lborkowski | April 11, 2011Back 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 miners are demanding improvements not only to unsafe working conditions, but to the local environment.
Fischel and Nelson were part of a group that visited Cananea last year through a tour arranged by the United Association of Labor Education and hosted by an organization of the Mexican Miners Union…
lborkowski | April 8, 2011Last 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 State Hospital and Atascadero State Hospital, about patient violence.
Both hospitals treat mentally ill patients who arrive through the criminal justice system; Atascadero was designed from the start to treat mentally ill criminal offenders, while Napa had hardly any criminal commitments 20 years ago…
lborkowski | April 7, 2011Today 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 once routinely killed large numbers of people became much easier to treat. That triumph can be undone, though. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warns, "In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will…
lborkowski | April 6, 2011It'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 tips for home, work, play, transportation, and communities.
CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control provides detailed information on what kinds of injuries kill people of different age groups. Here are a few statistics (2007):
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for…
cmonforton | April 5, 2011[Update 4/22/2011: see CDC's NIOSH corrects asbestos statement]
It was almost too much to believe. Here I was attending the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization's (ADAO) annual meeting, mingling and learning from patients and researchers about asbestos-related disease, and I hear that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has just issued its treatise on asbestos. That document, called a "current intelligence bulletin" is supposed to convey the most up-to-date scientific information on a hazard and risk of harm…
lborkowski | April 5, 2011One 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 leaders talking about coal miners ... They're going to talk about how hard working miners are, and how they put their lives on the line to provide electricity and put food on table for their families. They're going to talk about how we need to remember and honor the dead, and about how these men (well,…
egrossman | April 4, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
"If I say pollution, the images that first come to mind are likely to be smokestacks, waste pipes, an accident or a disaster. But increasingly, environmental health researchers are focusing on sources that are much closer to home, like toys and beauty products and food packaging and cleaners and furniture. These are now sources of chemicals of interest," said Julia Brody, director of the Silent Spring Institute introducing a session on biomonitoring at this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting held recently in Washington, DC. "The…
lborkowski | April 1, 2011On 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 deaths. The crowd's force pushed the store's sliding glass doors from their frames; one of them apparently fell on top of Damour, and his co-workers didn't see what happened after that. Damour had been working at the store for about a week, and none of his training addressed security or crowd…
lborkowski | March 31, 2011New 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 attack, this time in the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria…
cmonforton | March 30, 2011If you want to keep all your digits and limbs, you probably want to avoid working at Anheuser-Busch's Metal Container Corp., in Arnold, Missouri. That worksite was recently cited by OSHA for hazards related to incidents last fall in which one worker lost fingers in machinery, and another worker had a foot amputated because of a forklift incident. The 13 serious and one willful violation come with a proposed $107,200 penalty. Those two work-related amputations are just two of the estimated 3.9 million cases of injuries and illness that occur each year in U.S. workplaces. About a third of…
lborkowski | March 29, 2011A 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 Times Opinion Page: It Could Happen Here ("Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of 'regulatory capture' -- in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it.")
Michelle Andrews for Kaiser Health News: Demand Grows for Palliative Care
cmonforton | March 28, 2011One week from today will mark the first anniversary of the Upper Big Branch coal mine disaster where 29 men lost their lives from an enormous and powerful explosion. Those left behind--the parents, spouses, children and friends---have lives that are changed forever. Ken Ward and Gary Harki of the Charleston (WV) Gazette share a touching story of Ms. Bobbie Pauley, a rare female coal miner who worked at the Upper Big Branch mine. It's a must read story. Bobbie Pauley lost her love, Boone Payne, 53, on that fateful April 5, 2010 afternoon. He was a roof bolter with the 9-man headgate 22…
cmonforton | March 25, 2011The New York Times'' headline read: STREET STREWN WITH BODIES; PILES OF DEAD INSIDE. The article went on this way:
"Nothing like it has been seen in New York since the burning of the General Slocum. The fire was practically all over in half an hour. ...it was the most murderous fire that New York has seen in many years. The victims...were mostly girls of 16 to 23 years of age. They were employed at making shirtwaists by the Traingle Waist Company. ...Most of them could barely speak English. Most of them came from Brooklyn. Almost all were the main support of their hard-working…
lborkowski | March 24, 2011Mitsuru 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 emergency limit of 250 millisieverts, but more than the usual limit of 100 millisieverts for workers' exposure during recovery efforts.
This follows an earlier report from the New York Times that five workers have died since the quake and 22 more injured, 11 of those in a hydrogen explosion. Those…
lborkowski | March 23, 2011Exactly 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 nation's shameful uninsurance rate by an estimated two-thirds once it's fully implemented.
Public opinion on the law is still mixed, and that's likely due to two things. First, many of the law's provisions won't kick in until 2014. Second, for those of us with a reliable source of affordable health…
lborkowski | March 22, 2011Every 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 half the world's population now lives in an urban area. Nearly 40% of this urban expansion occurs in slums, where the infrastructure is insufficient for delivering clean water to residents and properly handling sewage.
I addressed the sanitation aspect of urban growth a few months ago in "From the…
cmonforton | March 21, 2011Monique Harper, 41, had a beautiful smile that family and friends will never forget. "Monique was the most hilarious and free-spirited person you will ever meet," said one of her sisters. "She was a mother that loved her children, family and friends." Monique Harper's contagious smile and free spirit are now only memories. She was one of the 26 U.S. workers killed in 2010 after being engulfed in grain at storage facilities that hold billions of bushels of harvested corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, and rice. Another 25 workers in 2010 were trapped in grain, but were rescued.
Entrapments and…
lborkowski | March 21, 2011I 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 York's Alistair Boxall discussing pharmaceutical contaminants. The previous episode focuses on municipal water systems and water fluoridation, and there are many other fascinating health-related episodes on the site available for downloading or online listening.
My past posts on sanitation in the…
cmonforton | March 18, 2011Imagine testifying before a congressional committee as the head of the FDIC and you're asked "do the vast majority of banks care deeply and passionately about their customers?" Or as the head of the FAA and you're asked "do you think the vast majority of airlines care deeply and passionately about their passengers?" Or the head of a State Insurance Bureau and you're asked "do you think the vast majority of HMO's care deeply and passionately about their policy holders?" That's one of the odd questions posed to OSHA chief David Michaels,PhD, MPH at a hearing on March 16 before a subcommittee…
lborkowski | March 18, 2011In 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 evacuate - while a small crew of brave workers remains nearby to try and avert catastrophic meltdown.
Here in the US, our budget debates highlight differing opinions about how much we want our government to do for us. The stories we tell ourselves make a virtue of self-sufficiency, and we highlight…