February 11, 2018
Coal
I admit I didn’t listen to the SOTU speech, but I did do a word search on the transcript to find anything about “environment” or “climate”. All I could find was “…we have ended the war on clean coal”. Clean coal – is that like safe cigarettes? Non addicting heroin? Maybe everything in the Great British Baking show is low calorie? Don’t worry about Ebola, it is just one of those western tie things? How dirty is coal – take a look at comparison to other fossil fuels at Truth About Coal 1. Coal certainly isn’t clean for the workers – look at Truth About Coal 2. What happens to the environment when coal is mined – you can always google Paradise Kentucky but I think best to get out that old record player and put on Paradise by John Prine, or if you are more techy go to Truth About Coal 3.
APHA Public Health Nursing Section
Please think about making a presentation at the APHA conference regarding environmental health. Deadline is the 19th to submit an abstract. Go to APHA. Since you are thinking about APHA, note that Public Health Week is coming up. Your state APHA affiliate, PH schools, others are probably doing something that week. Note that Wednesday is the Environment date. Go to PH Week.
Op-Ed
How are you doing on that new year’s resolution to write an op-ed? Here is one from Katie Huffling – go to The Hill. Send us the link to yours so we can share. If you need a list of Federal abominations towards the environment, go to Rules Going Away. I admit the list is over 10 days old, so it may be worse by now. Pick one, scroll down, get more info, and write your op-ed.
Drought
I am sure you have been reading about Cape Town running out of water. Rain may come, but we need to appreciate this future. For data on droughts bookmark Drought 1 and Drought 2. Drought is not just summer. Does a decrease in winter snowfall count as Drought? Go to Snowfall decrease.
Home Environment Guidance
EWG has published a suite of pages to help you regarding chemicals in your home. Go to EWG Home Guides. Fair warning – the guides are quite good but you will see those annoying donate and sign up for email things that pop up, ignore them or not at your pleasure. Again – the guides are very good.
Things To Do
If you are near Minnesota think about the Science and Health Conference in late April. There is a good list of webinars at Sustainability Forum. I recommend the Drawdown 60 Minutes. If you have not been to the Drawdown website, please drift there and look around. Your local PSR may have local PSR Events. I admit I don’t really know how to do the podcast thing, but with help from my children I was able to listen to the ANHE Podcast from Lisa Campbell. There is a link to “subscribe” (whatever that means) to the podcasts, or if you are a closet luddite like me you can scroll down to find the way to the other podcasts.
Resolutions
How are you doing with those resolutions – Join a workgroup call, tell a colleague about ANHE, write an opinion piece, and ask a candidate a question?
Conferences
APHN annual conference – April 29 – May 2, 2018
Clean Med – May 7-9, 2018
ACHNE annual conference – June 7-9, 2018
ANHE Website
Go to ANHE.
ANHE has a number of workgroups. Education, Practice, Research, Policy, and Climate. If you are interested in one of them, go to the pull down menu ‘Work Groups’ at the ANHE site.
Donate
Remember – ANHE is your nursing organization that works for you on environmental issues. Keep it going, go to Donate.
Be Well!
Tom Engle
Newsletter Ed.
tsengle@frontier.com
