Your World and You: Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health – Issue 21 (Premium)
Environmental and Nutritional Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health
This feature highlights reports, studies, and feedback onfforts that can make a positive impact in our quest for health. Topics we cover in this issue are included below. We invite you to share material with us that you think would be of interest to our readers.
Topics featured in this article:
- Check your labels: More bad news about the “gender-bender” chemical triclosan
- The gut-brain connection is getting the attention of neuroscientists
- Explosion of ADHD: Is it all all about the marketing?
- As if preemies don’t have enough to deal with. . .
- Another unexpected cause of obesity
- Fertility problems linked to chemicals in sunblock
- If you buy conventional strawberries, this may help convince you to switch
- Toys sold in U.S. stores continue to contain terrible toxic metals
Check your labels: More bad news about the “gender-bender” chemical triclosan
Traces of triclosan, a synthetic compound not found in nature, have been found in the breast milk of up to 97 per cent of lactating women and the urine of three quarters of people tested, researchers have said. The chemical, included in many cosmetics, soaps, detergents, shampoos and toothpastes, has now been found to trigger liver cancer in laboratory mice.
While some scientists claim they are not concerned, Professor Bruce Hammock of the University of California, Davis and a co-author of the study, suggested that the latest findings could lead to changes in the advice to consumers.
“We could reduce most human and environmental exposures by eliminating uses of triclosan that are high volume, but of low benefit, such as inclusion in liquid hand soaps,” Professor Hammock said.
See a complete article in The Independent.
The gut-brain connection is finally getting the attention of neuroscientists
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It’s taken about thirty years since the first reports, but there is now a growing respect for the connection between bacteria in the digestive tract and brain functioning. Nature magazine this month featured an article on the topic that begins:
“Companies selling ‘probiotic’ foods have long claimed that cultivating the right gut bacteria can benefit mental well-being, but neuroscientists have generally been sceptical. Now there is hard evidence linking conditions such as autism and depression to the gut’s microbial residents, known as the microbiome. And neuroscientists are taking notice —not just of the clinical implications but also of what the link could mean for experimental design.”
Explosion of ADHD: Is it all about the marketing?
You can’t catch attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet the diagnosis and treatment of this behavioral condition is spreading like a contagion — surging as much as tenfold in some countries.
Call it an economic and cultural plague, but not necessarily a medical one, says Peter Conrad, the Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences. In a recent paper in the journal Social Science and Medicine, Conrad and coauthor Meredith Bergey examined the growth of ADHD in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil. Conrad says, “I think we may look back on this time in 50 years and ask, what did we do to these kids?” Conrad says. Read the report from Brandeis University here.
As if preemies don’t have enough to deal with. . .
The substance, di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, or DEHP, is used to make plastic medical devices more flexible. But it also easily leaches into bodily fluids and tissues it comes into contact with.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore found that premature babies can be exposed to levels of the chemical that are 4,000 to 160,000 times higher than desired to avoid toxic effects. Learn more
Another unexpected cause of obesity
It is increasingly clear that obesity is not just caused by eating too much of the wrong foods. And if we don’t get a handle on all the environmental causes, the epidemic will be more difficult to battle. Exposure to secondhand smoke and roadway traffic may be tied to obesity, a new study shows.
Researchers studied more than three thousand children in Southern California, beginning at age 10 and followed them through age 18. The study, in Environmental Health Perspectives, controlled for factors such as “sex, initial body mass index (BMI), asthma, physical activity, insurance status, parental education and income, acres of parks and open space nearby, percentage of people living in poverty in each community.”
They found that compared with children exposed to no secondhand smoke or near-roadway air pollution, the BMI was 0.80 higher in children exposed to pollution alone, 0.85 higher in those exposed to secondhand smoke alone, and 2.15 higher in those exposed to both.
Check it out here in the Well blog of the New York Times.
The unfortunate link between sunscreens and infertility
CNN reports that a new study from the National Institutes of Health finds that chemicals in sunscreens and personal care products that filter out UV rays may lead to infertility issues among men.
The study followed 500 couples who are part of a larger study known as the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment. This large study looks at the role between environmental chemicals and fertility. . . Couples who took the longest to conceive had something in common. BP-2 or 4OH-BP, two UV filter chemicals found commonly in sunblocks and sunscreens, were found in high concentrations in the male partner’s urine. The chemicals are also used in moisturizers and shampoos. Get the story here.
If you buy conventional strawberries, this may convince you to switch to organic
Editor: I remember when my dad went on an organic strawberry hunt in Hillsboro County in Florida. It was about 20 years ago, and he was looking for a farm he could trust for produce. He told me that during his travels he learned of a conventional farmer who sprayed chemicals on his strawberries, both before and after harvesting, to make them appear a deeper red.
I had no idea how wide spread this practice may be, or if it was an isolated case. But it shocked me.
I since learned in a recent Prevention Magazine that a Pesticide Action Network Analysis of pesticide residues found 54 different pesticide residues among strawberry samples.
The testing turned up nine known or probable carcinogens, 24 suspected hormone disruptors, 11 neurotoxins, 12 developmental or reproductive toxins, and 19 honeybee toxins. Traces of fungicides captan and pyraclostrobin turned up on more than half of strawberry samples tested.
Unfortunately, even organic strawberries may not be pristine. (See article.) But they will surely be safer by comparison.
Relevant article: Pesticide poisoning on strawberry fields in Hillsborough
Toys sold in U.S. stores continue to contain toxic metals
In this day and age, you’d think we could trust that toys for kids are free of toxins. After all, it’s hardly a new subject or concern. Yet some toys tested recently in New Jersey had unsafe levels of cobalt, a heavy metal linked to cancer, lung problems and development problems—or antimony, another heavy metal that can damage the heart, liver and respiratory tract.
And a hair clip was found to be 11% cadmium, an extremely toxic metal!
Nearly all the items tested were produced in China. Some were sold in Party City, others in Target (!). Neither Party City nor Target would respond to questions. According to the article, Target “has a policy that urges — but does not require — its suppliers not to use hazardous chemicals or metals in their children’s products.” The article is carried on TimesUnion.com
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