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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\n\u003cp>The Food and Drug Administration has formally approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. The widely anticipated decision replaces the emergency use authorization granted by the agency last December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be subject to a full review by the U.S. regulator and to get an approval that puts the vaccine on par with other marketed vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The full approval could make it easier for employers, the military and universities to mandate vaccination and may reassure some people who are hesitant about the vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine\">acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California Gov. Gavin Newsom was quick to issue supportive words Monday morning in a statement emailed to reporters, saying he encourages “all Californians to trust the science and protect themselves and their community by getting vaccinated.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tomás Aragón, California’s public health officer, said the agency’s official approval of the vaccine “underscores the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and comes at a critical juncture as many of our communities are grappling with increasing cases fueled by the faster spreading Delta variant.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“For weeks we have watched cases go up at an alarming pace among individuals who are not vaccinated while the vaccinated are largely protected, especially against severe and long-term illness,” he said in a statement. “We know the vaccines work. We know vaccines are safe. We know they save lives. If you are not vaccinated, let this be the milestone that gets you there. Get vaccinated to protect yourself and help put an end to this deadly pandemic.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3 class=\"edTag\">Approval could lead to more vaccinations\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-june-2021/\">June poll\u003c/a> from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 31% of unvaccinated people said they would be more likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine once one receives full approval from the FDA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated,” Woodcock said. “Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FDA’s full approval applies to people 16 and older. Those between ages 12 and 15 can still receive the vaccine under the existing emergency use authorization.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3 class=\"edTag\">There is no timeline for children under 12\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>That authorization does not extend to children under the age of 12. FDA officials have acknowledged the interest in vaccination for children in that age group, but were unable Monday to provide a timeline for a decision on use of the vaccine for those under 12.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Currently there are still trials ongoing here,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters. “The agency has to wait for the companies to submit. … Obviously, we will move swiftly, but first the trials have to be finished … and the data need to be submitted to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FDA acted Monday without convening a customary public meeting of expert advisers to vet information about the vaccine and make recommendations to the regulator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of Sunday, 73%\u003ca href=\"https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations\"> of adults have had at least one dose\u003c/a> of the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Pfizer’s vaccine is most commonly administered, accounting for about 56% of the doses administered overall, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine remains under the FDA’s review, but its approval is expected to follow in the near future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Kevin Stark contributed to this report. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Pfizer%27s+COVID+Vaccine+Gets+Full+Approval+From+The+FDA&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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The widely anticipated decision replaces the emergency use authorization granted by the agency last December.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be subject to a full review by the U.S. regulator and to get an approval that puts the vaccine on par with other marketed vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The full approval could make it easier for employers, the military and universities to mandate vaccination and may reassure some people who are hesitant about the vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine\">acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California Gov. Gavin Newsom was quick to issue supportive words Monday morning in a statement emailed to reporters, saying he encourages “all Californians to trust the science and protect themselves and their community by getting vaccinated.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Tomás Aragón, California’s public health officer, said the agency’s official approval of the vaccine “underscores the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and comes at a critical juncture as many of our communities are grappling with increasing cases fueled by the faster spreading Delta variant.”\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“For weeks we have watched cases go up at an alarming pace among individuals who are not vaccinated while the vaccinated are largely protected, especially against severe and long-term illness,” he said in a statement. “We know the vaccines work. We know vaccines are safe. We know they save lives. If you are not vaccinated, let this be the milestone that gets you there. Get vaccinated to protect yourself and help put an end to this deadly pandemic.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3 class=\"edTag\">Approval could lead to more vaccinations\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-june-2021/\">June poll\u003c/a> from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 31% of unvaccinated people said they would be more likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine once one receives full approval from the FDA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated,” Woodcock said. “Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FDA’s full approval applies to people 16 and older. 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FDA officials have acknowledged the interest in vaccination for children in that age group, but were unable Monday to provide a timeline for a decision on use of the vaccine for those under 12.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Currently there are still trials ongoing here,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told reporters. “The agency has to wait for the companies to submit. … Obviously, we will move swiftly, but first the trials have to be finished … and the data need to be submitted to us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FDA acted Monday without convening a customary public meeting of expert advisers to vet information about the vaccine and make recommendations to the regulator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As of Sunday, 73%\u003ca href=\"https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations\"> of adults have had at least one dose\u003c/a> of the Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 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"content": "\u003cp>As the temperature in Grand Island, Nebraska, soared to 91 degrees that July day in 2018, two dozen farmworkers tunneled for nine hours into a thicket of cornstalks, snapping off tassels while they crossed a sunbaked field that spanned 206 acres — the equivalent of 156 football fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they emerged at the end of the day to board a bus that would transport them to a nearby motel to sleep, one of the workers, Cruz Urias Beltran, didn’t make it back. Searchers found the 52-year-old farmworker’s body 20 hours later amid the cornhusks, “as if he’d simply collapsed,” recalled a funeral home employee. An empty water bottle was stuffed in his jeans pocket. An autopsy report confirmed that Beltran died from heatstroke. It was his third day on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beltran is one of at least 384 workers who died from environmental heat exposure in the U.S. in the last decade, according to an investigation by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations, the investigative reporting unit of the Columbia Journalism School. The count includes people toiling in essential, yet often, invisible jobs in 37 states across the country: farm laborers in California, construction and trash-collection workers in Texas and tree trimmers in North Carolina and Virginia. An analysis of federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the three-year average of worker heat deaths has doubled since the early 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976348\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1976348\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A family photo of Cruz Urias Beltran taken during the 1990s. \u003ccite>(Paty Espinoza)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including workplace inspection reports, death investigation files, depositions, court records and police reports, and interviewed victims’ families, former and current officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers, employers, workers’ advocates, lawyers and experts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR also analyzed two federal data sets on worker heat deaths: one from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the other from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both are divisions within the U.S. Labor Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the findings:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), whose primary responsibility is to protect workers from hazards, has failed to adopt a national heat standard to safeguard workers against rapidly rising temperatures, resulting in an enforcement system rife with problems.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>For at least a dozen companies, it wasn’t the first time their workers succumbed to heat. One worker collapsed and died after repeatedly complaining about the heat; another died after hauling 20 tons of trash for nearly 10 hours. In some instances, employees died after not having ample water and scheduled shade breaks. Many died within their first week on the job.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>OSHA officials often decide not to penalize companies for worker deaths. When they do, they routinely negotiate with business owners and reduce violations and fines.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>In some cases, OSHA doesn’t follow up after a worker’s death from heat exposure to ensure that the company is complying with the measures the agency imposed to prevent future fatalities.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Workers of color have borne the brunt: Since 2010, Hispanics have accounted for a third of all heat fatalities, yet they represent a fraction — 17% — of the U.S. workforce. Health and safety experts attribute this unequal toll to Hispanics’ overrepresentation in industries vulnerable to dangerous heat, such as construction and agriculture.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>OSHA’s record-keeping on heat fatalities is so poor that there’s no way to know exactly how many workers have died from heat.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Current and former OSHA officials acknowledge that the known death tally is a vast undercount. The agency mostly relies on companies to report worker fatalities after they occur, but not all do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR reporters analyzed worker heat deaths recorded by OSHA between 2010 and 2020 and compared each incident day’s high temperature with historical averages over 40 years. Most of the deaths happened on days that were unusually hot for that date. More than two-thirds occurred on days when the temperature reached at least 90 degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet no worker should die from heat, said Ronda McCarthy, an occupational health specialist who directs medical services at the health care provider Concentra, in Waco, Texas. McCarthy spent seven years educating her home state’s municipal workers about heat, which reduced cases of worker heat exhaustion and similar conditions there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Heat illness should be considered a preventable illness,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>No federal heat standard\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>OSHA has known about the dangers of heat — and how to prevent deaths — for decades. In 1972, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studied the effects of heat stress on workers in the U.S. and recommended criteria for an OSHA heat standard. Under the proposal, employers would have had to give employees one break every hour and offer ready access to water. New workers would have received extra breaks so they could acclimate to strenuous activity in the heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NIOSH has refined these safety measures — first in 1986 and, again, in 2016 — but OSHA has not acted on them because of other regulatory priorities. This year, for the first time, OSHA is officially considering a heat standard by putting it on its regulatory agenda. James Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, said it’s a “priority” for the Biden administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Occupational exposure to heat remains a very important topic,” Frederick said in an interview with CJI and NPR. “We’re focused on improving our efforts to protect workers moving forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976349\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976349 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-1920x1279.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Frederick, acting assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, stands in the national office of OSHA in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2021. \u003ccite>(Ian Morton/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Absent a heat standard, OSHA must rely on a 50-year-old regulation guaranteeing workers a “hazard-free workplace.” OSHA does require companies to provide adequate water, but not other heat-safety measures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA’s own research shows relying on this general rule hasn’t worked. A 2016 study by agency scientists found that some employers whose workers got sick or died from heat hadn’t met basic water provisions. Most companies never offered rest breaks. Only one out of 84 total employers had a plan for building up its workers’ tolerance for laboring in heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2011, four labor and public interest organizations, including Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, petitioned OSHA to issue a heat standard. They asked the agency for an emergency temporary standard because a new rule, the petition stated, “could potentially take many years before it’s finalized and implemented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Michaels, then the assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health, who oversaw OSHA, denied the petition, arguing in a January 2012 letter to petitioners that workers weren’t dying from heat at a rate that would justify a legal standard. Recognizing extreme heat’s threat, he said most workers can “recover fairly quickly when the appropriate measures are taken.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Michaels launched a voluntary awareness campaign distributing posters and flyers that instructed employees on how to protect themselves. OSHA incorporated these precautions into a free bilingual phone app featuring government-issued heat alerts and advisories. The agency continued this campaign through 2013. Its principle message remains on \u003ca href=\"https://www.osha.gov/heat\">OSHA’s website today\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976351\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976351 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Michaels, the assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, attends a full committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2010. The hearing was on “Worker Health and Safety from the Oil Rig to the Shoreline,” focusing on how worker health and safety is regulated and enforced by various parties, from oil rig workers to post-accident cleanup operations. \u003ccite>(Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Michaels touted the campaign as a success at the time. The numbers are less clear. The number of workers who succumbed to heat topped 61 cases during the campaign’s inaugural year, in 2011 — an all-time high. An additional 65 workers would die from heat exposure in the ensuing two years, closer to the annual average for the decade, while the campaign remained an agency priority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Six years after his petition denial letter, and after leaving OSHA’s top post, Michaels changed his approach. In 2018, he joined Public Citizen and 131 additional groups in a second petition asking the agency to enact a heat standard. This time, petitioners cited NIOSH’s updated guidelines and warned that “this warming trend will not only continue but accelerate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent interview, Michaels, now a public health professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the agencywide consensus was that climate change would worsen the problem. But the rule-making process at OSHA is “so difficult” and the industry opposition so formidable that adopting a heat standard “became a bridge too far,” he said. He has come to believe a standard is essential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that heat kills,” Michaels said. “And if we don’t have requirements, heat will kill more workers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Search and rescue\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A standard that included water, rest, shade and acclimatization could have saved Beltran, an experienced farmworker who traveled more than 1,300 miles from San Luis, Arizona, to the heart of America’s Corn Belt to pull tassels off corn plants for Rivera Agri Inc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day he went missing in the fields on the outskirts of Grand Island, the temperature — with humidity — felt like 100 degrees. Joseph Rivera, the company’s owner, placed an emergency call to authorities shortly after 5 p.m. Beltran was in the field but didn’t come out with the other workers, he told the 911 operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976374\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976374 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-768x614.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-2048x1638.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-1920x1536.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cornfield where Cruz Urias Beltran’s body was found near Cairo, Neb., on July 28, 2021. \u003ccite>(Walker Pickering/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The call set off an elaborate search-and-rescue mission in the central Nebraska city of 51,000. One volunteer flew a Piper Cub airplane low and slow, on the lookout for the orange safety hat atop Beltran’s salt-and-pepper hair. Another manned a helicopter circling the sea of stalks until the chopper ran low on fuel. At sunset, a Nebraska State Patrol plane with thermal-imaging equipment scanned for a sign of Beltran’s body temperature, but since the plants and soil also were emanating heat, he went undetected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The following morning, as the temperature hovered in the 90s, the Red Cross opened a temporary cooling station with air conditioning for the 100 volunteers who joined the search. Shortly after noon, someone spotted Beltran’s body, facedown in the husks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two months after Beltran’s body was shipped to his family’s home in Mexico’s Sonora state, an OSHA inspector visited Rivera Agri as part of the agency’s investigation into the death. OSHA inspection records show the company didn’t deploy the kind of preventive measures that a heat standard would have required. Rivera Agri did not ensure that employees took enough rest breaks in the shade, drank sufficient amounts of water and adapted to their grueling work, the records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976357\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1976357\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-800x600.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-800x600.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-160x120.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-768x576.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1.png 952w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Beltran hugs his son, Jesus Adrian Urias Machado. Beltran was an experienced farmworker and traveled from Arizona to work in Nebraska. \u003ccite>(Paty Espinoza)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“These actions were left to the employees to manage themselves,” the inspector wrote in a nine-page citation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA found that the “moderate lifting and bending” and “pushing and pulling” that Beltran had performed in the heat had contributed to his death. It cited Rivera Agri for a violation and proposed fines totaling $11,641. The agency also ordered the company to train employees on the symptoms of heat illness, among other safety measures. Rivera Agri agreed to OSHA’s conditions, and the fines were reduced to $9,500, records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela Rivera, who runs the farm labor contracting business with her father, Joseph, said the company has worked to fulfill the agreement. Today, it contracts with a farmworker-rights group to educate employees on how to respond to heat emergencies. Near the cornfield, it sets up extra water stations and has canopies for emergency shade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been in this business for a long time,” said Angela Rivera, who calls Beltran’s death “an unfortunate thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every year we try to step it up,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joseph Rivera said supervisors now monitor the heat on their cellphones and pull detasselers from the cornfields whenever it gets too hot — part of a heat-stress plan the Riveras created after Beltran’s death. They hand out brochures explaining the new policy to every farmworker on their bus.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Not the first death\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Beltran was not Rivera Agri’s first heat-related fatality. In July 1997, a 39-year-old detasseler died of heatstroke under similar circumstances. Like Beltran, it was his third day on the job, and the temperature had spiked to 95 degrees. When he collapsed, the crew found him within two hours. But his core body temperature was 108 degrees — hot enough for the brain, liver and kidneys to shut down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA investigated his death but didn’t impose penalties because then-OSHA Area Director Ben Bare determined there was no applicable standard. The lack of a standard leaves individual OSHA officials to decide whether a general violation applies to each death, creating a pattern of uneven enforcement in worker heat-death cases, records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR’s analysis of worker heat deaths shows that, like Rivera Agri, 11 other companies have lost more than one employee. In five of the cases, OSHA investigated the first fatality and issued citations, only for another employee to die from heat. One of those cited was Texas-based Hellas Construction, which builds publicly and privately funded stadiums and other sports infrastructure projects across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In July 2018, the week before Beltran died in a Nebraska cornfield, Karl Simmons signed on as a laborer for Hellas. At 30, with long braided hair and a shoulder tattoo bearing his mother’s name, Simmons arrived at the sprawling Gateway Park in Fort Worth, Texas, ready to install turf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On his second day on the job, Simmons, who had served in the U.S. Navy, took a lunch break and fielded a call from his wife, Precious. “It’s just hot,” he complained, according to a deposition she gave in a lawsuit filed by the family against Hellas. The five-person crew had already drunk all the water. Simmons returned to preparing the mixture to attach to the turf, shoveling gravel and adhesive chemicals into a mixer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That afternoon — as the temperature topped 96 degrees — Simmons told his supervisor he felt hot, according to OSHA records. He complained about the heat two more times that day. Each time, he said he felt sick. At one point, he sought shade under a tree while his supervisor drove to a store to get water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A passerby eventually spotted Simmons sprawled on the ground, facedown, and alerted the crew. His brother-in-law, Michael Spriggins, who worked alongside Simmons as a Hellas laborer, sprinted to his aid. He found Simmons gasping for breath, bleeding from his nose and mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976359\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976359 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karl Simmons was installing turf at Gateway Park in Fort Worth, Texas, when he felt ill. Later, he was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The official cause of death was heatstroke. \u003ccite>(JerSean Golatt/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was a sight I ain’t going to never forget,” Spriggins said in an interview with CJI and NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called 911 and then placed a cool towel under Simmons’ neck at the dispatcher’s instructions. Simmons opened his eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It looked like he’s gonna pull through this,” Spriggins recalled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two hours later, Simmons was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Heatstroke, the autopsy report confirmed. He was one of at least 53 workers who have been fatally stricken by heat in Texas since 2010, CJI and NPR’s analysis shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, Jason Davidson, Hellas’ chief safety officer, emailed more than 340 company employees, addressing the perils of laboring in extreme heat. It was at least the fourth written warning he sent in the summer of 2018, when 11 additional Hellas employees were diagnosed with heat-related illnesses requiring medical attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dean Wingo, who oversaw the OSHA regional office that includes Texas from 2007 to 2012, said Hellas’ hospitalization numbers suggest a worrying pattern. Serious heat-related illness involves everything from a heat rash to uncontrolled bleeding, according to medical experts. In its most severe form, heatstroke can cause multisystem organ failure that has lasting adverse effects. Wingo said he believes Hellas’ record on workplace heat safety shows “poor” company management.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976360\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1976360\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dean Wingo, who formerly oversaw the OSHA regional office that includes Texas, says he believes Hellas Construction’s record on workplace heat safety shows “poor” company management. \u003ccite>(Michael Cirlos III/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hellas officials declined a dozen interview requests for this story and didn’t respond to a list of 20 written questions from CJI and NPR. In its response to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in July 2019 by Simmons’ wife, the company denied that its conduct “rose to a level of gross neglect” or that it failed to provide a safe workplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in December 2018, OSHA found that Hellas hadn’t provided Simmons a workplace “free from recognized hazards” and cited the company for two violations, including failing to record Simmons’ death in OSHA logs, records show. OSHA proposed a fine of $14,782 against Hellas for Simmons’ death. The company earned more than $150 million in revenue that year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of a settlement, Hellas agreed to implement “a more robust/detailed training program … to prevent heat exhaustion and heat stress injuries.” OSHA lowered the fine by nearly $2,000, to $12,934. That’s higher than the national average fine of $7,314 for employers in such cases, according to a CJI and NPR analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hellas executives did not carry out the safety measures, records show. And OSHA never showed up at a work site to see whether the company was following the terms of the settlement agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA’s regional office in Dallas, which investigated Simmons’ death, declined to discuss the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA data shows the agency reduced heat-related sanctions nationally by 31%, on average, after settlements. It cut the penalties in more than half of the 246 heat-death cases in which OSHA had proposed them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wingo said the only way OSHA can ensure that companies like Hellas keep their promises is to conduct follow-up inspections in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think it’s excusable,” he said. “When you’ve had a fatality, you go back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 19, 2019, a year after Simmons’ death, a second Hellas worker succumbed to heat — this time in Hondo, Texas, 42 miles west of San Antonio. At 6 a.m. that day, forecasters were promising a scorcher. The temperature would soar to 99 degrees, 3 degrees hotter than the 40-year average, the CJI and NPR data analysis shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pedro Martinez Sr., 49, had been employed by Hellas for more than a year when he arrived for work at McDowell Middle School with his 22-year-old namesake. The father had gotten the son a summer job. At the time, Pedro Jr., also known as “Bruno,” was between semesters at a college in his home state of Zacatecas, Mexico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the third day, the pair did cement work on the school’s athletic field. They pulled out vertical rebar stakes using a device called a JackJaw, pumping a handle to wrench the stakes from the ground. As in the Simmons case, an OSHA inspection would later confirm that the area had little shade. Records show that the younger Martinez toiled for 10 hours before taking a lunch break at 4 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly two hours later, he was working beside his father when he became overheated and ran off, hit a fence and collapsed. The father rushed his son to a local hospital’s emergency room, where nurses placed ice packs around his body. But his core temperature was already 108 degrees, according to a police report. The official cause of death was heatstroke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976365\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976365 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The former construction site where Pedro Martinez Jr., died of heatstroke. The athletic field and track is adjacent to McDowell Middle School in Hondo, Texas. \u003ccite>(Michael Cirlos III/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In December 2019, OSHA cited Hellas for a willful violation, the most serious category. The citation would have placed Hellas on a public list of “severe violators,” reserved for repeat offenders. The agency proposed a penalty of $132,598 — the maximum amount OSHA could levy at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One month later, Hellas challenged the citation, arguing it should be dismissed because OSHA didn’t prove “the necessary elements of its claims.” The Labor Department settled with Hellas in April 2020, cutting the fine in half and reclassifying the willful violation as five “serious” ones. This kept Hellas off the severe violators list. A revised settlement agreement required the company to create a heat-illness prevention plan, among other things. It’s unclear whether Hellas followed through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By May of last year, Hellas had paid the fine, and OSHA resolved the case. The agency’s regional office in San Antonio, which investigated Martinez’s death, declined two requests to discuss the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A state standard falls short\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Besides Texas, the states of California, Florida and Arkansas have each recorded at least 14 worker heat deaths since 2010, according to CJI and NPR’s analysis. Unlike most states, however, California has its own heat standard. Passed in 2005, the standard was later named after a 17-year-old pregnant farmworker, Maria Jimenez, who died from heat exposure while pruning grapes. The standard was the first to uphold the pillars of heat safety: water, rest, shade and acclimatization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, after the United Farm Workers sued California’s state version of OSHA, the agency tightened its standard. Cal/OSHA lowered the heat safety limit from 85 to 80 degrees and required companies to prepare for extreme heat threats on days hotter than 95 degrees. It also allocated more money and staff to enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, California’s rule is widely viewed as the gold standard. The Labor Department should emulate it, said John Newquist, who served as assistant administrator in OSHA Region 5 in the Upper Midwest from 2005 to 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s easy with California already adopting this thing for years,” he said. “If you follow these guidelines, that works.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But OSHA data on worker heat deaths suggests the state’s standard can fall short. The rule has led to a rise in heat-related enforcement actions by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, every year but 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic affected such activities across the board. In 2019, for instance, the agency conducted more than 4,000 heat inspections and cited workplaces in nearly half of them. Still, the CJI and NPR analysis shows that California’s yearly tally of worker heat deaths has remained steady over the past decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some critics say the agency has yet to curb worker heat illnesses and deaths because of lax and uneven enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garrett Brown, a Cal/OSHA inspector from 1994 to 2014, has investigated dozens of heat deaths and worked as a special adviser for a former Cal/OSHA secretary and as a part-time inspector until this year. He believes the agency can’t “do what it needs to do” to protect the state’s workers because of its chronic understaffing. Brown has documented staffing levels for years, charting the data on his blog, \u003ca href=\"https://insidecalosha.org/\">\u003cem>Inside Cal/OSHA\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. The figures reveal a tiny workforce — about 190 inspectors for 1 million employers responsible for 18 million workers. That’s one inspector for roughly every 5,200 companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown said mismanagement and the state’s inability to fill inspector positions have exacerbated the problem. As of July 31, at least 25% of nearly 250 Cal/OSHA inspector positions remained vacant. And that can make for dire consequences on the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A firefighter’s death\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In California, where fires have been raging, the victims of heat-related deaths are sometimes firefighters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April 2015, just two months before California’s standard was tightened, Raymond Araujo, one of 4,000 inmates who then served as firefighters for the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — known as Cal Fire — was on a 2-mile hike in Banning, California, about 30 miles from Palm Springs. Winding through steep, often shadeless hills, the trail was part of the department’s required cardiovascular training. On that day, the temperature climbed to 81 degrees, 10 degrees hotter than the 40-year average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976372\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976372 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fire station warning sign is shown down the road from Cal Fire’s De Luz Fire Station 16 in Fallbrook, Calif., where firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkovwas was assigned. \u003ccite>(Ariana Drehsler/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As the 12-member group neared the end of the exercise, Araujo stumbled and fell to his knees. His supervisor told his colleagues to help Araujo stand up and remove his fire gear so he could finish the hike. He walked 30 feet more and eventually collapsed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fire captain called for medical assistance, and a helicopter transported Araujo back to a nearby base camp, where he was pronounced dead, the records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Cal/OSHA inspection report named heat as a contributing factor in Araujo’s death, the cause was “hypertensive cardiovascular disease,” according to the autopsy report. As a result, Cal/OSHA deemed his death an accident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown, the former Cal/OSHA inspector, reviewed the agency’s report and said it was impossible for him to know why officials declined to investigate. He said the incident resembled many cases he had investigated — where workers suffered heart attacks because of the heat. Were he leading the charge, Brown said, he would have wanted to talk to eyewitnesses because the incident had all the hallmarks of a heat illness violation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One way to invalidate a fatality report is to decide that it’s natural causes,” he said, explaining that Cal/OSHA managers can look for ways to lessen understaffed inspectors’ workloads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal/OSHA declined CJI and NPR’s requests to interview key officials for this story. But an agency spokesman defended Cal/OSHA’s handling of Araujo’s death, noting that the agency followed the Cal/OSHA medical unit’s assessment in determining a cause of death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about the effectiveness of the heat standard, the agency said it regularly looks to enhance enforcement activities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to evaluate the effectiveness of our programs and consult with various subject matter experts to determine what changes, if any, are necessary to improve health and safety,” spokesman Frank Polizzi said in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>‘It pays not to comply’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Just before 8 a.m. on July 28, 2019, Cal Fire firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov set out with a fellow employee and a fire captain on a hike similar to the one that Araujo had made. The 28-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, who lived in Murrieta, California, a bedroom community near San Diego, had served as a reserve firefighter before being hired by Cal Fire in a seasonal role a year earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976371\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 395px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1976371\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/yaro3-c6336f214f435a3aeeca34908eac8a5749d38604-2.jpe\" alt=\"\" width=\"395\" height=\"296\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/yaro3-c6336f214f435a3aeeca34908eac8a5749d38604-2.jpe 395w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/yaro3-c6336f214f435a3aeeca34908eac8a5749d38604-2-160x120.jpe 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 395px) 100vw, 395px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cal Fire firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov was on a routine training exercise when he stumbled and felt exhausted shortly before he collapsed. \u003ccite>(Ashley Vallario)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On a standard training exercise, Katkov was asked to complete a 1.45-mile loop at Cal Fire’s rural Station 16 in Fallbrook, a remote mountainous area halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. As they traversed the loop, the captain and the co-worker noticed Katkov lagging behind the required 30-minute deadline to finish the hike. The two stopped on several occasions to allow Katkov to catch up, delaying their end time by 10 minutes. The temperature would climb to 88 degrees that day — 5 degrees hotter than the 40-year average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The captain, Joe Ekblad, recognized that Katkov hadn’t given his body enough of a rest yet, but ordered the firefighters to repeat the exercise, according to the Cal/OSHA records. On the way up the steepest incline of the loop, Katkov stumbled and told his supervisor he felt exhausted — two telltale signs of heat stress. He collapsed on the hilltop, was airlifted to a hospital nearly two hours later and died of heat illness the next day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He loved the idea of being like a wildland firefighter,” said Ashley Vallario, Katkov’s fiancée. “It made him happy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, Cal/OSHA investigated Katkov’s death, interviewing eyewitnesses. The inspector detailed extensive failures by the captain, which led to his demotion. The agency found that Cal Fire had failed to stop the hike and seek emergency medical treatment even after Katkov had exhibited heat-related symptoms. Regulators levied a fine of $80,000 — almost five times the average Cal/OSHA fine of $17,000 in these cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither Cal Fire nor Ekblad responded to requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976401\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976401 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov was asked to complete a 1.45-mile loop at Cal Fire’s rural Station 16 in Fallbrook, a remote mountainous area halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. \u003ccite>(Ariana Drehsler for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Such a large penalty shows what a fully enforceable heat standard can do, some experts say. But Cal/OSHA records suggest the regulators’ stick has not come soon enough. Since 2012, at least four other firefighters have died during Cal Fire training hikes. All the firefighters but Katkov were inmates. No other case yielded sanctions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire’s training processes, meanwhile, continue to put firefighters at risk. In 2020, almost a year after Katkov’s death, another department firefighter was sickened by heat during a hike. That firefighter was rushed to the hospital and survived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellen Widess, head of Cal/OSHA from 2011 to 2013, said she sees an unsettling pattern: Employers can brush off the cost of an agency fine. In many cases, she said, penalties have no effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve seen that the costs of [non]compliance are so cheap,” Widess said. “It pays not to comply.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>‘It’s going to be like this every year’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In the three years since Public Citizen renewed its petition for an OSHA heat standard, political pressure for such action has grown. In March, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., authored legislation that would require OSHA to create a national heat standard based on NIOSH criteria and mandate employer training “to prevent and respond” to heat illnesses. The bill, co-sponsored by at least 57 House Democrats, is pending in committee. It marks the second attempt by federal lawmakers to establish a rule since 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA, meanwhile, said it will take the first step toward issuing a rule this fall. In October, the agency plans to publish a request for information from employers, occupational health specialists, climate scientists and workers on the viability of a standard. Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, said the input could help the agency develop a regulation that applies to any industry in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Heat hazards exist in many, many industries,” he said. “We know that we have work to do with almost every industry to understand … what the effect of heat hazards in their workplace is and how best they are putting in practices and controls to mitigate those hazards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, former OSHA officials are anticipating industry pushback, particularly from construction groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976404\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976404 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-768x614.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-2048x1638.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-1920x1536.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The body of farmworker Cruz Urias Beltran was found in this cornfield near Cairo, Neb. \u003ccite>(Walker Pickering/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Every time OSHA proposes a standard, [the] industry accuses OSHA of killing jobs and destroying whatever industry is going to be regulated,” said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant labor secretary who helped shepherd two chemical-exposure standards through protracted rule-making processes. “That would probably follow with a heat standard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some states have decided not to wait. In June, as an unprecedented heat wave blanketed the Pacific Northwest, Sebastian Francisco Perez moved irrigation pipes at a nursery in Willamette Valley, Oregon. Perez was found dead at the end of his shift. Preliminary information suggests the incident was heat related, but Oregon Occupational Safety and Health (Oregon OSHA) has yet to make a determination, according to Aaron Corvin, a spokesman for Oregon OSHA. Ten days later, the state enacted an emergency heat standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Grand Island, Nebraska, where the average high temperature has increased 2 degrees since the 1990s, the intensifying heat is not lost on Joseph Rivera. As a younger man in the fields, he remembers there were hot and humid days. But now the heat is so extreme, he said, “you get these hot days that just come up over you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With climate change, you hit 112 in Nebraska the other day,” Rivera said, explaining why he’s amenable to a federal heat standard. “It’s going to be like this every year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christina Stella, a reporter with Nebraska Public Media; Jacob Margolis, a reporter with KPCC in Los Angeles; Allison Mollenkamp, an intern on NPR’s investigative team; and The Texas Newsroom contributed to this story. Julia Shipley, Brian Edwards and David Nickerson reported this story as fellows for Columbia Journalism Investigations, an investigative reporting unit at the Columbia Journalism School in New York. Cascade Tuholske, a climate impact scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, contributed to the data analysis. Public Health Watch, an independent investigative nonprofit, helped edit this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Heat+Is+Killing+Workers+In+The+U.S.+%E2%80%94+And+There+Are+No+Federal+Rules+To+Protect+Them&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As the temperature in Grand Island, Nebraska, soared to 91 degrees that July day in 2018, two dozen farmworkers tunneled for nine hours into a thicket of cornstalks, snapping off tassels while they crossed a sunbaked field that spanned 206 acres — the equivalent of 156 football fields.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When they emerged at the end of the day to board a bus that would transport them to a nearby motel to sleep, one of the workers, Cruz Urias Beltran, didn’t make it back. Searchers found the 52-year-old farmworker’s body 20 hours later amid the cornhusks, “as if he’d simply collapsed,” recalled a funeral home employee. An empty water bottle was stuffed in his jeans pocket. An autopsy report confirmed that Beltran died from heatstroke. It was his third day on the job.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beltran is one of at least 384 workers who died from environmental heat exposure in the U.S. in the last decade, according to an investigation by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations, the investigative reporting unit of the Columbia Journalism School. The count includes people toiling in essential, yet often, invisible jobs in 37 states across the country: farm laborers in California, construction and trash-collection workers in Texas and tree trimmers in North Carolina and Virginia. An analysis of federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the three-year average of worker heat deaths has doubled since the early 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976348\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1976348\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_in_the_1990s-edit-d66a1ab99079af2d799ed3c53e9aa916dbe96937-3.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A family photo of Cruz Urias Beltran taken during the 1990s. \u003ccite>(Paty Espinoza)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, including workplace inspection reports, death investigation files, depositions, court records and police reports, and interviewed victims’ families, former and current officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers, employers, workers’ advocates, lawyers and experts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR also analyzed two federal data sets on worker heat deaths: one from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the other from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both are divisions within the U.S. Labor Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among the findings:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), whose primary responsibility is to protect workers from hazards, has failed to adopt a national heat standard to safeguard workers against rapidly rising temperatures, resulting in an enforcement system rife with problems.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>For at least a dozen companies, it wasn’t the first time their workers succumbed to heat. One worker collapsed and died after repeatedly complaining about the heat; another died after hauling 20 tons of trash for nearly 10 hours. In some instances, employees died after not having ample water and scheduled shade breaks. Many died within their first week on the job.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>OSHA officials often decide not to penalize companies for worker deaths. When they do, they routinely negotiate with business owners and reduce violations and fines.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>In some cases, OSHA doesn’t follow up after a worker’s death from heat exposure to ensure that the company is complying with the measures the agency imposed to prevent future fatalities.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Workers of color have borne the brunt: Since 2010, Hispanics have accounted for a third of all heat fatalities, yet they represent a fraction — 17% — of the U.S. workforce. Health and safety experts attribute this unequal toll to Hispanics’ overrepresentation in industries vulnerable to dangerous heat, such as construction and agriculture.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>OSHA’s record-keeping on heat fatalities is so poor that there’s no way to know exactly how many workers have died from heat.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Current and former OSHA officials acknowledge that the known death tally is a vast undercount. The agency mostly relies on companies to report worker fatalities after they occur, but not all do so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR reporters analyzed worker heat deaths recorded by OSHA between 2010 and 2020 and compared each incident day’s high temperature with historical averages over 40 years. Most of the deaths happened on days that were unusually hot for that date. More than two-thirds occurred on days when the temperature reached at least 90 degrees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet no worker should die from heat, said Ronda McCarthy, an occupational health specialist who directs medical services at the health care provider Concentra, in Waco, Texas. McCarthy spent seven years educating her home state’s municipal workers about heat, which reduced cases of worker heat exhaustion and similar conditions there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Heat illness should be considered a preventable illness,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>No federal heat standard\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>OSHA has known about the dangers of heat — and how to prevent deaths — for decades. In 1972, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, studied the effects of heat stress on workers in the U.S. and recommended criteria for an OSHA heat standard. Under the proposal, employers would have had to give employees one break every hour and offer ready access to water. New workers would have received extra breaks so they could acclimate to strenuous activity in the heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NIOSH has refined these safety measures — first in 1986 and, again, in 2016 — but OSHA has not acted on them because of other regulatory priorities. This year, for the first time, OSHA is officially considering a heat standard by putting it on its regulatory agenda. James Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, said it’s a “priority” for the Biden administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Occupational exposure to heat remains a very important topic,” Frederick said in an interview with CJI and NPR. “We’re focused on improving our efforts to protect workers moving forward.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976349\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976349 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2-1920x1279.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/morton_jfrederick_osha_210716_06-edit_custom-4b483ec03879252f9584a0f9d955dc119e38b782-2.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Frederick, acting assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, stands in the national office of OSHA in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2021. \u003ccite>(Ian Morton/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Absent a heat standard, OSHA must rely on a 50-year-old regulation guaranteeing workers a “hazard-free workplace.” OSHA does require companies to provide adequate water, but not other heat-safety measures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA’s own research shows relying on this general rule hasn’t worked. A 2016 study by agency scientists found that some employers whose workers got sick or died from heat hadn’t met basic water provisions. Most companies never offered rest breaks. Only one out of 84 total employers had a plan for building up its workers’ tolerance for laboring in heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2011, four labor and public interest organizations, including Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, petitioned OSHA to issue a heat standard. They asked the agency for an emergency temporary standard because a new rule, the petition stated, “could potentially take many years before it’s finalized and implemented.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Michaels, then the assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health, who oversaw OSHA, denied the petition, arguing in a January 2012 letter to petitioners that workers weren’t dying from heat at a rate that would justify a legal standard. Recognizing extreme heat’s threat, he said most workers can “recover fairly quickly when the appropriate measures are taken.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Michaels launched a voluntary awareness campaign distributing posters and flyers that instructed employees on how to protect themselves. OSHA incorporated these precautions into a free bilingual phone app featuring government-issued heat alerts and advisories. The agency continued this campaign through 2013. Its principle message remains on \u003ca href=\"https://www.osha.gov/heat\">OSHA’s website today\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976351\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976351 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/gettyimages-102342163_custom-6b6018a90245a086253584a9f5b3992a88d2faa1-1-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Michaels, the assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, attends a full committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2010. The hearing was on “Worker Health and Safety from the Oil Rig to the Shoreline,” focusing on how worker health and safety is regulated and enforced by various parties, from oil rig workers to post-accident cleanup operations. \u003ccite>(Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Michaels touted the campaign as a success at the time. The numbers are less clear. The number of workers who succumbed to heat topped 61 cases during the campaign’s inaugural year, in 2011 — an all-time high. An additional 65 workers would die from heat exposure in the ensuing two years, closer to the annual average for the decade, while the campaign remained an agency priority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Six years after his petition denial letter, and after leaving OSHA’s top post, Michaels changed his approach. In 2018, he joined Public Citizen and 131 additional groups in a second petition asking the agency to enact a heat standard. This time, petitioners cited NIOSH’s updated guidelines and warned that “this warming trend will not only continue but accelerate.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent interview, Michaels, now a public health professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the agencywide consensus was that climate change would worsen the problem. But the rule-making process at OSHA is “so difficult” and the industry opposition so formidable that adopting a heat standard “became a bridge too far,” he said. He has come to believe a standard is essential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that heat kills,” Michaels said. “And if we don’t have requirements, heat will kill more workers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Search and rescue\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>A standard that included water, rest, shade and acclimatization could have saved Beltran, an experienced farmworker who traveled more than 1,300 miles from San Luis, Arizona, to the heart of America’s Corn Belt to pull tassels off corn plants for Rivera Agri Inc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day he went missing in the fields on the outskirts of Grand Island, the temperature — with humidity — felt like 100 degrees. Joseph Rivera, the company’s owner, placed an emergency call to authorities shortly after 5 p.m. Beltran was in the field but didn’t come out with the other workers, he told the 911 operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976374\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976374 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-768x614.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-2048x1638.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/nw-2021-07-28-wpick-4376_custom-7e2b8be8b7126e888b7cf0cca98ee3cad4e4cb2c-1-1920x1536.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cornfield where Cruz Urias Beltran’s body was found near Cairo, Neb., on July 28, 2021. \u003ccite>(Walker Pickering/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The call set off an elaborate search-and-rescue mission in the central Nebraska city of 51,000. One volunteer flew a Piper Cub airplane low and slow, on the lookout for the orange safety hat atop Beltran’s salt-and-pepper hair. Another manned a helicopter circling the sea of stalks until the chopper ran low on fuel. At sunset, a Nebraska State Patrol plane with thermal-imaging equipment scanned for a sign of Beltran’s body temperature, but since the plants and soil also were emanating heat, he went undetected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The following morning, as the temperature hovered in the 90s, the Red Cross opened a temporary cooling station with air conditioning for the 100 volunteers who joined the search. Shortly after noon, someone spotted Beltran’s body, facedown in the husks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two months after Beltran’s body was shipped to his family’s home in Mexico’s Sonora state, an OSHA inspector visited Rivera Agri as part of the agency’s investigation into the death. OSHA inspection records show the company didn’t deploy the kind of preventive measures that a heat standard would have required. Rivera Agri did not ensure that employees took enough rest breaks in the shade, drank sufficient amounts of water and adapted to their grueling work, the records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976357\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1976357\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-800x600.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-800x600.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-160x120.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1-768x576.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/cruz_urias_beltran_hugging_his_son_jesus_adrian_urias_machado-edit-40cf5ef60a1dc6e3723a63d2c216ceb3af5f9477-1.png 952w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Beltran hugs his son, Jesus Adrian Urias Machado. Beltran was an experienced farmworker and traveled from Arizona to work in Nebraska. \u003ccite>(Paty Espinoza)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“These actions were left to the employees to manage themselves,” the inspector wrote in a nine-page citation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA found that the “moderate lifting and bending” and “pushing and pulling” that Beltran had performed in the heat had contributed to his death. It cited Rivera Agri for a violation and proposed fines totaling $11,641. The agency also ordered the company to train employees on the symptoms of heat illness, among other safety measures. Rivera Agri agreed to OSHA’s conditions, and the fines were reduced to $9,500, records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela Rivera, who runs the farm labor contracting business with her father, Joseph, said the company has worked to fulfill the agreement. Today, it contracts with a farmworker-rights group to educate employees on how to respond to heat emergencies. Near the cornfield, it sets up extra water stations and has canopies for emergency shade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been in this business for a long time,” said Angela Rivera, who calls Beltran’s death “an unfortunate thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every year we try to step it up,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joseph Rivera said supervisors now monitor the heat on their cellphones and pull detasselers from the cornfields whenever it gets too hot — part of a heat-stress plan the Riveras created after Beltran’s death. They hand out brochures explaining the new policy to every farmworker on their bus.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Not the first death\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Beltran was not Rivera Agri’s first heat-related fatality. In July 1997, a 39-year-old detasseler died of heatstroke under similar circumstances. Like Beltran, it was his third day on the job, and the temperature had spiked to 95 degrees. When he collapsed, the crew found him within two hours. But his core body temperature was 108 degrees — hot enough for the brain, liver and kidneys to shut down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA investigated his death but didn’t impose penalties because then-OSHA Area Director Ben Bare determined there was no applicable standard. The lack of a standard leaves individual OSHA officials to decide whether a general violation applies to each death, creating a pattern of uneven enforcement in worker heat-death cases, records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CJI and NPR’s analysis of worker heat deaths shows that, like Rivera Agri, 11 other companies have lost more than one employee. In five of the cases, OSHA investigated the first fatality and issued citations, only for another employee to die from heat. One of those cited was Texas-based Hellas Construction, which builds publicly and privately funded stadiums and other sports infrastructure projects across the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In July 2018, the week before Beltran died in a Nebraska cornfield, Karl Simmons signed on as a laborer for Hellas. At 30, with long braided hair and a shoulder tattoo bearing his mother’s name, Simmons arrived at the sprawling Gateway Park in Fort Worth, Texas, ready to install turf.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On his second day on the job, Simmons, who had served in the U.S. Navy, took a lunch break and fielded a call from his wife, Precious. “It’s just hot,” he complained, according to a deposition she gave in a lawsuit filed by the family against Hellas. The five-person crew had already drunk all the water. Simmons returned to preparing the mixture to attach to the turf, shoveling gravel and adhesive chemicals into a mixer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That afternoon — as the temperature topped 96 degrees — Simmons told his supervisor he felt hot, according to OSHA records. He complained about the heat two more times that day. Each time, he said he felt sick. At one point, he sought shade under a tree while his supervisor drove to a store to get water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A passerby eventually spotted Simmons sprawled on the ground, facedown, and alerted the crew. His brother-in-law, Michael Spriggins, who worked alongside Simmons as a Hellas laborer, sprinted to his aid. He found Simmons gasping for breath, bleeding from his nose and mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976359\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976359 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/npr-jul-31-2021-1_custom-884b15aa0b305a577c37107e8a1a8d8cbe1f2a62-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karl Simmons was installing turf at Gateway Park in Fort Worth, Texas, when he felt ill. Later, he was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The official cause of death was heatstroke. \u003ccite>(JerSean Golatt/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It was a sight I ain’t going to never forget,” Spriggins said in an interview with CJI and NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He called 911 and then placed a cool towel under Simmons’ neck at the dispatcher’s instructions. Simmons opened his eyes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It looked like he’s gonna pull through this,” Spriggins recalled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two hours later, Simmons was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Heatstroke, the autopsy report confirmed. He was one of at least 53 workers who have been fatally stricken by heat in Texas since 2010, CJI and NPR’s analysis shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, Jason Davidson, Hellas’ chief safety officer, emailed more than 340 company employees, addressing the perils of laboring in extreme heat. It was at least the fourth written warning he sent in the summer of 2018, when 11 additional Hellas employees were diagnosed with heat-related illnesses requiring medical attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dean Wingo, who oversaw the OSHA regional office that includes Texas from 2007 to 2012, said Hellas’ hospitalization numbers suggest a worrying pattern. Serious heat-related illness involves everything from a heat rash to uncontrolled bleeding, according to medical experts. In its most severe form, heatstroke can cause multisystem organ failure that has lasting adverse effects. Wingo said he believes Hellas’ record on workplace heat safety shows “poor” company management.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976360\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1976360\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/a13i9995-edit_custom-17545930d6db6e5937a8834fbcc78ea9b70c6442-1-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dean Wingo, who formerly oversaw the OSHA regional office that includes Texas, says he believes Hellas Construction’s record on workplace heat safety shows “poor” company management. \u003ccite>(Michael Cirlos III/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hellas officials declined a dozen interview requests for this story and didn’t respond to a list of 20 written questions from CJI and NPR. In its response to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in July 2019 by Simmons’ wife, the company denied that its conduct “rose to a level of gross neglect” or that it failed to provide a safe workplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in December 2018, OSHA found that Hellas hadn’t provided Simmons a workplace “free from recognized hazards” and cited the company for two violations, including failing to record Simmons’ death in OSHA logs, records show. OSHA proposed a fine of $14,782 against Hellas for Simmons’ death. The company earned more than $150 million in revenue that year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As part of a settlement, Hellas agreed to implement “a more robust/detailed training program … to prevent heat exhaustion and heat stress injuries.” OSHA lowered the fine by nearly $2,000, to $12,934. That’s higher than the national average fine of $7,314 for employers in such cases, according to a CJI and NPR analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hellas executives did not carry out the safety measures, records show. And OSHA never showed up at a work site to see whether the company was following the terms of the settlement agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA’s regional office in Dallas, which investigated Simmons’ death, declined to discuss the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA data shows the agency reduced heat-related sanctions nationally by 31%, on average, after settlements. It cut the penalties in more than half of the 246 heat-death cases in which OSHA had proposed them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wingo said the only way OSHA can ensure that companies like Hellas keep their promises is to conduct follow-up inspections in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think it’s excusable,” he said. “When you’ve had a fatality, you go back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 19, 2019, a year after Simmons’ death, a second Hellas worker succumbed to heat — this time in Hondo, Texas, 42 miles west of San Antonio. At 6 a.m. that day, forecasters were promising a scorcher. The temperature would soar to 99 degrees, 3 degrees hotter than the 40-year average, the CJI and NPR data analysis shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pedro Martinez Sr., 49, had been employed by Hellas for more than a year when he arrived for work at McDowell Middle School with his 22-year-old namesake. The father had gotten the son a summer job. At the time, Pedro Jr., also known as “Bruno,” was between semesters at a college in his home state of Zacatecas, Mexico.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the third day, the pair did cement work on the school’s athletic field. They pulled out vertical rebar stakes using a device called a JackJaw, pumping a handle to wrench the stakes from the ground. As in the Simmons case, an OSHA inspection would later confirm that the area had little shade. Records show that the younger Martinez toiled for 10 hours before taking a lunch break at 4 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly two hours later, he was working beside his father when he became overheated and ran off, hit a fence and collapsed. The father rushed his son to a local hospital’s emergency room, where nurses placed ice packs around his body. But his core temperature was already 108 degrees, according to a police report. The official cause of death was heatstroke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976365\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976365 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/dji_0790-edit_custom-a75e19bdefb32b549549a243ec99508e6fadab64-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The former construction site where Pedro Martinez Jr., died of heatstroke. The athletic field and track is adjacent to McDowell Middle School in Hondo, Texas. \u003ccite>(Michael Cirlos III/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In December 2019, OSHA cited Hellas for a willful violation, the most serious category. The citation would have placed Hellas on a public list of “severe violators,” reserved for repeat offenders. The agency proposed a penalty of $132,598 — the maximum amount OSHA could levy at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One month later, Hellas challenged the citation, arguing it should be dismissed because OSHA didn’t prove “the necessary elements of its claims.” The Labor Department settled with Hellas in April 2020, cutting the fine in half and reclassifying the willful violation as five “serious” ones. This kept Hellas off the severe violators list. A revised settlement agreement required the company to create a heat-illness prevention plan, among other things. It’s unclear whether Hellas followed through.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By May of last year, Hellas had paid the fine, and OSHA resolved the case. The agency’s regional office in San Antonio, which investigated Martinez’s death, declined two requests to discuss the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A state standard falls short\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Besides Texas, the states of California, Florida and Arkansas have each recorded at least 14 worker heat deaths since 2010, according to CJI and NPR’s analysis. Unlike most states, however, California has its own heat standard. Passed in 2005, the standard was later named after a 17-year-old pregnant farmworker, Maria Jimenez, who died from heat exposure while pruning grapes. The standard was the first to uphold the pillars of heat safety: water, rest, shade and acclimatization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2015, after the United Farm Workers sued California’s state version of OSHA, the agency tightened its standard. Cal/OSHA lowered the heat safety limit from 85 to 80 degrees and required companies to prepare for extreme heat threats on days hotter than 95 degrees. It also allocated more money and staff to enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, California’s rule is widely viewed as the gold standard. The Labor Department should emulate it, said John Newquist, who served as assistant administrator in OSHA Region 5 in the Upper Midwest from 2005 to 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s easy with California already adopting this thing for years,” he said. “If you follow these guidelines, that works.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But OSHA data on worker heat deaths suggests the state’s standard can fall short. The rule has led to a rise in heat-related enforcement actions by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, every year but 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic affected such activities across the board. In 2019, for instance, the agency conducted more than 4,000 heat inspections and cited workplaces in nearly half of them. Still, the CJI and NPR analysis shows that California’s yearly tally of worker heat deaths has remained steady over the past decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some critics say the agency has yet to curb worker heat illnesses and deaths because of lax and uneven enforcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garrett Brown, a Cal/OSHA inspector from 1994 to 2014, has investigated dozens of heat deaths and worked as a special adviser for a former Cal/OSHA secretary and as a part-time inspector until this year. He believes the agency can’t “do what it needs to do” to protect the state’s workers because of its chronic understaffing. Brown has documented staffing levels for years, charting the data on his blog, \u003ca href=\"https://insidecalosha.org/\">\u003cem>Inside Cal/OSHA\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. The figures reveal a tiny workforce — about 190 inspectors for 1 million employers responsible for 18 million workers. That’s one inspector for roughly every 5,200 companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown said mismanagement and the state’s inability to fill inspector positions have exacerbated the problem. As of July 31, at least 25% of nearly 250 Cal/OSHA inspector positions remained vacant. And that can make for dire consequences on the ground.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A firefighter’s death\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In California, where fires have been raging, the victims of heat-related deaths are sometimes firefighters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April 2015, just two months before California’s standard was tightened, Raymond Araujo, one of 4,000 inmates who then served as firefighters for the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — known as Cal Fire — was on a 2-mile hike in Banning, California, about 30 miles from Palm Springs. Winding through steep, often shadeless hills, the trail was part of the department’s required cardiovascular training. On that day, the temperature climbed to 81 degrees, 10 degrees hotter than the 40-year average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976372\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976372 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0005-edit1_custom-38f23e78cad4ff96eef14fea9e92015d4c26beaa-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A fire station warning sign is shown down the road from Cal Fire’s De Luz Fire Station 16 in Fallbrook, Calif., where firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkovwas was assigned. \u003ccite>(Ariana Drehsler/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As the 12-member group neared the end of the exercise, Araujo stumbled and fell to his knees. His supervisor told his colleagues to help Araujo stand up and remove his fire gear so he could finish the hike. He walked 30 feet more and eventually collapsed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fire captain called for medical assistance, and a helicopter transported Araujo back to a nearby base camp, where he was pronounced dead, the records show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Cal/OSHA inspection report named heat as a contributing factor in Araujo’s death, the cause was “hypertensive cardiovascular disease,” according to the autopsy report. As a result, Cal/OSHA deemed his death an accident.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown, the former Cal/OSHA inspector, reviewed the agency’s report and said it was impossible for him to know why officials declined to investigate. He said the incident resembled many cases he had investigated — where workers suffered heart attacks because of the heat. Were he leading the charge, Brown said, he would have wanted to talk to eyewitnesses because the incident had all the hallmarks of a heat illness violation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One way to invalidate a fatality report is to decide that it’s natural causes,” he said, explaining that Cal/OSHA managers can look for ways to lessen understaffed inspectors’ workloads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal/OSHA declined CJI and NPR’s requests to interview key officials for this story. But an agency spokesman defended Cal/OSHA’s handling of Araujo’s death, noting that the agency followed the Cal/OSHA medical unit’s assessment in determining a cause of death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asked about the effectiveness of the heat standard, the agency said it regularly looks to enhance enforcement activities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We continue to evaluate the effectiveness of our programs and consult with various subject matter experts to determine what changes, if any, are necessary to improve health and safety,” spokesman Frank Polizzi said in an email.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>‘It pays not to comply’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Just before 8 a.m. on July 28, 2019, Cal Fire firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov set out with a fellow employee and a fire captain on a hike similar to the one that Araujo had made. The 28-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, who lived in Murrieta, California, a bedroom community near San Diego, had served as a reserve firefighter before being hired by Cal Fire in a seasonal role a year earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976371\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 395px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1976371\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/yaro3-c6336f214f435a3aeeca34908eac8a5749d38604-2.jpe\" alt=\"\" width=\"395\" height=\"296\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/yaro3-c6336f214f435a3aeeca34908eac8a5749d38604-2.jpe 395w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/yaro3-c6336f214f435a3aeeca34908eac8a5749d38604-2-160x120.jpe 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 395px) 100vw, 395px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cal Fire firefighter Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov was on a routine training exercise when he stumbled and felt exhausted shortly before he collapsed. \u003ccite>(Ashley Vallario)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On a standard training exercise, Katkov was asked to complete a 1.45-mile loop at Cal Fire’s rural Station 16 in Fallbrook, a remote mountainous area halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. As they traversed the loop, the captain and the co-worker noticed Katkov lagging behind the required 30-minute deadline to finish the hike. The two stopped on several occasions to allow Katkov to catch up, delaying their end time by 10 minutes. The temperature would climb to 88 degrees that day — 5 degrees hotter than the 40-year average.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The captain, Joe Ekblad, recognized that Katkov hadn’t given his body enough of a rest yet, but ordered the firefighters to repeat the exercise, according to the Cal/OSHA records. On the way up the steepest incline of the loop, Katkov stumbled and told his supervisor he felt exhausted — two telltale signs of heat stress. He collapsed on the hilltop, was airlifted to a hospital nearly two hours later and died of heat illness the next day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He loved the idea of being like a wildland firefighter,” said Ashley Vallario, Katkov’s fiancée. “It made him happy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, Cal/OSHA investigated Katkov’s death, interviewing eyewitnesses. The inspector detailed extensive failures by the captain, which led to his demotion. The agency found that Cal Fire had failed to stop the hike and seek emergency medical treatment even after Katkov had exhibited heat-related symptoms. Regulators levied a fine of $80,000 — almost five times the average Cal/OSHA fine of $17,000 in these cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neither Cal Fire nor Ekblad responded to requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976401\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976401 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/0017-edit1_custom-f7526141e0da5514521d7a2ee20044bccb4c63d7-2-1920x1279.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yaroslav “Yaro” Katkov was asked to complete a 1.45-mile loop at Cal Fire’s rural Station 16 in Fallbrook, a remote mountainous area halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. \u003ccite>(Ariana Drehsler for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Such a large penalty shows what a fully enforceable heat standard can do, some experts say. But Cal/OSHA records suggest the regulators’ stick has not come soon enough. Since 2012, at least four other firefighters have died during Cal Fire training hikes. All the firefighters but Katkov were inmates. No other case yielded sanctions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cal Fire’s training processes, meanwhile, continue to put firefighters at risk. In 2020, almost a year after Katkov’s death, another department firefighter was sickened by heat during a hike. That firefighter was rushed to the hospital and survived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellen Widess, head of Cal/OSHA from 2011 to 2013, said she sees an unsettling pattern: Employers can brush off the cost of an agency fine. In many cases, she said, penalties have no effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve seen that the costs of [non]compliance are so cheap,” Widess said. “It pays not to comply.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>‘It’s going to be like this every year’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In the three years since Public Citizen renewed its petition for an OSHA heat standard, political pressure for such action has grown. In March, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., authored legislation that would require OSHA to create a national heat standard based on NIOSH criteria and mandate employer training “to prevent and respond” to heat illnesses. The bill, co-sponsored by at least 57 House Democrats, is pending in committee. It marks the second attempt by federal lawmakers to establish a rule since 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OSHA, meanwhile, said it will take the first step toward issuing a rule this fall. In October, the agency plans to publish a request for information from employers, occupational health specialists, climate scientists and workers on the viability of a standard. Frederick, OSHA’s acting director, said the input could help the agency develop a regulation that applies to any industry in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Heat hazards exist in many, many industries,” he said. “We know that we have work to do with almost every industry to understand … what the effect of heat hazards in their workplace is and how best they are putting in practices and controls to mitigate those hazards.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, former OSHA officials are anticipating industry pushback, particularly from construction groups.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1976404\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1976404 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-768x614.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-2048x1638.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/08/se-2021-07-28-wpick-4427-edit_custom-c315a8531fef94c182a9d3c09fb7398ee7c3f664-2-1920x1536.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The body of farmworker Cruz Urias Beltran was found in this cornfield near Cairo, Neb. \u003ccite>(Walker Pickering/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Every time OSHA proposes a standard, [the] industry accuses OSHA of killing jobs and destroying whatever industry is going to be regulated,” said Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant labor secretary who helped shepherd two chemical-exposure standards through protracted rule-making processes. “That would probably follow with a heat standard.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some states have decided not to wait. In June, as an unprecedented heat wave blanketed the Pacific Northwest, Sebastian Francisco Perez moved irrigation pipes at a nursery in Willamette Valley, Oregon. Perez was found dead at the end of his shift. Preliminary information suggests the incident was heat related, but Oregon Occupational Safety and Health (Oregon OSHA) has yet to make a determination, according to Aaron Corvin, a spokesman for Oregon OSHA. Ten days later, the state enacted an emergency heat standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Grand Island, Nebraska, where the average high temperature has increased 2 degrees since the 1990s, the intensifying heat is not lost on Joseph Rivera. As a younger man in the fields, he remembers there were hot and humid days. But now the heat is so extreme, he said, “you get these hot days that just come up over you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With climate change, you hit 112 in Nebraska the other day,” Rivera said, explaining why he’s amenable to a federal heat standard. “It’s going to be like this every year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christina Stella, a reporter with Nebraska Public Media; Jacob Margolis, a reporter with KPCC in Los Angeles; Allison Mollenkamp, an intern on NPR’s investigative team; and The Texas Newsroom contributed to this story. Julia Shipley, Brian Edwards and David Nickerson reported this story as fellows for Columbia Journalism Investigations, an investigative reporting unit at the Columbia Journalism School in New York. Cascade Tuholske, a climate impact scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, contributed to the data analysis. Public Health Watch, an independent investigative nonprofit, helped edit this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Heat+Is+Killing+Workers+In+The+U.S.+%E2%80%94+And+There+Are+No+Federal+Rules+To+Protect+Them&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "making-sense-of-purple-air-vs-airnow-and-a-new-map-to-rule-them-all",
"title": "From PurpleAir to AirNow, Your Air Quality Maps for Wildfire Smoke",
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"headTitle": "From PurpleAir to AirNow, Your Air Quality Maps for Wildfire Smoke | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Bay Area residents have become used to the ritual of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1930023/map-heres-your-daily-air-quality-report-for-the-bay-area\">checking online maps for local air quality\u003c/a> amid burning forests and chaparral near and far.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the 2018 Camp Fire, \u003ca href=\"https://www.airnow.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">AirNow\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, an air quality website maintained by a partnership of states, the federal government, Canada and Mexico, crashed because it could not handle so many people flocking online to put numbers to what their noses were telling them: The air seemed really bad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">The failure sent web users \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1950648/californians-turn-to-low-cost-sensors-for-highly-local-air-quality-info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">rushing\u003c/span>\u003c/a> to alternative, unofficial websites like the interactive, crowdsourced map maintained by \u003ca href=\"https://www.purpleair.com/map?mylocation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">PurpleAir\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, a manufacturer of low-cost air monitors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But users have noticed a discrepancy between what official sites are reporting and the readings displayed on PurpleAir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>So, what’s the deal?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Broadly put, PurpleAir provides more localized, more current and less accurate readings than AirNow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA and the U.S. Forest Service have a \u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.768719999999995&lng=-122.4454258&zoom=12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">project\u003c/a> of what some may consider to be the Holy Grail of air quality maps: combined readings taken from PurpleAir’s low-cost sensors and those from official government monitoring devices, all in a single map. Click \u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.7576497&lng=-122.4353884&zoom=10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a> or on the image below to access the map; the circles represent official government monitors, the squares indicate PurpleAir sensors, and the triangles show temporary monitors set up by government agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969281\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.7576497&lng=-122.4353884&zoom=10\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1969281 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1020x544.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"341\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1020x544.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-800x427.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-160x85.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-768x410.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1536x819.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-2048x1092.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1920x1024.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot from AirNow Fire and Smoke map, a pilot project, on Sept. 4, 2020.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“While these [unofficial] sensors don’t meet the rigorous standards required for regulatory monitors, they can help you get a picture of air quality nearest you, especially when wildfire smoke is in your area,” the website states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PurpleAir readings and those from government sensors like the ones maintained by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District differ in several key ways: speed, accuracy and placement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[emailsignup newslettername='science' align='right']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003cspan class=\"s3\">Users of PurpleAir can toggle between real-time data and readings averaged over the last 10 or 30 minutes. The data comes from the commercial sensors the company sells, which members of the public install on porches, yards and other neighborhood sites. The readings can be helpful for people deciding whether to go for a walk or engage in other outdoor activity. (Remember to deselect “indoor sensors” to see outdoors-only readings.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"s3\">The AirNow site displays hourly, not real-time, readings. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s3\">The government sensors that send data to AirNow are very expensive, state-regulated and regularly calibrated by scientists to accurately measure the density of wildfire ash and other particles in the air. But they are more sparsely located than PurpleAir’s network of hundreds of monitors in the region. In contrast, PurpleAir’s devices rely on a laser to count the particles in the air, and use an average density to determine air quality at the monitor’s location. The calculation is an estimate, however, especially during fire season, as woodsmoke particles have a different density from gravel dust or other pollutants.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To try to remedy the situation, we’ve had a whole bunch of different groups, different scientists, different universities, different agencies look at the data and convert it into a calibrated reading that more accurately compares to the EPA’s data,” PurpleAir founder Adrian Dybwad said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">PurpleAir users can now toggle among several conversions — one listed as “US EPA” developed by the U.S. government; “LRAPA,” developed by the Lane Regional Air Pollution Agency in Oregon; “AQandU,” developed by the University of Utah; and another labeled “WOODSMOKE,” developed by researchers in Australia. These readings will align more closely with those from official sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003cem>An earlier version of this story was published on Sept. 4, 2020. Jon Brooks contributed.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Here's how to make sense of PurpleAir vs. AirNow air quality maps. Plus, a look at one map that rules them all.",
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"title": "From PurpleAir to AirNow, Your Air Quality Maps for Wildfire Smoke | KQED",
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"headline": "From PurpleAir to AirNow, Your Air Quality Maps for Wildfire Smoke",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Bay Area residents have become used to the ritual of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1930023/map-heres-your-daily-air-quality-report-for-the-bay-area\">checking online maps for local air quality\u003c/a> amid burning forests and chaparral near and far.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the 2018 Camp Fire, \u003ca href=\"https://www.airnow.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">AirNow\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, an air quality website maintained by a partnership of states, the federal government, Canada and Mexico, crashed because it could not handle so many people flocking online to put numbers to what their noses were telling them: The air seemed really bad.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">The failure sent web users \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1950648/californians-turn-to-low-cost-sensors-for-highly-local-air-quality-info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">rushing\u003c/span>\u003c/a> to alternative, unofficial websites like the interactive, crowdsourced map maintained by \u003ca href=\"https://www.purpleair.com/map?mylocation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cspan class=\"s4\">PurpleAir\u003c/span>\u003c/a>, a manufacturer of low-cost air monitors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But users have noticed a discrepancy between what official sites are reporting and the readings displayed on PurpleAir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>So, what’s the deal?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Broadly put, PurpleAir provides more localized, more current and less accurate readings than AirNow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The EPA and the U.S. Forest Service have a \u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.768719999999995&lng=-122.4454258&zoom=12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">project\u003c/a> of what some may consider to be the Holy Grail of air quality maps: combined readings taken from PurpleAir’s low-cost sensors and those from official government monitoring devices, all in a single map. Click \u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.7576497&lng=-122.4353884&zoom=10\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here\u003c/a> or on the image below to access the map; the circles represent official government monitors, the squares indicate PurpleAir sensors, and the triangles show temporary monitors set up by government agencies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1969281\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.7576497&lng=-122.4353884&zoom=10\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1969281 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1020x544.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"341\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1020x544.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-800x427.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-160x85.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-768x410.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1536x819.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-2048x1092.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2029/09/Air-quality-map-purple-air-airnow-1920x1024.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot from AirNow Fire and Smoke map, a pilot project, on Sept. 4, 2020.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"p4\">“While these [unofficial] sensors don’t meet the rigorous standards required for regulatory monitors, they can help you get a picture of air quality nearest you, especially when wildfire smoke is in your area,” the website states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PurpleAir readings and those from government sensors like the ones maintained by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District differ in several key ways: speed, accuracy and placement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003cspan class=\"s3\">Users of PurpleAir can toggle between real-time data and readings averaged over the last 10 or 30 minutes. The data comes from the commercial sensors the company sells, which members of the public install on porches, yards and other neighborhood sites. The readings can be helpful for people deciding whether to go for a walk or engage in other outdoor activity. (Remember to deselect “indoor sensors” to see outdoors-only readings.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"s3\">The AirNow site displays hourly, not real-time, readings. \u003c/span>\u003cspan class=\"s3\">The government sensors that send data to AirNow are very expensive, state-regulated and regularly calibrated by scientists to accurately measure the density of wildfire ash and other particles in the air. But they are more sparsely located than PurpleAir’s network of hundreds of monitors in the region. In contrast, PurpleAir’s devices rely on a laser to count the particles in the air, and use an average density to determine air quality at the monitor’s location. The calculation is an estimate, however, especially during fire season, as woodsmoke particles have a different density from gravel dust or other pollutants.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“To try to remedy the situation, we’ve had a whole bunch of different groups, different scientists, different universities, different agencies look at the data and convert it into a calibrated reading that more accurately compares to the EPA’s data,” PurpleAir founder Adrian Dybwad said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">PurpleAir users can now toggle among several conversions — one listed as “US EPA” developed by the U.S. government; “LRAPA,” developed by the Lane Regional Air Pollution Agency in Oregon; “AQandU,” developed by the University of Utah; and another labeled “WOODSMOKE,” developed by researchers in Australia. These readings will align more closely with those from official sites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p6\">\u003cem>An earlier version of this story was published on Sept. 4, 2020. Jon Brooks contributed.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "FDA OK's Booster Shots for Those With Weakened Immunity",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized the administration of an additional dose of one of the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines for people who have certain immunocompromising conditions amid growing evidence that they do not get adequate protection from the normal two-dose regimen of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision was formally an amendment to the emergency authorization under which the mRNA vaccines are already being used. It does not apply to the one-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which has been used far less in this country than the mRNA products. It is unclear how many immunocompromised Americans would have received the J&J vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today’s action allows doctors to boost immunity in certain immunocompromised individuals who need extra protection from COVID-19,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement released shortly before midnight. “As we’ve previously stated, other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine at this time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patient groups and the physicians who treat them have been advocating for \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/14/uncertain-protection-from-covid-vaccines-leaves-cancer-patients-in-limbo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">immunocompromised people\u003c/a> — for instance, solid organ \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2779852\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">transplant recipients\u003c/a> who take immunosuppressant drugs — to be given an additional dose, especially in the face of the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant. Several countries — France, Germany, Britain, and Israel among them — are or will soon be giving third doses to immunocompromised people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The amended emergency use authorizations say the third doses of vaccine should be given at least 28 days after the second shot in the series. The Pfizer vaccine, which can be given to people 12 years of age and older, is administered in two doses, 21 days apart. The Moderna vaccine, which can be given to people 18 and older, is given in two doses 28 days apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documents do not enumerate in detail who is eligible for an additional vaccine dose. They say people who have had a solid organ transplant or who have been diagnosed with conditions that are “considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise” can get a third dose of vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The vaccine advisory panel that makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on use of vaccines indicated late last month that it was amenable to recommending a different dosing schedule for immunocompromised patients, but could not do so while the emergency use authorizations under which the vaccines are deployed stipulate only a two-dose or one-dose regimen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our hands are really tied with the current regulatory situation,” Camille Kotton, director of the transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, said during the July 22 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group is scheduled to meet on Friday to recommend the changes the FDA’s revision allows. It is expected that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will sign off on the recommendation later on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the COVID-19 vaccines were fully licensed, doctors could decide on their own to give an additional dose to some of their patients. So-called off-label use is common medical practice. But the unusual status of these vaccines — they are the first ever to be deployed under emergency use authorizations — precludes that possibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The confusion about how to proceed has created a bit of a free-for-all, with some immunocompromised people — and some regular people worried by the Delta variant — crossing state lines and using subterfuge to \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/03/people-chasing-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-create-headaches-for-the-health-care-system/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">obtain an additional dose of vaccine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least one state, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mississippi-offer-covid-vaccine-booster-doses-immunocompromised-people-n1276076\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mississippi\u003c/a>, decided not to wait for federal action, telling vaccine providers and physicians to assess whether their immunocompromised patients should be given an additional vaccine dose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a presentation during ACIP’s meeting in July, CDC staff said that immunocompromised people make up about 2.7% of the American population. They include people with cancer who are undergoing some forms of therapy, people with advanced or untreated HIV infection, people born with severe immunodeficiencies, and organ or stem cell transplant patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-07/07-COVID-Oliver-508.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">are immunocompromised\u003c/a> are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19 and are more likely to have breakthrough infections, the CDC experts said. They are also more likely to have prolonged infections, creating the possibility that they will give rise to troublesome mutations of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week the World Health Organization \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/04/who-calls-for-a-temporary-moratorium-on-administering-booster-shots-of-covid-19-vaccines/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">called for a moratorium\u003c/a> on giving additional doses of vaccine to people who are fully vaccinated in a bid to speed vaccination in lower-income countries where few doses have yet been available. But agency officials made clear they make an exception for immunocompromised people. “There is increasing evidence that there are some populations … who don’t respond to the vaccine as well as the general population does,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/09/who-expert-rush-covid-19-booster-shots-premature/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kate O’Brien\u003c/a>, WHO’s director of immunizations, vaccines, and biologics. “We don’t want that to be confused with the policy … of whether booster doses should be given.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/12/fda-authorizes-additional-dose-of-covid-19-vaccine-for-the-immunocompromised/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"http://www.statnews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized the administration of an additional dose of one of the messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines for people who have certain immunocompromising conditions amid growing evidence that they do not get adequate protection from the normal two-dose regimen of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision was formally an amendment to the emergency authorization under which the mRNA vaccines are already being used. It does not apply to the one-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which has been used far less in this country than the mRNA products. It is unclear how many immunocompromised Americans would have received the J&J vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today’s action allows doctors to boost immunity in certain immunocompromised individuals who need extra protection from COVID-19,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement released shortly before midnight. “As we’ve previously stated, other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine at this time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patient groups and the physicians who treat them have been advocating for \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/14/uncertain-protection-from-covid-vaccines-leaves-cancer-patients-in-limbo/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">immunocompromised people\u003c/a> — for instance, solid organ \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2779852\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">transplant recipients\u003c/a> who take immunosuppressant drugs — to be given an additional dose, especially in the face of the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant. Several countries — France, Germany, Britain, and Israel among them — are or will soon be giving third doses to immunocompromised people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The amended emergency use authorizations say the third doses of vaccine should be given at least 28 days after the second shot in the series. The Pfizer vaccine, which can be given to people 12 years of age and older, is administered in two doses, 21 days apart. The Moderna vaccine, which can be given to people 18 and older, is given in two doses 28 days apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documents do not enumerate in detail who is eligible for an additional vaccine dose. They say people who have had a solid organ transplant or who have been diagnosed with conditions that are “considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise” can get a third dose of vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The vaccine advisory panel that makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on use of vaccines indicated late last month that it was amenable to recommending a different dosing schedule for immunocompromised patients, but could not do so while the emergency use authorizations under which the vaccines are deployed stipulate only a two-dose or one-dose regimen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our hands are really tied with the current regulatory situation,” Camille Kotton, director of the transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, said during the July 22 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group is scheduled to meet on Friday to recommend the changes the FDA’s revision allows. It is expected that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will sign off on the recommendation later on Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If the COVID-19 vaccines were fully licensed, doctors could decide on their own to give an additional dose to some of their patients. So-called off-label use is common medical practice. But the unusual status of these vaccines — they are the first ever to be deployed under emergency use authorizations — precludes that possibility.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The confusion about how to proceed has created a bit of a free-for-all, with some immunocompromised people — and some regular people worried by the Delta variant — crossing state lines and using subterfuge to \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/03/people-chasing-covid-19-vaccine-boosters-create-headaches-for-the-health-care-system/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">obtain an additional dose of vaccine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least one state, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mississippi-offer-covid-vaccine-booster-doses-immunocompromised-people-n1276076\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mississippi\u003c/a>, decided not to wait for federal action, telling vaccine providers and physicians to assess whether their immunocompromised patients should be given an additional vaccine dose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a presentation during ACIP’s meeting in July, CDC staff said that immunocompromised people make up about 2.7% of the American population. They include people with cancer who are undergoing some forms of therapy, people with advanced or untreated HIV infection, people born with severe immunodeficiencies, and organ or stem cell transplant patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People who \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-07/07-COVID-Oliver-508.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">are immunocompromised\u003c/a> are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19 and are more likely to have breakthrough infections, the CDC experts said. They are also more likely to have prolonged infections, creating the possibility that they will give rise to troublesome mutations of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week the World Health Organization \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/04/who-calls-for-a-temporary-moratorium-on-administering-booster-shots-of-covid-19-vaccines/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">called for a moratorium\u003c/a> on giving additional doses of vaccine to people who are fully vaccinated in a bid to speed vaccination in lower-income countries where few doses have yet been available. But agency officials made clear they make an exception for immunocompromised people. “There is increasing evidence that there are some populations … who don’t respond to the vaccine as well as the general population does,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/09/who-expert-rush-covid-19-booster-shots-premature/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kate O’Brien\u003c/a>, WHO’s director of immunizations, vaccines, and biologics. “We don’t want that to be confused with the policy … of whether booster doses should be given.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/12/fda-authorizes-additional-dose-of-covid-19-vaccine-for-the-immunocompromised/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"http://www.statnews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "CDC Again Recommends Indoor Masking, Even for Some Vaccinated People",
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"content": "\u003cp>Federal health officials advised Tuesday that even people who’ve had their COVID-19 shots wear masks in public indoor settings in areas with widespread transmission of the coronavirus, a major setback in the progress in the U.S. epidemic that reflects a surging variant and the country’s ongoing struggles to increase vaccination rates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reversal to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s earlier guidance comes as the Delta variant — the most transmissible version of the pathogen yet, by far — is igniting outbreaks and driving hospitalizations up in states with low vaccination rates, like Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida. The variant is responsible for \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/23/burning-questions-delta-next-phase-covid-19-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seemingly increasing numbers of breakthrough infections.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CDC also recommended that schools reopen in the fall with universal indoor masking for all students, teachers, and staff, even among people who are vaccinated — a policy decision that will ultimately be left up to state and local officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Children should return to full-time, in-person learning in the fall with proper prevention strategies in place,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, President Biden reiterated Walensky’s call that precautions would enable safer resumption of in-person schooling. “Masking students is inconvenient, I know, but will allow them to learn and be with their classmates with the best available protection,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just two months ago, the CDC said that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors, citing evidence that the immunizations prevented many cases entirely and left those who still got infected “less likely to … transmit [the virus] to others.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in addition to spreading more efficiently, Delta seems to have at least some ability to evade the immune response people generate after being vaccinated. Multiple studies have indicated that immunized people are still broadly protected against severe COVID-19 and death, but there is emerging evidence that Delta can cause breakthrough cases at higher rates than other virus versions — and that in some of those infections, people are still harboring large amounts of virus that could be passed to others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walensky said that new research indicates that vaccinated people are only contributing a small amount to overall transmission, the vast majority of which is occurring among people who haven’t received immunizations. But the data “unfortunately warrants” the updated recommendations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In those cases, those rare cases that we have breakthrough infections, we felt it important for people to understand that they have the potential to transmit virus to others,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walensky called masks “a temporary measure” and urged people to get vaccinated, framing the shots as the tools that can suppress transmission rates in lasting ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really need to work to get these areas in the country that have substantial and high amount of transmission right now down to lower amounts of transmission,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The masking recommendations for vaccinated people applies to communities with “substantial” or “high” transmission rates, which together the CDC defines as 50 cases or more per 100,000 people over the past seven days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Transmission rates in nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties are in those categories, with wide swaths of Nevada, Utah, and many southern states experiencing those levels of spread, \u003ca href=\"https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CDC data show\u003c/a>. Some communities are reporting several hundred new cases per 100,000 people in the past week — what Walensky called “really an extraordinary amount of viral transmission.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delta’s general transmissibility stems at least in part from changes in its genome that allow it to build up much higher levels of virus in the upper airway, leading to people emitting more virus for longer periods of time, meaning they are more likely to infect others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told STAT that health experts do not have studies proving that fully vaccinated people are transmitting the virus. Rather, the official said, the updated guidance is based on studies showing that vaccinated people who contract the Delta variant have similarly high levels of virus in their airways, which suggested that they may be infectious to others. With other variants, vaccinated people had substantially lower levels of virus in their noses and throats compared to unvaccinated people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new masking guidelines provide an unwelcome turn in the pandemic. As vaccines started rolling out, it was clear they weren’t just protecting people from getting so sick they needed hospital care or they would die, but that they were also drastically cutting transmission. Experts say vaccines are still limiting transmission even with Delta, but not to the same level as before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s taken some time for scientists to tease apart all that Delta can do in vaccinated people. Most concerningly, it has been ripping through unvaccinated populations, leading to another surge in hospitalizations in some states that are almost entirely among people who haven’t been immunized. Experts are still trying to determine if Delta causes more severe disease on average than other variants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recent infection clusters that included vaccinated people — and that broadly caused mild and asymptomatic cases — raised worries that Delta was potentially spreading among vaccinated people to an extent. Walensky said the CDC was conducting outbreak investigations of the clusters to determine whether and to what extent vaccinated people were passing the virus on to others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If vaccinated people are transmitting the virus, masks could help in cases when people are asymptomatic or in the period when they are infectious but haven’t yet developed symptoms. Under existing CDC guidelines, vaccinated people who were showing symptoms were still urged to isolate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vaccinated people passing the virus to other vaccinated people isn’t ideal, but given how protective the shots are against the worst outcomes, the bigger concern right now is that vaccinated people could be contributing to the spread of the virus to unvaccinated people. Vaccinated people could also be transmitting the virus to individuals who didn’t mount robust responses to the shots because their immune systems are suppressed, including some with cancer or who have received organ transplants. Children under 12 are also not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear how the new CDC guidelines will land with an American public that \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/22/public-health-officials-have-tools-to-beat-back-covid-again-does-anyone-want-to-use-them/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seems eager to move on from the pandemic\u003c/a>, even if the pandemic is not done with them. Many people who are vaccinated feel like they’ve done their part and might be unwilling to take a step back. And while health officials hope they can persuade some of the remaining unimmunized people to roll up their sleeves by improving access or addressing concerns, some portion of people have cemented their resistance to the shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the previous guidelines, unvaccinated people were still supposed to wear masks in public indoor settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CDC says breakthrough cases still appear to be rare given how many people have been vaccinated, and the vast majority of infections are asymptomatic or mild. It’s also thought that because so many of those cases are so tame, many go undetected. However, many experts argue that breakthrough infections that cause no symptoms shouldn’t really be considered as cases. Mild or asymptomatic breakthrough infections are signs that the vaccines — whose top aim is to stave off death and severe illness — are doing their job, experts stress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/27/cdc-recommend-masks-indoors-even-for-those-vaccinated-against-covid-19/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Federal health officials advised Tuesday that even people who’ve had their COVID-19 shots wear masks in public indoor settings in areas with widespread transmission of the coronavirus, a major setback in the progress in the U.S. epidemic that reflects a surging variant and the country’s ongoing struggles to increase vaccination rates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reversal to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s earlier guidance comes as the Delta variant — the most transmissible version of the pathogen yet, by far — is igniting outbreaks and driving hospitalizations up in states with low vaccination rates, like Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida. The variant is responsible for \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/23/burning-questions-delta-next-phase-covid-19-pandemic/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seemingly increasing numbers of breakthrough infections.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CDC also recommended that schools reopen in the fall with universal indoor masking for all students, teachers, and staff, even among people who are vaccinated — a policy decision that will ultimately be left up to state and local officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Children should return to full-time, in-person learning in the fall with proper prevention strategies in place,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement, President Biden reiterated Walensky’s call that precautions would enable safer resumption of in-person schooling. “Masking students is inconvenient, I know, but will allow them to learn and be with their classmates with the best available protection,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just two months ago, the CDC said that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors, citing evidence that the immunizations prevented many cases entirely and left those who still got infected “less likely to … transmit [the virus] to others.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in addition to spreading more efficiently, Delta seems to have at least some ability to evade the immune response people generate after being vaccinated. Multiple studies have indicated that immunized people are still broadly protected against severe COVID-19 and death, but there is emerging evidence that Delta can cause breakthrough cases at higher rates than other virus versions — and that in some of those infections, people are still harboring large amounts of virus that could be passed to others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walensky said that new research indicates that vaccinated people are only contributing a small amount to overall transmission, the vast majority of which is occurring among people who haven’t received immunizations. But the data “unfortunately warrants” the updated recommendations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In those cases, those rare cases that we have breakthrough infections, we felt it important for people to understand that they have the potential to transmit virus to others,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walensky called masks “a temporary measure” and urged people to get vaccinated, framing the shots as the tools that can suppress transmission rates in lasting ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really need to work to get these areas in the country that have substantial and high amount of transmission right now down to lower amounts of transmission,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The masking recommendations for vaccinated people applies to communities with “substantial” or “high” transmission rates, which together the CDC defines as 50 cases or more per 100,000 people over the past seven days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Transmission rates in nearly two-thirds of U.S. counties are in those categories, with wide swaths of Nevada, Utah, and many southern states experiencing those levels of spread, \u003ca href=\"https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CDC data show\u003c/a>. Some communities are reporting several hundred new cases per 100,000 people in the past week — what Walensky called “really an extraordinary amount of viral transmission.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Delta’s general transmissibility stems at least in part from changes in its genome that allow it to build up much higher levels of virus in the upper airway, leading to people emitting more virus for longer periods of time, meaning they are more likely to infect others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told STAT that health experts do not have studies proving that fully vaccinated people are transmitting the virus. Rather, the official said, the updated guidance is based on studies showing that vaccinated people who contract the Delta variant have similarly high levels of virus in their airways, which suggested that they may be infectious to others. With other variants, vaccinated people had substantially lower levels of virus in their noses and throats compared to unvaccinated people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new masking guidelines provide an unwelcome turn in the pandemic. As vaccines started rolling out, it was clear they weren’t just protecting people from getting so sick they needed hospital care or they would die, but that they were also drastically cutting transmission. Experts say vaccines are still limiting transmission even with Delta, but not to the same level as before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s taken some time for scientists to tease apart all that Delta can do in vaccinated people. Most concerningly, it has been ripping through unvaccinated populations, leading to another surge in hospitalizations in some states that are almost entirely among people who haven’t been immunized. Experts are still trying to determine if Delta causes more severe disease on average than other variants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recent infection clusters that included vaccinated people — and that broadly caused mild and asymptomatic cases — raised worries that Delta was potentially spreading among vaccinated people to an extent. Walensky said the CDC was conducting outbreak investigations of the clusters to determine whether and to what extent vaccinated people were passing the virus on to others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If vaccinated people are transmitting the virus, masks could help in cases when people are asymptomatic or in the period when they are infectious but haven’t yet developed symptoms. Under existing CDC guidelines, vaccinated people who were showing symptoms were still urged to isolate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vaccinated people passing the virus to other vaccinated people isn’t ideal, but given how protective the shots are against the worst outcomes, the bigger concern right now is that vaccinated people could be contributing to the spread of the virus to unvaccinated people. Vaccinated people could also be transmitting the virus to individuals who didn’t mount robust responses to the shots because their immune systems are suppressed, including some with cancer or who have received organ transplants. Children under 12 are also not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s unclear how the new CDC guidelines will land with an American public that \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/22/public-health-officials-have-tools-to-beat-back-covid-again-does-anyone-want-to-use-them/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seems eager to move on from the pandemic\u003c/a>, even if the pandemic is not done with them. Many people who are vaccinated feel like they’ve done their part and might be unwilling to take a step back. And while health officials hope they can persuade some of the remaining unimmunized people to roll up their sleeves by improving access or addressing concerns, some portion of people have cemented their resistance to the shots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Under the previous guidelines, unvaccinated people were still supposed to wear masks in public indoor settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The CDC says breakthrough cases still appear to be rare given how many people have been vaccinated, and the vast majority of infections are asymptomatic or mild. It’s also thought that because so many of those cases are so tame, many go undetected. However, many experts argue that breakthrough infections that cause no symptoms shouldn’t really be considered as cases. Mild or asymptomatic breakthrough infections are signs that the vaccines — whose top aim is to stave off death and severe illness — are doing their job, experts stress.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Last Year Saw the Biggest Drop in U.S. Life Expectancy Since WWII",
"headTitle": "Last Year Saw the Biggest Drop in U.S. Life Expectancy Since WWII | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Life expectancy in the United States declined by a year and a half in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says the coronavirus is largely to blame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>COVID-19 contributed to 74% of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr015-508.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> decline in life expectancy from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020\u003c/a>, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the largest one-year decline since World War II, when life expectancy dropped by 2.9 years between 1942 and 1943. Hispanic and Black communities saw the biggest declines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For African Americans, life expectancy dropped by 2.9 years from 74.7 years in 2019 to 71.8 in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Hispanics — who have a longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Blacks or whites saw the largest decline in life expectancy during the pandemic, dropping three years from 81.8 years in 2019 to 78.8 years in 2020. Hispanic males saw the biggest decline, with a drop of 3.7 years. COVID-19 was responsible for 90% of the decline among Hispanics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The increase in drug overdose deaths was also a factor in declining life expectancy. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1016029270/drug-overdoses-killed-a-record-number-of-americans-in-2020-jumping-by-nearly-30\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">More than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2020\u003c/a>. That’s the highest number reported in a single year. Other causes of death contributing to the decline were increases in homicide and deaths from diabetes and chronic liver disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just last month a study published in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1343\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>British Medical Journal\u003c/em>\u003c/a> looked at life expectancy data for the U.S. and compared it with life expectancy data from 16 other high-income countries. The study found the U.S. decrease in life expectancy from 2018 to 2020 was 8.5 times greater than the average decrease in peer countries. And the U.S. declines were most pronounced among minority groups, specifically Black and Hispanic people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Study author \u003ca href=\"https://medschool.vcu.edu/expertise/detail.html?ID=831\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University\u003c/a> School of Medicine, told NPR’s Allison Aubrey, “We have not seen a decrease like this since World War II. It’s a horrific decrease in life expectancy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is impossible to look at these findings and not see a reflection of the systemic racism in the U.S.,”\u003ca href=\"https://populationhealth.duke.edu/people/lesley-curtis-phd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Lesley Curtis, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences\u003c/a> at Duke University School of Medicine, told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The range of factors that play into this include income inequality, the social safety net, as well as racial inequality and access to health care,” Curtis said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=U.S.+Life+Expectancy+Fell+By+1.5+Years+In+2020%2C+The+Biggest+Drop+Since+WWII+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Life expectancy in the United States declined by a year and a half in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says the coronavirus is largely to blame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>COVID-19 contributed to 74% of the\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr015-508.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> decline in life expectancy from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020\u003c/a>, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the largest one-year decline since World War II, when life expectancy dropped by 2.9 years between 1942 and 1943. Hispanic and Black communities saw the biggest declines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For African Americans, life expectancy dropped by 2.9 years from 74.7 years in 2019 to 71.8 in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>U.S. Hispanics — who have a longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Blacks or whites saw the largest decline in life expectancy during the pandemic, dropping three years from 81.8 years in 2019 to 78.8 years in 2020. Hispanic males saw the biggest decline, with a drop of 3.7 years. COVID-19 was responsible for 90% of the decline among Hispanics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The increase in drug overdose deaths was also a factor in declining life expectancy. \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/07/14/1016029270/drug-overdoses-killed-a-record-number-of-americans-in-2020-jumping-by-nearly-30\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">More than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2020\u003c/a>. That’s the highest number reported in a single year. Other causes of death contributing to the decline were increases in homicide and deaths from diabetes and chronic liver disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just last month a study published in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1343\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>British Medical Journal\u003c/em>\u003c/a> looked at life expectancy data for the U.S. and compared it with life expectancy data from 16 other high-income countries. The study found the U.S. decrease in life expectancy from 2018 to 2020 was 8.5 times greater than the average decrease in peer countries. And the U.S. declines were most pronounced among minority groups, specifically Black and Hispanic people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Study author \u003ca href=\"https://medschool.vcu.edu/expertise/detail.html?ID=831\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University\u003c/a> School of Medicine, told NPR’s Allison Aubrey, “We have not seen a decrease like this since World War II. It’s a horrific decrease in life expectancy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is impossible to look at these findings and not see a reflection of the systemic racism in the U.S.,”\u003ca href=\"https://populationhealth.duke.edu/people/lesley-curtis-phd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Lesley Curtis, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences\u003c/a> at Duke University School of Medicine, told NPR.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The range of factors that play into this include income inequality, the social safety net, as well as racial inequality and access to health care,” Curtis said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=U.S.+Life+Expectancy+Fell+By+1.5+Years+In+2020%2C+The+Biggest+Drop+Since+WWII+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "More Heat Waves Coming, Scientists Say. But The Health Impacts Are Largely Preventable",
"headTitle": "More Heat Waves Coming, Scientists Say. But The Health Impacts Are Largely Preventable | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The heat goes on, the heat goes on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California has baked under blistering heat this summer, as temperatures in Death Valley climbed to 130 degrees earlier this month, one of the hottest recorded temperatures on Earth. And there’s still more summer to go.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state’s July heat wave followed one in the Pacific Northwest that was so hot it buckled streets and melted power cables around Portland, Oregon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/PDXStreetcar/status/1409287314870837253?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1409287314870837253%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2021%2F06%2F29%2F1011269025%2Fphotos-the-pacific-northwest-heatwave-is-melting-power-cables-and-buckling-roads\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists have long warned that severe heat waves will be one result of humans belching tons of planet warming gases into the atmosphere. And they say the heat is here to stay, and with time, these events will only increase due to a changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of all the extreme weather events that are tied to climate change, heat waves are the ones that are most telling,” says Sean Sublette, meteorologist at the science and news organization Climate Central. “That’s the kind of event that ties most directly to a warming climate. Just statistically, if the overall temperature of the planet is going up, you’re going to have hotter spells than you had in the past.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What Does Science Tell Us About the Long-term Trends for Heat Waves? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’ll increase: in how hot they get, in how long they last, and in how frequently they happen. We do have some control here, however. One way is through mitigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mitigation is actually reducing how much greenhouse gases we are putting out into the atmosphere,” says Jane Baldwin, assistant professor of Earth Systems Science at the UC Irvine. “And hopefully at some point reducing the actual levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which would reduce global warming and in turn curtail these trends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate Central’s Sublette says society would need to make rapid and dramatic changes to perhaps experience a leveling off of warming before the century’s end. “Look, there’s room for some optimism,” he says. “We’ve made big changes in society before. So this can be done. We just have to decide that it’s important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Secondly, we have control over how we adapt to heat waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The good news here is that there is a fair amount of evidence that heat wave related health impacts, at least, are largely preventable,” Baldwin adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11878134/bay-area-heat-wave-how-to-stay-safe-during-dangerously-hot-weather\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Here are some tips\u003c/a> on how to protect yourself during a heatwave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How are Heat Waves Dangerous?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans can acclimatize to very hot temperatures — if they are well adjusted, generally healthy and hydrated, then their bodies can manage heat up to a point. It takes about two weeks to acclimatize to new climates or sudden temperature changes. For people with certain pre-existing conditions, or those in more vulnerable groups, dealing with heat can be harder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s what’s happening inside a person’s body when confronting high temperatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When their blood warms, the brain signals the body to shift blood flow, moving heat away from vital organs, like the brain, heart, and lungs, to the surface of the body. This triggers sweating, and resulting evaporation, the final step of moving heat from the body into the outside environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We run into problems when these physiological systems fail. Certain groups of people are more vulnerable to heat than others, including:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Older adults. We become less able to adjust to heat the more we age. Older adults are also at risk due to social isolation, therefore it is essential that family, neighbors, and friends check on elderly people who live alone during a heat wave, making sure they can access a cooling center if needed.“Even if you don’t know them well, try to make that connection, even if it’s just getting a phone number ahead of time and then just calling and checking,” says Helene Margolis, associate adjunct professor of medicine at UC Davis School of Medicine.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Children. Check in on what your kid’s schools or extracurricular groups are doing to make sure they’re safe from heat. Children don’t perceive thirst as well as adults, so remind them to drink water.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Teenage and young adult athletes. This group has higher instances of death from heat illnesses due to exertion.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>People with some pre-existing conditions. These include heart disease, high blood pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, obesity and diabetes. Taking certain\u003ca href=\"https://mha.ohio.gov/Portals/0/assets/ResearchersAndMedia/News%20and%20Events/NewsNowBlog/2020%20heat-related%20illness%20brochure.pdf?ver=2020-07-15-141754-190\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> common medications\u003c/a> also puts some people at greater risk for heat illness.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Beyond these categories, environmental factors also increase someone’s risk for heat illness, such as living in what are known in the public health world as “heat islands.” These neighborhoods typically have lots of heat-trapping asphalt and concrete, fewer trees and green spaces, and can be \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/learn-about-heat-islands#:~:text=A%20review%20of%20research%20studies,2%E2%80%935%C2%B0F%20higher.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">five or more degrees hotter than surrounding areas\u003c/a>. Heat islands are often in urban centers, but can be outside of them too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even without a major heat spike, people living in these areas can suffer due to persistent heat, especially if buildings don’t cool down well at night, giving their bodies time to recover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People are getting sick from the heat. It’s causing them to go to emergency rooms,” says Jen Brady, senior data analyst at Climate Central.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If our body temperature reaches 103-104 degrees Fahrenheit, we are at risk of heat illness and heat stroke, which can be deadly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you or someone you know exhibits symptoms of heat stroke, call 911 immediately. Symptoms are: a temperature over 103 degrees; red, hot, dry or damp skin; fast pulse; nausea; headache; dizziness; confusion; or passing out. While waiting for help, move the person to a cooler area and help them reduce their temperature with a shower or wet towels. Do not give them anything to drink as they could pass out, and the liquid could obstruct their airway. More symptoms of other kinds of heat-related illnesses, and what to do if you see them, are listed on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/warning.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">website\u003c/a> of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heat fatalities are underreported, say meteorologist Sublette, because they are not as visually gripping as tornadoes or hurricanes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Sublette says, “When we look at the multi-year average, heat kills more than any other extreme weather event.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Climate scientists have long warned that severe heat waves will be one result of humans belching tons of planet warming gases into the atmosphere. And they say the heat is here to stay, and with time, these events will only increase due to a changing climate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Of all the extreme weather events that are tied to climate change, heat waves are the ones that are most telling,” says Sean Sublette, meteorologist at the science and news organization Climate Central. “That’s the kind of event that ties most directly to a warming climate. Just statistically, if the overall temperature of the planet is going up, you’re going to have hotter spells than you had in the past.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What Does Science Tell Us About the Long-term Trends for Heat Waves? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’ll increase: in how hot they get, in how long they last, and in how frequently they happen. We do have some control here, however. One way is through mitigation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mitigation is actually reducing how much greenhouse gases we are putting out into the atmosphere,” says Jane Baldwin, assistant professor of Earth Systems Science at the UC Irvine. “And hopefully at some point reducing the actual levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which would reduce global warming and in turn curtail these trends.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate Central’s Sublette says society would need to make rapid and dramatic changes to perhaps experience a leveling off of warming before the century’s end. “Look, there’s room for some optimism,” he says. “We’ve made big changes in society before. So this can be done. We just have to decide that it’s important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Secondly, we have control over how we adapt to heat waves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The good news here is that there is a fair amount of evidence that heat wave related health impacts, at least, are largely preventable,” Baldwin adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11878134/bay-area-heat-wave-how-to-stay-safe-during-dangerously-hot-weather\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Here are some tips\u003c/a> on how to protect yourself during a heatwave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How are Heat Waves Dangerous?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans can acclimatize to very hot temperatures — if they are well adjusted, generally healthy and hydrated, then their bodies can manage heat up to a point. It takes about two weeks to acclimatize to new climates or sudden temperature changes. For people with certain pre-existing conditions, or those in more vulnerable groups, dealing with heat can be harder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s what’s happening inside a person’s body when confronting high temperatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When their blood warms, the brain signals the body to shift blood flow, moving heat away from vital organs, like the brain, heart, and lungs, to the surface of the body. This triggers sweating, and resulting evaporation, the final step of moving heat from the body into the outside environment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We run into problems when these physiological systems fail. Certain groups of people are more vulnerable to heat than others, including:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Older adults. We become less able to adjust to heat the more we age. Older adults are also at risk due to social isolation, therefore it is essential that family, neighbors, and friends check on elderly people who live alone during a heat wave, making sure they can access a cooling center if needed.“Even if you don’t know them well, try to make that connection, even if it’s just getting a phone number ahead of time and then just calling and checking,” says Helene Margolis, associate adjunct professor of medicine at UC Davis School of Medicine.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Children. Check in on what your kid’s schools or extracurricular groups are doing to make sure they’re safe from heat. Children don’t perceive thirst as well as adults, so remind them to drink water.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Teenage and young adult athletes. This group has higher instances of death from heat illnesses due to exertion.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>People with some pre-existing conditions. These include heart disease, high blood pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, obesity and diabetes. Taking certain\u003ca href=\"https://mha.ohio.gov/Portals/0/assets/ResearchersAndMedia/News%20and%20Events/NewsNowBlog/2020%20heat-related%20illness%20brochure.pdf?ver=2020-07-15-141754-190\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> common medications\u003c/a> also puts some people at greater risk for heat illness.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Beyond these categories, environmental factors also increase someone’s risk for heat illness, such as living in what are known in the public health world as “heat islands.” These neighborhoods typically have lots of heat-trapping asphalt and concrete, fewer trees and green spaces, and can be \u003ca href=\"https://www.epa.gov/heatislands/learn-about-heat-islands#:~:text=A%20review%20of%20research%20studies,2%E2%80%935%C2%B0F%20higher.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">five or more degrees hotter than surrounding areas\u003c/a>. Heat islands are often in urban centers, but can be outside of them too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even without a major heat spike, people living in these areas can suffer due to persistent heat, especially if buildings don’t cool down well at night, giving their bodies time to recover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People are getting sick from the heat. It’s causing them to go to emergency rooms,” says Jen Brady, senior data analyst at Climate Central.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If our body temperature reaches 103-104 degrees Fahrenheit, we are at risk of heat illness and heat stroke, which can be deadly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you or someone you know exhibits symptoms of heat stroke, call 911 immediately. Symptoms are: a temperature over 103 degrees; red, hot, dry or damp skin; fast pulse; nausea; headache; dizziness; confusion; or passing out. While waiting for help, move the person to a cooler area and help them reduce their temperature with a shower or wet towels. Do not give them anything to drink as they could pass out, and the liquid could obstruct their airway. More symptoms of other kinds of heat-related illnesses, and what to do if you see them, are listed on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/warning.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">website\u003c/a> of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heat fatalities are underreported, say meteorologist Sublette, because they are not as visually gripping as tornadoes or hurricanes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, Sublette says, “When we look at the multi-year average, heat kills more than any other extreme weather event.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Experimental Brain Implant Lets Man With Paralysis Turn His Thoughts Into Words",
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"content": "\u003cp>A man who is unable to move or speak can now generate words and sentences on a computer using only his thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ability comes from an experimental implanted device that decodes signals in the man’s brain that once controlled his vocal tract, as researchers \u003ca href=\"http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027540\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reported\u003c/a> Wednesday in \u003cem>The New England Journal of Medicine\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The man is currently limited to a vocabulary of just 50 words and communicates at a rate of about 15 words per minute, which is much slower than natural speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This tells us that it’s possible,” says \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.ucsf.edu/edward.chang\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Edward Chang\u003c/a>, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco. “I think there’s a huge runway to make this better over time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A device that allowed people who can’t speak to communicate using brain circuits previously used for speech would be “more natural, and hopefully effortless compared to current assistive devices,” says \u003ca href=\"https://bme.gatech.edu/bme/faculty/Chethan-Pandarinath\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chethan Pandarinath\u003c/a>, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, people with paralysis who have lost the ability to speak usually rely on devices that use eye or head movements to spell out words one letter at a time. Some use a device that allows them to control a computer cursor with thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chang’s team wanted to find a better solution for the man, identified only as BRAVO1 to protect his privacy. The name refers to his status as the first patient in a study called BRAVO, or Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BRAVO1, who is in his late 30s, has been paralyzed and unable to speak since he had a stroke 15 years ago, Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The stroke left him nearly completely paralyzed in his arms and legs but also in the muscles of his vocal tract,” Chang says. But the areas of the brain that once issued speech commands are intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dormant Brain Signals Tapped for Communication\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previously, Chang’s team had developed a system designed to recognize the brain signals associated with the intention to speak specific words. Tests showed that the system worked in people who were still able to move and speak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But success was far from certain in someone such as BRAVO1, Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t know if the speech commands in the brain would still work after 15 years,” he says. “And even if we could revive those dormant brain signals for speech, could we actually translate those into full words?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find out, the team implanted sensors on the surface of the man’s brain. Then it had a computer study the patterns of electrical activity produced when he attempted to speak 50 different words. The process took months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once BRAVO1 could reliably generate words on a computer screen, the team began having him form sentences. To help improve accuracy, the team added a program that analyzed the context of each word as it was added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The system is a bit like the texting software on most smartphones. “So, for example, if one word is just not decoded correctly, this autocorrect function can correct it,” Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After months of adjustments to the system, the man was able to generate a word reliably every four seconds, or roughly 15 words per minute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Normal speech is on the order of 120, 150 words per minute, so there’s a lot of room to improve,” Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A device able to decode words in the brain could eventually help thousands of people who’ve had a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, says \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/krishna-shenoy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Krishna Shenoy\u003c/a>, a professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such a device might also help people with \u003ca href=\"https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Fact-Sheets/Amyotrophic-Lateral-Sclerosis-ALS-Fact-Sheet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amyotrophic lateral sclerosis\u003c/a>, or ALS, a paralyzing disease that eventually makes it impossible to speak, Shenoy says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ability to recognize even 50 words in the brain is a huge achievement, Shenoy says. “But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think that could easily become 500 or 5,000 words.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until that happens though, devices that recognize entire words will be limited to basic communication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Keeping Some Thoughts Private and Others Public\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, brain implants that allow people to spell out words keep getting better, Shenoy says. Earlier this year, he and a team published results of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/12/996141182/paralyzed-man-communicates-by-imagining-handwriting\">study\u003c/a> showing that people could spell quickly and accurately using a device that decoded the brain signals usually used for handwriting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know far more now than 10 years ago or 20 years about how to eavesdrop on those conversations in the brain,” Shenoy says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That sort of eavesdropping could compromise a person’s privacy though, Pandarinath says. That’s because devices wired directly to the brain could make it hard for people to separate private thoughts from those they choose to make public, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to make sure the devices we create allow that separation, allow people to be able to think their private thoughts without anything just being broadcast to the world,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be easier with devices that rely on brain signals that control muscles, he says. That’s because these signals generally aren’t sent unless a person makes a conscious attempt at movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Experimental+Brain+Implant+Lets+Man+With+Paralysis+Turn+His+Thoughts+Into+Words&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A man who is unable to move or speak can now generate words and sentences on a computer using only his thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ability comes from an experimental implanted device that decodes signals in the man’s brain that once controlled his vocal tract, as researchers \u003ca href=\"http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027540\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reported\u003c/a> Wednesday in \u003cem>The New England Journal of Medicine\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The man is currently limited to a vocabulary of just 50 words and communicates at a rate of about 15 words per minute, which is much slower than natural speech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This tells us that it’s possible,” says \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.ucsf.edu/edward.chang\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Edward Chang\u003c/a>, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco. “I think there’s a huge runway to make this better over time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A device that allowed people who can’t speak to communicate using brain circuits previously used for speech would be “more natural, and hopefully effortless compared to current assistive devices,” says \u003ca href=\"https://bme.gatech.edu/bme/faculty/Chethan-Pandarinath\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chethan Pandarinath\u003c/a>, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, people with paralysis who have lost the ability to speak usually rely on devices that use eye or head movements to spell out words one letter at a time. Some use a device that allows them to control a computer cursor with thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chang’s team wanted to find a better solution for the man, identified only as BRAVO1 to protect his privacy. The name refers to his status as the first patient in a study called BRAVO, or Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BRAVO1, who is in his late 30s, has been paralyzed and unable to speak since he had a stroke 15 years ago, Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The stroke left him nearly completely paralyzed in his arms and legs but also in the muscles of his vocal tract,” Chang says. But the areas of the brain that once issued speech commands are intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Dormant Brain Signals Tapped for Communication\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previously, Chang’s team had developed a system designed to recognize the brain signals associated with the intention to speak specific words. Tests showed that the system worked in people who were still able to move and speak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But success was far from certain in someone such as BRAVO1, Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We didn’t know if the speech commands in the brain would still work after 15 years,” he says. “And even if we could revive those dormant brain signals for speech, could we actually translate those into full words?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To find out, the team implanted sensors on the surface of the man’s brain. Then it had a computer study the patterns of electrical activity produced when he attempted to speak 50 different words. The process took months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once BRAVO1 could reliably generate words on a computer screen, the team began having him form sentences. To help improve accuracy, the team added a program that analyzed the context of each word as it was added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The system is a bit like the texting software on most smartphones. “So, for example, if one word is just not decoded correctly, this autocorrect function can correct it,” Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After months of adjustments to the system, the man was able to generate a word reliably every four seconds, or roughly 15 words per minute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Normal speech is on the order of 120, 150 words per minute, so there’s a lot of room to improve,” Chang says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A device able to decode words in the brain could eventually help thousands of people who’ve had a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, says \u003ca href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/krishna-shenoy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Krishna Shenoy\u003c/a>, a professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such a device might also help people with \u003ca href=\"https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Fact-Sheets/Amyotrophic-Lateral-Sclerosis-ALS-Fact-Sheet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amyotrophic lateral sclerosis\u003c/a>, or ALS, a paralyzing disease that eventually makes it impossible to speak, Shenoy says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ability to recognize even 50 words in the brain is a huge achievement, Shenoy says. “But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think that could easily become 500 or 5,000 words.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until that happens though, devices that recognize entire words will be limited to basic communication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Keeping Some Thoughts Private and Others Public\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the meantime, brain implants that allow people to spell out words keep getting better, Shenoy says. Earlier this year, he and a team published results of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/12/996141182/paralyzed-man-communicates-by-imagining-handwriting\">study\u003c/a> showing that people could spell quickly and accurately using a device that decoded the brain signals usually used for handwriting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know far more now than 10 years ago or 20 years about how to eavesdrop on those conversations in the brain,” Shenoy says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That sort of eavesdropping could compromise a person’s privacy though, Pandarinath says. 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"title": "How to Keep Indoor Air Clean During a Wildfire",
"headTitle": "How to Keep Indoor Air Clean During a Wildfire | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Wildfire smoke is \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/air/wildfire-smoke/default.htm#:~:text=Wildfire%20smoke%20can%20make%20anyone,Trouble%20breathing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">incredibly unhealthy\u003c/a> for all people, and especially for those with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease. Children, pregnant women and firefighters are also extremely vulnerable to the negative health impacts of wildfire smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s best to stay indoors on days when smoke outside reaches unhealthy levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California and the Bay Area brace for what could be another severe fire season, KQED spoke with scientists and engineers about how to keep indoor air clean — both at home and in shared spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Clean Air at Home\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Keep windows and doors closed and focus on cleaning the air inside your home. You can do that with an air purifier that uses a high-efficiency particulate air filter, or HEPA filter. These \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/lists/get-better-indoor-air-quality/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">portable air purifiers\u003c/a> force air through a filter, which catches harmful particles like those from smoke, dust or mold. HEPA filters are particularly good at cleaning the air in smaller spaces or individual rooms. While these purifiers won’t remove all hazardous particles from the air, studies have shown that they are \u003ca href=\"https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20170005166\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">effective at reducing them\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Portable HEPA air purifiers can be purchased online and in stores. They range in cost, but you \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">don’t have to spring for top price\u003c/a> to get top quality. Alternatively, some people are building \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1968863/helping-kids-protect-themselves-from-dirty-air-one-diy-filter-at-a-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their own air purifiers\u003c/a> out of a box fan, a minimum efficiency reporting value — or MERV filter — and heavy-duty tape, for a price of roughly $50.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cires.colorado.edu/council-fellows/jose-luis-jimenez\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jose-Luis Jimenez\u003c/a>, a chemistry professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the do-it-yourself purifiers work. But it’s important not to leave them unattended, as it could be a fire hazard if the fan gets too hot, Jimenez says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those running air conditioning units, check that they are not bringing in outside air. If outside air is coming in, make sure it passes through a MERV filter, preferably MERV 14, 15 or 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, it’s important to reduce the amount of indoor air pollution we create, says \u003ca href=\"https://wcec.ucdavis.edu/about/directory/theresa-pistochini/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Theresa Pistochini\u003c/a>, an engineering manager at the UC Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute and Western Cooling Efficiency Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Avoid generating other pollutants indoors: temporarily avoid cooking on a gas stove, candles, incense, etc.,” she said. “Shut off kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans to reduce air exchange with [the] outdoors.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Clean Air in Shared Spaces\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Smoke particles range in size — from large to ultra fine. \u003ca href=\"https://www.pdx.edu/engineering/dean\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Richard Corsi\u003c/a>, dean of engineering and computer science at Portland State University, says using strong MERV filters in building HVAC systems is the most effective in catching very small particles. The air filters used in HVAC systems have ratings. If your HVAC system can accommodate it, a MERV 14, 15, 16 or a HEPA filter is ideal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If buildings can’t accommodate stronger filters, Corsi advises not using the building for the time being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To learn about the capacity of filters used in HVAC systems, it may be best to ask the facilities department, a building manager or human resources. Portable HEPA air filters can further clean the indoor air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This post is adapted from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1969474/the-air-qualitys-terrible-out-there-so-how-can-you-keep-it-clean-indoors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an earlier KQED story.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Wildfire smoke is \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/air/wildfire-smoke/default.htm#:~:text=Wildfire%20smoke%20can%20make%20anyone,Trouble%20breathing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">incredibly unhealthy\u003c/a> for all people, and especially for those with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease. Children, pregnant women and firefighters are also extremely vulnerable to the negative health impacts of wildfire smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s best to stay indoors on days when smoke outside reaches unhealthy levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As California and the Bay Area brace for what could be another severe fire season, KQED spoke with scientists and engineers about how to keep indoor air clean — both at home and in shared spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Clean Air at Home\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Keep windows and doors closed and focus on cleaning the air inside your home. You can do that with an air purifier that uses a high-efficiency particulate air filter, or HEPA filter. These \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/lists/get-better-indoor-air-quality/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">portable air purifiers\u003c/a> force air through a filter, which catches harmful particles like those from smoke, dust or mold. HEPA filters are particularly good at cleaning the air in smaller spaces or individual rooms. While these purifiers won’t remove all hazardous particles from the air, studies have shown that they are \u003ca href=\"https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20170005166\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">effective at reducing them\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Portable HEPA air purifiers can be purchased online and in stores. They range in cost, but you \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-purifier/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">don’t have to spring for top price\u003c/a> to get top quality. Alternatively, some people are building \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1968863/helping-kids-protect-themselves-from-dirty-air-one-diy-filter-at-a-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">their own air purifiers\u003c/a> out of a box fan, a minimum efficiency reporting value — or MERV filter — and heavy-duty tape, for a price of roughly $50.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://cires.colorado.edu/council-fellows/jose-luis-jimenez\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jose-Luis Jimenez\u003c/a>, a chemistry professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, says the do-it-yourself purifiers work. But it’s important not to leave them unattended, as it could be a fire hazard if the fan gets too hot, Jimenez says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For those running air conditioning units, check that they are not bringing in outside air. If outside air is coming in, make sure it passes through a MERV filter, preferably MERV 14, 15 or 16.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, it’s important to reduce the amount of indoor air pollution we create, says \u003ca href=\"https://wcec.ucdavis.edu/about/directory/theresa-pistochini/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Theresa Pistochini\u003c/a>, an engineering manager at the UC Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute and Western Cooling Efficiency Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Avoid generating other pollutants indoors: temporarily avoid cooking on a gas stove, candles, incense, etc.,” she said. “Shut off kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans to reduce air exchange with [the] outdoors.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Clean Air in Shared Spaces\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Smoke particles range in size — from large to ultra fine. \u003ca href=\"https://www.pdx.edu/engineering/dean\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Richard Corsi\u003c/a>, dean of engineering and computer science at Portland State University, says using strong MERV filters in building HVAC systems is the most effective in catching very small particles. The air filters used in HVAC systems have ratings. If your HVAC system can accommodate it, a MERV 14, 15, 16 or a HEPA filter is ideal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If buildings can’t accommodate stronger filters, Corsi advises not using the building for the time being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To learn about the capacity of filters used in HVAC systems, it may be best to ask the facilities department, a building manager or human resources. Portable HEPA air filters can further clean the indoor air.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This post is adapted from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1969474/the-air-qualitys-terrible-out-there-so-how-can-you-keep-it-clean-indoors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an earlier KQED story.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>May Gray, June Gloom, No-Sky July … whatever you call it, the marine layer and California’s coastal summer weather patterns are insulating the Bay Area from yet another punishing summer heat wave descending on the Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While inland areas will broil this weekend, the forecast for cities around the bay is warm, but not uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meteorologists are still sizing up the projections, and say the heat \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1412437780353847297\">isn’t likely to break all-time records\u003c/a> like the heatwave that cooked the Pacific Northwest last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carbon pollution is trapping heat and warming the planet, causing more frequent and severe heat waves, even as companies and governments continue to emit planet warming gases with little abatement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A pre-print study released Wednesday by an international group of climate researchers found that the Pacific Northwest heat wave would’ve been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/\">World Weather Attribution\u003c/a> group produced the \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/\">rapid-turnaround modeling\u003c/a> of the extreme weather event. The researchers predict similar heat waves will be increasingly common in a warming world, although the conclusions have not yet been scrutinized through a peer review process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hidden away in coastal fog, residents of the inner Bay Area could almost forget that June saw \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/rgrahamwx/status/1411512917380435974?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">daily temperature records\u003c/a> crushed all across the state. For the Sierra and other interior regions of California, it was the hottest June in more than a century of record keeping, according to \u003ca href=\"https://weatherwest.com/archives/9899\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">climate scientists\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The baking continues. The National Weather Service issued a heat warning for the Bay Area region which lasts until Sunday, July 11. Residents of the far eastern parts of the region — Antioch, Brentwood, Napa and Livermore — face triple-digit temperatures, hotter nights and homes that likely won’t cool off in the evening, all of which compound to create \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1413098019562479616\">health dangers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1412857360977068036\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news for the Bay Area is that the marine layer will function as natural air conditioning for the coast, as it usually does this time of year. The bad news is that statewide, forests are extremely dry and vulnerable to wildfire. Scorching temps will likely only create more heightened risk of a big fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Heat Could Bring a ‘Significant Health Risk’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The incoming weather event — a couple days of heat brought on by a high pressure system moving in from the southeast — is fairly normal, said Jan Null, meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services, but cautioned that high temperatures can be dangerous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we start seeing temperatures in the upper 90s and past 100, there is a significant health risk in people overexerting themselves, especially when they’re not acclimated to it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you live west of the East Bay Hills, or wear shorts when it’s 60 degrees out, that’s you, likely to be poorly acclimated to heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The heatwave won’t extend to the coast “because there just isn’t enough offshore flow to overcome the strong marine influence this time of year and to fully suppress the marine layer,” wrote Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, on his blog, \u003ca href=\"https://weatherwest.com/archives/9899\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WeatherWest\u003c/a>. Most of the state’s population lives in places where cool ocean air provides some relief from summer heat, like the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego metro regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a pattern we’ve seen occur somewhat frequently in recent years, with searing heat inland yet quite mild conditions where the marine influence hangs on, and which also makes for a rather strange reality,” he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later in the season, when high pressure and hot air push toward the coast, effectively turning off the coast’s natural AC, the extreme temperatures will likely push out to the Pacific.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Hot Temperatures Intensify Already Bone Dry Conditions\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>This particular heat wave will bake an abnormally dry landscape, priming it further to burn. Much of the Bay Area is in an exceptional drought, the highest category on the \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U.S. Drought Monitor\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scott Stephens, a forestry professor at UC Berkeley is seeing evidence of that first hand in the Plumas County town of Quincy, where he’s teaching a summer field course for undergraduates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said after several weeks of temperatures above 90 degrees, plants there are “already showing signs that look like August: leaves starting to shrivel, shutting shut down because moisture is being depleted by the heat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The hot temperatures plus the combination of two years of below average precipitation this year is really worrisome because that lower moisture is going to make fire behavior more extreme, spread rates more extreme,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s typical for plants and trees to dry out in the summer in California’s Mediterranean climate, but not typically this fast, Stephens said. During the state’s last major drought, which lasted from 2012 to 2016, more than 120 million trees in the Sierra Nevada succumbed to bark beetles infestation and drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those stands of dead trees and dry timber fueled blazes like the Creek Fire, which ignited near Shaver Lake last September and burned for nearly four months, consuming an area larger than the city of Los Angeles, almost 600 square miles of forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephens notes that the northern tier of the Sierra has not yet experienced a similar tree die off during this drought, although he’s seeing an increase in bark beetle activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we put two more years of drought and warm conditions on this part of California, I’m afraid we might see the same kind of disaster,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephens blames decades of fire suppression and poor forest management for the larger fires in recent years, making parched land more vulnerable to extreme fire behavior. These policy failures are compounded by rising average summer temperatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You put climate change on top of [years of fire suppression] and it makes it worse,” he said. “We’ve got warmer periods, lower fuel moistures, snow melting earlier. All of this is contributing to what fire is doing,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>May Gray, June Gloom, No-Sky July … whatever you call it, the marine layer and California’s coastal summer weather patterns are insulating the Bay Area from yet another punishing summer heat wave descending on the Central Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While inland areas will broil this weekend, the forecast for cities around the bay is warm, but not uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meteorologists are still sizing up the projections, and say the heat \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1412437780353847297\">isn’t likely to break all-time records\u003c/a> like the heatwave that cooked the Pacific Northwest last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carbon pollution is trapping heat and warming the planet, causing more frequent and severe heat waves, even as companies and governments continue to emit planet warming gases with little abatement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A pre-print study released Wednesday by an international group of climate researchers found that the Pacific Northwest heat wave would’ve been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/\">World Weather Attribution\u003c/a> group produced the \u003ca href=\"https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/western-north-american-extreme-heat-virtually-impossible-without-human-caused-climate-change/\">rapid-turnaround modeling\u003c/a> of the extreme weather event. The researchers predict similar heat waves will be increasingly common in a warming world, although the conclusions have not yet been scrutinized through a peer review process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hidden away in coastal fog, residents of the inner Bay Area could almost forget that June saw \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/rgrahamwx/status/1411512917380435974?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">daily temperature records\u003c/a> crushed all across the state. For the Sierra and other interior regions of California, it was the hottest June in more than a century of record keeping, according to \u003ca href=\"https://weatherwest.com/archives/9899\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">climate scientists\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The baking continues. The National Weather Service issued a heat warning for the Bay Area region which lasts until Sunday, July 11. Residents of the far eastern parts of the region — Antioch, Brentwood, Napa and Livermore — face triple-digit temperatures, hotter nights and homes that likely won’t cool off in the evening, all of which compound to create \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea/status/1413098019562479616\">health dangers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>The good news for the Bay Area is that the marine layer will function as natural air conditioning for the coast, as it usually does this time of year. The bad news is that statewide, forests are extremely dry and vulnerable to wildfire. Scorching temps will likely only create more heightened risk of a big fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Heat Could Bring a ‘Significant Health Risk’\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The incoming weather event — a couple days of heat brought on by a high pressure system moving in from the southeast — is fairly normal, said Jan Null, meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services, but cautioned that high temperatures can be dangerous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we start seeing temperatures in the upper 90s and past 100, there is a significant health risk in people overexerting themselves, especially when they’re not acclimated to it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you live west of the East Bay Hills, or wear shorts when it’s 60 degrees out, that’s you, likely to be poorly acclimated to heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The heatwave won’t extend to the coast “because there just isn’t enough offshore flow to overcome the strong marine influence this time of year and to fully suppress the marine layer,” wrote Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, on his blog, \u003ca href=\"https://weatherwest.com/archives/9899\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WeatherWest\u003c/a>. Most of the state’s population lives in places where cool ocean air provides some relief from summer heat, like the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego metro regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a pattern we’ve seen occur somewhat frequently in recent years, with searing heat inland yet quite mild conditions where the marine influence hangs on, and which also makes for a rather strange reality,” he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Later in the season, when high pressure and hot air push toward the coast, effectively turning off the coast’s natural AC, the extreme temperatures will likely push out to the Pacific.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Hot Temperatures Intensify Already Bone Dry Conditions\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>This particular heat wave will bake an abnormally dry landscape, priming it further to burn. Much of the Bay Area is in an exceptional drought, the highest category on the \u003ca href=\"https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U.S. Drought Monitor\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scott Stephens, a forestry professor at UC Berkeley is seeing evidence of that first hand in the Plumas County town of Quincy, where he’s teaching a summer field course for undergraduates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said after several weeks of temperatures above 90 degrees, plants there are “already showing signs that look like August: leaves starting to shrivel, shutting shut down because moisture is being depleted by the heat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The hot temperatures plus the combination of two years of below average precipitation this year is really worrisome because that lower moisture is going to make fire behavior more extreme, spread rates more extreme,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s typical for plants and trees to dry out in the summer in California’s Mediterranean climate, but not typically this fast, Stephens said. During the state’s last major drought, which lasted from 2012 to 2016, more than 120 million trees in the Sierra Nevada succumbed to bark beetles infestation and drought.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those stands of dead trees and dry timber fueled blazes like the Creek Fire, which ignited near Shaver Lake last September and burned for nearly four months, consuming an area larger than the city of Los Angeles, almost 600 square miles of forest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephens notes that the northern tier of the Sierra has not yet experienced a similar tree die off during this drought, although he’s seeing an increase in bark beetle activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we put two more years of drought and warm conditions on this part of California, I’m afraid we might see the same kind of disaster,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephens blames decades of fire suppression and poor forest management for the larger fires in recent years, making parched land more vulnerable to extreme fire behavior. These policy failures are compounded by rising average summer temperatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You put climate change on top of [years of fire suppression] and it makes it worse,” he said. “We’ve got warmer periods, lower fuel moistures, snow melting earlier. All of this is contributing to what fire is doing,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "High Bay Area Vaccination Rates Likely to Tamp Down Future COVID-19 Outbreaks",
"headTitle": "High Bay Area Vaccination Rates Likely to Tamp Down Future COVID-19 Outbreaks | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp class=\"p1\">The Bay Area continues to outpace most of the country in terms of vaccination rates. Other key contenders include the state of Vermont and the city of Seattle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Marin County is leading the nine Bay Area counties with \u003ca href=\"https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/vaccine/data\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">78%\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of all residents at least partially vaccinated. San Francisco is next in line with \u003ca href=\"https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations-Progress/7mye-zncy/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">72%\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Vaccine rates in the other local counties hover in the high 60s. Solano County is at the back of the pack with \u003ca href=\"https://doitgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=055f81e9fe154da5860257e3f2489d67\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">64%\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of eligible residents vaccinated, which is on par with Los Angeles County’s vaccine \u003ca href=\"http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/coronavirus/vaccine/vaccine-dashboard.htm\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">rate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">When a majority of people are immune to COVID-19, either through a vaccine or because they have caught the bug, the virus can no longer spread because it runs out of vulnerable people to infect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epidemiologists predict these conditions for COVID-19 will occur when 75% to 85% of a population is protected.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“We are closing in on herd immunity,” said \u003cspan class=\"s2\">UCSF epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherfor\u003c/span>d. “It is very exciting. Very gratifying. It’s a miracle of modern molecular biology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">However, herd immunity is not a finish line because it’s impermanent. There are many factors at play. The virus can still mutate and kids under 12 have not received their shots yet. Plus scientists are just guessing at this point because they do not know what level of vaccination will actually keep the virus at bay.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But Rutherford says he is not worried about potential outbreaks following the state’s reopening on \u003ca href=\"https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">June 15\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. Small clusters of illness may arise but, he says, they are not likely to ignite substantial transmission. The virus can no longer spread rapidly within the community because a majority of the population is protected. The surges the Bay Area experienced when restrictions were lifted in the past are highly unlikely this time around.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Officials at the San Francisco Department of Public Health are encouraged by local numbers, but also stress the delicacy of the situation. “There are some populations that continue to be susceptible to the virus, including communities that have lower vaccination rates as well as those people who are ineligible for vaccines, such as children below 12 years of age,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “New variants are emerging, and the pace of vaccinations varies across the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Although current \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/keythingstoknow.html?s_cid=10493:covid%20vaccine:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY21\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">data\u003c/span>\u003c/a> is encouraging, scientists do not know if a vaccinated person can transmit the virus, and doctors do not know how long immunity to the virus lasts. Plus, we live in a highly global society connected by roads, trains and international airports.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“Herd immunity is really a term that’s designed for closed populations,” said Stanford epidemiologist Julie Parsonnet. “We are not a closed population by any stretch of the imagination. Until the world has immunity, then no one really has an immunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Parsonnet worries that focusing on the idea of herd immunity could send the wrong message to the public — especially when some people are still hesitant about getting a shot. They may interpret high vaccination rates as a sign that getting vaccinated is no longer necessary.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“And that’s not really the truth,” she said. “I think there are a lot of things that can still go wrong. We can’t predict the future and we need to prepare for it by using the tools that we have as aggressively as we can.”\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">In other words, high vaccination rates alone are not a panacea to stamp out the pandemic. Contact tracing and testing will still be required to quell small outbreaks going forward.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Parsonnet underlines that it took about 40-years to reach herd immunity for measles and doctors only had to vaccinate children to stop that virus. Every time someone is vaccinated it prevents further cases and potentially saves lives. The only way to truly stop COVID-19 is one shot at a time.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"p1\">The Bay Area continues to outpace most of the country in terms of vaccination rates. Other key contenders include the state of Vermont and the city of Seattle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Marin County is leading the nine Bay Area counties with \u003ca href=\"https://coronavirus.marinhhs.org/vaccine/data\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">78%\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of all residents at least partially vaccinated. San Francisco is next in line with \u003ca href=\"https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations-Progress/7mye-zncy/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">72%\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Vaccine rates in the other local counties hover in the high 60s. Solano County is at the back of the pack with \u003ca href=\"https://doitgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=055f81e9fe154da5860257e3f2489d67\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">64%\u003c/span>\u003c/a> of eligible residents vaccinated, which is on par with Los Angeles County’s vaccine \u003ca href=\"http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/coronavirus/vaccine/vaccine-dashboard.htm\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">rate\u003c/span>\u003c/a>.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">When a majority of people are immune to COVID-19, either through a vaccine or because they have caught the bug, the virus can no longer spread because it runs out of vulnerable people to infect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epidemiologists predict these conditions for COVID-19 will occur when 75% to 85% of a population is protected.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">“We are closing in on herd immunity,” said \u003cspan class=\"s2\">UCSF epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherfor\u003c/span>d. “It is very exciting. Very gratifying. It’s a miracle of modern molecular biology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">However, herd immunity is not a finish line because it’s impermanent. There are many factors at play. The virus can still mutate and kids under 12 have not received their shots yet. Plus scientists are just guessing at this point because they do not know what level of vaccination will actually keep the virus at bay.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">But Rutherford says he is not worried about potential outbreaks following the state’s reopening on \u003ca href=\"https://covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">June 15\u003c/span>\u003c/a>. Small clusters of illness may arise but, he says, they are not likely to ignite substantial transmission. The virus can no longer spread rapidly within the community because a majority of the population is protected. The surges the Bay Area experienced when restrictions were lifted in the past are highly unlikely this time around.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Officials at the San Francisco Department of Public Health are encouraged by local numbers, but also stress the delicacy of the situation. “There are some populations that continue to be susceptible to the virus, including communities that have lower vaccination rates as well as those people who are ineligible for vaccines, such as children below 12 years of age,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “New variants are emerging, and the pace of vaccinations varies across the world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p1\">Although current \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/keythingstoknow.html?s_cid=10493:covid%20vaccine:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY21\">\u003cspan class=\"s1\">data\u003c/span>\u003c/a> is encouraging, scientists do not know if a vaccinated person can transmit the virus, and doctors do not know how long immunity to the virus lasts. Plus, we live in a highly global society connected by roads, trains and international airports.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“Herd immunity is really a term that’s designed for closed populations,” said Stanford epidemiologist Julie Parsonnet. “We are not a closed population by any stretch of the imagination. Until the world has immunity, then no one really has an immunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Parsonnet worries that focusing on the idea of herd immunity could send the wrong message to the public — especially when some people are still hesitant about getting a shot. They may interpret high vaccination rates as a sign that getting vaccinated is no longer necessary.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">“And that’s not really the truth,” she said. “I think there are a lot of things that can still go wrong. We can’t predict the future and we need to prepare for it by using the tools that we have as aggressively as we can.”\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">In other words, high vaccination rates alone are not a panacea to stamp out the pandemic. Contact tracing and testing will still be required to quell small outbreaks going forward.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"p3\">Parsonnet underlines that it took about 40-years to reach herd immunity for measles and doctors only had to vaccinate children to stop that virus. Every time someone is vaccinated it prevents further cases and potentially saves lives. The only way to truly stop COVID-19 is one shot at a time.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The FDA's Controversial Approval of a New Alzheimer's Drug Explained",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Food and Drug Administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/fdas-decision-approve-new-treatment-alzheimers-disease\">approved\u003c/a> the drug \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-information-patients-and-providers/aducanumab-marketed-aduhelm-information\">aducanumab\u003c/a> to treat patients with Alzheimer’s disease on Monday. It is the first new drug approved by the agency for Alzheimer’s disease since 2003.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drug is the first to show significant progress against the sticky brain plaques that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drug has proved highly effective at reducing the plaques, called beta-amyloid, that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But does the drug actually slow the progression of the disease when it reduces the plaques? It’s not yet clear. Two large studies offered conflicting evidence about whether the treatment slows declines in memory and thinking. A panel of expert advisers to the FDA \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/932215023/fda-advisory-panel-rejects-controversial-alzheimers-drug\">recommended in November\u003c/a> that the agency not approve the drug.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a condition of approval, the FDA is requiring Biogen, the drug’s maker, to conduct another clinical study to confirm that the reduction of amyloid plaques results in clinical improvement for patients. If the subsequent study doesn’t show a clinical improvement, the agency could move to withdraw the approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are also concerns that the FDA’s approval will make it difficult for Biogen and Eisai, the companies marketing the drug, to find enough patients to participate in its next clinical trials as patients might not want to risk getting the placebo and can get the drug without being in a study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The medicine will be marketed under the trade name Aduhelm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FDA acknowledged the controversy and attention the drug’s approval has garnered from the Alzheimer’s patient community, elected officials and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency opted to put Aduhelm on the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway, which is meant to speed access to potentially valuable therapies for patients with serious diseases to serve an unmet need, and where a clinical benefit is expected — even if there is still some uncertainty about that benefit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[T]he Agency concluded that the benefits of Aduhelm for patients with Alzheimer’s disease outweighed the risks of the therapy,” Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could take several years to conclude the clinical trials the FDA is requiring. But in the meantime, Aduhelm will be available to patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patients will receive the drug in monthly infusions. They will also need regular brain scans to detect a rare side effect: bleeding or swelling in the brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biogen and Eisai said Monday that the annual wholesale cost for those taking maintenance doses \u003ca href=\"https://investors.biogen.com/news-releases/news-release-details/biogen-and-eisai-launch-multiple-initiatives-help-patients\">would be $56,000\u003c/a> a year for a patient of average U.S. weight with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia. The net price could change based on discounts and rebates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trading in Biogen shares was halted due to the announcement. After trading resumed midafternoon, shares were up more than $110, or 39%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Alzheimer’s Association, which has been pushing for approval, applauded the news.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the first drug that slows Alzheimer’s disease. And, this is the beginning of a completely new future for Alzheimer’s treatments,” the group said in a statement. “This is a new type of Alzheimer’s treatment; it addresses the disease in a way that has never been done before, compared to currently approved drugs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But others say the drugmakers have not yet proved that aducanumab’s benefits outweigh its risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November, an FDA advisory committee of medical experts voted that the evidence did not show the drug to be effective at slowing Alzheimer’s. One major study found that aducanumab slowed down the progress of Alzheimer’s, while the other showed it didn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Usually, you need two big studies finding the same thing to approve a drug,” NPR \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/932215023/fda-advisory-panel-rejects-controversial-alzheimers-drug\">reported\u003c/a> after the vote last year. But at that meeting, “the FDA asked its experts to focus only on the positive study, and it also presented analysis of the data that was really very favorable to the drug. All of that did not go over well with these advisers. Some of them seemed to feel like they were being railroaded by the FDA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An independent think tank also assessed the two phase 3 clinical trials of aducanumab and \u003ca href=\"https://icer.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ICER_ALZ_Draft_Evidence_Report_050521.pdf\">found\u003c/a> the evidence “insufficient to conclude that the clinical benefits of aducanumab outweigh its harms or, indeed, that it reduces progression” of Alzheimer’s disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. \u003ca href=\"https://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g275/p7909\">Jason Karlawish\u003c/a>, professor of medicine and medical ethics and an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/30/if-the-fda-approves-biogens-alzheimers-treatment-i-wont-prescribe-it/\">wrote last week\u003c/a> that he would not prescribe aducanumab to his patients even with FDA approval, due to risks of small bleeds in the brain, financial cost and unclear benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[T]he data to make this case are murky and, even if they were clear, the drug’s benefits are ambiguous at best and not worth this cost. Putting it on the market will stress Medicare’s resources,” he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+FDA+Has+Approved+A+New+Alzheimer%27s+Drug+%E2%80%94+Here%27s+Why+That%27s+Controversial&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Food and Drug Administration \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/fdas-decision-approve-new-treatment-alzheimers-disease\">approved\u003c/a> the drug \u003ca href=\"https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-information-patients-and-providers/aducanumab-marketed-aduhelm-information\">aducanumab\u003c/a> to treat patients with Alzheimer’s disease on Monday. It is the first new drug approved by the agency for Alzheimer’s disease since 2003.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drug is the first to show significant progress against the sticky brain plaques that are the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drug has proved highly effective at reducing the plaques, called beta-amyloid, that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But does the drug actually slow the progression of the disease when it reduces the plaques? It’s not yet clear. Two large studies offered conflicting evidence about whether the treatment slows declines in memory and thinking. A panel of expert advisers to the FDA \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/932215023/fda-advisory-panel-rejects-controversial-alzheimers-drug\">recommended in November\u003c/a> that the agency not approve the drug.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a condition of approval, the FDA is requiring Biogen, the drug’s maker, to conduct another clinical study to confirm that the reduction of amyloid plaques results in clinical improvement for patients. If the subsequent study doesn’t show a clinical improvement, the agency could move to withdraw the approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are also concerns that the FDA’s approval will make it difficult for Biogen and Eisai, the companies marketing the drug, to find enough patients to participate in its next clinical trials as patients might not want to risk getting the placebo and can get the drug without being in a study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The medicine will be marketed under the trade name Aduhelm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The FDA acknowledged the controversy and attention the drug’s approval has garnered from the Alzheimer’s patient community, elected officials and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agency opted to put Aduhelm on the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway, which is meant to speed access to potentially valuable therapies for patients with serious diseases to serve an unmet need, and where a clinical benefit is expected — even if there is still some uncertainty about that benefit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[T]he Agency concluded that the benefits of Aduhelm for patients with Alzheimer’s disease outweighed the risks of the therapy,” Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It could take several years to conclude the clinical trials the FDA is requiring. But in the meantime, Aduhelm will be available to patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Patients will receive the drug in monthly infusions. They will also need regular brain scans to detect a rare side effect: bleeding or swelling in the brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Biogen and Eisai said Monday that the annual wholesale cost for those taking maintenance doses \u003ca href=\"https://investors.biogen.com/news-releases/news-release-details/biogen-and-eisai-launch-multiple-initiatives-help-patients\">would be $56,000\u003c/a> a year for a patient of average U.S. weight with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia. The net price could change based on discounts and rebates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trading in Biogen shares was halted due to the announcement. After trading resumed midafternoon, shares were up more than $110, or 39%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Alzheimer’s Association, which has been pushing for approval, applauded the news.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the first drug that slows Alzheimer’s disease. And, this is the beginning of a completely new future for Alzheimer’s treatments,” the group said in a statement. “This is a new type of Alzheimer’s treatment; it addresses the disease in a way that has never been done before, compared to currently approved drugs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But others say the drugmakers have not yet proved that aducanumab’s benefits outweigh its risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In November, an FDA advisory committee of medical experts voted that the evidence did not show the drug to be effective at slowing Alzheimer’s. One major study found that aducanumab slowed down the progress of Alzheimer’s, while the other showed it didn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Usually, you need two big studies finding the same thing to approve a drug,” NPR \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/06/932215023/fda-advisory-panel-rejects-controversial-alzheimers-drug\">reported\u003c/a> after the vote last year. But at that meeting, “the FDA asked its experts to focus only on the positive study, and it also presented analysis of the data that was really very favorable to the drug. All of that did not go over well with these advisers. Some of them seemed to feel like they were being railroaded by the FDA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An independent think tank also assessed the two phase 3 clinical trials of aducanumab and \u003ca href=\"https://icer.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ICER_ALZ_Draft_Evidence_Report_050521.pdf\">found\u003c/a> the evidence “insufficient to conclude that the clinical benefits of aducanumab outweigh its harms or, indeed, that it reduces progression” of Alzheimer’s disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dr. \u003ca href=\"https://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g275/p7909\">Jason Karlawish\u003c/a>, professor of medicine and medical ethics and an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/30/if-the-fda-approves-biogens-alzheimers-treatment-i-wont-prescribe-it/\">wrote last week\u003c/a> that he would not prescribe aducanumab to his patients even with FDA approval, due to risks of small bleeds in the brain, financial cost and unclear benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[T]he data to make this case are murky and, even if they were clear, the drug’s benefits are ambiguous at best and not worth this cost. Putting it on the market will stress Medicare’s resources,” he wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+FDA+Has+Approved+A+New+Alzheimer%27s+Drug+%E2%80%94+Here%27s+Why+That%27s+Controversial&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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