Friday, June 30, 2006

Take Action on Toxic Sediments in New Orleans

From Amnesty International USA's Action Center:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 22 million tons of toxic sediment contamination and mold present serious health concerns for residents of New Orleans. Urge the EPA to fulfill its responsibility to ensure that News Orleans is safe and the public is protected from harmful environmental conditions created by the hurricane and subsequent flooding. Testing shows that the soil is contaminated with pesticides, arsenic, lead, industrial waste, and other cancer-causing chemicals. Without decisive action by the EPA, people will be at risk for serious and chronic health problems. Particular attention must be paid to low-income communities and communities of color, which are often situated near toxic industrial sites, and therefore suffer the greatest contamination.

Urge the EPA to meet their obligation to protect the people of New Orleans.
Environmental Justice for New Orleans
Environmental groups are sounding the alarm about the toxic chemical contamination in sediment and soil left in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The hurricanes created 22 million tons of toxic debris, now dispersed throughout Greater New Orleans. Insufficient action has been taken to clean up the toxic contamination. No decision has been made as to whether there will ever be a coordinated government effort to rid storm ravaged communities of toxic substances.

To read more about the Struggle for Environmental Justice in New Orleans, and how you can help to support it, read more here.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Improving the Social Safety Net Before the Next Disaster

From the Urban Institute:
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 27, 2006--The structural complexity and inadequate benefits of four essential government programs made it hard for them to respond quickly and effectively to the deep-seated needs of people harmed by Hurricane Katrina, says a new Urban Institute study.

Katrina's scale and severity tested the intergovernmental funding arrangements, eligibility guidelines, and benefit standards at the heart of housing assistance, unemployment compensation, health care, and cash support programs. The storm's aftermath raised unsettling questions about whether these programs could reach storm-wracked residents of the Gulf Coast swiftly and fairly, and about state and local governments' incentives to address
victims' needs.

"Federalism after Hurricane Katrina: How Can Social Programs Respond to a Major Disaster?" explores the programs' responses to Hurricane Katrina, describes pre-disaster operations, specifies what made Katrina so hard to handle, and recommends better ways to respond to disaster in the future.
This paper is available here, and is part of the Urban Institute's After Katrina research series (http://www.urban.org/afterkatrina).

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Depression & Suicide Epidemic in New Orleans, Due to Collapse of Mental Health System

While the President and Congress continue to fail to respond adequately to the worsening public health emergency in New Orleans, as SUSAN SAULNY reported in a front-page article in yesterday's (June 21) New York Times,
New Orleans is experiencing what appears to be a near epidemic of depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, one that mental health experts say is of an intensity rarely seen in this country. It is contributing to a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke 10 months ago.

Compounding the challenge, the local mental health system has suffered a near total collapse, heaping a great deal of the work to be done with emotionally disturbed residents onto the Police Department and people like Sergeant Glaudi, who has sharp crisis management skills but no medical background. He says his unit handles 150 to 180 such distress calls a month.

Cities and the Health of the Public: New Book



The essays commissioned for CITIES AND THE HEALTH OF THE PUBLIC (Vanderbilt University Press, to be published July 21, 2006) analyze the impact of city living on health, focusing primarily on conditions in the United States. With 16 chapters by 24 internationally recognized experts, the book introduces an ecological approach to the study of the health of urban populations.


For the Table of Contents and a sample chapter, click here.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Katrina Overview

For Review of the New Orleans Picayune's coverage of Katrina's aftermath, and a great animated map of how the city flooded, click here.