Health stories in the news

EPA to study health risks of chemical in widely-used weed-killer

The Environmental Protection Agency will announce today plans to study the possible health risks of atrazine, a herbicide commonly used in agriculture, landscaping maintenance and even home lawn care and which is now one of the most common contaminants found in U.S. drinking water, New York Times correspondent Charles Duhigg reports.

For years, the E.P.A. has decided against acting on calls to ban the chemical from environmental activists and some scientists who argued that runoff was polluting ecosystems and harming animals.

More recently, new studies have suggested that atrazine in drinking water is associated with birth defects, low birth weights and reproductive problems among humans, even at concentrations that meet current federal standards.

To learn more:

• Read Duhigg’s article Regulators Plan to Study Risks of Atrazine

Health officials seek to combat swine flu “myths”

Dr. Thomas Frieden

New York Times reporter Donald McNeil, Jr. today writes about efforts by U.S. health officials to calm concerns about the safety of the vaccine against the new H1N1 swine flu and to rebut charges that the government is hyping a disease that is, in fact, mild.

McNeil quotes Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

While most people recover, he said, “on average, flu is not a ‘mild’ illness — it can make you pretty sick, knock you out for a day or two or three.” And in rare cases, he emphasized, it kills.

He rejected suggestions that the new vaccine is untested. Its seed strain was created, grown and purified in the same slow way as seasonal flu shots, which hundreds of millions of people have had, and rapid clinical trials last month showed the same lack of serious side effects.

To learn more:

• Read McNeil’s piece Swine Flu Vaccinations Start as Officials Attack Myths.
• Go to our page listing local online swine flu resources.

Local Latino leaders decry health-reform proposals that deny care for immigrants

In an op-ed piece in today’s Seattle Times, Rogelio Riojas is CEO and president of Sea Mar Community Health Centers and Estela Ortega is executive director of El Centro de la Raza, both nonprofit organizations based in Seattle. Jesus Hernandez is executive director of Community Choice Health Care Network in Wenatchee call healthcare reform proposals that would limit immigrants’ access to healthcare both unfair and unwise:

Among the worst proposals is one that would leave uninsured millions of U.S.-born children whose parents do not have citizenship papers. Even if their parents are not citizens, our laws consider children born in the U.S. as citizens, and they are both legally and morally entitled to be treated as citizens. It is unconscionable and inhumane even to consider leaving innocent children without health-care coverage.

To learn more:

• Read the op-ed article: Don’t use health-reform debate as anti-immigrant vehicle.
• Visit the Web sites of -
  • Sea Mar Community Health Centers
  • El Centro de la Raza
  • Community Choice Health Care Network

Category: News