Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Hurricane Laura Adds To Health Risks
NPR: Hurricane Laura Releases Toxic Air Pollution, Raising Health Concerns
Hurricane Laura tore through a region that is home to dozens of major oil refineries, petrochemical plants and plastics facilities. Now, residents could be breathing dangerously polluted air from those sites, public health experts and local advocates say. The pollution began before the storm even made landfall. In the two days before the storm arrived, facilities in Texas released more than 4 million pounds of extra air pollution, according to reports the companies made to state environmental regulators that were analyzed by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund for NPR. (Hersher, 8/28)
AP: Key Air Monitors Offline After Laura Hits Louisiana Gas Hub
Hazardous emissions from a chlorine plant fire, abruptly shuttered oil and gas refineries and still-to-be assessed plant damage are seeping into the air after Hurricane Laura, regulators say, but some key state and federal monitors to alert the public of air dangers remain offline in Louisiana. While the chlorine fire was being monitored as a potential health threat, Louisiana environmental spokesman Greg Langley says he knows of no other major industrial health risks from the storm in the state. He said restoring power and water was a bigger priority. (Knickmeyer, 8/30)
In other news from Louisiana —
AP: ‘Protect Our Babies:’ Hospital Cares For Babies In Hurricane
As the wind howled and the rain slammed down, a team of nurses, respiratory therapists and a doctor worked through the night to care for 19 tiny babies as Hurricane Laura slammed southwestern Louisiana. The babies, some on ventilators or eating through a feeding tube, seemed to weather the storm just fine, said Dr. Juan Bossano, the medical director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital for Women. (Santana, 8/29)
The Acadiana Advocate: As Hurricane Laura Hit Hospitals, These Nurses Raced To Protect The NICU Babies They Were Treating
As her ambulance unit passed downed trees and whooshed through standing water, Our Lady of Lourdes neonatal intensive care unit nurse Ashley Judice was thinking of babies in Lake Charles. Judice and seven other team members including a nurse, respiratory therapists and Acadian Ambulance medics drove to Lake Charles Thursday in two ambulances to help evacuate NICU infants from Lake Charles Memorial Hospital. (Gagliano, 8/29)
AP: Analysis: An Unwelcome Twist On An Unwanted Ritual
Some familiar rituals are not comforting. Tabulations of deaths. Searches for the missing. Picking up the pieces of homes, businesses and lives. Hurricane Laura arrived two days before Saturday’s 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. And it hit roughly a month short of the same anniversary of Hurricane Rita — kind of an unscheduled, unwanted re-enactment of a southwest Louisiana disaster with much of the original, not particularly enthusiastic, cast. (McGill, 8/30)
