Young Worker Safety Is Connecticut Priority

Three Connecticut state agencies are collaborating to promote young worker safety in Connecticut, where 44 percent of teens work a paying job during the school year, and 12 percent of teens report having a work-related injury.  The Department of Public Health, Department of Education and Department of Labor, working with the Connecticut Young Worker Safety Team, report that young workers, age 15-24, have approximately twice the rate of non-fatal injury as older workers.

Teacher Appreciation Week Arrives; Negotiations Continue

As the Connecticut General Assembly and Malloy Administration grapple with education reform in an effort to forge a compromise package  prior to the end of the regular legislative session at midnight Wednesday, this week will be observed in schools throughout the state and around the country as Teacher Appreciation Week. On Tuesday, May 8, students all across America will show their appreciation by recognizing their teachers, and the impact that teachers have on their future - individually and collectively.  As the AFT Connecticut website points out, "teachers – the people who educate us and give us the vital knowledge which we need to live our lives. They encourage, support, discipline and prepare us for the road ahead and now it’s time for us to show them our appreciation."

Schools and school districts around the state are observing the annual appreciation week with a variety of activities, and a number of websites have cropped up, including a national site simply called,  thankateachertoday.org  The Students First organization is providing students and parents an opportunity to record a message to a teacher, which can be heard on their national website.

Public Transportation vs. Congested Highway Corridors

According to Smart Growth America, investment in public transportation creates 31 percent more jobs than investment in road and bridge infrastructure.  Transit use also reduces traffic congestion, which can also serve to benefit the economy.  In 2011, congestion cost Connecticut nearly $1 billion in lost time, wasted fuel and lost productivity, according to the 2011 Urban Mobility Report. Among the most congested highway corridors in the nation:  Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, as reported in the 2011 Congested Corridors Report, developed by the Texas Transportation Institute, part of Texas A&M University.  The inaugural 2011 report is the first nationwide effort to identify reliability problems at specific stretches of highway responsible for significant traffic congestion at different times and different days. Analyses are performed along 328 specific (directional) freeway corridors in the United States.

CT Science Fair Winners Headed to National Competition

Of the 446 projects entered in Connecticut’s only statewide science fair, nearly 200 projects earned honors. Top overall winners as well as the top high school winner of the new Urban Schools category and the winner of the Alexion Biotechnology category will represent the state at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF), May 13 to 18, in Pittsburgh, PA.

The Connecticut Science Fair is made possible by a grant and volunteer support from its presenting sponsor United Technologies Corporation and by contributions from industrial and individual supporters.

The winners were announced at Quinnipiac University, which hosted the science fair.

Shifting Religious Landscape in Connecticut

So much for that old-time religion.  Declining enrollment in Catholic schools is only part of the bigger religion trend in Connecticut, as is reported in the 2010 U.S. Religious Congregations & Membership Study, an update of a 50-year-old national census released Tuesday by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.  Hartford Courant columnist Susan Campbell describes  it asthe most detailed report of its kind, with county-level information on 236 religious groups from Amish to Congregationalists, Hindus to Methodists. In Connecticut, the report paints a radically changing religious landscape where evangelical Protestant groups are growing, while more mainline groups such as Roman Catholic and United Church of Christ churches are losing adherents. In Connecticut, the report said Catholics saw an 8.7 percent drop in membership since 2000, and the loss of 12 congregations, while in the same period, United Church of Christ membership dropped 22.7 percent, with a loss of 11 congregations.

Every Day a Suicide in Connecticut

The 371 suicides in Connecticut last year were most since 1991, when Connecticut's chief medical examiner's office reported 362 suicides.  Suicides increased to 371 in 2011 from 358 in 2010. There were 283 suicides among men in 2010 and 75 among women. In 1991, there were 362 suicides – 290 involving men and 72 involving women. The economic downturn is cited as a possible cause of the increase.  New Haven County had the highest number of suicides last year with 99, followed by Hartford County with 87. The most recent national figures show Connecticut ranked 47th in suicides among states in 2009 with a rate of 9 per 100,000 people.

In Connecticut, the Jordan Matthew Porco Memorial Foundation has created the National FRESH-CHECK Day to honor all college students in our country who are feeling the strain of a new environment, living situations, pressures, and the world of college-life - in an effort to prevent suicides.  Eastern Connecticut State University hosted the organization's  first FRESH-CHECK Day earlier this month.

MATCH Coaltion Reports 70% Want to Quit Smoking

A new report issued this month by the U.S. Surgeon General indicates that 3.6 million youth in the U.S. are cigarette smokers.  The report found that for every tobacco-related death, two new young people under the age of 26 become regular smokers. Mobilize Against Tobacco for Connecticut’s  Health (MATCH) is a statewide coalition of organizations and individuals fighting to reduce tobacco use – the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Connecticut and the U.S.

According to the most recent statistics compiled by the MATCH Coalition, 15.4% of adults smoke in Connecticut, and 24% of people ages 18-24.  Each year, 4,700 people in Connecticut die from smoking, including 440 who die from secondhand smoke.  More than 2/3 of Connecticut’s smokers indicated they want to quit (70%), nearly half attempt to quit each year (45%) and only 5% are successful for longer than one year.

The national report found that nearly 90 percent of new smokers under age 26 try their first cigarette by age 18. Approximately 3 out of 4 high school smokers continue to smoke well into adulthood.

Responsibility for Elderly Often by Unpaid Caregivers

In Connecticut, 486,000 people -- more than one in eight state residents -- were providing care to an adult with limitations in his or her activities at any given point in 2009, according to the report by AARP Public Policy Institute. A CT Mirror article highlights some of their stories. An estimated 42 million Americans act as unpaid caregivers, forming what experts call the backbone of the long-term care system. They far outnumber the home care workforce, providing services that one report estimated would cost $450 billion if performed by paid workers.

Federal EPA Salutes Eight in CT for Protecting Environment

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has honored eight Connecticut individuals, businesses and state and municipal agencies for their work to protect and sustain the region's natural resources. Hartford's Betsey Wingfield, who works in the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection; Anthony Leiserowitz, of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in New Haven; and Kevin Taylor of the Waterbury Development Corp., were individual honorees.

In the environmental, community, academia and nonprofit category, among those honored were:

Long Island Sound Study Citizens Advisory Committee  (Curt Johnson and Nancy Seligson, co-chairs): The volunteers of the Long Island Sound Study Citizens Advisory Committee have helped bring together a unified group of people dedicated to improving water quality in the sound. This group includes volunteers from community organizations, businesses, educational organizations, environmental groups and local government. Together these groups developed “SoundVision,” a community blueprint for clean water, healthy habitats, and economically strong communities.

Goodwin College: In 2005, Goodwin College announced dramatic plans to build a riverfront campus along Riverside Drive in East Hartford. With the help of EPA and other agencies, Goodwin created a new campus community with educational, economic, and environmental benefits for the region and beyond. The effort involved demolishing more than 30 above-ground oil tanks and other defunct industrial installations before redeveloping a formerly unusable industrial area. Late 2008, the college opened the 109,000 square-foot academic center. A year later, it rolled out its environmental studies degree program, which took advantage of access to the river and undeveloped flood plains for study of river ecology. In 2010, the Connecticut River Academy, an environmentally-themed magnet high school, also opened at the River Campus in a temporary space.

Other honorees were the Connecticut Department of Public Health's Drinking Water Section, Danbury's Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. and Greenwich Hospital (Thomas Lazzaro, John Huber).

Norwalk hotel operator HEI Hospitality LLC received an Energy Star Award.

We're #1: Lollipops, Frisbees, Helicopters, Vacuums & Nuclear Subs

If you ever wondered why Connecticut is often referred to as the home of Yankee Ingenuity (as opposed to being the Land of Steady Habits), a review of the state's "firsts" in the past century may explain.  When does that museum exhibit open, dedicated to the state's firsts? The list:

1907 -- first permanent public planning body in America, Hartford's Commission on the City Plan 1908 -- first lollipop 1920 -- first Frisbee, Yale students discovered empty pie plates from Mrs. Frisbie Pies in Bridgeport could be sailed across the New Haven Green 1933 -- first vacuum cleaner 1934 -- first Polaroid camera 1939 -- first FM radio station, WDRC-FM began broadcasting in Hartford 1939 -- first helicopter, Igor Sikorsky designed the first successful helicopter in the Western Hemisphere 1948 -- first color television 1949 -- first ultra high frequency UHF television station to operate on a daily basis, KC2XAK in Bridgeport 1954 -- first nuclear submarine, launched in New London 1982 -- first artificial heart, Dr. Robert K. Jarvik, a Stamford native, invented the world's first artificial heart

No doubt, there are others.  But these are not too shabby.  Wonder if PEZ counts.*

(*sorry, PEZ moved to Orange in 1974 from NYC, but had its origins in Europe)