this pressed: Public Health: Top 10 Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in Pictures|via WebMD

2. Whooping Cough (Pertussis) What it is: A lung infection that makes it hard to breathe due to severe coughing. How you get it: People can breathe in the pertussis bacteria when someone who has whooping cough coughs or sneezes. Why it’s serious: It can be life-threatening, especially in babies less than 1 year old. Whooping cough can lead to pneumonia, seizures, and slowed or stopped breathing. Get the WebMD list of the top 10 vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, whooping cough, flu, polio, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease, mumps, Hib, tetanus, and hepatitis B.

2. Whooping Cough (Pertussis)

What it is: A lung infection that makes it hard to breathe due to severe coughing.

How you get it: People can breathe in the pertussis bacteria when someone who has whooping cough coughs or sneezes.

Why it’s serious: It can be life-threatening, especially in babies less than 1 year old. Whooping cough can lead to pneumonia, seizures, and slowed or stopped breathing.

Get the WebMD list of the top 10 vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, whooping cough, flu, polio, pneumococcal disease, meningococcal disease, mumps, Hib, tetanus, and hepatitis B.

Source: Top 10 Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in Pictures|via WebMD

On the 30th anniversary of Bhopal: No one talks much about toxic Superfund sites anymore. But 49 million Americans live close to one.|National Geografic

National Geografic- Waateland – About Toxic Superfund Sites

No one talks much about toxic Superfund sites anymore. But 49 million Americans live close to one.

By Paul Voosen

Photographs by Fritz Hoffmann

Bettmann/Corbis

LOVE CANAL Niagara Falls, New York

“Not in my backyard.” The phrase, like the Superfund law, may have its roots here, where homes were built on a chemical waste dump.

Today nearly one in six Americans lives within three miles of a major hazardous

For most of his adult life Jun Apostol has lived, willingly, in the shadow of a mountain of waste. An accountant who’s now retired, he planted his family in 1978 in a modest new house in Montebello, an industrial cum bedroom community just east of Los Angeles. Behind the house, in neighboring Monterey Park, sat an active landfill—but don’t worry, the developer said. Soon it would close and become a park or maybe even a golf course.

The greens never came. It turned out that the landfill, a former gravel pit that had welcomed so much ordinary trash it had filled to ground level and then kept on rising, had also accepted some 300 million gallons of liquid industrial waste—and it hadn’t been selective. Was your waste laced with arsenic, 1,4-dioxane, or mercury? No problem. The nodding pump jacks nearby, left from the oil boom, wouldn’t care. Some of the waste might have come from drilling those oil wells.

Los Angeles had buried the hazardous waste, but it was far from gone. A few years after Apostol’s development was built, his neighbors began complaining of nausea. Gas had intruded into six homes. Property values plummeted. In 1986 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency marched in and listed the landfill as a Superfund site, part of its new program to contain the nation’s hazardous waste crisis.

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Suicide Takes a Life Every 40 Seconds

The suicide of beloved actor and comedian Robin Williams last month brought the typically taboo subject to the fore, yet this “major public health problem” is all too often ignored. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 800,000 people take their own lives each year. That is about one person every 40 seconds. The introduction of a national suicide prevention strategy has proven effective, but just 28 countries have done so. The WHO is therefore calling on the nations of the world to take action, with the goal of reducing suicide deaths by 10 percent by 2020. More… Discuss

Preventing Alzheimer’s

Researchers say a third of the world’s Alzheimer’s cases are preventable. They found that diabetes, mid-life hypertension, mid-life obesity, physical inactivity, depression, smoking, and poor education are all risk factors in the development of Alzheimer’s that can potentially be addressed to reduce risk. According to their calculations, reducing each risk factor by 10 percent could prevent nearly nine million cases of Alzheimer’s by 2050. More… Discuss

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Mosquito-Borne Virus Spreads to Caribbean and US

Chikungunya, a debilitating, mosquito-borne viral disease that causes fever and potentially long-term joint pain, has long troubled Africa and Asia, but it is now rapidly spreading to other parts of the globe. It was first detected in the Caribbean in December, and there have since been nearly 5,000 confirmed cases and more than 160,000 suspected cases in the region. There have also been 57 infections reported in the US this year, and though all were thus far acquired outside the US, experts believe it is only a matter of time before it spreads throughout the Americas. More… Discuss

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Antibiotic Resistance Is Global Threat

The “post-antibiotic era” is bearing down on us, and if we do not make some changes soon, it will only be a matter of time before antibiotics are powerless to protect us from diseases that have been treatable for decades. World Health Organization (WHO) data reveal that antibiotic-resistan t bacteria are now apparent in “every region of the world,” posing a major threat to public health. The WHO is urging governments around the globe to prioritize the development of new lines of antibiotics while at the same time taking steps to slow the progression of resistance. More… Discuss

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Law’s Expanded Medicaid Coverage Brings a Surge in Sign-Ups – NYTimes.com

“America ranks near the bottom of developed countries in health and longevity, and many public health experts believe that improving that ranking will be impossible without paying more attention to poor Americans. It is still an open question whether access to health insurance will improve the health of the disadvantaged in the long run, experts say, but the men and women getting the coverage here say the mere fact of having it has drastically improved their mental health.”

via Law’s Expanded Medicaid Coverage Brings a Surge in Sign-Ups – NYTimes.com.

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CHILDREN MAY BENEFIT FROM ONLINE HEALTH RECORDS

Parents who access their babies’ health records online are more likely to take their children to all of their recommended well visits and may also be more likely to keep youngsters up to date on their vaccinations. This does not mean that viewing these health records compels parents to take their children for regular checkups. After all, it is possible that parents who take advantage of these sorts of tools are simply more proactive than others when it comes to their children’s healthcare. Still, it does appear that such online systems are a useful tool for caregivers. More… Discuss