June 2, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH

We’ve been following the story ( see here, here, and here) of the National Guard troops who were exposed to the carcinogen hexavalent chromium at the Qarmat Ali water plant in Iraq – which contracting giant KBR was tasked with rebuilding. National Guard soldiers from four states were stationed there; many of them suffered nosebleeds […]

June 1, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

DemFromCT had a great post up at Daily Kos this past weekend about risk communication. He considers the somewhat unusual circumstances of the Gulf oil spill, noting, “unlike pandemics and hurricanes, this volatile mixture in the water has an equally volatile mix of politics, companies, government and media to sort out policy and communication.” The […]

May 31, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH

So far, 5,462 US service members have died from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the Reveres don’t have their own blog anymore, I’ll post what they’ve posted for Memorial Day in years past:

May 28, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

Officials from G8 countries will be gathering in Toronto next month, and scientific bodies from the eight countries (e.g., the Royal Society of Canada and US National Academy of Science) have developed a joint statement about what the G8 should do improve the health of women in children. They begin by citing the Millennium Development […]

May 27, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 21Comment

A New York Times article by Jane Gross highlights a costly healthcare problem: avoidable hospital readmissions, which affect one in five patients and account for $17.4 billion of the current $102.6 billion Medicare budget. (When people talk about readmissions, they’re generally referring to an admission within 30 days of the previous admission for the same […]

May 26, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 2Comment

On today’s Morning Edition, Russell Lewis reported on the memorial service held in Jackson, Mississippi for the 11 workers who died when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20th. Host David Greene noted that they’ve been called the “Forgotten 11,” because so much attention has been focused on the oil leak rather than […]

May 25, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 5Comment

A study published in the open-access journal BMC Immunology suggests an intriguing hypothesis: The explosion of spread of HIV in Africa and then worldwide in the 1950s might be partially explained by the eradication of smallpox and the discontinuation of smallpox vaccination campaigns. The researchers – Raymond S. Weinstein, Michael M. Weinstein, Kenneth Alibek, Michael […]

May 24, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

The New York Times’ Clifford J. Levy reports on violence against at journalists investigating corruption in the Moscow suburbs: Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb. “Last spring, I […]

May 20, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 11Comment

This week is Bike to Work Week, and tomorrow is Bike to Work Day (the League of American Bicyclists lists events here). I wouldn’t have realized this if it weren’t for this Washington Post article; cyclists are common enough here in DC that I’m not sure I’d notice a small uptick in their numbers. What […]

May 19, 2010 Liz Borkowski, MPH 8Comment

It’s only right that BP bear the cleanup costs in the Gulf – but their cleanup responsibilities shouldn’t interfere with federal agencies doing their jobs. Two recent news accounts paint a disturbing picture of federal employees taking orders from the multinational corporation that’s turned an already hard-hit part of our coastline into a disaster zone.