Category: Sharing Our Stories

Tracking Program Maps Radon Exposure in Washington State

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), radon causes about 20,000 cases of lung cancer each year, making it the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. Radon can seep up from the ground and become trapped in buildings. The EPA recommends taking action to reduce radon in buildings that have a radon Read More >

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GRASP Supports CDC Ebola Response

The 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history— affecting multiple countries in West Africa and leaving death, despair, and devastation in its wake. Scores of professionals from around the world, including CDC staff and volunteers, are working tirelessly to stop the virus in its tracks and save lives. Read More >

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Top 10 NCEH/ATSDR “Your Health, Your Environment” Blog Posts of 2014

As this year draws to a close, perhaps you’ve realized you didn’t get a chance to read all of the “Your Health, Your Environment” blog posts. To help get you into full catch-up mode, here are the ten most popular posts of 2014: Staggering Numbers: Do You Know the Disease? Are We Getting Enough Vitamins Read More >

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CDC’s Tracking Network in Action

CDC’s Tracking Network continues to develop new and innovative tools to make environmental and health connections easier to understand. Earlier this year, CDC’s Environmental Public Health Tracking Program’s “Tracking in Action” video series won the NCEH “Excellence in Communications” award for setting itself apart from other communications products with its high-caliber production quality Read More >

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Native American Heritage Month

Tracking Environmental Health Data about Native Americans “Data” is a buzzword in public health, but what does the word mean for the rest of us? Gathering data may sound like a snooze to non-scientists, but it is actually the beginning of scientific investigation. Whenever scientists and doctors are searching for the cause of a disease Read More >

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Woman’s Worry Prompts CDC/ATSDR Outreach on Testing Private Wells

In the “Voices from the Field” blog series, NCEH and ATSDR staff tell us about their work in communities, states, tribal territories, and even other countries. Read about how ATSDR Region 9 employees Ben Gerhardstein and Jamie Rayman discovered a critical need for accurate information in an Arizona community and created educational materials that everyone Read More >

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CDC and Planners Bring Healthy Design to Communities

Health professionals and community planners know that health starts where you live, learn, work, and play. They support the design and development of communities that encourage healthy behaviors, quality of life, and social connectedness. Learn how one planning firm is using National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) resources to ensure healthy community design. HKS, a Read More >

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In California, Community Advocates Have a Seat at the Table

What is a “roundtable”? It’s more than a circular surface to host meals or hold a meeting. For the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), the term has come to mean a way to bring together environmental health experts and community advocates to meet, share their stories, and learn from each other. As with King Read More >

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Voices from the Field: Hydrogen Sulfide in Detroit

Mark Johnson is ATSDR’s Region 5 director in Chicago, Illinois. Read about how he helped stop harmful hydrogen sulfide exposures in Detroit, Michigan. Air Samples Catch Harmful Levels of Hydrogen Sulfide at the Detroit Water Treatment Plant Hydrogen sulfide is a flammable, colorless gas that smells like rotten eggs. Exposure to hydrogen sulfide is a Read More >

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GRASP Propels Polio Vaccination by Locating Remote Nigerian Villages

Thanks to nationwide immunization, by 1979 the United States had effectively eliminated polio, a crippling and sometimes fatal disease. However, in much of the world, polio continued to spread. Polio is incurable and contagious, so widespread and thorough vaccination is the only way to eradicate it completely. In 1988, national governments organized by the World Read More >

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