Articles Tagged with ''public health''

For years, Montreal resident Brent George bought replacement water filters for his refrigerator from a local appliance store. Then one time he turned to Amazon, where he often shopped for other products. Besides being more convenient, the online filters he selected — sold by a third party and not by manufacturer Whirlpool — were also cheaper.

January is National Radon Action Month, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is encouraging Americans around the country to test their homes for radon, the second leading cause of lung cancer. “Radon exposure is one of the most important public health issues affecting Americans today,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

Some 2,561 people were hospitalized last year for lung injuries associated with e-cigarette, or vaping, product use EVALI, according to the CDC. EVALI hospitalizations or deaths were reported by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 2 U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Have a cockroach problem? Before you order pesticides online, consider this: the EPA has issued a “Stop Sale” order to online marketplace Bonanza.com requiring the company to immediately halt sales of a dozen imported pesticide products not legal -- or safe -- for sale in the United States. Among the unregistered, illegal pesticides targeted by the order is “Miraculous Insecticide Chalk" -dangerous because of its documented history of causing illness in children who mistake the chalk for regular sidewalk or black board chalk.

From an outbreak of mysterious lung-injury deaths to America’s near loss of measles elimination status, the beginning of the end of the U.S. HIV epidemic to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), CDC worked around the clock – and around the globe – to protect Americans from domestic and global health threats in 2019.

The percentage of high school seniors who reported vaping marijuana within a month of being surveyed jumped from 7.5 percent in 2018 to 14 percent in 2019, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The data analyzed in the study indicate that this was the second largest single-year jump for teen use of any substance since the survey began in 1975 – second only to another vaping-related increase, of nicotine use, between 2017 and 2018.

Although the CDC recommends that people get vaccinated for the flu early in the fall, getting vaccinated now can still be beneficial in protecting you from the flu virus. Furthermore, vaccination should continue to be offered throughout the flu season, even into January or later.