Global | Health organization leaders launch global campaign on air pollution

Global | Health organization leaders launch global campaign on air pollution

Unmask My City is global initiative by doctors, nurses, public health practitioners, and allied healthcare professionals dedicated to improving air quality and reducing emissions in our cities.

Launching today on World Asthma Day, Unmask My City, a global initiative in 10 cities on five continents, aims to promote practical solutions and create tangible policy changes that drive a clear, downward global trend in urban air pollution by 2030.

This will result in significant reductions in illnesses and deaths as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Through Unmask My …

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India | Stories from Ennore, where an oil spill only piled on to older, nastier disasters

India | Stories from Ennore, where an oil spill only piled on to older, nastier disasters

Credit: Archanaa Seker and Dharmesh Shah

A doctor alarmed by a stark increase in respiratory diseases.

A grandmother fretting over her grandson’s constant hospital visits.

Fishermen with skin lesions that the local hospital can’t heal.

Teenaged boys with itchy feet from trudging through sludge in order to play cricket.

A fisherman lamenting the loss of a river that was once beautiful, that once cleansed and provided a steady livelihood.

These are some of the stories from the port town of Ennore, on the outskirts of Chennai, told through images and words …

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Global & India | “State of Global Air” reveals India’s worsening air pollution in global context

Global & India | “State of Global Air” reveals India’s worsening air pollution in global context

The State of Global Air, a new report and interactive website launched by the Health Effects Institute and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, provides a comprehensive, yet succinct, source of trusted information on the levels of and trends in global air pollution, its sources, and its impact on public health.

Among other findings, the report shows that over 90% of the world’s population live in areas where fine particle levels exceed global air quality guidelines, and that India has surpassed China in the unenviable position of having …

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India | Health sector leaders launch Health and Environment Leadership Platform; call for urgent action on air pollution

India | Health sector leaders launch Health and Environment Leadership Platform; call for urgent action on air pollution

Gurgaon, India: Representatives of more than 5,000 healthcare institutions and several thousand healthcare professionals around the country that form the Health and Environment Leadership Platform (HELP) released a joint statement today calling for concerted action to reduce air pollution in India.

The statement called on “all relevant stakeholders to take immediate and sustainable action to improve India’s air quality and ameliorate its impacts on health”. The statement also noted that “if India is to realize the value of its demographic dividend, it will need to tackle the …

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India | Environmental health expert visits coal plants to jumpstart research

India | Environmental health expert visits coal plants to jumpstart research

From September 12 to 23, 2016, Dr. Peter Orris, Professor and Chief of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System and scientific adviser to Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), visited several coal plant communities that will undergo an environmental health impact assessment as part of HCWH’s Healthy Energy Initiative work in India.

Facilitated by Community Environmental Monitors (CEM), our Healthy Energy Initiative partner in India, Dr. Orris’s visit also included lectures and workshops delivered in several academic and research …

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India | Study reveals toxic air near coal plants in Chennai

India | Study reveals toxic air near coal plants in Chennai

Alarmingly high levels of harmful air pollutants can be found in communities in the Ennore region, a suburb of Chennai surrounded by a cluster of coal-fired power plants, according to a new report by the Chennai-based Coastal Resource Centre (CRC), a partner of the Healthy Energy Initiative.

The report, entitled “Unfit to Breathe,” notes that the fine particle pollution found in the air samples collected from residential rooftops in Ennore is comprised of a high fraction of four elements (aluminum, calcium, iron, and silicon) that occur in high levels …

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Global | New Solutions Article on Global Campaign for Healthy Energy

Global | New Solutions Article on Global Campaign for Healthy Energy

“From Extraction to Renewal: A Global Campaign for Healthy Energy”

The Healthy Energy Initiative team is pleased to share a new article published in the peer-reviewed journal New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. The article appears in a special issue on “Health, Environmental Policy and the Extractive Industries.”

To download the full text of the article (authors’ accepted manuscript), click here.
For additional information from New Solutions, and to download the version published in the journal, click here (subscription required; DOI: 10.1177/1048291115610433).
For additional resources from the Healthy Energy Initiative, …

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India | National Meeting on Climate, Energy and Health

India | National Meeting on Climate, Energy and Health

Indian launch event for the report of the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change

October 26th, 2015 – India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

Report from the Public Health Foundation of India

The National Meeting on Climate Change and Health was the Indian launch event for the report of the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change and was supported by Health Care without Harm (HCWH) and the Lancet Commission. The purpose of this meeting was to generate awareness about the health impacts of climate change, to emphasize the …

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India | Healthy Energy Speaking Tour / Toxic Tour Launched at PGI Chandigarh

Healthy Energy Initiative – India presented a Speaking Tour and Toxic Tour at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. The program at PGI Chandigarh marked the debut of an ongoing series of speaking tours and toxics tours developed by Healthy Energy Initiative – India, organized in conjunction with leading public health educational institutes, to sensitize students, faculty, and researchers on issues surrounding energy, industrial pollution, and environmental health.

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India | Former Power Secretary Rejects Coal, Supports Healthy Energy

Mr. Sarma speaking at the Healthy Energy Initiative’s Satellite Session at the 14th World Congress on Public Health in Kolkata, India, in February 2015

In an op-ed in the Guardian, EAS Sarma, a former secretary of India’s ministry of power, presented an evidence-backed rebuttal to claims from the coal industry and its allies that coal is critical to the welfare of Indians.

Mr. Sarma writes, “Australian coal, like any other coal, is not good for Indian people’s health and it will not deliver electricity to those who are currently …

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