health

Are our standards for exposure to toxics all wrong?

An intriguing new study published recently on Environmental Health News challenges the long-held assumption on which all regulatory toxicology testing is based, and poses new questions about what — and how much — of certain toxic substances merit “OK” exposure. Toxicology tests are usually performed by giving subjects (usually rodents) high doses of a substance […]

A video you simply must see

Yikes. Everyone must watch this video, which comes to us from DeSmogBlog: And on a related note, this seems like a good time to link to The Denialists’ Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts. You will see that these perpetual, maddening arguments about global warming are not […]

Orville Redenbacher must be stopped

My latest Victual Reality column looks at how perfectly wonderful foods like corn and butter get twisted up by food-industry marketers and flavor engineers, confusing people and often sending them scurrying in search of dubious, unhealthy, artificial substitutes — which the food industry is only too willing to provide. As if on cue, out comes […]

Just because it’s awesome

Occasionally I like to revisit one of the greatest magazine feature leads ever written: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. Perfect.

Dan Peplow and Sarah Augustine, activists for indigenous health in Suriname, answer questions

Dan Peplow and Sarah Augustine. Q. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? A. We are co-directors of the Suriname Indigenous Health Fund. Q. What does your organization do? A. Our organization supplies technology and support to indigenous communities that are impacted by gold mining. The communities we work with live in the rainforest deep […]

The new NYT piece does not disappoint

I can’t believe no Gristian has yet commented on the latest Michael Pollan piece in the NYT. What, is saying “Pollan has a new piece and it’s awesome” getting tedious? This one focuses on the farm bill and how it makes us fat: A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced […]

Umbra on aluminum bottles

Umbra, Are aluminum bottles safer than Nalgene bottles? I’m looking at getting Sigg bottles for my self, wife, and son. Vendor agnostic, are the materials used by aluminum-only vendors safer than those that incorporate Lexan? Chris Webber Seattle, Wash. Dearest Chris, I swear, I pick questions and only then do I notice that yet again […]

So to speak

No, as far as I know, no baby-food maker ever used rat poison as an ingredient. The point is that we don't have to worry about it; if you have an infant switching off milk, you can shop the baby food counter confident that none of the choices will contain rat poison.

However, as a consumer, buying "green" is not quite so easy. Hastening the end of our civilization is a routine ingredient in most of the things we buy. By spending a little extra time and money, we can sometimes find alternatives that don't contribute to our society's destruction -- though often not.

If baby food routinely contained micro doses of arsenic, of course you would go out of your way to buy uncontaminated versions for your child. But you would also recognize that we should not allow baby food to include anything so toxic in the first place.

Growth promoters in beef may damage sperm

As reported by the BBC, a University of Rochester study found recently that men whose mothers ate lots of beef during their pregnancies had lower sperm counts than the sons of women who ate little or no beef while pregnant: