Airport Scanner Cancer Risk 'Glossed Over,' Says New Report

The U.S. government whitewashed health risks when they put controversial full-body X-ray scanners in airports throughout the country, says a new report. Airport scanners emit radiation that could be responsible for up to 100 cancer deaths of airline passengers each year, according to the report by ProPublica and the PBS NewsHour.

Questions of safety have dogged the X-ray scanners since they were introduced to American airports two years ago. In Boston, representatives of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) union believe the scanners could be responsible for a cluster of cancers among airport security workers, according to Time. And experts believe they raise the risk of cancer for ordinary flyers — not just security workers.

Read more: Airport Scanner Cancer Risk 'Glossed Over,' Says New Report
Important: At Risk For A Heart Attack? Find Out Now.

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey

by Andrew Schneider | Nov 07, 2011

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn't exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled "honey."

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world's food safety agencies.

The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.

Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey - some containing illegal antibiotics - on the U.S. market for years.

Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 jars, jugs and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

The contents were analyzed for pollen by Vaughn Bryant, a professor at Texas A&M University and one of the nation's premier melissopalynologists, or investigators of pollen in honey.

Bryant, who is director of the Palynology Research Laboratory, found that among the containers of honey provided by Food Safety News:

• 76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

• 100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

• 77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

• 100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald's and KFC had the pollen removed.

• Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and "natural" stores like PCC and Trader Joe's had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.

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Alternative medicine remains an ethics-free zone

The level of misinformation about alternative medicine has reached the point where it is endangering patients

The World Health Organisation has claimed acupuncture is a 'proven therapy' for a range of conditions, but the evidence shows the opposite. Photograph: AP

Many people think medical ethics is a dry and boring subject mainly for the ivory towers of academia. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the foremost aims of medical ethics is to make sure that people receive treatments that demonstrably do more good than harm, so it directly relates to the health and wellbeing of all of us.

In conventional medicine, numerous safeguards are in place to make sure doctors adhere to generally accepted ethical standards. In alternative medicine, however, medical ethics has largely remained a blind spot.

Therapeutic decisions of any kind should normally be taken after a healthcare professional has provided evidence-based advice to a patient. In alternative medicine, by contrast, consumers often make up their own minds whether to try this or that treatment; advice is not mandatory but information is abundantly available.

In order to ensure the consumers' choice generates more good than harm, the publicly available information on alternative medicine would need to be reliable. We all know that this is not the case and that insisting on 100% reliability in a free market would be Utopian. Who, for instance, could even begin to vet the 50m or so websites that supply consumers with information on alternative treatments? But at the very least, information provided by healthcare professionals should not endanger the consumer.

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Anti-Smoking Drug Linked to Suicide

Pfizer's smoking cessation drug Chantix carries too many risks and should only be tried when other treatments fail, researchers said.

Chantix was eight times more likely to be linked with a reported case of suicidal behavior or depression than other nicotine replacement products, such as the nicotine patch, they said.

The findings contradict two studies released last month by the Food and Drug Administration that showed Chantix (sold as Champix outside the United States) did not increase the risk of being hospitalized for psychiatric problems such as depression.

The agency at the time acknowledged that those studies were flawed because they were too small to identify rare events and they only captured cases that were severe enough to land people in the hospital.

Read more: Anti-Smoking Drug Linked to Suicide
Important: At Risk For A Heart Attack? Find Out Now.

Is Junk Food as Addictive as Cocaine?

Cupcakes may be addictive, just like cocaine.

A growing body of medical research at leading universities and government laboratories suggests that processed foods and sugary drinks made by the likes of PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. aren’t simply unhealthy. They can hijack the brain in ways that resemble addictions to cocaine, nicotine, and other drugs.

“The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We are finding tremendous overlap between drugs in the brain and food in the brain.”

The idea that food may be addictive was barely on scientists’ radar a decade ago. Now the field is heating up. Lab studies have found sugary drinks and fatty foods can produce addictive behavior in animals. Brain scans of obese people and compulsive eaters, meanwhile, reveal disturbances in brain reward circuits similar to those experienced by drug abusers.

Read more: Is Junk Food as Addictive as Cocaine?
Important: At Risk For A Heart Attack? Find Out Now.

US lawmakers reject Canada drug purchases

US lobbying groups linked to the pharmaceutical
industry had vehemently opposed to the measure
© AFP/File Loic Venance

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate Thursday rejected a measure that would have enabled Americans to buy prescription drugs in Canada in a bid to reduce the costs of their health care.

The measure, an amendment to a spending bill, was defeated by a vote of 45 to 55.

It would have barred the US Food and Drug Administration from spending money to stop people importing prescription drugs from Canada that comply with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act -- which very few Canadian drugs do.

Even Canadian drugs with identical chemical makeup to US drugs do not technically comply with the law, because the FDA does not inspect Canadian manufacturing plants or approve their labeling.

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Republican Senator David Vitter, who introduced the measure, has tried and failed on several occasions to gain passage of similar measures, with the question of the importation of drugs from Canada a perennial hot-button issue.

US lobbying groups linked to the pharmaceutical industry had vehemently opposed to the measure.

In a statement Wednesday, the National Association of Drug Store Chains said it opposed the "personal importation" of drugs by Americans.

"NACDS shares your goal of reducing the cost of prescription drugs," it said in a letter to Vitter. "However, we do not believe that consumer safety can be ensured under a prescription drug reimportation system."

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

Many popular organic brands now owned by large industrial food processors

Jonathan Benson
Natural News

Since the initial release of the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) draft of organic standards in 1997, large industrial food processors have been gradually acquiring or forming strategic alliances with organic food brands. And a series of detailed charts assembled by Philip H. Howard, an assistant professor at Michigan State University (MSU), provides a visual glimpse into how the organic industry has changed over the years.

It was expected that, with the establishment of national organic standards to replace the loose patchwork of state and local standards that existed prior, large food producers would want in on the action. And many got what they wanted, as they quickly gobbled up many of the largest and most viable organic brands that existed at the time.

Howard explains that most acquisitions of organic brands by industrial food processors occurred between 1997 and 2002, when USDA organic standards were fully implemented. During that time, Dean Foods acquired the White Wave / Silk brand, for instance, and the Kellogg company acquired the popular Kashi brand.

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Other major acquisitions over the years include Kraft's takeover of Boca Foods and Back to Nature, General Mills takeover of LaraBar and Cascadian Farm, and Pepsi's takeover of Naked Juice. And many other acquisitions have taken place over the years as well, which you can learn more about here:
http://www.msu.edu/~howardp/organicindustry.html

Do these buyouts mean that the acquired brands are no longer reputable or of the same quality as they were before? The answer to this, of course, is dubious. In many cases, the contents of an acquired brand's products have remained mostly or completely the same -- the parent company simply wanted a strategic piece of the pie. But in other cases, the acquired brand's offerings were altered to cut costs.

Perhaps the most widely-known case of brand tampering occurred with Dean Foods Silk brand. As many NaturalNews readers may already know, Silk quietly stopped using organic soybeans in its soy milk products, but did not tell customers. Silk even kept the same barcodes and product packaging, which resulted in some retailers unknowingly selling the altered product as if it was organic for months after the change was made.

At the same time, many industrial food processed have developed organic versions of their existing brands in response to growing consumer demand for organic food, which has improved the overall quality of many popular brands. These include the introduction of a Campbell's Soup organic line, for example, and a Kellogg's organic cereal line.

To learn more about who owns what in the organic industry, visit:
http://www.msu.edu/~howardp/organicindustry.html

Are Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Your Baby’s Shampoo?

TRENTON, New Jersey (The Blaze/AP) — Chemicals that could be harmful to babies remain in Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo sold in the U.S. and some other countries, even though the company already makes versions without them, according to an international coalition of health and environmental groups.

The coalition is urging consumers to boycott Johnson & Johnson baby products until the company agrees to remove the chemicals from its baby products sold around the world, including in China and the U.K. Johnson & Johnson has said it has been phasing these chemicals out of its products and also notes that the levels at which these chemicals are present in their products is approved by regulators.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has unsuccessfully been urging the world’s largest health care company for 2 1/2 years to remove the trace amounts of potentially cancer-causing chemicals — dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde — from Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, one of its signature products.

Johnson & Johnson has said it is reducing or gradually phasing out the chemicals.

“Johnson & Johnson clearly can make safer baby shampoo in all the markets around the world, but it’s not doing it,” said Lisa Archer, director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

The campaign’s new report, “Baby’s Tub is Still Toxic,” is set to be released Tuesday, when the group was launching the boycott via its website, http://www.safecosmetics.org.

The updated report was based on an examination of label ingredients for Johnson & Johnson baby products in 13 countries.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/are-cancer-causing-chemicals-in-your-babys-shampoo/

Are Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Your Baby’s Shampoo?

TRENTON, New Jersey (The Blaze/AP) — Chemicals that could be harmful to babies remain in Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo sold in the U.S. and some other countries, even though the company already makes versions without them, according to an international coalition of health and environmental groups.

The coalition is urging consumers to boycott Johnson & Johnson baby products until the company agrees to remove the chemicals from its baby products sold around the world, including in China and the U.K. Johnson & Johnson has said it has been phasing these chemicals out of its products and also notes that the levels at which these chemicals are present in their products is approved by regulators.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has unsuccessfully been urging the world’s largest health care company for 2 1/2 years to remove the trace amounts of potentially cancer-causing chemicals — dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde — from Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, one of its signature products.

Johnson & Johnson has said it is reducing or gradually phasing out the chemicals.

“Johnson & Johnson clearly can make safer baby shampoo in all the markets around the world, but it’s not doing it,” said Lisa Archer, director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

The campaign’s new report, “Baby’s Tub is Still Toxic,” is set to be released Tuesday, when the group was launching the boycott via its website, http://www.safecosmetics.org.

The updated report was based on an examination of label ingredients for Johnson & Johnson baby products in 13 countries.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/are-cancer-causing-chemicals-in-your-babys-shampoo/

Watch out for those Halloween treats! Eating too much black licorice can be bad for your heart, FDA warns

It's been a favourite of children for generations - and some sweet-toothed adults too - but now black licorice comes with a health warning.

The Food and Drug Administration says black licorice can lead to heart arrhythmias, irregular heartbeats, and other health problems when consumed by adults in large quantities.

The FDA issued the warning in its pre-Halloween alert about over-indulgence of candy.

Food experts says that eating two ounces of black licorice every day for two weeks can actually set the heart racing or pounding out of sync in some people.

The cause is the ingredient named glycyrrhizin, which is what gives licorice its sweet flavour.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow is a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine.

He said that glycyrrhizin causes the kidneys to excrete potassium.
Low levels of potassium can make the heart beat dangerously fast or irregular.

Glycyrrhizin also leads to salt and water retention which can be a problem for people with heart failure or high blood pressure, he added.

In certain parts of the world, the chewy stuff is prescribed to treat everything from heartburn to bronchitis to viral infections, msnbc.com reports.

But the FDA alert also noted that there has never been a study proving that licorice can cure anything.

No magic formula: Black licorice is revered in some cultures for its healing properties, but the FDA says there is no evidence it can cure anything

Licorice is a bioactive food, which means it can alter metabolic processes in the body.

Mr Fonarow said that you have to be careful mixing licorice with medications.

He said: 'Licorice can be a problem for people taking diuretics, digoxin and laxatives.'

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The combination of the candy with these medications can drive potassium down to dangerously low levels, he added.

Licorice can drive up blood pressure in women taking oral contraceptives because of the potassium effect, previous studies have shown.

While the health risks are more applicable to adults, the FDA says that young and old alike should be careful about how much black licorice they consume at one time.

If you do get an irregular heart rhythm or muscle weakness, 'stop eating it immediately and contact your healthcare provider,' the FDA says.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054860/Eating-black-licorice-bad-heart-FDA-warns.html#ixzz1cHYNe4Hg