A U.S. federal court has given tobacco companies until June 18 to post a corrective statement on their websites about the dangers of their products and their efforts to mislead the public about those risks.

The companies were also ordered to include the statement on cigarette packages by November, according to the order issued Tuesday. It will also apply to any social media campaigns aimed at promoting cigarettes.

The corrective statements will state, among other things, that cigarette smoking causes on average 1,200 American deaths per day; that cigarettes are designed to create and sustain nicotine addiction; that low-tar, light, and natural cigarettes are no less harmful that regular ones; and that secondhand smoke causes disease and death in non-smokers.   

The statements are part of a 2006 injunction against major U.S. cigarette makers to “prevent and restrain” further deception of the American people regarding tobacco use, a Justice Department statement said.

Three major U.S. tobacco companies, R.J. Reynolds, Phillip Morris and ITG Brands, have been fighting to weaken and delay the statements since 2006.
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India should follow China’s example and clean up the air in its cities, which are among the world’s worst for outdoor pollution, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The WHO’s database of more than 4,300 cities showed Indian cities such as New Delhi, Varanasi and Patna were among the most polluted, based on the amount of particulate matter under 2.5 micrograms found in every cubic meter of air.

Chinese cities such as Xingtai and Shijiazhuang and the Saudi refining hub at Jubail were also highly polluted, but the data for those places was 4 to 5 years old, and Maria Neira, WHO’s head of public health, said China had made big improvements that India should follow.

“There is a big step at the government level [in China] declaring war on air pollution,” Neira said. “One of the reasons for that is that the health argument was very strongly presented, and the fact that the citizens were really breathing air that was totally unacceptable.”

“We would be very happy if we would see a similar movement now in India which is one of the countries for which we are particularly concerned, although there are good initiatives which can be put in place quickly, still the levels are very high and we would like to see a similar decision and leadership.”

The WHO says nine out of 10 people on the planet breathe polluted air, and it kills 7 million people each year, almost all of them in poor countries in Asia and Africa. About a quarter of deaths from heart disease, stroke and lung cancer can be attributed to air pollution, the WHO says.

Globally, outdoor air pollution has remained high and largely unchanged in the past six years, while household air pollution has got worse in many poorer countries, as people continue to cook with solid fuel or kerosene, instead of cleaner fuels such as gas and electricity.

“The transition to clean fuels and technology in the home, clean household energy, is too slow. It’s been three decades and we still have three billion people primarily relying on [polluting] fuels and technologies, and that’s for cooking alone,” said WHO technical officer Heather Adair-Rohani.

WHO’s global assessment is based on satellite data and modeling overlaid on the database of cities, which is self-selecting because it is based on voluntary reporting, with numbers that have been hugely revised since the previous report.

The most polluted city in 2016’s report, Zabol in Iran, has had its pollution level cut fourfold in the latest version of the database, and now appears to be cleaner than Australia’s capital Canberra.

“The data we are presenting today is, I think, the most accurate you can expect at the moment,” Neira said.
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The number of Americans sickened each year by bites from infected mosquitoes, ticks or fleas tripled from 2004 through 2016, with infection rates spiking sharply in 2016 as a result of a Zika outbreak, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that some 96,075 diseases caused by bites by mosquitoes, ticks and fleas were reported in 2016, up from 27,388 in 2004, in an analysis of data from the CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System.

Infections in 2016 went up 73 percent from 2015, reflecting the emergence of Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause severe birth defects. Zika was the most common disease borne by ticks, mosquitoes and fleas reported in 2016, with 41,680 cases reported, followed by Lyme disease, with 36,429 cases, almost double the number in 2004.

The increases may be a result of climate change, with increased temperatures and shorter winters boosting populations of ticks, mosquitoes and other disease-carrying creatures known as “vectors.”

“It enables these ticks to expand to new areas. Where there are ticks, there comes diseases,” said Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases.

Warmer summer temperatures also tend to bring outbreaks of mosquito-borne illnesses, Petersen said.

While Zika stood out as the latest emerging threat in the report, it also showed a long-term increase in cases of tick-borne Lyme disease, which can attack the heart and nervous system if left untreated.

Researchers warned that their numbers likely do not include every case, as many infections are not reported.

These increases are due to many factors, including growing populations of the insects that transmit them and increased exposure outside of the United States by travelers who unknowingly transport diseases back home.

The CDC said more than 80 percent of vector-control organizations across the United States lack the capacity to prevent and control these fast-spreading, demanding illnesses.

Petersen said that federal programs are increasing funding for those organizations.
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U.S. regulators on Tuesday issued warnings to 13 companies selling e-cigarette liquids for using child-friendly images in their packaging, in the latest crackdown aimed at preventing tobacco sales to minors.

The packaging resembles that of juice boxes, candy or cookies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission said, noting a recent increase in the number of reports to poison control centers.

“No tobacco products should be marketed in a way that endangers kids — especially by using imagery that misleads them into thinking the products are things they’d eat or drink,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

The FDA has made several sweeping moves in the past few months, including setting a maximum nicotine level for tobacco products as the regulator attempts to combat tobacco and nicotine addiction.

E-cigarettes are handheld electronic devices that vaporize an “e-liquid” fluid typically including nicotine and a flavor component. They have been grabbing market share away from traditional tobacco companies, and are available in different flavors.

“It takes a very small amount of these e-liquids, in some cases less than half a teaspoon … to [have] a fatal effect for a kid and even less than that to make them very, very sick,” an agency executive said on a call with reporters.

The FDA cited examples including “One Mad Hit Juice Box,” which resembles children’s apple juice boxes and “Twirly Pop,” which not only resembles a Unicorn Pop lollipop, but comes with one.

Six of the letters issued were for dual violations where the products were illegally sold to minors online as well as packaged inappropriately.

“We don’t have to wait until there’s been an actual injury of a child we can take action if it’s likely to cause substantial injury,” Acting Federal Trade Commission Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen said.

The latest warnings come a week after the FDA sent 40 warning letters to companies on the sale of tobacco products to minors, particularly those made by Juul Labs Inc.

Twelve of the vendors issued warning letters on Tuesday did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Nick Warrender of Lifted Liquids and E-Liquid Retail, which makes Vape Heads Sour Smurf Sauce, said the product had been pulled from the market and repackaged six months ago.

“We … took a lot of money and steps to change the product to something that wouldn’t be [as] child-appealing as the original packaging,” Warrender said. “It seems to be a false narrative that they [regulators] are pushing.”
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For decades America’s air was getting cleaner as levels of a key smog ingredient steadily dropped. That changed about seven years ago when pollution reductions leveled off, a new study found.

This means when tighter federal air quality standards go into effect later this year, many more cities may find themselves on the dirty air list. 

There are several reasons for the flattening of nitrogen oxide levels including hard-to-reduce industrial and truck pollution, said study co-author Helen Worden, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

The study, in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used satellite and ground measurements to track nitrogen oxides, a major ingredient in smog. Levels fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2009, but only dropped 1.7 percent from 2011 to 2015. 

“We can’t say anymore it’s going down,” Worden said. 

The results also show the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s computer models overestimate how clean the air really is, said University of North Carolina’s Jason West, who wasn’t part of the study. 

Smog is created when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds cook in sunlight. Those chemicals come from cars, trucks, power and industrial plants.

In 2015, the EPA proposed new air quality standards limiting smog levels to 70 parts per billion, down from the current 75 parts per billion. Those rules are slated to go into effect this fall, but that has been delayed once already. More than 170 counties in the United States are already exceeding the older clean air standard for smog, according to the EPA.

Worden and colleagues tried to figure out what was happening, ruling out the flow of the smog ingredient from China since levels in that country went down since it tightened its air quality rules. 

While the 2008 recession may have played a role in the slowdown, Worden said there were other bigger factors at play. 

The biggest and easiest pollution reductions have already been achieved, leaving smaller, more difficult cuts, Worden said.

University of Maryland air scientist Ross Salawitch said exposure to elevated ozone can lead to coughing and difficulty breathing, and make respiratory diseases such as asthma worse. 

For Worden, who lived in Los Angeles in the early 2000s when it was smoggier than it is now, she would bicycle to work and check ozone levels daily.

If smog levels were high, “it would really make my lungs burn,” she said.

 
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Pakistan’s environmental protection agency is installing air quality monitors and warning factories to add pollution filters after a panel of the country’s top judges ordered the government to detail its efforts to control worsening air pollution.

The court ruling earlier this month followed a lawsuit by a Karachi man challenging the government’s failure to control air pollution in that port city.

Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, head of a three-member high court panel, ruled that the government must provide details of what it is doing to curb air pollution across the country.

He said he was shocked at how dirty the air had become, particularly in Pakistan’s cities.

The ruling has spurred government authorities to action to try to reduce pollution levels, fearing they could face court orders or sanctions.

Venu G. Advani, the Karachi lawyer who filed the court petition, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation he was seeking to have air quality regulations in the country enforced.

He said he hoped the court would ensure “provision of the constitutional right to a clean environment, for which clean air is key.”

“There is no hope without the Supreme Court’s intervention to awaken government officials from their deep slumber” on air quality, he said in a telephone interview from Karachi.

Air pollution deaths

According to a 2015 report published by the medical journal Lancet, nearly 22 percent of annual deaths in Pakistan — or more than 310,000 each year — are caused by pollution, the majority of them due to air pollution.

A 2014 World Bank study on Pakistan’s air quality recommended the country set aside funding to “install and operate a reliable air quality monitoring network,” and set other standards and frameworks to cut pollution.

Since the court ruling, officials at the Pakistan Environmental Protection agency have said they are moving rapidly to comply.

“We are now installing air quality monitoring instruments with the help of federal government funding and punishing the polluters,” said Ziauddin Khattak, director of the agency.

“We have now told dozens of industrial units and brick kilns through warning notices to install air cleaning filters on smoke-emitting chimneys and have started monitoring vehicles on various thoroughfares and issuing fines to the polluting vehicle owners,” he said.

Nearly 50 brick kilns have been issued notices, Khattak said, and more than 130 buses and other vehicles fined over the last two months.

He said seven fixed and three mobile ambient air quality monitoring stations have been set up in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta, all cities that have suffered particular problems with air pollution.

Saif Anjum, Punjab provincial environment secretary, said his agency also had installed six air quality monitoring units in Lahore, with 30 more being put in place.

The units, along with an air quality action plan, “will help cut 50 percent of air pollution in the next couple of years,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Other keys to improving air quality include planting more urban trees, replacing aging city buses and increasing parking fees to encourage the use of public transport, Anjum said.

Left out?

A 2016 study by the World Health Organisation ranked Rawalpindi, located near the capital Islamabad, as the second most polluted city of the country after the northwest city of Peshawar.

So far no air quality monitors are being installed in Rawalpindi, however, because of a lack of funds, officials said. 

With few trees and an abundance of traffic, as well as brick kilns spewing black smoke and open incineration of waste, Rawalpindi has air pollution levels more than 10 times above levels considered safe by the World Health Organization, said Asif Shuja Khan, a former director general of the Pakistan Environmental Protection agency.

Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad stand as 3rd, 4th and 5th most polluted cities in the country in terms of air quality, Khan said.

Over 90 percent of Rawalpindi’s population of over 2 million inhales contaminated air regularly, exposing them to a higher risk of health problems such as cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, he said, with children particularly vulnerable.

Pakistan’s Constitution says a clean environment is a fundamental right of all citizens, under provisions that guarantee a “right to life” and “right to dignity,” said Ahmad Rafay Alam, vice president of the Pakistan Environmental Law Association.
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Britain and the United States launched a $25 million project on Monday to study the risks of a collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica that is already shrinking and nudging up global sea levels.

The five-year research, involving 100 scientists, would be the two nations’ biggest joint scientific project in Antarctica since the 1940s. Ice is thawing from Greenland to Antarctica and man-made global warming is accelerating the trend.

The scientists would study the Thwaites Glacier, which is roughly the size of Florida or Britain, in West Antarctica, the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council and U.S. National Science Foundation said in a joint statement.

“Rising sea levels are a globally important issue which cannot be tackled by one country alone,” U.K. science minister Sam Gyimah said.

Thwaites and the nearby Pine Island Glacier are two of the biggest and fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica.

If both abruptly collapsed, allowing ice far inland to flow faster into the oceans, world sea levels could rise by more than a metre (3 feet), threatening cities from Shanghai to San Francisco and low-lying coastal regions.

The scientists would deploy planes, hot water drills, satellite measurements, ships and robot submarines to one of the remotest parts of the planet to see “whether the glacier’s collapse could begin in the next few decades or centuries,” the statement said.

Despite satellites, “there are still many aspects of the ice and ocean that cannot be determined from space,” said Ted Scambos, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the lead U.S. scientific coordinator.

Other scientists from South Korea, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand and Finland would also contribute.

The United States is keeping up research even though U.S. President Donald Trump doubts mainstream scientific findings that human activities, led by the burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of global warming.
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