Health & WellnessS


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Report Calls for Better Regulation of Heavy Metals in Canadian Cosmetics

Diana Mehta
winnipegfreepress.com
Sun, 15 May 2011 12:32 UTC
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© fashiontakesaction.com
An environmental advocacy group is urging the government to impose stricter regulations on the cosmetics industry after publishing a report that suggests many makeup products contain a number of toxic heavy metals.

The report titled "Heavy Metal Hazards" by Environmental Defence calls on Health Canada to improve its cosmetics regulation and make companies list all metals on their product labels - moves which are being decried by representatives of the cosmetics industry.

The group tested 49 makeup products and found all of them contained varying amounts of heavy metals, including one lip gloss which contained levels of arsenic and lead exceeding limits recommended by Health Canada.
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Info

Fields of Watermelon Burst in China Farm Fiasco

Alexa Olesen
Associated Press
Tue, 17 May 2011 09:59 UTC
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© AP
Beijing - Watermelons have been bursting by the score in eastern China after farmers gave them overdoses of growth chemicals during wet weather, creating what state media called fields of "land mines."

About 20 farmers around Danyang city in Jiangsu province were affected, losing up to 115 acres (45 hectares) of melon, China Central Television said in an investigative report.
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Megaphone

Big Ag Doesn't Want You to Care About Pesticides

Tom Laskawy
Grist
Mon, 16 May 2011 19:43 UTC
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© GristPower to the people or the pesticide industry?
The produce lobby is livid that consumers might be concerned about pesticides. They are taking their fury out on the USDA for its annual report on pesticide use (via The Washington Post):
In a recent letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, 18 produce trade associations complained that the data have "been subject to misinterpretation by activists, which publicize their distorted findings through national media outlets in a way that is misleading for consumers and can be highly detrimental to the growers of these commodities."
This report happens also to be the basis for the Environmental Working Group's popular "Dirty Dozen" and "Clean Fifteen" lists of fruit and vegetables with the most and least pesticide residues. The produce lobbyists are pretty steamed about those, too:
"There are some organizations with agendas that do want to scare people away from fresh produce," said Kathy Means, a vice president at the Produce Marketing Association, a major industry group. "We don't want anyone eating unsafe foods, of course. But for those products that are grown legally and the science says [the pesticide] is safe, we don't want people turning away."
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Red Flag

From the Fields to Inner City, Pesticides Affect Children's IQ

Elizabeth Grossman
Yale Environment 360
Mon, 16 May 2011 19:14 UTC
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© fastcompany.com
Scientists studying the effects of prenatal exposure to pesticides on the cognitive abilities of children have come to a troubling conclusion: Whether pregnant mothers are exposed to organophosphate pesticides in California fields or New York apartments, the chemicals appear to impair their children's mental abilities.

New York City's low-income neighborhoods and California's Salinas Valley, where 80 percent of the United States' lettuce is grown, could hardly be more different. But scientists have discovered that children growing up in these communities - one characterized by the rattle of subway trains, the other by acres of produce and vast sunny skies - share a pre-natal exposure to pesticides that appears to be affecting their ability to learn and succeed in school.

Three studies undertaken independently, but published simultaneously last month, show that prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides - sprayed on crops in the Salinas Valley and used in Harlem and the South Bronx to control cockroaches and other insects - can lower children's IQ by an average of as much as 7 points. While this may not sound like a lot, it is more than enough to affect a child's reading and math skills and cause behavioral problems with potentially long-lasting impacts, according to the studies.
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Attention

Study: Toxin from Genetically Modified Crops Found in Human Blood

Dinesh C. Sharma
India Today
Wed, 11 May 2011 18:47 UTC
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© indiatodayBt toxin is widely used in genetically modified crops.
Fresh doubts have arisen about the safety of genetically modified crops, with a new study reporting presence of Bt toxin, used widely in GM crops, in human blood for the first time.

Genetically modified crops include genes extracted from bacteria to make them resistant to pest attacks.

These genes make crops toxic to pests but are claimed to pose no danger to the environment and human health. Genetically modified brinjal (eggplant), whose commercial release was stopped a year ago, has a toxin derived from a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis ( Bt).

Comment: For more information about toxins in Genetically Modified foods and the serious effects on overall health and wellness read the following article: Genetically Engineered Crops May Produce Herbicide Inside Our Intestines

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Magnify

Supermarket Meat Crawling with Bacteria, Packed with Drugs, Heavy Metals and Poison

William Douglass, M.D.
douglassreport.com
Mon, 16 May 2011 18:36 UTC
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© foodfreedom.wordpress.com
Sell a little healthy raw milk to a willing consumer, and you can expect cops to burst through the door with their guns drawn - but you can pass off tainted meat on unsuspecting customers all day long, and the feds won't do a thing about it.

Case in point: The latest study in Clinical Infectious Diseases, which showed that up to HALF of all supermarket meat is contaminated with bacteria - and half of those are resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Researchers bought 136 packages of beef, chicken, pork, and turkey from 26 supermarkets in five cities - and what they found would even make someone with an iron stomach a bit queasy.

Tests revealed that 47 percent of the meat was contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus. Nearly all of the samples were resistant to one antibiotic, and 52 percent were resistant to at least three different drugs.
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People

Apparent Immunity Gene 'Cures' Bay Area Man Of AIDS


Columbia Broadcasting System San Francisco
Mon, 16 May 2011 18:02 UTC
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© Associated Press
San Francisco, California - A 45-year-old man now living in the Bay Area may be the first person ever cured of the deadly disease AIDS, the result of the discovery of an apparent HIV immunity gene.

Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a "functional cure."

Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem cell transplant that had astounding results.

"I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven't had to take any since," said Brown, who has been dubbed "The Berlin Patient" by the medical community.

Brown's amazing progress continues to be monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and at the University of California at San Francisco medical center.
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Info

Modern Etiquette: Tips on How to Reform a Rude World

Mary Mitchell
Reuters
Mon, 16 May 2011 11:00 UTC
Rudeness is epidemic all over today. And I'm not even talking about cyber-rudeness.

People steal each other's cabs. Telephone receptionists are nasty. Sales clerks act like they're doing you a favor when you buy something. Waiters exhibit an attitude. Vicious gossip sells newspapers. Decency is considered boring.

Look outside and you'll see litter everywhere except in trash cans. Sit down in a restaurant and you'll find gum is underneath every table. Go into an office and you'll see bosses who don't treat their teams like human beings - foregoing simple little things like acknowledging their presence with introductions to visitors and clients.

The list could go on forever. I know because I pay a lot of attention to these things. I also know because any number of people call or write to tell me their latest manners travesties.

And all of it begs a question.
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Blackbox

Bizarre beauty practices

Dinna Chan Vasquez
Manila Standard Today
Mon, 16 May 2011 07:00 UTC
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© Unknown
Hair stylist Orlando Pita is said to be an advocate of not shampooing one's hair regularly. Instead he just rinses his mane with water and oils it afterward.

Cindy (not her real name) has an unusual facial once a month. Whenever Cindy gets her period, she takes some menstrual blood and slathers it on her face. She then leaves this on her face for 30 minutes. According to Cindy, this strange ritual makes her skin soft and supple.

In Japan, a spa offers a bath where noodle-shaped spa treatments are placed in bath water that contains elements from pork broth supplied by a nearby noodle shop. Taking a dip in the noodle bath is said to be good for the health as ingredients in the broth such as pepper collagen help improve the bather's metabolism and cleanse the skin.

In China, foot binding was inflicted on female children so that they would achieve the much-coveted lotus feet. Bandages were used to raise the instep of the feet and shorten their length. The foot would remain bound with straps in order to keep the instep in place, and eventually, over several years, the foot would become permanently deformed.
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Alarm Clock

Disturbing! Babies given anti-obesity drugs in the womb


The Telegraph
Wed, 11 May 2011 07:00 UTC
baby
© ALAMYDoctors hope it will prevent the birth of oversized babies, thereby reducing the need for caesarean sections

Babies to be given diet drug in the womb to stop them being born overweight in trial described as 'disturbing' by weight loss groups.

One hundred obese mums-to-be will be given Metformin as part of a three-year study to tackle obesity rates and reduce the number of difficult births.

Patients at Liverpool Women's Hospital will be given the drug to reduce the food supply to their unborn babies, although it will not help the mums themselves to lose weight.

Leading the trial, senior lecturer in obstetrics, Dr Andrew Weeks, said: "It is about trying to improve outcomes in pregnancy for women who are overweight.

"The problem is babies tend to be larger and many of the downsides of being overweight during pregnancy relate to the birth."
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