Behaviors are major contributors to our health status, but a tiny fraction of US health spending goes to encouraging healthy behaviors like physical activity. The Bipartisan Policy Center has some recommendations for increasing physical activity, including policy changes that make it easier for people to play and get around actively.
Tony Mazzocchi was a visionary who was in the forefront of the labor movement’s efforts to secure protections for working people, including strong workplace health and safety laws. He was inducted this week in the Labor Department’s Hall of Fame.
Public awareness of water-contamination concerns related to hydraulic fracturing has been growing. But one of the more pernicious and pervasive potential occupational fracking hazards may come from sand.
Debbie Brewer, a 53-year-old mother of three, has mesothelioma. It’s most likely due to asbestos exposure from the work clothes of her father, who succumbed to his own asbestos-related disease in 2006.
Environmental Health
Doubt and other products: The National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens, bad for whose business?
The styrene industry objects to their product being listed as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” in the National Toxicology Program’s latest Report on Carcinogens. They got a chance to describe anticipated impacts on their business in a House committee hearing.
A study on use of new cookstoves in India finds that solving soot problems isn’t as simple as just giving people new stoves. Long-term use of equipment provided by aid groups is also an issue in water and sanitation projects.
Environmental Health
Rick Brown, champion of occupational health, children’s health, will be missed terribly
UCLA Professor Rick Brown was a champion of public health who passed away suddenly last month. His colleagues, former students and friends are remembering and celebrating his tremendous contributions to improve occupational health, children’s health, and families’ access to health care services.
Cancer
Ideas galore on ways to speed process for new worker safety protections. Where is the leadership to implement them?
Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail’s pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., […]
Thanks to regulations limiting the use of lead in gasoline, paint, and plumbing supplies, the median blood lead concentration for US children age five and younger has dropped from 15 µg/dL in 1976-1980 to 1.4 µg/dL in 2007-2008. This is important because lead is a neurotoxicant that can lead to developmental delays and behavioral problems, […]
Mr. Mitt Romney spoke this weekend at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual convention and kicked off his remarks applauding the gun-lovers group’s defense of the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. “This fine organization is sometimes called a single-issue group,” Romney said. “That’s high praise when the single issue is freedom. I love my freedom […]