My Smartphone Is A Microscope. What Can Yours Do?
I lied. My smartphone isn’t a microscope — yet. But there are some smart physicists who want to make that transformation possible very soon, if not for you and me at first, then for doctors who don’t have easy access to laboratories. There are a lot of ways to trick out your smartphone. And if [...]
Undercover School Lunch Blogger ‘Mrs. Q’ Reveals Herself
School lunch is a topic of endless fascination here at The Salt and, really, wherever parents of school age children compare notes. If we don’t have time to pack their lunch, what exactly are the 32 million kids, including ours, eating? Well, the secret of what’s on the lunch tray has been out for some [...]
Penalties For ‘Worst’ Hospitals Could Hurt Minorities
Rating the best hospitals has become commonplace, with U.S. News & World Report, various research firms and lots of websites routinely issuing rankings. Now some health researchers have come up with a way to evaluate which hospitals are the worst. In a paper just published in the policy journal Health Affairs, three researchers classified 3,229 [...]
Women Exposed To Hormone In Utero Face Lifelong Health Problems
Back in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, doctors prescribed a hormone called diethylstilbestrol, or DES, to millions of pregnant women in the unfounded belief it would prevent miscarriages. Smack in the middle of this period, the deformed thalidomide babies demonstrated the terrible things that can happen when drugs are casually prescribed during pregnancy. But the [...]
Potato Lobby Turns Up The Heat In School Lunch Battle
When the potato lobby speaks, it always puts its best spuds forward. Yesterday at a National Press Club lunchtime briefing to promote the nutritional value of the vegetable, that meant a full bar of baked potatoes, french fries (baked, not fried), sour cream, cheddar cheese, chopped tomatoes, spinach and broccoli. Yes, according to sources close [...]
BPA To Be Banned In Calif. Baby Bottles, Sippy Cups
California Gov. Jerry Brown’s hand must be tired. He signed 18 bills on children’s health and safety into state law Tuesday. One of them, AB1319, prohibits the sale of any baby bottles or cups that contain more than 0.1 parts per billion bisphenol A. The chemical, found in some hard plastics, has come under fire [...]
Budget Cuts Deal Setbacks To Community Health Centers
Community health centers were among the big winners in the health care overhaul since the law provided $11 billion over five years to expand their ability to see millions more patients. But hundreds of health centers aren’t feeling so lucky any more. That’s because the Obama administration scaled back some of the expansion plans this [...]
Despite His Public Prominence, Jobs Waged Health Battle Privately
Even now, after Steve Jobs’ death, there’s more we don’t know about his health problems than we do know. In a Stanford commencement speech in 2005, Jobs talked about the inevitability of death, and, in rare personal detail, about how he dealt with his cancer diagnosis. Doctors found a tumor on his pancreas during a [...]
To Keep Required Insurance Affordable, Start With Price
It may not be the sexiest piece of last year’s health overhaul law, but it’s one that has given small businesses and insurers a lot of heartburn. What exactly should be required when it comes to benefits? Starting in 2014, every health plan in the new marketplaces known as “exchanges” will have to provide a [...]
Cantaloupe Recall Due To Listeria Expands To Pre-Cut Fruit Salads
The FDA just announced another recall in connection to the listeria outbreak in cantaloupes that has been blamed for at least 18 deaths and 100 illnesses since August. This time the potential suspect is a growing segment of the grocery market — those pre-cut chunks of cantaloupe that get mixed in with various other fruits [...]
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