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ChemicalsIn the recent Independent Women s Forum, CEI s Angela Logomasini dissects the hype from the facts about so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals. She points out (as we here at ACSH have been saying for years) that the term itself has no real scientific or medical meaning, outside of its repeated (emphatic) use by those with an anti-chemical agenda and their pals in the media....

A new weight-loss program for kids has shown promising results and we re pleased to note that the program did not involve reducing the participants dietary levels of BPA. In fact, as Dr. Whelan observes, the pilot program for kids relied on entirely rational methods.

For the study, published in Pediatrics, scientists at Temple University s Center for Obesity Research and...

Pregnant women with cancer may be relieved to know that a new (albeit small) study shows that children exposed to chemotherapy in utero develop just as well as those in the general population. In their study, published in The Lancet Oncology, researchers in Belgium recruited 68 pregnant women who received an average of three to four cycles of chemotherapy, then later assessed various health parameters in their children.

Ranging in age from 1.5 to 18 years old at the time of the assessment, the 70 children were evaluated in...

Much to the delight of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) continues to trumpet scientifically senseless and burdensome regulation to “protect” children from so-called toxic chemicals. Sen. Lautenberg has been trying to revamp the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 since 2005, and his crusade continues now with his introduction of the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011. The new bill, if passed, would require chemical companies to abide by the precautionary principle, proving their products are completely risk-free for human health and the environment prior to their sale and distribution. Companies would be required to submit all health and safety data to the EPA,...

Last May, a body calling itself the President’s Cancer Panel issued a report blaming environmental chemicals for causing cancer in America and calling for stricter regulation of chemicals to protect Americans from these supposed dangers. Despite widespread scorn among experts — including the American Cancer Society — the 2010 President’s Cancer Panel report was used as a platform for a New England Journal of Medicine perspective piece. The journal and the author decided to promote the Panel’s findings in order to “combat” the supposedly growing threat of “toxic” chemicals in the environment.

In his...

California is a trendsetter.  

It’s home to world-class wine, championship basketball teams, beautiful weather, and legendary cities like San Francisco. But my home state, sadly, is also a trendsetter when it comes to wrongheaded public health policy. There’s no better example of this than Proposition 65, a law that has cost California businesses close to $300 million as of 2016.

Originally approved by voters in 1986, the law empowers the state government to regulate the use of chemicals, over 800 and counting, that it deems toxic to human health and the environment. Scientific shortcomings aside, the language of Prop. 65 has exposed California’s businesses to an...

In October 2017, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) added to the weight of evidence they care more about media attention than science by publishing a "Letter" claiming that glyphosate was detected in urine. Their media bait worked. For example, a journalist at TIME rewrote the press release and used Paul Mills, the lead author and adjunct at a California university for a quote, without bothering to use Google for five seconds and learn his degree came from Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, which teaches transcendental meditation and yoga and is...

Following a year filled with baseless attacks on chemicals ranging from phthalates to BPA, a United Nations-sponsored research team released a report blaming these everyday chemicals for an increase in birth deformities, hormonal cancers and psychiatric diseases among many, many other conditions of vague or indeterminate etiology, including cancers of various types, obesity, you-name-it. The report also claims that these Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals could be linked to declines in human male sperm count and female fertility. This report, an update to a 2002 study on the proposed dangers of these chemicals, declares that these chemicals represent a global threat that needs to be...

Forty years after publishing the groundbreaking study linking in utero diethylsilbestrol (DES) exposure to a rare vaginal cancer — clear-cell adenocarcinoma (CCA) — the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has come out with a historical perspective piece on this incredible story. Over five decades ago, DES started off as a prescription drug to prevent miscarriages based on a single 1948 study. Subsequent studies failed to support its efficacy for maintaining pregnancy, but it was still widely prescribed — until a 1971 study revealed its ill effects....

If you want to look for the day when chemophobia - an irrational fear of harmless trace chemicals - came into being, September 6th, 1958 has to be in the running.

On that day, the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, a modification of the United States' Food, Drugs, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, went into force. It was called the Delaney Clause, after Congressman James Delaney of New York, who pushed for it due to reasons that remain unclear (1). Prior to the modification, the United States'...