News tagged with 'EPA'

Drs. Margaret Hamburg and Joshua Sharfstein, both Harvard Medical School grads, have been chosen by President Obama to be the commissioner and deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.  They still must face confirmation hearings.

It may be the most significant criminal prosecution ever brought against a corporate polluter. The town of Libby, Montana is finally having its day in court. Town residents claim that the vermiculite mining operation, W.R. Grace, withheld information about the dangers of asbestos that blanketed the entire town with a fine dust.  More than 1,200 died or developed lung disease from asbestos fibers. 

Just how many homes are built with foul-smelling wallboard from China? Many residents of coastal Florida have been reporting problems and now reports come from the inland Florida town of Sebring.

Seizures can turn into a medical emergency if they are not addressed immediately.  Tuesday, the coroner in the Bahamas officially listed Jett Travolta's death as a "seizure." 

The Travolta family had largely kept quiet about their teenage son's fight with seizure disorder. He had also suffered from Kawasaki disease, which affects 19 out of every 100,000 children.

Actor Jeremy Piven drops out of a Broadway play with symptoms of mercury toxicity. He reportedly ate sushi twice a day for health.  While the NIH is conducting studies to see if chelation will remove heavy metals from an overloaded body, the FDA is considering softening recommendations on fish consumption, something an environmental consumer group is calling the wrong direction.

The lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by actor, Dennis Quaid and his wife has settled for $750,000.  Their newborn twins received an overdose of the drug heparin and they bled out nearly dying. The twins have since recovered, but the Quaids have formed a foundation to inform the public about the "conspiracy of silence" of medical errors that kill 100,000 a year. 

An intra-agency controversy has the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenging the scientific accuracy of a 270-page draft by the FDA that suggest the health benefits of fish consumption outweigh the possibility that dangerous amounts of mercury would be ingested.

The final report is now in on the contaminated blood thinner heparin that caused as many as 81 deaths in the U.S. A man-made chemical was added to batches of the drug, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS) is also responsible for 152 adverse reactions.

Researchers suggest that pregnant women who take the epilepsy drug valproate during pregnancy increase their child’s risk of developing autism. However, experts say the benefits of the drug and the high risk of seizures during pregnancy may outweigh the risk of autism.

The FDA opened its first food safety office in China today with two more to follow. The offices will oversee $2 trillion in exports of food and drugs to the U.S. The trick will be to find a third party verifyer to certify the products before they are shipped.

Amphibians are being killed by a cocktail of common pesticides that blend downstream. They are considered a foreshadow of human harm. In the meantime, the USDA has stopped issuing reports of national pesticide use, saving $8 million.

U.S. Marshals seized 11 lots of Heparin from Celsus Laboratories Inc. The FDA found the products, manufactured from material imported from China, to be contaminated with OSCS, a substance that imitates heparin’s blood thinning activity.

The Southern Nevada Health District reports there are 105 cases of hepatitis C uncovered as a result of an investigation into two outpatient clinics. More than 7,000 former patients have been tested for the incurable blood disease. 

Chantix, the smoking cessation drug, and heparin top the list of the drugs most likely to cause death and injury as compiled by this watchdog group.  They represent just a tip of the iceberg.