lborkowski | May 30, 2011This Memorial Day, I haven't just been thinking of those who died in combat, but also of those who've died because of combat. This morning's NPR story about 23-year-old Ivan Lopez, who struggled with PTSD after returning home and then became the 14th Pennsylvania Guardsman since 2003 to die by his own hand, is just one reminder of the brutal cost of war.
cmonforton | May 27, 2011[June 3, 2011: Update below]
[May 31, 2011: Update below]
The West Virginia Supreme Court has taken up the case by Massey Energy shareholders to block the $8.5 Billon sale of the firm to Alpha Natural Resources. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr., and National Public Radio's (NPR) Howard Berkes have followed the day-to-day event on the suits (here, here, here, here.) Now, their organizations are part of the action.
The two news outlets filed a motion today before the WV Supreme Court, urging the judges to reject the request by the California State Teachers Retirement System (a…
cmonforton | May 26, 2011The White House's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein announced today agency roadmaps for a 21-century regulatory system, and the results of the Obama Administration's "unprecedented government-wide review" of existing regulations. I don't know what history books Mr. Sunstein has been reading, but for at least the last 20 years, every Administration has engaged in these regulatory review exercises to identify rules that are "out-of-date, unnecessary, excessively burdensome or in conflict with other rules." It's a real stretch for him to call this review "unprecedented." I only quibble about…
lborkowski | May 25, 2011I read a lot of stories about how our healthcare system fails people, but one of the ones that's stuck with me the most is the tragedy of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, who died in 2007 after bacteria from an abscessed tooth spread to his brain. Deamonte and his brother were covered by Maryland's Medicaid program, but their mother, Alyce Driver, struggled to find a dentist that would accept Medicaid and had appointments available. Then, their coverage lapsed, mostly likely because their paperwork was sent to the homeless shelter where they'd been staying after they moved on to other housing…
lborkowski | May 24, 2011I've written before about "Ten Great Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century," which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in 1999. Now, CDC has put together a list of ten great public health achievements from 2001 to 2010, based on nominations from the agency's public health scientists. Here are the ten achievements from the first decade of the 21st century:
Vaccine-Preventable Diseases -- Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases have dropped over the past decade, and the impact of the pneumococcal conjugate and rotavirus vaccines has…
lborkowski | May 23, 2011The saying "demography is destiny" reportedly dates back to 19th-century social scientist Auguste Comte, and it's still popular among journalists. Earlier this year, for instance, Alan Wheatley of Reuters warned about the challenges Asian countries (especially Japan) will face as over-60 residents make up ever-larger shares of their populations. His article also touches on the challenges for countries that face the opposite problem: a large proportion of young residents, or "large cohorts of angry, unemployed young men" prone to causing turmoil.
A recent Council on Foreign Relations report…
lborkowski | May 20, 2011Several news outlets have reported on the findings of the Governor's Independent Investigation Panel into the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster, which killed 29 miners in West Virginia last year. (The report is here; my post on it is here.) Two of the most in-depth articles come from Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette and Howard Berkes of NPR, both of whom have immersed themselves in the work of understanding and explaining how this disaster occurred. The Upper Big Branch archives at the Charleston Gazette and NPR are full of the details that have emerged (or been dragged out by these…
lborkowski | May 19, 2011On April 5, 2010, an explosion occurred at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The blast rocketed through 2.5 miles of underground chambers and tunnels nearly 1,000 feet beneath the mountains, and it killed 29 miners and severely injured another. The youngest victim was Cory Thomas Davis, age 20, who loved spending weekends hunting and fishing in the mountains, and the oldest was Benny Willingham, age 61, a Vietnam veteran of the US Air Force who had been a coal miner for 30 years and was five weeks away from retirement.
Shortly after the tragic day, then-…
lborkowski | May 18, 2011By Kim Krisberg
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air, water. In the face of this challenge, we need champions throughout the world who will work to put protecting human health at the centre of the climate change agenda.
-- Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, director-general, World Health Organization, 2008
Human health may not be the first image that pops to mind when it comes to climate change. People often envision melting icebergs or desperate polar bears…
lborkowski | May 17, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Charles Ornstein at ProPublica: Cardiac Society Draws Bulk of Funding from Stent Makers
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: A Chemical (Battle) Cry
Tara C. Smith at Aetiology: Ebola in Uganda: current and past outbreaks
Tim Lougheed in Environmental Health Perspectives: Phosphorus Paradox: Scarcity and Overabundance of a Key Nutrient
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Drug-resistant bacteria in bedbugs
lborkowski | May 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Two industrial accidents - one fatal - that occurred on May 11 within 40 miles of each other are a reminder what a fine line there can be between workplace safety and acute danger.
One incident occurred at the Stimson sawmill and hardwood facility in Gaston, Oregon, (about 35 miles west of Portland) where workers were removing the cap from a hydraulic accumulator - a routine operation on a piece of equipment used to power mill machinery - in preparation for moving it from one location to another. Described as a metal cylinder about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter…
cmonforton | May 13, 2011That's the question posed by Jon Stewart's Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi in his "Ored to Death" segment broadcast on May 12. Mandvi interviews G. Bernard Coulombe, the general manager of the proposed Jeffrey asbestos mine in Quebec, Canada, who reports the mine will produce 200 TONS annually of chrysotile fibers. In the segment, Mandvi really asks:
"does asbestos mean something different in French than it does in English?? Because in English it means it means a SLOW, HACKING DEATH."
The fact that this five minute "news" segment appears on Comedy Central doesn't take away from the…
egrossman | May 13, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Far-reaching and ambitious recommendations laid out at a meeting of the United Nations Strategic Approach to International Chemical Management (SAICM) could significantly reduce occupational exposure to hazardous chemicals in the electronics industry - and do so at every stage of product life, from component design and manufacturing to recycling. If implemented, these recommendations would reduce health hazards for the thousands of workers employed at electronics production plants worldwide and begin to reduce environmental health hazards for those involved in…
lborkowski | May 12, 2011For many years, the public health and environmental communities have been calling for reform of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which governs the use of chemicals in US commerce. Instead of requiring companies to demonstrate the safety of chemicals they intend to use or produce, TSCA puts the burden on EPA to request this data and justify their request based on anticipated hazards or substantial human exposures. EPA can only ban or restrict a chemical if it presents "an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment." Of the tens of thousands of chemicals now in use in…
lborkowski | May 11, 2011Good data isn't just important to researchers; it's also essential for people who want to participate in the governmental processes that affect our environment. The US government makes a lot of environmental data available to the public and provides many opportunities for public participation, but both the information and the engagement opportunities need to improve if we're going to effectively address the many threats to our health, from air pollution to climate change. The nonprofit OMB Watch has just released an action plan that contains many specific recommendations for doing exactly…
lborkowski | May 11, 2011The American Society of Magazine Editors has announced its 2010 award winners, and I found it striking that three of the winning pieces address the issue of cancer. Over the past couple of years, we've heard more cautions about the downsides of aggressive screening for breast and prostate cancers - and then we occasionally also hear about the relatively young man or woman whose cancer is caught and treated early thanks to such aggressive practices. At the population level, we compile statistics about risk and survival rates, but those are easy to forget about when someone we love gets the…
lborkowski | May 10, 2011One reporter from the radio world, Howard Berkes at National Public Radio (NPR), and the other from the print world, Ken Ward, Jr. at The Charleston Gazette have submerged themselves in interview transcripts from witnesses involved in the emergency response on April 5, 2010 at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine. About two dozen transcripts were released by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) on Friday, May 6, 2011 to the victims' families. Soon after, the investigative reporters were writing stories based on the transcripts. (To-date more than 250 individuals have…
lborkowski | May 9, 2011The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University's School of Medicine has announced that former NFL player Dave Duerson, who committed suicide at the age of 50 and left a request that his brain go to CSTE, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The disorder is linked to repeated brain trauma, and Duerson's family reports that he had at least 10 concussions during his NFL career.
The New York Times' Alan Schwarz, who's been covering the issue of brain damage among football players since 2007, reports that 14 of the 15 brains of football players tested by CSTE have…
lborkowski | May 6, 2011
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…
cmonforton | May 5, 2011It shouldn't be long now before Labor Secretary Hilda Solis releases her semi-annual regulatory plan for new worker health and safety rules. This document is required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866, and is supposed to be published every April and October. The Labor Secretary's most recent regulatory agenda wasn't issued until December 2010, the 20th to be exact. We''ll have to wait and see how tardy this one will be.
In that December 2010 document, OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) listed about a dozen regulatory initiatives in the pre…