While the EPA tries to remove harmless substances from its hazards list, public health officials in Washington’s King County are doing quite the opposite by proposing a ban on the use of e-cigarettes in public places.

On Tuesday, the EPA announced sweet news: it has finally removed saccharin, an artificial sweetener that was temporarily banned in 1977, from its list of hazardous substances.

Looking (once more) to garner attention, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) made a considerable media splash after they announced yesterday that they were starting a lawsuit against McDonald’s. CSPI and California mother Monet Parham are going after Ronald McDonald and friends with mysterious claims that the toys found in the fast-food restaurant’s Happy Meals violate consumer protection laws.

ACSH staffers were disappointed with the science writing in a Los Angeles Times article claiming that the treatment of livestock with antibiotics threatens both animal and human health. Melissa Healy reported yesterday that the FDA found that U.S.-livestock consumed 29 million pounds of antibiotics last year.

Mothers-to-be who received a flu shot during pregnancy are much more likely to protect their infants from contracting the flu, according to a Yale study published in today’s Clinical Infectious Diseases. In this case-controlled study, infants hospitalized for documented influenza were evaluated for the mother's flu vaccination history during pregnancy.

An annual survey shows that for the first time, teen marijuana use may be higher than cigarette smoking, Reuters reports. Conducted by the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the survey of approximately 46,000 students from 396 schools found that 16 percent of eighth graders admitted to using marijuana compared to 14.5 percent last year, while 21 percent of high school seniors reported using marijuana in the past 30 days compared to 19.2 percent who admitted to smoking cigarettes.

Five years ago, environmental activist Erin Brockovich was awarded the Harvard School of Public Health’s Julius B. Richmond Award — their highest honor for the promotion of public health — for her legal efforts to expose the undisclosed leaking of chromium (VI) (hexavalent chromium) by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) into the water supply of the California desert town of Hinkley. Allegedly, this was the cause of a spike in cancer cases among the town’s residents.

The FDA has been excessively precautionary in facilitating approval for drugs to treat terminal diseases, says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross in an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The accelerated drug approval process permits early FDA approval for drugs that combat deadly illnesses if they show promising results in early clinical trials; the drug companies promise to perform follow-up trials assessing drug safety and efficacy to win final approval. As Dr.

Patients and doctors cheered in 2008, when the Food and Drug Administration approved Genentech s Avastin for treating women with advanced breast cancer. Scientists had found that in many cases, the drug could prolong life, and today doctors prescribe it to some 17,500 women a year as their last, best hope.
In July, though, the FDA s advisory board recommended revoking Avastin s approval, which would be a nearly unprecedented step. A final decision will likely come Friday, but the agency usually follows the board s recommendations.

A just-released study about the dietary habits of American children offers a window into some of the problems of contemporary parenting.