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ACSH's Holiday Dinner Menu is our most popular publication of all time. And, how could it not be? Can any of you honestly tell me how you could not be captivated by a menu that tells you that there is a carcinogen in every bite of every item on the menu? 

I thought not. 

Yet, most Americans elect to take their chances and partake in the annual feast, despite knowing with absolute certainty that they will die if they have that meal. However, among the masses, there is a more evolved and enlightened group – those who choose to lead a chemical-free life. How I envy them! If only I could summon up the discipline to live this way I might even survive long enough to see the Knicks win another NBA championship (1)

But it is not to be....

In a Dispatch article Monday, ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom excoriated a study that tried (and failed miserably) to link exposure to BPA with childhood asthma. Apparently, he has a bit more to say on this matter. You can read his typically mild-mannered and non-judgemental op-ed, Maybe the Worst Paper Ever? here.

bpa yourlocalmarkets.blogpost.com

When the EU adopted the anti-science precautionary principle as its guiding paradigm a decade or more ago, we don t think anyone (except perhaps its anti-progress advocates) had any idea how low the regulatory process would stoop in service of its ideology. This misguided concept asserts that any process or substance which has not been proven safe should be restricted or banned out of an excess of precaution, until such time as such proof can be obtained. The fact that proving a negative is impossible and unscientific is not taken into account, nor is the fact that if...

An alarmist TIME article presents yet another dubious Environmental Health Perspectives study as factual. This time, researchers purport that even BPA-free plastics can leach so-called “endocrine disruptors” into the human body. The researchers made extracts of 455 common plastic products by applying saline or ethanol to the plastics. These extracts, containing chemicals derived from the plastic, were added to breast cancer cell cultures and subsequently measured for “estrogenic...

Should John Oliver decide that he's had enough, perhaps because generating sarcasm is exhausting, there is someone who can slip seamlessly into his seat. Jonathan Jarry, who is a member of the McGill Office on Science and Society (Director Dr. Joe Schwarcz) won't even have to break a sweat. 

Jarry's latest video in his the series "Cracked Science" concludes that The Boogeyman, who can take various forms, is responsible for all human disease.

In Hungary. The Boogeyman is called the "Copperpenis Owl," something that Schwarcz, who is...

New York, NY -- December 11, 2006. The frequently-made claim that exposure to low doses of environmental chemicals is often more hazardous than exposure to high doses of the same chemical is false. So says a peer-reviewed report released this today by a national science panel. Proponents of the "low dose theory" or the "endocrine disruptor hypothesis" argue that tiny doses of chemicals can be harmful, and they demand the removal of such chemicals from a variety of consumer products.

The scientific evidence that supposedly supports the "low dose hypothesis" is weak and unconvincing, according to Are "Low Dose" Health Effects of Chemicals Real?...

I like comedy news host John Oliver. He was among the top nine funniest guys in the first season of "Community" and he even won an Emmy when Jon Stewart made the jokes of Oliver's colleagues sound hilarious. So I was excited on Saturday when I got to send an email to our Board of Trustees and the staff at the American Council on Science and Health giddy that Oliver, host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight", was going to do a hit piece on us.

Maybe it's not a hit piece, maybe he is pro-vaccine, one replied, and is going to applaud our work on that. Or cheer our dismantling Dr. Oz and his supplement empire (along with half his audience) in 2015. Or note how we helped cause smoking in the US to collapse...

Endocrine disruptors are substances that interfere with or alter hormones, which are part of the endocrine system. Most attention focuses on chemicals, particularly pesticides, that cause these effects, i.e., “endocrine disrupting chemicals.” The purpose of EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program is to determine which chemicals cause these effects and then to ban or severely limit their use.

Endocrine disruption is an important issue, but there is a fundamental flaw in the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. There is no yes-no answer as to whether a chemical is an endocrine disruptor. The issue is much more complicated and includes substances other than the chemicals evaluated by EPA.

EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program

The EPA’s...

ACSH's Holiday Dinner Menu is our most popular publication of all time. And, how could it not be? Can any of you honestly tell me how you could not be captivated by a menu that tells you that there is a carcinogen in every bite of every item on the menu? 

I thought not. 

Yet, most Americans elect to take their chances and partake in the annual feast, despite knowing with absolute certainty that they will die if they have that meal. However, among the masses, there is a more evolved and enlightened group – those who choose to lead a chemical-free life. How I envy them! If only I could summon up the discipline to live this way I might even survive long enough to see the Knicks win another NBA championship (1)

But it is not to be....

As we begin a new year, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) would first like to try and slay the demons and hobgoblins of the past year. We do this each New Year s Eve by making a list of the top unfounded health scares of the outgoing year. These bouts of hysteria are prompted by many different things. But what they have in common is that there s no scientific evidence to back up the alarms being sounded.

Here s our top ten:

l.) Bisphenol-A (BPA) has been used for more than 50 years in the manufacture of everything from life-saving medical devices to water bottles, eyeglass lensesand CD s. It more than earned the unfounded scare of the year award. Not only does BPA not threaten health it actually promotes public health when used...