For over twenty-five years, the American Council on Science and Health has served as the voice of reason and sound science in often contentious debates about the role of food, nutrition, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and lifestyle factors in determining health risks.

Click here for our feisty, often-updated "blog" (web log): http://HealthFactsAndFears.com

The authors of a report in the latest Radiology, a peer-reviewed medical journal, estimate that exposure to the radiation from one total-body CT scan -- often called a "CAT scan" -- may increase the risk of cancer by a small, but not negligible, amount. The researchers make this estimate by analogy to the measured radiation exposure of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the rate of cancer in those survivors.

When it comes to fats, I call for eating a smart balance of different types rather than a complete abandonment, every three decades or so, of one type of fat.
"Everything has its pros and cons," Robert M. Reeves, president of a Washington trade group called the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post article today about food manufacturers trying to get every last ounce of trans-fats out of foods like cookies and chips.

ACSH Director Dr. Henry I. Miller takes on former New England Journal of Medicine editor Dr. Marcia Angell in his Wall Street Journal review of her new book, The Truth About the Drug Companies. The book attacks the pharmaceutical industry -- a reminder that the charges often heard from conspiracy theorists about medical journal editors being mere tools of the pharmaceutical industry are false. Miller counters Angell's criticisms with some perspective about how bad things were in past decades, without some of the industry's recent innovations.

An Associate Research professor at George Washington University's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health is advising other professors to show the documentary Fallon, NV: Deadly Oasis to students.
The film is touted by Physicians for Social Responsibility as an "emotionally compelling documentary that illustrates the link between environmental exposures and health."

In the midst of unfounded health scares claiming that fish consumption is hazardous to your health, a recent study actually encourages increased fish intake. On July 19, 2004, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues published a study in the journal Circulation that attributes reduced risks of atrial fibrillation* to increased consumption of broiled or baked fish.

A shorter version of this letter was sent to the Times -- and to the Houston Chronicle, which reprinted the Times piece under discussion:
To the editor:

Fortunately, Julia Child was honored in life as she is now being honored in death. She was rightly known for her TV cooking shows, her fabulous cookbooks, and her magnificent sense of humor. To some, mass culture is an oxymoron, to which we can add another, equally threatening, oxymoron: democratic elitism. For that is a defining characteristic of Julia Child's life; she democratized what had been the historic province and exclusive privilege of a tiny elite. In fact, today in our cuisine as well as our daily life, we enjoy much that even elites of prior times never experienced.

We spend the summer weekends on a barrier island off the southern coast of New Jersey. Our eighteen-mile long island is extremely vulnerable to the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes. Thus, this weekend we kept a close eye on Charley, wondering if the hurricane would re-energize as it swept northward.
As we checked the weather forecast on 1010WINS.com and other sites, we came across this advertisement:

Farmed salmon is getting yet another grilling this summer. Reports in an environmental journal once again suggest that contamination with "chemicals" (this time including fire-retardant chemicals) makes salmon a less than healthy food.
There are many, however, who beg to differ.