Posted on May 31, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
Scary stuff right here.
New research has linked pesticides with Parkinson’s risk. The
AFP reports:
Research on nearly 1000 Parkinson's sufferers in five countries -- one of the largest such studies to date -- showed that high-level [of pesticide] exposure upped the risk of contracting the debilitating brain disease by 39 percent.
Lower-level exposure, consistent with hobby-gardening use of pesticides, corresponded with a nine-percent increase, said Finlay Dick, the lead author of the study, published in the British journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Parkinson's is an incurable, degenerative disease of the central nervous system that causes uncontrollable shaking, along with impaired speech and movement. In approximately one third of cases it also results in dementia.
Posted on May 25, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
This is good news.
The number of smoke-free households increased 29% from 1993 to 2003. Robert Preidt of
HealthDay News reports:
The proportion of American households that forbid smoking increased from 43 percent in 1992-93 to 72 percent in 2003, a new government report shows.
However, rates of smoke-free households varied widely among states. In both 1992-93 and 2003, Utah had the highest rates of smoke-free homes (69.6 percent in 1992-93 and 88.8 percent in 2003), while Kentucky had the lowest rates -- 25.7 percent and 53.4 percent, respectively.
The study is in this week's issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"In the past decade, we've seen tremendous declines in secondhand smoke exposure in the workplace and public places. However, millions of children and nonsmoking adults remain at risk, because their homes are not smoke-free," CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said in a prepared statement. "The single best step that smokers can take to protect the health of nonsmoking family members and their own health is to quit smoking."
Posted on May 22, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
The recent E. coli outbreak and the melamine scandal have left me wondering, are we doing enough to protect our food supply? The answer seems to be no because
former FDA Commissioner David Kessler is calling our food-safety system broken. Nancy Shute of the
U.S. News & World Report has more:
Keeping homegrown food safe, too, requires diligence, from the field through the processing shed and factory, all the way to the supermarket. Farmers are legally bound to produce food that doesn't pose a health risk; so are manufacturers and retailers. Costco, for example, uses its own labs to test food samples for microbes and hires third-party auditors to inspect suppliers' farms and factories. Whole Foods, which increasingly looks abroad for its organic products, requires growers to shun pesticides allowed in their countries but not here. But with little oversight, human error or expediency can cause disease and death. "Our food-safety system is broken," former FDA Commissioner David Kessler told a congressional hearing this month. Last week, the USDA declared that 56,000 pigs fed melamine-tainted feed are safe for human consumption.
Posted on May 18, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
If the FDA says its okay, then it must be good—right? Yeah, that’s debatable. Anyway, remember how it was reported that
farmed fished had been also exposed to the pet food contaminate melamine? No worries,
the FDA now claims the fish is fine to eat—very fishy if you ask me. Randolph E. Schmid of the
Associated Press reports:
The two fish farms that used the feed kept their fish off the market until the tests could be completed.
Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection, said fish being raised at Kona Blue in Hawaii and American Gold Seafoods in Washington state were found negative for the chemical melamine.
The questionable feed was also sold to 196 fish hatcheries. Because those fish are small and the feed has been recalled, Acheson said the FDA believes there no longer is any public health concern from them.
The FDA on Tuesday cleared for use 56,000 pigs given feed that included scraps of pet food contaminated with melamine.
Posted on May 17, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
Oh man, this’ll give you the heebeegeebees
. Reuters reports that
Chromium found in drinking water causes cancer. It just gets harder and harder to maintain a toxin-free environment. More from the report:
Environmentalists, who have been fighting for decades for tighter limits on how much chromium can be present in drinking water, said the findings offered a basis for such restrictions.
High doses of chromium 6 given to rats and mice in drinking water caused malignant tumors, the two-year study by the NIH's National Toxicology Program or NTP found.
"In the rats we saw oral cavity tumors," said Michelle Hooth, who worked on the report. "In the mice we saw tumors in the small intestine."
Posted on May 10, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
Dr. Fuhrman’s radio show Nutritional Wisdom airs live Wednesdays at 11am EST with an encore presentation Thursdays at 3pm EST on VoiceAmerica. Be sure to check out this week’s episode Removing Disease Causing Chemicals from Your Home, with special guest Deirdre Imus. And if you've missed an episode click the Nutritional Wisdom category for previous shows.
Posted on May 9, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
I don’t eat pet food. So when the contaminated pet food story broke I wasn’t too nervous. I also wasn’t freaked out by the
tainted pigs and
chickens, but, contaminated fish? Now that’s a different story. I eat fish. And darn it!
HealthDay News now reports that
some farmed fish also ate the toxic compound melamine. Steven Reinberg is on it:
Levels of melamine in the fish are probably far too small to affect human health, stressed officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The FDA has so far not disclosed which fish farms received the contaminated food, or how many fish, of what type, may have eaten it.
"We have a preliminary list of fish farms, but I can't share it with you," Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection, told reporters at a teleconference.
It's also not clear how much of the potentially tainted fish -- if any -- has made it to supermarkets. But Acheson noted that at least one firm's fish had not yet reached a size suitable for sale.
In addition, he said, the contaminated material used in the pet food and imported from China turns out to be wheat flour, not wheat gluten or rice protein concentrate, as had been widely reported.
"We have discovered that the wheat gluten and rice protein was mislabeled," Acheson said. "It actually contained wheat flour contaminated with melamine and melamine-related compounds. These are from the two Chinese firms we have already identified."
Like there isn’t enough reason to be mindful of fish as it is. Not sure what I’m talking about? Dr. Fuhrman discusses fish in this previous post. From
Fishing for the Truth:
Higher levels of mercury found in mothers who eat more fish have been associated with birth defects, seizures, mental retardation, developmental disabilities, and cerebral palsy.1 This is mostly the result of women having eaten fish when they were pregnant. Scientists believe that fetuses are much more sensitive to mercury exposure than adults, although adults do suffer from varying degrees of brain damage from fish consumption.2 Even the FDA, which normally ignores reports on the dangers of our dangerous food practices, acknowledges that large fish such as shark, swordfish, and yellowfin and bluefin tuna, are potentially dangerous. Researchers are also concerned about other toxins concentrated in fish that can cause brain damage way before the cancers caused by chemical-carrying fish appear.
Continue Reading...
Posted on May 4, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
It all started with the contaminated pet food. Then we learned about the tainted hogs and chickens, and now, it seems the plot thickens even more. The
Associated Press is reporting that
the FDA plans to examine manufacturers of people food that might have used the contaminated batches of wheat gluten and rice protein. Randolph E. Schmid has more:
There is no evidence that any of the two contaminated batches of wheat gluten and rice protein from China ended up as an ingredient in human food, "but it's prudent to look," said Dr. David Acheson, assistant FDA commissioner for food protection.
Acheson said the inspections began this week, covering both human and pet food manufacturers to raise awareness of how important it is to know their supply chain and to make sure none of the contaminated products remain in stock.
The number of facilities to be visited could be in the range of hundreds, Acheson said, based on knowledge of what ingredients go to which manufacturer.
"This is going to go on until we feel satisfied we've got it covered. We're not setting the bar at 50 or 100 or 1,000. We're going to keep doing this until we're confident that we've got our arms around it," he said.
Posted on May 2, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
First,
tainted hog meat entered the food supply, now, the FDA reports that
millions of chickens that also ate some of the pet food contaminated with melamine hit the U.S. market back in February. E.J. Mundell and Steven Reinberg of HealthDay News have more:
Up to 3 million broiler chickens were fed melamine-tainted pet food and then sold on the U.S. market beginning in early February, U.S. health officials said in a press conference held late Tuesday.
The contaminated pet product made its way into poultry feed at 38 Indiana farms, 30 of which produced broiler chickens destined for restaurants and supermarkets, said officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Approximately 2.5 million to 3 million chickens fed contaminated pet food have already been sold, Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator for field operations at the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said during the teleconference. "That's out of a total of 9 billion broilers processed in the U.S. each year," he noted.
Experts from both agencies downplayed any potential threat to human health.
If ask me, heads should roll over this. Our food supply is precious and should be protected.
Posted on May 2, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
Look, another opportunity for the drug companies to stick us with needles! Afraid of E. coli? Time for another hyper-marketed super-vaccine. According to Andrew Pollack of
The New York Times an E. coli vaccine is on the horizon:
Shousun C. Szu, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, says the best way to prevent people from being poisoned by deadly E. coli would be to vaccinate all infants against the bacteria.
Graeme McRae, a Canadian biotechnology executive, says it would be more practical to inoculate cows instead.
Vaccines for people and for cattle are just two approaches under development to prevent or treat food poisoning by the strain E. coli O157:H7.
Right now, scientists can do little medically to fight the pathogen, which was responsible for two severe outbreaks last fall, one from contaminated bagged spinach and a second from tainted lettuce served in chain taco restaurants.
The main approach has been to try to prevent contamination through careful handling, rigorous inspections and government regulation.
Clearly more fallout from the
spinach E. coli crisis—fear, a powerful thing.
Posted on May 1, 2007 by Gerald Pugliese
Unfortunately for Los Angeles, it looks like there are more smog jokes on the horizon.
The American Lung Association has once again fingered Los Angeles as having the most polluted air in the country. The
Associated Press reports:
The news wasn't all bad for Los Angeles. Despite the dubious distinction, the number of days residents breathed the nation's worst ozone levels was fewer than in previous years.
"Nobody is surprised that LA has an air pollution problem," said Janice Nolen, the association's assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy. "The problems there are one of the reasons we have the Clean Air Act. But it is important for folks to know that there has been some improvement."
The organization based the rankings on ozone pollution levels produced when heat and sunlight come into contact with pollutants from power plants, cars, refineries and other sources. The group also studied particle pollution levels emitted from these sources, which are made up of a mix of tiny solid and liquid particles in the air.
Pollution and chemicals are a scary. According to Dr. Fuhrman they can bring on things like asthma. He goes into more detail in
Disease-Proof Your Child:
Living in an urban area around pollution is an important contributor. Non-dietary risk factors include exposure to day care before four months of age, and exposure to wood smoke, oil smoke, or exhaust anytime from birth to age five all increase asthma risk by 50 percent.1
Continue Reading...
