Packing Your Kids' School Lunch Will Kill Them

School lunches are vile and dangerous things that are leading our children down the path of obesity and certain death from cancer before they reach the tender age of 100. That much is a given. So what's a responsible parent to do? Pack your own kid's lunch of course.

Please, though, no peanut butter or any nut products. No violent characters on the lunch box. Actually, the lunch box itself is probably infested with lead and the plastic containers are dripping with BPA.

According to new research by people in white coats, well-meaning parents are unintentionally (perhaps) sending their little ones off to an early grave, or at least the nurse's office, because the lunches are not kept at the proper temperature.

Researchers at the University of Texas (official motto: "Meat Is A Vegetable") report that

More than 90 percent of sack lunches prepared at home and sent with kids to preschool were kept at unsafe temperatures, a new study by nutritional scientists at The University of Texas at Austin found.

The study will be published in the September 2011 issue of Pediatrics and was published online Aug. 8.

"Parents need to be aware of how important the storage temperature is for foods they pack for their young children," said Fawaz Almansour, a graduate student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and lead author of the research.

The best storage temperature is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit for cold foods and above 140 degrees for hot foods. Between 40 and 140 degrees is the "danger zone."

Study authors suggest that parents and the public need to be educated on safe food packing practices in order to prevent bacteria from growing and potentially causing illness.

Almansour and his colleagues, including Professor Margaret Briley and postdoctoral researcher Sara Sweitzer, collected data on sack lunches from more than 700 preschoolers at nine Texas child care centers. The lunches were measured with noncontact temperature guns [Worried Dad note: They sure do love their guns in Texas] one and one-half hours before the food was served.

They found that while 45 percent of the lunches studied had at least one ice pack, 39 percent had no supplemental ice packs. Even including lunches with ice packs, 88 percent were at room temperature. Less than 2 percent of lunches with perishable items were found to be in a safe temperature zone, while more than 90 percent (even with multiple ice packs) were kept at unsafe temperatures. [Worried Dad note: basically, we're screwed.]

Perishable items studied included meats, cheeses and vegetables. Prepackaged foods produced by manufacturers were not included in the study.

"The simple addition of one extra icepack could have prevented many of the perishable items in lunches from reaching the danger zone," wrote the researchers in their study.

They go on to say that the addition of two or more icepacks in lunches could help prevent food-borne illness in children.

In an aside, inadvertently picked up because they didn't realize their mikes were still plugged in, one of the researchers was overheard muttering "I never realized how much parents hate their kids. I mean, just one ice pack could save all those kids in there. What a loss."

Your kid's car seat is giving her cancer

According to people in White Coats, a chemical used to make all sorts of baby-related things flame resistant, from car seats to high chairs, is suspected of causing cancer.

From the New York Times:

The new research found that foam samples from more than a third of the 101 baby products that were tested contained chlorinated Tris. Over all, 80 of the products contained chemical flame retardants of some kind, some of which are considered toxic, though legal to use. In one instance, flame retardants represented 12 percent of the weight of the foam in a changing pad; most products were closer to 3 to 5 percent.

Among the products examined were changing table pads, sleep positioners, portable mattresses, baby carriers, rocking chairs and highchairs.

Fourteen of the products contained the flame retardant TCEP, which the State of California describes as a cancer-causing agent. Four of them contained Penta-BDE, a flame retardant that builds up in human tissue and that manufacturers voluntarily phased out in 2004; it is banned in many countries, but not the United States, and in some states, including New York.

"Why do you need fire retardant in a nursing pillow?" said Dr. Blum, who is the executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization that brings scientific data about toxic chemicals to policy makers.

"The whole issue is, they are toxic chemicals that are in our homes at high levels; and right now, people don’t know much about it," she said.

But what if a mother accidentally sets her cigarette on her nursing pillow while she reaches for her margarita? What about that????

Last year, California exempted strollers, nursing pillows and baby carriers from the flammability standard. Dr. Blum characterized the exemption as a positive step, though she noted that many other baby products were not exempted and it was not yet clear if manufacturers had stopped using flame retardants in those products.

Dr. Blum is among a group of academics and environmentalists who argue that the California standard exposes people and their pets to toxic chemicals. The flame retardants can migrate from furniture to household dust, and can be ingested by people and pets.

Some of the chemicals used in flame retardants are suspected carcinogens, and studies have linked the chemicals to variety of health issues, including problems with fertility and neurological development, the authors of Wednesday's journal article said.

Heather M. Stapleton, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Duke University and the lead author, complained that current federal oversight of chemicals is so weak that manufacturers are not required to label products with flame retardants nor are they required to list what chemicals are used.

Under current law, it is difficult for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to ban or restrict chemicals. Even now, the agency has yet to ban asbestos, widely known to cause cancer and other lung diseases.

"We can buy things that are BPA free, or phthalate free or lead free. We don’t have the choice to buy things that are flame-retardant free," Dr. Stapleton said. "The laws protect the chemical industry, not the general public."

When can we start buying baby products that will spontaneously combust in a cloud of cancer?

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Bisphenol A Now In Cans!

I've previously reported on that nasty stuff Bisphenol A (also known as BPA) that poison-mongers like to slip into plastic stuff like baby bottles.

Since I can never remember which number on the bottom of my cereal bowl is supposed to be okay, and which is supposed to consign me and my offspring to a slow, torturous death, I have switched the family to eating everything out of tin cans (well, aluminum).

Bad move.

According to a new study by people in White Coats at Consumer Reports, the

latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods we tested contain some BPA. The canned organic foods we tested did not always have lower BPA levels than nonorganic brands of similar foods analyzed. We even found the chemical in some products in cans that were labeled "BPA-free."

Now if you can't trust a label on a can, what can you trust???

According to the Civil Eats blog,

Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on a handful of experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating that serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA. Several animal studies show adverse effects, such as abnormal reproductive development, at exposures of 2.4 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight per day, a dose that could be reached by a child eating one or a few servings daily or an adult daily diet that includes multiple servings of canned foods containing BPA levels comparable to some of the foods Consumer Reports tested.

And then

Given the new findings, Consumers Union sent a letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg reiterating its request that the agency act this year to ban the use of BPA in food- and beverage-contact materials. FDA is expected to announce the findings of its most recent reassessment of the safety of BPA by the end of this month. Bills are currently pending in Congress that would ban the use of BPA in all food and beverage containers. Industry has been waging a fight against new regulations, and California Assembly members recently voted not to ban BPA from feeding products for children under three.

Consumer Reports is advising those who are concerned that they might be able to reduce, though not necessarily eliminate, their dietary exposure to BPA by taking the following steps:

Choose fresh food whenever possible.
Consider alternatives to canned food, beverages, juices, and infant formula.
Use glass containers when heating food in microwave ovens.

Wouldn't it just be simpler to lock regulators and lawmakers in a room with nothing to eat nothing but bisphenol-laden food until they ban this stuff?

Your showerhead is spraying you with bacteria

Sometimes it seems that researchers just want to mess with the heads of OCD germaphobes. Case in point: People in White Coats at the University of Colorado at Boulder looked at the gunk inside of showerheads in 45 sites around the United States. They put the showerheads inside a big centrifuge (or whatever it is scientists do) and discovered that every time you shower, you are covering yourself in filth.

It turns out that the showerheads had seven billion microbes per square liter -- or about ten times the number found in tap water. It gets worse. The microbes that the Boulder gunkologists looked at included teeming masses of Mycobacterium avium, which besides having a scary sounding Latin name and being written in italics, can cause respiratory illness.

The good news is that the microbes are harmless if swallowed (like in tap water) unless they are turned into an aerosol mist and inhaled... like, you know, when you're taking a shower (eep! eep! eep!)

Experts recommend the following steps:

* Switch to metal showerheads (the problem only appears in plastic ones).

* Hold your breath for the entire duration of your shower.

* Take baths (the soap scum appears to counteract the evil bacteria).

* Fill your water tanks with Purell.

* Go French and stop bathing altogether.

Beware of Sandals and Candles

Thinking about a romantic candlelit dinner or a walk on the beach in flip flops? According to the latest research, you might as well just drink a bottle of cyanide and shoot yourself in the head.

Okay, not quite, but here are two worrisome items on candles and flip flops.

Item Numero Uno:

According to people in white coats at South Carolina State University, candles release "harmful fumes linked to lung cancer and asthma."

According to a report from the BBC:

Lead researcher Amid Hamidi said people who frequently used candles, for instance to help them relax in the bath or provide the right ambiance for dinner, were most at risk.

He told the American Chemical Society in Washington: "An occasional paraffin candle and its emissions will not likely affect you.

"But lighting many paraffin candles every day for years or lighting them frequently in an unventilated bathroom around a tub, for example, may cause problems."

The danger seems to result from the fact that the candles don't reach a high enough temperature to burn off the toxins. To avoid dying from candle-induced cancer, researchers recommend "smoking, alcohol, obesity, unhealthy diets, inactivity and heavy sun exposure."

Item Numero Dos:

According to White Coaters from EMSL Analytical in New York City, walking around in flip flops is not only a big fashion faux pas, but will, in all likelihood, kill you faster than several candlelit dinners for two in an enclosed space. At least in NYC.

According to a stolid report from the New York Daily News, "Flip-flops are a magnet for dangerous, deadly bacteria!!!!"

Two reporters wore flip flops around New York, taking subways, buses, and going to Coney Island. They then handed the flip flops to the lab boys, who then put them in a big centrifuge.

"The results? Pretty heinous."

Researchers found thousands of bacteria on the footwear. Sure, they were mostly harmless, but, they note, some came from people's mouths. The researchers speculate that this was a result of the reporters walking where someone had spit on the sidewalk, but then again, we all know how weird New Yorkers are. (I'm just saying).

True, the labsters didn't find anything like Staph aureus, but, they write, they could have. If, you know, you had an open sore on your foot, and, like, you stepped in something gross, and, like, it entered your blood, it could, you know, KILL YOU DEAD!!!

Obviously, if you are going to walk around New York City, you must dispose of your footwear after every outing.

The needles and the damage done -- the trouble with Tamiflu

New reports out of Merry Olde England are showing that half of all children taking the anti-swine flu drug Tamiflu are experiencing side effects such as nausea, insomnia, and nightmares.

The kids were given the drug to prevent them from getting infected after other kids in their kids had been diagnosed with swine flu (H1N1). The people in white coats who conducted the study note that although some of the reported side effects could be due to other illnesses, they were "unlikely to account for all the symptoms experienced".

The full story is here.

Danger In the Sand

Despite rains here in Boston that could only make Noah happy, Summer is really here.

Before you relax and enjoy yourself in the usual ways, consider my earlier reports that grilling meat will kill you, your swimming pool will kill you, and the Sun will kill you. And don't even think about a staycation.

Ok, you say, why not just slather on 5 gallons of SPF 5000 sunblock and head to the beach?

Because the sand will kill you. Or at least make you sick. According to a study by some people in white coats, people who play in beach sand were 20-24 percent more likely to report gastrointestinal illness and diarrhea than those who just looked at it with horror and ran away.

Chicago Says Goodbye To BPA Plastics

As I reported last September, plastics are scary. Specifically, Bisphenol A, also known as BPA. Independent researchers in white coats, the stuff found in everything from baby bottles to, well, water bottles, and can leach out with repeated uses, cleanings, etc. Researchers claim it is linked to birth defects, early onset of puberty, miscarriages, and other scary things.

For its part, the plastics industry has tried to get everyone to worry about other stuff, like swine flu, and exploding toy helicopters (okay, that was me, but I'm sure they didn't object).

So back in September I said it was time for the government to do something. Well, they have. At least Chicago's government has. Last week they became the first city in the country to outlaw BPA. Here's hoping others follow suit.

Cats Are Controlling Your Thoughts

A study by people in white coats have discovered what many (including The Wife) have assumed for years: Cats are controlling our minds for their evil plans.

What are their plans? It's not entirely clear, but I have some ideas. The first phase involves making everyone anxious (about dogs, no doubt), depressed (leading to the acquisition of a cat), and insecure ("Why doesn't my cat love me? I must buy it more expensive food!"). Some are led to engage in reckless behavior (presumably leading to doomed relationships and the acquisition of more cats). Women also tend to develop a condition of "guilt proneness" ("My cats are unhappy! It's all my fault!").

From LiveScience:

A parasitic microbe commonly found in cats might have helped shape entire human cultures by manipulating the personalities of infected individuals, according to a new study.

Infection by a Toxoplasma gondii could make some individuals more prone to some forms of neuroticism and could lead to differences among cultures if enough people are infected, says Kevin Lafferty, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In a survey of different countries, Lafferty found that people living in those with higher rates of T. gondii infection scored higher on average for neuroticism, defined as an emotional or mental disorder characterized by high levels of anxiety, insecurity or depression.

His finding is detailed in the Aug. 2 issue of the journal for Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology.

Manipulating behavior

T. gondii infects both wild and domestic cats, but it is carried by many warm-blooded mammals. One recent study showed that the parasite makes normally cautious rats outgoing and more prone to engage in reckless behavior, such as hanging around areas frequently marked by cat urine, making the rats easy targets.

Scientists estimate that the parasite has infected about 3 billion people, or about half of the human population. Studies by researchers in the Czech Republic have suggested T. gondii might have subtle but long-term effects on its human hosts. The parasite is thought to have different, and often opposite effects in men versus women, but both genders appear to develop a form of neuroticism called "guilt proneness."

Other studies have also found links between the parasite and schizophrenia. T. gondii infection is known to damage astrocytes, support cells in the brain that are also affected during schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of antibodies to the parasite are also more likely to give birth to children who will develop the disorder.

In light of such studies, Lafferty wondered whether high rates of T. gondii infection in a culture could shift the average personality of its individuals.

"In populations where this parasite is very common, mass personality modification could result in cultural change," Lafferty said.

Kind of makes you wonder if this whole Swine Flu (err, sorry, H1N1 flu) paranoia wasn't some sort of a test run by the cats on their human servants...