Atlanta-area school districts fail to enforce vaccination requirements

While most schools in the Atlanta area meet the Georgia state standard for vaccination requirements, Alison Young of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that at least 99 schools' kindergartners
and 81 schools' sixth-graders failed to meet that standard during the 2007-2008 school year, with many of the schools in Atlanta's Fulton County. Before Young's investigation, the Fulton County health department, was unaware of the problem, and has since vowed to investigate further.

Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has found that Missouri and Illinois have some of the highest numbers of known methamphetamine labs, yet both states fail to ensure that former labs get decontaminated when properties are seized.  Additionally, there are no laws mandating that new residents are notified of potential contamination before moving into the homes despite national experts' warning of the health risks of living in the contaminated spaces.

Brian Joseph of the Orange County Register reports that the nation's largest water district has known for eight years about uranium contamination at the site of a proposed groundwater storage project, but failed to disclosed this information to key officials or the public. "The top official at the water district says the contamination is isolated and the water can be diluted with clean Colorado River water to the point that it's not a problem. He said that everyone who needed to know about the contamination was told about it."  The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California intends to move forward with the project at this site.

Joaquin Sapien of ProPublica reports that the CDC's original report on the safety of FEMA trailers dispensed to Hurricane Katrina victims was fundamentally flawed. While an agency standard states that formaldehyde exposure for two-weeks or more at levels measuring 30 parts per billion (ppb) can lead to health problems — the FEMA trailers all measured above this level — the study used a measure of 300 ppb.  At this level, the CDC proclaimed the trailers fit for residents as long as they kept the windows open. An investigation by ProPublica shows flawed science and failed communication between government agencies allowed conflicting information about the trailers' safety to continue to circulate. "The story that emerged is of a government bureaucracy that remained silent as the formaldehyde crisis mounted, straying from its mission to serve the public by 'providing trusted health information to prevent harmful exposures and disease related to toxic substances.'"

An investigation by D.L. Bennett, Cameron McWhirter, Heather Vogell and data analysts Megan Clarke and John Perry of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found that the apathy and negligence of workers at the Fulton County 911 call center endangered the lives of emergency workers and of those seeking emergency help. The reporters, who reviewed nearly five years of disciplinary records, found that negligent call center workers often misdirected crews, fell asleep on the job, did not show up for work and withheld information about dangerous situations. They also found that dispatchers often failed to meet their monthly standards of efficiency from records obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act.

Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia; Atlanta is its county seat.

Robert Pear of The New York Times reports that 94 percent of nursing homes in the United States violated federal health and safety standards in 2007 according to a recently released federal study. Although only 17 percent of nursing homes had violations that threatened the lives of residents, many were cited for abuse, neglect, confusing patients' medication and poor nutrition. The frequency and proportion of the problems ranged from state to state. Violations were reported in 76 percent of nursing homes in Rhode Island, while 100 percent of homes in Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming and the District of Columbia were cited in 2007.

"Nearly two-thirds of schools in New York state are not receiving the twice-yearly health inspections required by federal law to curb food poisoning, making the state among the nation's worst offenders," reports David Andreatta of the Democrat & Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.). Inspection rates are lowest in Monroe County where nearly 80 percent of school cafeterias were not inspected twice during the 2006-2007 school year. Failure to comply with the mandated inspections could lead to schools losing their federal lunch program funding, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture is more concerned with encouraging compliance than penalizing the offending schools. Critics argue that it is an underfunded mandate, and more stringent than most state and local health inspection policies.

A Toledo Blade investigation by Steve Eder and Julie M. McKinnon shows doctors nationwide fear that increasingly stringent insurance rules and frequent second-guessing of doctors' orders are eroding the doctor-patient relationship — and harming patients. The Blade's four-part, eight-month investigation included interviews with about 100 physicians in a dozen states and a national online survey of doctors with more than 900 responses. More than 99 percent of respondents reported that insurers had interfered with their treatment decisions.

More 13-year-olds — 10 since 2001 — were shot in hunting-related accidents than persons of any other age, a Tulsa World analysis found. That's more than two times as many hunting accidents than any other age group since 2001. Three of the 10 accidents were fatal. Experts site inexperience and immaturity as likely reasons for these accidents.   A new Oklahoma state law "reduced the age minimum for hunters seeking an apprentice designation. The minimum dropped from 16 years old to 10 years old and allows children with the designation to hunt with a certified and licensed adult prior to taking a hunter education course themselves."  Many believe direct supervision from a young age will improve overall safety for young hunters.

Clark Kauffman of The Des Moines Register reports that in the past five years, 38,000 Americans, including 267 Iowans, have complained of medical-privacy violations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. More than half of those complaints nationally have been disposed of with no investigation. Until last year, no one nationally ever was prosecuted for violating HIPAA. Kauffman used state unemployment records to provide readers with the names of specific hospitals and caregivers who snooped through the medical records of HIV-positive men, pregnant teenagers, victims of domestic violence and emergency-room patients.