Sarah Vogel: EDF Health

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice President for Health. This post originally appeared on the Global Clean Air blog.  When we’re outside, either walking or driving, we’re instinctively looking out for traffic. “Look both ways when you cross the street,” is advice drummed into most children. But even so, we all have blind spots, and we’re not […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice President for Health. This is the second in a series of Global Clean Air blogs on COVID-19 and air pollution. EDF scientists and program experts will share data about pollution levels during quarantine from a local and global perspective, and provide recommendations for governments and companies to Rebuild Better. Around the […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health. To breathe—from our very first breath to our last—is to be alive. But for billions of people around the world, that simple, necessary act is at risk due to pollution. For the hundreds of millions of children and adults with asthma struggling to breathe, the immediate and acute experience […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health. Today, Walmart announced that it will stop selling paint strippers containing methylene chloride or N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) in stores by February 2019 – making it the first general merchandise retailer to take such action.  Walmart’s announcement follows the strong leadership demonstrated by Lowes, Home Depot, and Sherwin Williams, all of […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health. In a new paper published in PLoS Biology today, Maricel Maffini, Tom Neltner and I detail the regulatory gaps in how the US manages chemicals in food. We explore how failures in our current regulatory system put the public’s health at risk as exemplified in the case of perchlorate, […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health. Last week a new study was published showing promising results for a non-estrogenic alternative to polymers based on bisphenol A (BPA) used to line the  inside of food cans.  The paper, in Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T), evaluated the estrogenicity of an alternative to BPA— tetramethyl bisphenol F (TMBPF) […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health. If you missed last week’s Washington Post piece, “The EPA’s lead-in-water rule has been faulted for decades. Will Flint hasten a change?”  we suggest you go back and take a look. Post reporter Brady Dennis takes us back to the beginning to figure out how a federal rule intended […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Vice-President for Health. Since the crisis in Flint hit the national headlines, the problem of lead exposure from drinking water has come under greater scrutiny. And for good reason. Seven to ten million American homes have water delivered through service lines made of lead pipe – the primary source of lead in […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Director of EDF’s Health Program. The hotly debated chemical BPA is back in the policy spotlight. This week Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) joined Representatives Lois Capps (D-CA) and Grace Meng (D-NY) to announce the Ban Poisonous Additives (BPA) Act.  The bill would ban the use of BPA or bisphenol A from […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Director of EDF’s Health Program. Add liver cancer—a childhood cancer on the rise in the US—to the growing list of potential health effects associated with bisphenol A (BPA) exposure that are under scrutiny by researchers.  A recent study by scientists at the University of Michigan, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, is […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Managing Director of EDF’s Health Program. Breast cancer is a personal issue for too many of us.  For six years I have watched the disease overtake a very dear friend’s life.  First diagnosed at 32, she underwent radical treatments— surgeries, radiation and chemo— and three years later faced metastatic breast cancer […]

Sarah Vogel, Ph.D., is Managing Director of EDF’s Health Program. Information, and importantly, access to reliable and objective information, is the cornerstone of a democratic society.  That is why recent efforts by the chemical industry and its allies to block Congressionally-mandated, scientific information on carcinogenic hazards by defunding the Report on Carcinogens (ROC) have many […]