Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/tag/public-health/)
Eastern Wisconsin has among the highest levels of the heavy metal strontium in drinking water. Limits may be on the way for this unregulated contaminant.
Two family planning clinics serving low-income women say their operations will be at serious financial risk if state auditors stand firm on claims that they overbilled Medicaid by $3.5 million, largely for birth control drugs and devices.
“My hunch is that if any one of us were audited it would come out the same way. We’re all operating the same way,” said Beth Hartung, president of the Wisconsin Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. “It would mean, quite frankly, that we would all close.”
Two new studies of private well water in Kewaunee County have linked contamination to fertilizer, livestock manure and human waste. “In these shallow bedrock areas, what you put on the surface, you will end up drinking eventually,” county conservationist Andy Wallander said.
Overview of permits required to operate a frac-sand mine.
The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board has retreated from claims that consuming dairy products could aid weight loss after some experts branded the statements “deceptive” and “discredited.”
A major Wisconsin dairy group continues to promote dairy products for weight loss, four years after two national groups, under pressure from the Federal Trade Commission, agreed to stop.
The milk board, which spends nearly a million dollars a year promoting dairy’s health benefits to children, defended its conduct and said claims were based in science.
This western Wisconsin community is in the midst of a land rush — call it a sand rush — fueled by exploding nationwide demand for fine silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing of oil and natural gas. At least 16 frac sand mines and processing facilities are operating, and an additional 25 sites are proposed, in a diagonal swath stretching across 15 Wisconsin counties from Burnett to Columbia, the Center has found.