Today the American Lung Association released its annual report, State of the Air 2012. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that air quality is improving in our most polluted cities, due in large part to the regulatory requirements of the Clean Air Act. The bad news, according to Janice Nolen, Assistant …

Last week, new research was posted online linking a type of air pollution to behavioral problems in children. The study, from Columbia University’s School of Public Health, followed inner city children exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), a type of pollution resulting from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels like diesel, gas, and coal. Researchers measured …

I sent my daughter to school today without her bathing suit, even though today is a swim day for her. And I forgot to remind the kids to pack their library books. Well, ok, there’s more: I had to buy a new Metrocard yesterday when I couldn’t find mine on the way home from work. …

Some air pollution is easy to see. When a truck roars down my urban street, I can see the coarse particles in soot as a black puff from the tailpipe. Those particles visibly settle on my potted porch plants, drift in my door, and get inhaled by my kids. It’s not pretty, and I’m not …

We’ve got our menorah out, our dreidels ready, and little bags of foil covered chocolate coins. My daughter has been practicing her Hanukkah songs on the piano, and we are wrapping little presents. We’ve had several rounds of potato latkes already, and Hanukkah has only just started. It’s a fun, warm, bright time of year. …

On a Saturday last month, people all over the world got together for a climate action day – a day to express our deep concern about climate change, and to insist that governments and citizens everywhere, take action to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. The Chesapeake Climate Action Network asked the Moms …

Asthma is only one of many health problems related to air pollution. But it’s a big one. According to statistics compiled by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, approximately 34 million Americans have been diagnosed with asthma; 9 million of those are children under 18. Asthma is responsible for 13 million missed school days …

While researching my blog series on mercury, I kept reading about “mixed results” of epidemiological research on mercury, with the implication that we can’t be sure whether methylmercury exposure from eating fish is harming children. I decided to get to the bottom of this and some other questions by talking with Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician …

These days, as the EPA is denounced as a job-killer, I often think about a story from the deep, dark, long-ago era of the twentieth century. Once upon a time, a gleaming, modern chemicals factory fueled Japan’s burgeoning plastics industry, providing jobs and wealth for the Minamata community. The busy factory deposited its untreated, polluted …

In my last post, I outlined mercury’s journey from trace amounts in coal to a potent poison in fish. Because coal contains small amounts of mercury, and because we burn coal for energy in large amounts, and because many coal plants have neglected to use readily available pollution control technologies in their smokestacks, mercury accumulates …