Get Up Off That Couch: A Grim Obesity Forecast for Americans

Obesity: Get up off that couch, already! If Americans keep gaining weight at the same pace they have been, half will be obese by 2030 and national health care costs will rise by $66 billion a year according to a new Lancet study, Maggie Fox reports for the National Journal.

Environmental Health: The Environmental Protection Agency has slammed California's pesticide regulators in a historic civil rights case, saying the state regulators discriminated against Latino kids by routinely approving the toxic pesticide methyl bromide used near their schools, Gosia Wozniacka reports for the Associated Press. In other methyl bromide news, researchers have linked methyl bromide exposure to prostate cancer in older men in the California Central Valley who did not work in agriculture but lived near sites where the pesticide was used.

Medical Marijuana: In another sign of the mainstreaming of medical marijuana, the Sacramento Bee will start running ads for medical marijuana dispensaries in its print edition, Suzanne Phan reports for ABC News10 in Sacramento.

Dental Health: Should Medicaid be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on orthodontia for poor children in Texas? Federal investigators are now looking into that question after an investigation of the expenditures by WFAA-TV in Dallas/Ft. Worth.

Want more from Reporting on Health? Join us, sign up for our newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

Photo credit: C. E. Kent via Flickr