Domestic shorthair kitten

This 5-month-old female domestic shorthair cat has a gray tabby coat. 

She is in kennel No. A#96b, ID No. LCAC-A-5464.

Female shorthair kitten

While she was interviewing Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler in March 2023, Drew Barrymore suddenly exclaimed: “I’m so hot … I think I’m having my first hot flash!”

She took off her blazer and fanned herself dramatically.

While most hot flashes aren’t televised, the entertainer’s experience was far from unique. Barrymore, age 48, is one of approximately 15 million U.S. women from 45 to 60 who work full time and may experience menopausal symptoms.

Unlike Barrymore, most women are silent about their menopausal symptoms. Yet their symptoms, even when concealed from employers and co-workers, are a burden on them, their workplaces and on the overall U.S. economy. Lost work productivity due to menopausal symptoms – measured by missed work hours, job losses and early retirement – add up to about $1.8 billion annually, the Mayo Clinic estimates.

The three of us write and teach about employment discrimination and feminism, and two of us have written a book about menstruation. Because of our shared interests, we are currently writing a book about menopause and the law. We’ve observed that although Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama and other celebrities are speaking out about their own menopausal transitions, work accommodations are rare and employers typically don’t even acknowledge this stage of life.

Stigma and silence

In the lead-up to menopause, which typically begins between the ages of 45 and 55, levels of reproductive hormones change, and menstrual cycles become irregular and then eventually cease. This transition, called perimenopause, typically lasts for seven years.

Common symptoms of perimenopause include hot flashes, sleep disturbances, heart palpitations, excessive bleeding and irregular periods. Technically, menopause occurs after women don’t have a period for an entire year, and postmenopause is the stage after that. Transgender men and nonbinary people assigned female at birth can experience menopause too.

Employees who experience menopausal symptoms are often reluctant to talk about them at all, let alone tell their bosses. They may feel stigma and shame, and they may worry that it could hurt their chances for a promotion, their co-workers will see them as less capable or that their status at work will be otherwise jeopardized. These concerns are not unfounded.

In a series of studies, researchers asked workers and college students to describe their initial impressions of potential co-workers, including “a menopausal woman.” The participants described her as “less confident and less emotionally stable” than the non-menopausal women.

No legal protections

Employees who do speak up and seek accommodations for their menopausal symptoms, which might include dress code adjustments to deal with hot flashes, are often out of luck.

No federal law requires employers to accommodate menopausal symptoms.

Although the Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for workers with disabilities, U.S. courts have consistently held that menopause, by itself, is not a disability, even when its symptoms are seriously affecting someone’s ability to do their job.

That’s what happened to Georgia Sipple, a food product demonstrator who had a doctor’s note requesting permission to break a dress code by wearing short sleeves on the job. When Crossmark, her employer, refused, Sipple felt that she had no choice but to quit. She sued the company, but the Eastern District of California federal court dismissed her case.

Sometimes, employees even get punished for their menopausal symptoms or status.

When 911 operator Alisha Coleman experienced heavy perimenopausal bleeding that seeped through onto the office carpet, she was fired for failing to “maintain high standards of personal hygiene”. She sued, but the Middle District of Georgia dismissed her case, refusing to recognize her termination as a form of sex discrimination.

Instead, the judge drew a specious distinction, saying that Coleman had been fired for “being unable to control the heavy menstruation.” With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, she appealed, later obtaining a confidential settlement.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding accommodations

Employees have far fewer legal protections for menopause today than for pregnancy and breastfeeding.

Congress first directly addressed pregnancy discrimination in the workplace in 1978 with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. That law made it clear that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination. This means that an employee who was fired because her water broke and she went into labor at work would, unlike Coleman, have a winning sex discrimination claim.

Congress also passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in December 2022, which goes into effect on June 27, 2023. That law requires reasonable accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on employers.

Since 2010, Congress has required most employers to provide breastfeeding employees with reasonable break times to pump milk for one year after their children’s births, and also to provide them with a private place that isn’t a bathroom to do so. Most recently, in December 2022, the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act expanded those protections.

Why not menopause?

In our view, pregnancy and breastfeeding offer a potential model for protecting workers from menopause-related discrimination and providing reasonable accommodations. Until Congress is ready to pass such legislation, there are other possibilities.

First, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws, could issue “best practices” guidelines.

These guidelines can be modeled on practices in the United Kingdom, where many business have adopted menopause policies. Climate-controlled break spaces, dress codes that incorporate short-sleeve options and breathable fabrics, dedicated menopause support and the like can all make a positive difference. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission could also issue guidance highlighting menopause-based discrimination as a form of sex or age discrimination.

Additionally, even if the commission does not act, companies can adopt these kinds of policies on their own. That is already starting to happen, as U.S. businesses like the tech company Nvidia and the drugmaker Bristol Myers Squibb begin to establish some accommodations for menopause, including help with finding treatments.

New York Mayor Eric Adams has promised “more menopause-friendly workplaces,” at least for city workers.

To be sure, it can be risky to discuss symptoms at work, as this can undercut perceptions about women’s competence at work.

Given these symptoms’ prevalence, though, and the millions of workers experiencing them, we believe that breaking the silence can challenge and dispel these stereotypes – increasing the chances that they’ll remain on the job for many more years.

Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia; Bridget J. Crawford, Professor of Law, Pace University , and Emily Gold Waldman, Professor of Law; Associate Dean for Faculty Development, Pace University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Internal Revenue Service is getting a funding boost thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.

That legislative package originally included about US$80 billion to expand the tax collection agency’s budget over the next 10 years. Congress and the White House have since agreed to pare this total by about $20 billion, but $60 billion is still a big chunk of change for an agency that until recently had about $14 billion in annual funding.

I’m a tax researcher who studies how the IRS uses technology and how taxpayers respond to the agency’s growing reliance on it. While the number of IRS enforcement personnel will surely grow as a result of additional funding, I think that the agency can get more mileage out of emphasizing technological improvements.

Making enforcement more efficient

The IRS plans to use most of these new funds to step up enforcement and improve customer service for taxpayers.

There’s been plenty of conjecture about what the added enforcement will look like and no shortage of fearmongering about the tens of thousands of new agents the IRS might hire.

Often left out of this discussion is the fact that the agency’s staffing was cut by 22% between 2010 and 2021. Much of the agency’s hiring spree will replace these labor shortages rather than fill new posts. Further, the IRS expects over 50,000 of its employees to retire within five years.

The agency aims to hire 20,000 people over the next two years, of which one-third will work in enforcement.

But IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel has indicated that better enforcement won’t just rely on more tax agents and auditors. He released a plan in early 2023 promising that “technology and data advances will allow us to focus enforcement on taxpayers trying to avoid taxes, rather than taxpayers trying to pay what they owe.”

And U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo has said that “the IRS is going to hire more data scientists than they ever have for enforcement purposes,” with the goal of using data analytics in audits.

At least initially, the agency was aiming to increase its spending on enforcement by 69%, from about $6.6 billion in 2022 to $11 billion in annual spending projected through 2031.

Technology, including the electronic filing of tax returns and a growing portfolio of online tools, transfers work from agents to computers. Online tools include the IRS’ digital scanning program, which expedites the processing of the roughly 1 in 5 federal tax returns that weren’t filed electronically in 2022.

Werfel says the IRS workforce is becoming more efficient by ramping up its reliance on technology to provide services for taxpayers and spot tax cheats.

The IRS has tapped one form of data analytics or another to select people and companies to audit since the late 1960s. As early as 1986, it had researched ways to use artificial intelligence to improve how it selects its auditing targets.

At the same time, outdated technology is hampering the Internal Revenue Service’s effectiveness. It relies on a 60-year-old computer system to maintain and process data. That undercuts its technological agility and customer service.

3 sources of data

When the IRS collects better data, its ability to use data analytics to make predictions about noncompliance improves.

Beyond data reported on tax forms themselves, like 1099s, the IRS has three main sources of data it assesses to learn more about taxpayers.

1. Past tax returns

The IRS’s National Research Program collects data to support what it calls “strategic decisions” to better enforce compliance.

The program first relies on its vast stores of taxpayer data, including prior audit results, to develop an expectation of what a given tax return may include, like a tuition tax credit for a taxpayer with a history of claiming the child tax credit. Filed returns are compared against those standards to identify potential outliers. Outliers aren’t necessarily dodging taxes or misrepresenting their tax liabilities, but big departures from the norms can indicate a higher likelihood of mistakes or evasion.

2. Publicly available data

The IRS relies on publicly available data associated with each tax return when it’s building a case for an audit.

The data, which is available to anyone who wants to find it, has increased tremendously with the rise of social media and the growing role of the internet for commerce and advertising. A social media presence can alert the IRS to a business with potential income in a way that the agency could not have identified before the internet emerged.

This includes methods that might surprise you.

As far back as 2010, for example, IRS training materials instructed agents to use a band’s social networking sites to compare musicians’ reported income with their likely income from their past performances. IRS training materials instruct agents to predict musicians’ gig income based on the number of shows a band advertises through its social media posts.

People make all sorts of financial information public today, including their side hustles and Venmo ledgers. The IRS can access and use this data like anyone else.

3. Third-party data

The IRS can also buy data.

For example, a 2020 government contract with the company Chainalysis is described, perhaps clumsily, as a contract for “pilot IRS cryptocurrency tracing.” This type of contract gives the IRS information related to otherwise untraceable income sources so that agents can detect underreporting.

What has changed in recent years is the volume of data it can access, which has skyrocketed.

Sometimes, widespread underreporting results in legislation which requires third parties to report income information to the IRS, rather than requiring the agency seek it out.

Recent legislation includes requiring third-party payment agencies like Venmo, PayPal and Uber to issue a 1099 tax form to anyone making over $600 on the app in one year. These 1099s are issued to taxpayers – and the IRS.

Similar legislation was recently proposed for cryptocurrency transactions.

What might change

What does this increase in IRS spending on technology mean for taxpayers?

When the IRS detailed how it wanted to use the new funds in April 2023, it emphasized improving taxpayers’ experiences and increasing compliance. By using chatbots to respond to taxpayer questions, providing online portals for real-time processing, and letting taxpayers respond to notices online, the IRS could substantially decrease the time taxpayers spend corresponding with the agency or waiting on hold while attempting to speak to a staffer.

Technology-boosted enforcement could help the agency collect more revenue to fund government programs.

And the agency also hopes to use data to make paying taxes less onerous for the majority of Americans who follow the rules.

For example, when a taxpayer has a child or experiences another kind of life change that will change their tax status, the IRS wants to gain the ability to proactively notify people about the consequences – whether it’s paying more, owing less or getting a new tax credit.

Most people want to pay what they owe, no more and no less. I believe the IRS intends to make good use of its new funding to help people do just that.

Erica Neuman, Assistant Professor of Accounting, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Secondhand smoke may be an important but overlooked source of chronic lead exposure in kids and adolescents. That is the key finding of our recent study, published in the journal BMC Public Health.

We analyzed national data on blood lead levels and secondhand smoke exposure in 2,815 U.S. children and teenagers ages 6 to 19 from 2015 to 2018. We looked at levels of lead and a nicotine metabolite – a substance known as cotinine produced in the body’s chemical process that forms when tobacco smoke is inhaled. Levels of cotinine indicate exposure to tobacco smoke.

We found that the average blood lead levels in the intermediate and high tobacco smoke exposure groups were 18% and 29% higher, respectively, than those in the group with the lowest tobacco smoke exposure. The lowest lead exposure group was comparable to the U.S. average. A greater number of boys had detectable lead levels in their blood, as did a greater number of Black children and adolescents, compared with the other ethnic groups we studied.

Elevated blood levels were more common in children ages 6 to 10 than in older participants. Notably, children from low-income households showed 27% higher blood lead levels compared with those from high-income households.

Why it matters

Lead, unlike many other toxins, does not get diluted when exposure decreases. Nor does the body excrete it naturally. Instead, it accumulates in the bones and leaches into blood. The only way to remove it is through an oral medical treatment.

Exposure to lead can cause numerous and severe neurological problems, including nerve damage, cognitive problems, loss of IQ points and possibly even conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

Lead exposure is more harmful to younger children than older children and adults because their bodies are still developing and they are growing so rapidly.

Children at high-exposure risk often come from low-income households in older homes built before 1978, when lead paint was still used. Young children’s frequent hand-to-mouth activity provides a pathway for lead exposure at home. Lead-containing water pipes in these older, low-income housing areas also contribute to the issue.

Children and others can also be exposed to lead through a variety of everyday household items, including some ceramic cookware and dishes, some vinyl lunchboxes – especially those manufactured outside the United States – many common spices and some toys, hair-coloring products and cosmetics. Lead exposure has even been traced to some candies from Mexico.

Over the past four decades, U.S. regulators have banned lead-based paint for residential use and leaded gasoline. This has led to a significant decrease in lead exposure from major traditional sources.

Despite continued efforts, lead exposure continues to pose a risk. Our findings help create awareness of the link between secondhand tobacco smoke and lead exposure, especially for young people. Approximately 35% of U.S. children, or over 23 million, were exposed to secondhand smoke between 2013 and 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What’s next

We are working within our local areas to educate parents and school administrators about the dangers of lead poisoning, including exposure from secondhand smoke. Our efforts include encouraging individuals and communities to test their drinking water for lead and to take actions to reduce children’s lead exposure from drinking water.

We plan to conduct further studies to quantify the contribution of various sources to lead exposure. We believe that this research will enhance our understanding of children’s exposure and contribute to the improvement of environmental health disparities.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Genny Carrillo, Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, Texas A&M University and Taehyun Roh, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.