Daywatch: Tribune investigation: Chicago’s sewage district fails to warn gardeners free sludge contains toxic forever chemicals
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Good morning, Chicago.
Illinois children’s hospitals are seeing a surge of kids with respiratory illnesses, leaving some hunting for beds.
“It’s skyrocketed since school started,” said Dr. John Cunningham, physician-in-chief at University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, of the number of families seeking care at Comer. “This is the most challenging period we’ve experienced since March 2020.”
It’s not unusual for children’s hospitals to see surges of sick kids each winter, as illnesses such as the flu and RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, spread. But it’s rarer to get a big influx of children with respiratory illnesses in August and September, and, at some hospitals, it’s posing a particular challenge this year because of staffing shortages.
Many of the kids have enterovirus, which can be an upper respiratory or gastrointestinal infection, or rhinovirus, which is a type of enterovirus that affects the upper respiratory tract, Cunningham said. Most children who catch the illnesses don’t get very sick and recover at home, experiencing cold-like symptoms. But some, including children with asthma, can become short of breath and have low oxygen levels, requiring hospitalization. Read the full story here.
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Tribune investigation: Chicago’s sewage district fails to warn gardeners free sludge contains toxic forever chemicals
Bags of the earthy muck are labeled organic or natural. Sometimes it is billed as exceptional quality compost. Industry held a nationwide contest years ago and decided to call it biosolids, a euphemism that beat out black gold, geoslime and humanure.
No matter how it is described, the humus-like material distributed to gardeners, neighborhood groups and landscapers by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is still sewage sludge — a byproduct of human excrement and industrial waste from Chicago and the Cook County suburbs.
Those same officials have repeatedly failed to tell the public what they’ve known for more than a decade: Every scoop of sludge is contaminated with toxic forever chemicals linked to cancer and other maladies, a Chicago Tribune investigation has found.
Mayor Lightfoot says the ‘destiny’ of Black Chicagoans is at stake in the 2023 election. But can she win their votes?
At a South Side diner one recent morning, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot served up a cautionary tale about what might happen if Black voters don’t unite behind her reelection bid.
She told the mostly Black crowd at Huddle House on Stony Island Avenue that the city’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, spent years feuding with a “racist mob in City Council.” When he died in office in 1987, they voted to replace him with Ald. Eugene Sawyer, who they “thought they could control,” but two years later they “dropped him like a bad habit” and “went all in for (Richard M.) Daley,” she said.
The result? Daley’s long tenure at City Hall and “30 years of people struggling,” Lightfoot said.
Chicago Bears’ plans for stadium in Arlington Heights excite many suburbanites — but with funding a big issue, economists caution about subsidies
Bursts of applause greeted the Chicago Bears’ presentation of plans for a new enclosed stadium in Arlington Heights. “I’ve never had so many claps in my life,” team President Ted Philips said.
The team’s proposal to build the stadium and an adjoining mixed-use complex won support from many of those who attended the team’s initial sales pitch Thursday. That’s encouraging for team officials who emphasized that the project can’t happen without taxpayer funding. Numerous suburbanites told the Tribune that they supported the project — but didn’t want to pay more taxes for it.
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Meet the new American Girl: Claudie Wells, modeled after a 6th grader from Hinsdale
On a recent visit to New York City, 11-year-old Rio Lewis walked into the American Girl doll store with her family and was shocked to see her face on banners for the brand’s newest character all around the shop.
“One mom and a little girl, they’re like, ‘Hey, you know what? You kind of look like Claudie.’ And I was like, ‘I am Claudie!’” Lewis told the Tribune.
