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Childhood Lead Poisoning

margauxf
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 In 1991, the Public Health Service articulated a vision for primary prevention in Strategic Plan for the Elimination of Childhood Lead Poisoning, a departure from previous federal policy focused on finding and treating lead-poisoned children. This publication detailed a 15-year strategy for primary prevention and offered a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate the monetized benefits of this approach. A strong national effort to follow this strategy developed but was eventually abandoned.

The organized campaign against universal screening began in California, where letters questioning the reported prevalence of elevated BLL began appearing in pediatric journals and newspapers. These letters acknowledged receiving editorial assistance from Kaiser Permanente Foundation Hospitals and argued that money spent on screening, treatment and abatement would be harmful to more worthy public health efforts. The AAP president took up this attack on universal screening as well, and efforts for universal screening were gradually eroded. 

Needleman identifies racism and the belief that lead poisoning “is a product of poor mothering, not of environmental pollution” as a driving factor shaping lead detection and prevention efforts (or the lack thereof) … “this weighting of personal choice or behavior over environment is a tool used to shift responsibility away from health authorities or polluters and onto the victim” (1875).

Train carrying PVC derails in Ohio

tschuetz
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Rick Mullin (Feb 9, 2023) reports about a railcar accident in Ohio in which several cars carrying vinyl chloride had to be released and burned. Mullin highlights that the event is one in a series of recent rail accidents in Ohio, calling into questions the safety of the railway infrastructure. He also mentions that, based on data from the Chlorine Institute  20,000 rail shipments of vinyl chloride in North America in 2021.

The Ohio train derailment underscores the dangers of the plastics boom: https://grist.org/transportation/ohio-train-derailment-east-palestine-p…

Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/FalconryFinance/status/1624051231554510848

second thoughts on willowick

mikefortun
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Katie Cox Shrader10:44 AM Today@kimfortun@uci.edu I know what you mean about that anxiety. Two thoughts: 

- Re working with urban planners and others on gentrification: Santa Ana has a long, rich history of anti-gentrification organizing, and many of the groups involved in those have worked with UCI including planners. I recall from my time working with Montoya that some of the politics there are sensitive. I think an important next step is to be researching/documenting some of that history and reaching out to groups like el Centro Cultural de México and the Kennedy Commission. Maybe the OC library archive too. It seems really important to include gentrification as a central part of our analysis of EiJ in SA and I think we have a lot to learn from them. Those conversations may give us some insight into how outside planners might help or support, and how they might already be doing so.

- This kind of discursive risk does seem really important to track... AB 617 certainly comes to mind here. I also wonder how we might discern the difference between instances where well-intentioned interventions are captured or coopted in implementation, and those where legislation is compromised from the outset. Not to be cynical, but I am very curious about what developers supported the Surplus Land Act. Is the kind of development that Rise Up Willowick is fighting a "detour from intent" or is it a predictable/anticipated outcome of incentivizing the auction of public land for (private) redevelopment? In other words, is the Surplus Land Act a mechanism for progressive redistribution (golf courses become affordable housing), or neoliberal privatization of public assets (city-owned green space becomes a Jamba Juice)? Such a very California question.Show lessReassigned to kimfortun@uci.eduKatie Cox Shrader10:46 AM Today@mike.fortun@uci.edu  ... Now am thinking we need to have a workflow for moving these side-bar conversations into PECE as analysis of field notes. Maybe we could be in the habit of having these conversations in the text of the document, rather than the comments?