By now, most people are aware of just how essential fleets are to our daily lives — we have the pandemic to thank for that. Click-and-collect culture met with the supply chain fiasco of 2022 has compounded the need for fleets to keep the supply and demand chain moving, enable technicians to deliver field services, and transport both the niceties and essentials of modern life.
There are different kinds of pollution — water, land, and air, for example — and it’s time that people on this planet start leveraging green technology and treating them as real issues. But those types of pollution often come from the work we do, and the environment itself is dangerous to workers.
Nearly two years ago, Jeremiah Mock heard a student in Marin County, California, complain that her school was littered with e-cigarette waste. A health anthropologist by training, Mock did some shoe-leather investigating in a student parking lot, where he found a significant amount of e-cigarette and tobacco trash.
Surprised, Mock went further.
With plastic pollution having emerged as a significant environment and health crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for more research into the potential effect on human health of microplastics in drinking water.
“We urgently need to know more about the health impact of microplastics because they are everywhere - including in our drinking-water,” says Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Public Health, Environment and Social Determinants of Health, at WHO.
More than a hundred groups and hundreds of individuals from Pennsylvania have signed onto a letter to the state’s governor, calling for an official investigation into recent reports of rare cancers in counties heavily impacted by shale gas development over the last decade. The letter also calls for the Governor Tom Wolf to suspend all gas drilling permits until the investigation shows that fracking is not the cause of what appears to be an emerging public health crisis.
Canada will follow the European Union in banning some single-use plastics like straws, bags and cutlery, according to an announcement yesterday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A statement by the government accompanying the announcement notes that without such a prohibition, Canadians will throw away an estimated $8.3 billion worth of plastic materials each year by 2030. Less than 10 percent of the plastic used in Canada gets recycled.
Floods, droughts, record-breaking temperatures – the evidence indicates that addressing climate change has become one of the world’s most pressing issues, which is why the publication of two International Organization for Standards (ISO) standards will have a significant part to play in helping to reduce damaging greenhouse gases.
Tackling the effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on global warming and the subsequent impact on climate change is one of the defining, and intractable, challenges of our time.
Single use plastics are the hot topic of the moment – and with good reason. They’re non-biodegradable meaning once created they will never disappear from the environment. When consumers open the bin to drop their plastic waste in that may be the last they see of it but it’s far from the end of the story.
On February 12, the federal government announced a multimillion-dollar settlement with Shell Oil over a long list of air pollution violations at a petrochemical refinery in Norco, Louisiana. In a statement, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the settlement "demonstrates EPA's dedication" to pursuing pollution violations and protecting public health.
