In an article that seems like a joke, the UK's Daily Mail reports on a study published in the journal Death Studies, which suggests that the first initial of a child's name might affect their longevity by as much as ten years.

The EPA has released the first of its Chemical Action Plans (CAP) targeting phthalates, following EPA chief Lisa Jackson's pledge last September to more closely scrutinize chemicals that cause public concern.
"Lisa Jackson said in September that increasing public concern about chemicals would result in more EPA regulation," says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. "Well, it's speeches like those that generate public concern when there's no reason for it," as Ross warned in an op-ed at the time.

France is trying to sell surplus doses of H1N1 vaccine that they purchased under the impression that everyone would need two doses for full immunity.
"They have 65 million citizens, and they ordered 94 million doses," says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. "It turns out only 5 million of them were vaccinated. I'd say they overestimated."

In an article with the headline "Philip Morris Pushes Smokeless," today's Wall Street Journal reports "Tobacco giant Philip Morris USA Inc. is urging the Food and Drug Administration to adopt a regulatory plan that would encourage smokers who can't or won't quit tobacco to switch to less-harmful smokeless tobacco."

Remember the commotion last year about radioactive granite in our kitchen counters?
That story's just one of 10 health stories from 2008 identified as "hoaxes" by the American Council on Science and Health, a nonprofit group of scientists and physicians that advocates a common-sense approach to maintaining good health, writes the Washington Post.

A new study by the Jules Stein Eye Institute of UCLA indicates that quitting smoking reduces the risk of age-related macular degeneration, which can lead to blindness.
"This is not a surprise, given the known negative vascular effects of smoking," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. "Cigarette smoking definitely plays a role in age-related macular degeneration."
"On the other hand, smoking actually reduces the risk of old-age itself," quips ACSH's Jeff Stier.

he American College of Radiology and the Society of Breast Imaging released guidelines yesterday asserting that mammograms should begin at forty for women with an average risk of breast cancer and by thirty for high-risk women. These recommendations contradict those recently submitted by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which concluded that screening mammograms for women under fifty cause more harm than good.

Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview blog duly criticizes the NBC Today "Eat This, Cure That" segment that advised people to eat certain foods in order to cure what ails them, regardless of whether their claims have any basis in reality. "The segment stated that eating one cup of black beans can help ease migraine pain," writes Schwitzer. "Viewers should be given some data to back that up."

The notorious anti-vaccine activist Barbara Loe Fisher filed a lawsuit against pediatric immunologist and vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit, writer Amy Wallace, and Wired magazine publisher Condé Nast for an article in Wired wherein Wallace quoted Dr. Offit saying of Fischer, "She lies."

According to the Associated Press, the January issue of the journal Pediatrics released yesterday includes a study by a panel of experts, which concludes that "there's no rigorous evidence that digestive problems are more common in children with autism compared to other children, or that special diets work, contrary to claims by celebrities and vaccine naysayers."