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Study: Sprawl Linked to Chronic Ailments

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Warning: Suburban sprawl may be hazardous to your health. A report released Monday found that people who live in sprawling metropolitan areas are more likely to report chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, arthritis, headaches and breathing difficulties than residents of more compact cities.

The difference - which remained even when researchers accounted for factors such as age, economic status and race - may have something to do with the way people get around in more spread-out cities.

"People drive more in these areas; they walk les," said Roland Sturm, co-author of the report by Rand Corp., a nonprofit research group.

The report suggests that an adult who lives in a sprawling city such as Atlanta will have health characteristics similar to someone four years older, but otherwise similar, who lives in a more compact city like Seattle.

The report is not the first to suggest that sprawl cramps a healthy lifestyle. Last year, major studies found that residents of such areas weighed more than their counterparts in walkable cities like New York.

The study was based on information from a telephone survey, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that questioned adults about their physical and mental health in 1998 and 2001. The study analyzed information from more than 8,600 people in 38 metropolitan areas.

The study found no link between suburban sprawl and a greater incidence of mental health problems.

Regions considered to have the worst suburban sprawl included Atlanta; Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Bridgeport-Danbury-Stamford, Conn., the report said. Regions with the least amount of sprawl included New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Portland, Ore. The findings appear in the October edition of the journal Public Health.

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Dead bodies pose no risk of epidemics - WHO

Last Updated: 2004-09-24 14:57:13 -0400 (Reuters Health)

GENEVA (Reuters) - Dead bodies do not spread disease but mass burials after disasters, such as this week's killer floods in Haiti, cause unnecessary suffering to surviving relatives, the United Nations' health agency said on Friday.

Citing mass graves being dug on the Caribbean island, where over 1,000 people were killed by tropical storm Jeanne, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was a misconception that cadavers cause epidemics.

"It is a myth that regularly surfaces after disasters...that dead bodies pose a danger to the surviving population," said Johanna Larusdottir, WHO senior advisor on health action in crises.

Outbreaks of diseases such as cholera are more likely to be caused by the living, with their sewage and effluence seeping into the drinking water, for example, than by the dead.

"Infectious agents do not survive long in dead bodies," she told reporters.

Denying survivors the chance to bury their dead, however, could cause them long-term psychological traumas and governments often wasted scarce resources in unnecessary vaccination programmes and in disinfecting areas where bodies had been.

"It often leads to resources being wrongly directed and all kinds of cleaning and disinfecting programmes," she said.

In Haiti, police had to restrain angry neighbours and relatives protesting at mass graves in Gonaives, the northern town that took the brunt of the storm.

Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

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