Texas Department of State Health Services

Dallas Healthcare Worker Tests Positive For Ebola

According to reports from multiple news outlets and the Centers for Disease Control, a healthcare worker -- reportedly a nurse -- who was in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan has tested positive for the Ebola virus. The test was performed by the Texas Department of State Health Services and is being c ... More >>

Dallas County Sheriff's Deputy Taken to Presbyterian Hospital Yesterday Doesn't Have Ebola

Michael Monnig, the man taken from a Frisco Care Now clinic to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas after showing potential Ebola symptoms and indicating that he had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, has tested negative for the Ebola virus. According to conflicting reports yesterday, Monnig ... More >>

Thomas Eric Duncan's Death Shows Ebola Is a Killer Wherever It Strikes

The death of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan on Wednesday morning comes as a shock, despite his infection with one of the most dangerous illnesses in the world. "When people get sick, we will recognize them. And the local health departments will go to action and do the same kind of thing as here," ... More >>

Dallas' Effort to Relocate the Ebola-Exposed Family Might Not Be So Easy

For now, the occupants of the Vickery Meadow apartment where patient Thomas Eric Duncan was staying are hunkered down in their ebola-tainted quarters while a Hazmat team scrubs the unit and the rest of Dallas preps for the end times. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins told reporters in a conference c ... More >>

Ebola in Dallas: Day 3

Newest updates will appear at the bottom of this post. Yesterday's updates can be found here: Ebola in Dallas: What We Know So Far October 2: Morning Links: Emily Mathis on the atmosphere at Texas Health Presbyterian. From Vox, "How a Dallas hospital failed to diagnose the Ebola patient" and "The ... More >>

Dallas ISD Puts Parents on High Alert for Ebola Symptoms as CDC Monitors Five Students

Early this morning, Dallas ISD received word from the Centers for Disease Control that five district students have been exposed to the Ebola virus. The students attend Emmett Conrad High School, Sam Tasby Middle School, Dan Rogers Elementary, and Hotchkiss Elementary. Jack Lowe Elementary, which is ... More >>

Feds Say Parkland Is No Longer Placing Patients in Jeopardy, Still Needs to Fix Discharge Policy

Parkland has until November to fix its discharge policy and governing board, or the hospital will lose its Medicare funding, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced today. On the plus side, Parkland isn't placing patients who dare visit the hospital in jeopardy anymore, according to ... More >>

Many New Moms Are Eating Their Placentas. Baylor Wants Them Off the Menu.

She was recovering in a postpartum room at Baylor University Medical Center this spring, exhausted from giving birth, when her husband gave her the good news. "We got the placenta," he told her. "It's in the cooler." Now she just had to get it off the hospital property without being caught. "We wer ... More >>

State Health Services Says Dallas Bag Ban Must Exempt Poor People from Five-Cent Fee

If the point of a plastic bag fee is get people to stop using plastic bags, then it may not make sense to give the bags away to people who can't afford the fee, though the Texas Department of State Health Services says poor people on federal aid shouldn't have to pay for grocery bags. A few weeks ... More >>

You Can Find Out If You Live Near Explosive Chemicals Even If Texas Won't Tell You

When you buy a house, there are several factors to consider, like lot size, crime rates, and proximity to good schools and/or a decent bar or two. And, of course, whether or not your new home is within the blast zone of any explosive chemical plants. That last factor is the rationale behind the fed ... More >>

The Feds Will Investigate Dallas County's Use of AIDS Funds, Even If the County Won't Admit It

The Dallas County Health and Human Services Department has had a rough week. First, the state cracked down on the department for allegedly falsifying county STI records. The manager of HIV-STI division, Lashonda Worthey, has been fired, and the Texas Department of State Health Services is set to lau ... More >>

Texas, Accused of Downplaying Cancer Fears, Grudgingly Re-examines Flower Mound Cluster

People who live in Flower Mound may or may not be at higher risk for developing cancer. The state already assured the public that there isn't a cancer cluster back in 2010, but after a UT-Austin researcher published a recent report challenging the state's methods, Texas has grudgingly agreed to look ... More >>

At Dallas' Horse Park, Beware of Goat Carcasses

You needn't stray far from where where the Texas Horse Park's barn and activity building are going up off Pemberton Hill Road to start finding goat skulls. A couple of feet into the mesquite trees should do; the bleached white bone is impossible to miss against the underbrush.

A Texas Boy's Summer Camp Nightmare

An 11-year-old sent to the Hill Country's Camp La Junta returns to his family with a horrible secret.

Texas' New Abortion-Clinic Rules Could Be Stricter Than Those For Many Surgery Centers

Unless Planned Parenthood's lawsuit gets in the way, Texas' new abortion restrictions will require all abortion providers to become ambulatory surgical centers by September 1, 2014 or close their doors. But state regulators seem to be even tougher on abortion clinics than for your typical ASC. Unti ... More >>

Feds Bypass State, Give $13 Million for Family Planning Directly to Women's Health Coalition

Maybe you're not a Yiddish speaker, but you need a handy illustration of the concept of "chutzpah." In Spanish: cojones. Or in English, if you insist: king-sized brass balls. If you need a real-world demonstration of this cross-cultural concept, you have only to look at how your state-level bureaucr ... More >>

State Rep. Bill Zedler Wants to License Strippers

State Representative Bill Zedler first gained attention about a decade ago, when he led a grassroots crusade to block a Hooters from opening near his neighborhood in Arlington. To a certain extent, this was a classic case of not-in-my-backyard activism in which neighbors unite against an unwanted bu ... More >>

Fiscal Cliff Would Slow Texas' Economy by 1.2 Percent, White House Predicts

Earlier this month, state legislators met in Austin to learn what damage Texas might sustain if the country careens off the fiscal cliff, which is now frighteningly near. The short answer is, quite a bit. As the Austin American-Statesman reported, state agencies stand to lose as much as $1.1 billio ... More >>

Considered a Sex Offender Since He Was 12, a Plano Man is Finally Freed from the Registry

In May, the Texas Observer profiled Josh Gravens, a 25-year-old Plano man struggling to find a job and otherwise coping with life on the Texas Department of Public Safety's sex offender registry. His crime? Molesting his 8-year-old sister -- when he was 12. Gravens's case illustrates a flaw in the ... More >>

Mike Rawlings Declares State of Emergency, Wants Entire City Blanketed With Pesticide

There have been 111 documented human cases of the West Nile Virus in the city of Dallas this year, a full quarter of cases nationwide. The county declared a state of emergency a couple of days ago and, this morning, Mayor Mike Rawlings followed suit this morning. That puts the decision over whether ... More >>

Mayor Rawlings Wants Aerial Spraying in Dallas, Which Will Start As Early As Thursday

It didn't take Mayor Mike Rawlings long to make up his mind. Just after meeting with state health officials and reading all those helpful Facebook comments yesterday, Rawlings declared he's all in for aerial mosquito spraying. "Since public safety is my No. 1 job, I think it's paramount to step up ... More >>

Texas' New Food Cottage Law Might Actually Mean Something for Home Bakers After All

The Texas Baker's Bill is getting closer to being useful to bakers. Late last week, news circulated about new language for the Texas Food Cottage Law, which passed last year and allows home bakers to legally sell their goods with a few certain conditions. After the law was passed, the Texas Departm ... More >>

Dallas Chefs Support The Farm at Paul Quinn College with Culinary Cookout

Back in 2010, students at Paul Quinn College, Dallas' only historically black college, tilled up their football field to create an urban garden in a food desert. Since that time, the "We Over Me Farm" has cultivated over two thousand pounds of corn, squash, greens, tomatoes and other produce for the ... More >>

Texas Cottage Food Law Catches a Break

I love bakers. Not because they smell like brown sugar and cinnamon. Or even because they make superhero birthday cakes. Nope. I love bakers because they're scrappy. Back in June, the state enacted the Cottage Food Law, allowing home bakers to sell their goods under a few guidelines. Within that l ... More >>

Don't Panic, But There's Probably Meth in Your Ecstasy and De-Wormer In Your Cocaine

What's in your drugs? Well, not your drugs, obviously, or ours, because we're law-abiding, tax-paying, speed-limit-driving good citizens, one and all. But as anyone who may have a purely academic interest in this sort of thing might like to know, street drugs are often very, very impure (shocker), a ... More >>

With the Red Tide Receding, It's Time To Eat Some Texas Oysters

​Finally. We've been covering the red tide outbreak and its effect on oyster harvesting in the gulf for some time now. Last week the news finally shifted toward the positive. Many regions of the Texas Gulf shore have been opened to oyster fisherman. I talked with Chris Van Deusen, spokeswoman ... More >>

Feared by Bakers, New Rules for Texas' Cottage Food Law Are One Step Closer to Becoming Law

City of Ate reported recently that the Texas Department of State Health Services had proposed new rules for the Cottage Food Law that passed last year, designed to make it easier for home bakers to peddle their deliciousness. The law required DSHS to establish specific rules for the home-baker bus ... More >>

Texas' Cottage Food Law Passed, But That Won't Stop the State from Changing It

During the last state legislative session, the Cottage Food Law was passed, clearing the way for home bakers to sell certain goods from their home. Guidelines were established, including limiting annual gross sales to less than $50,000, requiring in-person transactions and limiting sales to non-pote ... More >>

Roll Red Tide: Still No Good News for Oyster Lovers from the Coastlines of Texas

Steven Doyle​Red tide, the naturally occurring algae bloom that causes toxicity in shellfish, continues to plague the state's coastline -- keeping Texas oysters out of local restaurants and threatening the $18.5 million Texas oyster industry. The state closed the entire coast of Texas to oyst ... More >>

Fear Not the Red Tide, and Go Eat Some Oysters

Steven Doyle​The oystermen of Galveston Bay can't get a break. First the Texas drought raised the salinity of the water they fished, then changes to water rights regulations threatened to keep it there. Now they're unable to harvest until otherwise notified. Yesterday the Texas Department of ... More >>

New Study From Gas Drilling Activists Gathers Decade of Industrial Woes in the Barnett Shale

​Natural gas activist and blogger Sharon Wilson was among the environmentalists out at Earth Day last weekend -- not far from the EPA's six-foot cardboard Al Armendariz -- and she was passing out copies of a new report she'd helped produce on gas drilling in the Barnett Shale. Produced by the Fort ... More >>

Bake Sale Bandits

Local Movement Fights for Cottage Food Bill.

It's a diary of a mad year as Buzz recalls a P.O.'d 2010.

This Just In From the State: Whatever You Do, Don't Eat the Fish in the Trinity River!

​The Texas Department of State Health Services just sent word: Today it issued a "fish advisory" for the Trinity River -- most of it, anyway, and most definitely the part that runs through Dallas. Why come the heads-up? "Laboratory testing of fish samples found elevated levels of dioxins and polyc ... More >>

Food For Thought 2.23.09

"When you order a recall and don't get a response, you've got to do something to protect the public." (Doug McBride of the Texas Department of State Health Services, noting that the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Plainview had not responded to an order to recall all products shipped from the ... More >>

Food For Thought 2.17.09

"The burden is on the company to make sure they are complying with any local, state and federal regulations that apply to food manufacturing. Naturally, that's not reassuring to the public. But we don't have people driving up and down roads looking for places like this." (Doug McBride of the Texas D ... More >>

There Goes the Neighborhood

One couple's bad, strange relationship entangles their neighbors