Public Health

A recent analysis of published data on human exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) revealed more than 140 studies with over 85,000 data points from 30 countries.  Taken together the data show that exposure to BPA around the world is hundreds to thousands of times below the science-based safe intake limits set by government bodies. That’s already far more data than is available for most chemicals, but the data just keeps on coming.  Health Canada recently released an important new report with data on exposure of Canadians to a variety of chemicals.  Along with BPA, the Fourth Report on…

Center for Science in the Public Interest, a litigation group that sues food companies, may be dusting off some of its old materials after new report which finds "good" cholesterol, also known as HDL, might not be as good as we think. The new paper contradicts findings from the last 25 years that high levels of HDL in the blood are a good thing. They instead found that people with extremely high levels of good cholesterol have a higher mortality rate than people with normal levels. For men with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 106 percent higher than for the normal group. For…

Just like some people are overweight but healthy - an obesity paradox - some people are thin but have a three-fold higher risk of mortality and/or cardiovascular events. Weight is not the best way to understand metabolic health, according to an analysis of lean, overweight and obese people. A new paper claims that ~20 percent of normal weight adults are still metabolically unhealthy and have a higher risk of mortality and/or cardiovascular events than metabolically healthy obese subjects. Oddly, a reduced accumulation of fat in the lower body puts lean people at risk. One size does not…

Everyone has heard about bisphenol A (BPA).  It’s primarily used as a raw material to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, both of which are high performance materials used in many consumer products that help to make our lives better and safer.  But that’s probably not what you’ve heard. What you may have heard is that we’re all exposed to BPA.  And it’s true, we probably are all exposed to BPA.  But unless you’re an exposure scientist who studies exposure to chemicals for a living, just knowing we’re exposed to BPA isn’t very useful without knowing a lot more.…

It's not an 80/20 rule but if you are addicted to opiods you are likely to be visiting a small number of physicians in Ontario, according to a new analysis. People in Ontario who have become addicted to opioids such as oxycodone and heroin are often prescribed a longer-acting but less euphoric opioid such as methadone or buprenorphine (also known as Suboxone®). About 30,000 physicians are licensed to practice medicine in Ontario so using administrative health-care databases housed at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, the team identified 893 who prescribed methadone or…

A common definition of the word dust refers to fine, dry particles of matter.  From dust storms on earth to cosmic dust, just about everywhere that any form of matter is present, dust will also be present.  That includes the ubiquitous household dust that seems to magically appear in our homes on every surface and in the form of dust bunnies under furniture. Household dust consists of particles of most every form of matter that is present in our personal environment, including particles of us.  From skin cells and hair, to fabric fibers, to pollen and soil particles, household…

A randomized controlled trial of the use of acupuncture in emergency departments has found the treatment is a safe and effective alternative to pain-relieving drugs for some patients who visit looking for relief from things like a self-reported ankle sprain, a headache (invariably called a migraine) or back pain. Pain professionals know those are very common, and that people reporting to the emergency room are often looking for prescription drugs. In the case of 528 patients at the emergency departments of the Alfred Hospital, Cabrini Malvern, Epworth Hospital and Northern Hospital between…

In the many efforts to prevent people from taking up smoking, most initiatives have focused on kids.  As the consumer advocacy group the American Council on Science and Health has long phrased it, "smoking is a pediatric disease." Prevent uptake in the young, and addiction rarely occurs. But that has led to governments with a big blind spot about young adults, according to a paper in the Canadian Journal of Public Health by Thierry Gagné, a doctoral student at Université de Montréal's School of Public Health. Over the last two decades, use of tobacco by high-school students has dropped…

It’s widely understood that a key reason why life developed on Earth is because of water.  A common definition of a habitable environment is one in which plenty of liquid water is available to sustain life.  In short, we can’t live without water. But there’s more to it than just the presence of water.  We want our water to be clean and healthy so as to avoid risks to people and the environment from unwanted contaminants.  With that goal in mind, numerous environmental monitoring studies have been conducted that look for various contaminants in water, and generally find…

In a previous blog, I discussed the European Commission’s (EC) proposal for criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), highlighting its strengths and shortcomings.  Subsequently, the EC asked the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to jointly develop guidance for actual implementation of the proposed criteria. They published an outline for their proposed guidance last December.   In a recent development, the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (ECETOC) has added flesh to the bones of the ECHA/…