Low priorities for black american leaders: Environmental and occupational health

Summary Black Americans face increased health risks from environmental and occupational exposures when compared with white Americans, but they also face increased risks for more immediate health problems such as HIV infection/AIDS, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, and infant mortality. A survey of more than 1,000 black public health and black political leaders solicited opinions on the relative importance of 1) environmental health and 2) occupational health and safety compared with other public health problems faced by the black community. The survey also determined opinions about the degree to which specific health problems are amenable to change for black Americans and who (or what agency) should spearhead efforts aimed at specific public health objectives.Responding black leaders felt environmental health and occupational health and safety goals were somewhat important for black Americans, but among the most difficult of all public health objectives to meet. Those who felt that the above objectives were very important identified the federal govemment as the primarily responsible party for seeing that the objectives are met.Dr Dona Schneider is Assistant Professor of Public Health at Rutgers University. She teaches epidemiology and biostatistics for the New Jersey Graduate Program in Public Health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and holds memberships in both the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and the National Institute for Environmental and Health Sciences. Her research spans the health problems of children and minorities. She regularly reviews books for theEnvironmentalist.     

Tiefsee-Bergbau auf Manganknollen vor dem Hintergrund globaler Versorgungs- und Umwelt-Probleme

Ich danke C. Kaubisch (Göttingen) herzlich für die graphische Ausf ührung der Abb., Prof. H. Thiel (Hamburg) besonders für kritische Diskussionen, Durchsicht des Manuskriptes und wertvolle Anregungen. Ebenso danke ich Dr. M. Sturm (EAWAG/ETH Zürich) für Kritik und Anregungen.     

Relativistische Astrophysik — zum Einstein-Jahr 1979

The 9th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics took place in Munich on the eve of the Einstein year 1979. An outstanding tribute to Einstein was the announcement by J. Taylor that gravitational radiation has finally been shown to exist. We report in some detail on the history of this event: the progress in timing accuracy of the binary pulsar PSR 1913 + 16 and the chain of conclusions which lead to the present result. The binary pulsar appears as ‘Einstein's dream’. We also emphasize that tests of gravitational theories in the solar system have left Einstein's General Relativity as the lone survivor. In context with Einstein's basic ideas we also discuss the puzzling fact that a “new aether drift” has appeared in measurements against photons of the 3-K cosmic background radiation. We finally report on spectacular progress in X-ray astronomy.