Health

India, Chevron and monitoring pollution after toxic disasters

Shweta Narayan, one of India’s leading environmentalists, paid the Bay Area a visit last week and presented information about the importance of environmental monitoring when it comes to toxic disasters. For the past nine years, Narayan, and Global Community Monitor, a group based in El Cerrito, have collaborated on air pollution awareness campaigns in India, where she coordinates Community Environmental Monitoring. Narayan spoke at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco and Center for Environmental Health in Oakland. “It’s…

Planet Fitness comes to Richmond

More than 5,000 Richmond fitness hopefuls signed up for gym memberships at the new Planet Fitness that opened Friday inside a former Safeway store location, on the corner of Macdonald and San Pablo Avenues.

As California considers soda tax, Richmond refocuses debate on health

Mr. Wilks strides onstage, a 12-ounce bottle of Coca Cola in hand. The bottle fizzes as he cracks open the seal. He takes a gulp. “Man, that’s good.” Between swigs of soda, he tells an audience his family has been in Richmond since the beginning. His grandparents were shipbuilders during WWII. His grandfather went to work at Chevron. His parents were teachers and “community folks,” and now he’s a teacher at Richmond High. Actually, Wilks isn’t a teacher; he’s an…

Budding football stars train early, first snap five months away

They say you can’t teach blistering speed. Don’t tell that to 68-year-old Donald Jackson. He and his Richmond Steelers youth football coaching staff had 10 boys out in Kennedy High’s grassy baseball field Sunday morning, pumping their knees and arms like runaway freight trains. Jackson said they’d be in right field every Saturday and Sunday until the last week of July, when football practice starts, from 10 a.m. until noon, working on speed training. “The purpose of the training is…

Refinery safety collaborative holds first Richmond forum

The microphone sputtered in and out as community members lined up for a turn to speak at the new Collaborative on Refinery Safety and Community Health’s public forum Wednesday evening. The meeting at St. Mark’s Catholic Church gym was the first of many conversations the group plans to have in Richmond and across the state. The evening’s panelists included representatives from the United Steelworkers union, the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley, and several environmental groups. Speakers stressed both…

New bills take aim at Chevron

Two bills introduced in the State Legislature Friday take aim at Chevron in direct response to the August refinery fire. Berkeley Democrats State Senator Loni Hancock and Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner co-announced legislation Monday that would impose higher fines against air quality polluters and ensure more timely corrections to unsafe workplace conditions. Hancock authored a bill that would quadruple the civil penalties large polluters must pay for air quality regulations violations. In a news release, Hancock said current penalties “are far…

Labor and environmental groups join forces on refinery issues

The fire at Richmond’s Chevron oil refinery on August 6, 2012 wasn’t the only reason the United Steelworkers union and several environmental organizations—disparate groups that rarely work in tandem—decided to join forces in an industry-wide conversation about health and safety, but it was certainly an accelerating factor. “Absolutely, that spurred us,” said Charlotte Brody, national associate director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups that advocate for a green economy and safer workplaces. “It was…

Homes in need: A look at foster care in the East Bay

Every holiday season Nancy DeWeese and her husband, Gary, host a Christmas party. But it’s not your average family gathering, because this is not your average family. At these parties, three dozen children from all walks of life, including the couple’s four biological kids, gather to share in a common experience: Each child has spent part of their lives growing up at the DeWeese family home in Moraga. “They see each other and they’re like, ‘Oh, we started out as…

On Valentine’s Day, health professionals at Doctors give advice on heart care

On Valentine’s Day, health professionals at Doctor’s Medical Center focused on the most important organ of the day—the heart—by presenting several free sessions to an audience on how to better care for their own. Doctors Medical Center is the only hospital in Western Contra Costa County—which has a population of close to 200,000 people—that receives patients who are suffering from a kind of acute heart attack called a STEMI (or ST-elevation myocardial infarction). It occurs when a clot blocks the…