Latest news with #healthhazards
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Urgent recall for over 3 million hoses
By Meanwhile, the manufacturing date is listed in a month-year format and typically located near the package's barcode. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) advises owners to stop using the hoses immediately, and contact Winston Products for a full refund. Many summer essentials have been recalled this year due to a variety of health hazards. An urgent recall was issued earlier this month for about five million above-ground swimming pools after a design flaw was linked to nine child drownings. The recall covered 48-inch and taller pools made by Bestway, Intex, and Polygroup that use compression straps. Endless Pools recalled thousands of pool covers a month prior after discovering they could potentially lead to injury or death. Like the pool covers, no illnesses or deaths from ingesting the recalled foods were reported. Besides summer essentials, record-breaking recalls have been issued from car manufacturers over issues such as display errors on interior screens and defects that could lead to fires under the hoods. Recalled hoses
Free Malaysia Today
2 days ago
- Health
- Free Malaysia Today
Melaka health dept drafting proposal on vape ban
Melaka health, human resources and unity committee chairman Ngwe Hee Sem said nicotine content in vapes poses addiction risks and health hazards. PETALING JAYA : The Melaka health department is preparing a proposal to ban the manufacturing and sale of e-cigarettes or vapes in the state. State health, human resources and unity committee chairman Ngwe Hee Sem said the proposal will be presented to the state executive council for a decision later this year. 'The state government has yet to take a position on whether to support or reject the ban, as the matter is still under review,' Bernama reported him as saying during the Melaka assembly sitting at Seri Negeri today. He was responding to Low Chee Leong (PH-Kota Laksamana), who asked about the state government's stance on vape sales. Ngwe said while vapes are often seen as a safer alternative to conventional smoking, their nicotine content still poses addiction risks and health hazards, and are by no means 100% safe. He said vape liquids contain various harmful heavy metals such as nickel, chromium and arsenic, all classified as Group 1 carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. 'They also contain cobalt, which is toxic to the lungs, and cadmium, which can damage the kidneys and is also linked to cancer. 'These heavy metals have also been associated with mental health issues, including depression,' he said.
News.com.au
3 days ago
- Health
- News.com.au
‘Death trap': Owner stuck in defective Melbourne home after developer collapsed
Rebecca Welsh thought she'd found her dream home. The two-bedroom townhouse in the beachside suburb of Edithvale, Melbourne, appeared to tick all the boxes when Ms Welsh bought it at auction for $795,000 in early 2021. 'I thought it was great location - it was close to my daughter's school, close to public transport, close to the beach,' the 52-year-old told 'It just had everything. I wasn't any the wiser.' Ms Welsh was eager to move straight in and did not get a building inspection, a decision she has come to regret. The following year, she began to notice major issues with the property - and her health. Water was leaking into the kitchen in multiple areas, including through the window, rangehood and ceiling. The house was humid and had a constant damp smell. Ms Welsh was horrified when she discovered the wall cavities were damp and riddled with black mould. On-top of the stress of trying to repair the house, she was also dealing with breathing problems and skin rashes. She arranged an environmental assessment report which found the house was damaged, mouldy and damp due to water ingress - particularly a lack of waterproofing around the floor slab and inadequate drainage. The level of mould was 'likely to have significant health effects to occupants,' the report said, estimating the cost of mould remediation works to be more than $130,000. Ms Welsh later also arranged a building report, which concluded the property had a long list of defects, including poor waterproofing at the floor slab level, non-compliant roof pitch, sarking, and flashings, and incorrectly installed external cladding. The report estimated the cost of repairs - after the mould remediation work - to be more than $200,000. 'This place is a death trap,' Ms Welsh said. Do you know more about Arrow Building Group? Email Ms Welsh said she was unable to cover the repair costs herself and nobody else would take responsibility. When she contacted the developer, Arrow Building Group, the company initially told Ms Welsh that its homes came with a three month defect liability period that had already concluded. It later agreed to send a builder to carry out repairs, but Ms Welsh said it only intended to 'patch up' the problem rather than address the root causes. She said she had not received any assistance from the strata manager, appointed by Arrow Building Group, and the body corporate's insurer had told her that it does not cover defects. Having run out of options, Ms Welsh said she was effectively stuck in her defective home, with no end to her ordeal in sight. 'What do you do? Where do you go and live? 'I can't sell, because I wouldn't get a cent for it. It would have to be bulldozed. Either way, for my own mental sanity, I've got to get the place repaired.' The Melbourne-based Arrow Building Group collapsed into voluntary administration in April. has contacted the company and its administrator for comment. A country-wide problem Research shows Ms Welsh is one of millions of Australians who are living in defective homes. Last year, a report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute revealed 70 per cent of the estimated 10.9 million homes across the country have some kind of major building defect. They range from plumbing and waterproofing issues, some of which can cause hazardous mould such as in Ms Welsh's case, through to serious structural faults and foundation cracking. Associate Professor Lyrian Daniel from the University of South Australia, an architectural expert and lead author of the research, said the findings smashed the old perception that homes in this country are built to stand the test of time. 'For many years in Australia, we've had a fairly laissez-faire approach to regulation in the construction sector when it comes the quality of our housing,' Dr Daniel said. 'The notion that the free market will demand a certain level of quality - it will lead to high standards - simply doesn't ring true. We need national leadership in this area - a strategy that ensures housing stock, whether it's new, existing, owned or private rental, is of a good standard.'
Independent Singapore
22-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- Independent Singapore
'Two jobs, no life — Is this hustle culture or just slow suicide?'
SINGAPORE: For the past three months, a Singaporean has lived a life that many would call 'extreme' and damaging. In an honest and very revealing post, the poster shared how he's been working two full-time jobs nonstop — an exhausting 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. night shift, followed by a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. day job. That's a full 24 hours of work with hardly time to breathe, and just one day off a week. The motivation is financial independence. This Redditor is resolute in wiping out his financial liabilities, building up savings, and starting to invest. 'I don't see any chance of getting a job that pays S$4k to S$5k, let alone hitting the S$10k mark with just one job,' he wrote. 'So, I'm working two jobs to beat that ceiling.' Each month, when the salaries come in, there's a sense of pride — a concrete prize for persistent determination, but the effect on the body and mind is obvious. 'My body? It's beaten, running on low battery. I look like I have cancer, pale, exhausted, like a zombie. I feel drained all the time,' he shared. Heart tremors, anxiety, and seclusion have become routine. 'Is this sacrifice worth it?' he asked. 'Has Singapore become like this?' Empathy, tough love, and reality checks One response zeroed in on the blatant health hazards: 'How much sleep are you getting? Success amounts to nothing when your health suffers, and you can't enjoy what you worked hard towards.' The commenter advised the original poster to re-examine his approach now that the debt has been settled, and to make rest and upskilling the priorities. Another netizen provided a frank but vital reality check: 'No, Singapore hasn't 'become like this'. It's your own choice to live like this. You could've taken longer to clear your debt by working one job. This is not a success. This is self-destruction.' A recurring theme emerged from the readers' reactions — the difference between short-range gains and continuing sustainability. Many commented that dashing for a financial target without considering physical and mental well-being is a hazardous move. 'This isn't what success feels like, this is what stupidity feels like — something which will dawn on you when you're lying in a hospital bed,' one Redditor said. Others recommended a few options — upskilling, side hustles, or concentrating on building a single career path instead of grinding out two jobs in an unmanageable twist. 'The aim isn't to grab on to whatever money you can now. The aim is to build a life and career such that money finds you.' When hustle culture turns toxic Underneath the real-world advice and frank commentaries are deeper issues — the pressure of combating financial uncertainty and meeting societal expectations. The Redditor's story resonates with many young adults who are stuck between stagnant salaries, escalating prices, and the craving to become financially independent. However, as several netizens pointed out, forfeiting sleep, physical strength, mental well-being, and happiness for the sake of a somewhat quicker climb out of debt is not a sustainable or honourable path. Success, one commenter said, isn't about working yourself to death. 'Job success is when you get paid to do nothing. When something goes wrong, you fix it to remind people why you're paid highly.' It's about leverage, not hundreds of hours worked. To those grinding themselves into dust, one netizen asked – 'Is this the life you want? Because if your body breaks down before you reach your goals, none of that money will matter.' Sometimes, the most heroic act isn't crushing through the pain — it's stopping long enough to rebuild, re-evaluate, and pick a better path onwards.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
I covered the L.A. fires in the Palisades. So I had my blood tested for lead
I watched my blood snake through the tube stuck into my arm as I sat under a canopy erected by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health at an Altadena church. Four months prior — almost to the hour — I stepped out of my car in Pacific Palisades to wailing sirens, raining ash and fleeing people. Now, like hundreds of others, I desperately wanted to know: Had lead once locked away in the homes of the Palisades and Altadena seeped into my bloodstream? And, if so, how much now sat in the vial in the hands of Jessica Segura, a nurse with the Department of Public Health? Tania Rysinski took my chair after me. She had evacuated from Pasadena and, after a trying remediation process, had moved back home with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. I asked what brought her to the Eaton fire resource fair. 'I also worry,' she told me. 'My daughter is the one that we worry about the most.' Despite hours of reading about and discussing remediation and health hazards with friends and family, Rysinski found little certainty that her family was safe. I shared her apprehension. Alongside other health and environment reporters at The Times, I've read thick scientific studies, reviewed reams of data and interviewed dozens of experts to understand what dangerous compounds, transported by wind and smoke, had laced our water systems, settled into homes and embedded themselves in the soil and our bodies. Even so, our reporting left me feeling mostly frustrated with my brain. Several times, after I interviewed residents in the burn areas, they would say: You've covered this in detail. Would you feel comfortable moving back here with kids? I didn't know. A 20-foot-tall flame staring at you through the windshield is a very tangible risk. The lead lurking in the air and soil is a different story. It is invisible and damages our bodies in complex ways. And that damage happens quietly. Segura, the nurse, removed the tube from my arm and pressed a cotton ball to the needle prick. The results would not be a simple positive or negative, she explained. Instead, it would list the concentration in micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Anything over 3.5 mcg/dL requires follow-up care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I could expect results within two weeks, Segura said. I asked Rysinski what her plan was if her levels were high. 'I have no idea,' she said. Neither did I. I, admittedly, took little precaution to protect myself from the wildfire smoke during the three days I spent in Pacific Palisades. My brain focused on more immediate concerns: dodging downed electrical wires, plotting escape routes, jump=starting folks' cars and watching in horror as buildings erupted into flames in front of me. Rysinski had felt the same in Pasadena. 'We were all on survival mode,' she said. After retreating to my car, which reeked of smoke, for a brief break the morning after the fires erupted, I got a message from my editor. Like concerned friends and family who had been messaging me from the East Coast — and strangers who'd seen my reports on Instagram — the editor wanted to know what the smoke might be doing to our lungs. And were people worried? I threw my body weight against the car door, barely managing to out-muscle the wind, and stumbled through gale-force gusts to talk to folks. At a haphazardly parked SUV, Amber Vanderbilt rolled down the window. 'I know this isn't on the top of most people's minds,' I said, 'but I'm curious how you or the people you know have been dealing with the air quality. Has that been a concern for you?' 'No,' she said with a chuckle. 'I see that it's on the news too, which is really funny.' In fact, the discourse had frustrated her enough that she recalled yelling at the TV newscast, 'No one cares! Show me where the fire perimeter is! Tell me where the wind is going!' I chuckled with her. I too did not care. Then, I started looking at the data. On Jan. 8, an air quality sensor in Chinatown had read fine particulate matter at a concentration over 13 times the federal daily limit — the number that had prompted my team to elicit my interview with Vanderbilt. Amid the scattered, ad hoc testing efforts that followed, one emerged as a leader: the LA Fire HEALTH Study, or the Los Angeles Fire Human Exposure and Long-Term Health Study. Scientists from eight research institutions had banded together with some private funding to, ambitiously, study the health effects of the fires over the course of a decade. In May, I attended one of their events — supposedly a symposium, definitely a cocktail party and perhaps a fundraiser — at a home in Brentwood. A Times photographer and I, slightly underdressed, scuttled past the valet and into the backyard. Guests began migrating to the white lawn chairs set up on the tennis court to hear the scientists speak. The jaunty atmosphere turned tense as Palisadians struggled to make sense of the environmental crisis unfolding in front of them. 'My daughter is a surfer, Pali High student. She's only 17 years old,' one attendee said when the topic of beaches came up. 'Our family is having a really, really hard time telling what the actual truth is.' Dr. David Eisenman, a UCLA public health professor and an avid surfer, had hit the waves that morning after carefully reviewing the nonprofit Heal the Bay's latest test results that showed no significant levels of contaminants in the water. But the attendee pushed back. 'I know a mom who spent $6,000 of her own money to have the beach tested and she found ridiculously high levels of arsenic,' she said. 'This is where children are playing. This is insane. So, we don't know who to trust. We don't know what to do.' The researchers sympathized with her frustration. For almost every combination of contaminant and domain, scientists have rigorously studied the exposure risk and health impact, and, based on that, the federal and state governments have set screening levels: Any more of a particular contaminant requires additional action. California's level for lead in residential soil is 80 milligrams per kilogram. That's the amount that, in the worst case, can raise the blood lead level of a child who routinely plays in the soil by 1 mcg/dL. A blood lead level increase in children of 5 mcg/dL corresponds to a loss of roughly 1 to 3 IQ points. But the problem quickly gets more complicated than that. Take the state's screening level for arsenic, for example, based on a 1-in-a-million chance of developing cancer over a lifetime of exposure. The level is 0.032 milligram per kilogram of soil. But arsenic naturally occurs in soil, typically 2 to 11 milligrams per kilogram. When I asked the state Department of Toxic Substances Control about this, it had a shockingly morbid answer. Arsenic occurring naturally at potentially cancer-causing levels, it said, is simply 'a part of living on Earth.' It's not hard to see why talk of contaminants leaves people frustrated and confused. That includes me, whose full-time job is to figure this stuff out. Yet one report from the LA Fire HEALTH Study struck me as surprisingly lucid. I couldn't get it out of my head. Dr. Kari Nadeau, a researcher with the study and professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been collecting firefighters' blood for years. After the L.A. County wildfires, she did the same. The results: The firefighters who battled L.A. County's urban fires had lead levels in their blood five times of those who had battled forest fires in Yosemite. Technically, no level of lead in the blood is safe, but we all live with it in our blood. The average American's blood lead level sits around 0.8 mcg/dL. Elevated levels in kids — above 3.5 mcg/dL, according to the CDC — can cause significant brain and nerve damage leading to slowed development and behavioral issues. Adults are less sensitive to lead, but under much higher concentrations — beyond 40 mcg/dL — the metal, which the body mistakes for calcium, can damage many organs. When I read my colleague's coverage of Nadeau's findings in March, a thought flickered from the back of my mind: What was in my blood? As I waited for my blood test results via snail mail, I became increasingly interested not only in what the environmental health risks of the fires are, but also how our brains process them. Spending so much time in the data had changed me. One weekend I sat next to a campfire, and as I admired the dancing flames, I also imagined the benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons the fire was stripping from the wood and whispering into the air for me to inhale. In my head, I recited the federal and state screening levels for airborne chemicals, like a high school student studying for a chemistry exam. So, I called professor Wändi Bruine de Bruin, director of the Schaeffer Institute's Behavioral Science and Policy Initiative at USC and an expert on the psychology of risk assessment. 'Any situation with environmental risk can be hard to comprehend … but with the fires, it is much more complex,' she said. Stacking multiple risks with limited information while likely dealing with a lost home and uncertain future — 'it's a lot.' To escape the helpless quest to find solace and certainty in the numbers, Bruine de Bruin recommended focusing on the most relevant data to you from trusted experts or your own testing, then shifting your focus to simple, accessible actions to limit future exposure. Dr. Michael Crane, a leading health expert in the response to 9/11 and the following environmental disaster, agreed with Bruine de Bruin. 'It's funny, if you make a decision about it, you usually get some peace on that point,' Crane said. 'I would urge people to manage the controllable risks — the ones that are right there, in their fingers.' As the initial shock of the terrorist attacks morphed into trauma, the very real long-term cancer risk posed by the smoke and debris began to sink in among New York's medical community. Crane recalled when an expert from the National Cancer Institute came down to talk with doctors. 'Fantastic young guy, and I mean, we basically surrounded him,' he said. The doctors unloaded all their burning cancer questions until one finally yelled, 'Well, what do you think we should do?" 'Get them to stop smoking,' the expert bluntly replied. Suffice to say, it did not soothe the doctors' concerns. 'He was lucky to get out of that room alive at that point,' Crane said. Yet that one sentence, Crane believes, is a large part of why the cancer rates never reached the sky-high levels many of those doctors feared. Since we don't have silver-bullet medical techniques to reverse the effects of exposure to all harmful contaminants, it's prudent we try to prevent another exposure and lead healthy lives. For doctors, it means staying vigilant: aware of their patients' risks and ready to act should those risks become a reality. Crane chuckled as he recalled the seeming absurdity of the expert's cancer comment; then he turned sincere. "We're very grateful for that guy,' he said. Ten days after my blood test, a letter from the Department of Public Health arrived. I quickly opened it. The lead level in my blood: less than 1 mcg/dL. Rysinski texted me a few days later to share that her results were the same. In fact, of the 1,350 individuals concerned about their exposures from the wildfires who had partaken in the county's lead blood testing program as of May 31, only seven had levels greater than 3.5 mcg/dL. All were adults older than 40; all lead levels were under 10 mcg/dL. Dr. Nichole Quick, chief medical advisor for the Department of Public Health, wants people to remain cautious about contamination but is pleased by the initial results of the county's lead testing program. 'The results are reassuring,' Quick told me, looking at numbers from the beginning of May. Reassuring not that contamination isn't present — it is — but that many of us are taking the simple, manageable steps to lower our risk. To face the often scary and seemingly insurmountable challenge of making it through our scarred landscape, we must do the little things. Wash our hands, clean the floors and keep the cigarettes away from our lips. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
