Covid-19: A planetary disease

Wednesday, October 14th, 2020 | tedla55p | 1 Comment

Louise Delany*

This blog focuses on the underlying environmental causes of Covid-19 (Covid) and the role of international law in tackling both Covid and other planetary crises. I argue that major changes to our relationship with our planet and its creatures are needed and these changes must be supported by new international law.

Continue reading

Protecting Fresh Waterways in Aotearoa/NZ: The Strong Public Health Case

Thursday, October 17th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Nick Wilson, Leah Grout, Mereana Wilson, Anja Mizdrak, Phil Shoemack, Michael Baker

Protecting waterways has the benefits of: (1) protecting water from hazardous microbes; (2) minimising cancer risk and other problems from nitrates in water; (3) avoiding algal blooms that are hazardous to health; (4) protecting mahinga kai uses (cultural importance and food security); (5) facilitating safe recreational water use; (6) minimising flooding risks from silted up waterways; and (7) protecting renewable energy from waterway sediments. In this blog we briefly consider these issues and why health workers and agencies should now do submissions on protecting waterways to the Ministry for the Environment, as part of a current consultation process which ends on 31 October.

Continue reading

How should we manage the harm caused by tobacco product waste?

Friday, June 14th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Professor Janet Hoek and Emeritus Professor Philip Gendall

Annual consumption of cigarettes now exceeds five trillion, with around four trillion butts littered every year. These cigarette butts cause major environmental damage and impose significant clean-up costs on local authorities. Although tobacco companies have framed smokers as responsible for butt litter, recent debate has focused on the tobacco industry’s role in creating tobacco product waste (TPW) and its responsibility for managing this problem.  We recently examined public perceptions of TPW in New Zealand and allocation of responsibility for creating and managing it.

Continue reading

The Havelock North drinking water inquiry: A wake-up call to rebuild public health in New Zealand

Wednesday, December 20th, 2017 | dayhi34p | 1 Comment

Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Alistair Woodward

The huge campylobacteriosis outbreak in Havelock North in August 2016 caused by contaminated drinking water was a public health disaster. The second report of the Havelock North Drinking Water Inquiry describes a long list of failings that contributed to the outbreak. In this blog we argue that the failings are much broader than the safety of drinking water supplies and represent a serious erosion and fragmentation of NZ’s national public health institutions. What is needed now is a major stocktake and rebuilding of our country’s national public health capacity.

Continue reading

NZ’s Environmental Protection Authority in a muddle over weed killer

Wednesday, August 16th, 2017 | dayhi34p | 5 Comments

Prof Alistair Woodward*, A/Prof Andrea t’Mannetje**, Dr Dave McLean**, Prof Jeroen Douwes**, Prof John D Potter** (*Auckland and **Massey Universities)

Last year the New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) chose not to accept the assessment of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in “Roundup”) was a “probable carcinogen”. Instead the EPA commissioned its own report which found that glyphosate is “unlikely to be genotoxic or carcinogenic”, a significant departure from IARC’s conclusion. An investigation by the Green MP Stefan Browning released two weeks ago raises serious questions about the process followed by the EPA. The controversy has been given fresh life by comments made by the Chief Scientist for the Authority, Dr Jacqueline Rowarth. Her attempt to justify what happened gives a muddled account of risk assessment, and misrepresents her own Authority’s publication. In this blog, we explain why it is important to understand the issues raised by the EPA pronouncements on glyphosate and the potential implications for chemical safety more generally. This is now particularly important as the EPA is about to undertake an expanded review of hazardous substances in New Zealand.

Continue reading