San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Health

Public Hearing Today on Gregory Canyon Landfill in Escondido

by

A public hearing is being held today – Thursday, Jan. 31 – at 6pm on the Gregory Canyon Landfill, and it will be at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido.

The site proposed Gregory Canyon Landfill would negatively impact a sacred site of the Luiseño tribes of Pala Indians. San Diego County’s environmental impact report for the landfill admits that these impacts cannot be fixed. The proposed landfill site is also on a natural aquifer and near the San Luis Rey River, both important sources of drinking water for North County.

Landfills are an outdated way of handling waste. With higher recycling rates than ever and improved waste reduction strategies, the county does not need another place to bury its trash.

The hearing is at the California Center for the Arts, at 340 North Escondido Blvd. in Escondido.   [Read more…]

Parties Cry Foul at Public Uitlities Commission’s Investigation of San Onofre Nukes

by

By Women’s Energy Matters

Parties to the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) investigation of the San Onofre nuclear generating station outage are crying foul over ongoing procedural delays and a narrow Scoping Memo issued Tues. Jan. 28th.

Women’s Energy Matters, the Coalition to Decommission San Onofre, United Public Workers For Action and Michael Aguirre charge that both seem designed to force southern California customers to pay even higher rates in the next couple of years to fund Edison’s reckless plan to restart one of its severely damaged reactors —instead of getting immediate refunds for the year the nuclear plant has been offline. Parties ask CPUC to stop paying for these lemons now, and plan for permanent replacement resources instead.   [Read more…]

The Military Prepares for Warmaking but Not Its Medical Consequences

by

By Kathy Gilberd

Many observers say that the military medical system is broken. Military doctors and other medical professionals are too few to handle the multitude of physical and psychological illnesses and injuries engendered by two wars and other “engagements,” repeated deployments, and intense and rigorous training that injures many even before they are sent to combat zones.

Soldiers are often denied access to medical care or pressured to avoid reporting injuries by military command units anxious to keep available troop numbers high. And recent changes to the medical discharge and retirement system, intended in part to speed processing of medical separations, have actually slowed the system down, with many ill or injured service members waiting well over a year to be retired or returned to duty.   [Read more…]

PSA: Carbon Monoxide Alarms Now Required in Apartments and Homes

by

As of January 1, 2013 all California apartments with an in-unit fossil-fuel powered appliance (fireplace, stove, furnace, water heater, etc.) or attached garage are required to have a carbon monoxide alarm installed. This requirement is from the Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Prevention Act (Senate Bill 183) and was applicable to single-family homes as of July 1, 2011.

I was motivated to write this article after moving into an apartment earlier this month which has a gas dryer, gas fireplace, gas stove, and gas furnace all in-unit but was not equipped with a CO alarm as required. I imagine this is not uncommon across the county and wanted residents to be aware of the danger and the steps they can take to protect themselves.

more inside….   [Read more…]

Reporting Factory Farm Abuses to be Considered ‘Act of Terrorism’ If New Laws Pass

by

By Katherine Paul and Ronnie Cummins / Alternet

How do you keep consumers in the dark about the horrors of factory farms? By making it an “act of terrorism” for anyone to investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on the corporate-controlled farms that produce the bulk of our meat, eggs and dairy products.

And who better to write the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, than the lawyers on the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the corporate-funded and infamous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms. Lawmakers in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012. The laws passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah. But consumer and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.   [Read more…]

Federal Court Denies Lawsuit Claiming Marijuana’s Medical Benefits

by

By Steven Wishnia / Alternet

Preserving the main legal barrier to medical marijuana, a federal appeals court on Jan. 22 rejected a lawsuit intended to force the Drug Enforcement Administration to move marijuana out of Schedule I, the federal law that classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug with no valid medical use.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that the medical-marijuana advocates who filed the suit—Americans for Safe Access, a California-based patient-advocacy group; the Coalition to Reschedule Cannabis, Patients Out of Time, and four individual medical users, including Air Force veteran Michael Krawitz—had not proved that the DEA’s decision to keep marijuana in Schedule I was “arbitrary and capricious.” The court held that marijuana had failed to meet the five standards the DEA sets for drugs to qualify as having a valid medical use.

  [Read more…]

To Bike or Not To Bike? That is a good question.

by

By Brigitte Taylor

I love the idea of cycling all over town and the trend to encourage people (and currently women, in particular, to ride bikes.

Ideas are great, but as a result of biking in Mission Valley, Old Town, North Park, Downtown, College Area, City Heights and various parts of the city, I definitely have a new take on what it means to share the road with vehicles. I used to ride my bike frequently until I was knocked off by a driver. Thankfully, I was not injured but after that, I limited my rides to mountain biking and bike paths where road sharing is not an issue.

I decided that it was time to start riding on city streets again last year. Riding my bike on El Cajon Boulevard, I must admit, can be daunting. Depending on where you are riding, some of the lanes are so narrow that the cars parked on the street will position a cyclist in the middle of the lane for vehicles meaning that we literally must share the same lane with vehicles. The traffic is quite rapid and, in my experience, people are fairly hasty and do not drive in a manner or speed that promotes comfortable riding of a bike in the middle of the street. I noted the streets have designated lanes for the bikes; however, these lanes are in or near the same spaces along with vehicles. While I have noted more courtesy among drivers, I still think there should be a designated area specifically for bicycles.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – California Tobacco Taxes on the Agenda for 2014

by

A group that includes Ca. Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom is backing an initiative for the mid-term elections to add $1 per pack to the state tobacco tax, and use the money for college scholarships and financial aid.

An early version of the initiative filed last month indicates revenues with be directed exclusively through the California Student Aid Commission. Monies, as much a $750 in its first year, would be kept separate from the state’s general fund.

Supporters of the tax are optimistic about their chances, pointing out the relatively low level of the existing tax, the narrow margin of the vote on Proposition 29 in 2012, and the fact this measure will avoid a fight not over bureaucracy and research by channeling the proceeds to college tuitions.

Inside: More Gunnutia, Earth Day Update, Corruption on Wall Street….   [Read more…]

Monsanto’s Earnings Nearly Double as They Create a Farming Monopoly

by

By Charlotte Silver / Al Jazeera / Alternet

Last week Monsanto  announced staggering profits from 2012 to celebratory shareholders while American farmers filed into Washington, DC to challenge the Biotech giant’s right to sue farmers whose fields have become contaminated with Monsanto’s seeds. On January 10 oral arguments began before the U.S. Court of Appeals to decide whether to reverse the cases’ dismissal last February.

Monsanto’s earnings nearly doubled analysts’ projections and its total revenue reached $2.94bn at the end of 2012. The increased price of Roundup herbicide, continued market domination in the United States and, perhaps most significant, expanded markets in Latin America are all contributing factors to Monsanto’s booming business.   [Read more…]

Marijuana Smoothie, Anyone?

by

By Laura Gottesdiener / Alternet

One of the nation’s leading cannabis doctors has an idea for a New Year’s diet: a marijuana smoothie. Dr. William Courtney, who has spent years researching the potential health benefits of medical marijuana, argues that juicing whole hemp plants can provide a host of healing properties, ranging from pain relief to even helping prevent diseases like cancer.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: 2012 Was Warmest Year Ever For US

by

The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.2 degrees above normal and a full degree higher than the previous warmest year recorded — 1998 — NOAA said in a recent report. All 48 states in the contiguous U.S. had above-average annual temperatures last year, including 19 that broke annual records, from Connecticut through Utah.

It was also a historic year for “extreme” weather, scientists with the federal agency said. With 11 disasters that surpassed $1 billion in losses, including Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Isaac, and tornadoes across the Great Plains, Texas, and the Southeast and OhioValley, NOAA said 2012 was second only to 1998 in the agency’s “extreme” weather index. However, the dollar costs may well indeed pass the 1998 level because of the severity of the events.

The average temperature for the US was 55.3 degrees, one full degree hotter than the previous record in 1998 and 3.2 degrees hotter than the 20th century average. Nineteen states — including Texas, New York, Ohio and Oklahoma — had their highest annual average temperatures on record; 26 others had years that ranked in the top-10 hottest ever.   [Read more…]

Some ‘Why?’ Questions – Part 3 of a Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe

by

Continued from Part 2
By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

WHY does America’s weakly regulated gun culture vs. that in Europe correlate to out-of-sight gun homicide rates in the U.S.? One WHY answer is that there are higher levels of U.S. criminality compared to England, Switzerland, Norway, and other EU countries … illustrated by the number of U.S. citizens in prison per 100,000 population of  750 ± vs. 100 ± in the EU! (see European Institute for Crime Prevention & Control, “International Statistics on Crime and Justice,” 2010).

Our sub-cultures of violent and less violent crime justify for many Americans the constitutional argument of self-defense, thus allowing high cartridge capacity, semi-automatic firearms of all sorts to roll off gun manufacturers’ production lines. We are at a crossroads … where it’s not only the high gun ownership level that contributes to high homicide rates but also the high level of crime and military-style killings by the emotionally unbalanced (as occurred in Newtown) that motivate more people to acquire guns for self-defense.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry