A UCLA chemistry professor’s website announces his lab’s award of an NIH grant. I wonder if we’ll also see an announcement explaining the settlement of the criminal charges against him for the work-related death of Sheri Sangji?
Evidence from decades of research has convinced many public health professionals that there is no single factor more important to healthy living than a minimum standard of income and no single factor more harmful to health than persistent poverty.
Where you live may be hazardous to your health. This is the conclusion of several new reports including one by the Environmental Justice and Health Alliance for Chemical Reform that shows who lives in US communities most vulnerable to hazardous chemical exposures and the CDC’s latest examination of health disparities.
California’s workforce has grown by about 22 percent in the last 20 years but the number of safety inspectors for the 17 million people employed in the state’s 1.34 million workplaces has decreased by about 11 percent. This leaves California’s workforce – the largest of any US state – with the lowest number of inspectors per workers of any state with its own occupational safety and health plan for private-sector workers. California has so few workplace safety inspectors that it would take 173 years to inspect each workplace in the state just once.
By Sara Satinsky: Should pregnant women who use drugs be charged as criminals or given help? From a public health perspective the choice is clear: provide treatment to help women quit drugs before their use harms their child. Less than a year ago, Tennessee adopted a progressive policy to provide such treatment, but now is on the brink of taking a big step back.
By Jonathan Heller. Author Nicholas Freudenberg advocates that we “return to the public sector the right to set health policy and to limit corporations’ freedom to profit at the expense of public health.” We should also think specifically about obligations corporations have to their workers, at a time when the minimum wage is inadequate, wage theft is common among low-wage workers, and millions of US workers lack paid sick time.
The quality of public housing is a key determinant of health among low-income populations, but much of the public housing in the United States is in disrepair – unhealthy, unsafe, even uninhabitable. A health impact assessment of San Francisco’s Rental Assistance Demonstration project highlights some of the considerations for local governments working to assure safe, well-maintained housing for their most vulnerable residents.