Category: Health

by Alejandra Reyes-Velarde / Cal-Matters / March 27, 2026

Just south of downtown Los Angeles, the Exide battery recycling facility spent decades leaking lead and arsenic into the soil — sickening children, causing cancer, and creating a nearly billion-dollar liability for the state of California.

A flurry of last-minute reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act at the end of last year’s legislative session exempted a broad, poorly defined category of industrial facilities from environmental review – so broad that if Exide were proposed now, it might get a pass, critics say.

Now lawmakers are trying to figure out what they actually meant when they approved those exemptions.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who represents coastal San Diego and Orange counties, introduced a bill this week seeking to more narrowly define what kinds of facilities are exempt from environmental review and to add protections for communities near developments.

Famous Bar Survived Prohibition, Developers — and Now This

By Jacob Smith / Hoodline / March 26, 2026

The Waterfront Bar & Grill has been pouring drinks in Little Italy since 1933 — the year Prohibition was repealed, the year it all became legal again, and the year San Diego’s oldest tavern planted its flag on Kettner Boulevard and never left. Developers eventually built condos around it rather than demolish it. Celebrities including Gene Wilder and Bill Murray came through. Regulars have been coming for decades.

One of them loved the place so much he asked to have his ashes placed on the north wall when he died, and they honored the request. So it takes more than a health inspection closure to rattle a place like this — but that’s exactly what happened on March 25, 2026, when San Diego County inspectors found a major vermin violation and ordered the doors shut.

What Inspectors Found
The routine inspection on March 25 flagged five violations, according to records on SD Food Info: a major vermin violation (the category that triggers automatic closure), a minor food contact surfaces finding, and three out-of-compliance findings covering toilet facilities, premises and vermin-proofing, and floors, walls, and ceilings.

By The Associated Press / 7SanDiego / March 26 -27, 2026 

The Trump administration has opened investigations into how race is considered in admissions at three medical schools, ratcheting up its pressure campaign against colleges and universities.

The Justice Department opened the investigations Wednesday into possible discrimination at the medical schools of Stanford University, Ohio State and the University of California, San Diego. Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced the investigations on X.

Through a series of investigations and executive actions, President Donald Trump has been ramping up scrutiny of universities he decries as overrun by liberal influence. His administration previously has targeted undergraduate admissions at selective colleges, demanding they collect data to show they are in line with a 2023 Supreme Court decision forbidding affirmative action in college admissions.

The investigations were reported first by The New York Times.

In a letter to Ohio State, Dhillon wrote that the Justice Department was seeking any documents related to “the use or lack of use of race” in evaluating applicants. She said they were also seeking all applicant-level admissions data and any reviews by the school of admissions trends or outcomes by race.

San Diego County’s Department of Environmental Health and Quality today, Wednesday, March 25th, announced the closure of the San Diego River where it meets Dog Beach in Ocean Beach after a large volume of sewage was released.

According to the DEHQ, 18,000 gallons of sewage was discharged, with an estimated 9,000 gallons reaching the San Diego River near the intersection of Friars Road and Sea World Drive.

Beachgoers were advised that the ocean water contains sewage and may cause illness. The water contact closure will remain in place until sampling and field observations confirm these areas are safe for water contact, according to a county statement.

By Nicole Gomez / 7SanDiego / March 20, 2026

A group of off-duty San Diego lifeguards is being credited with saving the life of a 57-year-old man who went into cardiac arrest at a restaurant in Ocean Beach.

The incident happened on March 1, around 7:30 p.m. at Blue Water Seafood, where three lifeguards — including Noah Herrera — had just sat down to eat when they noticed a man who appeared to be in distress.

Herrera said the situation quickly escalated.

“We rolled him, checking his pulse, and I didn’t feel anything after about 10 seconds, and I told Mitch, ‘I don’t feel a pulse, start compressions,’ and he just started on his chest right away,” Herrera said.

At the same time, another off-duty lifeguard, Griffin Houldin, was dining nearby with his girlfriend when they noticed the commotion.

Ken Abbott, 61, started his cross-country trip from Ocean Beach Wednesday ten years after receiving a heart transplant.

By Shannon Handy / CBS8 / March 4, 2026  

A man who received a heart transplant a decade ago is embarking on a 3,000-mile bicycle journey from San Diego to St. Augustine, Florida, to raise awareness about the critical need for organ donors.
Ken Abbott, 61, started his cross-country trip from Ocean Beach on Wednesday after recovering from a life-threatening cardiac condition that nearly killed him in 2016. The journey commemorates ten years since his transplant and aims to educate people about the importance of organ donation and transplantation.

Abbott was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition years before his heart began to fail. In 2016, he walked into Mount Sinai’s emergency room, where doctors gave him only a 5% chance of survival.

From UC San Diego Today Now / March 5, 2026

The growth form of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is composed of shoots known as stipes instead of branches. From one parent holding fast to the hard bottom might come as many as 150 stipes.

Typically the tips of the biggest kelp bob at the ocean surface and calm the waters, appearing as patches of gold visible from land — a sign of the good health of the ecosystem that it anchors.

But the kelp as San Diego knows it is in trouble.

In January, a team led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography released an unmatched history of kelp forests off La Jolla and Point Loma. Together spanning nearly 19 square kilometers (7.3 square miles), they are the largest on the United States West Coast. Amassed over more than 40 years, their story reveals a progression of steady decline that transcends typical cycles of crash and recovery.

Now, say the researchers, competing organisms usually cast in shadow by the kelp are emerging as winners. The giant kelp are losing, but so might be myriad other organisms – fishes and humans included – as another natural order is disrupted by climate change and other new circumstances.

The downsides range from a decrease in the catch available to recreational fishers in San Diego to the loss of the nurseries that sea stars and open ocean fishes use to protect their larvae. Even the beach wrack – the large piles of decaying kelp that wash up after storms – is diminishing. Though the absence of the pungent kelp will be a relief to some beachgoers, those piles attract the kelp flies that are an important source of food for seabirds.

Children Under 12 Would Be Banned

By Esmeralda Perez / CBS8 / February 25, 2026

San Diego may soon implement electric bike regulations, as Councilmember Raul Campillo has proposed an initiative aiming to address growing safety concerns about misuse and excessive speeding on e-bikes throughout the city.

The proposed regulations would ban children under 12 from riding Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes. The proposal also restricts passengers to bicycles specifically designed with a permanent second seat.

“We’re seeing a lot of young people show up to ERs, we’re seeing a lot of seniors who are walking down the sidewalk who get hit by irresponsible e-bike riders that are going way too fast and so we’re really just trying to preserve public health, safety that’s really at the heart of what we’re doing,” Campillo, who represents District 7, said.
Campillo shared that state law empowers San Diego to add e-bike regulations to its municipal code.

31,000 Kaiser nurses and other professionals vow to strike until fair contract agreement is reached.

By City News Service / NBC7  / February 16, 2026

Kaiser Permanente nurses and health care workers in the San Diego area will remain on picket lines Monday as their open-ended strike alleging unfair labor practices amid prolonged contract talks enters it’s fourth week.

The roughly 31,000 members of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals vowed to stay on strike until a fair contract agreement is reached. UNAC/UHCP members include registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians and other specialty health care professionals.

Picketing resumes at 9 a.m. Monday at San Diego Medical Center, 9455 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.

A woman who stabbed two men in an Ocean Beach alley, pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to prison on February 17. Jana Nicole Halaska’s sentence will range from four to eight years. She is 29.

Halaska pleaded guilty to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon on Jan. 14 as her trial date approached. It all extends from an incident on April 13, 2025, when she stabbed the victims, Gabriel Millan and Christopher Abrahamsen in an alley at Bacon Street and Newport Avenue just after 1 a.m. Millan and Abrahamsen were seriously injured, were rushed to an emergency room at a hospital, where they remained for many days.

Halaska famously declared “that’s not how you treat a lady” before stabbing the two men.

Halaska’s attorney tried to resolve the case by entering her into a mental health diversion program, but Judge Chandra Reid denied the motion on Dec. 10, records show. and she remains in the Las Colinas Women’s Detention Facility on $500,000 bail.

Fox5 San Diego / Feb. 7, 2026

The San Diego Lifeguard confirmed four people were rescued from Sunset Cliffs Saturday afternoon, Feb.7, after recreationally leaping off the cliff before becoming stuck.

Three of the jumpers were saved by cliff-rescue operations, while the fourth was rescued by a watercraft around 1:45 p.m., authorities said.

Last week, the City of San Diego announced that 14 roadways and intersections throughout San Diego have been labeled as “high-crash locations” and “will potentially receive safety enhancements.”

Locally, Midway Drive between Kemper Street and Duke Street: Near Sports Arena Blvd has been chosen as one of the dangerous places.

In a statement, the City declared:

The 14 areas were identified after the City of San Diego’s Traffic Engineering team reviewed 2024 collision data and evaluated intersections with five or more injuries or fatal crashes. The data also looks at patterns, street segments with the most injury crashes and intersections with the most pedestrian-involved collisions. …