Fumes at Mushroom Farm Kill 3, Sicken 3 Others
LANGLEY, British Columbia — Three people have died and three became seriously ill after being overcome by fumes of an undetermined nature in a pump house at a mushroom farm south of Vancouver.
Two remained at a hospital Sunday, two days after the episode at Farmers Fresh Mushrooms Inc. in Langley, roughly half a dozen miles north of Blaine, Wash.
Police identified one of the victims as Ut Tran, 35, of Surrey. Thirty-five-year-old Michael Phan of Langley was listed in serious condition and there was no word on the condition of the other person who was hospitalized.
Owner Ha Quan Truong has been unavailable for comment.
The Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia, known as WorkeSafeBC, has been trying to determine the nature of the fumes and how they escaped.
“We’re still making the site safe,” said John Eldridge, the agency’s manager of fatal and serious injury investigations. “We can’t really go in and take a look inside this pump house yet because it’s still not a safe environment for our investigators.”
The British Columbia Federation of Labor has proposed a public inquiry and federation President Jim Sinclair said not enough has been done to protect the rights of immigrant workers.
He said he went to the farm and spoke to workers, most of them Vietnamese.
“We have a systemic problem of using a lot of immigrants to do the work who aren’t necessarily trained to do the job,” Sinclair said. “We need to look deeper into what’s going on in this industry.”
Neighbors say they have complained to authorities for years about a foul stench of manure.
“The smell can be at any time … 10 minutes or four hours,” said Roger Layton of the neighborhood group Citizens for Responsible Composting. “It depends which way the wind is blowing.”
Huge piles of manure sit at the farm for weeks and composting is done at all hours, Layton said.
“They’d have a tractor out there and that tractor would mix it and a couple of guys would hose water on it and it would steam away and the wind would blow my way and you’d have to hide in the house,” he said.
Another neighbor, Charlie Fox, a member of the municipal council, filed a complaint with the Farm Industry Review Board in June to have the farm inspected.
“When it’s smelly, you can’t have a barbecue because it’s just uncomfortable,” Fox said.
New Lung Institute in Munich
Lung diseases among the world the most common causes of death, their importance to forecasts of the World Health Organization in the next 20 years will grow even further. Their research but has a large backlog in Germany. Now at the Helmholtz Centre Munich 1 November 2008 a new, pneumologisches Research Institute under the direction of the medical Dr. Oliver Eickelberg established. This is clear from the previous inhalation Institute of Biology. Eickelberg, along with a date to be appointed Pneumologen the clinical management of the Translation Centre for Lung Research (Comprehensive Pneumology Center - CPC). Parallel to this, he receives a call on the newly established Institute of Experimental Lung at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich.
As a partner of the CPC bring the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich and the Asklepios specialised hospitals for lung diseases in Gauting their experiences in experimental and clinical research, says Prof. Dietrich Reinhardt, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the LMU. A laboratory complex at the Max-Lebsche place in the immediate vicinity of the Grosshadern clinic will be based on a total area of 1,500 square meters within the meaning translational research working groups of the two chairs of experimental and clinical Pneumology network. For the future we hope this cooperation between research and clinical care important lessons for the benefit of patients, said Dr. Tobias Kaltenbach, Chairman of the Board of Management of Asklepios specialist clinics.
With the establishment of the Institute pneumologischen and the building of the CPC are important steps have been taken to address the situation of lung research being done, says Prof. Dr. Günther Wess, Scientific, Technical Director of the Helmholtz Centre Munich. The region Munich medium can play a leading role in pulmonary medicine in Germany - if not in Europe -. In addition expands the Helmholtz Centre Munich with the new institute focusing on specific disease Image. The scientific focus of research at the CPC are bronchial asthma, COPD, interstitial Pneumopathien, lung cancer, lung transplantation, and aspects of stem cell research. We will CPC on the molecular mechanisms of these lung diseases explore new therapeutic approaches for their treatment and develop as quickly as possible for the benefit of patients in clinical trials to test Eickelberg explains.
More than half of pregnant women drink alcohol
Drink alcohol 58 percent of pregnant women in Germany. Even though they only occasionally do they endanger the health of the unborn child considerably. But many expectant mothers - regardless of their level of education - not aware of this, as a study of the Charité Berlin now has revealed.
ach year, 10 000 alkoholgeschädigte children born in Germany, of which 4 000 babies with the full picture of Fetalen alcohol syndrome (FAS), a severe physical or mental disability. FAS is the most common disability in newborns in Germany, it occurs twice as often as Down’s syndrome, but in comparison to 100 percent preventable.
The drug Federal Government, Sabine Bätzing, thus calls for avoiding alcohol during pregnancy: “There is no safe threshold for safe consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. The child is exposed to alcohol as well as the mother, has much more under the consumer to suffer Because the fetus alcohol only with a capacity of four percent compared to the mother degrades. ”
Symptoms of FAS range from slight physical and mental damage on subsequent behavior problems to a disability, the child never lead an independent life. Only about 20 percent of the FAS-affected children are later able to live independently. The remaining 80 percent is a whole lifetime to care instructed.
Malaria rarely imported to Germany
The number to Germany imported malaria diseases within six years almost halved. For 2007 only 540 such cases. 2001, 1 040 persons imported malaria, as the “Doctors newspaper, referring to the Center for Travel Medicine (CRM). Most of the malaria patients were from African countries.
In 81 percent of Plasmodium falciparum cases were diagnosed as pathogens, the most dangerous among all malaria pathogens. He replaces the worst form of Tropenfiebers, malaria tropica, within seven to 30 days. The disease is characterized by irregular fever attacks and attacks the immune system strong. Affected infants at risk of this form in a coma for life.
New toys draws children from pain
Children with burns, a new computer sensorbasiertes toys distracted from their pain. By concentrating on the game, the small physical pain when changing the associations are less likely than if they are watching movies, or with popular computer games. According to a report of the magazine “New Scientist” at the toy “Ditto” on a circular touch-screen searched for hidden treasures. The screen responds to movements of the child. Developed has been the new concept at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia’s Brisbane.