Anti-chemical activists are banding together this week to say numerous illnesses are caused by the combined influence of numerous chemicals, and they say the Centers for Disease Control affirms their view. It doesn't. Read my TechCentralStation.com column about it:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&C…

"It is absolutely essential for the protection of our consumers that a national frying limit be set at 175C."

Recent research from the Harvard School of Public Health and Sweden's Karolinska Institute found no link between consumption of acrylamide from foods and the occurrence of colon, bladder, or kidney cancers just as ACSH predicted.

Judge Robert Sweet of the U.S. District Court in New York dismissed a lawsuit against the McDonald's Corporation that accused the fast food giant of causing the obesity of two New York teens. Perhaps the plaintiff's supporters are outraged that McDonald's doesn't query customers about their caloric needs before selling them burgers and fries.

There are a growing number of reasons to drink alcohol.
No, no, I don't mean because my girlfriend left me or because it's so terribly cold in the big city (the Kyoto Accord against global warming must be working perfectly). I mean that drinking appears to be associated with health benefits:

"If plaintiffs were able to flesh out this argument...it may establish that the dangers of McDonald's products were not commonly well known."
Federal judge Robert Sweet, explaining that lawyers for obese patrons who are suing McDonald's, blaming the restaurant for making them fat, have failed to make their case but have thirty days to file an amended complaint (as noted by CNN).

The search for elevated rates of disease among soldiers exposed to Agent Orange is never-ending, and since diseases do not occur at a perfectly uniform rate throughout the population, occasionally there's bound to be a disease that's unusually common among the vets. (For more on the variation in disease rates, see ACSH's booklet on Cancer Clusters.)

Today brought another reminder that people writing for the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and the reporters responsible for the rest of the paper aren't necessarily on the same wavelength:

To the Editor:
As a physician and public health educator, I say it's self-evident that parents' rights to evade vaccinations for their school-age children stop at classmates' respiratory tracts ("Worship Optional")
Parents seeking "religious" exemptions from vaccinations for their kids should be made aware of recent epidemics of whooping cough and other rare communicable diseases. When vaccination rates drop below 80 percent or so, community ("herd") immunity falters and even vaccinated youngsters become vulnerable.

Obesity rates in the U.S. and other nations both developed and developing have been rising dramatically over the past two decades, and this is certainly a matter of public health concern. Lately, attention has been focused on a particularly alarming trend not only are there more obese American adults, but there are increasing numbers of obese children and teens. Weight is increasing at younger ages, as is the appearance of obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus. But how to stop this trend?