| Healthy Indoor Environment First Step in Managing Allergic Diseases
Taking steps to reduce indoor air pollution and maintain a healthy home or office is the best defense against allergic diseases including chronic rhinosinusitis and asthma, according to a team of experts presenting the latest research at the Healthy Indoor Environment Conference held in conjunction with the ACAAI Annual Meeting. .
Today on the presidential campaign trail
Barack Obama underscores his foreign policy differences with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton ... Clinton garners endorsement from black ministers in South Carolina, singer-actress Barbra Streisand ... Mitt Romney suggests Rudy Giuliani liked Clinton's 1993 health care plan. ___ OBAMA-FOREIGN POLICY Obama calls for renewed approach to diplomacy, underscores his differences with Clinton PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) Democrat Barack Obama, confronting claims that he's light on foreign policy, surrounded himself Tuesday with heavyweights who said his differences with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and others are just what the country needs: A new leader willing to talk with America's enemies and become a better friend to struggling nations. Obama, closing the three-hour policy forum, said a president should be unafraid to meet with tyrants, and must restore the nation's moral authority by ending torture, closing Guantanamo Bay's military prison and helping fight global poverty and AIDS.
Novel MRI technique shows secondhand smoke damages lungs
CHICAGO � For the first time, researchers have identified structural damage to the lungs caused by secondhand cigarette smoke. The results of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville and The Children�s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). �It�s long been hypothesized that prolonged exposure to secondhand smoke may cause physical damage to the lungs, but previous methods of analyzing lung changes were not sensitive enough to detect it,� said Chengbo Wang, Ph.D., magnetic resonance physicist in the Department of Radiology at The Children�s Hospital of Philadelphia. In recent years, secondhand smoke has emerged as a public health threat.
Now, the Stick
Employers frustrated with mounting health-care costs for their workers have tried dangling a carrot to discourage bad habits such as smoking as well as behaviors that can lead to obesity, uncontrolled diabetes or high blood pressure. Now some employers are beginning to brandish a stick, docking pay, hiking insurance premiums or even banning employees from the workplace if they don't comply with off-site smoking bans. So far Midwestern companies have taken the lead; only a few Washington area employers have followed. Starting in January, Tribune Co. will require its employees, including 1,200 at the Baltimore Sun, to pay $100 a month more in insurance premiums if they or any of their covered family members smoke. .
Childhood Influenza Immunization Coalition Encourages Vaccination Throughout the Influenza Season
BETHESDA, Md. (Map) - BETHESDA, Md., Nov. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- To raise awareness of the need to vaccinate more infants, children and adolescents against influenza, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in conjunction with Families Fighting Flu, declared today, November 27, as the first ever "Children's Flu Vaccination Day." The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases' (NFID) Childhood Influenza Immunization Coalition commends this effort to emphasize the importance of annual influenza vaccination to protect children and their contacts from this serious and potentially deadly virus. "Influenza claims more American lives every year than all other vaccine- preventable diseases combined," said Richard H. Carmona, M.D., M.P.H., FACS, Coalition Chair, 17th Surgeon General of the United States (2002-2006), President of Canyon Ranch Institute and Distinguished Professor of Public Health, The University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.
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