sitting

Family-friendly policies in the workplace are a good thing, but as Claire Cain Miller writes in The New York Times, there’s also a risk that such policies end up hurting the very workers they’re intended to help. Miller starts off her piece with international examples of family-friendly policies, such as a law in Chile that requires employers provide child care for working mothers and a policy in Spain that gives the parents of young children the option of working part time. The unintended results of each example? All women — whether they have children or not — get paid less and face fewer…
As Travis Saunders has explained, evidence is accumulating about the unhealthy effects of excessive sedentary time. This isn't just because sitting burns fewer calories than walking or standing, but because sedentary behavior is associated with changes in triglyceride uptake, HDL cholesterol, and insulin resistance. And bouts of intense exercise every morning or evening can't completely offset the effects of spending several hours sitting at a desk or behind the wheel. Given that a large segment of our population works at sedentary jobs, this is disturbing news. But a recent story by NPR's…
A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Travis Saunders at the Scientific American Guest Blog: Can sitting too much kill you? Tanya Snyder in Streetsblog Capitol Hill: Actually, Highway Builders, Roads Don't Pay for Themselves Tina Rosenberg for the New York Times' Opinionator: To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor Ilan Greenberg in Guernica: Murder Music ("Jamaica's dancehall music is being blamed for the country's violent attacks on gays. But there are many who don't see the music as homophobic, only the battle cry of a changing nation.") Environmental Health News compiles its Top Stories of…