April 29, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 8Comment

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 […]

April 28, 2011 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH

“Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living” was the rallying cry of community organizer Mother Jones (a.k.a. Mary Harris Jones, 1837-1930) to fire up workers as they demanded better working conditions and labor rights. The motto still resonates today, especially this week when workers, human rights, and public health advocates commemorate International […]

April 27, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

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, […]

April 26, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH

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 […]

April 25, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH

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 […]

April 22, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH

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 […]

April 22, 2011 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 2Comment

Earlier this month, in my post “CDC’s NIOSH says WHAT about asbestos???” I reported on the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) new treatise on asbestos, and my dismay with the agency’s characterization of the mineral as a “potential occupational carcinogen.” NIOSH’s current intelligence bulletins are supposed to convey the most up-to-date scientific […]

April 21, 2011 The Pump Handle 2Comment

By Kim Krisberg I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count. You’re a reporter? What do you write about? Public health. (Blank stare.) Oh. What’s public health? Is that like universal health care or something? How do you describe public health? It’s a tricky question. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines public health as the […]