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Belmont Area News

Colorful detergent pods present health hazards for toddlers

Poison control officials have issued a warning about the new detergent pods on store shelves.

Some children have confused them with candy and hundreds of children around the country have eaten them and gotten sick.

All the brands have them now, the  single dose packets meant to be tossed in the washer. Tide is getting a lot of attention because theirs are especially bright and bite-size.

Jessica Deiters of San Francisco had a scare. She brought the laundry pods home and her one-year-old daughter Kennedy got into them.

 "If they have drool or anything, it will just start dissolving in their hand," she said.  "She opened them up and took one out, and they squeeze really easy and she got it in her mouth, and it turned her skin, rashy," recounted Deiters.

Frantically, she was able to get the liquid out of her daughter's mouth before she swallowed any.

The Bay Area's Poison Control Center has received dozens of calls of toddlers vomiting, wheezing and becoming dangerously drowsy only minutes after biting into a packet. They’ve gotten much sicker than if they'd consumed the product as a liquid or powder.

"Is it because it's so concentrated in these little packets?" asked Raymond Ho, poison control toxicologist. "Or is it something else, that's causing them to have these life-threatening effects."

Detergent poisoning doesn't begin to rival what preschoolers get into most: Ibuprofen and diaper rash cream. Since the pods are a growing part of the market, experts worry the risk will grow too.

"Kids are attracted to color, things that look bright, things that look similar to candy, they will put it in their mouth," said Deiters. "I think they're pretty dangerous."

After her close call, she said she won't buy the detergent pods again.

So far, no child has died, but some have ended up in intensive care, and needed oxygen.

_{Fri, 25 May 2012 01:01:31 -0700}

Former prosecutor hurt in fistfight gets $50,000

A former Contra Costa County prosecutor who was hurt in a fistfight with another prosecutor has received a $50,000 settlement from the county.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Paul Sequeira received the payment after filing a claim for the injuries he suffered in the fight with Harold Jewett.

The 53-year-old Sequeira says he was punched twice in the face by Jewett during a March 2010 workplace brawl.

Jewett has maintained that he was acting in self-defense after Sequeira initiated contact by leaning into him. The 55-year-old Jewett was suspended for 30 days over the incident.

The fight was apparently sparked as the two prosecutors argued over opposing candidates in a then-upcoming district attorney's election.

Sequeira left the Contra Costa County DA's office in 2011. He and now works in Mendocino County as an assistant district attorney.

Jewett is now the senior deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County.

_{Thu, 24 May 2012 21:58:50 -0700}

Judge strikes down Defense of Marriage Act provision in state employees' case

A federal judge ruled in Oakland that the state's public-employee pension system must make long-term care insurance equally available to same-sex spouses and partners.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is unconstitutional to the extent that it limits same-sex spouses of state workers in obtaining the insurance.

The provision of the 1996 DOMA law defines marriage as "a legal union of a one man and one woman as husband and wife." 

It has been used to bar gay and lesbian spouses from obtaining a variety of federal benefits.

Wilken issued her ruling in a lawsuit filed against the California Public Employees' Retirement System, known as CalPERS, by same-sex couples. The system has refused to let gay spouses enroll in its federally approved insurance program on the ground that they were excluded by DOMA.

Wilken said the DOMA ban violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal treatment. She wrote that there was no proof the DOMA provision was "rationally related to a legitimate government interest."

Thursday's decision makes Wilken the second trial judge in the U.S. District Court for Northern California to strike down that section of the 1996 law.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of San Francisco issued a similar ruling in February in a lawsuit filed by Karen Golinski, a federal appeals court staff attorney who wants to enroll her wife in the court's employee health plan.

An appeal of White's decision by a Republican-led Congressional group is slated to be heard by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in September.

The group, known as the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, is made up of the five top leaders of the House of Representatives. It stepped into both the cases before White and Wilken after the Obama Administration said last year it will no longer defend DOMA.

The group's three Republican members, including Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, supported intervening in the two lawsuits to defend DOMA. Its two Democratic members, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, opposed doing so.

Another decision by a federal judge in Massachusetts striking down DOMA is on appeal before a U.S. appeals court in Boston.

In Thursday's ruling, Wilken also struck down a U.S. Internal Revenue Service law to the extent that it bars domestic partners from enrolling in the long-term care insurance plan offered by CalPERS.

She ordered CalPERS to begin allowing gay and lesbian spouses and partners to enroll in the plan, but also said she will suspend that order during an appeal if the Congressional group files an appeal.

Wilken had indicated, in two previous rulings in which she declined to dismiss the case, that she was likely to strike down the DOMA provision.

The government-approved long-term care insurance plan offered by CalPERS gives participants federal tax benefits.

_{Thu, 24 May 2012 21:46:56 -0700}

News Source: MedleyStory More Local News Stories