The French news agency AFP brings us a story that seems at first like a parody in the style of The Onion but apparently is quite serious: "The current image of Santa Claus promotes obesity, drink-driving, speeding, and an unhealthy lifestyle, says a study from Australia's Monash University published in the British Medical Journal."

The H1N1 flu vaccine is now plentiful enough in almost half of the states that it is no longer reserved for those in high-risk groups only. Health officials are concerned that a decrease in the number of infections across the nation will make people feel that being vaccinated is unnecessary.
"The worry is that with all this supply being available, people will be complacent and think they don't need it," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. "Still, it's a matter of covering the odds, and it's effortless to get the vaccine."

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has done Duhigg one better by actually ranking American cities according to how "toxic" their water supply is.

Yet another front-page article by Charles Duhigg in today's New York Times reiterates his favorite message: America's tap water is extremely dangerous.
(In news that The Times apparently deems less important, the CDC reports that Americans' average life expectancy has reached an all-time high, while the death rate continues its decades-long decline.)

NBC New York tells the horror story of a cancer cluster in New Jersey "in a neighborhood where state health department officials have found elevated rates of kidney cancer in women and non-Hodgkins lymphoma in men. The study stopped short of linking the cancer to the chemical-laden groundwater from the sprawling DuPont plant that takes up 1,455 acres in this Passaic County community."

An FDA panel ruled yesterday that the cholesterol pill Crestor can prevent heart attack, stroke, and death even among people with healthy cholesterol levels, since it also lowers levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an indicator of inflammation that can lead to clogged arteries.

Tara Parker-Pope's "Well" column in yesterday's New York Times discusses in some depth the conundrum of why women with elevated risk of breast cancer are reluctant to take tamoxifen or raloxifene for 'chemoprevention' of breast cancer. These drugs have been proven to reduce the risk of breast cancer (and osteoporosis). She writes, "While [the risks of side effects] are not to be taken lightly, neither are the risks of failing to use tamoxifen; its benefits for breast and bone are substantial. Yet virtually every woman in the study said she would be unlikely to take the drug.

ACSH staffers would like to offer a seat at the table to Ken Green of the American Enterprise Institute for his article on the BPA scare.

If my doctor told me that I had no established risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) but should go on prescription medication to prevent it anyway, I'd look at him like he was from another planet -- Jupiter, perhaps.
But a new analysis of data from a study known as JUPITER (Justification for the Use of statins in Prevention: an Intervention Trial Evaluating Rosuvastatin) suggests that for certain people, the statin drug rosuvastatin (sold as Crestor) could reduce their risk of CHD.

An op-ed from FoodNavigator argues that BPA has become a litmus test for the FDA's leadership abilities: "Each day the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dithers in delivering its verdict on the safety of bisphenol A (BPA) its authority is diminished and its credibility wanes."