It is spring and the flowers, black flies and ticks are blooming! Flowers and black flies rarely cause significant health problems, but deer ticks can. They can transmit Lyme disease by transmitting Lyme bacteria when they attach to their victim. They can also transmit the rarer diseases called ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and, even more rarely, tularemia and Lyme variants, recently reported to cause a dementing illness especially in the elderly. Our region used to be on the edge of the deer tick/Lyme disease infestation area, which was the southern New England states and southern Maine.

Everybody knows that smoking is bad in all kinds of ways, but most smokers have found that it is extremely hard to stop! That’s because one’s body becomes both habituated and usually addicted to smoking and the nicotine it delivers. And smoking has become financially very expensive as well. In this article, I want to offer suggestions, based on decades of trying to help 100s if not 1000s of smokers, about what strategies seem to help people kick the habit.

Let’s face it; we are all distracted drivers some of the time. I tie my tie or floss my teeth sometimes when I’m driving to work and I’ve seen others even reading newspapers! But the explosion in cell phone use has markedly increased the frequency and consequences of distracted driving.

What are the risks of living next to a new cell tower, or of using your cell phone a lot? Many in the area are asking these questions as new cell towers go up

Nearly everybody over 45 has probably worried about a elderly parent or other loved one’s safety when driving. Crashes caused by older drivers are a significant public health issue, especially in Maine with its oldest median age of all the states, and its predominantly rural environment that lacks much public transportation.

Last winter I wrote about home water contamination risks and how to avoid them. Several other home environmental risks, especially for young children, may be worsened when we re-do a room in our houses or bring out old furniture, like heirloom cribs and chairs. I’ll review several of the most important ones in this column.

Summer brings many more encounters with various insects in Maine than the other seasons, some are no bother, some temporarily irritating, and some painful and potentially downright dangerous.