cigarettes
kkrisberg | October 28, 2015The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the first nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, finding that more than 12 percent had ever tried the aerosol nicotine products in 2014. So, as is the unfortunate case with many emerging and potential public health threats, it seems like e-cigarette use is outpacing the ability of regulatory bodies to protect the public’s health and educate consumers about possible risks.
The new data is from CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, which first began collecting data on e-cigarette use…
oracknows | February 6, 2014Now we come to a post in which Orac unloads a bit about one of his pet peeves. It is a post that will likely piss a few people off on "his" side. If it does, so be it. He does this now because yesterday something happened that irritated the crap out of me because it put on display one of the less appealing characteristics of the skeptical movement, a tendency to obsessively focus on what it views as important at the expense of losing touch with the big picture. It is a story about knee jerk responses to which we all (myself included) fall prey.
Yesterday it was widely reported in the media,…
tsmith | April 24, 2013It's time for this year's second installment of student guest posts for my class on infectious causes of chronic disease. Second one this round is by Jonathan Yuska.
If you happen to be one of the 46 million individuals who have not been swayed to quit smoking by the countless anti-cigarette ads in print and on television, here is one more piece of evidence that may have you second thinking that next puff. On top of the more than 3,000 chemicals and heavy metals already identified in ordinary cigarettes1, upwards of a million microorganisms per cigarette have also been found to live and…
cmonforton | October 2, 2012The Pump Handle is launching a new "Public Health Classics" series exploring some of the classic studies and reports that have shaped the field of public health. If you have a favorite Public Health Classic to recommend, let us know in the comments. And if you're interested in contributing a post to the series, email us at thepumphandle@gmail.com (send us a link to the report or study along with a sentence or two about what you find most interesting or important about it). As we add more posts to the series, they'll all be available in the "Public Health Classics" category.
A headline from…
lborkowski | August 1, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Brad Plumer at Ezra Klein's blog: Will the new fuel economy rules actually work?
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Is Polio Eradication Slipping Out of Reach?
David Bornstein at the New York Times' Opinionator: Treating the Cause, Not the Illness
John Culhane at Slate: Concussions and Cigarettes ("A new lawsuit claims the NFL is like Big Tobacco. Does the case have merit?")
Zuska at Thus Spake Zuska: Hunger Relief vs. Poverty Relief: I Vote for More of Both
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…
oracknows | February 20, 2009I knew it. I just knew it.
I just knew that when I finally decided to come back from my absence from this blog that something very unpleasant and sad would be waiting for me. True, there had actually been one very nasty thing that I simply had to deal with a few days ago, but that was a particularly vile and despicable human being who, believe it or not, was not John Best. That is not the case here, although the misinformation being pushed is truly disturbing.
Not surprisingly, what awaited me upon my decision to come back was posted earlier this week on that repository of antivaccine…
grrlscientist | December 13, 2007tags: two-fork toothpick trick, physics, streaming video
This streaming video is a variation on a theme that I've posted about before: smoking is BAD BAD BAD for you! In this video, tar is extracted from 400 cigarettes -- in the kitchen, so you too, can do this experiment [4:09]
Still Smoking? Watch This !! - video powered by Metacafe