Aging US water infrastructure has meant more leaks, flooded basements, and massive sinkholes in cities across the US. Fixing the water and sewer systems in need of repair will take billions of dollars, and it’s hard to find that kind of money in the budget these days. Saqib Rahim reports for ClimateWire on Philadelphia’s decision […]
Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich likes to pump himself up by picking on other people. Several weeks back his target was “children in the poorest neighborhoods.” Now it’s people who receive food assistance. Others have checked his claims about President Obama being the “food stamp President,” but Gingrich also suggested that if you are on […]
For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Candace Rowell at Mind the Science Gap reminds us that environmental injustice is a pressing civil rights issue, writing, “minority groups in the United States bear an unequal distribution of environmental risks and outcomes.” (Mind the Science Gap will feature posts from 10 University of Michigan MPH students over […]
The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has warned about the dangers of combustible dust before, and its new report on a series of disasters at the Hoeganaes facility in Gallatin, Tennessee once again highlights how deadly this hazard can be. In three separate incidents at the Hoeganaes powdered metals plant, fires killed a […]
Two years ago, a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing 300,000 Haitians and leaving 1.5 million homeless. Nine months later, a cholera epidemic began — its first victim a 28-year-old man who bathed in and drank from a river that was likely contaminated by raw sewage from an encampment of UN peacekeepers from Nepal. Half a […]
The late Steve McQueen—the King of Cool—will be honored later this year by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) with its “Keep Me in Your Heart” memorial tribute award. McQueen starred in dozens of films including the The Great Escape (1963), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Bullitt (1968), and Papillon (1973). He died in November […]
Washington State becomes the first in the nation to adopt specific workplace safety rules to protect healthcare workers who are potentially exposed to anti-neoplastic drugs and other hazardous medications. The new rule, issued earlier this month by the State’s Department of Labor & Industries, stems from legislation passed in April 2011 and signed into law […]
by Elizabeth Grossman Next month will mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth. Given the last two centuries’ stratospheric advances in technology and the past century’s progress in human rights policy, one would think that child labor, dangerous and unhealthy working conditions, and the export of hazardous industrial refuse to poor countries and communities […]
At her Superbug blog, Maryn McKenna reports on a disturbing, but not unexpected development: over the past three months, 12 cases of tuberculosis at a single Mumbai hospital have been found to be resistant to all the drugs used to treat the disease. This is not the first time totally drug-resistant tuberculosis (TDR-TB) has been […]
By Susan Wood, cross-posted from RH Reality Check On Friday, January 6th, 2012, several public health experts addressed the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology on the issue of Plan B One-Step® and the Obama administration’s refusal to let the Food and Drug Administration lift the age restriction from over-the-counter deliver of emergency […]