A few months ago, Travis Saunders wrote at the Scientific American Guest Blog about the dangers of excessive sitting. He warned that those of us who faithfully log our exercise hours might still be at an increased risk of negative health effects if we spend too many hours sitting at a desk or lounging on […]
In much of the reporting I’ve seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times’ Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He […]
At her Washington Post blog 2chambers, Felicia Sonmez reports that the House has passed legislation repealing the section of the Affordable Care Act that created the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which gives the Department of Health and Human Services $15 billion over the next 10 years to fund prevention and public health. The Republican […]
A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Superbugs Found in New Delhi’s Water and Sewage Kim Barker at ProPublica: ‘Spillionaires’: Profiteering and Mismanagement in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill Darryl Fears in the Washington Post: Goldman Environmental Prize goes to Texas man who took on refineries over pollution […]
Back 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 […]
Last 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, […]
Today 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 […]
It’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 […]
One 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 […]
On 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 […]