Author: Lance Garrison
The classic “white glove test” to detect dust doesn’t have such a high profile these days. (Who routinely wears gloves anymore, anyway?) You can’t see the germs, viruses, and other microorganisms that can cause disease. But it isn’t necessary to disinfect your entire home for it to be a healthy place to live. The right question might be, how clean should it be?The key is to consider your household members and needs. If you have a sick person in your home, very young children, or someone who’s immunocompromised, your house might need more attention. This means going deeper with disinfecting…
A scholar of attention outlines how you can get your focus back.
To keep your home clean, you need to think in germ terms. Sometimes a general cleaning with a milder product will usually do the job well enough. At other times and in grimier areas, you’ll need to disinfect always and often. The key is knowing which is which.How to ID the HotspotsIt also helps to know why you’d choose one method or another. Cleaning alone will get rid of dirt and dust and reduce the number of microbes on a surface. Disinfection goes a step further: It gets rid of harmful viruses and bacteria completely. This is key when a sick…
Ido Shamriz turned his eulogy for his brother, Alon, into a protest.Against all odds, Mr. Shamriz said, his brother had survived 70 days of captivity in Gaza and escaped — only to be shot and killed by Israeli soldiers along with two other hostages waving white flags. Those “who abandoned you also murdered you,” Mr. Shamriz said.In other words, the state failed to protect Alon on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel and again on Dec. 15, the day he was killed.The accidental killing of the three hostages by Israeli troops shifted the public mood in Israel from despair and…
Photo Credit: iStock / Getty Images Plus / Getty ImagesSOURCES:Nancy Simcox, assistant teaching professor and director of continuing education programs, environmental and occupational health sciences, University of Washington, Seattle.Khanya Brann, spokesperson, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. EPA: “Improving Your Indoor Environment,” “Learn About the Safer Choice Label,” “Safer Choice Criteria for Fragrance-Free Products,” “Indoor Air Quality In Your Home.”American Lung Association: “Volatile Organic Compounds.”Michael Sevilla, MD, family physician, Salem, Ohio. New York State: “Benefits of Green Cleaning Products and Programs.”Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit Green Cleaning, Sanitizing, and Disinfecting: A Toolkit for Early Care and Education, Second Edition.Children’s Environmental…
Two far-right members of Israel’s cabinet, the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, caused an international uproar this week with their calls to depopulate Gaza. “If in Gaza there will be 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not two million the entire conversation on ‘the day after’ will look different,” said Smotrich, who called for most Gazan civilians to be resettled in other countries. The war, said Ben-Gvir, presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” facilitating Israeli settlement in the region.The Biden administration has joined countries all over the…
SOURCES:EPA: “Indoor Air Quality,” “What are the main ways to control moisture in your home?” “Improving Indoor Air Quality,” “The Inside Story: A Guide to Indoor Air Quality,” “Health and Environmental Effects of Particulate Matter (PM).”Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Health and Medicine Division; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Health Risks of Indoor Exposure to Particulate Matter: Workshop Summary, National Academies Press, 2016.Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Health and Medicine Division; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Indoor Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter and Practical Mitigation Approaches: Proceedings of a Workshop, National…
All Wall Street wants is a good hypocrite — someone who can convince the Republican base that he or she shares its extremism, but whose real priority is to enrich the 1 percent. Is that too much to ask?Apparently, yes.If you’re not a politics groupie, you may find the drama surrounding Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, puzzling. Until recently, few would have considered her a significant contender for the Republican presidential nomination — indeed, she arguably still isn’t. But toward the end of last year, she suddenly attracted a lot of support from the big money. Among…
Jan. 4, 2024 –Experts are sounding the alarm that a combination of prescription and/or recreational drugs now contribute to nearly three-quarters of overdose deaths in the United States. Reports of the use of fentanyl along with the animal tranquilizer xylazine make preventing substance use disorder and associated overdose deaths even more complicated, experts said during a webinar sponsored by the National Institute for Health Care Management. “Nearly 74% of all overdose deaths linked to cocaine now involve synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl,” said Cecelia Spitznas, PhD, a senior science policy analyst in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “This…
Sometimes social revolutions emerge from ordinary ideas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers like William Petty, David Hume and Adam Smith popularized a concept called “division of labor.” It’s a simple notion. If I specialize in doing what I’m good at, and you specialize in what you’re good at, and we exchange what we’ve each made, then we’ll both be more productive and better off than if we tried to be self-sufficient.It seems banal, but division of labor was part of a constellation of ideas that liberated our civilization from the savage grip of zero-sum thinking. For millenniums before…