We’re hearing a lot of rhetoric about the need to slash government spending, so it’s a good time to remind everyone that there’s no such thing as a free lunch – and if you think you’re getting a free lunch, it might be loaded with pathogens. Maryn McKenna, writing at Superbug about a New England […]
By Dick Clapp An ambitious paper was released in Boston last week, with subsequent media coverage in local, national and international outlets (see, for example the New York Times’ Green Blog and Reuters). The first author, Paul Epstein, was interviewed on the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise, which was anchored in the Boston Harbor as […]
Environmental Health
The Great Leap Backward – Do we really want to roll back regulations and look more like China?
By Elizabeth Grossman As I’ve watched the hearings House Republicans have been holding over the past couple of weeks on the economic impact of environmental and occupational health and safety regulations, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned about and seen of the working and environmental conditions in places that are now the hub of […]
Freshman Congressman Larry D. Bucshon (R) of Evansville, Indiana is a cardiothoracic surgeon. His father was an underground coal miner and a member of the United Mine Workers Union for 37 years. Both his grandparents were coal miners. But, Republican-controlled Capitol Hill is now the Twilight Zone when I heard him say the following last […]
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is holding its annual meeting in DC this week, and the organization is presenting awards to “professional journalists for distinguished reporting for a general audience.” An endowment from the Kavli Foundation funds the awards program, which gives $3,000 and a plaque to each winner. I wasn’t surprised […]
Budget proposals are flying up and down Washington DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol Hill, as lawmakers and the President wrestle with funding plans for the current and next fiscal years. The House began debate this week on HR 1 (359 pages), a bill to appropriate funds to federal agencies for the […]
Public Health Practice
Clean water and education could outperform vaccines at reducing Haiti cholera epidemic
Cross-posted from the American Geophysical Union’s GeoSpace blog. Even though the deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti is now spreading more slowly, health officials are still working to prevent as many new cases as possible. Detailed models of the disease’s spread help those in charge of making public health decisions understand the effectiveness of control measures, […]
Environmental Health
National Contingency Plan Left Gulf Inadequately Prepared for Health Effects of Deepwater Horizon Disaster
By Elizabeth Grossman Since release of its Final Report to the President on January 11th, the National Oil Spill Commission has released five additional papers (called “working papers”) reviewing aspects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil disaster – three on February 3rd and two on February 8th. On February 11th, National Oil Spill Commissioners Don Boesch […]
The Kaiser Family Foundation has just released a report on the future of global health journalism, and it’s not surprising to hear that the traditional model of covering global health is crumbling. KFF commissioned journalists Nellie Bristol and John Donnelly to conduct this research, and their interviews with 51 stakeholders found that challenges abound. Budget […]
Environmental Health
Behind the kitchen door: low wages, few benefits for many U.S. restaurant workers
Annual sales revenue in the nation’s restaurant industry tops $515 billion, but few of the 10.3 million workers in the industry earn a living wage. Those are the findings released today of comprehensive surveys of working conditions for 1,700 restaurant workers employed in Washington DC, Miami and Los Angeles. To date, more than 4,300 workers […]