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Worth Reading: Superbugs and Spillionaires
Posted by Liz Borkowski on April 13, 2011 A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Superbugs Found in New Delhi’s Water and Sewage Kim Barker at ProPublica: ‘Spillionaires’: Profiteering and Mismanagement in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill Darryl Fears in the Washington Post: Goldman Environmental Prize goes to Texas man who took on refineries over pollution…
Worth Reading: Dieting’s Effects on the Brain, Energy Efficiency, and Giving Birth
Posted by Liz Borkowski on February 10, 2011 Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic blogs: On Labor (“My son is the joy of my life. But the work of ushering him into the world nearly killed his mother.”) Scicurious at Neurotic Physiology: Dieting, Stress, and the Changing Brain. Robert Reich’s Blog at the Christian Science Monitor: US Chamber of Commerce: Obama makes a bargain…
What the Egg Recall Says About Our Food Safety System
Posted by Liz Borkowski on August 24, 2010 The Iowa-based company Wright County Egg is recalling 380 million eggs, which were sold to distributors and wholesalers in 22 states and Mexico, due to concerns about salmonella contamination. The eggs have been sold under several different brand names, so if you’ve got eggs in your fridge you can check FDA’s page for info. Salmonella-infected…
Imperial Sugar agrees to $6 million OSHA penalty, bold promises about safety
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on July 7, 2010 OSHA and Imperial Sugar reached an agreement this week stemming from the agency’s investigations following a February 2008 dust explosion that ultimately claimed 14 workers’ lives. OSHA originally issued more than 100 willful citations for violations at the company’s Port Wentworth, GA (site of the disaster) and Gramercy, LA plants, and proposed a total of…
Could the Smallpox Vaccine Protect Against HIV?
Posted by Liz Borkowski on May 25, 2010 A study published in the open-access journal BMC Immunology suggests an intriguing hypothesis: The explosion of spread of HIV in Africa and then worldwide in the 1950s might be partially explained by the eradication of smallpox and the discontinuation of smallpox vaccination campaigns. The researchers – Raymond S. Weinstein, Michael M. Weinstein, Kenneth Alibek, Michael…
Posted by by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure A good story by the AP’s Lauran Neergaard yesterday highlighted the need for better public health surveillance and the efforts being made to improve it so as to keep track of possible rare side effects from the swine flu vaccine. This is an issue we’ve talked about a lot…
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure I just got my seasonal flu shot. It was free and my medical center is encouraging everyone to get one. I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said I didn’t feel it at all, but in all honesty, I hardly felt it. They must be using smaller needles…
by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog After weeks of sustained attack from the right-wing on issues that are marginal to the job the President asked him to do, Cass Sunstein has emerged from the nomination process bloody but apparently unbowed (here’s this afternoon’s roll call). He is now the nation’s “regulatory czar,” Director of…
President Obama’s address to Congress last night on health care had its high points and low points. You can tune into your favorite spin-masters to hear those recaps. My favorite part of the President’s speech was when he spoke of our “large-heartedness” and our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others to offer assistance, provide comfort…
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure One of the most feared outcomes of infection with influenza is Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS; in less severe form it mahy be called Acute Lung Injury, ALI). For reasons we still do not understand, cells deep in the lung that are involved in gas exchange (oxygen and carbon…