In June, the School District of Philadelphia’s long-running struggle to protect staff and students from asbestos in its aging buildings came to a head with federal criminal charges and an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to take care of the problem once and for all. The Justice Department alleges that the Philadelphia School District
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Nearly two years after the launch of the Philly Tree Plan, the City’s ambitious effort to reverse decades of urban canopy loss is still in its infancy. A $12 million U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant represents a significant step forward, but community advocates and public health leaders worry that progress isn’t moving quickly enough.
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Who you are determines how well and how long you live. In 2012 the life expectancy for white Philadelphians was 78 years, versus 73 for Black Philadelphians, according to the latest Health of the City Report, produced by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In 2019 that five-year gap remained, and it widened to six
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A recent PennEnvironment report found that Pennsylvania school districts are failing to keep lead out of school drinking water. Grid spoke with the executive director of PennEnvironment, David Masur, to learn more. Why should people be concerned about lead in school drinking water? Lead is unsafe at any level, especially for kids. There’s no “safe”
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What’s more important, jobs or health? The question nominally sits at the heart of the struggle to ban smoking in casinos in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, covered by Rebecca McCarthy in this issue. The people who work at casinos say they should not have to breathe tobacco smoke at work, since that can lead to
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Jennifer Skirkanich updated her kitchen exhaust fan after an air quality monitor reminded her just how dangerous cooking can be. “You don’t ever think about it, but seeing the light turn red is like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s harmful,’” says Skirkanich, a biologist and West Philadelphia resident who teaches at Bryn Mawr College. Skirkanich’s air quality
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The same blue flame that imparts the sense that gas cooking is real cooking also accounts for the health hazards posed by the appliance found in approximately one third of American homes. “When you have a gas stove,” Drexel University environmental epidemiologist Josiah Kephart told NPR in 2021, “combustion is actually occurring right in your
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What makes us healthy or unhealthy? Is it how many steps we take in a day? Whether we eat enough whole grains or leafy vegetables? Exercise and diet are important, certainly, but much is beyond our control. This can be simultaneously comforting and worrisome. We benefit from the public health accomplishments of the past, such
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Walk into Live! Casino in South Philly on a Saturday night, and the smell of cigarettes hits you immediately. The Clean Indoor Air Act prohibiting smoking in Pennsylvania establishments passed in 2008, but casinos remain a notable loophole — one of the last bastions of the old, vice-friendly service industry. They’re open 24 hours, they’re
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On May 8, the City of Philadelphia cleared a homeless encampment that stretched two blocks on Kensington Avenue between East Allegheny Avenue and Orleans Street under the Market-Frankford Line. This clearing marked the first step of Mayor Cherelle Parker’s five-phase plan to dramatically improve Kensington, whose residents contend with extreme poverty, open-air drug markets and
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By Kyle Bagenstose and Adam Litchkofski If you’re reading this story when it’s still hot off the press, odds are you’re probably pretty warm yourself. Another July has arrived in Philadelphia, and they ain’t what they used to be. From 1939 through the end of the 20th century, Philadelphia’s average air temperature in this quintessential
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