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March 26, 2009
Itâs Cover the Uninsured Week, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is working to âhighlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and demand solutions from our nationâs leaders.â
Concern about uninsurance is growing as more people lose jobs that provided them with…
March 26, 2009
By Dick Clapp
A critically important verdict with far-reaching implications is soon to be rendered in an Ecuadorian Court. The court case involves the rights of 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorians to compensation from the Chevron oil company for destruction of their land and for devastating ecological…
March 25, 2009
Our food production system is unsustainable, but those who advocate for healthier agriculture and diets often find themselves dismissed as elitists. While I think this is often an unfair criticism , itâs clear that it hampers advocatesâ effectiveness. So, I was delighted to read in the Washington…
March 25, 2009
Whistleblowers often play key roles in uncovering problems, from unsafe working conditions to embezzlement and fraud. Yet when the Project on Government Oversight examined the Inspectors General system, which receives and investigates complaints about federal agencies, it found that IGs too often…
March 25, 2009
The question of whether or not I am a geologist is not just an amusing exercise in academic politics. In Washington, as in most U.S. states, geology is a regulated profession; guidelines for who can and cannot call themselves a geologist in a professional context are laid out in the administrative…
March 24, 2009
Twenty years ago today, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in the Prince William Sound and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil. Hundreds of miles of Alaskaâs coastline were coated in oil, a quarter of a million seabirds died, and one estimate puts local fisheriesâ losses at nearly $300 million…
March 23, 2009
Weâve written before about the way that use of nanomaterials in consumer products is outpacing research on the materialsâ occupational and environmental health effects. So, itâs good to see that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is contributing a piece to the puzzle, and…
March 23, 2009
Just a friendly reminder that tomorrow, March 24, is Ada Lovelace Day, a day devoted to highlighting women in technology. Get your posts together! (Even if you didn't sign the pledge, please join in on the fun!) Details on how to post and tag are here.
I am so excited about my own post---the…
March 23, 2009
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
One of the nastiest things about the years after the Republicans took control of the Congress in 1994 and Bush the White House in 2001 was the increase in inequality in the US. The rich not only got richer and the poor, poorer, but rich got more…
March 20, 2009
Sunday is World Water Day, so bloggers are highlighting water issues:
Ronnie Cohen at NRDC's Switchboard and Kevin Ferguson at Gristmill report from the World Water Forum, which is going on this week in Istanbul.
Melanie Nakagawa, also at Switchboard, emphasizes the economic benefits that clean…
March 20, 2009
By Alison Bass (cross-posted)
At a talk I gave Wednesday at George Washington University, someone in the audience asked why there seemed to be an inordinate number of psychiatrists on the take to the drug industry. Was it something about the specialty of psychiatry itself or the individuals…
March 20, 2009
Funny!
From Jimmy Fallon:
Last night, Michael Showalter (from Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, The State, your dreams) made a cameo on the show. He and our head writer, A.D. Miles, played a couple of Columbia grad students on spring break. Things got pretty scandalous!
Really funny... but totally…
March 20, 2009
Straight from XKCD...
I had this exact same reaction.
Now that we're on the topic. I don't like federal money going to pay bonuses but seriously... this money was promised long ago and it's already been given out. Using the tax code to take it back? Wow this is seriously a real cluster @#$!
March 20, 2009
For the first second time in Department of Labor history, the Solicitor of Labor (SOL) will be a woman.* Yesterday, the White House announced a handful of appointments, including M. Patricia Smith to the top attorney slot at DOL.  This position requires Senate confirmation.
Ms. Smith is the…
March 20, 2009
The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward posted two items yesterday at Sustained Outrage: a Gazette Watchdog Blog concerning records related to the August 2008 explosion at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, WV that killed two workers (previous posts here, here, here, here), and OSHA's and…
March 19, 2009
On Monday, airline passengers were the first to observe the eruption of the just-barely-above-the-water volcano that forms the islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha'apai, in Tonga. Three days later, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake occurred on the Tonga trench.
Was the timing of these two events just…
March 19, 2009
Weâve written before about Alexandra Berzonâs fantastic Las Vegas Sun articles on construction-site dangers, so we were delighted to learn that the paper has won the 2009 Roy W. Howard public service reporting award from the Scripps Howard Foundation for its coverage of Las Vegas construction…
March 18, 2009
University of California Berkeley's Health Research for Action is calling on OSHA to revise its occupational health standard on lead, which is now 30 years old. In a report entitled "Indecent Exposure: Lead Puts Workers and Families at Risk," the authors describe the adverse health effects of…
March 18, 2009
The National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution here in DC, has asbestos in its wall seams â a situation unlikely to pose harm to visitors, but a potential risk to workers who might be cutting or drilling into walls. Seventeen years ago, managers were informed about the…
March 17, 2009
Alison Bass, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee, will be here at George Washington University tomorrow to speak about why the system of drug research and development in the United States is seriously flawed and what reforms are needed.
Wednesday, March 18, 4:30pm
GWU-SPHHS…
March 17, 2009
With an announcement today in the Federal Register, Labor Secretary Solis' OSHA is moving in a new direction to address occupational exposure to diacetyl. The butter-flavoring agent is associated with respiratory harm, including bronchiolitis obliterans. Just six days ago, Ronald Kuiper, 69…
March 16, 2009
Updated 3/17 and 3/19 (see below)
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's newsroom heard the announcement this morning: The Heart Corporation, which owns the paper, will cease printing after tomorrow's edition.
The official word is that the P-I won't be going away, but transitioning to an online-only…
March 16, 2009
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
There is an attitude toward the prospects of an influenza pandemic and what, or what not, to do about it that I have little patience with. We saw examples a couple of years ago with the writings of Wendy Orent and Marc Siegel and now it is surfacing again…
March 14, 2009
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
There is a good summary by Robert Roos at CIDRAP News about the $420 billion spending bill signed by President Obama this week to cover the next six months. The good news edges out the bad news, so the net is positive, a welcome change from the kind of…
March 13, 2009
Bloggers are reacting to the news of major scientific fraud: Massachusetts anesthesiologist Dr. Scott Reuben falsified data in his published studies for more than a decade.
Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Ethics and Science explores the effects of Dr. Reubenâs duplicity on anesthesiology and…
March 13, 2009
The Washington Postâs Juliet Eilperin reports that a âlittle-noticedâ provision in the spending bill signed into law this week will reverse the Bush administrationâs loosening of Toxics Release Inventory reporting requirements. (Check out our past posts on the watered-down requirements and the…
March 13, 2009
by revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
I'm just getting around to reading the Brief Report by Blachere et al., "Measurement of airborne influenza virus in a hospital emergency department" (Clinical Infectious Diseases 2009:48:483-440) but it's quite interesting. We've noted fairly often here…
March 12, 2009
Um, hi. Apparently I've been gone for a while. Yeah. Sorry about that. Life's been a bit crazy around here lately, and I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water. I'm not sleeping. I'm not taking care of myself. I'm sick. I'm stressed to the gills. I have way too much to do. I…
March 12, 2009
Welcome to version 2.0 of Eruptions, the blog on volcanic eruptions and volcano research in general. I've been writing this blog (starting over on Wordpress) over the last year or so, but now it has found a new home here at ScienceBlogs. If you're wondering what to expect if you're new to…
March 12, 2009
In today's New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof turns his attention to a problem that's been worrying the public health community for the past several years: MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. The bacteria's antibiotic resistance makes it hard to fight, and it's responsible…