Healthy Living Healthy Planet Radio

As we go about our daily lives  and use and throw away many different kinds of plastics, we don’t know or think about how plastics and plastic pollution affect our environment and our health. Plastic fills our dumps, homes and oceans.  Plastic debris is found absolutely everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica. It clogs street drains in our cities; it litters campgrounds and national pa...

Consider the amount of plastic you put into the trash or recycling on a typical day. There's the lid to your coffee cup, and perhaps a bag from a newspaper. There's the wrapper from a granola bar, a yogurt container, a salad clamshell, and the plentiful packaging from inside a box that arrived in the mail. Many of these plastic items are useful and convenient, but they also come with a high enviro...

About COP 27, ( the Conference of the Parties), President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt where it was held this past year, said, I deeply believe that COP27 is an opportunity to showcase unity against an existential threat that we can only overcome through concerted action and effective implementation. The hosting of COP27 in the green city of Sharm El-Sheikh in November, marked the 30th anniversar...

Simply defined, a hazardous waste is a waste with properties that make it dangerous or capable of having a harmful effect on human health or the environment. Hazardous waste is generated from many sources, ranging from industrial manufacturing process wastes to the batteries we use each day and may come in many forms, including liquids, solids gases, and sludges. While e-waste is not technically d...

Waste ManagementWaste is not only an environmental problem, but also an economic loss. When resources are produced and used in ways that lead to their disposal as waste, the loss of those resources is an economic loss. When resources can be saved, reused, recovered or used more efficiently, there is a net economic gain. Waste is part of the economy – it is a by-product of economic activity, by bus...

Virtually every resident, organization, and human activity in the U.S./the world generates some type of waste. Many different types of waste are generated, including municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, industrial non-hazardous waste, agricultural and animal waste, medical waste, radioactive waste, construction and demolition debris, extraction and mining waste, oil and gas production waste, fo...

While it does not affect as many people as its opposite, extreme heat does, extreme cold can be just as deadly, especially in areas that are not accustomed to cold weather. As with extreme heat, extreme cold has a variable definition depending on the location and how accustomed the population is to those temperatures. For example, people who live in a temperate state such as Florida may find 50 de...

Extreme heat can increase the risk of other types of disasters. Heat can exacerbate drought , and hot, dry conditions  - that can in turn create wildfire conditions. Buildings, roads, and infrastructure absorb heat, leading to temperatures that can be 1 to 7 degrees F hotter in urban areas than outlying areas – a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. This impact is most intense du...

Extreme weather continues to swell like US coastlines during high tide . And with it comes the realization that the climate changes we were warned about are already here. For decades the core question in the public debate over global warming was: Will all these scientific projections come true? Now, Britain has had its hottest summer ever and New Zealand its third-warmest winter in a row. The Rhin...

In the early 2000s, a new field of climate-science research emerged that began to explore the human fingerprint on extreme weather, such as floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms. Known as “extreme event attribution”, the field has gained momentum, not only in the science world, but also in the media and public imagination. These studies have the power to link the seemingly abstract concept of cli...

The climate crisis is increasingly marching forward Fortunately, there are many things we can do to ensure our future is as prosperous as possible. These actions fall into one of two broad categories: climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation. These terms go hand-in-hand while navigating through the climate crisis, but they mean very different things. Climate change mitigation means...

The success  of the recently enacted climate change legislation shows how the politics of climate change have shifted profoundly since scientists began years ago, warning about how human-caused emissions would warm the planet.  Whereas President Jimmy Carter once pushed clean energy as a matter of personal, moral responsibility, the new bill treats climate change as a pragmatic pocketboo...

The World Health Organization says Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit t...

Within the lifetime of anyone born at the start of the Baby Boom, the human population has tripled. In the 1960s, humans took about three-quarters of what the planet could regenerate annually. By 2016 this rose to 170 percent, meaning that the planet cannot keep up with human demand, and we are running the world down. Humans have altered about 70 percent of Earth’s land surface and ocean. Wetlands...

The effects of human-caused climate change are happening now. There seems to be almost universal agreement among scientists that earth will continue to earm and the Effects will be profound. Effects that scientists had long predicted would result from global climate change are now occurring, such as sea ice loss, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves. In fact, some change...

According to the World Health Organization, reducing environmental risks could prevent 1 in 4 child deaths. In 2012, 1.7 million deaths in children under five were attributable to the environment. These included 570 000 deaths from respiratory infections, 361 000 deaths from diarrhea, 270 000 deaths from neonatal conditions, 200 000 deaths from malaria and 200 000 deaths from unintentional injurie...

Locating polluting facilities in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color means that people with marginalized identities experience more asthma, a greater likelihood of heart attacks, even premature death. The disadvantages that come with these health issues, like missing school, create a cycle of poverty and lack of access to opportunity that spans generations and shapes every part of th...

Environmental factors such as air and water quality are fundamental determinants of our health and well-being. Environmental factors can lead to disease and health disparities when the places where people live, work, learn, and play are burdened by social inequities.  These social inequities, often referred to as social determinants of health, include differences in individual behaviors, cult...

The transition to an environmentally sustainable economy will take at least a generation, if not a bit longer. And at the end of the journey, we will not emerge with a pristine planet. The goal is to minimize the damage we humans inflict on the planet; because the damage will probably never be totally eliminated. There are too many of us and too little planet to eliminate destruction. We need...

Air pollution is a familiar environmental health hazard. We know what we’re looking at when brown haze settles over a city, exhaust billows across a busy highway, or a plume rises from a smoke stack. Some air pollution is not seen, but its pungent smell alerts you. It is a major threat to global health and prosperity. Air pollution, in all forms, is responsible for morethan7milliondeathseachyeargl...

The U.S. transportation sector is responsible for about a third of our country’s climate-damaging emissions. Cars aren’t the only vehicles that pollute — airplanes, ships and trains produce a large portion of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Yale Climate Connections asked:  How can American society reconcile people’s seemingly boundless love affair with their vehicles with the need to re...

According to the EPA, great progress has been made in achieving national air quality standards, which EPA originally established in 1971 and updates periodically based on the latest science. One sign of this progress is that visible air pollution is less frequent and widespread than it was in the 1970s. However, air pollution can be harmful even when it is not visible. Newer scientific studies hav...

From fertilizer runoff to methane emissions, large-scale industrial agriculture pollution takes a toll on the environment. However, Agriculture is the world's largest industry. It employs more than one billion people and generates over $1.3 trillion dollars worth of food annually. Pasture and cropland occupy around 50 percent of the Earth’s habitable land and provide habitat and food for a multitu...

As dramatically as climate change stands to literally remap the planet, no effects will be more profound than those on our food system. Climate change is reshaping the life that once teemed in our oceans, and that billions of people rely on for sustenance; it’s complicating the growing conditions for everything from everyday lettuce to rarefied truffles; and it’s making the act of eating beef more...

By 2050 we’ll  need to feed 2 billion more people.  How can we do that without overwhelming the planet? And, perhaps overwhelming our pocketbooks as well. Todays guest has written -  The numbers of hungry people are rising again, with hunger concentrated in fragile, conflict-, and climate-affected regions where production and trade are disrupted. Concerns are growing that the enviro...