health

Bisphenol-A, a toxic chemical used to make baby bottles, plastic water bottles, and food and beverage can liners, has been linked to heart disease and diabetes. Even so, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) insists that the chemical is fine for use by infants, children and adults.

BPA, an artificial sex hormone, has produced irreversible damage in test animals. It has been under fire from environmentalists, scientists, and, increasingly, concerned moms.

FDA, the federal agency charged with regulating food safety, has argued that BPA can continue to be used in consumer products. The agency cites 2 studies indicating that the chemical is safe, despite the fact that both studies were funded by the chemical industry....

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Will the next president do more for the environment than focus on energy?

It may be sacrilege to say so, but there’s more to protecting the environment than stopping global warming, especially where women are concerned.

I admit this acknowledging that climate change is probably the pre-eminent environmental issue of our time. Melting ice caps, catastrophic hurricanes and droughts, rising sea level, and changing weather patterns are altering the very nature of Nature. By and large, scientists agree that the window of opportunity to reverse the atmospheric build-up of hothouse gases like carbon dioxide is rapidly closing. Predictions for an overheated future grow more dire every day.

Still, moment to moment, our lives are affected in a more immediate way by other environmental threats that have been completely ignored by the Bush Administration. Will the next president have the foresight to tackle them sooner rather than later? ...

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Thinking about buying some handy 'germ fighting' dish soap or bathroom cleanser? Think again. In all likelihood, those cleaners contain triclosan, a toxic pesticide that's marketed as an "antibacterial agent" but is powerful enough to threaten children's health and pollute mothers' breast milk.

According to a study by researchers at the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG), triclosan has been:

• linked to cancer in lab animals

• targeted for removal from some stores in Europe for its health and environmental risks

• recommended against use at home by the American Medical Association

Triclosan's human health and environmental impacts are serious: ...

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