Many public health activists cheered this week’s announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that it plans to actually move ahead with research to better understand how manufactured nanomaterials may harm human health and the environment.
The tortuously protracted, unalterable progress of the growth of the first batches of H1N1 vaccine is almost over. Everyone concerned about the looming pandemic is closely watching the vaccine as it finally leaves it laboratory birthplace and is shipped to 90,000 health departments, hospitals and doctor’s offices that will administer the immunization.
What’s not getting the [...]
That’s only a drop in the bucket when it comes to what the world needs to control the evolving influenza pandemic, said the head of the World Health Organization as she praised the U.S. and nine other countries for donating vaccine to fight the spreading H1N1 flu.
Current supplies of pandemic vaccine are inadequate for a [...]
After years of cajoling from the U.S. Senate and pleading from health activists, the Office of the Surgeon General finally warned the public of the dangers of asbestos.
Back in April, then-acting Surgeon General Steven Galson issued a statement about the deadly fiber and the illness it causes.
It wasn’t literature. Just 341 words explaining the most [...]
Years ago, long before it became a marketing ploy to call everything “green,” the Environmental Protection Agency described, what it called, a green dream.
It was where millions and millions of pounds of useless tires were recycled into tire crumbs or tiny shreds and used to cover playgrounds and athletic fields to reduce injuries from falls [...]
Home much liquid did you consume today? Was it clean? Will you become ill, spawn a deformed child, get cancer, die a lingering death?
In an attempt to head off some of the pithy comments accusing me of being a fear monger, let me admit that, in this case, I am.
I don’t think most of us [...]
NEW – A link to the study on radiation risk to granite workers is now available.
The last time I wrote about radiation from granite kitchen countertops, the comments and e-mails flowed in for weeks.
Some people thought the finding was absurd, insisting there was really no risk to health. Others said they were going to [...]
If you want to talk about mixed signals, just step back a bit and look at the messages being sent and received on the care and treatment of the Swine Flu pandemic.
The Seattle Times ran a front-page story about the largest outbreak of H1N1 in the country, so far. Washington State University and community health [...]
A steady stream of people responded to my story on Thursday about a government panel of medical experts reporting that the standard paper surgical mask will do little or nothing to protect healthcare workers and everyone else from breathing in the H1N1 virus.
The panel from the Institute of Medicine and scientists at the CDC and [...]
Dr. John Howard, was named today as the new director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and will reoccupy his old office next week.
Howard served at the top gun in CDC’s crucial worker health research agency from 2002 through 2008 and also held the sometimes uncomfortable position of Coordinator of HHS’ World [...]
