The dish on fish. It's been a winter of bad news for seafood lovers. A joint draft fish advisory from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. EPA added tuna -- America's second-most popular seafood after shrimp -- to its list of mercury-containing fish that should be restricted in the diets of pregnant women and young children. A separate new study found unhealthy pollutants in far higher amounts in farmed salmon than in their wild kin. And, as reported in the February issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, Great Lakes' sport-caught fish contain PCBs, DDT, and PBDEs, though the …

In December, the vision of a "downer" cow stricken with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) caused indigestion in more than a few Americans, especially those who'd eaten beef in one of the six Western states in which the "mad" cow's meat might have been sold. The potential hazards of this disease have been apparent since Britain's disastrous handling of its mad cow crisis in the early 1990s, which led to the deaths of 137 people. But did the U.S. heed any of these lessons? We look into the lax regulations that let mad cow catch hold in the U.S., the risks …