Hollywood will make no sequel to Erin Brockovich, nor will Pacific Gas & Electric be reimbursed $333 million. However, after nearly 20 years the truth about hexavalent chromium has finally been revealed by California regulators.
Chemicals & Chemistry
Dicamba is big news in 2017. It's easy to blame agriculture companies but what about farmers who used dicamba with their resistant plants knowing it drifts?
The Environmental Working Group wants your money. And they're very good a getting it by scaring people about nothing. It should be no surprise that the group's latest fundraising letter is big on fears – but super small on science. Here's what we found.
The New York Times smeared a company at the request of an organic food lobby. Instead of behaving like responsible, skeptical journalists they chose to act like a PR firm. Such is the state of affairs at America's self-appointed "Paper of Record."
Apricot seeds are all over the internet - marketed as cancer fighters. But the seeds contain a chemical compound that, when ingested in high quantities (and by high we mean several seeds), can cause cyanide poisoning.
An interesting finding, that a sunscreen chemical may be useful in treating multiple sclerosis, gave us an unexpected treat: an opportunity to pound the chemical-scares industry. The sunscreen ingredient, homosalate, like just about every other chemical in the world, has been called an "endocrine disruptor" by groups like EWG. Too bad the paper that's cited as proof shows that it's not one at all.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily people can be manipulated into worrying about nothing simply because the "nothing" is portrayed as (but really isn't) scary, while at the same time pay no attention to a "something" because it is portrayed as healthy (which is just as wrong).
Heavy metals get a bad rap. For the most part, it is deserved because they are usually toxic. Except when they aren't. You have probably consumed a whole lot of at least one or two of them and are just fine. Here's why.
"Science" took a walk on the wild side in a recent New York Times piece. It tried to tell us that the tiny amount of a class of chemicals found in macaroni and cheese (and everywhere else on Earth) is going to wreak havoc with our sex hormones. It's so bad, it's almost funny.
Our society is woefully illiterate on scientific matters. Yet instead of taking the opportunity to educate customers about the benefits of food science, some companies have chosen to cash in on public ignorance.
Though chlorine has been attacked as being "dangerous" to one's health, it's got a health-supporting side, too. In pools it combines with nitrogen-containing compounds to take them out of circulation. How do they get there in the first place? A recent study showed that (like it or not) people pee in pools — and the presence of artificial sweeteners proves it.
Junkscience.com has informed the New England Journal of Medicine that it may have been the victim of scientific misconduct regarding a paper recently published on air pollution and mortality. The contention was that material information was omitted from the work.