Health & WellnessS


Biohazard

African swine fever outbreak in Eastern Europe has now spread to Western Europe


Sputnik
Sat, 15 Sep 2018 21:48 UTC
pigs
© RIA Novosti/Igor Zarembo
The highly contagious disease, which has severely afflicted the agriculture business in Eastern Europe over the last several years, has now been found in the western parts of the EU, potentially threatening a ban on meat exports being imposed on local firms.

At least two cases of African swine fever (ASF) have been registered in Belgium, as pigs infected with the virus have been found there. It is unclear so far how the disease made its way to Western Europe, after having hurt the agricultural sector in the eastern part of the EU.

The ASF virus poses little threat to humans, but is deadly for pig populations on farms and, since to it is highly contagious, could lead to mass culling of pigs and boars in the region to prevent the disease from spreading. In Romania alone it cost local farms 230,000 pigs, bringing huge losses, according to some estimates reaching almost $12 million. Moreover, the virus outbreak could prompt the government to impose a ban on pork exports, further increasing losses for the agricultural sector, even for farms that are unaffected.

Comment: This comes after a summer where drought devastated many farms in Europe: And it appears that it's not just animals suffering contagions:

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Beaker

BPA-Free plastics are just as harmful to human health

Ed Cara
Gizmodo
Thu, 13 Sep 2018 14:29 UTC
BPA Free
Plastic products that boast of being "BPA-free" aren't necessarily any safer for us, suggests a new mouse study published Thursday in Current Biology. The chemicals used to replace BPA in these plastics can still leak out and affect the sperm and eggs of both male and female mice, it found. And these same effects could be happening in people.

Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a chemical commonly used to create polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. These clear white plastics are themselves used in food and drink packaging, as well as consumer products and medical devices, while resins are used to coat metal products like canned foods. When these products degrade or are otherwise damaged (from being repeatedly heated in a microwave, for example), they can leach out BPA, exposing us to it. As a result, it's estimated that 93 percent of Americans have some level of BPA in their system.

Comment: Consumer Alert: BPA-Free Goods Still Contain Toxic Bisphenol
Despite industry spokespersons and industry-funded scientists claiming BPA does not possess estrogenic properties of any biological significance, it was first acknowledged and used as an artificial estrogen in the early 1930's, where it was used both to fatten poultry and cattle, as well as a form of estrogen replacement therapy in women in the mid-1930's.[2] Only later, in the 1940's, did Bayer and General Electric use BPA to harden polycarbonate plastics and make epoxy resin, the latter of which is still used to line nearly the entire world's supply of food and beverage containers. Only Japanese industries, which responded to consumer concern about the toxic effects of BPA between 1998-2003, voluntarily reduced BPA in favor of safer alternatives.


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Attention

Big Food manufactures are in big trouble

Jeffery Jaxen
jeffereyjaxen.com
Sun, 09 Sep 2018 14:04 UTC
glyphosate
In August the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released its findings of glyphosate contamination found in popular oat-based foods. EWG found that out of 61 conventional and organic food products tested, 48 were contaminated with the potentially carcinogenic herbicide glyphosate. Furthermore, 43 out of 45 conventional food products were contaminated with 31 of them above the EWG 160 parts per billion safe limit. Most major corporate media outlets happily ran with the EWG findings which constituted a move away from typical censorship, or just plain ignoring, of such reports. Perhaps the extended media coverage the EWG findings enjoyed was due to the recent, still buzzing $289M lawsuit loss delivered to Bayer AG-Monsanto in San Francisco due to cancer caused by the company's Roundup herbicide product. ​

To be fair, other reports over the last few years have alerted the public to widespread glyphosate contamination of our food supply but were met with subdued media coverage. Huffington Post covered the limited data compiled in 2016 by a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chemist and presented at a meeting in Florida showing residues of glyphosate in popular oat-based products. The FDA's testing program was later suspended and the chemist was pulled from further agency glyphosate testing.
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Arrow Down

Chemical revolution - Sperm count 0

Daniel Noah Halpern
GQ
Tue, 04 Sep 2018 12:20 UTC
sperm count

A strange thing has happened to men over the past few decades: We've become increasingly infertile, so much so that within a generation we may lose the ability to reproduce entirely. What's causing this mysterious drop in sperm counts-and is there any way to reverse it before it's too late?

Men are doomed. Everybody knows this. We're obviously all doomed, the women too, everybody in general, just a waiting game until one or another of the stupid things our stupid species is up to finally gets us. But as it turns out, no surprise: men first. Second instance of no surprise: We're going to take the women down with us.

Comment: "The epigenetics are the scary bit," he told me, "because what we're doing now affects the future of the human race." When even the skeptics are scared, it's probably time to pay attention:

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Airplane

Indian pilots lack sleep, 'long hrs' on social media are to blame - Air Force Chief


RT
Fri, 14 Sep 2018 17:25 UTC
Airforce
© Jagadeesh N.V/ReutersIndia Air Force pilots fly during an Aero India display.
In the war for a good night's sleep, India's top air force official has called for the service to develop a system to assess how well rested their pilots are before they fly. "Long hours" on social media are to blame.

"Everybody appears to be spending long hours on social media, late nights," Air Chief Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa told the 57th Indian Society of Aerospace Medicine conference in Bengaluru on Friday.

"Most flight briefings, sometimes, are as early as 6 am and pilots haven't had enough sleep," he added, according to Indian news agency PTI.

Dhanoa went on to say that while the Indian Air Force (IAF) had systems in place to tell if pilots had alcohol in their system before taking to the skies, no such system was in place to test for how well rested they were.
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: The Health & Wellness Show: Health News Headlines: The Good, the Bad and the Completely Insane


Sott.net
Fri, 14 Sep 2018 15:00 UTC
surprise shock
I know, dude. We're all freakin' out.
On this episode of The Health and Wellness Show we touch on some of the latest news in the health-o-sphere. Despite the ongoing hate campaign against low carb diets there are quiet whispers that red meat, fat and cheese aren't the devils they're made out to be. Can we finally cut gluten some slack and turn our attention to that spawn of Mon-Satan, glyphosate, and it's more vicious little brother, Dicamba, as a major cause of our bodily woes? Are magic mushrooms more than just for trippin'? And finally, we'll try to answer that not-so-age-old question of whether or not coconut oil is poison. Join us!

And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she tells us everything we never knew about sloths!

Running Time: 01:11:28

Download: MP3

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Pills

Oregon sues Purdue Pharma, claims it misrepresented OxyContin risks


CBS Sacramento
Thu, 13 Sep 2018 13:07 UTC
opioids oxycontin
© Associated Press/Toby Talbot
Oregon's attorney general on Thursday sued the pharmaceutical company that makes OxyContin, saying it misrepresented the risks and benefits of the drug and lied to a state regulatory agency to maximize profits.

A spokesman at Purdue Pharma, targeted by Thursday's lawsuit in Multnomah Circuit Court, denied the allegations.

Spokesman Bob Josephson said the state was inappropriately substituting its judgment for the judgment of experts at U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Comment:

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Beaker

Holy Schmeat! FDA and USDA debate the future of lab-grown meat

Rachel England
engadget.com
Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:53 UTC
schmeat
The joint meeting will address public concerns and regulatory issues.

It's inevitable that lab-grown meat will play some kind of role in the future of food supply, but at this stage, it's unclear how much of a role, or what its regulatory frameworks will look like. This is why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are hosting a joint public meeting on the issue, to address public concerns about cell-cultured meat products and to examine how they will fit into existing food systems.

Comment: Inside the meat lab: The future of food:

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Bullseye

The ongoing battle for meaningful food labelling

Michael Levitin & Terry Slavin
ethicalcorp.com
Mon, 03 Sep 2018 21:53 UTC
GMO labels

The contentious battle over mandatory GMO labelling rages on months after the deadline for federal regulation.

Two years after former US President Barack Obama signed a law mandating the disclosure of all genetically modified (GMO) ingredients on food packaging, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has overshot the July 31 deadline to bring in new food labelling laws, amid rising consumer opposition to GMO food.

The USDA received more than 14,000 comments when it published its proposed National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard in May, and though the consultation period ended July 3, Gregory Jaffe, the director of the Project on Biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, suggests that it will be "several months" before the USDA publishes the new food labelling standards.
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Microscope 2

Monkeypox diagnosed for the first time in the UK in naval officer visiting from Nigeria

Dianne Apen
Daily Mail
Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:29 UTC
Royal Free Hospital
The patient was transferred to the expert infectious disease unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, pictured, on Saturday morning
Monkeypox has been discovered in the UK for the first time ever, Public Health England have said.

The rare viral infection was recorded on Friday in a Nigerian national staying at a naval base in Cornwall.

The patient was transferred to the expert infectious disease unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London on Saturday morning.

They are believed to have contracted the infection in Nigeria before travelling to the UK.

Comment: Rare infections appear to be on the rise in recent years, and they're being discovered over a much wider geographical area: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Health & Wellness Show: Syphilitic Superpower: The rise of STDs

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