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...says Dr. Samantha Rosman, a fellow in pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center and a trustee of the AMA, was to make sure parents hear what their kids' doctors are telling them. "The stronger wording was a call to action," Rosman says. "This is a really important health problem that has the potential to be devastating to our society if we don't do something about...
...hard. On the whole, overweight children are more likely than healthy-weight kids to be anxious, unhappy and depressed. The science is mixed on which kids suffer the most. One study finds that self-esteem takes a bigger hit in black kids than in white kids; another sees the problem as being worse for Hispanic children. One study finds significantly higher rates of depression in overweight girls; another finds overweight boys taking a huge self-esteem hit when teased by their peers. No matter who feels the most pain, however, they're all getting hurt...
Food scraps are a recent focus for recyclers in part because, unlike glass and plastic, organic waste will decompose once it's put in the ground. But that becomes a problem in municipal landfills. As buried food breaks down in these oxygen-free environments, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that has a warming effect 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Global methane emissions from garbage are estimated to be as high as 70 million metric tons a year. By recycling organic waste--composting it--methane emissions are eliminated...
...about half its residents participate in the curbside program, along with thousands of restaurants. The key is getting over what Robert Reed of Norcal Waste Systems calls the "ick factor"--the fear that leaving food in a curbside bin will lead to bad smells and marauding rodents. But that problem can be solved with biodegradable bags, and ultimately putting food scraps out for recycling shouldn't be any different from leaving it out for the garbage truck...
This isn't supposed to be a problem anyway. A couple of years ago, some starry-eyed technology pundits--myself included--announced the dawning of the age of free municipal wi-fi networks, when every American city would have its own city-size hot spot. It would be too cheap to meter! But the legal, technological, financial and political practicalities of municipal wi-fi have been much harder to work out than anyone expected. Even mighty Google had to back down from its plan to flood all of San Francisco with free wi-fi. Downtown Spokane, Wash., is online, though...