The 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 […]
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 […]
Tobacco use is one of the top risk factors for the non-communicable diseases the World Health Organization is targeting, and WHO has already done a lot of anti-smoking work over the past few years. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control entered into force in 2005, and its core demands include both price and non-price […]
Last week in Moscow, the World Health Organization and Russian Federation held the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control, which addressed the “slow-motion catastrophe” of rising rates of non-communicable illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warned that diabetes rates have skyrocketed in both rich and poor […]
A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Ken Ward Jr. at Sustained Outrage: Protecting workers: Progress under Obama? (Also see his related Coal Tattoo piece on mine safety in the Obama administration) Maryn McKenna at Superbug: What vaccine refusal really costs: Measles in Arizona Body Horrors: Blood Money: Hookworm Economics in the Postbellum South […]
Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients’ lives and made the following proposal: If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures […]
Those who work to prevent death, disease, and disasters often have a thankless task – if they do their jobs well, people rarely notice. But two OSHA inspectors recently saved workers’ lives in a very visible way, and the agency wrote about it on their blog, (Work in Progress). Trench collapses are an all-too-common occurrence, […]
Earlier this month, Yale University student Michele Dufault was killed by lathe equipment at the school’s chemistry lab. It appears that she was working alone late at night and her hair got tangled in the machine. Richard Van Noorden of Nature News puts the tragedy in context: Around the United States, laboratory directors and safety […]
Today is World Malaria Day, and the World Health Organization reminds us that each year the world sees approximately 250 million malaria cases and nearly 800,000 deaths from the disease. In 2009, half of the world’s population were at risk of malaria. The disease is present in 106 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and […]
While much of the Earth Week news coverage has dwelt on the lasting effects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster, two other events have highlighted a separate but related issue: water supply. Drought conditions in the Plains and Southwest have damaged winter wheat crops and fueled the spread of wildfires in Texas. Two volunteer firefighters, Elias […]