneath the kitchen counter: nothing so grand as what passes for normal in American kitchens. Do […]

It was only a matter of time

Remember when Umbra wrote about offsetting flatulence in 2005? Turns out she was ahead of her time.