The chemical in your baby's bottle
Boston Globe - 3/23/2009. We live in a chemical stew. So pervasive are the chemicals in the food we eat, in the products we use to keep our bodies, clothes, and houses clean, and in keeping our lawns manicured that it has become impossible to avoid them. We are surrounded by chemicals. Over 80,000 are in use and an additional 1,000-2,000 are introduced each year; however, only about 2 percent are tested by regulatory agencies for safety. |
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Study Links DDT Residues, Obesity In Women
Organic Consumers - 3/20/2009. The daughters of women who eat Lake Michigan fish laced with the toxic remnants of DDT are at greater risk of becoming obese, according to a new study. Researchers at Michigan State University have discovered that prenatal exposure to a derivative of DDT -- an insecticide commonly used until it was banned in the 1970s -- may play a role in the obesity epidemic in women. |
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How To Tell If You're Poisoning Yourself With Fish
Discover - 3/19/2009. When the halibut on my hook breaks the surface, writhing in a splash of seawater off the coast of Bolinas, California, I am thinking less of this fish’s fate than of my own. Considering that I plan to kill and eat it, this might seem cruel. Yet inside the fat and muscle cells of this flat, odd-looking creature is a substance as poisonous to me as it is to him: methylmercury, the most common form of mercury that builds up inside people (and fish). At the right dose and duration of exposure, mercury can impair a person’s memory, ability to learn, and behavior; it can also damage the heart and immune system. Even in small quantities, this heavy metal can cause birth defects in fetuses exposed in the womb and in breast-fed newborns whose mothers’ milk is laced with it. |
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Flame retardants create hyperactive mice
Environmental Health News - 3/19/2009. A commonly used flame retardant routinely found in people and house dust alters behavior and brain development in mice, causing hyperactivity and adjustment difficulties that worsened with age. |
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Dioxin alters ability to fight infection, mouse study finds
Environmental Health News - 3/18/2009. Researchers find for the first time that mice exposed to the contaminant dioxin during development or while nursing have a diminished capacity to fight a flu infection later in life. Mouse pups born to pregnant mice that were exposed to a small amount of the ubiquitous and persistent pollutants had fewer white blood cells that normally kill the flu virus and more of a different kind that increases lung inflammation. The increased inflammation can make the disease more severe and recovery more difficult. |
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Legislation targets chemical linked to disease
USA Today - 3/13/2009. Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives have introduced legislation to ban a controversial chemical, bisphenol A, or BPA, from all food and beverage containers. |
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No BPA For Baby Bottles In U.S.
Washington Post - 3/6/2009. The six largest manufacturers of baby bottles will stop selling bottles in the United States made with bisphenol A, a controversial chemical widely used in plastics but increasingly linked to a range of health effects. |
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