The American Lung Association issued its annual report card on air pollution, ranking cities most affected by three types of pollution: short-term particle pollution, year-round particle pollution and ozone pollution. For the first time ever, a city outside California, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, tops one of the most polluted lists in the ninth consecutive American Lung Association State of the Air report.

Haiti’s largest vaccination effort in history-aimed at more than 5 million children and youths-will be kicked off with a new public service announcement (PSA) featuring Haitian musician, producer and writer Wyclef Jean, a founding member of the ALAS Foundation. The PSA, produced by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in association with ALAS, is aimed at boosting participation in the upcoming campaign to vaccinate young Haitians against measles and rubella.

The Minister for Health and Children, Ms. Mary Harney T.D., proposes to introduce legislation to control the use of sun beds and has launched a public consultation process relating to her proposals.

The Baltimore Sun recently featured two opinion pieces related to a lead poisoning study conducted by Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Summaries appear below.

The number of new mothers who breastfeed their infants during the first months of life has increased to 77%, up from 60% in 1993-1994, with the sharpest increase among black women, according to a CDC report, the Associated Press reports (Stobbe, Associated Press, 5/1). The

The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID) welcomes the findings of the review Head Covering - A major modifiable risk factor for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: A systematic review, by Blair PS et al, published online yesterday (1 May 2008) in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The research found that more than a quarter (27.1%) of SIDS deaths could be prevented if babies’ heads didn’t become covered with bedclothes while they were sleeping.

The Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday examined how funding shortfalls, concerns about education equality and changing social mores are threatening alternative schools that cater to pregnant and parenting teenagers. About one-third of all girls who drop out of high school cite motherhood as the reason, the Monitor reports.

“The troubled economy could soon create a major fiscal crisis for the state-run Medicaid and children’s health programs that would only be exacerbated by the Bush administration’s efforts to cut these programs back,” a New York Times editorial states. The Times notes that a new

More than two-and-a-half years after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, some Louisiana residents still experience negative health effects related to the storms, particularly mental health problems, according to a report released on Tuesday, the Baton Rouge Advocate reports (Gyan, Baton Rouge Advocate, 4/30). The findings were released at a forum cosponsored by the

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Tuesday “grew increasingly impatient and sometimes angry” while listening to arguments from government lawyers in an asylum case concerning three women who underwent female genital cutting in Guinea, the AP/Staten Island Advance reports.