Milk has earned a healthy reputation: adding strength to bones and providing protein, multiple vitamins, and minerals, among other benefits. Its recent hype as a weight loss aid is still being debated, with studies showing mixed results.

Because of improvements in the ability of scientists to measure exceedingly low concentrations of chemicals, it is now possible todetect thousands of substances in human blood, urine, and other bio-logical samples.

Click here to see our Video News Release summarizing the implications of biomonitoring.

Today, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is releasing the Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. Known as "biomonitoring," the practice of measuring extremely small levels of chemicals in human tissue is all the rage these days. Just last week, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) tried to scare us by reporting that they found "toxic chemicals" in umbilical cord blood.

A July 20, 2005 post on the popular blog Overlawyered.com noted the position of ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan on Teflon:
Teflon class action

Only in America: today, a group of Florida attorneys filed a $5 billion class action suit against DuPont claiming that the company has for decades failed to notify consumers of the health risks posed by "Teflon chemicals."
The plaintiffs want DuPont to spend $5 billion to replace the cookware that is allegedly dangerous and provide medical monitoring for the plaintiffs who used the cookware. The suit also demands that Teflon-coated products in the future carry health warning labels.

A July 16, 2005 article by Jeff Montgomery on DelawareOnline.com touted the Environmental Working Group's alarmist report about chemicals in our blood but noted ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan's response:
Elizabeth M. Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, said that EWG had been "trying for years to scare us" about chemicals in the environment. The group provided nothing to show that the levels detected were harmful, Whelan said.

When reading the medical news, you might want to start asking for a second opinion. A report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that it is not unusual for medical studies to contradict one another: 16% of highly-cited original clinical studies were contradicted by subsequent ones, and another 16% were shown by later trials to have overstated results.

A new study suggests that increasing physical activity may be the key to fighting the obesity epidemic -- despite all the recent emphasis on food consumption and schemes to tax or ban "junk food."

There was substantial media coverage this week of the claim by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), based on analyses of a small number of umbilical blood samples, that newborn babies are exposed even before birth to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals. Few stories put the disturbing assertions in perspective.