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angrytoxicologist
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Posts by this author
October 15, 2007
PUR water wasn't content with removing impurities from your water so they decided that they would put some back in...and then charge you for it!
I am talking about PUR Flavor Options. No joke, after they filter your water they add artificial flavors. All over the website are testimonials about how…
October 10, 2007
Good reading for today:
Ken Sepkowitz on why we should eat more excrement. Truly, he makes an excellent point. One other thing that he doesn't mention is that as we get safer the outbreaks that exist look worse and worse. Has anyone done a study of whether eating charred foods protects against…
October 9, 2007
National Healthy Moms Health Babies Coalition issued a statement that women who are pregnant (or breastfeeding, or trying to get pregnant, or not trying but might be anyway, or dreaming about being pregnant, or know someone who's dreaming about...) should eat at least 12 oz of fish per week (all…
October 5, 2007
Perhaps I should call this entry Mr Kawamura, CA secretary of the state department of Food and Agriculture, is a moron.
Background
The Monterey area has a problem with the light brown apple moth. Apparently it's been there for a while but now the state is concerned. They want to spray a pheramone…
October 4, 2007
That hed refers both to the fact that I promised to post on this last week and didn't as well as the fact that there have been way too few studies of Thimerosal given it's controversial status. you have probably all heard about the study. If fact, go over to Respectful Insolence and read all about…
October 2, 2007
Sounds like the hed from The Onion, right? Sadly, it's not. Go watch the NYTimes video (A consumer alerts the world). He started the whole toothpaste concerns a while back. What inside track did that guy use? He read the ingredients. Now I know that I'm thinking way into the future but go with me…
September 28, 2007
The NYTimes reports today on an upcoming HHS OIG (Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General) report among other things audited less than 1% of clinical trial testing sites. When they did show up it was usually after the trial was finished. The worst part of it is, when the…
September 25, 2007
It's nice to a see a good study every once in a while and after about 30 years of debating whether preservatives cause hyperactivity/attention deficit. I can't go into all the studies that have been done because there are too many. Suffice it to say that the methodologies were always lacking, and…
September 21, 2007
I've been AWOL this week on SB; life, apparently, is not concerned with what is convienent for you. Anywho...
The House on thursday passed the FDA reform bill (H.R. 3580) by a huge margin (405-7) and the Senate passed it last night by a voice vote. As an aside, Sen Burr (R-NC) placed a hold on it…
September 14, 2007
Three things I thought you might find interesting today, starting with the shortest:
Don't pass the gas.
When you get crude oil, there is usually a natural gas pocket that goes along with it. Most drillers just burn it off. According to the World Bank, the gas burned off last year was enough to…
September 13, 2007
A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine ($ required) was published this week that found that from 1998 to 2005, adverse drug reactions increased 2.6 times (89,842 in 2005) while the number of scripts written only went up 0.65 times (65%). Fatal events increased 2.7 times.
The real interesting…
September 11, 2007
I couldn't have said it better myself so I won't try. I stumbled accross this yesterday (it's about a month old). Via Slate.
This week, some big thinkers about biotechnology came to Washington for a "progressive bioethics summit." They invited me to go and talk to them. I like these people, but I'm…
September 10, 2007
It must have been a slow news day over at MSN because they headlined a story that was pegged to a study published in 2005 (as far as I can tell). Anyway, the point of the article was that air fresheners aren't good for you. Hopefully this isn't a revelation for anyone (You mean that pumping out…
September 7, 2007
I read a couple of critiques of Going Tribal (Or Tribe depending on whether you watch via the BBC or the Discovery Channel) lately that piqued my interest. The first was by The Times and the other was from Short Sharp Science(S^3).
For the uninitiated, the Times gives a pretty good, if rather…
September 6, 2007
A man who eats a lot of popcorn (2 bags a day) has been diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans (via NYTimes). The fact that diacetyl is still used is rediculous so I re-posted the popcorn/obliterated lung piece. What is interesting about this is that we've all known for a long time that this is…
September 5, 2007
Well, we've gone over why tea supplements aren't a good idea, but the question of chemoprevention by drinking tea is still up in the air. I thought it would be interesting to lay out what's been done. Let's start with the basics:
How would tea inhibit carcinogensis?
No idea. There are dozens of…
August 31, 2007
Meathead of the Week: Sen Criag. He grabbed instant meathead status when he tried to use the excuse that he's got a "wide stance". Hehehe; it's the new "the dog ate my homework".
Where is South Carolina?
We need more maps! Why didn't we think of this before? Oh it's just too good, such as. Now,…
August 30, 2007
That's the hed for the Washington Post story on the study that found that doctors ignored or dismissed patients concerns about side effects and didn't report them to MedWatch (the FDA system for collecting side effects). The Post goes through some reasons for this but I think the end conclusion is…
August 29, 2007
I saw a good documentary on Libby MT (the town that got pummled with asbestos from the surrounding vermeculite mines) last night on PBS's P.O.V. program. You should check it out, there are rebroadcasts in most areas for taping it. Check it out here: P.O.V.
What happend in Libby is really a good…
August 28, 2007
Yesterday FDA proposed a new sunscreen rule that did two things.
1) It set out rules for measuring UVA protection (currently SPF only measures UVB protection. UVB causes burns but UVA is a greater risk for skin cancer). Finally! The new system will give you SPF for UVB (now up to 50+, as far as is…
August 27, 2007
I'm traveling right now but wanted to post a link to NYTimes' "Choking on Growth" series. It's well worth a read (it's not the best written article I've seen - it repeats itself a lot, but the facts make a good story). The author of "The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's…
August 23, 2007
Question from LindaW: What's up with bioidentical hormones? Is it okay to take them?
Bioidentical progesterone is a joke. Don't even think about buying it. Then, consult your doctor with your health concerns.
Bioidentical progesterone is sold on numerous web pages after having been popularized by…
August 22, 2007
From Rueters:
Healthy subjects who received daily caffeine-free green tea extract capsules had an increased production of detoxification enzymes, which may provide some cancer-fighting benefits, study findings show.
"Concentrated green tea extract could be beneficial to those who are deficient in…
August 21, 2007
So I if walked over to your house and dumped something over your fence, that's probably trespassing, unless that something happened to be a box of Krispy Kreme, then it's just tasty. If it's grass clippings, you'd be pissed off; if it's an industrial chemical, you might sue. If I came over with…
August 17, 2007
Meatheads of the week: The passport office. A must read about One Man's Journey Into the Greatest Bureaucracy Ever Assembled over at Slate.
It's been a busy week here on AngryToxicologist with sunscreens and STATS and all. I appreciate the hearty discussions. Please e-mail me other topics that you'…
August 16, 2007
It's cheap, durable, and beautiful. I was going to post on this next week, but Slate beat me to the punch. So instead of reinventing the wheel I'll send you over there. One thing that most people don't think about is the fact that tons of painted items not meant for kids and ceramics not meant for…
August 15, 2007
Friends of Earth put out a report on nanotechnology and sunscreens recently. They bungled it. Big time.
A little background.
Zinc (Zn) and Titanium (Ti) Oxides are the best sun protectants known. They don't break down in the sun and they have broad UVA UVB coverage. However, they are bright opaque…
August 14, 2007
Most cities and towns use chlorine or bromine to disinfect water. When the water is polluted, chlorine or bromine reacts with the pollution (agricultural runoff is probably a bigger problem here than traditional industrial pollution) to create what are called disinfection by-products (DBPs). DBPs…
August 13, 2007
To get right to the heart of the matter, Salon did an article about the risks of bisphenol A (BPA) in plastics. From the land where nothing is harmful, a reply came from Trevor Butterworth (real name) who is an editor at STATS. If you don't know what STATS is, they are a non-profit attached (in…
August 10, 2007
Meathead of the Week: Bonds. Destroyed his moment in the sun years ago when he started doping. Enough said.
Bonus Meatheads: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who have been assuring everyone that the subprime mess has been contained. Oh, except for like our…