From Our Blogs

GREENSPACE

Town’s asbestos crisis

The EPA declared a public health emergency in Libby, Mont., on Wednesday after decades of asbestos-related diseases and deaths in the tiny community. Hundreds of people there have died and thousands have been sickened by a poisonous legacy of mining. W.R. Grace & Co. and its officials were acquitted in May of charges that officials knowingly concealed the dangers of mining asbestos-contaminated vermiculite. The company supplied more than 70% of U.S. vermiculite, a mineral used for insulation, from 1919 to 1990.

The announcement marks the first time the EPA has declared a public health emergency under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund, which took effect in 1980. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson made the announcement at a joint news conference with Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius announced a grant for short-term medical care in the towns of Libby and Troy. The EPA will also continue its efforts to remove asbestos from the area.

“This is a tragic public health situation that has not received the recognition it deserves by the federal government for far too long,” Jackson said.

-- Amy Littlefield

From Greenspace: Environmental news from California and beyond

For more, go to latimes.com/greenspace

TECHNOLOGY

Students use new tools to cheat

A survey by Common Sense Media of more than 1,000 students ages 13 to 18 found that more than a third said they’d used cellphones to cheat at least once.

In addition, about 38% said they’d copied text directly from the Web and turned it in as their own work.

Other ingenious forms of cheating include storing notes on a cellphone, using camera phones to take pictures of tests to send to classmates and text-messaging friends for answers. The incidence of cheating is the same for honors students and non-honors students, the survey found.

These students are redefining digital ethics. One in four said they thought looking up notes on a cellphone did not constitute cheating. One in five felt it was perfectly ethical to text-message friends or to copy and paste text from the Internet.

Interestingly, more than 76% of parents who participated in the survey believe that cheating using technology was rampant, but only a tiny fraction -- 3% to 7% -- said their own children cheat.

Text-messaging is also widespread among this crowd, regardless of whether schools have policies banning cellphone use. The average teenager sends 440 texts a week, 110 of them during class, according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group that studies the effect of digital media on children and families. That translates to about three text messages each class period.

-- Alex Pham

From Technology: The business and culture of our digital lives

For more, go to latimes.com/technology

MOVABLE FEAST

Teller enters the Twitter age

Teller is the half of Penn & Teller who does not speak on stage. For 35 years, Penn & Teller have worked that into their act in a variety of ways.

Penn & Teller have been so successful at working the illusion of Teller’s silence into their act, many don’t realize that Teller not only talks in his private life, but he also talks to people in his public life when off stage and screen.

Teller is the natural for a medium that allows him to speak publicly without using his voice. Twitter seems invented for this purpose. Yet, until recently, I could not find Teller on any of the social-networking sites. That has changed; I have found and confirmed that there is the authentic Teller on Twitter (follow him at twitter.com/MrTeller).

Teller so far has only done nine updates, and I am proud to be among his first five followers, beating even his partner Penn there.

-- Richard Abowitz

From The Movable Buffet: Dispatches from Las Vegas by Richard Abowitz

For more, go to latimes.com/movablebuffet

BOOSTER SHOTS

Parents make OCD worse

Parents of children with obsessive-compulsive disorder are often faced with a tough choice: not indulge the behavior, or soothe the anxiety. While many parents often opt for the latter, they may do so at a price. A recent study shows that accommodating OCD behavior may trigger more serious symptoms, but therapy may help in reversing that.

In the study, which appears in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49 children aged 6 to 18 with OCD took part in 14 sessions of family-based cognitive-behavioral therapy with their parents. Emphasis was placed on helping parents reduce “family accommodation,” or trying to relieve the anxiety by offering comfort, giving the child objects, or even doing tasks like homework. The therapy also included exposure-response prevention, a treatment based on the idea that by facing their fears and realizing they’re baseless, people will eventually stop their behaviors as they find better ways to cope.

Before the sessions, tests were given to measure the children’s level of OCD and note how often parents indulged their behavior. Researchers noticed that the more serious the symptoms, the more the parents accommodated them.

But after therapy, families did not try to soothe their children’s anxiety as much or facilitate their behavior. Parents who changed the most also saw the most progress in improving their children’s OCD symptoms.

Despite the results, researchers caution that the study had its limitations, including the lack of a control group, the fact that most study participants were white and middle or upper-middle class, and that parents reported their own levels of family accommodation.

-- Jeannine Stein

From Booster Shots: Oddities, musings and news from the world of health

For more, go to latimes.com/boostershots