Author Archives: VeroniqCollier

Infant Mortality Rose 1.3% Last Year

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today the Centers for Disease Control announced that life expectancy at birth declined slightly between 2014 and 2015. I wonder how they calculate that? They’re basically predicting death rates around the year 2100, and it hardly seems likely they can do this. My understanding is that it’s based on age-specific death rates prevailing for the current year, but what makes anyone think those death rates will remain the same for the next 80 years?

That’s a question for another blog post, I suppose. One thing is for sure, however: we can certainly take a look at death rates right now. And this, in particular, is disturbing:

Infant mortality in the US is already far higher than it is in the rest of the developed world. It’s under 450 in France, Germany, and Britain, for example, and under 350 in Italy, Japan, and Norway. The only OECD countries with higher infant mortality rates have per-capita incomes less than half ours.

To make things worse, the rate of infant mortality among blacks is double what it is among whites and Hispanics. It’s a horror story—and apparently it’s getting worse. How is this possible?

Taken from: 

Infant Mortality Rose 1.3% Last Year

Posted in Brita, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Infant Mortality Rose 1.3% Last Year

No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

Hillary Clinton addresses the National Action Network’s 25th Annual Convention in New York City. REUTERS/Mike Segar

No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

By on 13 Apr 2016commentsShare

The day before a Democratic presidential debate in New York, Hillary Clinton rolled out an environmental justice plan that calls for eliminating lead as a major public health threat within five years.

She would have her work cut out for her, as Flint, Mich.’s lead-poisoning crisis has shown. As Clinton reminded her audience today in a speech on racial justice at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference: “There are a lot of Flints across our country where children are exposed to polluted air, unhealthy water and chemicals that can increase cancer risk.”

Studies show that some 500,000 U.S. children under the age of 5, who are predominantly black and Latino, have high levels of lead in their bloodstreams. This is primarily because of lead-based paint in old buildings, but also stems from contaminated soil and drinking water. When it comes to water contamination, we don’t even know where most of the problematic pipes are concentrated; best guesses range from 3 to 10 million lead service lines in America. Nor do we have consistent reporting on concentrated areas of lead paint in homes.

Despite the myriad challenges, Clinton insisted Wednesday: “If we put our minds to it, it can be done.”

Her plan calls for:

A Presidential Commission on Childhood Lead Exposure and a task force charged with finding and fixing 50 other Flints around the country.
Directing all federal agencies to develop plans on environmental justice and ensure that the Justice Department prosecutes environmental crimes as heavily as other crimes.
More funding — specifically, up to $5 billion in federal dollars — to replace lead paint in homes and contaminated soils in school yards.
Federal incentives through her Clean Energy Challenge (something Clinton proposed previously) so that states have a reason to exceed federal standards for lead reduction and other types of pollution.
Funds to replenish the Superfund budget to clean up over 450,000 polluted sites around the U.S.
An update the Lead Disclosure Rule and Safe Water Drinking Act to improve lead inspections, and the need for more infrastructure spending to fix water and transportation-related pollution.

A number of these proposals would require Congress to cough up more funding for infrastructure and transportation, as well as for Congress to amend laws. And a few of them overlap with proposals from Bernie Sanders, who has also called for more funds for Superfund sites and would direct agencies to develop clear priorities on environmental justice. Sanders, too, has highlighted the “unequal exposure of people of color to harmful chemicals, pesticides and other toxins in homes, schools, neighborhoods and workplaces” on his campaign website.

Flint has featured heavily in the Democratic primary and was the site of a Clinton-Sanders debate in March. With a week to go before New Yorkers vote, environmental justice is back in the national spotlight. But the intertwined problems of pollution, poverty, and racism won’t be fixed in just a handful of debates.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Taken from: 

No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No new lead crises in 5 years? Clinton has a plan

The 11 Best Moments From CNN’s GOP Debate

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

CNN’s primetime debate between the 11 leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination had no shortage of memorable and combative moments. This was thanks in large part to moderator Jake Tapper’s efforts to pit the candidates against each other by asking them to respond to something another candidate (usually Trump) had said about them. Here are the highlights.

Continue Reading »

View post – 

The 11 Best Moments From CNN’s GOP Debate

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The 11 Best Moments From CNN’s GOP Debate