Health & WellnessS


Recycle

Lead found in reusable shopping bags


CBC
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 01:11 UTC
reausable grocery bags
© iStockAn investigation by a Florida newspaper found high levels of lead in some of the reusable shopping bags it had tested.
An investigation by a Florida newspaper has found concentrations of lead in reusable shopping bags.

Most of the two dozen bags tested by Thornton Laboratories, on behalf of the Tampa Tribune, had more than five parts per million (ppm) of lead, with some containing more than 100 ppm.

Health Canada says that most toy manufacturers voluntarily conform to European standards that limit the amount of extractable lead in toys to 90 ppm.

The only chain included that has outlets in Canada, Wal-Mart, tested below five ppm for the bags it sells. It's unknown whether any Canadian retailers are selling the same types of reusable bags that tested for higher concentrations of lead.

Thornton labs found that reusable bags with elaborate illustrations were more likely to contain higher levels of lead. Yellow and green paints tend to have higher levels of lead.
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Question

Distorted Body Image Means People Don't Know the Back of Their Own Hands

Alok Jha
The Guardian, UK
Sun, 14 Nov 2010 14:00 UTC
Image
© PNASTrue locations of knuckles and tips of each finger (black dots) and subjects' judgements of where they are (white dots). Average hand shape is given as solid lines for the actual hand and as dotted lines for subjective judgements
A study suggests our brains have highly distorted representations of the size and shape of our own hands. The distortion may extend to other body parts, skewing body image

You may think you know the back of your hand like, well, the back of your hand. But think again. Scientists have found that our brains contain highly distorted representations of the size and shape of our hands, with a strong tendency to think of them as shorter and fatter than they really are.

The work could have implications for how the brain unconsciously perceives other parts of the body and may help explain the underpinnings of certain eating disorders in which people's body image becomes distorted.

In the study, neuroscientists at University College London asked more than 100 volunteers to place their left hand palm-down on a table. The researchers covered the volunteers' hands with a board and then asked them to indicate on it where they thought landmarks such as fingertips and knuckles lay underneath. This data was used to reconstruct the "brain's image" of the hand.

The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed a consistent overestimation of the width of the hand. Many of the volunteers estimated their hand was around 80% broader than it really was.
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Pills

How Super Skinny TV Stars Are Harming Our Health

Aric Sigman
The Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:10 UTC
Image
© AP PhotoMTV host Alexa Chung
Jutting collar bones, ­Twiglet legs and razor-sharp cheek bones. It wasn't so long ago that these were unenviable signs that a woman had lost too much weight or, worse, was suffering from an eating disorder.

Now, however, it's hard to think of a female celebrity who isn't that thin - not just models and actresses, but news­readers and children's TV presenters. So much so that women and children not only view skeletal frames as normal, but as something they wish to emulate.

There has been an 80 per cent rise in young girls being hospitalised with ­anorexia in the past ten years. And body dissatisfaction is affecting younger and younger children.

In a recent study ­published in the British Journal of ­Developmental Psychology, almost half of the three to six-year-old girls surveyed said they worried about being fat.

Yet any serious correlation between visual media and the rise of eating disorders has largely been dismissed. Until now, so-called 'body politics' has been a cultural and psychological debate, owned by feminists and eating-disorder therapists. They dismissed blaming the visual media as too simplistic.
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Bug

DHS Report: 70% Chance Disease Will Escape Proposed Biodefense Laboratory

Martin Matishak
Global Security Newswire
Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:38 UTC
agro ,defense, facility
© U.S. Homeland Security Department imageA rendering of the U.S. National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility planned for Manhattan, Kansas. In a report issued yesterday, the National Research Council said a government safety evaluation for the proposed facility contained "several major shortcomings".

This November 16 article should have stated that a calculation that there is a nearly 70 percent chance a pathogen could escape the planned Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas was made by a National Research Council panel based on data from a U.S. Homeland Security Department risk assessment. The NRC panel also estimated economic losses of between $9 billion and $50 billion from a postulated foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

Washington -- An expert panel said yesterday the U.S. Homeland Security Department has not adequately gauged the potential risks associated with a proposed multimillion-dollar infectious-disease research laboratory in Kansas (see GSN, May 20 ).

There are "several major shortcomings" in a department risk assessment of its planned National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility near Manhattan, Kansas, according to a report by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The proposed site is roughly 120 miles west of Kansas City.

The facility's construction is expected to cost between $500 million and $700 million. The 520,000-square-foot center, slated to begin construction in 2012, would study highly infectious animal-borne pathogens, some of which could pose a threat to humans. It would replace the Plum Island Disease Center located near Long Island, New York, which was established in 1937.

The new site would also be the world's third Biosafety-Level 4 Pathogen laboratory to work with large animals. The other two such facilities are in Australia and Canada.
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Red Flag

Research Suggests Mercury Linked to Dementia


Physorg.com
Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:34 UTC
Image
© physorg.comProfessor Richard Deth
New research by Northeastern University professor Richard Deth and academic colleagues in Germany suggests that long-term exposure to mercury may produce Alzheimer's-like symptoms in people.

Deth also discovered a probable biological mechanism through which mercury can destroy neurological brain function in humans.

The findings were reported this month in a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

The team of researchers conducted a literature review of more than 100 experimental and clinical studies on mercury exposure in cell models, animals and humans. They found that animals exposed to mercury exhibited many of the pathological changes associated with the Alzheimer's disease, including memory loss, poor cognitive performance and confusion.

Comment: To learn more about detoxing mercury for better health and wellness read the following:

Mercury: How to Get this Lethal Poison Out of Your Body

Chelation Detox Eliminates Mercury and Heavy Metals and Leads to Better Health

In addition read the extensive thread on the forum:

Detoxification: Heavy Metals, Mercury and how to get rid of them

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Family

To Read Others' Emotions, It Helps to be Poor

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:01 UTC
empathy
© Unknown
Money can't buy you happiness - or social skills, apparently. A new study finds those who are poor are better at empathy than the wealthy.

In multiple experiments, people of high socioeconomic status (or people who perceived themselves to be well-off) were worse at judging other people's emotions than those of low socioeconomic status, both when looking at photographs and interacting with real people. The reason may be that people with low income or low education have to be more responsive to others to get by, said study author Michael Kraus, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of California, San Francisco.

"You can see how being empathic provides a better ability to respond to social threats," Kraus told LiveScience. "It also gives you an opportunity to respond to social opportunities."
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Target

Genetically Modified Foods and the Monsanto Initiative

Steven Forrest
OpEd News
Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:39 UTC
Image
© unknown
"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson

Deception, manipulation, propaganda and profit: These words have become the basis of the American corporate and political landscape without any seeming concern or guilt over their promulgation. One company in particular, which seems to be the iconographic example of this is Monsanto or so go the claims today by the "conspiracy crowd" in reaction to the Genetically Modified (GM) food technology and its apparent governmental backing.

In order to understand the purpose of GM foods and the reasons stated for its implementation, the powers that be will tell us we need only look at the current global environment and the necessity of solutions to provide an adequate food supply to those in need in the global community. Farmable land and access to water, energy, and biological resources are not as plentiful in many countries as they are in many parts of America. These shortages equate to low crop yield which means certain death and starvation to many people around the world each year.


Comment: The Food Crisis is Not About a Shortage of Food
Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? This premise is put forward and supported by those who would benefit financially if their "solution" were implemented. Corporations peddle their high technology genetically engineered seed and chemical packages, their genetically altered animals, always with the "promise" of feeding the world.
...
Food shortages are seldom about a lack of food, there is plenty of food in the world, the shortages occur because of the inability to get food where it is needed and the inability of the hungry to afford it. These two problems are principally caused by, as Francis Moore Lappe' put it, a lack of justice. There are also ethical considerations, a higher value should be placed on people than on corporate profit, this must be at the forefront, not an afterthought.
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Video

The World According to Monsanto: The History of Agent Orange


Salem-News.com
Sun, 14 Nov 2010 18:27 UTC
Monsanto insists that its genetically modified crops are safe. Their history however includes the deaths of millions from Agent Orange...

This is a clip from the French documentary The World According to Monsanto. It summarizes the history of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide produced by Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and other companies.
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Beaker

Flashback Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury


Washington Post
Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:44 UTC
High Fructose Corn Syrup
© quest.tvHigh Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.
"Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,"
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.
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Beaker

Frankenplants in the service of Big Pharma: Scientists develop GMO plant that produces pharmaceutical drugs

Ethan A. Huff
Natural News
Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:46 UTC
GMO plant
© Keith Wood (of DeLuca lab) for Science Magazine
Splicing and dicing natural plant compounds and patenting them for profit may be a thing of the past for drug companies, at least in terms of them having to do it manually in a laboratory. It might seem like something out of a science fiction movie, but a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has actually developed a way to genetically engineer plants that are programmed to create pharmaceutical drugs instead of their natural healing compounds.

You read that right. Sarah O'Connor and her colleagues from MIT added bacterial genes to periwinkle plants that altered their natural alkaloid production system, causing them to accept external chemical additions. Chemists then added halogens like chlorine and bromine to the plants' biosynthetic mechanisms, which altered the composition of the final alkaloids. So instead of producing their natural alkaloids, the altered periwinkles literally started producing synthetic pharmaceutical drug versions of those alkaloids instead.
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