Author: Roopa Krithivasan
Oh, Deer! Venison joins fish and beef on list of contaminated food in Maine
Last week, news broke that deer in central Maine showed high levels of PFAS, followed by Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife deer hunting advisory not to eat any venison harvested in the Fairfield area and to discard any deer killed there earlier in the season. The news shocked and angered many Maine hunters. But… Read more »
Testing for PFAS in Fairfield: why transparency matters
If you’ve been following our work here at Defend Our Health, you know that we’ve been deeply involved with the widespread PFAS contamination in Fairfield, ME, since we found out that the past use of municipal and industrial sludge as fertilizer from the 1970s-2000s destroyed Fred Stone’s family dairy farm. From the start, we have joined… Read more »
Back to School – What’s in your dairy?
Dairy products are ubiquitous in kids’ lunchboxes and school meals – milk, yogurt, string cheese, boxed or pre-made mac and cheese — the list goes on. Kids aged 2-11 make up the largest age demographic of dairy consumers, consuming an average of 1.4 cups of milk a day. But as many of us prepare to send our… Read more »
The cost of inaction: Arsenic in water
In the last blog post on lead in drinking water, we talked about how our drinking water isn’t as safe as it should be to protect children’s brains. The EPA says that 15 parts per billion (ppb) of lead in water is good enough; but science has long known that no amount of lead is… Read more »
Back to School: Lead in drinking water
Water fountains are a common fixture of public schools in the US, providing water access to the over 50 million kids attending public schools across the country. In fact, schools that offer federal free lunch programs are required to ensure that students have access to drinking water at school. In theory, this should be great… Read more »
Back to School: Packing lunches
If your kid is off to school this fall, you might be thinking about what to put in lunch boxes. And you may be trying to figure out what kinds of packaging are safe for snacks and meals. Here are some quick facts about different kinds of packaging that might help you through your lunch… Read more »
What’s in your fish?
Fishing is one of the most popular outdoor recreational activities in the nation, and if you happen to live in Maine, you have thousands of miles of rivers and streams and hundreds of freshwater lakes at your disposal to drop your line. For nearly 40 million Americans, fishing represents an important connection to nature, a… Read more »