"One of the oldest known workplace dangers is breathing in tiny bits of silica, which is basically sand. Even the ancient Greeks knew that stone cutters got sick from breathing in dust. And today, nearly 2 million American workers are exposed to silica dust in jobs ranging from construction to manufacturing."
An asthma inhaler rigged to a GPS device? Just as this new medical tech device may help researchers determine the precise triggers of asthma attacks, the emerging field of geomedicine promises to help correlate environmental conditions with health risks.
"COTTRELLVILLE, Mich. -- The fight has been under way for several years, but the momentum may have peaked on a night in June 2011. That was the night of a community meeting in Marine City to discuss a startling spate of rare kidney cancers identified in area children -- one as young as 5 months."
"BRUSSELS -- Long-term exposure to fine particles of pollutants in the air can trigger adverse birth outcomes, childhood respiratory diseases and atherosclerosis, the World Health Organization warned today.
"Vitamin D plays a pivotal role in a number of disorders. Now scientists are investigating whether the 'sunshine vitamin' could be implicated in autism. With autism rates climbing and levels of vitamin D declining because of more sunscreen use and less time spent outdoors, scientists have begun to look into a possible link."
"Chevron ignored potentially life-threatening dangers to workers at its Richmond refinery and should pay a record fine of nearly $1 million stemming from the fire there in August, state regulators said Wednesday."
"Did you have a nasty case of food poisoning this year? Chances are that fruit or vegetables were the culprit."
"We’ve come a long way since the days when kids played in clouds of DDT, gas stations sold leaded gasoline, and smoking near youngsters was commonplace."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned 12 rodent poisons made by the United Kingdom-based Reckitt Benckiser Inc. because the products failed to abide by safety regulations, the agency announced Wednesday."
Sunlight cures many ills. A month after watchdog Sheila Kaplan exposed a White House blackout of an EPA report on children's environmental health, the Obama administration uncorked it. Of course, the timing may have had something to do with the election as well; EPA announced its publication January 25, just a few days after the inauguration.
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