Liz Borkowski
lborkowski
Posts by this author
April 27, 2011
Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following proposal:
If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong…
April 27, 2011
Those who work to prevent death, disease, and disasters often have a thankless task - if they do their jobs well, people rarely notice. But two OSHA inspectors recently saved workers' lives in a very visible way, and the agency wrote about it on their blog, (Work in Progress).
Trench collapses are…
April 26, 2011
Earlier this month, Yale University student Michele Dufault was killed by lathe equipment at the school's chemistry lab. It appears that she was working alone late at night and her hair got tangled in the machine. Richard Van Noorden of Nature News puts the tragedy in context:
Around the United…
April 25, 2011
Today is World Malaria Day, and the World Health Organization reminds us that each year the world sees approximately 250 million malaria cases and nearly 800,000 deaths from the disease. In 2009, half of the world's population were at risk of malaria. The disease is present in 106 countries in…
April 22, 2011
While much of the Earth Week news coverage has dwelt on the lasting effects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster, two other events have highlighted a separate but related issue: water supply.
Drought conditions in the Plains and Southwest have damaged winter wheat crops and fueled the spread of…
April 21, 2011
By Kim Krisberg
I've had this conversation more times than I can count.
You're a reporter? What do you write about?
Public health.
(Blank stare.) Oh. What's public health? Is that like universal health care or something?
How do you describe public health? It's a tricky question. The Merriam-Webster…
April 19, 2011
by Ellen Smith, Mine Safety and Health News
While Congress looks for sources of funding, they may want to just ask mining companies to pay their overdue bills. A one-day snapshot by Mine Safety and Health News found operators owing $55 million in delinquent penalties. The Civil Penalties Special…
April 18, 2011
A few months ago, Travis Saunders wrote at the Scientific American Guest Blog about the dangers of excessive sitting. He warned that those of us who faithfully log our exercise hours might still be at an increased risk of negative health effects if we spend too many hours sitting at a desk or…
April 15, 2011
In much of the reporting I've seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times' Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and…
April 14, 2011
At her Washington Post blog 2chambers, Felicia Sonmez reports that the House has passed legislation repealing the section of the Affordable Care Act that created the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which gives the Department of Health and Human Services $15 billion over the next 10 years to fund…
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…
April 11, 2011
Back in August, our New Solutions: The Drawing Board partnership with the journal New Solutions featured a post by Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson about the situation in Cananea, Mexico, where miners have been striking against the Asarco/Grupo Mexico copper operation for more than three years. The…
April 8, 2011
Last year, psychiatric technician Donna Gross was killed on the job at Napa State Hospital, allegedly by a patient who had a pass that gave him unsupervised access to the grounds. In a two-part series, NPR's Ina Jaffe talks with staff, directors, and patients from two psychiatric hospitals, Napa…
April 7, 2011
Today is World Health Day, and the World Health Organization is using the occasion to draw attention to a serious global health problem: the rapid spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The development and widespread use of antibiotics counts as a public health triumph, as infections that…
April 6, 2011
It's National Public Health Week, and this year's theme is "Safety is No Accident: Live Injury Free." The American Public Health Association notes that in the US each year, nearly 150,000 people die from injuries, and almost 30 million people visit emergency rooms for injuries. They offer safety…
April 5, 2011
One year ago, an explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia killed 29 miners. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr., who has covered the disaster and its aftermath extensively, writes today on his Coal Tattoo blog:
Stay tuned today to hear a lot of political…
April 1, 2011
On Black Friday 2008 at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, Long Island, 34-year-old worker Jdimytai Damour was killed by a stampede of shoppers. In a New Yorker article on crowd disasters, Jon Seabrook reports that the official cause of death was asphyxiation, as it often the case in crowd-related…
March 31, 2011
New York Times columnist Mark Bittman (famous for his writing on food) reported on Tuesday that he was joining more than 4,000 others who've been fasting to call attention to House legislation's proposed cuts to programs for the poor and hungry. He explains:
[The poor] are -- once again -- under…
March 29, 2011
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling of NPR: Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon
Susan Milius in Science News: Backup Bees
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: The Radium Girls (Part II, Part III)
Frank N. Von Hippel on the New York…
March 24, 2011
Mitsuru Obe reports in today's Wall Street Journal that three workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to moderately high levels of radiation, due to contact with radiactive water on the ground. Their reported exposures of 170 to 180 millisieverts are less than the new…
March 23, 2011
Exactly one year ago, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - the most sweeping change to US healthcare since the legislation that created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The law's most important achievement is its creation of a system that will slash our…
March 22, 2011
Every March 22nd is designated as World Water Day, with the goal of "focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources." This year's theme is "Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge," in recognition of the fact that…
March 21, 2011
I was delighted to be a guest on the Skeptically Speaking radio show/ podcast recently - I spoke with host Desiree Schell about why toilets (and other related forms of sanitation) are so great. In fact, the whole episode is dedicated to the topic of "Sewer Science," and also features University of…
March 18, 2011
In the early hours of March 11th, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck northern Japan, and a massive tsunami followed. More than 5,000 people are dead and almost 10,000 are missing. Hundreds of thousands are homeless, and those living near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been told to…
March 17, 2011
Earlier this week, the Geiger Gibson/ RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative released a policy research brief that estimates the impact of the House of Representatives' proposed reduction in funding to community health centers. (Full disclosure: the Geiger Gibson program is part of…
March 16, 2011
The workers remaining at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station are braving extremely risky conditions as they try to avert a nuclear catastrophe. They are working to keep fuel rods - both those inside reactors and in the spent rods stored in ponds - cool enough to avert a Chernobyl-type…
March 14, 2011
With nearly one-third of US healthcare spending going to hospital care, it's natural that people would be looking for ways to trim spending on hospital services. A new study just published in the journal Health Affairs reports that seriously ill hospital patients receiving consultations from…
March 11, 2011
Earlier this week, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food released a report stating that agroecology - basically, sustainable agriculture - can double global food production over the next decade. Specifically, agroecology can raise production in the poor, food-deficit countries that most…
March 10, 2011
Celeste wrote last week about how the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. broke the story of how a previously unpublished report sent to Congress by the Mine Safety and Health Administration two weeks before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster warned about serious enforcement lapses, including…
March 8, 2011
For today's celebration of International Women's Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remarks:
One hundred years ago, when the world first commemorated International Women's Day, gender equality and women's empowerment were largely radical ideas. On this centenary, we celebrate the significant…