health

People here waited for hours in a line that by 9 a.m. stretched out along the rim of the large asphalt parking lot in front of Green Solutions, one of the lucky Colorado medical marijuana pot shops licensed to begin selling product for recreational use yesterday to anyone in the state over 21 years old.

They aren’t happy, and they don’t make for good eating because they’re more susceptible to illness. Yet a lot of cows are stressed in America. They’re shuttled around and crowded onto the massive feedlots where so many of them live out their short lives, breathing, eating and drinking in the same crowded space where they leave their waste.

The latest figures from Colorado’s health insurance marketplace show 3,408 Coloradans are now covered through the marketplace, while another 52,542 have signed up for accounts. In the first month Massachusetts opened its pioneering insurance exchange, informally known as Romneycare, only 123 people enrolled.

Residents in towns sited in a line that stretches just north of Denver to just south of Wyoming, through a 250-square-mile gas field covered with wells like a picnic blanket overrun by ants, voted Tuesday to impose moratoriums and an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing within city limits.

Coal companies, their lawyers and their hand-picked doctors will go to any length — ethical or not — to deny the small monthly benefits that stricken miners are due under the Black Lung Benefits Act. Reports show doctors at John Hopkins denying thousands of claims, while coal companies fight tooth and nail against any new regulations to lessen coal dust. It's a dirty game.

Monsanto reported worse-than-expected losses for its fiscal fourth quarter on Wednesday, due to lower sales of its genetically engineered seeds. The company forecast for fiscal 2014 also came in below Wall Street expectations, and it revealed plans to buy farming software and data firm The Climate Corporation. The combination sent shares lower in premarket trading.

Colorado personhood groups submitted signatures to the secretary of state’s office Monday in support of an effort to land an initiative on 2014 Colorado voter ballots that could ban abortion, the fourth attempt by personhood groups since 2010 to pass a state constitutional amendment here that would grant “unborn human persons” legal rights.

Very quietly, the EPA recently withdrew two rules that regulated chemicals. One of them was to add BPA — a chemical found in plastic bottles and linked to a number of health issues — to a list of substances that require more scrutiny. The regulatory agency is being blocked from adding regulations regarding plastics — much the way they were for fracking — once again from up above.

A group of 11 building and contracting associations have come together to further delay OSHA’s Silica Dust Regulations. Their motivation? The bottom line, of course.

Higher blood-sugar levels, even those well short of diabetes, seem to raise the risk of developing dementia, a major new study finds. Researchers say it suggests a novel way to try to prevent Alzheimer's disease — by keeping glucose at a healthy level.