Boehringer Ingelheim s new anticoagulant drug Pradaxa was approved yesterday by the FDA to prevent blood clots in patients with atrial fibrillation. Compared to warfarin, an anticoagulant medication that has been in use since the 1950s, Pradaxa does not require frequent monitoring with blood tests. Further, it was more effective at preventing strokes the result of clots being embolized to the brain than the older drug in clinical trials.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is ensuring that ghosts and goblins are not the only things you ll have to fear this Halloween as they send out another infamous scaremongering email. This time EWG is unhappy that the Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF), a national non-profit organization composed of farmers and farm groups, in conjunction with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the U.S.

Following the 2008 federal CPSIA law restricting lead content in children s toys, the Associated Press found in a January investigation that Chinese jewelry manufacturers were supplanting lead with cadmium. Subsequently, the Consumer Product Safety Commission initiated its first of many recalls of cadmium jewelry due to safety concerns associated with the metal. One immediate effect of the CPSC s warning was that McDonald s voluntarily pulled 12 million Shrek glasses last spring after the comission advised parents of the possible toxicity of cadmium.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT), particularly the oft-prescribed estrogen-progesterone combination therapy Prempro, increases the risk of dying from breast cancer, according to a new study. The study, a follow-up to the Women s Health Initiative (WHI), was published in today s Journal of the American Medical Association.

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) — a consortium of 140 environmental activist groups — calls for an expansion of European chemical disclosure rules beyond kids’ toys after finding “elevated” levels of phthalates in everyday products like erasers and pencil cases. EEB claims that the plastic-softening chemicals are to blame for health effects including genital abnormalities in children and declines in male fertility.

The American Heart Association has recommended new guidelines for the performance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). In emergency people are are now advised to give 30 chest compressions first, and then check the airway and administer rescue breaths as needed to children and adults. Previously the guidelines called for the rescue breaths coming before the chest compressions, a system dubbed ABC, for airway-breaths-chest compressions. Now it’s CAB — compressions, airway, breathing.

There s more and more beneficial and lifesaving drugs on the market, so it should be no surprise that more Americans are taking them. But a New York Times article on a study the National Center for Health Statistics released six weeks ago sensationalizes and misrepresents the data.

A thoughtful comment was sent to us recently by Kathleen Hoke Dachille, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. Professor Dachille wrote she agreed with our call to eliminate the philosophical belief exemption for mandatory childhood vaccines, but went on to say: