environmental health
The Pump Handle
Tag archives for environmental health
Study: Banning smoking in subsidized housing could save millions in health care costs
Posted by The Pump Handle on April 26, 2013 Another day, another study that shows investing in public health interventions can make a serious dent in health care spending. A new study has found that banning smoking in all U.S. subsidized housing could yield cost savings of about $521 million every year.
New study lifts the lid on unhealthy kitchen conditions in migrant farmworker housing
Posted by The Pump Handle on February 22, 2013 For many migrant farmworkers, the health risks don’t stop at the end of the workday. After long, arduous hours in the field, many will return to a home that also poses dangers to their well-being. And quite ironically for a group of workers that harvests our nation’s food, one of those housing risks is poor cooking and eating facilities.
Study: Despite health risks tied to industrial food animal production, health departments have little involvement
Posted by The Pump Handle on February 8, 2013 A couple years ago, two public health researchers attended a hearing about the possible expansion of an industrial food animal production facility. During the hearing, a community member stood up to say that if the expansion posed any hazards, the health department would surely be there to protect the people. The two researchers knew that probably wasn’t the case.
Excess breast cancer risk among women employed in automobile plastics facilities
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on December 12, 2012 Two recently published papers funded by the federal agency Health Canada report on excess risk of breast cancer among auto plastics workers and the chemical compounds and processes used that are the likely culprits.
Public Health Classics: Assessing air pollution and health in six U.S. cities, researchers’ findings changed the air we breathe
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on November 2, 2012 In the 1974, most of us thought that air pollution was something that just looked and smelled bad. But public health researchers had just launched a study to determine whether air pollution shortened people’s lives. Twenty years later they published their results. It forever changed the way we think about and address air pollutants.
Report on chemical-asthma links a useful resource for workers at risk
Posted by The Pump Handle on September 21, 2012 It really is a chemical world, which is bad news for people with asthma. According to a recent report, at this very moment from where I write, I’m surrounded by objects and materials that contain chemicals that are known or suspected asthmagens — substances that can act as asthma triggers if inhaled.
Congress and White House decided to turn their back, but child labor on U.S. farms hasn’t disappeared
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on August 8, 2012 The NBC News affiliate in California’s Bay Area released last week a multi-part investigative series entitled “Children in the field: American kids pick your food.” Congress and the White House embrace the fiction of family farms, but children working on farms tell a different story.
Gun violence is a U.S. public health problem
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on July 23, 2012 Gun violence is uniquely an American problem compared to other industrialized countries. Firearm-related fatality rates in the U.S. are four times the rates in other industrially advanced countries. We continue to relegate this social ill it to our criminal justice system when it needs a public health solution.
Five years and $10 billion later, but process safety problem halts production at brand new U.S. oil refinery
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on July 11, 2012 Royal Dutch Shell’s and Sauid Aramco’s Motiva refinery in Port Arthur Texas open last month with fanfare. The celebration was quickly overshadowed by a ruinous leak of corrosive into the heart of the refinery. The incident could have resulted in catastrophic loss of life
Obama’s regulatory czar should pay attention to the uncertainty he creates
Posted by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH of George Washington University School of Public Health & Health Services on July 5, 2012 President Obama’s regulatory czar is missing a fundamental component of regulatory uncertainty. It’s pretty simply, make a deadline, stick with it, or explain why it will be missed.