Anti-smoking groups, frustrated by federal inaction on restricting menthol cigarettes, are taking matters into their own hands. In recent months, cities ranging from Oakland and Los Gatos, Calif., to Minneapolis and St. Paul have passed laws limiting the availability of menthol cigarettes, which health advocates say have a particular appeal to beginning smokers. St. Paul is the latest, voting this month to restrict sales to adult-only tobacco and liquor stores.

The CDC is inviting Americans to take a look at their usual holiday activities to see if they can be made more “sustainable,” that is – if they can use environmental resources more responsibly so that future generations will have enough to meet their needs. Sounds like a daunting task, but if you reuse and recycle; compost; walk, bike, take mass transit, or drive low-emission vehicles; or conserve water and electricity, you’re already having a positive effect on the planet.

Hayden McClure didn’t know he had cancer – didn’t know he was even at risk – until he took the test offered by the Building Trades National Medical Screening Program. It saved his life. McClure, a member of Anchorage, Alaska, Local 1547, worked on a Department of Energy site at Amchitka Island that qualified him for the free medical screening.

What is systematic review? There are many different types of occupational safety and health questions and a variety of scientific methods to answer them. Systematic review is one method for comprehensively reviewing a body of scientific literature. It is an explicit and transparent process to identify, select, synthesize, and critically appraise the scientific literature relevant to a specific question.

One person was killed and approximately three dozen injured in an explosion and fire last week at a cosmetics factory in New York state. Seven of the injured were firefighters who were inside the facility, responding to a first blast, when a second explosion occurred.

After multiple delays, OSHA has finally announced that employers who are required to keep OSHA injury and illness records must send summary information in to the agency by December 15, fifteen days after the deadline announced last June, when the agency proposed to delay the reporting deadline from July 1 to December 1.

‘Workplaces are not merely spaces where people work – they are spaces where people live their lives. Anything which would be prohibited on grounds of consumer health or environmental protection should also be prohibited in workplaces.’ These were the words with which Laurent Vogel, a researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), closed the ‘Work and Cancer’ conference organised by the ETUI in November in Brussels.

Changing our behavior could help many more Americans avoid cancer, according to a new American Cancer Society (ACS) study that calculates the contribution of several modifiable risk factors to cancer occurrence. The study finds that more than four in ten cancer cases and deaths in the U.S. are associated with these major modifiable risk factors, many of which can be mitigated with prevention strategies.

Does the holiday season have you indulging in too much fattening food and too many adult beverages? Do the festivities leave you little time for your regular workouts? Do family gatherings re-ignite old conflicts or usher in new ones? (Oh, those political arguments between Uncle Mike and Cousin Betty!)