Only 3.3 percent of all visits to emergency departments are classified as “avoidable,” according to a study published today in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care (“Avoidable emergency department visits: a starting point”).

Oil refineries in the Houston area damaged by Hurricane Harvey may have accidentally released millions of pounds of contaminants into the air, according to news reports.

Explosions and fumes emanating from a flood-crippled chemical plant in southeast Texas sent a deputy sheriff to the hospital and caused local officials to brace for a fire and more blasts at the facility. News sources report that the flooding caused by Harvey knocked out power to the plant, disabling its refrigeration system and allowing the volatile chemicals it stored to heat up and explode.

Young adults, particularly men, lag behind middle-aged and older adults in awareness and treatment of high blood pressure, putting this population at an increased risk for heart attack and stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s (AHA) journal Hypertension.

If filmmakers won't stop showing characters in PG-13 movies smoking, then movies depicting smoking or tobacco use should be rated "R." That's the demand being made health experts, who are frustrated by the failure of efforts to  eliminate smoking imagery from movies targeted toward young people. Research has shown that smoking in movies has a direct impact on children who go on to smoke.

Just after noon on March 29, a pickup truck crossed the center line of a rural road in South Texas and slammed into a church bus, killing 13 members of the First Baptist Church of New Braunfels. A police report said the 20-year-old pickup driver, who survived, had taken medication and was texting.

Better fuel management by aviators could prevent an average of 50 general aviation accidents a year, according to the NTSB’s latest safety alert, ‘Flying on Empty,’ issued yesterday.

One worker at a Wisconsin manufacturing company suffered severe injuries after being struck by a moving piece of machinery and another was exposed to excessive levels of hexavalent chromium, OSHA investigators found, after responding to a complaint about unsafe conditions at the facility.

Harvey may have been downgraded from hurricane status to tropical storm, but it continues to produce extraordinary amounts of rain, bringing misery to residents of southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana. Forecasters say the area can expect heavy rain to persist throughout the Labor Day weekend.