Environmental Health

Happy Friday! Here are some articles, talks, and resources that caught the eye of MCN employees this week. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

For Valentine’s Day, let’s show our love to farmworkers. As clinicians, we care about the health and safety of our country’s 1.5 million farmworkers and their families who work tirelessly to bring us Valentine’s Day flowers and put food on our tables -- and they need our support. Will you join us?

Editor's note: This post, written by MCN's Amy Liebman, first appeared in The Pump Handle, a public health blog. Please visit The Pump Handle at http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/.

Update: This blog post is republished from its original posting on October 10, 2014.

On September 18, over 100 people packed into Salisbury University’s Downtown Art Gallery in Maryland to view a unique photojournalism exhibit that revealed the untold stories of the often invisible immigrant population on Maryland’s eastern shore.  The exhibit featured photos of local immigrants and migrants in their everyday lives: at work, at home and in our community.

EDIT: MCN is saddened to hear Thomas Duncan has passed away. We offer our condolences to his family and friends.

On September 25, Thomas Eric Duncan went to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas, with an unspecified illness. During the intake interview with the nurse, he noted that he had recently returned from Liberia, the country at the epicenter of the Ebola virus, which has already claimed the lives of more than 3400 people in West Africa. 

With your help, MCN added more than 17,000 voices to the call for stronger workplace protections for our nation's farmworkers. 

The proposed revisions to the Worker Protection Standard have many positive elements and I, along and many others concerned about farm worker health applaud the EPA for this long-awaited proposal.  In particular, for the first time an age requirement has been proposed to determine who is eligible to handle pesticides.  However, for unknown reasons the proposed age requirement has been identified as age 16 when it should be age 18.   There is no rationale to suggest any minor, i.e.

Last week, President Obama and every member of Congress received a copy of Seth Holmes’ Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies.  For nearly two years, physician and anthropologist Seth Holmes lived and worked as a migrant farmworker.

Your patient reports stomach pain, nausea and headache. It’s nearing the heart of flu season - these are possible flu symptoms, you think. On examination, the patient doesn’t present with a fever.

“Is anyone at home sick?” you ask.   

No.

“When did the symptoms begin?” 

Hoy (Today).

You notice the patient appears to be dressed for work. “Where were you when the symptoms began?” you ask.

En el trabajo (At work).  

At work, you think. “And what do you do for work?”