- Officials said Friday that one of the worst U.S. wildfire seasons in terms of land burned is likely to keep scorching Western states and blanketing them with smoke until later this fall.
- City officials in San Diego declared a public health emergency Friday over an outbreak of hepatitis A that has been linked to at least 15 deaths and 400 hospitalizations.
- According to the latest government data, every state in the U.S. and its territories reported an obesity rate of either 20% or more. More than 1 in 4 Americans are obese in the U.S. according to the 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention obesity prevalence map.
News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 6th of September 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News
The smoke from massive wildfires hangs like fog over large parts of the U.S. West, an irritating haze causing health concerns, forcing sports teams to change schedules and disrupting life from Seattle to tiny Seeley Lake, Montana. Air quality has been rated unhealthy across the region because of blazes that show no signs of abating. Officials said Friday that one of the worst U.S. wildfire seasons in terms of land burned is likely to keep scorching Western states and masking them with smoke until later this fall. People who live in small towns to the populous San Francisco Bay Area have had enough.
As the long Labor Day weekend approached, several high school football teams changed their season-opening games to avoid the smoke, and other athletic events have been postponed.
A helicopter makes a water drop amid black smoke rising from a wildfire burning in the Tujunga area of Los Angeles, seen from nearby Burbank, California on September one,two thousand seventeen. Subdivisions full of houses are within a mile of the flames, and residents have been told to evacuate. In Southern California, an erratic wildfire just north of Los Angeles forced the closure of Interstate two hundred ten, an important link to routes in and out of town just as Labor Day weekend travel was starting. Firefighters had reduced the raging flames, but the freeway was expected to be shut down all night.
City officials in San Diego declared a public health emergency Friday over an outbreak of hepatitis A that has been linked to at least fifteen deaths and four hundred hospitalizations.
The liver disease outbreak started last November, with the homeless population affected most. The emergency declaration will help the city access state funds and provide legal protection for new sanitation measures, the Union-Tribune reported.
Areas with high concentrations of homeless people will receive roughly forty portable hand-washing stations to help combat the disease, which can spread through fecal matter when people fail to thoroughly clean their hands after using the restroom. Crews also plan to use bleach-spiked water for high-pressure washing to remove “all feces, blood, bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces,” according to a sanitation plan outlined in a letter Thursday.
Other cities in the region can expect to see similar hand-washing and street-sanitizing efforts, said Doctor Wilma Wooten, the region’s public health officer. After previous vaccination and educational programs failed to significantly reduce the infection rate, and with death reports spiking in recent weeks, San Diego decided to mimic a campaign used in Los Angeles, which is home to tens of thousands of homeless, in an attempt to curb the outbreak. The moves in San Diego follow finger-pointing between city and county officials, with both sides insisting they were doing the best they could under tough circumstances, the newspaper said.
According to the latest government data, every state in the U.S. and its territories reported an obesity rate of either twenty percent or more. More than one in four Americans are obese in the U.S. according to the two thousand sixteen Centers for Disease Control and Prevention obesity report. The state with the lowest obesity rate, Colorado, still came in as having twenty two point three percent of its population self-report as obese. West Virginia had the highest prevalence of obesity at thirty seven point seven percent. Across geography, the highest obesity rates were recorded in the southern states of the continental U.S. with an average of thirty two percent of the population obese. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi joining West Virginia with obesity rates above thirty five percent. The second most obese region is the Midwest or thirty one point four percent, followed by the Northeast or twenty six point nine percent, and then the West or twenty six percent. Obesity rates in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands were greater than thirty percent, and Guam was at twenty five percent.
The CDC notes that adults with less than a high school education had the highest rates of obesity at thirty five point five percent, followed by high school graduates at thirty two point three percent, adults with some college at thirty one percent, and college graduates at twenty two point two percent. Among racial groups, combined data from two thousand fourteen to two thousand sixteen found that self-reported obesity rates for blacks was thirty eight point three percent, for Hispanics thirty two point five percent, and whites twenty eight point one percent. Obesity leads to a number of health effects including type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, certain cancers, poor mental health and can cause problems with infertility and pregnancy. The CDC also says that obesity affects worker productivity, adds to health care costs and hinders the ability to serve in the military.