Triclosan and triclocarban are widely used in antibacterial soaps, body washes, deodorants, lip glosses, dog shampoos, shave gels and even toothpastes.
Over the past several months, your bathroom has become the site of a major controversy. In fact, the controversy has been heating up for a while (Environmental Working Group's Cosmetic Safety Database dates back to 2004), but recently, stories of dangerous ingredients in common personal care products like soap, toothpaste and lipstick have become even more common in the media. They're even the subject of a bill in Congress, The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010. The inadequate regulation and dubious safety of cosmetics spurred Annie Leonard, famous for making The Story of Stuff, to come out with a new video last month, The Story of Cosmetics.
Health & Wellness
© Sean McCormick
Sue Laws of Gaithersburg sits in her kitchen chair, where she has spent many sleepless nights agonizing over symptoms of a mysterious disease
Sue Laws of Gaithersburg sits in her kitchen chair, where she has spent many sleepless nights agonizing over symptoms of a mysterious disease
Laws's doctors thought she was delusional. But she found a host of other sufferers on the Internet and joined the Morgellons Research Foundation and the lobbying effort that prompted a number of lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, to write the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demanding an investigation.
Now, nearly three years later, the CDC has completed its investigation of Morgellons, or what it calls unexplained dermopathy, evaluating patients in Northern California and sending tissue samples to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology for analysis. CDC experts are preparing the final draft of their report, which they hope to submit for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal sometime in early 2011.
Parkinson's disease may stem from an energy crisis in the brain that occurs years before symptoms appear, recent study suggests.
If the research into this area pans out, it points to a possible new approach for Parkinson's: giving a boost to a key power switch inside brain cells in hopes of slowing the disease's inevitable march instead of just treating symptoms.
The research was done by Dr. Clemens Scherzer of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University and published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
"This is an extremely important and interesting observation that opens up new therapeutic targets," says Dr. Flint Beal of New York's Weill Cornell Medical College, who wasn't involved with the new study.
If the research into this area pans out, it points to a possible new approach for Parkinson's: giving a boost to a key power switch inside brain cells in hopes of slowing the disease's inevitable march instead of just treating symptoms.
The research was done by Dr. Clemens Scherzer of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University and published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
"This is an extremely important and interesting observation that opens up new therapeutic targets," says Dr. Flint Beal of New York's Weill Cornell Medical College, who wasn't involved with the new study.
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The study, published in the current issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, examined data on more than 30,000 Canadians collected as part of Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics and compared results between workers involved in different types of shift work from 1996-2006. It shows that while the overall rate of work injuries in Canada decreased during this time, the rate of injuries did not decline for night shift workers.
The study also found that the risk of work injury associated with shift work was more pronounced for women, especially if they work rotating shifts.
"The disruption of normal sleep patterns due to shift work can cause drowsiness or fatigue, which can lead to workplace injuries," says Imelda Wong, a PhD Candidate at UBC's School of Environmental Health and the study's lead author. "Our research shows that people working rotating and night shifts are more likely to experience an injury than those who work regular day hours."
© The Ecologist
The smell of our food is inexorably linked to our enjoyment of it. In fact, taste and smell are the two most directly linked of our senses. Aroma is the essence of food, but as well as making food taste good, it can also enhance our sense of well-being.
While the concept of aromatherapy has become something of a catch-all phrase for a wide range of healing techniques, such as massage and steam inhalation, which involve the use of highly concentrated oils derived from plants and flowers, rarely if ever do we think of our food as having aromatherapeutic properties.
The health benefits of flavorful food are well known in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine. While it is unlikely that you will be eating herbs and spices in anything like medicinal quantities, many have been shown to be concentrated sources of antioxidants, and if taken regularly in great enough quantities, some can have medicinal effects. Cinnamon, for example, helps regulate blood sugar; in Germany, sage is licensed as a standard medicinal tea to treat gastrointestinal upsets and night sweats.
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BPA has been used in food tins, dentists' operating lamps and CD packages. Heinz, left, is committed to moving to alternatives
BPA has been used in food tins, dentists' operating lamps and CD packages. Heinz, left, is committed to moving to alternatives
Some of the world's biggest food companies are removing the chemical Bisphenol A from packaging, amid growing concern it is causing a wide range of human illnesses including heart disease and breast cancer.
Nestlé, the world's biggest food manufacturer, says its will stop putting Bisphenol A (also known as BPA) into US products within three years, while tinned giant Heinz is at "an advanced stage" in removing it from UK baby food, and is funding research by one of the chemical's leading critics. General Mills, the US giant behind the Green Giant tinned brand, has already ditched BPA from its Muir Glen tomato range, while Campbell Soups says it has done "hundreds" of tests exploring alternatives. Several other firms, such as Coca-Cola, have declined to disclose a timetable for its withdrawal, saying that BPA is safe.
While you savour those mouth-watering Diwali sweets, here's the bitter truth: what you are consuming is most likely substandard, adulterated and poisonous.
Raids across the country have unearthed hundreds of kg of adulterated sweets or their ingredients, but that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
In Meerut, 500 kg of adulterated milk cake and 300 kg of poisoned petha were seized on Monday while around 550 kg of adulterated mawa was seized in Gonda. The mawa was being transported in a bus to avoid detection.
In Allahabad, around 900 kg of rotten peas and 100 kg of contaminated ice cream were seized.
In Jalgaon, Maharashtra, around 9,900 kg of spurious sweets were confiscated. A tip-off led the state food department to a godown where heaps of sweets made from substandard ingredients were ready for circulation.
Raids across the country have unearthed hundreds of kg of adulterated sweets or their ingredients, but that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
In Meerut, 500 kg of adulterated milk cake and 300 kg of poisoned petha were seized on Monday while around 550 kg of adulterated mawa was seized in Gonda. The mawa was being transported in a bus to avoid detection.
In Allahabad, around 900 kg of rotten peas and 100 kg of contaminated ice cream were seized.
In Jalgaon, Maharashtra, around 9,900 kg of spurious sweets were confiscated. A tip-off led the state food department to a godown where heaps of sweets made from substandard ingredients were ready for circulation.
Montreal researchers have discovered that patients using inhaled steroids increase their chances of developing diabetes.
Patients with lung disease should ask their physicians about treatment with the synthetic hormone medication because the higher the dose, the greater the risk, said Samy Suissa, director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical of the Jewish General Hospital.
Oral corticosteroids like prednisone have long been known to increase the risk of diabetes, but this is the first time the effect has been observed with the inhaled form, said Suissa, lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Medicine.
Inhaled steroids have become the mainstay of medical treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the new name for emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
But they have been shown to increase the risk of cataracts and pneumonia, "and now we are finding the increase in diabetes," said Suissa, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University.
Dipping into Quebec's database kept by the provincial health insurance board, the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec, Suissa's team studied 400,000 patients over 18 years.
Patients with lung disease should ask their physicians about treatment with the synthetic hormone medication because the higher the dose, the greater the risk, said Samy Suissa, director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical of the Jewish General Hospital.
Oral corticosteroids like prednisone have long been known to increase the risk of diabetes, but this is the first time the effect has been observed with the inhaled form, said Suissa, lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Medicine.
Inhaled steroids have become the mainstay of medical treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the new name for emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
But they have been shown to increase the risk of cataracts and pneumonia, "and now we are finding the increase in diabetes," said Suissa, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University.
Dipping into Quebec's database kept by the provincial health insurance board, the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec, Suissa's team studied 400,000 patients over 18 years.
We think we know what to eat: less red meat and more fibre, less saturated fat and more fruit and veg, right? Wrong, according to a controversial new book by obesity researcher and nutritionist Zoe Harcombe.
In The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It? Harcombe charts her meticulous journey of research into studies that underpin dietary advice - and her myth-busting conclusions are startling.
Myth: The rapid rise in obesity is due to modern lifestyles
According to Zoe Harcombe, the obesity epidemic has less to do with our lifestyles than with what we are eating.
'The key thing that people don't realise is that throughout history, right until the Seventies, obesity levels never went above 2 per cent of the population in the UK,' she says. 'Yet by the turn of the millennium, obesity levels were 25 per cent.
'What happened? In 1983, the government changed its diet advice. After that, if you look at the graphs, you can see obesity rates taking off like an aeroplane. You might feel it is coincidence, but to me it is blindingly obvious.
'The older dietary advice was simple; foods based on flour and grains were fattening, and sweet foods were most fattening of all.
'Mum and Granny told us to eat liver, eggs, sardines and to put butter on our vegetables. The new advice was "base your meals on starchy foods" - the things that we used to know made us fat (rice, pasta, potatoes and bread). That's a U-turn.'
In The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It? Harcombe charts her meticulous journey of research into studies that underpin dietary advice - and her myth-busting conclusions are startling.
© Getty Images
Ditch conventional diet advice: Zoe Harcombe says vitamins and minerals in meat are better than those in fruit.
Ditch conventional diet advice: Zoe Harcombe says vitamins and minerals in meat are better than those in fruit.
According to Zoe Harcombe, the obesity epidemic has less to do with our lifestyles than with what we are eating.
'The key thing that people don't realise is that throughout history, right until the Seventies, obesity levels never went above 2 per cent of the population in the UK,' she says. 'Yet by the turn of the millennium, obesity levels were 25 per cent.
'What happened? In 1983, the government changed its diet advice. After that, if you look at the graphs, you can see obesity rates taking off like an aeroplane. You might feel it is coincidence, but to me it is blindingly obvious.
'The older dietary advice was simple; foods based on flour and grains were fattening, and sweet foods were most fattening of all.
'Mum and Granny told us to eat liver, eggs, sardines and to put butter on our vegetables. The new advice was "base your meals on starchy foods" - the things that we used to know made us fat (rice, pasta, potatoes and bread). That's a U-turn.'
Comment: For readers wishing to look more into diet and health issues, you may want to read the Diet and Health board on our forum.
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British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.
Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.
Comment: Corporations such as Coca Cola keeping claiming BPA safe. The following articles depict the growing health concerns associated with BPA in food containers and consumer products:
BPA Report Details Chemical's Hazards
Study: Human Exposure to BPA 'Grossly Underestimated'
Bodies of Pregnant Women Polluted with Chemicals Found in Consumer Products
Common Plastic Ingredient Linked to Birth Defects
Bisphenol-A Now Linked to Male Infertility
More States Move to Ban BPA Even While FDA Does Nothing