Category: Public health
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Private water wells in Texas test positive for contamination after Harvey
Nearly 60 percent of samples from 50 private water wells in Harris County tested positive for the bacteria sometimes found in feces, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, according to data released Wednesday. The presence of total coliform, the bacteria sometimes found in feces but more commonly in soil and floodwater, was detected along with…
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Puerto Rico is becoming a textbook example of how waterborne disease outbreaks spread
The disaster in Puerto Rico wrought by hurricane Maria is still unraveling one month after it hit. Most of the island remains without electricity. A third of residents still don’t have running water, while those who do can’t count on what comes out of the faucet being clean. Meanwhile, pools and puddles of standing water…
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ACLU Wants Flint Kids Screened for Impact of Lead
Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan want a federal judge to order state and Flint education officials to screen and evaluate all Flint schoolchildren for health and education disabilities stemming from the lead water crisis. The ACLU of Michigan filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of a group of Flint…
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4 million Americans could be drinking toxic water and would never know
Photo: Laura Ungar, USA TODAY RANGER, Texas — The leaders of this former oil boomtown never gave 2-year-old Adam Walton a chance to avoid the poison. It came in city water, delivered to his family’s tap through pipes nearly a century old. For almost a year, the little boy bathed in lead-tainted water and ate…
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Puerto Ricans given drinking water from a hazardous-waste site
Photo: Puerto Ricans given water from hazardous site. Dorado, Puerto Rico (CNN) Jose Luis Rodriguez waited in line Friday to fill plastic jugs in the back of his pickup truck with water for drinking, doing the dishes and bathing. But there is something about this water Rodriguez didn’t know: It was being pumped to him…
