Leading advocates from human rights, labor rights, women’s rights, public health, environmental justice, and sustainable purchasing organizations from around the world are
calling
on Samsung to protect the thousands of workers - most of them women of child-bearing age - who are making their mobile phones at factories in Vietnam. A
report
from the Hanoi-based, gender equity NGO
Research Center for Gender, Family and Environment in Development
(CGFED) and IPEN identified numerous health and labor violations from interviews with 45 women who work at two of Samsung’s factories in Vietnam. Please sign and invite your network to join the signature campaign on
Change.org
.
BBC covered the release of the CGFED/IPEN report on 15 December, in which the news outlet highlighted report findings, including workers' experiences of extreme fatigue, fainting and dizziness at work, and many accounts of miscarriage. In response, deputy general manager of Samsung Electronics Vietnam, Bang Hyun Woo said,"This report does not have a scientific basis." He also said much of the content in the report was "false" and "arbitrary."
IPEN requests Samsung "transparently publishes a complete list of chemicals used at the manufacturing facilities and describes the control."
The near-fatal poisoning of a NSW Central Coast man with severe autism who drank a cocktail of highly toxic herbicides left in an unmarked drink bottle has sparked fresh calls for a nationwide ban on Paraquat.
Nairobi, Dec 4 : This year has been the deadliest for environmental women defenders, with 200 assignations reported across the globe, and most of them were killed over land and forest conflicts, rights activists said on Monday.
A new study has revealed that mercury pollution is more widespread across the world than previously thought, even among high-level ministers and delegates, as a new UN treaty struggles to get to grips with what experts call “an immediate threat to everyone.”
New Study Reveals Dangerous Mercury Levels among Delegates at Minamata Mercury Convention COP1, with the Highest Levels in Delegates from Small Island Developing States.
Evidence that the neurotoxic metal mercury poses a global health threat to all was underscored today in a new study analyzing the mercury body burdens among delegates of a global conference of the world’s first mercury treaty. The study detected mercury levels above health alert thresholds in over half of the global policy decision-makers tested at the first Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention.
Researchers concluded that even global policy-makers who are educated about mercury risks are not protected from mercury contamination. The findings revealed mercury in all participants and elevated mercury levels exceeding theUS EPA health advisory level of 1 ppm. Levels many times higher were identified in delegates from a number of regions. Mercury, while harmful to adults, causes the greatest damage to the developing nervous systems of fetuses in utero.
Millions of people are risking their lives using mercury to separate gold from ore in the gold mining industry.
United Nations launched a campaign to stop the use of mercury in unofficial gold mining, but alternative machines are still too expensive for miners to obtain.
This is one of the issues to be discussed at the UN Environment Assembly being held in Kenya.
Joseph Muema has been showing up for his spray painting job for the past three years with the knowledge that his lifetime on earth shortens with each passing day, something he insists is for the sake of his family.
