Fort Bragg, a lovely community on California’s North Coast, made the New York Times last week. The community and its people, like so many on the North Coast, lived by the timber industry for over 100 years. Six years ago, the Georgia-Pacific lumber mill in Fort Bragg closed and left behind ash pits loaded with dioxin and other toxins. [Read more…]

If you want to get in good physical shape, live in an affluent neighborhood with a supportive community spirit and lots of women. At least that’s one of the conclusions you could draw from a recent study of the relative effect that a neighborhood’s social support systems and degree of affluence have on how much people in the neighborhood exercise. [Read more…]

Financial and economic ministers from around the world met this last Sunday in Washington, DC and, of all things, talked about food. This might have been a way to dodge talking about crumbling conditions in the world’s capital markets. But something more imminent seemed to be on their minds. [Read more…]

I just watched the first of a four part series on PBS titled “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” California Newsreel produced this documentary about all the ways in which inequity fundamentally affects health. I encourage you to look in your TV listings for it or go to the California Newsreel website unnaturalcauses.org. [Read more…]

There was a flurry of news reports recently about parents who opt out of having their children vaccinated. Sometimes they don’t vaccinate their kids at all and sometimes it’s only for specific vaccines. This trend has the medical and public health establishment worried. [Read more…]

I purchased new razor blades recently. Thinking I was getting comparable quality at a bargain price, I bought an in-store brand that was about half the price of the name brand. The bargain blades ripped my face to shreds. After trying three, I gave up and bought the name brand. My face is much happier now. [Read more…]

Most of us work in a building. If you’re an employee, you work in your company’s building. Even if you’re independent you often have to work in your client’s building. Outside sales representatives who visit customers end up working in those customer’s buildings. [Read more…]

If you work evening or night shifts, you’re at greater risk of stress-related illnesses such as heart attacks and diabetes. Shift workers are also more likely to get injured on the job at almost twice the rate of day workers. [Read more…]

We’re all understandably worried about climate change. Information is churning away in our information age about what it means and what we can do: reduce our carbon footprint, purchase carbon offsets when we can’t, and support legislation that forces manufacturers to offer low greenhouse alternatives. Without these actions, scientists like those who sit on the Nobel Prize winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict significant effects on public health such as increased incidence infectious disease. [Read more…]

The New York Times published an article on fibromyalgia yesterday titled “Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?” What the article describes is creepy for what it reveals about health care in this country, in particular the warped logic that counts for medical reasoning. [Read more…]