According to police statistics, Oakland has the highest crime rate and slowest police response time of any major California city. In fact, the rate of violent crime in Oakland is more than twice the average rate of the top ten other California cities. So naturally, Oakland has chosen to crack down on crime, starting with, yes,
Recently I got an email from a pregnant woman wondering about the safety of using hand-me-down pajamas for her newborn given the historic use of flame retardants in children’s sleepwear. The issue of flame retardants in sleepwear is not as straight forward for consumers as it should be. But let’s see if I can shed
There’s a new little mac n cheese restaurant opening next week in my neighborhood. It’s called Homeroom, and it plans to highlight several mouth-watering sounding varieties of that great American comfort food. Now I don’t usually write about the local food scene, but what caught my attention (and that of some local press) was the name change
Halloween is one of those holidays where even the most rational, health-conscious adults give their kids, and themselves, a break and let all junk food precautions fall by the wayside?. They fill their homes with all the Snickers, Skittles, M&Ms and other Halloween candy goodness that they can find, for their kids, trick-or-treaters, and for
There’s been much recent news about Monsanto paying farmers to use its competitors’ herbicides, in what many see as a last ditch effort to address the spread of superweeds created by the company’s “Roundup Ready” (RR) GMO crops. Environmental scientists warned even before Monsanto’s “herbicide tolerant” GMO crops were approved that they would hasten the evolution
At the risk of sounding like the geek that I really am, I’ll make this confession: I’ve been reading the fine print on the back (and front) of Roundup bottles for a couple of decades. The Roundup I’m talking about here is not cowboys chasing down straggling cattle or horses. Roundup, along with other brand
Following an investigation and legal action earlier this year by the Center for Environmental Health, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Tween Brands today announced a recall of 19 styles of children’s metal necklaces, bracelets and earrings due to high levels of cadmium. About 137,000 pieces of jewelry were pulled from the company’s Justice and
If you were to search for men who admit to frequenting Claire’s Boutique – where your teenage daughters shop for clothes, jewelry, and other fashion accessories with short shelf lives – I am quite certain that you would spend a long time looking. I visit this store often, along with many others that sell women’s
(Guest blogger Sarah Howard is a CEH supporter and an environmental health advocate.) Diabetes is the quintessential “lifestyle” disease – or is it? There is growing scientific evidence that exposure to environmental contaminants may contribute to the development of diabetes. A provocative study of U.S. residents found that people who were obese but had very
The best friend a polluting factory hog farm ever knew is back in the news. The so-called “Enviropig” is a genetically manipulated (GMO) hog that a Canadian team has been trying to develop for more than a decade, in response to the pork industry’s need to evade environmental regulations. Pigs crammed onto factory farms produce