Image by SamaraHeisz5OPINION – The COVID-19 pandemic exposed long-standing gaps in health care access and education among communities of color and low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles and existing health disparities continue to leave Los Angeles’ large LatinX community at a higher risk for significant health threats.
Photo by LightField Studios via ShutterstockAs we enter this new phase of the pandemic, the coronavirus has made us more aware of other viruses that are just as harmful and potentially even deadlier.
A woman pours the contents of an in-house compost unit into a larger outdoor container. (Photo: Electric Egg, via Shutterstock)By expanding California’s existing legal definitions of compostability and biodegradability to cover more products than plastics, and by creating more specific, safer definitions, the single-use disposable products that companies label as “compostable” will now actually biodegrade into safe, usable organic matter. This package of environmental legislation transforms the rules around environmental marketing claims and continues California’s move toward a truly sustainable economy.
An illustration of California battered by the coronavirus pandemic. (Image: bekulnis, via Shutterstock)More than two years after California imposed the nation’s first lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19, the deadly disease persists, fueled now by the highly infectious subvariants and clouded by fears that the malady will stick around awhile — a long while.
Illustration by Quentin Lueninghoener, Fair WarningA federal court trial under way in San Francisco could spell the beginning of the end of water fluoridation in America, potentially affecting drinking water for hundreds of millions of people across the U.S. Although fluoride can occur naturally in water, many water utilities add the chemical with the goal of improving dental health.
A patient in a wheelchair has a visit from hear doctor. (Photo: Spo;tmatik Ltd, via Shutterstock)OPINION: As a state, we are fighting this pandemic with a hand and a foot tied behind our backs. Decades of disinvestment in public health infrastructure has weakened our public health system, making this crisis even worse.
Discarded e-cigarette pods and vape devices recovered by University of California, San Francisco researchers. (Photo by Jeremiah Mock).Nearly two years ago, Jeremiah Mock heard a student in Marin County complain that her school was littered with e-cigarette waste. A health anthropologist by training, Mock did some shoe-leather investigating in a student parking lot, where he found a significant amount of e-cigarette and tobacco trash.
A photo illustration of opioid addiction. (Photo: Kimberly Boyles, via Shutterstock)OPINION: A key focus of this year’s California legislative session is the nation’s opioid crisis, and rightly so. According to the California Healthcare Foundation, an estimated 2,000 Californians died of an opioid overdose in 2016. The opioid epidemic confronting California and the rest of America is a growing public health crisis from which no state is immune.