April 08, 2011 | Crain’s Detroit Business
Asthma is a serious chronic disease, afflicting more than 1 million people in Michigan and 20 million people nationwide.
But Southeast Michigan isn’t even in the top 10 as far as environmental and medical factors and numbers of people affected, according to a new study by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Detroit was ranked 23rd and Grand Rapids 62nd in the U.S., the foundation said of its Asthma […]
April 5, 2013 | Detroit Free Press
An estimated 535,000 young children in the U.S. have harmful levels of lead in their bodies, putting them at risk of lost intelligence, attention disorders and other lifelong health problems, according to a new estimate released Thursday by federal health officials.
The new number shows lead poisoning affects 1 in 38 children ages 1 to 5, according to the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. […]
April 4, 2013 | The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — More than half a million U.S. children are now believed to have lead poisoning, roughly twice the previous high estimate, health officials reported Thursday.
The increase is the result of the government last year lowering the threshold for lead poisoning, so now more children are considered at risk.
March 18, 2013 | NPR
Nothing sends more kids to the hospital than asthma. So when doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston noticed they kept seeing an unusually high number of asthmatic kids from certain low-income neighborhoods, they wondered if they could do something about the environment these kids were living in.
March 15, 2013|HuffPost
Erin Pavlica’s family pediatrician had never recommended a blood lead test for any of her three children. And when she came in with her daughter Quinn in January, just after the girl’s first birthday, the nurse initially brushed off her request for the test.
“She was like, ‘Oh really? Why?’” recalled Pavlica, of St. Paul, Minn.
Pavlica pushed. Eventually, Quinn’s lead level was checked and the result came back at just over 9 […]
March 5, 2013 | Michigan Radio
Ridding Detroit of thousands of burned-out and dilapidated structures is an ongoing issue in the city struggling for a comeback.
And there’s a pilot project under way to figure out if there’s a way to do it in a way that gets jobs, adds value and does no environmental damage.
Using 10 abandoned houses as a case study, a pilot project in Detroit’s Springwells Village is under way to evaluate the […]
January/February 2013 Issue | Mother Jones
WHEN RUDY GIULIANI RAN FOR MAYOR of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again. It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy image, but it was more than mere posturing. Since 1960, rape rates had nearly quadrupled, murder had quintupled, and robbery had grown fourteenfold. New Yorkers felt like they lived […]
February, 28, 2013 | Scientific American
DETROIT – When Renee Thomas moved into her two-story home two years ago, she had no idea it posed a hidden threat to her four children.
But a new city law forced her landlord to check the century-old house for lead contamination. Old, deteriorating paint had left lead dust on its windows, floors and porch. Through a patchwork of grants and city partnerships, the contamination was cleaned up. […]
February 27, 2013 | TIME
Lead exposure may be on the decline, but it’s still taking its toll on children’s performance in school.
Legal requirements to remove lead from gasoline, paint and other common products have led to decreases in lead exposure. But remnants of the metal remain, according to the latest study, and this legacy may be enough to affect children’s cognitive functions.
February 25, 2013 | Michigan Radio Newsroom
A study by researchers at the University of Michigan links lead exposure in children to lower achievement on standardized tests.
It’s published in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Click here to read the study.
From the study:
Detroit has an extensive lead poisoning problem. Although only 20% of Michigan’s children younger than 5 years lived in Detroit in 2010, childhood lead poisoning in Detroit has […]