SAVING THE OZONE: Part seven in our series exploring on the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer – dubbed “the world’s most successful environmental agreement” – explains how the…
The Charlotte Dawson troll saga shocked many Australians, with revelations of vile tweets, death threats and online intimidation. Nobody should have to endure this kind of abuse, but unfortunately it’s…
Why hasn’t human health been considered in the push for expanded coal facilities?
AAP Image/Paul Miller
A massive expansion of Newcastle’s coal export terminal has been proposed by Port Waratah Coal Services. Approval is likely soon, but the expansion’s effect on human health has been ignored in the project’s…
The combination of more access and busier lifestyles has likely contributed to increasing consumption of fast food.
Ben Weston
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) has just finished hearing submissions in a case against McDonald’s opening an outlet in the town of Tecoma. The case is part of a growing trend of…
Shaving. Waxing. Sugaring. Creams. Laser. Threading. Electrolysis. When it comes to pubic hair, there’s certainly more than one way to skin the [cat]! But more important than the exact method are the health…
The High Court has ruled the enforcing plain packaging is constitutionally legal.
AAP/Lukas Coch
After much political debate, the Australian Parliament passed the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 (Cth). Australian legislators, such as Richard di Natale, provided moving accounts for the need for plain…
Public health advocates who criticise industries for promoting harmful forms of consumption – the alcohol, food, pharmaceutical, tobacco and gambling industries – increasingly find themselves facing legal…
Wind farms have existed in Australia long before the first claims about health ever surfaced.
AAP
At the beginning of this year I started collecting examples of health problems some people were attributing to wind turbine exposure. I had noticed a growing number of such claims on the internet and was…
Unsafe: thousands of Port Pirie children have been poisoned over decades, and yet government after government fails to stop it.
Flickr/Viola Ng
It is shocking to discover that more than 3000 children have been lead poisoned in the South Australian town of Port Pirie during the last decade. Whilst Australia continues to be a world leader in lead…
It’s been 100 years since the first medical textbook identified a link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer. So how strange is it that in 2012 we can walk into Coles and Woolworths and buy cigarettes…
The first public health laws governed sanitation and led to clean piped drinking water.
Darren Stueber
OBESE NATION: It’s time to admit it - Australia is becoming an obese nation. This series looks at how this has happened and more importantly, what we can do to stop the obesity epidemic. Today, we look…
Every time smokers pull a cigarette pack out of their pocket, they’re reminded of the harms their habit is likely to cause. In much the same way, Australian petrol stations should display health warnings…
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand
Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand