Category: Climate Advocacy (AAP/Climate Reality/ClimateHealthNOW)

August 25, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I really wanted to blog about my “new to me” sewing machine. My sister handed it down to me last Christmas. We had a magical family vacation up in Park City, Utah where we were able to be together for a long time. Especially now that our home state and Utah are being scorched by wildfires and I haven’t seen my sister since Christmas, it was a magical snowy memory https://drplasticpicker.com/how-did-our-greener-christmas-go-10-ways-we-changed/. We snow-shoed through Utah’s Aspen forest, and I learned how Aspen forest are one living organism connected through their roots. The forest talked to me that day.

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August 22, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s 515AM and everything is always better in the early morning. Work has been overwhelming of late. I had this very rare case series of an odd physical finding and I posted it on the COVID-19 Pediatrician Facebook group. I’ve referred these patients to the specialist. If it ends up being anything, I’ll probably try to write it up as a case report for fun. We have three interns now for our AAP Climate Change and Health Committee. I need to find them projects to work on. If it pans out to be anything, I’ll offer one of them to help me write it up. A case series is pretty easy to write up. I’m sure it will get accepted somewhere. At the least, I’ll publish it on this blog and have them do a presentation for my friends. But there are so many little journals out there looking for content, and Dr. Plastic Picker the imaginary eco-warrior me and the real world pediatrician me has a lot of content!

A lot of the “content” in my head or at least the things I’ve been thinking of late has been clean air, or lack of it. A bunch of my colleagues and I advocated for AB345 gas and oil drilling setbacks bill which unfortunately did not pass the Senate Committee. I did learn a lot about the political process https://drplasticpicker.com/ab-345-did-not-fail-politicians-failed-but-pediatricians-are-quick-learners-and-we-rise-up/. There is a lack of advocacy right now for clean air from pediatricians. Although I am the AAP Climate Change and Health Committee Co-Chair and HMO Assistant Boss, I cannot just say whatever I want on behalf of these organizations. The problem with big organizations like those is that we have to be non-partisan. Rightly so, everything needs to go through a vetting process. Those organizations while big and important, are under scrutiny. But as an individual and part of a organic network of friends who are pediatricians who care about the air, we want to move quickly and be able to be able to speak up.

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August 18, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s Saturday morning and it’s just starting to get light. I worked a full Friday clinic and it was busy. Twenty-six families, twenty-six developing story-lines. Supposedly the appointments are segmented into 15 minute blocks, but life does not work like that. Anyone who has ever been to the MD office knows that the entire process takes much longer from preconception to the actual visit. I know the time with me is the end of a long process for the family. So I try to take my time and sit, listen and do something that progresses my little and big patients onto better physical, mental and moral health. One can’t rush life nor rush the practice of medicine. The actual schedule I am presented each mornings is only a suggestion of how the day will go. In the end, when they come in I see them. We get something done.

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August 8, 2020

by drplasticpicker

As a former valedictorian of a large public school that made it to Crimson University, and then made it through the gauntlet of the morass of premedical students to Crimson Medical School, then residency at Mans Greatest Hospital, and even up the HMO ladder as Assistant Boss – Dr. Plastic Picker is competitive. And when State Senator Ben Huesos said in response to the community effort to lobby regarding AB 345, gas and oil set backs to protect schools and day cares and hospitals from air pollution, “This, ladies and gentlemen, is nothing more than a publicity stunt at a time when we cannot afford publicity stunts,” Hueso said. He did not make a friend of Dr. Plastic Picker.

I will continue to play the demure non-partisan pediatrician who ocean plastic picks along the beach (because that is all true). I refrained from saying mean things about him. But I looked up his CV and his accomplishments, and I said “meh.” What made me mad about his response, was that he was obviously speaking to some kind of other audience. Why make fun of people? Why paint everyone who called in and took their time to lobby as part of their civic duty “publicity stunts.” As a pediatrician and as a parent, I teach my children there is never a reason to be unkind. And that comment was just mean. But I live in a world where I see trash carelessly thrown all over the place, and can learn to work with anyone. Being Assistant Boss in a department of over 100 pediatricians with various interesting personalities has taught me a lot. Indeed Ben Huesos, in some ways I probably have better political skills than you. Try surviving as Assistant Boss of Pediatricians in my work place!!!

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August 4, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I am preparing for my first press conference as a pediatrician on environmental health. The other speakers are Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis (National City) and Mayor Serge Dedina (Imperial Beach). There have been groups working on ensuring the passage of Califronia AB345 for months. These groups include from Mothers Out Front, CA Youth Vs. Big Oil, Climate Health NOW, VISION (Voices in Solidatrity Against Oil in Neighborhoods), The Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, Sierra Club and STAND LA, and many others.

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July 28, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I graduated today. Truly graduated from the Climate Reality Leaderhip Corp. The program wanted to virtually issue me my certificate on Sunday, but I wanted to finish the last two modules/projects before I claimed the certificate. It was a very important exercise to me, and I’m glad I did it. The funny thing is that this short project, which I call my “thesis,” is probably a million times more impactful than my actual senior thesis on cleft palate and degeneracy theory in college. I spent one entire year working on that one, which probably only 5 people ever really read. So here is the long more illustrative title, “Climate Change Affects My Patients: More premature births, more pediatric asthma, and more COVID-19 deaths especially of my patient’s parents and their grandparents causing more grief, despair and health inequities in already overburdened communities of color in the South Bay of San Diego.”

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July 26, 2020

by drplasticpicker

There are a lot of environmental advocacy groups out there. Now we started another one, our American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Climate Change and Health Committee for our local chapter. There was a California bill AB 345 the oil and gas setbacks bill. Between the AAP Climate Change and Health coalition of all 4 California chapters, Climate Health NOW (which overlaps with many AAP Climate Change members), PHAC and Climate Action Campagins, and Climate Reality Leadership Group and my just being on the litter-picking Instagram committee – I literally received 20 emails about this. I had already signed a personal letter, and had already sent it to our committee. Our AAP Climate Change and Health local chapter already endorsed it. Bruce Bekkar is writing a letter on behalf of PHAC Climate Action Campaigns. And now we need individual members to lobby specific state representatives about it. And during our Climate Reality Training first local meeting, it came up again. And I get it, this one is important. The elephant in the room is climate emmissions, and this helps reduce emissions. There are a lot of climate groups and a lot of concerned citizens, and we all want the same thing.

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July 16, 2020

by drplasticpicker

To All the My Patients and Your Parents,

Dr. Plastic Picker has now completed my FIFTH anti-vaping trash art piece. Yes my FIFTH trash art piece. The first one was Ocean Plastic Beach Baby which made a great splash on my personal facebook page. She was quickly followed by Vaping Company CEO Man, Hypertensive Man Made from Vaping Pens and an old blood pressure cuff, Shark Boy with Vaping Pen Arms, “A Deconstructed Life,” and yesterday I posted on Instagram “Vaping Aliens: Vaping Flavors Hook Adults, Kids and Aliens.”

As a litter-picking and ocean plastic pollution preventer, I am part anthropologist as I sometimes sort through the debris of our modern human lives. Not only are these vaping pens literally going into the oceans (I found the passion fruit one on the lower left panel on Tourmaline Beach in Pacific Beach washed onto the rocks), they are going into the lungs of our children and of their beloved parents. Two parents told me yesterday that they Vape, and that the flavors are hooking them. Now I am irate that children are being marketed to and children are telling me that the middle school bathrooms are FILLED with vaping students. And now I have realized that the hard-working parents that I have known for years are falling victim to the Vaping Company CEO Man. They are taking money from your children and your families, and also polluting our oceans.

This is the OBJECTIVE TRUTH that Dr. Plastic Picker sees in the world now.

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Much of this work on @drplasticpicker, this blog and with American Academy of Pediatrics has been driven by our children. The children we care for in clinic. The children we are raising in our own homes. And the children that will inherit this beautiful planet. The kids who are the ones who “get it” and have showed up for our group beach cleanings.

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July 5, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Honestly sometimes I’m not sure what I am doing. I pick up trash (223 bags now). I recycle (302 aluminum cans and 125 plastic mostly water bottles). I donate found items (41 pieces of clothing and 26 tennis balls/dog toys). I make trash art (see my anti-vaping pieces). I’m on instagram, never my face but always the trash I pick up (933 followers now). And I’m trying to go vegan, and educate my patients and fellow pediatricians that a planet-healthy and plant-based diet are one in the same. I just set in motion a journal club for our department on evidence-based discussion of veganism within the pediatric population called “So You Want Your Toddler to be Vegan?” Honestly one of the most impactful things I do is just donate money to environmental groups and we are at over $3000 this year and have helped preserve 7,212 acres of mostly rainforest and planted or helped preserve 200,000 trees. When the plastic picker children wake up, we’ll discuss where to donate this month.

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