Debora Porter

  Today is Children’s Environmental Health Day!  Sponsored by the Children’s Environmental Health Network, we’ve covered this campaign before (in 2018 , 2019 , and 2020 ) on The PediaBlog: Focused on action and equity, the goal of #CEHDay is to collectively increase the visibility of children’s environmental health issues while empowering individuals and organizations to take action on behalf of children nationwide. We believe that all children have the right to healthy environments in which to thrive. Environmental health for all kids means clean air, clean water, products free from harmful chemicals.   We’ve spent each day this week on The PediaBlog exploring environmental topics that impact the health of our kids. While we recognize steps made to make the environment cleaner and safer — grandparents today may remember the not-so-good-ol’-days when Pittsburghers referred to their city as “Hell with the lid off” due to thick and unrelenting air pollution from ...

  In anticipation of Children’s Environmental Health Day on Thursday, October 14, The PediaBlog will focus this week on environmental impacts to children’s health and well-being.   You may be surprised to learn that climate denial isn’t really a thing in the United States anymore. Sure, there are a few people living out there on the fringe of reality who still insist,  without displaying any credible, peer-reviewed, scientific evidence whatsoever, that climate change is a hoax propagated by a cabal of pointy-headed “coastal elites” or some such conspiracy theory. According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 72% of American adults who were surveyed in 2020 agreed that global warming is happening, and most of them know that human activities — greatest among them, extracting and burning fossil fuels — are to blame. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said they were worried future generations will suffer harm as a result of climate change. The co...

  In anticipation of Children’s Environmental Health Day on Thursday, October 14, The PediaBlog will focus this week on environmental impacts to children’s health and well-being.   It is doubtful there are any adults living in the United States today who deny that breathing unclean air is harmful to our health. Even children, who are more susceptible to the damage caused by air pollution and learn about it in school science and health classes, know that air pollution is bad and clean air is good. According to the World Health Organization, 91% of humanity live in areas where air quality exceeds international limits of air contaminants. WHO estimates that every year more than eight million people around the world die prematurely as a result of exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution. That number includes tens of thousands of Americans. Decades of occupational and community-based medical research shows that frequent exposure to outdoor (ambient) air pollution makes ...

  In anticipation of Children’s Environmental Health Day on Thursday, October 14, The PediaBlog will focus this week on environmental impacts to children’s health and well-being.   Someday in the far-distant future, archeologists seeking knowledge about our modern culture will chip away at Earth’s crust and find the magic fingerprint which defines our time. They won’t have to dig far before finding plastic in dwellings where we live, work, learn, and play. Practically every item they identify as a modern convenience will have plastic parts, or be made entirely of plastic. And although the passage of time will have transformed the landscape above the buried treasure into something completely unrecognizable to those living today, the plastic tools, utensils, and tchotchkes (trinkets) collected by the human (or alien?) scavengers will remain essentially unchanged. The story of plastic  begins at an oil or natural gas well head, where fracking for hydrocarbons like etha...

Bliss by Harry Bliss ( GoComics.com )                       source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/10/10/sunday-funnies-475/

Best of Zach King Compilation — Summer Magic 2020 on YouTube .   source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/10/09/cool-video-of-the-week-475/

*This post originally appeared on The PediaBlog October 8, 2020.   Everything Around Us       The environment is everything around us. The environment supports and sustains us, and wherever we live we are intricately connected to it. We bring the environment into our bodies with every breath, every touch, and every swallow. Every smell and sight and sound connects us with the environment around us.   But the environment can also threaten our health and safety. For example, extreme weather events fueled by climate change threaten life and limb. Microscopic life forms live in the environment along with us — molds, bacteria, and viruses like coronavirus — and these microbes can make us sneeze, make us sick, and even kill us. Natural toxins like plant oils can give us rashes, pollens can make us wheeze, and snake venom can make us die.   There are things that humans do that damage the environment. We allow the byproducts of our existence — human was...