News Updates

Pennsylvania residents in areas where the drilling process called fracking is widely used to extract natural gas from buried shale deposits have expressed concern that it might have caused dozens of cases of childhood cancers, and the state is launching new studies to better assess fracking’s potential health risks. Timely and needed. In Issues, a group of analysts earlier argued that there is “remarkably little independent information available to the public” on possible health effects of fracking, going on to outline steps that states should take to fill the gap.

Object lessons drawn from how cities and states are reducing their vulnerability to flooding are laid out in a new report from the Pew Charitable Trust, and some of the steps being taken, such as just saying no to developers, are featured in the New York Times. Out ahead, three sustainability specialists explored in Issues how the nation can upgrade its infrastructure, including practical and policy prescriptions for all scales of government, to help meet the flooding and other extreme weather-related events expected to accompany climate change.

Amid proposals to ban e-cigarettes, it should be remembered that vaping can help smokers kick the habit or discourage people from smoking at all, says a New York Times editorial. And a new study adds evidence that adult smokers can gain heart health benefits from switching to e-cigarettes. Earlier in Issues, a public health specialist looked at the science and laws around vaping and called on states to launch “policy experiments” to test vaping and other tobacco alternatives as ways to reduce overall smoking rates.

The plan just released by presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to rein in climate change may “win high marks for ambition,” but numerous scientists and economists also call it “technically impractical, politically unfeasible, and possibly ineffective,” a New York Times article says. This view aligns with a recent Issues column arguing that similar proposals offered in the original Green New Deal were more socially divisive than practical, and that elected officials in the “vital center” should forge coalitions on behalf of “politically viable and effective policy approaches.”

Green energy technologies—wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, among others—are growing faster than predicted, but that won’t cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to mitigate global warning, says a new report from the International Energy Agency. Addressing this gap, an energy analyst wrote in the latest Issues, will require researchers and policy-makers to focus on sources of difficult-to-eliminate emissions, particularly in the areas of reliably generated and distributed electricity; air travel, shipping, and long-haul trucking; and industrial processes.

“The race for fusion energy is now fully on,” says a leading researcher in the field, adding that current efforts favor “early involvement of industry in technology development and a greater appetite for tackling technology risk if it leads to commercial viability.” As a case in point, a venture capitalist backing a US firm working on the fusion push recently explained in Issues the key elements that private investment provides: money for entrepreneurs, guidance to keep them focused, and patience in solving problems that are too risky for most companies to tackle alone.

The software in the self-driving Uber vehicle that killed an Arizona woman in March 2018 was not designed to detect pedestrians jaywalking, according to newly released information from a federal investigation, which also identified other failures in how the vehicle’s technology accounted for how humans actually behave. Issues has examined such shortcomings, with articles suggesting that industry move cautiously in developing autonomous vehicles, that government develop new regulations tailored to changing needs, and that society reject claims about the vehicles’ inherent safety as reason for speeding ahead.

The multinational firm Bayer AG is facing thousands of new lawsuits alleging that its herbicide Roundup causes cancer, following “a blitz of advertising from attorneys seeking new clients,” says a Bloomberg report. But a cancer epidemiologist argues in the latest Issues that Roundup “has been exhaustively reviewed by regulatory agencies all over the world and repeatedly found to be safe.” Moreover, a comparison of the use of herbicides such as Roundup that contain glyphosate and cancer rates shows no rise in cancer incidence even as glyphosate’s use dramatically increased.

On his HBO talk show, Bill Maher recently allowed a vaccination skeptic to defend the oft-cited but debunked claim that vaccines can cause autism, with the longtime comedian even agreeing on some points. A double whammy, in scientific terms. Issues has been on scene, examining and proposing fixes for the oversize and often misleading influence that celebrities have on public views of health and medicine, and exploring ways to address the conundrum that some people’s opinions about vaccines go beyond science and reflect deepening social disagreements.