New York Times is worried your kid will bump into the coffee table

For real.

They plastered it all over the Home and Garden section.

You can read the whole story here, but it's basically a long variation on this:

Do not be fooled. The coffee table means your children harm. And when it attacks, results can be ugly.

Last year, 143,070 children age 5 and younger visited emergency rooms after table accidents, according to estimates from the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. Coffee tables, in particular, turn up in more than a quarter of the accident reports, in the commission’s sample count.

The safety commission recommends that parents install bumpers on the corners and edges of their tables. Do they work? Who knows? Perhaps style-savvy children can be repelled by things that are ugly and made of foam.

Coming next week: It's all fun and games until somebody pokes their eye out!

Alcohol will kill you dead or save your life

A new study by people in white coats reports that alcohol is more destructive than crack or heroin. According to the study in the British medical journal The Lancet (typical Brits to name a medical journal after a "small and extremely sharp bladed instrument used for surgery or anatomical dissection") alcohol outranked such sentimental favorites as heroin, crystal meth, marijuana cigarettes (or whatever those damn hippies are calling them these days), and crack.

While some on the list were more harmful than alcohol to the health of the individual user, booze outranked them all when you combined the negative impacts to both the individual and society.

Hungover readers of Worried Dad may have a hazy recollection of my post about two months ago that Not drinking alcohol can kill you.

Interestingly, LSD was ranked as pretty benign overall, leading study author T. Francis Leary to suggest that we all start dropping acid instead of Jagerbombs.

BPA to sperm: DROP DEAD

According to the latest reports from people in White Coats, workers in Chinese factories that process BPA-laden products had two to four times lower quality sperm, including lower sperm counts, than workers in factories that don't deal with BPA. Those with the worst sperm also had the highest levels of BPA.

The report was published by the Journal of Fertility and Sterility. Oddly, the article The impact of luteal phase support on gene expression of extracellular matrix protein and adhesion molecules in the human endometrium during the window of implantation following controlled ovarian stimulation with a GnRH antagonist protocol, also in the current issue, hasn't generated any press coverage.

Asked to comment on the possibility that BPA can lower sperm counts, study author Dr. De-Kun Li simply responded "That can't be good."

BPA apologist and spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council Stephen Hentges probably had the same thought. However, he is quoted in media reports as saying "This study of Chinese workers with high exposure to BPA is of limited relevance to consumers who, by contrast, are exposed to only very low levels of BPA."

"I mean is there really an American consumer who worries about the welfare of factory workers who make their cheap consumer crap?" Hentges inferred but did not actually say.

Li, who isn't on the BPA industry payroll had this to say:

"When you see this kind of association with semen you have to wonder what else BPA has an effect on," says Li. As a precautionary principle, he adds, "Everybody should avoid BPA as much as you can."

Toxic Face Paint No Fun For Kids

Back in the day when Worried Dad was just Worried Kid, the biggest Halloween scare was the biggest thing we were afraid of was someone sticking a razor blade in an apple. Even though Snopes.com says there was some bits of truth behind these rumors, what kid in their right mind would eat an apple on Halloween?

Now the all-knowing Yahoo newsdesk has reminded us of a more modern worry: toxic face paint.

Besides the obvious warnings, like not dipping your candy in face paint, the FDA has these helpful tips:

• Read ingredient lists and don't buy any product that has non-approved colors. The FDA lists coloring agents approved for use in cosmetics. Worried Dad note: Laminate the FDA's fun 217 item chart and carry it with you every time you go shopping.



• Don't use products with fluorescent colors (D&C Orange No. 5, No. 10, and No. 11; D&C Red No. 21, No. 22, No. 27 and No. 28; and D&C Yellow No. 7) near the eyes. Worried Dad note: Turn these colors and numbers into a limerick to make them easier to remember.



• Don't use luminescent (glow-in-the-dark) colors (zinc sulfide) near your eyes. Worried Dad note: This may lead your child to permanently glow in the dark.



• Before using older products, check it against these two May 2009 recall notices for Fun Express children's face paints. Worried Dad note: How can a product called Fun Express be bad?
  

What's a worried parent to do? Two suggestions:

• Use a mask (free of BPA, of course). Except the stupid rubber bands that hold them up always break 20 minutes into the night.



• Just cover their faces in chocolate. Everybody wins!

Sour candy will kill your kid's teeth

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it turns out that candy is actually bad for your teeth, especially if it tastes good.

Studies by people in white coats from a few years ago (but recycled every year near the end of October for some reason) highlight the findings that sour candy (e.g. Sour Patch Kids, sour worms, sour Nerds, sour gummy vitamins -- okay, basically the word "sour" should be a tipoff) is as corrosive to the teeth of young children as battery acid.

The effects are particularly bad for baby teeth and adult teeth until they have been around for at least 10 years (you know, basically when you lose any desire to eat them)..

White Coat experts say that if a sour candy (with any kind of acid on the ingredient list: citric, lactic, malic, tartaric, fumaric, adipic, and ascorbic) should touch your child's mouth, DO NOT BRUSH THEIR TEETH right away. Either wash their mouth with water, or have them drink a glass of milk.

The good folks at the California Dental Hygienists Association (official motto: "You're not flossing regularly, are you?") suggests the following tactics:

"This Halloween, we are advising adults to think twice about buying sour candies for trick-or-treaters," said Erika Feltham, a Registered Dental Hygienist and CDHA member who has studied this issue for more than a decade. "We also are encouraging parents to comb through their child's bag at the end of the night to remove sour acid candies and replace them with a small piece of non-sour sugarless candy or gum."

Yeah, that'll work!

This kind of reminds Worried Dad about Cinderella's first couple of Halloweens. Basically Worried Mom and I dressed her up in really cute costumes, scored big time on the candy, and then ate it all as soon as she was asleep.

Celery will kill you

Worried Dad's daughter, Cinderella, has long contended that she is allergic to vegetables. Turns out she might be right.

Back in March, the Environmental Working Group declared that conventionally grown (i.e. NOT organic) celery topped their supermarket "dirty dozen." This means that with every bite of those crunchy green stalks, you are walking a chemical-laden path to a cancerous pesticide induced death.

Now, killer celery has claimed multiple victims in Texas: the count so far is 4 dead and two more sick. But the numbers are sure to rise. The culprit this time is listeriosis, a nasty little bacterium.

Okay kid, you can have a side of chocolate tonight.

Stink Bug Invasion

Just when we thought that the end of the world was coming thanks to staph infections and bedbugs, now it turns out that stink bugs are in the running for "Pest of the Apocalypse." Well, at least if you happen to be an apple.

While the bugs don't bite or carry diseases, they do emit a foul odor if squashed. There may even be a connection between this feature and their name, but I'm still working this out.

The bugs do like to nosh on peaches, apples, soybeans, corn, and ornamental shrubs and trees. Farmers are not amused.

According to the Washington Post, stink bugs appear to be one of the four insects of the Apocalypse, or a Cuban revolutionary conspiracy, or something:

"This is the vanguard," said Mike Raupp, a University of Maryland entomologist and extension specialist. "I think this is going to be biblical this year," he said. "You're going to hear a collective wail in the Washington area, up through Frederick and Allegany counties, like you've never heard before. The [bug] populations are just through the ceiling."

As with bedbugs, the Post reports (without any actual sources) that distraught homeowners are resorting to "burning them with propane torches."

The bugs seem to have arrived as illegal immigrants from Asia over a decade ago, and have since spread to 29 states.

Authorities recommend that homeowners stop bathing so that they won't notice the smell from the bugs if they accidentally step on any as they flee from their burning homes.

Some media reports have noted that the bugs are a delicacy when eaten in tacos in parts of Mexico. Stink Bug Tacos -- I think I have the name of my next band.

tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle recall muddle

When you put a beetle in baby bottle, you get a recall by a lab named Abbott:

WASHINGTON -- Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories said Wednesday it is recalling millions of containers of its best-selling Similac infant formula that may be contaminated with insect parts.

The voluntary action affects up to 5 million Similac-brand powder formulas sold in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam and some Caribbean countries. The company said the products may contain a small beetle or larvae, which could cause stomach ache and digestion problems.

The recall does not affect any liquid formulas or other Abbott-brand products.

A company spokeswoman said Abbott uncovered the insects last week in one section of a manufacturing plant in Sturgis, Michigan.

Good thing they don't sell noodles.

Superbugs will kill you part three: It came from India

As reported back in 2008 by Worried Dad, the MRSA staph infection has been called a superbug that appears to be resistant to all known antibiotics, except fire.

Then just a few weeks ago, this blog reported on the spread of a new superbug, c. diff, another nasty bug that will be stopped by nothing in its quest to kill you dead.

If anyone is still alive enough to read this, it appears that there is a new contender for "the microorganism that will destroy humanity" comes to us from India -- or does it??

In a challenge to the "there is no bad publicity" maxim, the new superbug has been given the name "New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase," or NDM-1. New Delhians are not amused, and point out that the bug is really a close match to another superbug that's been making the rounds of US hospitals and back alleys for quite some time.

However, a spate of infected patients that appear to have originated in India have been spreading the stuff around the globe. It seems that globe-trotting healthcare bargain hunters have been going to India for cheap operations, getting some NDM-1 as a free souvenir, and then spreading Armageddon to the four corners of the Earth.

Basically, the NDM-1 stuff is resistant to all known antibiotics. People in White Coats blame other people in White Coats for over-prescribing antibiotics when we didn't need them, and now we need them, but they don't work anymore and we're all going to die. Also, you should wash your hands a lot and bathe nightly in Purell.

Aiming laser pointer at your eye can burn your eye out

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a very worried man in a white coat is warning about the latest craze turning the world's children to piles of ashes: super powerful laser pointers.

According to the wire reports:

A 15-year-old boy damaged his eyes while playing with a laser pointer he'd bought over the Internet, say doctors who warn that dangerously high-powered versions are easily available online.

One eye expert called it "a legitimate public health menace."

The boy's case is reported in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by doctors who treated him at the Lucerne Cantonal Hospital in Switzerland.

It follows two reports in June of similar accidents. British doctors said a teenager damaged his eyes with a high-powered laser pointer, and a British physician said his vision was affected for several months after he was zapped by his 7-year-old son.

The lasers used in these incidents were of the European persuasion, and exceed the firepower of those allowed in the United States. However, the high-powered eye blasters can be found on the Internet.

The FDA has warned in the past that it has found laser pointers and toys that exceed the output limit of 5 milliwatts - five-thousandths of a watt. It rarely collects reports of eye-damage incidents like the case in Switzerland, said FDA health promotion officer Dan Hewett, so it's not clear how often they happen.

His agency recommends that consumers make sure laser pointer labels carry a designation of Class IIIa or lower, along with a statement of compliance with Chapter 21 CFR. Hewett suggests consumers should look on the label to make sure the power output is no more than 5 milliwatts, or 5 mW.

But he stressed that even a laser product that meets those conditions can cause eye damage if a person stares into the beam long enough.

"Just because it says 5 mW and Class IIIa, FDA is not saying you can grab this laser and stare at it," he said.

Researchers are still determining what the point of buying a laser is if you can't stare at it.

Reusable shopping bags will kill you

A recent study by some guys in white coats at the University of Arizona warns that those nifty reusable shopping bags (like the 20 or so I have in my trunk) are teaming with bacteria.

The researchers tested 84 bags collected from shoppers in Tucson, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area and found that just over half were contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria. Twelve percent of the bags contained E. coli, which indicates possible fecal matter and more dangerous pathogens.

According to the study co-author Charles Gerba, using a reusable bag is on a par with having your family play Russian Roulette (how do those Russian casinos keep attracting customers anyway?):

Well, it's sort of a random chance," he said. "Sometimes, there may be enough. Sometimes, there may be not. You're really always gambling with germs."

The biggest problems arise from people stuffing dripping hunks of raw meat into their bags and then leaving them in the trunk for a while.

Unacceptable alternatives include chopping down forests to create paper bags, and despoiling our pristine wetlands with offshore oil drilling to make toxic plastic bags. The study authors (who, incidentally, got $30k from the American Chemistry Council to conduct their research), recommend soaking bags overnight in Purell, or just skipping the bags entirely and stealing the store's shopping carts.

Your kitchen is a lethal weapon

Even if you've thrown out the eggs, it's still not safe to go back into the kitchen.

According to news reports, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health surveyed thousands of home cooks and concluded "Yuck!"

According to the report, discussed in my favorite Center for Disease Control magazine, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, one out of seven home kitchens would not get a passing grade if they were a restaurant. Only 61 percent of homes would get a grade of B or higher.

According to the report:

An estimated 87 million cases of food-borne illness occur in the United States each year, including 371,000 hospitalizations and 5,700 deaths, according to an Associated Press calculation that uses a CDC formula and recent population estimates.

Many outbreaks that receive publicity are centered on people who got sick after eating at a restaurant, catered celebration or large social gathering. In this summer's outbreak linked to salmonella in eggs, several illnesses were first identified in clusters among restaurant patrons.

But experts believe the bulk of food poisonings are unreported illnesses from food prepared at home.

Not drinking alcohol can kill you

Just when you thought it was safe to get on the wagon, new research by people in White Coats suggests that people who abstain completely from alcohol are more likely to die early from heart disease and diabetes than moderate drinkers.

The report, Late-Life Alcohol Consumption and 20-Year Mortality by Charles J. Holahan, Kathleen K. Schutte, Penny L. Brennan, Carole K. Holahan, Bernice S. Moos, and Rudolf H. Moos (with an acknowledgment to the friendly barkeeps at O'Dooley's Pub), published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, shows that moderate drinkers age 55 to 65 had significantly lower mortality rates than tea-totalers, and much lower than car-totalers. The findings held true even when adjusting for socioeconomic factors and other variables.

Apparently, the effect holds true regardless of what your, um, poison (?) is, according to an article in Slate.

I knew all those years of clean living would be the death of me.

Bed Bug Apocolypse

The bed bug epidemic has reached epidemic proportions. The jury is still out, however, as to whether the world is ending because it is being overrun with bed bugs, or if humans will end the world in order to get rid of them.

This is the story so far:

• Bed bugs used to be a problem.


• Then we began covering the world in nasty toxic chemicals like DDT, and bed bugs were not a problem.


• But we were killing all other living creatures on the planet along with the bedbugs, so we stopped with the DDT.


• Then, 50 years or so later, all the bedbugs started coming back.


• The government basically advises barricading yourself in your home, avoiding contact with other humans, and sleeping in a bug zapper.


• If you find bedbugs in your home, you should abandon your home and all your possessions (which most of us are doing anyway because of the economic crisis), remove all your clothing, and move into a hermetically sealed bubble.

Unfortunately, according to media reports, people with bed bug infestations are starting to douse their houses with toxic chemicals or kerosene. Not a good idea.

In Cincinnati, an unlicensed applicator saturated an apartment complex in June with an agricultural pesticide typically used on golf courses. Seven tenants got sick and were treated at the hospital. The property was quarantined, and all tenants were forced to move. Authorities are pursuing criminal charges.

...

Authorities around the country have blamed house fires on people misusing all sorts of highly flammable garden and lawn chemicals to fight bedbugs. Experts also warn that some hardware products - bug bombs, cedar oil and other natural oils - claim to be lethal but merely cause the bugs to scatter out of sight and hide in cracks in walls and floors.

Superbugs will kill you in the hospital

Just when you thought the only kind of super bug that hospitals were trying to kill you with was Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), it turns out that they are adding a new one to the mix: Clostridium difficile, or C. diff as we say in the 'hood.

The Washington Post reports that C. diff is sickening about 3 million people a year, usually after they visit a hospital or clinic.

According to the article:

It can cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the colon. It is deadly in up to one in 40 cases, particularly when it strikes the elderly and infirm, and contributes to 15,000 to 30,000 deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Recent studies have shown a 25% higher incidence of C. diff than the better-known and more publicity savvy MRSA in 28 community hospitals tested by people in White Coats.

Once again, the main culprits appear to be over-prescription of antibiotics, and hospital staff not washing their hands:

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, the C. diff germ has been cultured from bed rails, floors, toilets and windowsills, and it can remain in hospital rooms for up to 40 days after infected patients have been discharged. Health-care workers can hasten the spread. One study found C. diff on the hands of almost 60 percent of doctors and nurses caring for infected patients - a percentage experts said could be reduced dramatically if they washed their hands thoroughly with soap and water between patients.

Acetaminophin could give your kid asthma

According to the latest reports by people in White Coats, new studies suggest a correlation between kids who take acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) and kids who develop asthma.

According to a pair of reports in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (slogan "Home of breath-taking research!"), there seems to be growing evidence that giving kids acetaminophen can increase the odds that a kid will develop asthma or other breathing trouble.

In one study, researchers followed 1,000 Ethiopian tots for three years.:

When the toddlers turned one, the researchers asked the mothers if their babies had breathing problems, and how much acetaminophen they had used.

About eight percent of the kids began to wheeze between ages one and three. Those who had been given acetaminophen during their first year -- before they had breathing trouble -- had up to seven times the odds of developing wheezing.

That increase held even after adjusting for fever and coughs, which in principle could have triggered both the wheezing and the use of painkillers.

Another study following 320,000 teens in 50 countries found that kids who took acetaminophin at least once a month doubled their odds of developing asthma, and seems to be associated with other breathing problems.

However, researchers helpfully point out that there may not be any good alternatives if your kid is in suffering. Ibuprofen (aka Advil), is not recommended if your kid already has asthma (although there nothing to suggest that it might do harm if your kid doesn't have asthma already), and aspirin is generally frowned upon.

Two popular alternative treatments include telling the kid "I'll give you something to cry about" and Worried Dad's brother's favorite method of pinching them really hard somewhere other than where they are currently feeling pain.

Bad eggs! Very bad eggs!

Chickens appear to have begun a massive uprising by infecting our nation's eggs with salmonella.

According to authorities, the rebel chickens are using two farms in Iowa that are the source for gazillions of infected eggs sent to stores in at least 59 states. The hens have funneled the tainted eggs through 87,000 front businesses that pretend to be from local farms.

Anyone finding eggs in their house should immediately call authorities and stomp the eggs on their kitchen floors before eating.

According to the rebel chicken leader, the felonious fowl demands include: The right to be shaken, but not baked, and the ability to cross the road without being interrogated.

Going to the gym will kill you

[The people in the above photo were found dead moments after this picture were taken]

My two main reasons for canceling my gym membership were that I was broke and I got tired of being a straight guy surrounded by naked men in the locker room. Plus, I'm lazy.

Thankfully, people in White Coats (working for people in running shorts) have given me a better reason: gyms are covered in nasty germs.

As the staid "Gray Lady" herself, the New York Times, soberly put it:

When you go to the gym, do you wash your hands before and after using the equipment? Bring your own regularly cleaned mat for floor exercises? Shower with antibacterial soap and put on clean clothes immediately after your workout? Use only your own towels, razors, bar soap, water bottles?

If you answered "no" to any of the above, you could wind up with one of the many skin infections that can spread like wildfire in athletic settings.

Well, sure, you say, that's why they call it athlete's foot, after all. What's the big deal? Well, that's what some guy you've never heard of thought, pal:

And if you think skin problems are minor, consider what happened to Kyle Frey, a 21-year-old junior and competitive wrestler at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Mr. Frey noticed a pimple on his arm last winter but thought little of it. He competed in a match on a Saturday, but by the next morning the pimple had grown to the size of his biceps and had become very painful.

His athletic trainer sent him straight to the emergency room, where the lesion was lanced and cultured. Two days later, he learned he had MRSA, the potentially deadly staphylococcus infection that is resistant to most antibiotics.

Mr. Frey spent five days in the hospital, where the lesion was surgically cleaned and stitched and treated with antibiotics that cleared the infection. He said in an interview that he does not know how he acquired MRSA: "The wrestling mat might have been contaminated, or I wrestled with someone who had the infection."

If it could happen to Mr. Frey, who said he has always been health-conscious in the gym and careful about not sharing his belongings, it could happen to you.

According to the CDC, if you insist on going to the gym, you are advised to wear a full body protective suit, refrain from touching anything, and keep a bottle of alcohol-based disinfectant to spray at anyone who comes within ten feet of you.

B Vitamins won't prevent death

According to the latest reports from people in White Coats, taking vitamin B, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, or folic acid supplements won't prevent heart attacks, as previous research had suggested.

It's unclear whether getting vitamins through food still does any good (Worried Dad's daughter, Cinderella, believes that vitamins only come in ice cream), and even if they do, they don't even have as much vitamins as they used to.

Sitting will kill you

According to the latest study by people in White Coats at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (inventors of the Swedish Bikini Team), people who sit in chairs all day die faster and more gruesome deaths than people who don't. According to lab rat Elin Ekblom-Bak, "After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals." She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down. People who sit, whether at home, in the car, or at work, are more likely to be fat, have heart trouble, and die early deaths than those who don't sit.

"No problem!" you say. "I often get up from my chair and walk to the water cooler to discuss the latest happenings with my office chums. I must be in the clear!" Sorry pal. You're still dead. Even a twenty-mile jog to the office won't do you any good. According to the Swedes, you'll just have a more muscular corpse as you lie decomposing next to the other ex-desk monkeys.

Interestingly, the inscrutable ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have had a key breakthrough about this problem years ago. In the wake of the revelations about US-military torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Rumsfeld was widely criticized for pooh-poohing one particular practice -- forcing prisoners to stand for hours at a time. According to declassified documents, Rumsfeld wrote on the margins of one torture memo "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," Rummy scrawled. "Why is standing limited to four hours?" Who knew he was just looking out for their health?