Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Why a UN effort to end cooking-fire pollution in the world’s poorest countries failed
ProPublica
For decades, health officials decried the problem of pollution from wood, dung, and charcoal cooking fires, claiming it shortened millions of lives and exacerbated climate change. In 2010, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was formed to do something about it. “The alliance pledged to help engineer the distribution of 100 million cookstoves, small-scale appliances designed to cut fuel use and toxic emissions in impoverished households worldwide by 2020,” writes Sara Morrison. “Eight years and $75 million later, however, the Alliance has fallen well short of its ambitious health and climate goals.”
Food writing after #MeToo
The New York Times
In the wake of #MeToo, foodies are grappling with challenging questions: “Should home cooks throw out the cookbooks from chefs exposed for regularly grabbing and propositioning women? … Should you make a reservation at a restaurant where blatant sexual harassment or assault allegedly occurred?” And the landscape for food writers has changed dramatically, too. “In between stories about cooking and cultural trends, I now spend my days reporting about sexism, sexual abuse and harassment in the food world,” writes Kim Severson. “The emotions involved are stronger than any I have come across since I started writing about food full time 20 years ago.”
A yeast that behaves like a bacterial superbug has scientists struggling to respond
Wired
Candida auris, a yeast that scientists have only known of since 2009, is being compared to the Ebola virus as one of the world’s most potent microbial threats. “Science can’t yet say where it came from or how to control its spread,” writes FERN contributor Maryn McKenna. “It has developed the ability to survive on cool external skin and cold inorganic surfaces, which allows it to linger on the hands of healthcare workers and on the doorknobs and counters and computer keys of a hospital room. With that assist, it can travel from its original host to new victims, passing from person to person in outbreaks that last for weeks or months.”
A public-health crisis in the American South
Scalawag Magazine
To some, it would seem unimaginable that communities in the U.S. would lack basic plumbing, electricity, and other municipal services. But, writes Lyndsey Gilpin, “[m]any communities from the Black Belt to Appalachia lack basic sewage and water infrastructure. In economically distressed regions like Lowndes County [in Alabama], it’s led to a surge in poverty-related tropical diseases often found in developing countries. Doctors and researchers have observed significant levels of parasitic infections like hookworm and toxocara and conditions for mosquito-borne illnesses like Zika and West Nile.”
Turning to Coca-Cola when there isn’t water to drink
The New York Times
In San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, clean water is infrequently available. So many residents drink Coca-Cola instead, which is bottled nearby and almost cheaper than water. “Residents of San Cristóbal and the lush highlands that envelop the city drink on average more than two liters, or more than half a gallon, of soda a day,” write Oscar Lopez and Andrew Jacobs. “The effect on public health has been devastating. The mortality rate from diabetes in Chiapas increased 30 percent between 2013 and 2016, and the disease is now the second-leading cause of death in the state after heart disease, claiming more than 3,000 lives every year.”