Consumers
revere | December 18, 2007It is taking the Occupational Safety and Health Administratiohn (OSHA) a long time to write rules to protect flavoring workers from a serious lung disease called bronchiolitis obliterans, linked to artificial butter flavor used in microwave popcorn. According to the public health blog, The Pump Handle (which has been instrumental in keeping the diacetyl story alive), OSHA has initiated a rulemaking. But meanwhile another factor is pre-empting OSHA's tardy start. The market:
ConAgra has removed a controversial chemical from its microwave popcorn that gives the snack a buttery, creamy taste,…
revere | December 13, 2007I'm not one of those people that thinks bloggers are all powerful but I know that blogs are often an effective way to expose bad behavior by some corporations. If I know this, you'd think everyone in the corporations would know it, too. I guess the word didn't get out to Best Buy:
Best Buy sent a cease and desist letter to blogger Scott Beale (Laughing Squid) for having had the audacity to blog news that prankster/comedy troupe Improv Everywhere selling t-shirts that were a parody of the Best Buy brand. Whether or not the parody is legally in the clear is one matter, but Best Buy…
revere | December 7, 2007This post is about something I've wanted to write about for a while, but never found the time. That's still true, but I've just spent five days as a natural environment for a norovirus or something similar. The good news is I lost 5 pounds. But the bad news -- and there was a lot of it -- is that as I recover I am desperately trying to catch up on too many urgent things that didn't get done. Still, this story is something I want to write about, so I'll do it more briefly now and come back at some later point for more analysis. What's bothering me? Press embargoes:
The World Health…
revere | November 20, 2007It's OK for storm victims to live in them, but don't let your employees enter them: FEMA. Who else?
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is barring employees from entering thousands of stored travel trailers over concerns about hazardous fumes, while more than 48,000 other trailers continue to be used by hurricane victims in Louisiana and Mississippi.
FEMA is advising employees not to enter any of the roughly 70,000 trailers in storage areas across the country, but the directive does not apply to other trailers still in use, agency spokeswoman Mary Margaret Walker said Thursday. (AP; hat…
revere | November 3, 2007I've been to plenty of scientific meetings sponsored by federal agencies in the last several years where we have either had to do weird back door stuff just to have coffee breaks as part of the program or if we are sponsoring it and inviting federal scientists and staff they have to go off and have lunch on their own nickel so they won't run afoul of conflict of interest regs. They would be taking a "gift" from us if they ate food we paid for. OK. I get the principle. Some of it is bureaucratic and dumb but where do you draw the line? Now I find out where the big guys draw the line:
The chief…
revere | October 19, 2007I don't have fantasies involving 75 year old women. At least not yet. But I remember comedian Gary Shandling once remarking he knew he was getting old when Mrs. Beaver started to look good to him (as in Leave it to Beaver, the TV show, you knuckleheads). However there is one 75 year old that could tempt me: Mona "The Hammer" Shaw.
Mona signed up for Comcast Cable's Triple Play: cable, internet and phone. But she couldn't even get to first base (excuse the mixed metaphor) and get it installed:
Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but…
revere | September 4, 2007The argument about whether bloggers ever do real reporting is not very interesting to us, but suffice it to say there are numerous instances where they do the same thing as journalists, even in the tiny public health blogosphere. A case in point is my colleague. Dr. David Michaels at The Pump Handle (TPH), who has been dogging the story of flavoring workers lung (aka popcorn workers lung) from the outset, and has even broken a few stories. Today's post at TPH may be the most significant entry yet. But first, some background.
It is now known that an ingredient in microwave popcorn with…
revere | September 2, 2007Politics aside, Mrs. R. and I are real Americans in one important way. We like to shop. Not shop as in "buy." We couldn't afford that. Shop as in entertainment. We like each other's company (we've had many years to get used to it), so when we go to a new place we wander in and out of shops, looking at things. Maybe not the most uplifting of pursuits -- better we should be going to museums, I suppose -- but we like it. So a new study by The Nielsen Company (TV ratings) piqued our interest. Essentially it wanted to know what went into brand loyalty and why that loyalty seemed to be more…