HOW NOT TO COMMUNICATE GEOLOGY AND HEALTH ISSUES

Publishing or presenting geology and health studies exclusively in geoscience journals or geoscience conferences or presenting in most foreign conferences all but guarantees obscurity from the biomedical/public health communities. Two examples illustrate this comfortable but myopic approach. The first example concerns the leaching of dangerous hexavalent chromium from coal ash. In the late 1990s my colleagues and I noted that as much as 50% of the Cr III could be converted to carcinogenic Cr VI during commercial coal combustion. It was further noted that all of the Cr VI was water soluble. Between 1997 and 2001 we presented these observations at five conferences, four coal-related and one ecology conference, in Europe and in Israel. Abstracts or short papers were published in all the conference proceedings. In 2011 a report was issued entitled EPA’s Blind Spot: Hexavalent Chromium in Coal Ash. The report stated that the chromium leached from coal ash is nearly 100% Cr VI. The otherwise well documented report failed to cite any of our publications on the subject. The second example concerns the relationship between kidney disease and ingestion of ground water in communication with low-rank coals. During the past five years the special relationship between kidney disease and lignite-associated ground water in the Gulf Coast was presented at numerous regional and national geoscience meetings with the obligatory abstracts. No biomedical/ public health scientist stepped forward in response to our expressed desire for collaboration. However, earlier this year a brief presentation at the annual meeting of the Texas Public Health Association resulted in active collaboration with a major Texas health science research organization. I strongly recommend that we geoscientists reach out to the biomedical/public health communities at their conferences and in their journals. The response we receive may be a pleasant surprise and may open up critical lines of communication.