They are not slickly produced but, arguably, ought to be up for some sort of award. Throughout the long hockey season the NHL has not only been assessing tough penalties on players who cross the line in what was already a rough sport: the league has been going out of…
A Portland jury recently awarded $70 million in damages to a pilot who was injured as well as the family of another pilot who was killed in a 2008 helicopter crash, according to The Oregonian. The case involved the 2008 crash of a helicopter “on a California mountainside killing nine…
The explosion of an oxygen tank as it was being filled left an employee of the Metro West Ambulance service in Hillsboro injured over the weekend, according to a report in The Oregonian. The newspaper quotes the victim’s father saying that the employee received first- and second-degree burns and is…
The explosion of a mobile home in Damascus, Oregon has raised numerous questions, even as seven families struggle with its aftermath, according to The Oregonian. The newspaper reports that the families are currently being helped by the Red Cross. Their homes were damaged after a nearby mobile home exploded for…
Tomorrow, April 1, marks the beginning of National Window Safety Week. I’ve written about the dangers of open windows on several occasions in the past, notably last summer when there was a spate of Oregon injuries to children stemming from open-window accidents in the Portland area. In one particularly disturbing…
A lengthy piece published this week in the New York Times tells the sad story of a 2008 industrial accident in Manhattan and the chain of events leading up to it. It is a story of corners cut and the fatal consequences that followed: of an American employer desperate to…
I could not let this week come to an end without taking note of the fact that it has been National Poison Prevention Week. The March 18-24 period was marked by events here in Oregon and across the country designed to raise awareness of the dangers poisons pose to children.…
The New York Times’ online forum for expert discussion, “Room for Debate,” recently published an excellent look at bike-versus-car issues. While the debate was understandably somewhat New York-centric, it raised a number of interesting points that merit some thought on our part here in Oregon. Portland, of course, has a…
An excellent online article at Motherlode, the New York Times’ parenting blog, considers the question of fighting and youth hockey. I have written on a number of occasions about the risk here in Oregon of traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries in sports, especially at the college and pro…
An important article recently published in Science Daily offered details of a new study providing the first scientific evidence linking traumatic brain injuries to post-traumatic stress disorder. This development is especially important because it confirms something that many people who follow the issue have, until now, known only anecdotally. Through…