Health, Science, Environment

The Environmental Protection Agency notified Missouri environmental regulators this month that the state’s plan for overseeing the disposal of toxic waste from coal-fired power plants is not strong enough to protect human health and the environment.

In a recent letter to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, EPA officials noted several provisions in the state’s plan that are weaker than the 2015 federal coal ash rule. Some allow the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to waive requirements for utility companies to clean up groundwater contamination or even monitor groundwater for toxic chemicals if they can show that it doesn’t affect drinking-water supplies or harm the environment.

The Missouri Public Service Commission gave the green light Wednesday to allow a 780-mile wind-energy transmission line to be built across Missouri.

The Grain Belt Express transmission line will deliver nearly 4,000 megawatts of power from wind farms in western Kansas to parts of Missouri, Illinois and some eastern states. The line would course through eight Missouri counties, including Caldwell, Randolph and Monroe.

The Missouri State Board of Nursing has approved expanding five of the state’s nursing programs, adding 250 slots for future students.

State officials say the move aims to help reduce nursing vacancies. The profession has one of the highest vacancy rates in the health sector, with 13 percent of positions unfilled in Missouri, according to the Missouri Hospital Association.

A federal jury in San Francisco has unanimously decided that Bayer AG’s weed killer Roundup caused a California resident to develop cancer.

Edwin Hardeman alleged in his suit that using the herbicide over three decades on his properties caused him to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that affects the immune system. His lawsuit is the first federal court case against Bayer’s Roundup and could predict the outcome of hundreds of cases that the company faces for similar claims. Bayer bought St. Louis-based Monsanto, maker of Roundup, last year.

About 60 percent of the approximately 70,000 Missourians purged from the state’s Medicaid program in 2018 lost coverage because they failed to reply to a mailed renewal form, according to state data.

The Missouri Department of Social Services started using an automated system to determine residents’ Medicaid eligibility last year. If the system couldn’t find their information, the state mailed enrollees renewal forms to complete and return.

Some health experts and state officials are concerned people otherwise eligible for the program are living without insurance because they never received the mail.

A St. Louis nonprofit is sending outreach workers to city streets to dispense life-saving treatment from a newly refurbished ambulance.

The Missouri Network For Opiate Reform and Recovery will use the vehicle to dispense the overdose-reversal drug naloxone to active drug users and those in recovery. It also provides testing for sexually transmitted diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV and information about treatment programs.

The mobile unit extends the nonprofit’s reach beyond its headquarters at 4022 S. Broadway.

In an industrial, desolate block of Granite City, artists are presenting videos, photography and sculptures that depict environmental problems in the St. Louis area.

The 18 pieces that comprise Art + Landscape STL are on display the Granite City Art and Design District, a converted area of former retail and outdoor spaces along State Street. Some works, like a ring of stacked sandbags, allude to flooding along the Mississippi River.

A table of objects that include a map of where radioactive Manhattan Project waste had been dumped in north St. Louis County refers to toxic-waste sites. The exhibits will be on display for the next four weekends.

Federal officials are encouraging St. Louis residents to enroll in flood insurance, in anticipation of a potentially severe flood season.

Most homeowners and renters-insurance policies don’t cover flooding, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency offers flood insurance to residents in thousands of U.S. cities, including St. Louis. The program — which dates back to the late 1960s — sets insurance rates based on building location, age and other factors.

A survey of first-year St. Louis University medical students found those who described themselves as perfectionists were more likely to experience mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

The findings, published in February in the journal Academic Psychiatry, show the thought processes that are lauded in high-achieving fields such as medicine can have a serious effect on students’ well-being.

“We then essentially found evidence these toxic thought patterns would contribute to distress and even mental health conditions in medical students,” said survey author Stuart Slavin, the medical school's former associate dean of curriculum.

A study released this week by the National Institutes of Health indicates that nearly one-third of Americans between the ages of 10 and 12 “screened positive for suicide risk in emergency department settings.”

Meanwhile, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have been studying even younger children who think and talk about suicide – and their most recent findings refute some conventional wisdom about children’s understanding of what it means to die.

On Tuesday’s St. Louis on the Air, two local experts joined host Don Marsh to discuss the topic: Dr. Deanna Barch and Dr. Joan Luby.

Researchers at St. Louis University are recruiting volunteers to test a new vaccination for avian influenza.

The vaccination targets the H7N9 strain, which has caused at least 600 deaths since it first surfaced in China in 2013. The National Institutes of Health has identified the strain as one that could cause a global pandemic and is now preparing for an outbreak before it happens.

Health officials in Jefferson County are trying to find people who may have come in contact with a person there who has caught measles.

The person caught the virus after traveling, according to officials at the Jefferson County Health Department. The department is “working directly with the case to identify potential contacts and make arrangements for follow up immunizations and care if necessary,” officials said in a release.

Measles infects the respiratory system and can cause deafness, blindness and can even be fatal in some rare cases. People who contract the measles develop a distinctive red, splotchy rash over their bodies. There is no specific antiviral treatment or medicine for measles, but giving a person a vaccine soon after they’ve been infected may lessen symptoms.

Even as an especially wintry winter continues to make itself known across the St. Louis region, spring is more and more on residents’ minds – and will finally be here, at least officially, in less than two weeks.

Along with warmer temperatures the new season brings renewed focus on gardening and yardwork, and on Monday’s St. Louis on the Air, host Don Marsh led a discussion about fostering native habitats and incorporating native plants as part of those efforts.

Missouri University of Science and Technology could be part of the solution to the state’s bridge-maintenance problem.

The state is behind on its maintenance and is working with Missouri S&T on robots to make it easier to inspect and repair bridges.

A common chemical used to kill bacteria is making them more capable of surviving antibiotics.

According to new research from Washington University, triclosan has a protective effect on strains of E. coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. The chemical — which is added to hundreds of consumer products — also interferes with the antibiotic treatment of urinary-tract infections in mice.

Retired astronaut and U.S. Air Force officer Catherine “Cady” Coleman is among very few people who have lived in space. But during a visit to St. Louis last month, she came across as equally excited about life on Earth – especially because of her interactions with some accomplished high school students.

Thursday’s St. Louis on the Air included a conversation with Coleman as well as comments from two Gold Award Girl Scouts, 17-year-old Molly Frei and 16-year-old Lilly Orskog, who Coleman came to town to help celebrate alongside the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri.

Wildlife conservationists worry that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to remove federal protections for the endangered gray wolf will hurt efforts to restore the species in states where it has disappeared, such as Missouri.

Although the species is native to Missouri, the state has not had gray wolves since the 1950s, largely due to hunting, habitat loss and landowners killing them for preying on livestock. Today, only about 5,000 live in the western Great Lakes and Northern Rockies regions.

After analyzing microscopic particles of human feces, scientists have found more evidence to support the theory that extreme-weather events may have contributed to the demise of an ancient city that built the Cahokia Mounds.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers based in California, Wisconsin and Massachusetts reported that drought and flooding that occurred around 1150 A.D. could have caused people to leave Cahokia.

Roughly 850,000 people are facing food insecurity in the state of Missouri alone – and that includes about 220,000 kids.

“We estimate roughly one in five kids in the state of Missouri [are] hungry or at risk of not knowing where their next meal is going to be coming from,” Operation Food Search’s Lucinda Perry said Tuesday on St. Louis on the Air.

Perry, who is director of strategic initiatives for the nonprofit, joined host Don Marsh alongside guests from two other St. Louis-area organizations that focus on addressing food insecurity: Food Outreach and the St. Louis Area Foodbank.

Ro Kicker realized a few years ago that keeping up with a large backyard was very time-consuming.

Last spring, Kicker all but parked the lawnmower, and with the help of volunteers, began transforming the Bevo neighborhood yard into a vegetable garden. They named it the Feed the People Garden Project to reflect its mission: giving away food.

This spring, the garden area will double in size to include a small orchard. But one thing that isn’t changing is the garden’s reliance on the honor system.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is close to finishing its removal of World War II-era radioactive waste from the Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals plant in downtown St. Louis.

Uranium, radium and thorium leached into the land around the plant during the 1940s and 50s when Mallinckrodt Chemical Works manufactured uranium to create atomic bombs for the Manhattan Project. The Corps of Engineers has been removing the contaminated soil since 1998.

Six decades ago, the uranium processors simply dumped waste down the drain, said Susan Adams, the project engineer for the clean-up efforts at the site.

Missouri likely would not have to spend any additional money to expand Medicaid to insure more low-income people, according to a report from the Washington University Center on Health Economics and Policy.

The state spends nearly $4 billion to provide Medicaid to people with disabilities, pregnant women, children and some seniors.

Researchers say adding people who make up to 138 percent of the federal poverty rate – close to $17,000 annually – likely wouldn’t cost Missouri extra funds, because the state would receive increased federal funding under a Medicaid expansion.