by Celeste Monforton From the Ground Zero construction site to an expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport, the tide seems to be turning for cleaner diesel engines, particulate filters and low-sulfur fuels. As Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter Alex Frangos writes: âInstead of belching black smoke, the bucket loaders, cranes and other diesel-power behemothsâ are […]
by Dick Clapp Atul Gawande is well-known around Boston because of his skills as a surgeon, but also for his books and articles in the New Yorker, and his interviews with local media. He was a recipient of one of this yearâs MacArthur grants, in recognition of his work. I got one of his books, […]
by Liz Borkowski Nearly half of Mumbaiâs 18 million residents live in unofficial settlements called zopadpatti. In one of these areas, Dharavi, estimates suggest there is one toilet for every 1,4440 people, tap water flows for only two hours each day, and approximately 15 families share each water tap. Around the globe, rural residents are […]
by Celeste Monforton Who was the most compelling speaker at last weekâs 134th annual meeting of the American Public Health Association? It wasnât a scholarly epidemiologist warning about pandemic flu, or an emeritus professor presenting research on health disparities. No, the superstar speaker was a petite grandmother, wearing a red âHotel Workers Rising!â t-shirt.
by David Ozonoff My new Pump Handle blog colleague, “Revere”, has posted on NIH’s proposal to limit the Research Plan section of Research Project Grant applications to 15 pages, down from the current 25. He/she/they (Revere’s blog, Effect Measure, is ambiguous as to how many Reveres there are) also gives a peek into the NIH […]
The story of the pump handle is familiar to any first-semester public health student: During the London cholera epidemic of 1854, John Snow examined maps of cholera cases and traced the disease to water from a local pump. At the time, the prevailing theory held that cholera spread through the air, rather than water, so […]