New York, NY Contrary to the claims of the activist group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), there is no scientific validity to fears that diesel exhaust emissions from school buses pose a cancer risk to schoolchildren.
This was the conclusion reached by scientists affiliated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), which today released a peer-reviewed analysis entitled School Buses and Diesel Fuel. The ACSH report criticized a recently promoted report on diesel exhaust, authored by the NRDC.

Overview: Questions and Answers on AIDS in New York City
By Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan
President, ACSH
Question 1

In regard to "Spending on Prescription Drugs Rose 19%" (Economy, May 8): I fear that many readers will view this significant increase on drug spending in 2000 as more bad news about health care in the U.S. Yet if we consider how many patients have been helped by the very drugs that are responsible for this rise in spending, we might instead see this as a step forward.

A World-Wide item May 16 referred to a report on dioxin by the EPA's Scientific Advisory Board concluding that "dioxin causes cancer." Perhaps true, if you were referring to rats. While agreeing that the evidence was sound to incriminate dioxin as a rodent carcinogen, there was "a lack of consensus . . . with regard to whether [dioxin] satisfies EPA's 1996 draft cancer Guidelines criteria for a human cancer hazard." The board members could not even agree that dioxin was a carcinogen in highly exposed workers.

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) today announced the addition of nine distinguished scientists, physicians, and policy experts to its Board of Directors. Directors are responsible for the overall direction of ACSH, such as setting organizational policy and overseeing the executive staff.
The new directors are:
Terry L. Anderson, Ph.D., M.S. Executive Director Political Economy Research Center (PERC) Bozeman, MT
Dr. Anderson's career in law and environmental economics enables his providing insight to ACSH on such issues.

Water is necessary to prevent overheating of the body; for fecal, urinary, and perspiratory excretion; and for bodily chemical reactions of numerous kinds. Environmental and physiologic conditions can greatly affect how much water the body loses. For example, in residents of hot climates, perspiratory water losses generally are much more than in residents of temperate regions. Exercising increases such water losses. So does fever.

Humankind has been consuming cows' milk as nourishment for thousands of years. Such use has contributed significantly to the development of civilization. Yet outcries to the effect that cows' milk as food is unhealthful, even poisonous, to humans have occasionally been getting play in the American media. The roots of this incongruity are complex. They lie in the culture of abundance that characterizes the present-day United States. Much of the negativism toward milk relates far less to health concerns than to antagonism toward animal agriculture.

"Canola oil," Rodney W. Flynn apparently said in a message that recently circulated on the Internet, "is a health hazard to use as a cooking oil or salad oil. It is not the healthy oil we thought it was. It is not fit for human consumption, do not eat canola oil, it can hurt you. Polyunsaturated or not, this is a bad oil." Yet in an email response to a question from me, Flynn said of this message: "I am no authority on the subject. As a matter of fact, I did no research.