Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
A set of India-related diplomatic cables on the Indo-US nuclear deal released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, claims that an aide of Congress leader Satish Sharma had told a US diplomat that the party had paid crores to several lawmakers to ensure that they voted for the deal in Parliament.
Governments and corporations are eager to control the Net. Surveillance of netizens is commonplace whether in democracies or in totalitarian regimes. What does the loss of Internet freedom mean? Down To Earth finds out. As the Internet becomes the public square and the marketplace of our world, it is increasingly …
The energy drinks market in the country is worth Rs 200 crore and is growing unregulated and several studies confirm that energy drinks can be unsafe. But in India these drinks are labelled as proprietary food that has no prescribed standards. Read this special report in Down to Earth to …
In January, about 300 people in the US suffered health problems from excessive consumption of energy drinks like Red Bull and Monster; most of them were children and teenagers, as per the American Association of Poison Control Centers. The association has recently started tracking the toxicity of energy drinks that …
Ideas and ideologies, images and reports of events, both minor and cataclysmic, fly on the Internet, swirling through cyberspace, gathering resonance, metamorphosing and touching millions of lives in different ways. Many of the ideas—and visuals—could be banal (as they very often are), some dangerous, others bringing promise of change. Some …
WikiLeaks is now turning the heat on the oil industry. The whistleblowing website has unearthed confidential cables from the US embassy in Saudi Arabia that show the world’s largest crude oil exporter may not have enough reserves to prevent escalation of oil prices. The cables urge Washington to take seriously …
The debate over 'cashless payments' misses the real point: What we really need is health insurance for all, not just the few people in cities who can afford high premiums and meet absurd 'cherry picking" conditions. And such a system is not only feasible, it exists in many countries.
Boston: The tsunami that thrashed California's coast, triggered by the devastating earthquake in Japan, has caused damage totalling about $ 50 million in the west coast state.
The documentary Bananas! highlighted plight of Nicaraguan banana plantation workers who brought a legal case in the US against the use of a banned pesticide DBCP by the Dole Food Company. Tom Levitt reports.
KOCHI: Endosulfan is all set to be a major election issue in states like Kerala as despite the ban, endosulfan continues to be a major problem. And Karnataka has followed Kerala in enforcing a ban on the
The global push towards a more biomass-based energy sector is ramping up efforts to adopt regionally appropriate high-yielding crops. As potential bioenergy crops are being moved around the world an assessment of the climatic suitability would be a prudent first step in identifying suitable areas of productivity and risk. Additionally, …
High cadmium (Cd) concentrations have recently been found in some inexpensive jewelry. In response, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued five recalls of children’s jewelry products for Cd contamination. However, there is no formal standard for Cd in jewelry and few data exist regarding potential exposures. We …
Exposure to perchlorate is ubiquitous in the United States and has been found to be widespread in food and drinking water. People living in the lower Colorado River region may have perchlorate exposure because of perchlorate in ground water and locally-grown produce. Relatively high doses of perchlorate can inhibit iodine …
Birth-cohort studies offer invaluable data on the links between childhood development and later life, but today's efforts could learn something from a pioneering project that turns 65 this week.
A child with chest pain or tics, a toddler who is limping, a 12-year-old girl with abdominal pain or headaches, an infant whose fever does not respond to antibiotics — these are age-old challenges that pediatricians face. I have been teaching pediatrics to residents and medical students for more than …
As Royal Dutch Shell and other oil companies prepare to drill offshore in the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), a new report commissioned by the Washington, DC–based Pew Environment Group concludes current response capabilities aren’t adequate to contain and clean up a major spill in the area.1 Marilyn Heiman, who …
Industrial food animal production employs many of the same antibiotics or classes of antibiotics that are used in human medicine. These drugs can be administered to food animals in the form of free-choice medicated feeds (FCMF), where animals choose how much feed to consume. Routine administration of these drugs to …
The purpose of this review is to evaluate the impact of recent epidemiologic literature on the National Research Council (NRC) assessment of the lung and bladder cancer risks from ingesting low concentrations (< 100 µg/L) of arsenic-contaminated water. PubMed was searched for epidemiologic studies pertinent to the lung and bladder …
The American Lung Association’s report "Toxic Air: The Case for Cleaning Up Coal-fired Power Plants" documents the range of hazardous air pollutants emitted from coal-burning power plants and the urgent need to clean them up to protect public health. The report details the dangerous mix of toxic air pollutants that …
