Environmental Health

One-year-old Hatuey Connelly is back in the hospital for another exam. Doctors regularly check the baby's blood for dangerous levels of mercury and lead. And they puzzle over his startling birth defect: six fingers on his right hand. No one knows the source of his abnormalities, but his family and doctors suspect the U.S. Navy, which has used this tropical isle for military training and bombing practice for decades. "I can't say categorically that the Navy has caused health problems, but things like this make you wonder," said his doctor, Betzaida MacKenzie.

Months after the Pennsylvania auditor general criticized health departments for not making restaurant inspection reports public, the Philadelphia Department of Health yesterday began posting the information on the Web. The city posted reports of what it described as serious violations of the health code, including mouse and fly infestations, in food-service establishments in 2004 and 2005. Among the restaurants cited for various infractions were the well-known White Dog Cafe in West Philadelphia, and Matyson, Alma de Cuba, and Susanna Foo in Center City.

When Molly Rouse-Terlevich, a Bryn Mawr mother of two, goes to clean the kitchen counter, she reaches for a spray bottle.   In it is a solution of half water, half white vinegar. When she cleans the floor, same stuff. The bathroom, same stuff. She runs vinegar through the dishwasher to reduce the buildup from hard water, and adds it to especially dirty loads of laundry. And she's been at it for several years. "We use it for virtually everything except the cleaning that would require slightly more grit," she said.

His coffee consumption level hasn't changed. Nor has his sleep schedule. But Michael McTigue feels a lot more energetic at work these days, perhaps because he stands most of the time. Sitting at a traditional office desk, "I ended up exhausted at the end of the day," said McTigue, director of digital media for pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. "There was nothing stimulating me. " About a year ago, Glaxo set up a pilot program in which employees could work at adjustable-height desks, among a slew of other workplace design changes in preparation for the company's move from its Center City offices to the Navy Yard on Monday.

Instem, a Conshohocken software firm, said Wednesday that it will supply software for the collection, management and maintenance of certain studies overseen by the National Institutes of Health. The value of the deal is $656,100, Instem said. The company said its Provantis software will be used by the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for reproductive, perinatal and developmental National Toxicology Program studies conducted predominantly at contractor laboratories around the United States.

Air pollution from traffic and power plants seems to cause genetic changes - the kind linked to cancer - in developing fetuses, a federally funded study released yesterday has concluded. A first-of-its-kind study of 60 pregnant women in poor areas of New York City used backpacks to monitor the women's exposure to airborne carcinogens and then tested their babies' umbilical-cord blood after birth. Babies whose mothers were exposed to higher pollution levels had 53 percent more aberrations in their chromosomes.

Considering what happened Thursday, Tom Smith could not be happier that the in-home water filtration product his company sells hasn't been very popular. On Thursday, a California environmental watchdog group said that the Uniflow water filtration system distributed by Franke Inc., a Swiss company with its U.S. office in Hatfield, actually increased the lead content of drinking water instead of removing impurities as it was designed to do. "These results show that consumers are often exposed to toxic levels of lead from these products," said Richard Mass, research director of the Environmental Quality Institute of the University of North Carolina-Asheville, which conducted the study for California's Center for Environmental Health.

An explosion ripped through an oil refinery yesterday, injuring 30 workers, three critically. The afternoon blast originated in a line carrying liquid petroleum gas, but its cause was not immediately known, said Bill Buckalew, environmental health and safety manager at the Mobil Oil plant. A fire that went to three alarms was quickly extinguished, Fire Capt. Randy Brooks said. Portions of the refinery south of Los Angeles were shut down, but most of the plant was operating normally within a few hours, Mobil said in a statement.

In testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Ken Cook spoke passionately about 10 Americans who were found to have more than 200 synthetic chemicals in their blood. The list included flame retardants, lead, stain removers, and pesticides the federal government had banned three decades ago. "Their chemical exposures did not come from the air they breathed, the water they drank, or the food they ate," said Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a national advocacy group.

The trouble with a chocolate high is it wears off quickly - and that can leave you feeling cranky. One month after members of Congress held a retreat in Hershey, America's chocolate capital, to relearn (or, in some cases, be introduced to) the arts of civil dialogue, two high-ranking lawmakers got in a jawing and shoving match on the House floor Wednesday. Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, wagged an angry finger in the face of Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, who responded with a shove and the kind observation that Mr. Obey was a "gutless chickens--t.