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Lake County, California, is in a high geothermal-activity area. Over the past 30 years, the city of Clearlake has reported health effects and building evacuations related to geothermal venting. Previous investigations in Clearlake revealed hydrogen sulfide at levels known to cause health effects and methane at levels that can cause explosion risks. The authors conducted an investigation in multiple cities and towns in Lake County to understand better the risk of geothermal venting to the community. They conducted household surveys and outdoor air sampling of hydrogen sulfide and methane and found community members were aware of geothermal venting and some expressed concerns. The authors did not, however, find hydrogen sulfide above the California Environmental Protection Agency air quality standard of 30 parts per billion over one hour or methane above explosive thresholds. The authors recommend improving risk communication, continuing to monitor geothermal gas effects on the community, and using community reports and complaints to monitor and document geothermal venting incidents., Introduction Lake County, California, is in north central California, north of San Francisco Bay. Lake County sits on tectonic plate conjunctions, generally described as areas where separate slabs of the [...]

We assessed inhalation risks to California communities from airborne agricultural pesticides by probability distribution analysis using ambient air data provided by the California Air Resources Board and the California Department [...]

Commercial laboratories in the US that do hair analysis are unreliable. Researchers sent pieces of one hair from one volunteer to six different laboratories. All six gave different results for most minerals and even used different reference values to determine what a normal mineral level should be. They also provided different dietary advice based on the results.

OBJECTIVES. Asthma prevalence for different ethnic groups in the United States, beyond white, black and Hispanic, is seldom reported. We compared the prevalence of asthma diagnosis among various Hispanic and Asian American ethnic subgroups using data collected from the school-based California Healthy Kids Survey. METHODS. The California Healthy Kids Survey was administered to 462 147 public school students in the seventh, ninth, and 11th grades throughout California during the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 school years. Prevalence of lifetime asthma diagnosis was calculated for 11 Asian American Pacific Islander subgroups and 8 Hispanic subgroups. RESULTS. Asthma prevalence among Hispanic subgroups ranged from 13.2% for Mexican American students to 22.8% for Puerto Rican students and 23.0% among Cuban American students. Lifetime asthma diagnosis among the 11 Asian American Pacific Islander subgroups ranged from 10.9% among Korean American students to 23.8% among Filipino American students. CONCLUSIONS. The survey revealed substantial variation in asthma prevalence between the different Hispanic and Asian American Pacific Islander subgroups and that Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans are at elevated risk for asthma. Differences in the distributions of characteristics related to country of birth, residential history, generational status, and/or degree of acculturation might account for much of the observed differences in asthma prevalence between ethnic subgroups. Previous asthma prevalence estimates for Asians or Hispanics are in part a function of the particular ethnic composition of the population under investigation. We suggest that asthma studies that include a substantial number of Asian Pacific Islander and Hispanic persons use a more detailed categorization of race/ethnicity. KEY WORDS. asthma, prevalence, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, ethnicity, race., URL: www.pediatrics.org/cgi/doi/10.1542/peds.2005-2687 Adam M. Davis, MPH, MA, Richard Kreutzer, MD, Michael Lipsett, MD, JD, Galatea King, MPH, Nazerah Shaikh, [...]

Data on maternal smoking during pregnancy are required for many important public health activities related to tobacco consumption, including surveillance, identification of women at high risk for smoking, program evaluation, […]