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WARNING: USING AI FOR MEDICAL DIAGNOSES MAY BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:52:06 GMT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the landscape of healthcare, particularly in the realm of medical diagnosis. From analyzing medical images to predicting disease risk, AI-driven tools are increasingly being integrated into clinical workflows. While the potential benefits are substantial—improved accuracy, faster diagnoses, and expanded access to care—there are also meaningful risks that warrant careful scrutiny. Understanding both sides is essential for clinicians, policymakers, and patients alike.

The Benefits: Precision, Speed, and Scale

One of the most compelling advantages of AI in diagnosis is its ability to process vast datasets with remarkable speed and consistency. Machine learning models, particularly those trained on imaging data such as X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans, have demonstrated performance comparable to—or in some cases exceeding—that of human specialists. For example, AI systems can detect early signs of diseases like cancer, diabetic retinopathy, or pneumonia with high sensitivity, often identifying subtle patterns that may be missed by the human eye.

Speed is another critical benefit. Traditional diagnostic processes can be time-consuming, involving multiple tests and specialist consultations. AI can streamline this by delivering near-instantaneous analysis, which is especially valuable in time-sensitive scenarios such as stroke or sepsis. Faster diagnosis can translate directly into earlier intervention and improved patient outcomes.

AI also offers scalability. In regions with limited access to healthcare professionals, AI tools can help bridge the gap by providing preliminary diagnostic support. This democratization of expertise has the potential to reduce disparities in healthcare access, particularly in underserved or rural communities.

The Risks: Bias, Opacity, and Overreliance

Despite these advantages, AI in medical diagnosis is not without significant risks. One of the most pressing concerns is algorithmic bias. AI systems are only as good as the data they are trained on. If training datasets lack diversity—whether in terms of race, gender, age, or socioeconomic status—the resulting models may perform poorly on underrepresented populations. This can lead to misdiagnoses or unequal quality of care, exacerbating existing health disparities.

Another challenge is the “black box” nature of many AI models. Deep learning systems, in particular, often lack transparency in how they arrive at specific conclusions. This opacity can make it difficult for clinicians to trust or validate AI-generated diagnoses, especially in high-stakes situations. Without clear interpretability, accountability becomes murky—who is responsible if an AI system makes an error?

There is also the risk of overreliance. As AI tools become more integrated into clinical practice, there is a danger that healthcare providers may defer too readily to algorithmic outputs, potentially diminishing their own diagnostic skills. This is particularly concerning in cases where AI systems may produce confident but incorrect results. Maintaining a balance between human judgment and machine assistance is critical.

Regulatory and Ethical Considerations

The integration of AI into medical diagnosis raises complex regulatory and ethical questions. Ensuring the safety and efficacy of AI tools requires rigorous validation, ideally through clinical trials and real-world testing. Regulatory bodies are still evolving their frameworks to keep pace with rapid technological advancements.

Data privacy is another key issue. AI systems often rely on large volumes of patient data, raising concerns about consent, security, and potential misuse. Robust safeguards are necessary to protect sensitive health information while enabling innovation.

Ethically, there is a need to ensure that AI augments rather than replaces human care. The patient-provider relationship is built on trust, empathy, and communication—elements that AI cannot replicate. Any deployment of AI in diagnosis should preserve these human dimensions.

The Path Forward: Integration, Not Replacement

AI has the potential to be a powerful tool in medical diagnosis, but it should be viewed as a complement to—not a substitute for—clinical expertise. The most effective use cases are those where AI enhances human decision-making, providing additional data points or second opinions rather than definitive answers.

To realize this potential, stakeholders must invest in high-quality, diverse datasets; prioritize model transparency and interpretability; and establish clear regulatory standards. Ongoing education for healthcare professionals is also essential, ensuring they understand both the capabilities and limitations of AI tools.

In conclusion, AI in medical diagnosis represents a significant advancement with the capacity to improve outcomes and expand access to care. However, its deployment must be guided by rigorous standards, ethical considerations, and a commitment to equity. With thoughtful integration, AI can become a trusted ally in the pursuit of better health for all.

LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES: A GROWING FIRE RISK IN OUR HOMES

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:55:20 GMT

Lithium-ion batteries power much of modern life. From smartphones and laptops to e-bikes, power tools, and even home energy storage systems, these compact and efficient batteries are everywhere. But as their use has expanded, so too has a serious and often underestimated danger: the risk of fire.

Lithium-ion battery fires are not like typical household fires. They burn hotter, spread faster, and can reignite even after appearing to be extinguished. These fires are caused by a process known as “thermal runaway,” where damage, overheating, or internal defects trigger a chain reaction inside the battery. Once this process begins, it can release flammable gases, cause explosions, and produce intense flames that are difficult to control.

Source: Research Institutes | Fire Safety

In recent years, fire departments across the country have reported a sharp increase in fires linked to lithium-ion batteries. Many of these incidents occur in homes and involve everyday devices such as e-scooters, e-bikes, and portable chargers. Improper charging, use of incompatible chargers, and low-quality or counterfeit batteries are among the leading causes.

One of the most concerning aspects of lithium-ion battery fires is how quickly they escalate. A battery that appears normal can fail without warning, turning a small device into a major fire hazard within seconds. In multi-family housing, such fires can spread rapidly, putting entire buildings and communities at risk.

Fortunately, there are practical steps we can all take to reduce the risk.

First , always use the manufacturer’s recommended charger and battery. Mixing and matching components, especially with cheaper third-party options, increases the likelihood of overheating and failure. Certified products may cost more upfront, but they significantly reduce risk.

Second , avoid overcharging. Leaving devices plugged in overnight or unattended for long periods can stress batteries and increase the chance of failure. Whenever possible, unplug devices once they are fully charged.

Third , be mindful of where you charge devices. Avoid placing them on soft surfaces like beds or couches, which can trap heat. Instead, charge batteries on hard, non-flammable surfaces and keep them away from flammable materials such as paper, clothing, or curtains.

Fourth , inspect your batteries regularly. If you notice swelling, leaking, unusual odors, or excessive heat, stop using the device immediately. Damaged batteries should be disposed of properly at designated recycling centers—never thrown in the trash.

Fifth , never charge batteries near exits. This is especially important for larger devices like e-bikes or scooters. In the event of a fire, you need a clear escape path. Charging near a doorway can block your exit and trap occupants inside.

For households with multiple battery-powered devices, it may also be worth investing in a fire-resistant charging bag or storage container designed specifically for lithium-ion batteries. These products can help contain fires if they occur.

Finally , education and awareness are critical. Many people are unaware of the risks associated with lithium-ion batteries or assume that small devices are harmless. By understanding the hazards and adopting safe practices, we can significantly reduce the likelihood of fires.

Lithium-ion batteries are an essential part of modern living, but they require respect and care. As their presence in our homes continues to grow, so too must our awareness of the risks they pose. Taking a few simple precautions today can prevent devastating fires tomorrow.

Stay safe, stay informed, and make battery safety a priority in your home.

WARNING: THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S EPA IS DISMANTLING REGULATIONS PROTECTING US FROM PFAS, PUTTING OUR LIVES AT RISK

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:07:45 GMT

1. Weakening National Drinking Water Standards

In April 2024, the EPA finalized the first federally enforceable National Primary Drinking Water Rule (NPDWR) for six PFAS, including PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA (GenX), PFBS, and mixtures of these chemicals. These rules established maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) and required monitoring and treatment timelines for public water systems.

Under Trump's EPA, this landmark public health rule is being undone :

Repealing PFAS Limits for Four Chemicals : The agency has announced plans to repeal the enforceable MCLs for four of the six regulated PFAS—PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA (GenX), and the hazard index covering mixtures. These are chemicals commonly found in water systems across the country.

Extending Compliance Deadlines : For the remaining two PFAS—PFOA and PFOS—the EPA plans to extend the deadline for utilities to comply with the 4 parts-per-trillion limits from 2029 to 2031.

Rescinding Key Components : The agency has signaled it will rescind regulatory determinations under the Safe Drinking Water Act that justified controlling several PFAS, claiming procedural technicalities to reverse the earlier protections.

Taken together, these moves would erase or delay the protections designed to limit residents’ exposure to some of the most harmful PFAS compounds .

2. Gutting Reporting and Data Collection Requirements

Accurate government oversight depends on knowing what chemicals are in commerce, how much is produced, and how they are used . Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), Congress mandated a one-time reporting requirement for PFAS to gather comprehensive industry data.

The Trump EPA is now proposing major exemptions that would greatly reduce reporting obligations:

Exemptions Proposed for Manufacturers : The EPA has suggested broad carve-outs, including allowing exemptions for PFAS present at low levels in products, imported articles, byproducts, impurities, and items used in research and development. These carve-outs could eliminate reporting on over 98% of entities that otherwise would be obligated to disclose information about PFAS chemicals in commerce , according to state attorneys general opposing the rollback.

Without complete data, regulators and public health professionals cannot track PFAS exposure pathways, identify pollution sources, or craft effective interventions.

S ource: TheScientist

3. Delays and Rollbacks in Enforcement and Oversight

Beyond rule repeals and reporting rollbacks, recent reporting indicates that the Trump administration’s EPA has:

Delayed enforcement of existing PFAS standards and compliance timelines, giving utilities and polluters more time before they face consequences.

Cut research funding and staff dedicated to PFAS risk assessment, slowing scientific progress on understanding health impacts and remediation strategies.

These changes not only weaken regulatory teeth, they reduce the agency’s institutional capacity to protect communities from ongoing PFAS contamination.

4. Legal and Public Health Backlash

The rollback of PFAS protections is not going unchallenged. State attorneys general, environmental groups, and public health advocates are pushing back, citing:

Legal challenges to repeals of drinking water limits , arguing the EPA lacks authority to weaken protections without sound science and adherence to statutory anti-backsliding provisions.

Opposition to gutting reporting requirements , highlighting risks of hidden chemical use and reduced oversight.

These fights underscore the magnitude of what is at stake : the very tools designed to prevent toxic chemicals from circulating in drinking water and harming human health.

Why This Matters to You and Your Family

PFAS are not abstract industrial compounds hidden from daily life—they are found in:

Water supplies serving tens of millions of Americans, often above even the EPA’s own (now contested) safety thresholds.

Household products including non-stick cookware, water-resistant clothing, carpets, and food packaging.

Soil and groundwater near airports, military installations, manufacturing sites, and waste disposal facilities.

Scientific research consistently shows that PFAS accumulate in human blood and tissues and that many compounds have no safe level of exposure . Rolling back protections designed to reduce such exposure jeopardizes public health, especially in vulnerable communities already burdened by pollution.

W hat You Can Do

Stay informed about federal and state actions on PFAS regulations.

Engage with policymakers —contact your representatives in Congress and state legislatures to express concern about weakening environmental protections.

Support legal challenges and public interest groups fighting to defend environmental health safeguards.

Push for stronger state standards if federal protections falter.

The dismantling of PFAS regulations is not just a regulatory shift; it is a public health crisis in the making . When the institutions charged with protecting our air, water, and health retreat from that mission, the consequences echo in every community. It is up to all of us to demand accountability and to insist that public health does not take a backseat to deregulation.

THE SILENT WINTER THREAT: CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING DURING STORMS AND POWER OUTAGES

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:25:53 GMT

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere brings cold weather, snow, and often severe storms. These conditions can lead to power outages that last hours or even days. When electricity is lost and temperatures plummet, many households turn to alternative heating methods or portable power generators. While these actions are understandable, they can expose families to a perilous and often invisible threat: carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning .

Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas produced when fuels such as gasoline, propane, natural gas, oil, wood, or charcoal do not burn completely. Because people cannot detect it using their senses, CO is known as “the silent killer.” Each winter, CO poisoning incidents increase, resulting in serious injuries and fatalities that are largely preventable.

The Scope of the Problem

Carbon monoxide poisoning represents a significant public health risk in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other national data sources:

More than 100,000 people visit emergency departments nationwide each year due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
Unintentional, non-fire-related CO poisoning results in more than 400 deaths annually.
Some studies estimate that around 101,847 emergency department visits and over 14,000 hospitalizations occur annually from unintentional CO exposures.
Other traditional surveillance data show approximately 15,000 ED visits and nearly 500 deaths per year , though these figures may undercount the full burden due to limitations in reporting systems.

These statistics reflect acute poisonings across all seasons. However, winter months are a high-risk period , coinciding with the use of furnaces, heaters, generators, and other combustion sources in enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces.

Why Winter Elevates Risk

Power outages and cold weather create conditions where people may use portable generators, propane or kerosene heaters, wood stoves, or charcoal grills to heat their homes or generate electricity. Problems arise when:

Generators are used indoors or too close to living spaces , allowing exhaust to seep in through windows, doors, or vents.
Indoor fuel-burning devices are used without proper ventilation , such as grills, camp stoves, or unvented heaters.
Snow and ice block exhaust vents or chimneys , trapping CO inside the home even when appliances are operating correctly.

Health Effects of Carbon Monoxide Exposure

Carbon monoxide binds with hemoglobin in the blood more readily than oxygen, effectively reducing the blood’s ability to carry oxygen to vital organs. The effects of CO poisoning can mimic other common illnesses, which can delay recognition and treatment.

Early symptoms include:

Headache
Dizziness
Fatigue or weakness
Nausea or vomiting
Shortness of breath
Confusion

With higher exposure levels, individuals may experience loss of consciousness, seizures, heart damage, or death. Children, the elderly, pregnant individuals, and those with preexisting heart or lung conditions are particularly vulnerable.

Prevention and Safety Measures

While carbon monoxide poisoning is dangerous, it is also highly preventable . Following a set of straightforward precautions can dramatically reduce the risk:

Install carbon monoxide detectors
Place detectors on every level of your home and near sleeping areas. Test them monthly and change batteries as needed.
Use generators correctly
Operate portable generators outdoors and at least 20 feet away from any building , with exhaust directed away from windows and doors. Never use generators in garages, basements, or enclosed spaces — even with doors open.
Keep fuel-burning devices outside
Charcoal grills, camp stoves, and similar devices should only be used outdoors, well away from structures.
Maintain appliances and vents
Have furnaces, water heaters, and chimneys professionally inspected annually. During heavy snow, check that vents remain clear of snow or ice.
Never use gas ovens or stovetops to heat your home
These appliances are not designed for space heating and can emit concentrated CO into your living space.

What To Do If You Suspect CO Poisoning

If a carbon monoxide detector sounds or you experience symptoms consistent with CO poisoning:

Move everyone outdoors to fresh air immediately.
Call emergency services or your local fire department.
Do not re-enter the building until it has been declared safe by professionals.

Even if symptoms seem mild, seek medical evaluation; carbon monoxide exposure can have delayed or long-term effects if not treated promptly.

Final Thought

Winter storms and power outages will continue to disrupt our lives. Being prepared and informed about carbon monoxide hazards can mean the difference between a close call and tragedy. Share this information with friends, family, and neighbors — especially those who are older or unfamiliar with generator safety — because public awareness is one of the most effective defenses against this silent and invisible threat.

HOLIDAY FOOD SAFETY: PROTECTING YOUR FAMILY FROM SALMONELLA & LISTERIA THIS THANKSGIVING

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 16:58:42 GMT

As Thanksgiving approaches, kitchens across the country are about to come alive with the sounds and smells of holiday cooking. While this season brings family, gratitude, and plenty of delicious food, it also comes with a serious and often overlooked risk: foodborne illness. In the U.S., Salmonella and Listeria remain two of the most dangerous and persistent causes of food poisoning—especially during the holidays, when increased food preparation, crowded refrigerators, and large holiday meals create ideal conditions for bacterial growth.Whether you’re hosting your first Thanksgiving dinner or you’re a seasoned holiday chef, brushing up on a few key food safety practices can help you keep your loved ones healthy and your celebration memorable for all the right reasons.

Why Salmonella and Listeria Are So Dangerous

Salmonella

Salmonella bacteria are commonly found in raw poultry, eggs, unpasteurized dairy, and sometimes produce. It causes an infection called salmonellosis, which can lead to severe gastrointestinal illness. Each year, Salmonella infects over a million Americans. Symptoms can be especially dangerous for young children, older adults, pregnant individuals, and people with weakened immune systems. Holiday meal prep often involves handling raw turkey—one of the highest-risk foods for Salmonella contamination. When large turkeys thaw on countertops, juices drip in the fridge, or cutting boards aren’t cleaned properly, bacteria can spread quickly across kitchen surfaces.

Listeria

Listeria monocytogenes is particularly dangerous because it thrives even at refrigerator temperatures. While less common than Salmonella, it is far more deadly, especially for pregnant individuals, newborns, older adults, and those with weakened immune systems. Listeria is often associated with deli meats, soft cheeses, smoked fish, and ready-to-eat foods that aren’t reheated before serving. Holiday grazing tables—featuring cheese boards, charcuterie, and cold appetizers—can inadvertently create opportunities for Listeria to spread, especially if foods sit out for long periods.

Protecting Your Holiday Meal: Essential Tips

1. Safely Thaw Your Turkey

Never thaw a turkey on the counter. Bacteria multiply rapidly at room temperature, and the surface of the bird can reach the “danger zone” (40–140°F) long before the inside has thawed.

Safe methods include:

◾Refrigerator thawing: The safest method. Allow 24 hours of thawing per 4–5 pounds of turkey.

◾Cold water thawing: Submerge the turkey in cold water, changing the water every 30 minutes.

◾Microwave thawing: Only if the turkey fits and you plan to cook it immediately.

2. Avoid Cross-Contamination

Raw turkey and its juices can contaminate anything they touch.

Follow these rules:

◾Use separate cutting boards for raw poultry and other foods.

◾Wash hands with warm, soapy water for 20 seconds before and after handling raw meat.

◾Clean and sanitize countertops, knives, and utensils that come into contact with raw turkey.

3. Cook to the Right Temperature

Don’t rely on color, texture, or “gut feeling.” A meat thermometer is your best defense.

Key temperatures:

◾Turkey: 165°F measured in the thickest part of the breast and thigh.

◾Stuffing (if cooked inside the bird): 165°F

◾Leftovers: Reheat to 165°F

If your turkey is stuffed, be extra careful—stuffing can insulate bacteria if not heated thoroughly.

4. Keep Cold Foods Cold and Hot Foods Hot

Once your Thanksgiving buffet opens, the clock starts ticking. Bacteria grow rapidly between 40°F and 140°F .

◾Don’t leave perishable foods out for more than 2 hours .

◾Use ice trays or cold packs under cheese boards or cold platters.

◾Keep hot dishes in warmers or warming trays.

5. Practice Smart Refrigerator Management

Holiday fridges are notoriously overcrowded—but overstuffing reduces airflow and creates uneven cooling.

◾Keep raw meats on the bottom shelf , sealed and away from produce.

◾Store ready-to-eat foods (like cheese, cut fruit, and desserts) on upper shelves.

◾Wipe spills immediately, especially leaks from thawing poultry.

Remember, Listeria can grow in the refrigerator , so clean your fridge before and after the holidays.

6. Rinse Produce—But Not Poultry

Wash fruits and vegetables under running water before preparing them. But never wash raw turkey. Rinsing poultry only spreads bacteria around your kitchen. Cooking is the only way to kill Salmonella on poultry.

Handling Leftovers: A Hidden Food Safety Challenge

Thanksgiving leftovers are almost as beloved as the meal itself, but mishandling them can lead to foodborne illness long after the dishes are cleared.

◾Refrigerate leftovers within 2 hours of cooking.

◾Divide large amounts into shallow containers for quick cooling.

◾Enjoy leftovers within 3–4 days , or freeze for longer storage.

If something smells off—even slightly—throw it out. “When in doubt, throw it out” is a motto worth memorizing.

A Safe and Happy Thanksgiving Starts in the Kitchen

Thanksgiving is about sharing food and gratitude, but it’s also a time when foodborne illnesses spike across the country. With a few mindful precautions and an understanding of how dangerous pathogens like Salmonella and Listeria spread, you can protect your family and serve a feast that’s as safe as it is delicious.

This holiday season, let your kitchen be a place of warmth and celebration—not contamination. By following these simple food safety practices, you’ll ensure that the only thing your guests take home is a full belly and fond memories.

ARE WAYMOS SAFER THAN HUMANS DRIVING A CAR?

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 02:56:50 GMT

The race to develop autonomous vehicles (AVs) has reached a pivotal moment. Alphabet-owned Waymo, widely regarded as the frontrunner in the field, has rolled out fully driverless taxis in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with plans to expand to additional cities. But as more Waymo vehicles hit public roads without human drivers, the question looms large: Are they truly safer than the people they’re replacing behind the wheel?

Autonomous Waymo Jaguar I-Pace.
Source: Wikipedia

The Promise of Safety

Every year, more than 40,000 people die in traffic crashes in the United States, and experts attribute over 90% of those deaths to human error—impaired driving, distraction, fatigue, and speeding. Waymo and other AV developers argue that by eliminating those human failings, autonomous systems could drastically cut fatalities.

Waymo's vehicles are powered by a combination of lidar, radar, high-definition mapping, cameras, and machine learning systems that allow them to perceive their surroundings in all directions, day or night. Unlike human drivers, they never drink, text, fall asleep, or get distracted. In theory, that gives them a major advantage.

Annual US traffic fatalities per billion vehicle miles traveled (red), miles traveled (blue), per one million people (orange), total annual deaths (light blue), VMT in tens of billions (dark blue), and population in millions (teal), from 1921 to 2017. Source: Wikipedia

The Data So Far

Waymo has been relatively transparent about its safety record, releasing annual safety reports and independent analyses. According to a 2023 study conducted with Swiss Re, Waymo's driverless vehicles were involved in roughly 85% fewer injury-causing crashes than human-driven cars in comparable settings. A separate analysis of Waymo's operations in Phoenix found that the company’s fleet had not been involved in a single fatal crash over millions of autonomous miles.

That said, AVs are not immune to incidents. Waymo vehicles have been in minor fender-benders, most often caused by other human drivers misjudging the AV’s conservative driving style. In San Francisco, for example, there have been reports of human drivers rear-ending Waymos that stop more cautiously than typical motorists. The good news: these crashes have been overwhelmingly low-speed and low-severity.

Waymo’s driverless system avoids and mitigates crashes more effectively than human drivers in simulated tests, supporting real-world findings of significantly lower injury crash rates. Source: Waymo

Comparing to Human Drivers

To fairly assess AV safety, experts compare crash rates per million miles driven. Human drivers in the U.S. experience about 4.2 crashes with police reports per million miles. Waymo’s autonomous fleet has consistently come in lower, with about 2.1 reportable crashes per million miles—and, importantly, none involving life-threatening injuries.

Yet skeptics argue that the data pool is still too small. While Waymo has logged more than 20 million autonomous miles on public roads, Americans drive over 3 trillion miles annually. That’s a vast gulf, and some say it’s premature to declare Waymo—or any AV—safer overall until billions of miles are logged.

Public Perception and Trust

Despite strong safety data, many Americans remain wary of robotaxis. A 2024 AAA survey found that 68% of U.S. drivers say they are afraid of riding in a fully self-driving vehicle. High-profile incidents involving competitors, such as GM’s Cruise—whose fleet was suspended in California after a pedestrian injury—have only fueled skepticism.

Waymo has largely avoided such scandals, but building public trust remains a challenge. The company has emphasized slow, deliberate rollouts, extensive safety testing, and transparent data-sharing. Its vehicles also include redundancies: two separate computing systems, fail-safe braking, and remote monitoring teams that can intervene if unusual situations arise.

Despite strong safety records, public trust in self-driving vehicles remains low—two-thirds of U.S. drivers report feeling afraid, a figure that has held steady in recent years. Source: AAA

Strengths and Limitations

Waymo’s cautious, rules-based driving style is both its biggest strength and its biggest criticism. On the one hand, the system virtually eliminates risky human behaviors like running red lights, speeding, or weaving through traffic. On the other, it can frustrate passengers and other drivers when the AV hesitates too long at an intersection or refuses to make an assertive lane change.

Another limitation: Waymo’s operations are geofenced. Unlike a human driver who can take you anywhere, Waymo currently only drives in pre-mapped service areas. Expanding to new cities requires intensive mapping and simulation work, slowing its growth compared to human drivers’ flexibility.

The Road Ahead

Regulators are watching closely. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has generally been supportive of AV development but has required companies like Waymo to file crash reports and safety disclosures. Some safety advocates argue that more stringent oversight is needed, especially as robotaxis expand into dense urban areas.

Waymo, for its part, is doubling down on transparency. Its safety reports outline not just crash data but also disengagement rates (times when human operators had to take over in earlier testing), system redundancies, and ethical approaches to difficult driving scenarios. The company has also invested heavily in simulation, logging over 20 billion simulated miles annually, which allows it to practice extremely rare but dangerous scenarios, such as a child running into the street.

The interior of a Waymo Jaguar I-Pace robotaxi as it autonomously drives through San Francisco. Source: Wikipedia

Conclusion: Safer, But Still Evolving

So, are Waymo’s driverless cars safer than human drivers? The evidence to date suggests yes—at least in the limited environments where they currently operate. Waymo’s vehicles avoid the most dangerous human failings and have logged millions of miles without a single passenger fatality.

But “safer” doesn’t mean “perfect.” AVs remain a new technology, with plenty of hurdles in public perception, regulatory approval, and scaling to new areas. For now, the best framing may be this: Waymo’s cars appear to be incrementally safer than human drivers and, if deployed widely, could reduce crashes and save lives.

The ultimate question is whether society will embrace a cautious, rule-abiding robot driver—even if it’s safer—over the faster, riskier, but all-too-familiar human behind the wheel.

TACKLING SAFETY: FOOTBALL, CTE, AND WHAT ACTUALLY MAKES THE GAME SAFER

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 18:23:09 GMT

We are now in the middle of another football season, and the question, as asked every year: Is this sport safe enough for our high school, college, and professional athletes to play?

Football has always been a violent sport of collision, glory, and growing concern. Over the last decade, research tying repetitive head impacts to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has shaken parents, players, and the game’s governing bodies. The central realities are straightforward but sobering: repeated head impacts — both diagnosed concussions and the many “sub-concussive” blows players take — are linked to later-life brain pathology; helmets and add-ons can lower impact forces, but no helmet or cover has been shown to prevent CTE; and rule and culture changes that reduce the number and severity of head impacts are where the biggest gains lie.

A normal brain (left) and one with advanced CTE (right)

Source: Wikipedia

Do the new “Guardian” helmet products reduce CTE risk?

Short answer: Not proven.

Guardian Caps and similar soft-shell helmet covers have laboratory and some real-world evidence showing they reduce head impact kinematics (peak linear and rotational accelerations) in controlled tests — a plausible biomechanical benefit. A 2023 kinematics study found reduced peak linear and rotational accelerations with after-market soft-shell padding.

But that mechanical improvement doesn’t equal proof they lower concussions across all settings or that they reduce the long-term cumulative exposure that appears to drive CTE. University of Wisconsin researchers found no reduction in concussion rates among 2,610 high school players who used soft-shell covers in practice during the 2023 season. At the same time, NFL reports and internal analyses indicate big drops in practice concussions after mandated use of Guardian Caps in certain sessions and seasons. The pro-level data suggest utility in that specific context, while high school evidence is mixed — likely because player size, play speed, exposure patterns, and how/when the caps are used all differ. Crucially: no peer-reviewed study has shown that Guardian Caps or any helmet upgrade prevents CTE.

Hassan Hall wearing a Guardian Cap in 2023

Source: Wikipedia

What the science says about risk

CTE is currently a post-mortem diagnosis; brain-bank studies from the Boston University CTE Center have found very high rates of CTE in samples of donated former NFL brains (e.g., 345 of 376 in one case series), and other work shows a dose-response: more years and more repetitive impacts mean higher odds of CTE and more severe disease. That dose-response is the key takeaway: reduce exposure and you reduce risk — even though we can’t yet say precisely by how much for any one intervention.

Members of the Los Angeles Rams wearing Guardian Caps during their 2023 training camp. Two years prior, team became an early adopter of the equipment.
Source: Wikipedia

Rules, culture, and policy changes that would make football safer

Technology helps, but it’s policy and practice that move the needle most:

Limit full-speed contact in practice. Evidence repeatedly shows the majority of head impacts happen in practice. Rules and caps on live-contact reps — enforced and audited — lower exposure. (Example: many youth and college programs that limit contact report fewer concussions.)
Aggressively enforce and expand targeting/helmet-to-helmet penalties. Studies show targeting rules reduced helmet-to-helmet concussions at the high school level. Better officiating, consistent discipline, and education of coaches/players about tackling technique are essential.
Continue kickoff and special-teams reforms. Rules that reduce high-speed collisions on kickoffs have produced measurable concussion declines at the college and pro levels; similar protections at lower levels would likely help.
Age and exposure restrictions for youth football. Given the dose-response risk, many researchers recommend delaying tackle football until the mid-teens and/or promoting flag alternatives for younger children. Reducing total years of exposure is a straightforward, high-impact idea.
Standardize helmets and fit, and require high-performing models. Make objective helmet performance (STAR or similar ratings) part of procurement decisions; ensure every player has a properly fitted, certified helmet. Helmets reduce impact severity but are not magic bullets.
Limit cumulative load with player monitoring. Track individual exposure (number of hits, high-g impacts) using sensors and use that data to limit high-risk players’ contact days and to guide return-to-play decisions.
Better medical protocols and independent oversight. Mandated independent neurologic evaluation for suspected concussions, strict RTP protocols, and removal-from-play rules enforced by non-team medical staff reduce pressure to return early and reduce repeat injury risk.
Culture change — reward safe play. Coaching incentives, rule enforcement, and public messaging should prioritize technique, smart tackling, and protecting defenseless players rather than glorifying helmet-first collisions.

An example of a helmet-to-helmet collision , a common cause for concussions
Source: Wikipedia

Practical bottom line for parents, players, and administrators

Helmets and caps may reduce impact forces and in some pro settings appear to reduce practice concussions, but no piece of equipment has been proven to prevent CTE . Treat equipment as one layer of risk reduction, not as a cure.
The strongest levers are rule changes and exposure reduction — fewer full-speed hits, safer kickoff rules, strict targeting enforcement, delaying tackle for young children, and better medical oversight. Those policy moves lower both concussions today and the cumulative load that appears to drive CTE.

Football can be made substantially safer — but it requires honest tradeoffs. If we value the long-term brain health of high school and college athletes as much as we value the spectacle at the highest level, we’ll invest in rules, coaching, enforcement, and youth alternatives as first priorities — with equipment improvements as important but secondary protections.

CHAOS AT THE CDC: A THREAT TO AMERICA’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 15:52:11 GMT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has long been viewed as the nation’s front-line defense against disease outbreaks, health emergencies, and public health threats. But today, the agency faces internal turmoil, political interference, and organizational confusion that experts warn could have dangerous consequences for the U.S. healthcare system—and for ordinary Americans.

CDC's Roybal campus in Atlanta, Georgia

Source: Wikipedia

The CDC’s Critical Role

The CDC is responsible for detecting and responding to health threats ranging from seasonal flu and foodborne illnesses to emerging pandemics and bioterrorism. Its scientists and epidemiologists collect vital data, provide guidance to hospitals and physicians, and coordinate responses with state and local health departments. In short, when a public health crisis hits, the CDC is the nerve center.

If this system falters, the ripple effects can be deadly. Hospitals could be left without timely guidance, state health departments might face gaps in testing or surveillance, and frontline doctors may lack clear protocols for patient care. The chaos now engulfing the agency makes this scenario increasingly likely.

Trump Fires CDC Commissioner Monarez

The crisis reached new heights recently when President Trump abruptly fired CDC Commissioner Susan Monarez after she openly challenged Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his controversial anti-vaccine positions. Monarez, a respected scientist and public health leader, had pushed back against efforts to weaken vaccine promotion and safety programs. Her removal stunned the public health community.

Within hours of her firing, several of Monarez’s top deputies resigned in protest. Their walkout leaves the agency’s leadership gutted at a critical moment, depriving the nation of decades of experience in epidemiology, vaccine safety, and emergency preparedness. Instead of a stable, science-based command, the CDC is now drifting, vulnerable to political interference and without trusted leaders to guide it through the coming fall and winter virus season.

CDC in Crisis: Commissioner Susan Monarez ousted after challenging Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine safety—leaving the nation’s top public health agency leaderless at a critical moment.

A Vaccine Advisory Committee Missing in Action

Equally alarming is the absence of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, which was expected to provide updated recommendations on COVID-19 boosters and flu vaccines. Without that expert guidance, hospitals, state health departments, and providers lack the information they need to plan and prepare. At the very moment when trust in vaccines is already fragile, the absence of this committee’s voice further deepens public uncertainty. The turmoil is already trickling down to patients. CVS and Walgreens, the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, have announced that they will now require a doctor’s prescription for COVID-19 vaccines in about one-third of the states. Public health experts warn this policy may soon spread nationwide.

This change adds a significant hurdle for millions of Americans, especially those without regular access to healthcare providers. Pharmacies have been central to vaccine distribution because of their accessibility and convenience. Forcing patients to take extra steps will inevitably reduce vaccination rates. Fewer vaccinations mean more infections, more hospitalizations, and ultimately, more preventable deaths. The combination of missing CDC guidance and added barriers at pharmacies risks undoing years of progress in making vaccines routine and widely available.

Internal Disarray and Broken Trust

Even before Monarez’s firing, the CDC was already in disarray. Budget uncertainty and leadership turnover had left critical programs stalled. Veteran scientists were leaving in significant numbers, taking with them decades of expertise.

Compounding the problem, the agency has struggled to communicate consistently. Mixed messages during past health emergencies left hospitals, schools, and the public uncertain about how to act. Without trusted leadership, these communication failures are likely to worsen, eroding public confidence just when it is most needed.

What's at Stake

The CDC is more than just a federal agency; it is the backbone of America’s health security. Its surveillance, research, and guidance underpin the functioning of hospitals, health departments, and clinics nationwide. If political interference continues to strip away its leadership, weaken its vaccine programs, and reduce public trust, the consequences will be dire.

The bottom line is stark: firing Commissioner Susan Monarez for defending science doesn’t just destabilize the CDC—it places lives at risk. Unless steps are taken to restore independent leadership, rebuild trust, and ensure that vaccines remain accessible, the chaos at the CDC could cost thousands of American lives.

TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FLOODS: DID WARNINGS FAIL VICTIMS?

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:37:56 GMT

From July 3–4, 2025, Central Texas—especially Kerr County and the Guadalupe River basin—experienced catastrophic flash flooding that claimed over 130 lives, including children and staff at Camp Mystic. As grief and outrage settle, survivors and officials alike are questioning whether enough was done to warn those most at risk.

July 3, 1:18 PM – Initial Flood Watch Issued

On July 3 at 1:18 p.m. CT, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a flood watch for Kerr County, predicting 1–3″ of rain, with isolated amounts up to 7″.

A flood watch issued by the National Weather Service at 1:18 PM CDT on Thursday, July 3, 2025, several hours before the start of the deadly and historic July 2025 Central Texas floods .

But late-night rains far exceeded that, as more than 12″ fell within hours, and the Guadalupe River gauge rose from 0.34 ft at 11:45 p.m. to over 34 ft by 6:45 a.m., completely submerging the sensor.

July 4, Midnight–4 AM – NWS Emergency Alerts Sent

Between midnight and 4 a.m. on July 4, the NWS sent three urgent Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) to the public, including:

“THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!”

The USCG continues to assist the state of Texas with flooding near Kerrville. USCG MH-65 helicopters have conducted 12 flights to the flooded area, rescued 15 campers from Camp Mystic in Hunt, and aided in the evacuation of 230 people.

Local Alert Failures and Camp Mystic Conditions

Yet local government alerts were absent. In Kerr County, no county-issued push alerts accompanied the NWS warnings . Victims like campers and residents reported: “No warning at all” . Kerr County lacked an autonomous warning system like sirens linked to NWS data. Officials had debated installing one for nearly a decade, but rejected grant offers and funding due to cost sensitivity and political resistance.

By contrast, Comfort, a neighboring Kendall County town, installed a $60,000 siren system. It ran manually during the crisis and reported zero casualties. Because Camp Mystic prohibited campers from carrying phones, emergency alerts via cell were unlikely to reach them just before the flood.

A firefighter based in Ingram requested a local alert at about 4:22 a.m., but local dispatchers waited almost six hours for supervisor approval. The first CodeRED messages were delayed by 90 minutes or more, and some residents received them as late as 10 a.m., long after the flood struck.

An emergency siren is visible on top of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department in Comfort, TX. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

At Camp Mystic, director Dick Eastland reportedly received a severe flood warning on his phone about an hour before the waters hit, but evacuation orders were not issued until too late.

Though NWS forecasts escalated rapidly, state officials argued some rainfall magnitude predictions missed the actual storm intensity, with up to 18″ falling vs. modest projections of far fewer amounts.

Staffing shortages within NWS offices in San Antonio and San Angelo have also come under scrutiny for weakening coordination: several key roles were vacant during the critical period.

Excessive rainfall outlook outlined at 16:00 on Friday, July 4, 2025, valid till 12:00, Saturday, July 5, 2025.

At the federal level, FEMA director David Richardson defended the response, calling it a “model,” while lawmakers criticized the agency for missed calls on hotlines and bureaucratic delays .

A FEMA urban search‑and rescue leader resigned mid‑response, citing frustration over procedural constraints.

Experts urge attention to the social trust dynamic in flood alerts. Many residents are conditioned to ignore repeated non‑urgent alerts, contributing to "alert fatigue”.

Without layered, specific, and instructive messages, even accurate forecasts may not drive action.

A “multi‑layered” alert system consisting of sirens, wireless emergency alerts, local opt-in systems like CodeRED and even call trees may be deemed essential, especially in rural or low‑phone zones.

Areas served by siren systems like Comfort had no fatalities, while Kerr County, lacking such infrastructure, recorded over 100 deaths.

Camp Mystic, a known high-risk site, was allowed to operate in a 100‑year floodplain, and warnings there were downplayed or ignored despite prior expert recommendations.

NOAA/NWS data shows 4-day rainfall totals from July 3–7, 2025. Parts of Burnet, Williamson, and Travis counties received over 20 inches, leading to catastrophic flooding. Source: CW3E, UC San Diego Full report (PDF)

As I write this newsletter, Texas lawmakers in a special session are debating legislation to:

Fund county-level sirens and flood gauge upgrades
Require evacuation planning for camps and floodplain developments
Expand grants and oversight tied to early-warning implementation

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority (UGRA), which previously declined a low-cost $1 million state loan, has faced bipartisan criticism for prioritizing tax cuts over public safety.

FEMA critics and lawmakers across party lines are calling for improved central coordination and repealing internal rules that delayed rescue team deployment.

Editorials, such as those in the Austin American‑Statesman and Houston Chronicle, argued the floods revealed decades of preparedness failures, and urged climate‐informed planning and flood‑risk awareness.

WATCH: NOAA/NWS radar reflectivity — Central Texas flash flood event, circa July 3–4, 2025

Source: NWS radar compiled in Historic Texas Flash Flooding Radar Archive (YouTube video based on NOAA data)

As the Warnings Doctor, it is obvious to me that the Texas floods revealed a major failure to warn the public about an immediate life-threatening event.

At a minimum, the following actions need to be taken:

Federal and state leaders must update disaster protocols, mandate sirens and gauge networks in high-risk zones, and ensure local officials act on NWS warnings.
A multi-layered alert system should become the norm, with redundancy built into phone, siren, and personal outreach channels to overcome rural gaps and device restrictions.
Trust in alerts can't be taken for granted. Messages must be action-based, localized, and impactful, not generic or technical.

Without accountability and persistent investment, another flash flood could repeat these errors. For the survivors, the loss will linger—but their voices may yet save future lives.

TEXAS LEADS THE NATION: WARNING LABELS ON ADDITIVES

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 14:22:29 GMT

On June 22, 2025, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 25 (SB25), known as the Make Texas Healthy Again Act. Beginning January 1, 2027, Texas will require prominent on-pack warning labels whenever food sold in the state contains any of 44 specific additives—including synthetic colorants like Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, titanium dioxide, bleached flour, and partially hydrogenated oils. The mandated label must declare the following:

"WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom."

These warnings must appear in font no smaller than the existing ingredient list, in a visible, high-contrast placement, and also be included on product webpages when sold online. The list of additives spans a broad range of chemicals used in ultra-processed foods, from food dyes to emulsifiers, preservatives, and bleached and bromated flours. While many are legal in the U.S., advocates cite regulatory caution in other nations and studies linking ingredients like titanium dioxide to health concerns. SB25 marks the first U.S.state to mandate additive-specific warning labels, shifting from nutrition-focused warnings to ingredient-level transparency. The law ties into a broader movement spearheaded by U,S, Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s backing state-level action through his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.

New Texas law demands warning labels on additives like Red 40 and Yellow 5, found in popular cereals like this.

SB25 calls for action in four key domains:

Labeling Additives — Enforce warning labels on any food product with listed ingredients by 2027.
Education — Introduce nutrition education in all grade schools (K–8), including daily physical activity mandates. Also include nutrition electives in high school and add nutrition coursework for universities to retain state funding.
Medical Training — Require continuing nutrition and metabolic-health training for licensed professionals (doctors, nurses, PA’s) to maintain licensure.
Advisory Committee — Create a seven-member Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee to study connections between additives, ultra-processed foods, and chronic disease; they’ll also guide curriculum development.

Consumer advocacy groups like Consumer Reports and the Environmental Working Group view this as a major win for transparency and public health. They argue that Texas is stepping in where the federal government lagged.

Critics, including industry groups like the Consumer Brands Association, label the law “misleading” and legally questionable. They contend the foreign recommendations are often recommendations rather than bans, and that the law could drive unnecessary costs, legal action, and consumer confusion. The Texas Attorney General may seek injunctions or impose daily fines up to $50,000 per non‑compliant product.

Federal Preemption & Company Strategies 

SB 25 includes a federal preemption clause : if the FDA or USDA declares a listed ingredient safe, prohibits it, or mandates similar warning labels, Texas’s requirement on that ingredient would be invalidated. This ensures companies won't face conflicting obligations, but also opens interpretative challenges.

Manufacturers face a choice: label , reformulate , or litigate . Many may reformulate products to remove additives to avoid the label. Others might issue Texas‑specific packaging or challenge the law in court before enforcement begins. Given Texas's national influence, some companies may extend changes nationwide to avoid logistical complexity.

What starts in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas. New labeling laws could ripple nationwide as companies react to SB 25.

What’s Next—and What to Watch

Rulemaking Phase: Texas regulations detailing enforcement are to be finalized by December 31, 2025, in advance of the January 1, 2027 effective date.
Legal Pressure: Industry groups may file lawsuits, citing First Amendment and federal preemption concerns.
Federal Response: If the FDA acts—e.g., banning titanium dioxide or creating front-of-pack labels—federal rules could override Texas’s law.
Consumer Impact: Parents, schools, and health professionals should begin awareness preparation. Early label updates may appear before 2027, and companies might release natural‑color versions of iconic products.

In Summary

Texas’s SB 25 is a game‑changer: the first U.S. state to mandate bold warning labels for specific food additives tied to foreign caution. Extending far beyond packaging, it rethinks school PE requirements, nutrition education, and health‑care training. Backed by a federal health initiative, this law may pressure both industry and regulators toward broader transparency, public‑health focus, and ingredient refinement—whether in Texas or across the nation.

As the Warnings Doctor, I fully support the Texas law and hope the Federal Government, through the FDA, comes through with sensible national guidelines and even requirements. Putting politics aside, the health of our nation should be a top priority of our government.

WARNING: FDA DELAYS IMPLEMENTATION OF RULE THAT WOULD REQUIRE NEW NUTRITION LABELING

Tue, 27 May 2025 17:27:50 GMT

The FDA is delaying implementation of a rule that would require food companies to print nutritional information on the front labels of their products.

The proposed rule was developed by President Biden’s Administration, with a comment period scheduled to close on May 16. The rule is designed to help consumers make better choices to avoid chronic health problems. Such problems—and consumer choices about nutrition—are things President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has repeatedly touted.

Even though hundreds of comments have been filed about the proposed rule, Kennedy’s Food and Drug Administration is delaying the close of the comment period by 60 days. Most of the comments filed so far have come from food companies and food industry trade organizations.

“ A 60-day comment period extension allows adequate time for interested parties to submit comments while also not significantly delaying rulemaking on the important issues in the proposed rule ,” according to the FDA’s announcement about the delay.

Image Source: FDA

Kennedy has repeatedly said that Americans’ diets are problematic and that a better-informed public would be able to make better decisions about the foods they eat. Those points are a cornerstone of his Make America Healthy Again agenda. He has called sugar “poison.”

The proposed nutrition labeling—also referred to as the “Nutrition Info Box”—would provide information on saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content in a simple format, showing whether the food has “Low,” “Med,” or “High” levels of these nutrients. It complements the FDA’s iconic Nutrition Facts label, which gives consumers more detailed information about the nutrients in their food on the back of packages.

Before President Trump was sworn in, two previous FDA leaders under the Biden Administration lauded the proposed label rule as a long-needed change.

“ The science on saturated fat, sodium and added sugars is clear ,” said President Biden’s FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D. “ Nearly everyone knows or cares for someone with a chronic disease that is due, in part, to the food we eat. It is time we make it easier for consumers to glance, grab and go. Adding front-of-package nutrition labeling to most packaged foods would do that. We are fully committed to pulling all the levers available to the FDA to make nutrition information readily accessible as part of our efforts to promote public health. ”

Real choices happen in real aisles. Labels should make them easier.

Image Source: Getty Images

The FDA’s former Deputy Commissioner for the Human Foods Program, Jim Jones, had similar comments:

“ Food should be a vehicle for wellness, not a contributor of chronic disease, ” said Jones earlier this year, before resigning amid severe FDA staff cuts. “ In addition to our goal of providing information to consumers, it’s possible we’ll see manufacturers reformulate products to be healthier in response to front-of-package nutrition labeling. Together, we hope the FDA’s efforts, alongside those of our federal partners, will start stemming the tide of the chronic disease crisis in our country. ”

Neither current FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary nor the FDA’s Acting Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, Kyle Diamantas, has commented on the proposed nutrition labeling rule or its delay.

The proposed Nutrition Info Box has been designed using a substantial body of research conducted by the FDA, including a scientific literature review, consumer focus groups, and a peer-reviewed experimental study.

In 2023, the FDA conducted a study of nearly 10,000 U.S. adults to further explore consumer responses to three different types of front-of-package labels. The purpose of the experimental study was to identify which label designs enabled participants to make quicker and more accurate assessments of the healthfulness of a product based on the levels of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars displayed. The study showed that the black-and-white Nutrition Info design with percent Daily Value performed best in helping consumers identify healthier food options.

Design matters—especially when every second in the aisle counts.

Image Source: Getty Images

The proposed Nutrition Info Box was part of the Biden Administration’s White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health to reduce diet-related diseases by 2030.

According to former FDA officials, such efforts can help consumers more easily identify foods recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and may assist them in reducing their consumption of certain nutrients that are commonly found in ultra-processed foods.

If finalized in its existing form, the proposed rule would require food manufacturers to add a Nutrition Info Box to most packaged food products three years after the final rule’s effective date—for businesses with $10 million or more in annual food sales. Businesses with less than $10 million in annual sales would have four years to implement the rule.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has long advocated for front-of-package nutrition labeling, starting with a Citizen Petition to the FDA in 2006. CSPI, the Association of SNAP Nutrition Education Administrators, and the Association of State Public Health Nutritionists filed a petition in 2022 calling for mandatory, interpretive, nutrient-specific front-of-package nutrition labels of the very type proposed in the pending rule.

Earlier this year, the CSPI called for the Trump Administration to act:

“ The incoming administration has the opportunity to finalize this important rulemaking and follow through on commitments to stand up to Big Food ,” said the CSPI. “ When finalizing the policy, we hope FDA will consider the growing body of international evidence supporting the ‘High In’ style labels adopted by our neighbors to the North and South. We hope to see FDA continue to push forward with evidence-based public health protections, including mandatory front-of-package nutrition labeling. ”

WARNING: THE GENDER BIAS IN CAR SAFETY TESTING PRESENTS AN ONGOING DANGER

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:27:10 GMT

Car accidents are a leading cause of injury and death worldwide, yet the safety measures designed to protect occupants in these life-or-death situations have long ignored a critical reality: women are more likely to be severely injured or killed in crashes than men. This disparity isn't rooted in biology alone—it’s also a result of a troubling oversight in the automotive industry’s safety testing protocols. For decades, crash-test dummies, which serve as proxies for human passengers in simulated collisions, have been modeled after the average male physique, leaving women out of the equation entirely.

The Alarming Data Gap

The implications of this gender gap in safety testing are both staggering and infuriating. Women, on average, have different body compositions than men—they tend to be shorter, lighter, and have different muscle distributions and bone densities. These physiological differences mean that women’s bodies interact with car safety features—such as seat belts, airbags, and headrests—in distinct ways. When vehicles aren’t tested with dummies that accurately represent female anatomy, crucial data about how to better protect women in crashes is simply ignored.

Studies have revealed the dire consequences of this exclusion. Research from the University of Virginia found that women are 47% more likely to sustain serious injuries in car accidents compared to men, even when accounting for variables like seatbelt usage and crash severity. Women are also significantly more likely to suffer whiplash injuries due to the positioning of headrests, which are often designed with men’s neck dimensions in mind. These statistics aren’t just numbers—they represent lives cut short, families broken, and untold suffering that could have been mitigated with equitable safety testing.

One size does not fit all. Women's safety deserves real representation.

The Consequences Are Real and Deadly

The absence of female-representative crash-test dummies isn’t just a matter of neglect; it’s also a reflection of deeper systemic biases. The automotive industry, like many other sectors, has historically been dominated by men, from engineering teams to executive leadership. This lack of diversity has led to a blind spot where products are designed and tested for a default male consumer. When women are treated as an afterthought—or worse, not considered at all—their safety is compromised, reinforcing a cycle of inequality that permeates far beyond the car itself.

Efforts to address this issue have been slow and inadequate. Some manufacturers have introduced “female” crash-test dummies, but these dummies are often scaled-down versions of male models, lacking the anatomical differences that would make them truly representative. Moreover, these dummies are rarely used in front-seat crash tests—the most common type of collision—further diminishing their impact on safety improvements. Regulatory bodies, like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), have also been slow to mandate inclusive testing standards, leaving manufacturers with little incentive to prioritize women’s safety.

Women face a significantly higher risk of injury in car accidents compared to men — and it’s not just one area. Source: Destination TBC

Systematic Biases in Car Safety Testing

This lack of progress is unacceptable, especially considering the advancements in technology that could make inclusive testing a reality. Today, engineers have access to sophisticated simulation tools that can model crash scenarios with virtual dummies of various sizes, genders, and ages. These tools could provide invaluable insights into how to design cars that protect everyone—not just the male average. But without industry-wide commitment and regulatory enforcement, these innovations remain underutilized.

The consequences of this negligence extend beyond the immediate physical dangers. When women’s safety is disregarded, it sends a chilling message about their worth in society. It implies that their lives are less valuable, their experiences less important, and their voices less deserving of attention. This message reinforces broader patterns of gender inequality and undermines efforts to create a more equitable world.

For decades, crash-test dummies have looked like this — modeled after the average male body.

Slow Progress, Inadequate Solutions

So, what can be done to correct this glaring injustice? First, regulatory bodies must step up. The NHTSA and similar organizations worldwide should mandate the use of female-representative crash-test dummies in all safety evaluations and require data transparency from manufacturers. These measures would hold companies accountable and ensure that vehicles are designed with the safety of all passengers in mind.

Second, the automotive industry must embrace diversity at every level. By hiring more women in leadership, engineering, and design roles, companies can foster perspectives that challenge the status quo and prioritize inclusivity. Diversity isn’t just a moral imperative—it’s also a practical one, leading to better, more innovative products that serve a wider range of consumers.

It’s time to design protection for every body on the road.

Technology Exists to Solve This - But It's Being Ignored

Finally, consumers have the power to demand change. By supporting manufacturers that prioritize gender equity in safety testing and raising awareness about the issue, individuals can push the industry toward reform. Public outcry has sparked change in other sectors, and the automotive industry is no exception.

The Deeper Message: Women's Lives Are Devalued

The dangers of cars not being tested for women’s safety are real, pervasive, and deeply unjust. But they are also solvable. By acknowledging the problem, demanding accountability, and committing to equity, we can ensure that the vehicles we rely on every day are designed to protect us all—regardless of gender. It’s time for the automotive industry to hit the brakes on outdated practices and accelerate toward a future that values every life equally.

WARNING: ARE MUSK, KENNEDY, AND TRUMP IGNORING THE GRAVE CONSEQUENCES OF SLASHING PUBLIC HEALTH FUNDING?

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 03:04:42 GMT

Recent budget cuts at the Health and Safety Science Services (HSSS) have sent shockwaves through the scientific and public health communities, threatening the very infrastructure designed to protect us from disease outbreaks, food contamination, and medical crises. These cuts have affected food inspectors, vaccine scientists, Alzheimer’s researchers, and experts studying bird flu, among others—positions that are essential to ensuring public safety and advancing critical medical research. The consequences of these decisions will be dire, potentially reversing years of progress and exposing society to increased health risks.

A Blow to Food Safety

One of the most immediate and tangible threats posed by these budget cuts is the reduction in food safety inspectors. Foodborne illnesses affect millions of Americans each year, causing thousands of hospitalizations and deaths. Inspectors are the frontline defense against contaminated products, ensuring that what reaches our grocery stores and restaurants meets rigorous safety standards. With fewer inspectors in the field, the likelihood of tainted food slipping through the cracks rises significantly. Recalls will be slower, outbreaks will be harder to track, and public confidence in the food supply will erode. The long-term cost of dealing with foodborne illness—both in terms of healthcare expenses and economic losses—far outweighs the short-term financial savings of cutting these critical positions.

Food safety inspectors are our first line of defense against contamination. Budget cuts are putting millions at risk, slowing recalls, and threatening public trust in what we eat. The cost of inaction? Illness, economic fallout, and lost lives. Image Source: USDA

Undermining Vaccine Research in a Post-Pandemic World

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the crucial role vaccine scientists play in safeguarding global health. Cutting funding to vaccine researchers now is not just shortsighted—it is reckless. Infectious diseases, both old and emerging, pose a constant threat, and the rapid development of vaccines has proven to be one of the most effective tools in combating them. With fewer resources dedicated to vaccine research, the nation’s ability to respond to future pandemics will be severely weakened. Diseases like measles, polio, and new strains of COVID-19 require continuous monitoring and adaptation of vaccines. The loss of experienced scientists in this field could mean delayed responses to outbreaks, resulting in preventable deaths and economic disruptions.

Abandoning Progress in Alzheimer’s Research

Alzheimer’s disease is a growing public health crisis, affecting millions of Americans and placing immense financial and emotional strain on families and caregivers. Advances in research over the last decade have brought us closer than ever to understanding and potentially treating this devastating disease. Slashing funding for Alzheimer’s researchers halts momentum at a critical time when promising treatments are emerging. Without sustained investment, breakthroughs will be delayed or lost altogether, leaving millions to suffer unnecessarily. The economic burden of Alzheimer’s-related care will continue to skyrocket, straining Medicare and Medicaid systems. Cutting funding for researchers dedicated to solving one of the most pressing medical challenges of our time is a failure of leadership and foresight.

Ignoring the Threat of Bird Flu and Emerging Zoonotic Diseases

The recent rise in cases of avian influenza (bird flu) has alarmed health officials worldwide. The virus has the potential to mutate into a strain capable of human-to-human transmission, leading to a pandemic with catastrophic consequences. Scientists studying bird flu are working to understand how these viruses evolve, how they spread, and how they can be contained. By cutting funding for these experts, we are effectively blinding ourselves to an impending threat. Without proper surveillance and research, we risk being caught unprepared for a virus that could devastate global health and economies. The world cannot afford another pandemic response as chaotic and uncoordinated as the initial reaction to COVID-19, yet these cuts make that scenario more likely.

New York City posts warning in Central Park urging people not to handle birds due to health concerns.

Source: Wikipedia

The Larger Pattern: Devaluing Science and Public Health

These cuts are not occurring in isolation—they are part of a disturbing trend of devaluing science and public health in favor of short-term budgetary savings. The pandemic demonstrated the critical importance of a well-funded public health infrastructure, yet instead of reinforcing these systems, policymakers are dismantling them. The long-term costs of this approach will far outweigh any immediate financial benefits. Fewer food inspectors mean more food recalls and outbreaks. Fewer vaccine scientists mean slower responses to new disease threats. Fewer Alzheimer’s researchers mean prolonged suffering and economic burdens. Fewer bird flu scientists mean heightened pandemic risks.

Public health funding is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Cutting it in the name of fiscal restraint is a dangerous gamble that prioritizes immediate cost savings over long-term stability and safety. The role of government is to protect its citizens, and these cuts undermine that fundamental responsibility. Lawmakers must reverse course before irreversible damage is done. The stakes are too high to ignore.

WARNING: IS ELON MUSK'S DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY JEOPARDIZING AIR SAFETY?

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 19:26:38 GMT

As Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DGE) pushes for sweeping reforms and cost-cutting across federal agencies, concerns are mounting over the impact on critical public safety roles. Among the most alarming areas affected is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), where staff reductions may threaten the lives of millions of air travelers.

The DGE, established with a mandate to streamline government operations and reduce bureaucratic waste, has come under fire for its aggressive downsizing tactics. Critics warn that essential safety personnel, including air traffic controllers, are being cut under the guise of efficiency, leaving the nation's airspace dangerously understaffed.

The FAA's Staffing Shortage: A Brewing Disaster

The FAA, the agency responsible for managing the nation's airspace and ensuring the safety of millions of travelers, is currently facing a significant staffing shortfall. According to a 2023 report by the Office of Inspector General, the FAA employed 3,000 fewer certified professional controllers than necessary, resulting in widespread fatigue, operational strain, and elevated risks of errors.

Experts link this crisis, in part, to the DGE's sweeping mandates to trim government payrolls. With a focus on reducing headcount and operational costs, the agency has reportedly accelerated retirements and limited hiring. This has exacerbated an already dire situation in which air traffic controllers are overworked and under-supported.

How Efficiency Mandates Threaten Public Safety

The push for government efficiency is not new, but the DGE's approach has raised red flags due to its indiscriminate cuts across vital agencies. Air traffic control is a prime example of how a one-size-fits-all efficiency model can backfire in high-stakes environments. Reducing staff in roles where precision, expertise, and rapid decision-making are crucial directly undermines public safety.

FAA Headquarters – The Heart of U.S. Aviation Safety

Source: Federal Aviation Administration - Wikipedia

Moreover, the DGE's emphasis on "lean operations" may overlook the unique demands of safety-critical fields. In industries like aviation, cutting corners to save costs can have life-or-death consequences. Safety experts warn that a failure to maintain adequate staffing and resources will inevitably lead to more near-misses and potentially fatal accidents.

Real-World Consequences of Staffing Cuts

For everyday travelers, these systemic issues translate into tangible risks. Increased flight delays, communication breakdowns, and more frequent near-misses underscore the human cost of administrative neglect and corporate interference.

In a recent near-catastrophe, two commercial aircraft came within 100 feet of colliding at a major U.S. airport—an incident attributed in part to an overworked and understaffed control tower. Such incidents highlight the stakes when efficiency mandates are prioritized over public welfare.

This graph illustrates total workforce operations from 1998 to 2020 , showing a decline after peak traffic in the early 2000s. While a post-pandemic recovery is forecasted, staffing shortages remain a key challenge for aviation safety. Source: FAA Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan (2021)

This year alone, there have been four major aviation accidents that may be linked to these staffing shortages:

Washington, D.C. (January 29, 2025): A Bombardier CRJ700 operating as American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. All 64 people on the CRJ700 and three on the helicopter perished.
Philadelphia (January 31, 2025): A Learjet 55 operating as Med Jets Flight 056 crashed shortly after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, resulting in the deaths of all six onboard and one person on the ground. The crash also injured at least 24 others and caused significant property damage.
Alaska (February 6, 2025): A Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX operating as Bering Air Flight 445 disappeared from radar 10 minutes before its scheduled arrival in Nome. The wreckage was found 34 miles from Nome, with all 10 occupants deceased.
Toronto (February 17, 2025): A Bombardier CRJ900 operating as Delta Connection Flight 4819 crashed and overturned while landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. All 80 occupants survived, though 21 sustained injuries.

Aviation analyst Michael Torres emphasizes the broader implications: “We’re seeing a culture shift where quick profits and operational cost-cutting overshadow the essential work of public service. But when it comes to air safety, the margin for error is zero.”

Emergency crews respond to the mid-air collision of American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk near Reagan National Airport, claiming 67 lives.

Source: Wikipedia

What Needs to Change

Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach. Advocacy groups are calling for increased federal funding to support air traffic control staffing and better oversight to insulate public agencies from aggressive efficiency mandates. Additionally, policy reforms could ensure that agencies like the FAA retain the independence needed to prioritize public safety over corporate-style cost-cutting.

For concerned citizens, raising awareness is a first step. Contacting lawmakers, supporting worker advocacy groups, and staying informed about the intersection of corporate efficiency and public policy can drive meaningful change.

The skies above us are not the place for experiments in extreme efficiency. It’s time to ensure that air safety remains the top priority—before cost-cutting measures cost lives.

WARNING: WILL TRUMP'S SURGEON GENERAL SUPPORT IMPROVED ALCOHOL WARNING LABELS?

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:09:10 GMT

Biden Administration former Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, on his way out of office, issued a Surgeon General's Advisory calling for new warnings on alcoholic beverages related to the cancer risk from consuming alcoholic beverages. Given that most individuals are unaware of the connection that consumption of alcoholic beverages can increase the risk for at least seven types of cancer, Murthy said in his advisory: "Given the conclusive evidence on the cancer risk from alcohol consumption and the Office of the Surgeon General's responsibility to inform the American public of the best available scientific evidence, the Surgeon General recommends an update to the Surgeon General's warning label for alcohol-containing beverages to include a cancer risk warning."

Vivek Murthy

There are about 100,000 alcohol-related cancer cases and about 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths annually, and according to Murthy, cancer risk increases as alcohol consumption increases. Consuming alcohol raises the risk of developing at least seven types of cancer diseases, including liver, breast, throat, and colon cancer, according to several research studies. The current warning label printed on bottles and cans of alcoholic beverages warns about the dangers of drinking while pregnant or before driving and operating other machinery. This language has not been updated since its inception in 1988.

Source: "Alcohol and Cancer Risk," National Cancer Institute

So, now the question is: Will Trump's nominee for Surgeon General, former Fox News commentator Dr. Janet Nesheiwat, who must be confirmed by the Senate, go along with Murthy's advisory, which must be approved by Congress before the label can be changed?

Dr. Janette Nesheiwat

Despite the fact that neither Donald Trump nor his pick to head HHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., drinks alcohol and both have been outspoken about the dangers of alcohol (Trump's brother died from the effects of alcohol), neither one has embraced Murthy's proposed warning label. Further, Republicans, who control both the House and the Senate, have in the past resisted many new regulations. In fact, Trump campaigned on unleashing the power of industry by cutting as many regulations as possible. He even appointed the world's richest man, Elon Musk, to head up an advisory panel called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) to assist him in cutting regulations. And it doesn't hurt to have a strong alcohol lobby, which contributes $30 million/year, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, the lobby gave about 1/3 of their money last year to support Kamala Harris' presidential campaign. Further, there are many top liquor companies in conservative states dominated by Republicans, including Kentucky (home of Jim Beam and many other popular bourbon labels), Tennessee (home of Jack Daniel's whiskey), and Texas (home to several popular brands of tequila and Tito's Vodka). In fact, Texas passed a law in 2021 expanding alcohol sales, which prompted its Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, to exclaim, "Stay thirsty, my friends!"—hardly an endorsement for a cancer warning label to be placed on its Texas-brewed alcoholic beverages.

There is precedent for such a warning label as proposed by Murthy. Ireland recently became the first country in the European Union and the second country worldwide, after South Korea, to better regulate alcoholic beverages by adding cancer warnings and health information to alcohol products. Surveys conducted by the World Health Organization have shown that 51% of people don't know that alcohol is associated with an increased risk of cancer. And, if done right, there are studies that show that an effective warning label on alcoholic beverages could indeed have a positive impact on intended behavior. One recent study found that when young men looked at alcohol warning labels that were larger and included a picture of a young man with a bloody face, they experienced lower activation of the reward circuits in their brains, and the warning labels "significantly reduced their reported desire to drink." Another study conducted in the Yukon in Canada found that adding labels to alcohol that included information on cancer risks not only reduced alcohol sales, but also found that people who bought alcohol with the new warning labels better remembered information about national drinking guidelines and cancer risks. These labels were colorful and well-designed and reduced consumption in the area where the labels were introduced by 6.3% compared with control areas that had no such labels.

While this research should encourage policymakers to at least consider Murthy's recommendation, I doubt that the Trump Administration will move forward on this label. While Donald Trump, as I pointed out above, has been an outspoken opponent of alcoholic beverages and is a teetotaler himself, his family is in the hospitality business, and all of their hotels and golf courses serve millions of alcoholic beverages. Additionally, the family owns a 1,300-acre winery near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Source: Rumgay H, Murphy N, Ferrari P, Soerjomataram I. Alcohol and Cancer: Epidemiology and Biological Mechanisms. Nutrients. Sep 11 2021;13(9) doi:10.3390/nu13093173

As your Warnings Doctor, my recommendation is that you don't wait for either the Trump Administration or the current Congress to endorse an expanded alcohol warning label that addresses the risk of cancer. I suggest that you each consider the available research that Murthy cited and make your own informed choices to reduce the risk of cancer for you and your loved ones.

WARNING: TRUMP'S RE-ELECTION MEANS A DEREGULATORY NIGHTMARE FOR CONSUMERS

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:07:34 GMT

In my best-selling book, Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It , I propose a safety triad consisting of three components: manufacturers, regulators and consumers. All three must function properly in order to keep us safe. Manufacturers must produce and market safe (or safe as possible) products and warn us about any potential hazards so that we can make informed choices about whether or not to purchase their product and/or how to use it safely. Regulators , by imposing and implementing necessary rules and regulations, should hold manufacturers accountable for the above stated actions and to endure that they engage in "principled disclosure" by warning us about any potential hazards and dangers associated with their products. And, finally, Consumers , especially in the absence of well-meaning manufacturers or competent, well-intentioned regulators, must be highly diligent by researching products and learning about potential hazards prior to buying and/or using them.

All three, manufacturers, regulators and consumers, must perform their jobs or the safety triad may fail to protect us and our loved ones. Think of a three-legged stool that distributes the weight of a person sitting on the stool, equally among the three legs. But what would happen if we leaned heavily to one side of the stool, essentially spreading the weight that was once borne by three legs to the two legs remaining braced to the floor. Unfortunately the third leg is no longer contributing to the stability of the stool, which may actually collapse because the two remaining legs may not be able to handle the amount of weight that was intended to be equally distributed among all three legs.

That is precisely what might happen to our safety triad if President-Elect Donald Trump carries out his campaign promises (and those listed in the notorious Project 2025 developed an written by former members of his first presidency) to significantly de-regulate the Federal Government, starting with the automobile and oil industries and continuing into virtually every level of our government, including EPA regulations governing our water, air and climate as well as our health and personal safety overseen by such agencies as the FDA and CDC. If past is prologue, then we only have to look at the de-regulatory frenzy Trump engaged in during his first term as President. Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.

In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 100 environmental rules officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. More than a dozen other potential rollbacks remained in progress by the end but were not finalized by the end of the administration’s term.

As of this writing, Trump has selected former NY Congressman and 2022 Republican NY Gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, to head up the EPA. Zeldin backed Trump’s 2017 exit from the Paris Climate Agreement, telling Bloomberg in 2018 that the U.S. should not reenter the agreement “as it currently stands,” arguing it did not impose enough responsibility on other countries relative to the U.S. “It’s not anywhere close to a level playing field,” he added.

He also took aim at the Hochul administration’s climate targets in a July Fox News op-ed. In the article, he ridiculed the state goal of 70 percent renewables by the end of the decade, established under Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo, as “whimsical,” and noted that as of last summer, the state was on track to only hit 44 percent by 2030.

Not only do we have to worry about Zeldin, we cannot ignore the stated goals of Project 2025:

The Project 2025 playbook proposes replacing tens of thousands of career civil servants, such as scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with far-right, non-expert loyalists to usher in a radical agenda that would make it easier for big corporations to dump dangerous toxins into the U.S. water supply and air. This would place corporate profits over the health of the American people and the environment. An April, 2024 joint staff report by the Democratic staff of both the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Senate Budget Committee sheds light on how fossil fuel companies have attempted to undermine efforts to curb pollution while they earn record-breaking profits.

These far-right loyalists would seek to erode the fundamental freedom of every American to breathe clean air and drink safe water and, in so doing, would significantly increase the number of Americans suffering from asthma, cancer, heart disease, reproductive health harms, child development delays, and other health conditions.

And this is just the damage Trump and his de-regulatory nightmarish policies could produce regarding our air, water and climate. Think about the damage from deregulating our food, drugs, automobiles, worker safety policies, etc., etc.

If Trump does indeed unleash a de-regulatory nightmare upon us, the three legged safety triad will come crashing down UNLESS we, the consumers, do our job and save the third leg of the triad.

The third leg of my safety triad is you, the worker and/or the consumer. who when faced with a greedy corporation and a totally conflicted regulator must take steps, mostly self-educational, to protect you and your family. That means going to the library, reading newspaper stories, making phone calls to regulators and manufacturers alike, reading warning and safety labels and instructions, joining consumer advocacy groups. In other words, if the people who make unsafe products and the government regulators can’t or won’t do their jobs, we the people must take charge of our own safety, gather as much information as possible, so that we can make informed choices for us and our loved ones. We have no other choice, especially under the coming Trump administration.

WARNING: FDA RECOMMENDS REMOVING POPULAR DECONGESTANT FROM MARKET

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 13:56:11 GMT

If you or anyone in your family has used, uses or plans to use such over the counter (OTC) remedies for the flu or common cold as Theraflu, Robitussin, NyQuil, DayQuil, Mucinex, Sudafed or even some versions of Tylenol or Advil, you may want to read this newsletter very carefully.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just announced that it is recommending that a key ingredient found in the above cough, cold and flu products, oral phenylephrine (PE), be removed after the agency's scientists concluded that the oral version of the drug is ineffective as a nasal decongestant. The FDA's proposal comes more than a year after the agency's outside advisers voted against continued use of the ingredient, oral (not nasal spray) phenylephrine, citing concerns with the initial data used to support its approval and new data questioning its effectiveness.

"Based on our review of available data, and consistent with the advice of the advisory committee, we are taking this next step in the process to propose removing oral phenylephrine because it is not effective as a nasal decongestant," Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a news release. It's important to note that this isn't the final order. The FDA, with its recommendation, has opened up a 6-month period during which the public and any interested parties can submit comments to the FDA. After that period (which ends on May 7, 2025), the FDA will release it's final decision in the form of an order as to whether or not it is pulling products with the ingredient from shelves.

In a preemptive move, CVS stopped selling products with phenylephrine last year after an FDA advisory committee declared that it was ineffective. Other major pharmacies, including Walgreens and Rite Aid, still stock products containing the drug for now.

Although phenylephrine received FDA approval for over-the-counter use in the 1970s, its popularity surged in 2005 after legislation moved products that use a similar decongestant, pseudoephedrine – which, in large quantities, can also be used to make methamphetamine – behind pharmacy counters.

"The FDA would provide manufacturers with appropriate time to either reformulate drugs containing oral phenylephrine or remove such drugs from the market," the agency said in its release.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association said Thursday it was "disappointed" in the FDA's proposal. The industry trade group renewed its claim that no changes "are warranted" for oral phenylephrine and cited previous FDA and advisory committee decisions that did not call for pulling the ingredient.

"PE should remain an available option for consumers, because Americans deserve the option to choose the safe and effective OTC medicines they prefer and rely on," Scott Melville, CHPA's president and CEO, said in a statement.

The FDA's proposal caps a push by pharmacy professors at the University of Florida who have urged the agency for years to pull the product, pointing to new data showing phenylephrine did no better than a placebo when swallowed. The latest data shows that only a tiny fraction of phenylephrine is absorbed into the body when digested from a pill or syrup containing phenylephrine. This is different from other formulations like the inhaled nasal spray versions of the drug, where larger percentages of the drug can make it into the bloodstream. The researchers also have questioned the initial studies that were run to prove the drug's effectiveness, though they acknowledge that it is safe at currently approved levels.

"Let me be clear, oral phenylephrine is not a safety risk," said Professor Hatton from the University of Florida, "It just doesn't work."

In a scientific review published very recently by the FDA, the agency's scientists concluded that past studies estimating that higher percentages of the drug could be absorbed during digestion were "an overestimate and based on outdated technology." Less than 1% of the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream after being swallowed, they estimated. Far higher doses could "be needed to achieve a clinically meaningful outcome which would raise significant questions about safety."

"Furthermore, there are no clinical data demonstrating that oral PE is effective as a nasal decongestant at any dosage," the FDA's scientists wrote.

As the Warnings Doctor (who has provided consulting advice to the FDA in the past), I would recommend that consumers looking for some relief from their cold or flu symptoms no longer purchase any product that contains PE. For true relief, I recommend several servings of my (or your) grandmother's chicken soup.

WARNING: SOCIAL MEDIA IS ASSOCIATED WITH SIGNIFICANT MENTAL HEALTH HARMS FOR ADOLESCENTS

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 18:46:59 GMT

In an unprecedented, but, according to many social scientists and parents, a long overdue action, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, in a June editorial in the New York Times, called for a warning label to be placed on all social media platforms. In the words of the Surgeon General:

"The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours. Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies."

If Congress passed a bill requiring warnings on social media platforms, they would probably draw attention to the adverse effects of extended social media exposure on the mental health, especially of adolescents whose use of social media is legendary. These warnings would remind parents and adolescents that "social media has not been proven safe." The Surgeon General believes that Congressionally approved legislation "should shield young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds. The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use."

Let's look at what exactly these features are and why they should be restricted.

1. Push Notifications are a powerful mobile-first communication channel that's used by every successful app today. These small, pop-up messages are sent to users devices by a mobile app and can be viewed from the device lock screen when an app isn't currently in use. Unlike other communication channels like email, push notifications are designed to be viewed in real-time and often trigger immediate engagement. When you have notifications constantly bombarding you, it can feel like you have to respond to everything right now. With them off, it’s amazing what falls away. If someone needs to reach me, they know they can call, text, or email. Not everything requires an instant response, and as it turns out, not much is truly important and urgent.

The bottom line is this: Turning off social media notifications lets your phone work as a tool for you rather than letting it control you.

2. Autoplay feature on social media automatically plays videos without a user needing to click or tap to play them. Autoplay on social media can cause a number of problems, including:

Annoying: Autoplay can be annoying, especially if the video has audio that starts playing without warning.
Battery drain: On mobile, autoplay can drain your battery.
Data usage: Autoplay can eat into your data, especially on mobile.
Disturbing content: Some videos have disturbing content that you might not want to see without a warning.
Disruptive: Autoplay can disrupt the natural flow of conversations by diverting attention to videos that might not align with ongoing discussions.
Accessibility issues: Autoplay can be frustrating and even distressing for users with cognitive impairments, photosensitive epilepsy, or who are blind or visually impaired.
Addictive behavior: Autoplay and infinite scrolling may promote addictive online behaviors.

3. Infinite Scrolling is a design feature on social media platforms that allows users to scroll through content without stopping. It's also known as endless scrolling, lazy loading, or continuous scrolling. Some of the problems with infinite scrolling include the following:

Addiction. The infinite scroll can be addictive because it activates the brain's reward center by releasing dopamine when users receive unexpected rewards, such as likes and comments.

Mental Health. The American Psychological Association says that infinite scrolling can be especially risky for young people because their developing brains are more sensitive to distractions and less able to disengage from addictive experiences.

Cybersickness. The visual and vestibular mismatch caused by infinite scrolling can make users feel like they're in danger, which can lead to cybersickness.

Time Management. The infinite scroll can make it easy to spend more time on social media than intended, which can lead to issues like being late for work or neglecting other aspects of life.

In support of the Surgeon General's call for warnings on social media platforms, New York Attorney General, Letitia James is co-leading a bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general throughout the United States also calling on Congress to act now. James has stated:

“Young people across our country are struggling, and these addictive social media algorithms are only making this mental health crisis worse. New York has led the nation in our efforts to protect kids from online harm, but everyone needs to know the risk associated with these social media platforms. The Surgeon General’s recommendation is a strong first step in that direction, and I hope warning labels will be implemented swiftly to raise more awareness about this issue.”

As long as the social media platforms are unwilling to fix the problem that they and their carefully crafted algorithms have created, as the Warnings Doctor, I believe Congress must consider further measures to protect children from the potential harms of social media, including adding a strong warning to all of their platforms.

WARNING: DOES YOUR REFRIGERATOR CONTAIN LISTERIA?

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 18:15:20 GMT

If you are one of the millions of Americans who recently purchased one of several Boar's Head Deli Products, you may have bought a product containing deadly listeria bacteria. At least nine people have died and 57 have been hospitalized from a listeria outbreak linked to deli meat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In late July, Boar’s Head, a deli meat and cheese company, expanded a previously announced recall to include at least 7 million pounds of deli products the company says may have been contaminated by listeria amid a nationwide outbreak. The recall spans 71 products and includes meat meant to be sliced at retail delis along with prepackaged meat and poultry products sold at retail locations, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As the tally of those stricken in a nationwide listeria outbreak tied to recalled Boar's Head deli meat rises, federal health officials are urging Americans to check their refrigerators for the products, some with sell-by dates into October. This is the largest such outbreak of listeria in the United States since one linked to cantaloupes more than a decade ago killed 33 people and injured another 147 in 28 states. Here's exactly what happened here with Boar's Head Deli Meats. A Boar's Head liverwurst sample tested positive for the outbreak strain of listeria in testing last month by the Maryland Department of Health, prompting the expanded recall. The 18 states where the 57 cases in the latest outbreak took place include Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. The first case was reported on May 29, 2024, and the last occurred on Aug. 16, 2024. Some people are suing Boar's Head after eating the company's products, according to the Associated Press. That includes lifelong liverwurst lover Sue Fleming, 88, who was hospitalized for more than a week with a listeria infection; and Ashley Solberg, who claimed in a lawsuit that she had "nearly lost her unborn child" after contracting the illness.

Still, recent illnesses may have yet to be reported as it typically takes three to four weeks to determine if an illness is part of an outbreak, according to the CDC. Further, the real number of sick people in the outbreak is likely higher than the number reported, as some recover without medical care or being tested for listeria.

What exactly is listeria? According to the CDC, listeria is a hardy germ that can remain on surfaces such as meat slicers and foods, even when refrigerated. It can take up to 10 weeks for some people to develop symptoms of listeriosis. Listeria spreads easily among equipment, surfaces, hands and food. The bacteria can contaminate many foods, and listeria infection is the third leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the U.S. Each year an estimated 1,600 Americans are infected with listeria and 260 die from it.

Who is most at risk for a listeria infection? People who are pregnant, 65 and older or those with weakened immune systems are at a higher risk of serious illness or death from a listeria infection. Those with symptoms including fever, muscle aches, tiredness should call a healthcare provider. Other symptoms include headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance or seizures. Listeria can cause pregnancy loss or premature birth, as well as serious illness or death in newborns. The infection is typically diagnosed with a sample from an ill person's body fluid or tissue, and treatment depends on the severity of the illness. People with diarrhea should drink lots of fluids to prevent dehydration. Those with an invasive illness are treated with antibiotics. If you have any of the Boar's Head products in your refrigerator, you should immediately throw them out or return them to the store where you bought them, and clean your refrigerator, containers and any surfaces that may have come in contact with the recalled meats.

As a service to our readers, the Warnings Doctor is providing you with a link to all of the recalled Boar's Head products:

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/documents/Recall-023-2024-EXP-Product_Information_Sheet.pdf

Also, here is a link to the actual product labels of the recalled products:

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/food_label_pdf/2024-07/Recall-023-2024-EXP-Labels.pdf

In a statement, a Boar's Head spokesperson said the company deeply regrets the impact of the recall, and that food safety is their "absolute priority." As the Warnings Doctor, I also must tell you that the U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed unappetizing conditions at the Boar's Head plant in Jarratt, Virginia, where the implicated products were produced. USDA inspectors found mold, mildew and insects throughout the facility, which has suspended operations for now.

WILL THE CHEVRON DECISION CREATE A DEREGULATORY NIGHTMARE FOR CONSUMERS?

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 16:07:50 GMT

In my best-selling book, Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It (Hartford, Ct.:PYP Press, 2020), I discuss the need for "principled disclosure" from corporations about potential hazards that could hurt or kill us. I also discuss the role we as consumers play by seeking information about those hazards and finally, the role various regulatory agencies must play to initiate and enforce meaningful regulations on industry so that they do, indeed, engage in "principled disclosure" (i.e., tell the truth). In order to carry out its mandate, any regulatory agency or department charged with the responsibility of protecting the general public or consumers or workers and so on, must be empowered to both set the safety and hazard warnings rules and take aggressive, impactful action when they are not followed. Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark 6-3 vote last month, overturned a 60-year old decision, colloquially known as "Chevron", which has the potential to undermine our government's regulatory agencies' ability to hold corporations accountable.

What is the Chevron Decision and how could it impact your safety and well-being? In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court ruled against energy giant, Chevron, who challenged the Clean-Air Act, and instructed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when laws passed by Congress are not crystal clear. The 40-year-old decision has been the basis for upholding thousands of regulations by dozens of federal agencies, but has long been a target of conservatives and business groups who argue that it grants too much power to the executive branch, or what some critics call the administrative state. In the decades following the ruling, Chevron has been a bedrock of modern administrative law, requiring judges to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of congressional statutes. But the current high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies.

With a closely divided Congress, presidential administrations have increasingly turned to federal regulation to implement policy changes. Federal rules impact virtually every aspect of everyday life, from the food we eat and the cars we drive to the air we breathe and homes we live in. For example, the Biden administration has issued a whole host of new regulations on the environment, including restrictions from emissions at power plants and from vehicle tailpipes. Those actions and others could be opened up to legal challenges if judges are allowed to discount or disregard the expertise of the executive-branch agencies that put them into place. When you consider who was advocating for the overturn of Chevron, it does not bode well for consumers and their safety: groups representing the gun industry and other businesses such as tobacco, agriculture, timber and homebuilding, were among those pressing the justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine and weaken government regulation. Can you imagine the FDA being defanged by Chevron-influenced lawsuits to the point where tobacco could sell their products to teens or resume advertising on television, a practice banned by Congress since 1970. Or imagine OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations being stripped away that protect worker safety? Or a CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) challenged on its stringent toy regulations that are aimed at infant choking hazards? Or a Department of Agriculture no longer able to inspect meat with the rigor that industry now faces? Or a NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) no longer able to regulate the safety of our automobiles, especially now as we address the feasibility and safety of self-driving vehicles?

One of the most important areas of concern to consumers will be the impact of the new Chevron ruling on our health and the health of our families. Federal health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid are established by statutes that outline numerous requirements regarding the coverage of items and services, including how, when and by whom said items and services may be provided. In interpreting the statutes, the designated agencies and sub-agencies within HHS—including CMS, FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and others—issue detailed regulations and guidance that ultimately determine how new and existing statutes are implemented. Under the new ruling, these decisions may now be thrown to the courts to resolve, giving the courts, especially the Federal Courts, unprecedented power, a major shift from the Legislative and Executive branches. How ironic that a conservative court could now become an activist court that infringes on the legislative authority of Congress or the Executive Branch's Federal Agencies. In her dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling has created a “jolt to the legal system,” and that the court has in “one fell swoop,” given “itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law.”

Pictured: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan

As the Warnings Doctor, I have written in my new book and elsewhere that in order for the public to be protected from industry-created product hazards, we must have a symbiotic relationship among the three legs of what I call the "safety triad": Industry, Government Regulators and the Consuming Public. Much like a three-legged stool, if one of the legs of the "safety triad" is weakened, the entire triad may fall. Unfortunately, the Chevron ruling has the potential to do exactly that. It is my opinion that measured, responsible, and effective regulatory oversight by appropriately empowered government agencies is a necessity to ensure continued public safety in an ever-dangerous world.

CAN DEMENTIA BE CURED: NEW DRUG WITH NEW WARNINGS

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 16:55:08 GMT

CNN recently featured its medical expert, neurologist Sanjay Gupta, narrating a very thorough documentary entitled "The Last Alzheimer's Patient" which, over a 5 year period, collected data on the latest research related to dementia, highlighting advances in new medications as well as in lifestyle changes, both of which offer promising developments that may, in some cases, reverse or, at least stop the advance of Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia. What is Alzheimer's Disease (AD)? According to the Yale School of Medicine, AD "is a progressive disorder that damages and destroys nerve cells in the brain. Over time, the disease leads to a gradual loss of cognitive functions, including the ability to remember, reason, use language, and recognize familiar places. It can also cause a range of behavioral changes."

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently granted full approval to a new Alzheimer’s treatment called lecanemab, which has been shown to moderately slow cognitive and functional decline in early-stage cases of the disease. “It’s very exciting because this is the first treatment in our history that shows an unequivocal slowing of decline in Alzheimer’s disease,” says Dr. Christopher van Dyck of Yale who was the lead author on the research behind the clinical trials of the drug, which slowed clinical decline by 27% after 18 months of treatment compared with those who received a placebo. Sold under the brand name Leqembi™ and made by Eisai in partnership with Biogen Inc., the drug is delivered by an intravenous infusion every two weeks. Lecanemab works by removing a sticky protein from the brain that is believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease to advance. This is the first time in two decades that the FDA has granted full approval to a drug for Alzheimer’s, but there is also a “black box” warning on the medication—the agency’s strongest caution—because of safety concerns. While 96% of the effects related to the drug's infusion were such transitory symptoms as chills, aches, fever and rash, the FDA's "black box" warning alerted consumers about the risk of brain swelling and bleeding and that people with a gene mutation that increases their risk of Alzheimer’s disease are at greater risk of brain swelling on the treatment. The label also cautions against taking blood thinners while on the medication.

In addition to advances in drug treatment for AD, Dr. Gupta's documentary featured new research published by Dr. Dean Ornish, the founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ornish's work has focused exclusively on lifestyle changes that can either prevent, slow down or, in some cases, reverse the symptoms of AD. Some of the strongest evidence modifying risk factors for AD and other dementias comes from research that links brain health to heart health. The risk of developing AD or vascular dementia appears to increase with many conditions that damage the heart and blood vessels. These include:

Diabetes
Mid-life high blood pressure
High cholesterol
Midlife obesity
Smoking
Physical inactivity
Poor diet
Stress
Lack of quality social interaction

Dr. Ornish and his colleagues found that lifestyle changes that address the risk factors for heart disease can prevent, and even reverse, it. The same lifestyle changes that reverse heart disease can also prevent AD and vascular dementia. Based upon his research, he recommends the following 9 steps which he claims will "ward off" dementia:

Stay physically active. Walking, bicycling, gardening, tai chi, yoga and other exercise of about 30 minutes a day will provide a good blood flow to the brain and encourage new brain cell growth.
Stick with a brain-healthy/heart-healthy diet. Limit the amount sugar and saturated fats you eat. Make sure to eat plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
Stop smoking.
Maintain a healthy weight.
Stay socially active. Take a class at the local library or community college, volunteer, or just hang out with friends.
Stay mentally active. Exercise your brain on a daily basis. Engage in mentally challenging work or other activities, like learning a foreign language, puzzles or games with friends.
Get more quality sleep. Try for at least seven to eight hours a night. If you need help, free guided meditation apps are available on your smart phone, like “Insight Timer.”
Limit alcohol consumption. If you drink alcohol, stick with no more than two drinks per day.
Protect your head. Buckle your seat belt, wear your helmet when participating in sports, and “fall-proof” your home. Make sure floors are uncluttered, remove or tack down all scatter rugs, avoid using slippery wax on floors, and slip-proof the tub. Make sure the bath mat has a nonslip bottom and remove electrical or telephone cords from traffic areas.

Dr. Ornish' research suggests that combining good nutrition with mental, social and physical activities may have a greater benefit in maintaining or improving brain health than any single activity. A two-year clinical trial of older adults at risk for cognitive impairment showed that a combination of physical activity, nutritional guidance, cognitive training, social activities and management of heart health risk factors slowed cognitive decline.

As the Warnings Doctor, I applaud Dr. Sanjay Gupta for bringing attention to a disease that now afflicts 5 million Americans with one new case diagnosed every 66 seconds in our country, a disease, however, which now may have a promising future as far as potential treatments and lifestyle changes that may slow or even, perhaps, reverse its course.

WARNING: SUMMER FUN MAY LEAD TO SUMMER DANGERS!

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 14:10:09 GMT

The following story is from one of my cases. I have changed the names to protect my client's identity.

It was a very hot summer day at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL, but the heat did not prevent the Abreu family, visiting Florida from the Dominican Republic, from enjoying a day at the world famous theme park, exploring all the rides they could squeeze in during a 12 hour adventure. The fact that none of the Abreu's spoke a word of English, a demographic shared by over 20% of the visitors to Universal, did not deter them from their mission of joy, which soon would turn into a tragic disaster. The Abreu's, relying on a map and rider's guide, given to them when they bought their tickets, were soon confronting literature only available in English, a language none of them spoke or read. When they approached the turnstile to enter the famous King Kong ride, they entered the ride without even glancing at the signage, also posted only in English, and not understanding the words of the young Universal attendant )who spoke no Spanish, but who guided them to their seats. As the ride began, in a dark, poorly lit area, the Abreu's once again passed a sign, once again only in English, conveying safety warnings for all to read...that is, for all except the Abreu's and any other customer who didn't speak or read English. Included in these warnings was a statement that people with heart conditions should not participate in the King Kong experience, which included a very life-like version of the famous giant gorilla suddenly appearing out of the darkness, ready to grab and terrorize all patrons, including Mr. Abreu, who had recently been diagnosed with advanced coronary artery disease. As the ride drew to its conclusion, Mr. Abreu suffered a fatal heart attack. During my inspection of Universal and its neighboring competitors, SeaWorld and Disneyland, I discovered that unlike Universal, they did post all warnings in Spanish, employed bilingual attendants who gave the warnings both in English and Spanish and handed out all literature again both in Spanish and English. After I released my initial findings, Universal quickly settled the case.

The above case, as tragic as it was, is not atypical of the risks we face at amusement parks during this or any summer. According to the CPSC, approximately 30,000 permanent and mobile amusement park injuries/year result in a visit to an emergency room. The International Association of Amusement Parks places the number of injuries at about 1500/year, but that only includes data from permanent parks that don’t move around the country. The truth is that nobody really knows because there are NO Federal Regulations for amusement parks. It’s mostly up to the states, many of which only require annual inspections and many of those states leave it up to the park itself to self-inspect and report voluntarily if anyone gets injured. In other words, the fox is running the henhouse with regards to amusement park safety, which means it’s up to each of us to monitor the safety of ourselves and our loved ones. While most amusement parks post a buffet of signage and loud speaker announcements restricting rides to customers of allowed ages, heights, weights and medical conditions, the ultimate enforcement of these safety rules is typically left in the hands of high school and college teens, 16-18 years old, whose main responsibility is to take tickets from riders, not to act as trained safety officers. While conducting a study of amusement park warnings, I interviewed a number of these teens and asked them why they didn’t enforce the park’s posted warnings. The overwhelming response was, “I didn’t want to embarrass the customer.” In other words, the amusement park’s last enforcer of safety had chosen avoiding embarrassment over avoiding the risk of injury or death.

Amusement parks are not the only dangerous locations we confront during our summer of fun. Pools and other bodies of water present two major risks to us: drownings and diving injuries. In my June, 2021 newsletter, I wrote the following, which I believe is just as relevant today as it was three years ago:

While pools and other bodies of water may indeed be a source of summer fun and pleasure, they present a particular risk of danger both to toddlers/young children and teens, especially males. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), approximately 300 children age 1-4 years old, drown every summer in a private swimming pool. Drowning is the leading cause of death for young children, according to the National Safety Council, and the real tragedy is that most of these deaths are very preventable.

Here are a few water safety precautions that may prevent your child from drowning in a residential pool or other body of water:

Never leave your child alone; if you have to leave, take your child with you
While age-appropriate swim lessons for your child may be beneficial, such lessons do not make your child “drown-proof”
Lifeguards aren’t babysitters; always keep your eyes on your child
Never consume alcohol or other substances when watching your child
Always have a first aid kit and emergency contacts handy
Get training in CPR
If a child is missing, always check the water first.

Pools and beaches are fun, especially on a hot summer day; all they require is your undivided attention. Child drownings aren’t the only hazard you may face in a pool or other body of water. Diving into shallow water, especially in residential pools, presents a unique set of factors that call for very strong actions and warnings. What do the statistics show?

There are approximately 1000 spinal cord injuries each year in the U.S. due to shallow water diving
90% of all diving injuries cause a spinal cord injury which results in paralysis
Most injuries occur to males aged 15-25
Most injuries occur while diving into six feet of water or less
Three out of four injuries occur in lakes, rivers, oceans and other natural bodies of water.

Additional statistics of interest: 6500 adolescents/year are brought to hospitals with diving-related injuries both from in-ground and above-ground pools. Half of these injuries occurred during a pool party where alcohol or drugs were involved and almost all (80%) took place in shallow water of less than four feet mostly due to headfirst dives... WITH NO WARNING SIGNS POSTED AT THE POOL. I designed the following No Diving sign now recommended by the National Spa and Pool Institute and other organizations.

But posting such a sign, even in several locations, may not be enough to prevent diving injuries. Given that most injuries are among the population most likely to ignore such a sign (young men, especially those who are inebriated or otherwise chemically impaired), the role of the pool owner now becomes a vital part of any warning system. In addition to posting a no diving sign along with depth markers along the sides and ends of the pool, they must orally warn all pool users, especially the friends of their children who might be using the pool for the first time, that there is absolutely no diving in the shallow water of their swimming pool. And unless the pool is at least 9’ deep from the sides or ends, there should be no diving at all in the pool. Obviously, the same rules should apply to diving into any body of shallow water including lakes, rivers and oceans.

So, as you get ready for your summer of fun, please remember that the Warnings Doctor wants you to have fun but also to remain safe. The above precautions should go a long way to making that so.

FOREVER MAY NOT BE FOREVER WITH EPA’S NEW PFA LIMITS

Tue, 07 May 2024 20:45:52 GMT

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized strict limits on PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals”, in drinking water that will require utilities to reduce them to the lowest level they can be reliably measured. Officials say this will reduce exposure for 100 million people and help prevent thousands of illnesses, including cancers. You may recall that in my August, 2023 newsletter ("Nothing Says Forever Like Diamonds and PFAS"), I wrote that PFAS are called "forever chemicals" because most don't break down, are found in many of our most commonly used products, including the water we drink. Among my recommendations for minimizing your exposure to PFAS, which have been linked to certain cancers, birth defects, liver damage, impaired fertility, high cholesterol and obesity, etc., was to "Drink filtered or bottled water". Carbon filters on faucets or in water pitchers can reduce the levels of PFAS if the filters are replaced regularly. However, not everyone can afford the couple hundred dollars such a system costs. Under the new rules being implemented by the Biden Administration, you may not need to install such an expensive system and can rely upon your municipal authority's regular drinking water, without worrying about over-exposure to PFAS. However, this won't happen overnight. Water providers will have three years to do testing on their systems. If those test results exceed the newly proposed limits, they'll have two more years to install treatment systems to reduce the amount of PFAS to below the EPA limits. Naturally, the utilities are warning us that the new rules will cost tens of billions of dollars each and will fall the hardest on small communities with fewer resources. And, of course, they promise that legal challenges will be sure to follow.

According to the EPA, nearly half of the water supply in the United States is contaminated with "forever chemicals." And EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the rule is the most important action the EPA has ever taken on PFAS: “The result is a comprehensive and life changing rule, one that will improve the health and vitality of so many communities across our country,” said Regan.

Environmental and health advocates praised the rule, but said PFAS manufacturers knew decades ago the substances were dangerous yet hid or downplayed the evidence. Limits should have come sooner, they argue. “Reducing PFAS in our drinking water is the most cost effective way to reduce our exposure,” said Scott Faber, a food and water expert at Environmental Working Group. “It’s much more challenging to reduce other exposures such as PFAS in food or clothing or carpets.”

The EPA's new rule is that municipal water supplies cannot exceed 4 parts/trillion of PFAS. To put that in perspective, a utility outside Philadelphia that serves nearly 9,000 people learned last June that one of its wells had a PFOA (a form of PFAS) level of 235 parts/trillion, among the highest in the United States. The good news is the authority took the well offline immediately; the bad news is they now have to raise the money to replace the missing water with a less contaminated source.

The EPA expects that excess PFAS levels will be found in 6-10% of water systems, affecting some 100 million people in the United States.

"This is historic and monumental," says Emily Donovan , co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, an advocacy group working to protect communities from PFAS contamination. "I didn't think the EPA would ever do it." Donovan lives in an area of North Carolina which has been contaminated with PFAS from the Chemours chemical manufacturing plant. She says seeing the EPA set limits is "validating." Six years ago when her group first raised the issue of PFAS, she says they were told that the water met or exceeded state and federal guidelines. "And that's because there weren't any," she says. "It really broke public trust for so many people in our community."

The advice I gave in my August, 2023 newsletter, to drink bottled water or install your own treatment system, may be good advice TODAY. But with the EPA's new rule, over the next five years, you may be able to safely drink your local tap water without worrying about the effects of "forever chemicals".

WARNING: IS SPRING CLEANING A TIME OF RENEWAL OR DANGER?

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 16:29:31 GMT

In one of the most memorable song and dance numbers from the classic Lerner and Lowe musical, Camelot, the chorus offers these memorable Alan Jay Lerner lyrics:

Whence this fragrance wafting through the air?
What sweet feelings does its scent transmute?
Whence this perfume floating everywhere?
Don't you know it's that dear forbidden fruit?

While Lerner was obviously addressing the time of year when romance and gaiety spring forward, often without restraint, he could just have easily been addressing our often obsessive and lustful drive in Springtime to clean our homes and apartments, a desire that could be filled both with our passionate desire for renewal through cleanliness and, at the same time, filled with "forbidden fruit", risks and dangers, especially to our most vulnerable children.

Could that colorful stash of cleaning supplies under your kitchen sink, in your broom closets and around the washer and dryer contain toxic compounds that might significantly affect your health and the environment? Unfortunately, for many common household cleaning products, the answer is too often “yes.”

Research conducted by the Environmental Working Group into more than 2,000 common cleaning products lays bare the troubling consequences of the lack of federal oversight over the ingredients in cleaning supplies. Manufacturers can use nearly any substance they want, even those known to pose health or environmental hazards. And they can hide information about virtually all those ingredients from the eyes of consumers. The result is an unregulated industry and hundreds of potentially harmful cleaning products on store shelves. The results of not knowing what exactly is in the common cleaning materials we use on a daily basis can be disastrous, again especially for our children. According to a National Safety Council analysis over 10,000 soap- and detergent-related injuries occurred in U.S. children 4 years old and under in 2021.

The label on a typical cleaning product is a mix of marketing hype and instructions for use. What’s missing is a list of what’s inside. Cleaning products, unlike foods, beverages, cosmetics and other personal care products, are not required by federal law to carry a list of ingredients. This means that manufacturers have no reason to avoid risky chemicals that happen to clean well – even if they can trigger asthma attacks or skin rashes or are linked to cancer. Without full disclosure, consumers lack key information they need to select cleaning products made with safer ingredients.

Finding cleaning and other products that are safer for you, your family, and the environment should be easy — that's why the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, developed the Safer Choice label. Products with the Safer Choice label help consumers and commercial buyers identify products with safer chemical ingredients, without sacrificing quality or performance.

About 1,900 products currently qualify to carry the Safer Choice label. Safer Choice-certified products are available for use in homes and in facilities like schools, hotels, offices, and sports venues.

Please feel free to share this issue of the Goldhaber Warnings Report with any interested friends or colleagues who may wish to subscribe to this newsletter or enroll in any of my NACLE courses on warnings.

Click to print a copy of this document

E-Bikes and Their Lithium-Ion Batteries Are Leading Cause of NYC Fires

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 19:42:18 GMT

Since the pandemic, when E-Bikes first became a big deal in NYC, with almost everyone demanding that food, toilet paper and other products be brought to their doorsteps, E-Bikes have become one of the leading causes of fires in NYC. What are E-Bikes and why are they so dangerous. First of all, an E-Bike is an electric bicycle, typically powered by a lithium-ion battery, known mostly for its longevity, lasting typically ten times longer than lead-acid batteries, often exceeding 5 years.

Lithium-ion batteries are generally safe. If you follow proper storage, charging, and discarding procedures, they are unlikely to fail or catch fire. However, at least in NYC, where there are over 65,000 E-Bikes, mostly driven by food-delivery personnel working for companies such as Uber Eats or Grubhub, and even work commuters, that is not always the case.

According to the FDNY (Fire Department of New York), lithium-ion battery fires caused 270 fires, injured 150 people and killed 18 in 2023. And this year is not shaping up to be any better. As of Feb. 26, officials said there have been 31 fires related to the batteries, along with 36 injuries and one death. A fire in a Harlem apartment building, caused by a lithium-ion battery from an E-Bike, killed a 27-year old man and injured 30 people. The problem is not due to the battery itself, but to the replacement of original equipment from the battery manufacturer with used and/or second-hand batteries from bike and other dealers throughout the city, most of whom are unauthorized to sell such batteries. When charged, typically in the homes or apartments of the E-Bike owners, a deadly fire can occur.

The FDNY has run public service announcements warning people about the dangers of the batteries, especially those that aren’t certified and don’t meet safety standards. The smoke from these devices is so toxic that, if it reaches your apartment, you’re immediately overcome by the toxic gas. To combat the presence of the faulty batteries in the city, the FDNY’s Lithium-Ion Task Force carries out inspections throughout the five boroughs. But these warnings and inspections from FDNY are not being heeded by the drivers or the stores selling illicit batteries to them, thus necessitating legislation by the NYC Council and the Mayor's Office.

Although some in the city have called for an outright ban on storing E-Bikes in apartment buildings, the Mayor and City Council has opted instead for legislation calling for stricter regulations on E-Bikes and lithium-ion batteries sold in the city. The City Council has also introduced legislation to install safe charging stations and provide reduced-cost or free lithium-ion batteries that meet safety standards. FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh vowed this month to continue cracking down on businesses that offer to replace individual battery cells from old ones, a fire code violation that creates what she called "Frankenstein Batteries".“They kill people, they have killed people and they will kill more people if businesses continue to operate in this manner,” Kavanagh said. But while New York has pushed businesses and consumers to follow new UL standards for the batteries, Flynn noted that there was little the city could do about older units coming in from other states that do not require such regulations. U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), however, is pushing for a nationwide standard to help put an end to the “unprecedented crisis in fire safety.” “Poorly manufactured and poorly handled lithium-ion batteries are ticking time bombs in American homes and businesses,” Torres said during a congressional hearing mid-February urging passage of the Setting Consumer Standards For Lithium-ion Batteries Act.

Congressman Torres, it appears, has the support of fire chiefs around the country who are trying to inform and warn the public about how dangerous lithium-ion batteries can be. The situation is getting more and more deadly as fires occur, and they too believe that a Federal Safety Standard is absolutely needed for lithium-ion batteries. As the Warnings Doctor, I enthusiastically endorse such a standard, but until such a code is passed by Congress, I urge consumers NOT to charge or store their E-Bikes in their homes or apartments and to absolutely NOT purchase secondary-market or used batteries to replace their existing batteries when they no longer can sustain a charge. Only purchase replacement batteries from the original manufacturer.

THIS JUST IN: PUBLISHED March 13, 2024, DAILY NEWS

Lithium-ion e-bike battery sparks Bronx fire, dramatic escapes leaving 10 hurt

Full article>

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WARNING: IF YOU ARE HEADING TO THE CARIBBEAN THIS WINTER, IS YOUR BOEING AIRCRAFT SAFE?

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 21:53:42 GMT

If you are like most Americans suffering through this nasty, snow and ice-driven extremely cold winter, you probably have dreams of flying somewhere warm to lounge on the beach while sipping margaritas (that's my tribute to the late Jimmy Buffett ). If you can afford the time and money to fly away to your dream winter holiday in the sun, you may still be worrying if your flight to paradise is safe. And worry you should, especially if you are booked on a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft.

Unless you've been living in a cave, you probably know about the infamous episode on January 5 of this year when an Alaska Airline flight, shortly after taking off from Portland, OR with 177 passengers, lost a door plug, unbolted and not securely fastened to the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. Although nobody died in this bizarre event (one young passenger's shirt was ripped from his body and disappeared in the atmosphere), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took immediate action and grounded all Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft with the door plug feature, pending a very thorough safety examination. It has now been 3 weeks since the FAA took action, and the agency is about to clear all Boeing 737 Max 9 planes for takeoff. But are they safe to fly and can passengers take any actions to protect themselves?

In my new book, Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It , I discuss the "safety triad" in which all three parties that affect our collective safety, the manufacturer, the regulator and the consumer, must cooperate in order to prevent injury or death. In the Boeing affair, it appears that the FAA and Boeing are cooperating in order to get to the bottom of the flying door plug incident. The FAA correctly and immediately grounded the affected airplanes, in contrast to the last series of Boeing Super Max crashes where they apparently didn't act immediately. The FAA has initiated an intensely thorough process where each of the 171 grounded Max 9's must (according to CNN) "undergo inspection of the bolts, fittings and guide tracks for the door plug, the piece of fuselage that flew off an Alaska Airlines plane earlier this month. It also includes tightening fasteners and performing “detailed inspections of … dozens of associated components.” Boeing even waived its right to a "safety exemption" in order to solve the current door plug/loose bolts problem. That leaves the consumer element to the safety triad. What specifically can the consumer do to better inform themselves and feel safer when they fly?

First of all, the consumer has the right to know exactly what aircraft they are about to board, which is all the more important given the new revelations by Ben Minicucci, CEO of Alaska Airlines that their initial inspections of their fleet of 65 Boeing 737 Max 9's revealed many aircraft had loose bolts, hardly an endorsement of the safety of their aircraft. Along with announcing the inspection process to get grounded Max 9’s into the air, the FAA told Boeing that “it will not grant any production expansion of the MAX, including the 737-9 MAX,” the agency said in its news release. “Let me be clear: This won’t be back to business as usual for Boeing,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. To further add to Boeing's stress levels, Alaska Airlines is now reevaluating its decision to buy a new fleet of Boeing 737 Max 10's.

Again, its CEO Ben Minicucci said the company will now evaluate "what the best long-term strategic plan is for Alaska('s) fleet mix" once the craft is certified.

"I think everything’s open at this point ... for us," he said, confirming that Hawaiian Airlines, which Alaska Airlines is in the process of buying, uses planes produced by Boeing's rival, Airbus. "I think we’re going to do what’s best for Alaska long term, in terms of fleet mix for us. It gives us optionality."

So, what is the consumer to do, given all this uncertainty from both the FAA and Alaska Airlines? The FAA does state that once the affected planes pass the rigorous inspections required both by the agency and the airlines, the planes should be safe to fly. The Warnings Doctor recommends that, at the very minimum, consumers should know ahead of time what aircraft they will be flying and then, as I recommend in my book, make an "informed choice" based upon the best information available.

WARNING: THESE TOYS R NOT FOR US!

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:28:01 GMT

Imagine a group of 10-year olds sitting in a darkened room, with a bunch of their "friends" engaged in a discussion about whom to kill while playing a game of Russian Roulette. This is NOT a pretend game. Virtual reality goggles are marketed to children as young as ten years old. These goggles and other smart toys are listed in the 38th edition of Trouble in Toyland, the annual listing of holiday toys that pose hazards for children, released by the Massachusetts chapter of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) If you have doubts about the safety of such "hi-tech" toys, last month, an 11-year-old girl was kidnapped by a man she encountered while playing a game online. Fortunately, she was found safe a short time later, about 135 miles away from her home. The game, Roblox, is one of the most popular mobile games this year.

According to PIRG, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last spring accused Amazon of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA) through its Alexa service by keeping the voice recordings of children indefinitely and failing to delete children's transcripts, even when a parent requested they be deleted. Amazon also gathered geolocation data and used children's transcripts for its own purposes. A few years ago, Fisher Price's Smart Toy Bear, created for children ages 3-8 as an interactive learning friend who talks, listens and remembers what your child says, was discontinued because a security flaw allowed hackers to gain information about children without permission.

The toy bear is not alone with its risk of hacking. We are surrounded by smart devices, all with microphones, cameras, connectivity, location trackers and more, that connect to the internet and/or to the outside world, while gathering and storing data, sometimes very poorly. This holiday season your child's gift list may be filled with stuffed animals that listen and talk, devices that learn their habits, games with online accounts, smart speakers and watches, or all kind of toys that require you to download an app. The global market for smart toys grew from $14.1 billion in 2022 to $16.7 billion this year and is expected to double by 2027.

These toys, and the threats that come with them, may increase with the incredible growth of artificial intelligence (AI), which is already being advertised in toy robots, games and interactive toy animals, some targeting children as young as 3 years old. According to PIRG, AI-enabled toys with a camera or microphone may be able to assess a child's reactions using facial expressions or voice inflection, allowing the toy to try and form a relationship with the child and gather and share information with others that could risk the child's safety or privacy.

PIRG is not alone in looking out for the safety of our children this holiday season. For the past 51 years, W.A.T.C.H. (World Against Toys Causing Harm), an organization founded by the late, legendary Boston attorney, Edward Swartz, and continued to this day by his children, James and Joan Siff, has identified its annual picks for the ten most dangerous toys in America. The Nominees for the “10 Worst Toys” List are representative of some of the many different types of potential toy hazards that families, caregivers, and educators can avoid to safeguard children year-round. Among other safety concerns, these traps include toy weaponry with the potential for blunt force and eye injuries, plush pillow toys that could potentially lead to infant suffocation, and water beads, such as Orbeez Seeds- Rainbow on W.A.T.C.H.’s list, that could expand when swallowed potentially leading to choking or ingestion injuries.

As a service to this newsletter's readers, I am reprinting W.A.T.C.H.'s 2023 ten most dangerous toys with my recommendation that you avoid them like the plague:

Disney The Little Mermaid King Triton’s All-Powerful Trident : Potential For Blunt Force and Eye Injuries!
Original Squishmallows-Raisy : Potential For Suffocation!
Soccer Boppers : Potential For Blunt Force and Impact Injuries!
Diecast Fast-Food Truck : Potential For Choking Injuries!
Our Generation Hop In Dog Carrier : Potential For Choking Injuries!
Orbeez Seeds-Rainbow : Potential For Choking and Ingestion Injuries!
Splat-R-Ball Dude Perfect Blaster : Potential For Eye Injuries!
B Toys Make A Melody Musical Instrument Set : Potential Ingestion and Choking Injuries!
Zoom-O Turbo Disc Launcher : Potential For Face and Eye Injuries!
Carve Pro Stunt Scooter : Potential For Head and Other Impact Injuries!

Before you get angry wondering how such dangerous toys could be sold for our children in 2023, I'd like to point out that in 1950, this toy was sold to unsuspecting parents, and many experts have labeled it the most dangerous toy ever manufactured: the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab Kit, which included three sources of radiation and four uranium ores that are also radioactive. The kit came with an instruction booklet, a pamphlet on how to prospect uranium, and various tools that enabled children to dive deep into the world of atomic chemistry.

My advice to parents, as the Warnings Doctor, is to stick with old reliable stuffed animals, board games, race tracks, building sets and good old reliable Barbie.

For more information about potentially harmful products, please consult our fellow consumer safety organization, Consumer Notice.org

BETTER DYING THROUGH CHEMISTRY-PART TWO: THE FDA ACTS (FINALLY)

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 15:33:32 GMT

Last month in this newsletter, I wrote about several of our favorite foods that, while they are legally sold in the U.S., despite known health issues associated with them, have been banned throughout Europe, Canada and other developed nations, including Australia, Japan and New Zealand. One of the chemicals I wrote about was Brominated Vegetable Oil or BVO whose main ingredient, Bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, can build up in the body and potentially lead to memory loss, as well as skin and nerve problems. BVO is most commonly found in smaller grocery store brands and regional beverages, including some Food Lion-brand sodas, some Walmart branded Great Value-brand sodas, and Sun Drop citrus soda, manufactured by the makers of Dr. Pepper. It keeps the citrus flavoring in fruit-flavored beverages from floating to the top of the drink.

Before you start applauding the FDA for finally doing the right thing, after decades of stalling under pressure from the food industry, be aware that the FDA’s proposed rule doesn’t go into effect until 2027 , and the food industry has until January 17, 2024 to file any objections it still may have to the proposed ban.

BETTER DYING THROUGH CHEMISTRY--FOODS WITH HARMFUL CHEMICALS

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 13:51:28 GMT

1. Skittles. Mars Co , manufacturer of Skittles, was named in a class action lawsuit filed in California last year claiming that Skittles contains titanium dioxide, used by Mars to make its Skittles look brighter and more colorful, while at the same time causing irritation to the eyes, nose and throat and, more seriously, having the potential for causing reproductive damage in humans. The European Union, which has banned Skittles, claims that titanium dioxide may also be a human carcinogen.

2. Mountain Dew & Fresca . Americans who “do the Dew” might be surprised to learn the product contains brominated vegetable oil. BVO is banned in Japan and the European Union because it contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, which can build up in the body and potentially lead to memory loss, as well as skin and nerve problems. The grapefruit-flavored soda, Fresca, also contains the ingredient.

3. Kraft Stove Top Stuffing . Kraft Stove Top stuffing might make weeknight dinners easier, but it also contains the same BHT discussed earlier and found in American breakfast cereals, including Honey Bunches of Oats and even the popular Wheat Thins, as well as BHA, which as we have already seen, at high doses causes cancer in rats, mice and hamsters, thus resulting in bans in the EU, Japan and elsewhere.

4. Little Debbie Swiss Rolls. Products in the European Union containing Yellow 5 and Red 40 carry warnings that they cause adverse effects in children, but you won’t find that warning on a box of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls in the U.S. Norway and Austria have banned the snack cakes outright. Some cereals, such as Lucky Charms, also use Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Red 40, despite being known to cause itching and hives for some.

5. Ritz Crackers and Coffee-mate. Trans fats were officially banned in the U.S. in 2018; however, some trans fats such as partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils can still be found in popular products such as Ritz Crackers, Coffee-mate creamers and even those buttery Pillsbury Biscuits. These ingredients are also banned in Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Iceland, Norway and Denmark.

I could go on but you get the picture. As the Warnings Doctor, my advice to you is the same advice I got from my Jewish grandmother: "If it's from the farm, it's probably great for you, but if it's from a factory, not so great!"

NOTHING SAYS FOREVER LIKE DIAMONDS AND PFAS

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:57:07 GMT

What are PFAS? PFAS are a group of manmade chemicals used in a vast number of consumer and industrial products. They’re often referred to as “forever chemicals,” because most don’t break down. PFAS stands for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which contain a strong carbon-fluorine bond that allows them to accumulate over time in the environment and in the bodies of animals and people, posing health risks. PFAS chemicals might also be thought of as “everywhere chemicals,” since they’ve become so common in the products we use every day.

Manufacturing processes and waste storage and treatment sites release PFAS into the air, soil, and water. Among the industrial facilities most likely to produce PFAS are petroleum stations and terminals, chemical manufacturers, commercial printers, plastics and resin manufacturing sites, paint and coating manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers, makers of metal products and electrical components, and electroplating and polishing. Landfills and waste disposal facilities, along with sewage and waste treatment plants, are other common sources of contamination. Many nearby communities also suffer groundwater and drinking water contamination as a result of their proximity to these facilities.

These "forever" and "everywhere" chemicals are found in many of our most commonly used products. PFAS have been used around the world since the 1950s in a wide variety of consumer goods. Today, they can be found in products like firefighting foam, non-stick cookware, cosmetics and materials that protect against grease, oil, and water, such as stain-resistant carpeting and fabrics, food packaging, and water-repellent clothing. So whether we’re camping, hiking, hunting, fishing, cooking, putting on makeup, enjoying a takeout meal, or playing with our kids on the living room floor, PFAS have infiltrated everyday life. PFAS, while everywhere, may be highly toxic and harmful to our health. Scientists are finding that tiny concentrations of some forever chemicals can trigger testicular and kidney cancer, birth defects, liver damage, impaired fertility, immune system disorders, high cholesterol and obesity, as well as breast cancer and other diseases.

Since, for the average consumer, it is virtually impossible to avoid these chemicals, The Warnings Doctor will offer you a few suggestions that may minimize your exposure to them, at least from the foods you eat. These tips include:

1. Reduce consumption of fast food. Fast food companies use grease-resistant packaging that keeps oil and meat juices from spilling on your clothes; these wrappers, used to serve burgers, fries and salads, often contain oil-resistant PFAS. Scientists believe your risk of exposure depends on the amount of time the food has spent inside the plastic bag or paper wrapper. Consumer Reports tested more than 100 food packages and found high levels of PFAS in wraps, trays and bags from Burger King, McDonald's, Chick-fil-A and Cava, among others. The very properties that make PFAS useful compounds for oil-resistant fast-food wrappers are the same properties that allow these chemicals to stay in your bodies. "They actually stick to our blood while they accumulate in our bodies," according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The good news is that McDonald's and Burger King have announced they plan to reduce or phase out the use of packaging with forever chemicals. (They key words in their announcements were "plan to" and "reduce".)

2. Skip Microwave Popcorn and Cake Mixes. In general, food packaging is a source of contamination, thus switching to fresh foods from packaged foods will definitely reduce your exposure to PFAS. However, you should be aware that some products, such as cake mixes and microwave popcorn, have some of the highest concentrations of PFAS because the mixes and the corn kernels are often sitting in their packaging for long periods of time. Additionally, if we heat up products in paper linings or plastic containers, some of the PFAS which coat the packaging may turn into a vapor and contaminate what we eat.

3. Avoid Nonstick Cookware. Nonstick pots and pans are often coated in a material with PFAS. If you have such pots and pans, throw them out and treat yourself to ceramic, stainless steel or cast-iron cookware. Remember, he's called the "Iron Chef" NOT the "teflon chef"! It also helps to store leftovers in glass containers, and not plastic, in the refrigerator. It's time to throw out all of our 20-30 year-old Tupperware!

4. Drink Filtered or Bottled Water. Consider adding a water filtration system in your home, especially if you suspect high concentrations of PFAS in your publically available water supply. Carbon filters on faucets or in water pitchers can reduce the levels of PFAS, if the filters are replaced regularly. Reverse osmosis systems installed under sink faucets can typically eliminate the PFAS contamination. These systems typically cost a couple hundred dollars, but the investment may well be worth it.

5. Check the Source of the Fish You Eat. PFAS have been widely detected in freshwater fish. Last year, the FDA detected PFAS in 74% of the seafood they tested, including in clams, cod, crab, pollock, salmon, shrimp, tilapia and tuna. While their data was limited, the FDA concluded that seafood may be at higher risk for PFAS than other types of foods. Locally caught fish is more likely to have higher PFAS levels than farm-raised fish. While the FDA found PFAS in seafood, it still recommends that people should continue to eat a variety of healthy foods, including seafood, because the levels of PFAS in seafood were not high enough to pose a human health concern. While eating fish, especially farm-raised fish, is healthy, we should still check statewide advisories before eating a recreationally caught fish.

PFAS may well be forever chemicals that, unfortunately, are not yet regulated by the FDA, but as educated consumers, we may be able to reduce our intake of such chemicals and prevent their toxic outcomes.

Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It". Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

WARNING: IT’S PRIME TIME FOR ENERGY DRINKS

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 15:51:24 GMT

"PRIME was developed to fill the void where great taste meets function. With bold, thirst-quenching flavors to help you refresh, replenish, and refuel, PRIME is the perfect boost for any endeavor. We're confident you'll love it as much as we do."

The rest of their website is filled with pictures and descriptions of their many flavored products, all colorfully illustrated, which Schumer believes is a deliberate ploy to attract children. In fairness to Prime, the back of each can contains the following safety message: "Drink responsibly. Not recommended for children under 18 years of age, people sensitive to caffeine, pregnant women and women who are nursing." Schumer, however, doesn't believe this is an adequate warning because it fails to outright ban the product for anyone under 18.

The question for all of us should be: Is Prime safe for both children and adults? First of all, 200 milligrams of caffeine in a 12-ounce can is about 6 times the amount of caffeine in a comparable can of Coca-Cola. In addition to its high levels of caffeine, Prime also contains ingredients commonly found in other energy drinks (e.g., taurine, inositol, l-theanine and glucuronolactone). The company also makes a non-caffeinated beverage which Schumer believes parents could get mixed up with the caffeinated beverage because they both use similar brightly colored cans. As the following images indicate, I believe Schumer has a point. It might be challenging both for parents and children to tell the two beverages apart.

Canadian health authorities have also voiced concern that cans of Prime sold there may be exceeding regulations on limits for caffeine. How does Prime compare to other caffeinated beverages? Most energy drinks have less caffeine than Prime. Starbucks Cold Brew (11 oz.) has 155 mg, Monster Energy (12 oz.) has 123 mg, Red Bull (12 oz.) has 108 mg, Diet Coke (12 oz.) has 46.8 mg, Snapple Iced Peach Tea (16 oz.) has 37 mg.

Is 200 mg a lot of caffeine? It depends on who you are and what your underlying health conditions may be. 200 mg of caffeine is roughly equivalent to drinking 2 cups of coffee a day, not unusual for most adults. Caffeine is a stimulant that is found naturally in plants and can affect our central nervous system that can boost our alertness and enhance our ability to concentrate. However, pediatricians recommend that children under 12 avoid caffeine completely and kids 12 and older consume NO MORE THAN 100 mg/day. Many physicians recommend that adults should have no more than 400 mg/day, which is about 4-5 cups of coffee. According to the FDA, which doesn't require beverage companies to list the amount of caffeine on their products, rapid consumption of around 1200 mg of caffeine can lead to "toxic effects," such as seizures. Some people are more sensitive to caffeine than others. It depends on the speed your body metabolizes the stimulant and whether you have a high tolerance level for caffeine after drinking coffee, etc. for years. Most doctors would advise people with high blood pressure or some other preexisting conditions to consider limiting their amount of caffeine. Too much caffeine can cause anxiety, agitation, sleeplessness, gastrointestinal problems and even cardiovascular symptoms.

The problem with energy drinks is that they are more likely to be consumed at a faster rate than either coffee or tea because they are chilled beverages and not served steaming hot. The CDC believes that the stimulants in energy drinks can cause dehydration, anxiety, insomnia and heart complications, including skipping beats, symptoms more likely to be felt by children or teenagers consuming the same amount of caffeine as an adult. If you take a high dose of caffeine to stay more awake, to stimulate your brain, such as done by students relying on energy drinks to help them stay awake to finish homework or write a paper, it will also affect your heart rate, blood pressure and your stomach's gastric secretions.

As the Warnings Doctor, my advice is for adults to limit their caffeine intake to no more than what is found in about 4 cups of coffee/day and for adults with high blood pressure or other pre-existing conditions, to consult their doctors before consuming any caffeine. It's always good advice for children under 12 to avoid any stimulants, including caffeine, and for those children 12-18, limit caffeine intake to no more than 100 mg/day, about the same amount as in 1 cup of coffee/day. As for Prime Energy, absolutely avoid this drink if you are under 18.

ARE CANADA'S WILDFIRES WARNING US ABOUT OUR CLIMATE FUTURE?

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 13:29:22 GMT

McDONALD’S HASN’T LEARNED ITS LESSON: HOW HOT IS TOO HOT?

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 17:46:50 GMT

Once again, just as with Stella Liebeck almost thirty years earlier, McDonald’s was caught serving its food and beverages at temperatures significantly higher than the rest of the industry, at temperatures sure to result in serious burns to its customers, should they suffer a situation similar to Olivia’s or Stella’s. While McDonald’s may have believed (and still may believe) they are only doing what their customers want...in fact, the Florida jury did NOT find fault with McDonald’s for serving the extremely hot food...McDonald’s was still at fault for not warning their customers that the food could actually cause them to suffer serious burn injuries. In short, McDonald’s failed to engage in what I call “principled disclosure”, simply telling its customers the truth about its products and letting their customers make “informed choices” about whether to buy their overheated products and, if bought, how to handle them safely.

Has McDonald’s learned anything from its litigation experiences? I’ll let you be the judge by looking at (or for) the so-called “warning” that McDonald’s now puts on the back of its coffee cups in white print on a yellowish-orange background.

WARNING: A POTFUL OF TROUBLE FOR NYC?

Tue, 02 May 2023 19:35:45 GMT

On March 31, 2021, New York became the 15th state to legalize marijuana when then Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, which eliminated penalties for possession of less than 3 ounces of cannabis, and sought to advance racial justice by automatically expunging records of people with past convictions for marijuana-related offenses that would no longer be criminalized.

DOES TESLA'S FULL SELF-DRIVING SYSTEM ADEQUATELY WARN DRIVERS?

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 16:53:36 GMT

"My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination: probably toward the end of next year. I would say I am certain of that. That is not a question mark." (Elon Musk, 2019). Since he made these obviously wrong, over-promised predictions about the future of his "autonomous vehicle" project, Tesla has been embroiled in dozens and dozens of major lawsuits, some even around the world.

So what's the bottom line? Is it safe to drive a Tesla with its Autopilot system engaged? One thing is certain: Tesla is still involved in its national beta-testing program where volunteer drivers (in the tens of thousands) are actively and eagerly, despite all of its potential flaws, active lawsuits and NHTSA investigations, still testing the system on both local roads and highways. As the Warnings Doctor, I have a "wait and see" attitude. I will wait for the completion of both the NHTSA investigations and Tesla's own beta testing before I draw any conclusions about my own safety and that of my loved ones.

Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It" . Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

Goldhaber Research Associates, LLC Celebrates 45 Years in the Warnings Business

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 18:49:48 GMT

LEFT TO RIGHT: Gerry Goldhaber; Marcus Goldhaber and band at Room 623; Gerry Goldhaber speaking; John Dobinsky and Gerry Goldhaber; Michelle, Gerry and Marcus Goldhaber; Gerry and Marcus Goldhaber

LITHIUM ION BATTERIES CAN KILL YOU!

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 16:38:55 GMT

E-bikes and other lithium-ion battery-powered mobility devices have become all the rage in New York City, especially since the COVID Pandemic spawned a new cottage industry of food and grocery deliveries, mostly brought to our doorsteps by drivers riding E-bikes powered by lithium-ion batteries.

The hazard occurs when many people store and charge e-bike batteries in their apartments, which “present serious fire safety hazards". According to the New York City Fire Department, there were at least 200 fires and 10 deaths in 2022 and another fire kicked off the New Year in New York City that injured 10 people and killed one man. In one of the 2022 fires, a lithium battery was blamed in College Point, Queens, in September that left an 8-year-old girl dead and two adults seriously injured. Fire officials said an electric scooter battery caused the blaze.

Throughout the last year, after every deadly fire caused by lithium-ion batteries, the New York City Fire Department issued loud and frequent warnings to consumers/drivers NOT to charge their batteries indoors, especially not near flammable objects and materials. They also warned not to use secondary market batteries instead of relying upon original equipment that comes with devices. Because this is a national problem of significant risk to not just the drivers of lithium-ion powered scooters, E-Bikes, etc, but to all who reside in buildings where these drivers engage in dangerous activities that could result in explosions and fires.

I am listing here the recommendations by the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) for how to safely use and charge Lithium-ion batteries. If you follow these safety recommendations, you, hopefully, will avoid a dangerous fire/explosion that can kill or seriously burn you and anyone near your device.

'TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY...AND SAFE FROM HOLIDAY FIRES!

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 19:34:28 GMT

If you're like most of us, you probably think of the holiday season as a time for family festivals and good cheer with friends. What few of us consider is that the holidays also present an increased risk of home fires. For example, every year in the U.S., fire departments respond to an estimated 250 home fires involving Christmas trees. Even though Christmas tree fires are infrequent, when they occur, they can be dangerous and costly. These fires cause an annual average of 6 civilian deaths, 16 civilian injuries, and $16.2 million in property damage.

Another example, cooking, was the leading cause of reported home fires and home fire injuries in 2015-2019 and the second leading cause of home fire deaths. Cooking caused 49 percent of reported home fires, 20 percent of reported home fire deaths, and 42 percent of home fire injuries. In 2019, Thanksgiving was the peak day for home cooking fires, followed by Christmas Day and Christmas Eve.

Other sources of fires during the holidays can be found in the use of candles, chanukah menorahs, fireplaces, fireworks and space heaters. By taking some preventative steps, using common sense and adhering to some of the following safety tips, most home fires can be prevented during the holidays and beyond.

1. COOKING.
The following safety tips for cooking come from the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association):

a. What you should know about home cooking safety
• Be on alert! If you are sleepy or have consumed alcohol, don’t use the stove or stovetop.

• Stay in the kitchen while you are frying, grilling, boiling, or broiling food.

• If you are simmering, baking, or roasting food, check it regularly, remain in the kitchen while food is cooking, and use a timer to remind you that you are cooking.

• Keep anything that can catch fire — oven mitts, wooden utensils, food packaging, towels or curtains — away from your stovetop.

b. If you have a cooking fire

• Just get out! When you leave, close the door behind you to help contain the fire.

• Call 9-1-1 or the local emergency number after you leave.
If you try to fight the fire, be sure others are getting out and you have a clear way out.

• Keep a lid nearby when you’re cooking to smother small grease fires. Smother the fire by sliding the lid over the pan and turn off the stovetop. Leave the pan covered until it is completely cooled.

• For an oven fire, turn off the heat and keep the door closed.

c. Safety considerations for cooking with oil

• Always stay in the kitchen when frying on the stovetop.

• Keep an eye on what you fry. If you see wisps of smoke or the oil smells, immediately turn off the burner and/or carefully remove the pan from the burner. Smoke is a danger sign that the oil is too hot.

• Heat the oil slowly to the temperature you need for frying or sautéing.

• Add food gently to the pot or pan so the oil does not splatter

• Always cook with a lid beside your pan. If you have a fire, slide the lid over the pan and turn off the burner. Do not remove the cover because the fire could start again. Let the pan cool for a long time. Never throw water on the fire.

• If the fire does not go out or you don’t feel comfortable sliding a lid over the pan, get everyone out of your home. Call the fire department from outside.

2. Christmas Trees

Old fashioned Christmas celebrations featured wax candles on live tree branches – inside homes! Today we know better, but risks still remain.

U.S. fire departments annually respond to an average of 250 structure fires caused by Christmas trees. Nearly half of them are caused by electrical problems, and one in four resulted from a heat source that’s too close to the tree. The following are some very valuable safety tips if you plan to have a Christmas tree in your home:

a. If you have an artificial tree, be sure it’s labeled, certified or identified by the manufacturer as fire-retardant.

b. If you choose a fresh tree, make sure the green needles don’t fall off when touched; before placing it in the stand, cut 1-2″ from the base of the trunk. Add water to the tree stand and be sure to water it daily.

c. Make sure your tree is not blocking an exit and is at least three feet away from any heat source, like fireplaces, space heaters, radiators, candles and heat vents or lights.

d. Use lights that have the label of an independent testing laboratory, and make sure you know whether they are designed for indoor or outdoor use. Replace any string of lights with worn or broken cords, or loose bulb connections. Connect no more than three strands of mini-string sets and a maximum of 50 bulbs for screw-in bulbs.

e. Never use lit candles to decorate the tree.

f. Always turn off Christmas tree lights before leaving the home or going to bed.

g. After Christmas, get rid of the tree. Dried-out trees are a fire hazard and should not be left in the home or garage or placed outside the home.

h. Bring outdoor electrical lights inside after the holidays to prevent hazards and make them last longer.

3. CANDLES.

Candles are widely used in homes throughout the holidays; December is the peak month for home candle fires. More than half of all candle fires start because the candles had been too close to things that could catch fire. These safety tips can help prevent a candle fire:

a. When burning candles, keep them at least 1-foot away from anything that can burn (create a 1-foot circle of safety), and remember to blow them out when you leave the room or go to bed.

b. Use candle holders that are sturdy, won’t tip over and are placed on uncluttered surfaces.

c. Avoid using candles in the bedroom, where two of five U.S. candle fires begin, or other areas where people may fall asleep.

d. Never leave a child or pets alone in a room with a burning candle.

e. Consider using flameless candles, which look and smell like real candles.

4. MENORAH OR KINARA.

It’s possible to buy electric menorahs and kinaras, but if you prefer traditional candles you can still celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in a fire smart way. Keep flammable items, including curtains and holiday decorations, at least 3 feet away from your candles. Place your menorah or kinara on a non-flammable surface to catch the melting candle wax, such as a tray lined with aluminum foil. Never leave lit candles unattended.

5. FIREPLACES.

Nothing takes the chill off winter holidays like the light and heat of a fire on your hearth. Just be sure to keep “fuel” – from wrapping paper to rugs to clothing – at least three feet away from the flames. Use a fire screen to keep embers and logs from escaping. Lastly, make sure all embers are fully extinguished before you turn in for the night.

6. FIREWORKS.

We usually talk about firework safety for the Fourth of July, but many New Year celebrations also include fireworks. If you’ll be setting off fireworks at home, choose a location away from buildings and trees. Be sure your spectators, including children and pets, stay well back. Keep a supply of water or fire extinguisher at hand. If you live in an area that’s experiencing a drought, consider cancelling the show this year – a stray spark that lands on dry grass or leaves can lead to a wildfire.

7. SPACE HEATERS.

Keep anything that can burn at least 3-feet from all heat sources including space heaters. Turn off space heaters when you leave the room or go to bed. Space heaters, stoves and ovens are not designed as primary heating appliances. Always plug a space heater directly into a wall outlet. Never use an extension cord or power strip. Select a space heater that has the label of a nationally recognized testing laboratory (e.g. U.L), and select a space heater that turns off automatically if it tips over.

Please follow the above safety tips from the Warnings Doctor so that your holiday season will be a "hot time" but not one that is tarnished by a very hot fire. Happy Holidays from all of us at Goldhaber Research Associates.

Check out my latest podcast

"EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It". Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

HALLOWEEN SAFETY TIPS FROM THE WARNINGS DOCTOR

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 13:20:32 GMT

It's that time of year again when ghosts, goblins and children imitating them will be prowling our streets and neighborhoods seeking sweets and treats, throughout what for many who are young at heart, will be a magical time of year. In order to keep the evening magical and not tragical, I have compiled a list of costume, traffic and food safety tips (from the FDA), essential for young and not-so-young trick-or-treaters which can help make a safe and happy holiday for everyone.

Costume Safety: Before Halloween arrives, be sure to choose a costume that won't cause safety hazards.

WARNING: COSTUME DOES NOT ENABLE YOU TO FLY!

1. All costumes, wigs and accessories should be fire-resistant
2. If children are allowed out after dark, fasten reflective tape to their costumes and bags, or give them glow sticks
3. Opt for nontoxic Halloween makeup over masks, which can obscure vision; always test makeup in a small area first to see if any irritation develops
4. Remove all makeup before children go to bed to prevent skin and eye irritation

When They're on the Prowl : Here's a scary statistic: Children are more than twice as likely to be hit by a car and killed on Halloween than on any other day of the year. Lack of visibility because of low lighting at night also plays a factor in these incidents. Keep these tips in mind when your children are out on Halloween night:

1. A responsible adult should accompany young children on the neighborhood rounds
2. If your older children are going alone, plan and review a route acceptable to you
3. Agree on a specific time children should return home
4. Teach your children never to enter a stranger's home or car
5. Instruct children to travel only in familiar, well-lit areas and stick with their friends
6. Tell your children not to eat any treats until they return home

Safety Tips for Motorists: The National Safety Council offers these additional safety tips for parents---and anyone who plans to be on the road during trick-or-treat hours:

1. Watch for children walking on roadways, medians and curbs
2. Enter and exit driveways and alleys carefully
3. At twilight and later in the evening, watch for children in dark clothing
4. Discourage new, inexperienced drivers from driving on Halloween

Food Safety Tips for Both Young and Old:

To make sure treats are safe for children of all ages, follow these simple steps:

1. Snacking : Children shouldn’t snack on treats from their goody bags while they’re out trick-or-treating. Give them a light meal or snack before they head out – don’t send them out on an empty stomach. Urge them to wait until they get home and let you inspect their loot before they eat any of it.
2. Safe treats : Tell children not to accept – and especially not to eat – anything that isn’t commercially wrapped. Inspect commercially wrapped treats for signs of tampering, such as an unusual appearance or discoloration, tiny pinholes, or tears in wrappers. Throw away anything that looks suspicious.
3. Food Allergies : If your child has a food allergy, check the label to ensure the allergen isn’t present. Do not allow the child to eat any home-baked goods he or she may have received.
4. Choking hazards : If you have very young children, be sure to remove any choking hazards such as gum, peanuts, hard candies, or small toys.

Of course, the Warnings Doctor would be guilty of dereliction of duty if I did not advocate for limiting the amount of candy you and your children consume not only on Halloween but throughout the year, mostly because of the amount of sugar you will consume. The average candy bar has 28-40 grams of sugar (or 7-10 teaspoons).

If we add these sugar treats to the average amount of added sugar each of us consumes every day (80-100 grams or 20-25 teaspoons), you will quickly understand why 20% of our children and 1/3 of our total population are clinically obese. If you're looking for a "healthier" candy bar, one with the least amount of added sugar, try a Twix bar which "only" has 14 grams (3 1/2 teaspoons) of sugar. Of course, if you are looking for the most dangerous (i.e., contains the most sugar) candy bars, Three Musketeers and Gummy Bears win hands down! The former has 37 grams of sugar (9 1/4 teaspoons) in one serving (there are three servings in an average bar), and Gummies, which are virtually ALL SUGAR, have 22 grams (5 1/2 teaspoons) per serving...about 13 pieces. For more information about the dangers of sugar in our diet, please see the June, 2013 issue of this newsletter.

If you and your loved ones follow these safety tips, your Halloween can be filled with positive and happy memories instead of tragic and disappointing ones.

Remember: the more informed you are, the safer you will be!

CPSC RELEASES NEW REPORT ON PORTABLE GENERATORS

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 14:19:05 GMT

With hurricane season upon us and ferocious storms likely to cause loss of electrical power, as evidenced by Hurricane Fiona which caused the entire island of Puerto Rico to be blacked out, portable generators will once again play a major role in many households. However useful portable generators may be in supplying us with power, they can also be quite hazardous, mostly due to carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning from the toxic engine exhaust, electric shock or electrocution and from fire and burns. Recognizing that CO poisoning is the number one hazard associated with portable generators, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently released a new report and launched a new public service announcement (PSA) underscoring the dangers of portable generators. In its new report, the CPSC tells us that "one portable generator can produce the same amount of carbon monoxide as hundreds of cars."

The CPSC estimates that about 85 consumers die in the U.S. each year from CO poisoning caused by gasoline-powered portable generators. Their report also shows that African Americans are at higher risk, accounting for 23% of generator-related CO deaths, nearly double their estimated 13% share of the U.S. population. Most generator deaths (81%) occur in residential locations. CPSC's study also found that the top three reasons for using a generator among the reported fatal incidents were weather-related power outages, power shut-offs, and attempts to provide power to temporary locations, such as cabins, campers and trailers. Portable generators can create a risk of CO poisoning that can kill in minutes . CO is called the invisible killer because it is colorless and odorless. You cannot see or smell CO, but even if you do not smell exhaust fumes, you may still be exposed to CO. CO poisoning from portable generators can happen so quickly that exposed persons may become unconscious before recognizing the symptoms of nausea, dizziness or weakness. If you start to feel sick, dizzy or weak while using a generator, you must get to fresh air right away, without any delay.

All portable generators manufactured or imported after May 14 2007 are required to have the following warning label attached to them:

Consumers who plan to use a portable generator during a power loss should follow these tips provided by the CPSC in its new safety alert:

1. NEVER use a generator inside homes , garages, crawlspaces, sheds, or similar areas, even when using fans or opening doors and windows for ventilation. Deadly levels of CO can quickly build up in these areas and can linger for hours, even after the generator has shut off. Opening doors or windows will not provide enough ventilation to prevent the buildup of lethal amounts of CO.

2. Use portable generators OUTSIDE ONLY. Keep them at least 20 feet from doors, windows, and vents that could allow CO to come indoors. You should direct the generator's exhaust away from the home and any other buildings that someone could enter, while keeping windows and other openings closed in the exhaust path of the generator.

3. Check that portable generators have had proper maintenance , and read and follow the labels, instructions and warnings on the generator and in the owner's manual.

4. Look for portable generators that shut off automatically when high levels of CO are present . Some models with CO shut-off also have reduced emissions. These models may or may not be advertised as certified to the latest safety standards for portable generators--PGMA G300-2018 and UL 2201--which are estimated to reduce deaths from CO poisoning by 87% and 100%, respectively.

5. Install battery-operated CO alarms or plug-in CO alarms with battery back-up in your home, according to the manufacturer's instructions. CO alarms should be certified to the requirements of the latest safety standards (UL 2034, IAS 6-96, or CSA 6.19.01).

6. Test CO alarms (and smoke alarms, which you should also have) monthly to make sure they are working properly, and replace batteries, if needed. Never ignore an alarm when it sounds. Get outside immediately and then call 911.

Portable generators can be lifesavers to consumers who lose their electricity, especially for extended periods of time. However, they can also be lifetakers unless you follow the sound advice provided above by the CPSC.

Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It". Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

LUCKY CHARMS MAY NOT BE SO LUCKY!

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 14:26:34 GMT

WARNING: DON'T LET MONKEYPOX RUIN YOUR SUMMER

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 19:52:26 GMT

Monkeypox is a disease caused by the monkeypox virus (MPV) which resembles smallpox but is much less severe. It was first discovered in research monkeys in 1958 and in humans, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970. While the disease is endemic in Central and Western Africa, the first case was reported in the U.K. on May 7, 2022 and in the U.S. on May 18, 2022. As of July 26, 2022, 3591 cases in 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. have been diagnosed (according to the CDC), representing 19% of the 19,188 cases confirmed globally by the World Health Organization which has declared monkeypox a global health emergency of international concern. As of this writing, the Biden administration has not yet declared a health emergency for monkeypox in the U.S., instead opting for ramping up testing and vaccine distribution for those most at risk, typically those engaged in skin-to-skin contact. especially with those who are showing symptoms of monkeypox. However, as of this writing, New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, has declared monkey pox to be a health emergency in New York, hoping to ramp up efforts to provide needed vaccines to those at risk.

What are the symptoms? The CDC states that MPV begins with: fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes chills or exhaustion. Rash or lesions will typically begin to appear in 1-3 days after the initial fever often beginning on the face and then spreading to other parts of the body. The incubation period lasts from 2-4 weeks and individuals remain infectious until lesions have completely healed and scabs have fallen off. While the current outbreak in the U.S. has high rates of known cases among gay and bisexual men and transgender and non-binary people, this virus is not limited by gender or sexuality and can spread to anyone, anywhere through close, personal, often skin-to-skin contact.

Monkeypox spreads through close contact, according to the CDC . That includes direct physical contact with lesions as well as "respiratory secretions" shared through face-to-face interaction, and touching objects that have been contaminated by monkeypox lesions or fluids. The virus may also pass to a fetus through the placenta. Again, anyone who has had contact with someone with a monkeypox-like rash, or who has had contact with someone who has a probable or confirmed case of monkeypox, is at high risk for infection.

Can we prevent monkeypox? The simple answer is yes, if we follow these steps:

1) Avoid skin-to-skin contact , especially at events occurring in enclosed spaces where people can be expected to have minimal clothing.
2) Avoid intimate activities , including sex, if you have flu-like symptoms or have developed any unusual rashes or lesions on your body.
3) Engage in good hand washing (remember Covid!) especially after encountering a person with MPV.
4) Wear a mask if you think you or someone with whom you are interacting has MPV. In situations with face-to-face contact, this can help prevent the spread of the virus through respiratory droplets.
5) Quarantine yourself from others if you've become exposed to or infected with MPV, and avoid contact with those who have the infection. Remember that you or someone else can be infectious until all of the lesions have healed and all scabs have fallen off.
6) Vaccines are available for those most at risk, and you should consult your healthcare provider if you believe you are at risk, have been exposed or have symptoms yourself.

The vaccine, Jynneos, is specifically intended for monkeypox, but it's in short supply. Federal stock is being distributed to municipalities based on the number of cases and the population at risk in a given area.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, more than 300,000 doses of Jynneos have been distributed from the strategic national stockpile.

The Biden administration has announced the release of a stock of Jynneos doses from Denmark, which it says should make an additional 786,000 doses available in the US. The government expects to make almost 2 million doses available this year and 2.2 million more in the first half of 2023.

Jynneos is a two-dose vaccine, with a four-week gap between doses. But in light of the shortages, some experts have called for a single-dose regimen until supply improves.

Monkeypox is a serious disease that should not be ignored, but if we follow the above steps, we should be in good position to avoid contact with it.

Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It". Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

WARNING: THESE SILLY WARNINGS REALLY ARE SILLY!

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 14:07:33 GMT

Folks, it's that time of year again! Yes, summer is officially here, and after a seemingly never ending year of tedious stories involving COVID, Ukraine, January 6 and now Monkeypox, I think we need a breather and some joy that only summer can bring. I know in the last issue of this newsletter, we warned you that "summer may be hazardous to your health" and identified some very real hazards lurking in our quest for summer recreation. Such is not the case with these very real, but most likely NOT NEEDED warnings that my team and I found on actual products being sold in the U.S. today. Consider these our version of 2022's silliest warnings, offered as a needed counterweight to offset our terror from today's terrifying "Breaking News".

1. "Caution: The contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish."
(On a bottle of shampoo for dogs)

2. "Danger: Do not place this product into any electronic equipment"
(On the case of a chocolate CD in a gift basket)

3. "Caution: Do not spray in eyes"
(On a container of underarm deodorant)

4. "Caution: This product is not to be used in bathrooms."
(On a bathroom heater)

5. "Warning: Eating rocks may lead to broken teeth."
(On a novelty rock garden set called "Popcorn rock")

6. "Caution: Shoots rubber bands"
(On a product called "Rubber Band Shooter")

7. "Warning: Not suitable for children aged 36 months or less"
(On a birthday card for a 1 year old)

8. "Warning: May contain small parts"
(On a frisbee)

9. "Fragile: Do not drop"
(Posted on a Boeing 757)

10. "Warning: Do not use on eyes"
(In the manual for a heated seat cushion)

11. "Warning: For indoor or outdoor use only"
(On a string of Christmas lights)

12. "Danger: May be harmful if swallowed"
(On a shipment of hammers)

13. "Warning: Not dishwasher safe"
(On a remote control for a TV)

14. "Caution: Product will be hot after heating"
(On a supermarket dessert box)

And my favorite silly warning for 2022, which I just saw on an Amtrak train from New York to Buffalo:

15. "Warning: May contain nuts"
(On a package of peanuts)

Please share these silly warnings with your friends and family, but please remind them that, while these warnings are silly and obviously unnecessary, there are still plenty of dangers in our lives that, without warnings, we could be in for a hazardous summer.

Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

C h eck out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It". Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

WARNING: SUMMER MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!

Thu, 26 May 2022 14:01:06 GMT

I get it! Summer is fast approaching, and we all want to celebrate the end of our Covid winter nightmare, despite the fact that Covid is far from over. But that's a topic for another newsletter. As the Gershwin brothers promised us: "Summertime and the livin is easy!" While the fish may not be jumpin as much due to climate change, most people are eager to go outside and enjoy the great weather. However, soaring temperatures and harsh sunlight can pose health hazards. And many of the leisure activities we look forward to in the haze of summer may also come with hidden dangers, especially the following:

1. Heat-related Illnesses such as heat exhaustion and heatstroke are common summer health issues. Heat exhaustion come with many unfortunate symptoms, including increased pulse, dizziness, fatigue, muscle cramps, nausea and headache. Heat exhaustion can lead to heatstroke, a more severe condition that may require emergency medical care, without which you may damage your organs and muscles or, in the extreme, it could even be fatal. At a recent Fenway Park baseball game I attended, a young man in his 20's actually collapsed in his seat from heat exhaustion. Fortunately for him, Fenway's security and medical team were there in an instant. The rest of us may not be so lucky. We need to pay attention to the symptoms of heat exhaustion, seek cool shelter and hold off on any physical activities. Your body is telling you that it needs rest and hydration. Some of us are more prone to heat exhaustion than others. Children, older adults and people who are not used to high temperatures are more at risk for heat-related illnesses. All of us need to reserve outdoor physical activities for mornings or evenings, when the weather is coolest. High-intensity activities should be avoided during midday. As a former Little League coach and manager, I know first hand the benefits of scheduling all of our practices and games in late afternoon and early evening. It may seem obvious, but summer is the time to wear (and show off) your lightweight, flowy clothes. Save the tight and heavy outfits which retain heat for the winter months.

4. Sunburn is one of those summer health risks that can come with long-term consequences. Just a few sunburns will increase your risk of skin cancer. When I was in my teens, my friends and I all believed that a sunburn was the necessary price to pay to get a golden tan...and the darker the better! We were encouraged by our elder relatives, including my Great Aunts Sadie and Ida who lived near the North Shore beaches of Greater Boston and whose year-round bodies were not only tanned, but definitely wrinkled beyond repair! We even used baby oil, incorrectly thinking it was a safe way to speed up getting our bodies tanned. Of course, every dermatologist in America would cringe if they read this newsletter! Today, we know better. One in five Americans will develop skin cancer before they reach 70, many resulting from our "youthful indiscretions." Every hour, 1 American dies from Melanoma. According to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), just ONE childhood sunburn can increase your risk of skin cancer by 50%. Sun exposure is cumulative, and chronic overexposure to the sun can damage the integrity and health of your skin, hasten the aging process and lead to higher risk of skin cancer. Again, according to the AAD, while, there is no healthy way to tan, you should at least adopt these "better practices":

a. Apply sunscreen that blocks both UVB and UVA rays even on cloudy days because the sun's rays go through the cloud cover. The higher the SPF (sun protection factor), the longer you can stay in the sun until your skin starts to turn red. An SPF of 30-50 may protect most people for at least a couple of hours, but it should be reapplied every few hours, especially in high heat.
b. Avoid midday sun exposure. Stick to shady areas during these times. If you have had skin cancer or there is a history of it in your family, you should avoid most sun exposure.
c. Avoid taking long naps in the sun.
d. Wear clothing such as hats or long-sleeve cover-ups when you are in the full sun.

WARNING: MICKEY MOUSE AND YODA MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR CHILD'S HEALTH!

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 17:16:22 GMT

In what was definitely NOT an April Fool's joke, the FDA on April 1 posted the following company announcement about a voluntary recall:

Best Brand Consumers Products, Inc. Issues Voluntary Recall of Mickey Mouse Hand Sanitizer (Ethyl Alcohol 68%) Due to Presence of Methanol and the Mandalorian Hand Sanitizer (Ethyl Alcohol 68%) Due to the Presence of Benzene.

As a service to the public, the FDA posted this announcement because its own testing found the presence of benzene in the Mandalorian Hand Sanitizer product and methanol in the Mickey Mouse Hand Sanitizer product. Both products were imported by Best Brands from a third-party manufacturer.

Benzene is classified as a human carcinogen. Substantial exposure to benzene can occur through inhalation, oral and skin, and it may result in cancers including leukemia and blood cancer of the bone marrow and blood disorders, which can be life-threatening. Benzene is also a highly flammable liquid that is fairly common in the U.S., and has caused the recall of other products, such as makeup, for contamination. It is also used in the manufacturing of pesticides, laundry detergent and other goods, though it is heavily regulated. Exposure can also cause some issues in the nervous system. Physical contact with benzene can also damage the skin and eyes of a person.

The Mandalorian sanitizer recall, which comes in a box branded with the likeness of Baby Yoda, a character made popular from the Star Wars series, applies to both blue and green versions of the hand sanitizer.

There are no cancer causing properties to methanol, but substantial exposure to methanol can result in nausea, vomiting, headache, blurred vision, coma, seizures, permanent blindness, permanent damage to the central nervous system, or even death. Although all persons using these products on their hands are at risk, young children, attracted no doubt by the marketing images of Mickey and Yoda, who accidentally ingest these products, and adolescents and adults who drink these products (you read this right...drink these products) as an alcohol (ethanol) substitute, are most at risk for methanol poisoning.

Both products were launched in 2020, and the good news is that neither product is on shelves anymore, removed because their special promotional sale ended in 2021. However, since many families may still have these bottles in their home and could still be using these harmful hand sanitizers, Best Brands Consumer Products chose to do the right thing and issue their voluntary recall asking parents to return any bottles they still may have. Consumers with any questions about the recall should contact Best Brands (quality@bestbrandsintl.com). If any consumer has experienced any problems that may be related to taking or using this product, they should contact their physician or health care provider. Although no adverse reactions have been reported to the FDA, as of this writing, with carcinogens, though, it may take years for their effect to truly display in a person.

As a service to our readers, the following is the exact product information for the two recalled bottles of hand sanitizer:

1. Mickey Mouse Hand Sanitizer, Ethyl Alcohol 68%, blue color, 2.11 fl. oz bottle. MFG Lot# 20D21; Expire Date 6/30/2022; NDC #74530-013-02

2. The Mandalorian Hand Sanitizer, Ethyl Alcohol 68%, blue/green color, 2.11 fl. oz bottle. MFG Lot#20E21; Expire Date 9/30/2022; NDC #74530-012-02

If you have either or both of these products, you should discard them or return them for a refund.

SCREEN TIME IN THE AGE OF COVID: ARE WE HURTING OUR VISION?

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 17:54:05 GMT

During the last two years when many of us were working at home along with our children whose schools had instantly shifted to in-home instruction, we suddenly found ourselves looking at all kinds of screens for an average of almost 8 hours a day. Whether it was a computer, smartphone, tablet, television or some other electronic device, our eyes were glued to more and more screens, sometimes to two or more at the same time. One national survey recently reported that 67% of Americans use two or more devices at the same time, which I call "digital juggling" and which, due to our heavy reliance on screens for work, school, entertainment and everyday activities, has created a set of symptoms known as "digital eyestrain"(DES), a condition affecting over 60% of Americans today, which presents itself with blurry vision, eyestrain, dry eye, or at a more serious level with macular degeneration, cataracts and even sleep issues.

You may be familiar with the news stories about possible damage from the blue light emitted through the screens of our electronic devices. First of all, you may be asking: what exactly is blue light and how can it harm my eyes or vision? Simply put, blue light is one of several colors in the visible light spectrum, along with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Together, they make up the white light that we see when the sun--the main source of blue light--is shining. Fluorescent and LED (light-emitting diode) light bulbs also give off blue light. Each color in the visible light spectrum has a different wavelength and energy level. Blue light has shorter wavelengths and higher energy levels than other colors. Some research shows a link between eye damage and short-wave blue light with wavelengths between 415 and 455 nanometers. That's where the link to our devices may be of some concern, since most of the light from the LEDs used in our electronics (especially smartphones, TVs and tablets) has wavelengths between 400 and 490 nanometers. While more research is definitely needed, some studies have shown that blue light from digital screens can affect at least half of us, mostly resulting in dry eyes, blurred vision and eyestrain.

However, blue light may also damage your retinas. That's called phototoxicity, and the amount of damage is related to the wavelength and exposure time. Animal studies show that even short exposure (a few minutes to a few hours) may be harmful. A filter that cuts 94% of blue light has been shown to lessen damage, however there is evidence that blue light could lead to permanent vision changes. Almost all blue light passes straight through to the back of your retina. Some research has shown blue light may increase the risk of macular degeneration, a disease of the retina. Research shows blue light exposure may lead to age-related macular degeneration (AMD). One study found that blue light triggered the release of toxic molecules in photoreceptor cells causing damage that may lead to AMD.

Screen time, especially at night, has also been linked to poor sleep. The blue light from electronic devices messes with your circadian rhythm, or sleep cycle. It signals your brain to wake up when it should be winding down. In one study, as little as 2 hours of exposure to blue light at night slowed or stopped release of the sleep hormone melatonin. Powering down your digital devices at least 3 hours before bedtime can help, especially with your children, whose eyes don't filter blue light as well as adults do, additionally raising their chances of developing obesity, nearsightedness and attention focusing issues. Nighttime exposure to blue light has also, in animal studies, been linked to depressive symptoms.

Despite the need for more research that can help us definitively address the potential damage that blue light can cause to our eyes, many news sources, health-and vision-related websites, and health organizations suggest a causal link between blue light exposure and retina damage. This has led to an interest in "blue blockers," which are special eyeglass lenses that filter out blue light in the same way UV lenses block ultraviolet light. Manufacturers of these lenses often make bold claims about using blue blockers to prevent retina damage, sometimes quoting studies that examined the effect of blue light on cellular eye tissue. However, a National Institutes of Health analysis of blue blockers research found NO SOLID EVIDENCE that these lenses improve vision or preserve retinal health.

Still, too much time with digital devices can cause problems. Digital eyestrain often leads to dry eyes and puts an extra burden on the muscles that help the eye focus, leading to blurred vision. Also, the eyes do not blink as frequently when looking at digital devices, which causes faster disruption and evaporation of the film of tears that protects the surface of the eyes, leading to minor eye irritations such as burning and stinging.

So, what can we do, especially now that our children are back in school and many of us are back in our offices, to maintain more comfortable vision and healthier eyes while using digital devices:

Take frequent breaks while using digital devices. Use the 20/20/20 rule: For every 20 minutes of usage, look away for 20 seconds and focus on something (e.g., a soothing painting) 20 feet away.
Use artificial tears or lubricant drops to relieve symptoms of dryness.
Reduce overhead lighting to minimize screen glare.
Keep your eyes an arm's distance away from the screen .
Increase the text size on devices to see screen content more easily.
Adjust the contrast on the screen so that the screen itself isn't too bright.

While the above tips may be helpful, they are more like putting a bandaid on a sore or a wound. To address the underlying problem, we must significantly reduce the amount of screen time we commit to all of our devices. As Matthew Broderick said at the end of the classic film, War Games, "The only way to win (avoid nuclear war, in the film) is not to play!"

WARNING: COVID-19 IS NOT OVER!

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 21:45:45 GMT

Rip off your mask! Run, don't walk to your favorite bar, restaurant or neighbor's raucous indoor party! Hug the persons you love, even the complete strangers you meet on the street! Go shopping again, in person, in a real store with crowds pushing and shoving you in a scene reminiscent of my childhood days during a sale at Filene's Basement, Boston's notoriously cheap haven in the days of yore before Amazon conquered all things good. Go back to the offices we used to hate going back to! We can finally return to normal, whatever that means and not have to grab a calculator to determine the risk/benefit ratio of every activity we engage in during our waking hours from greeting our mailman to picking up a pizza or even eating it, heaven forbid, inside the pizzeria.

Hold it! Not so fast, my friends. Despite the lifting of most mandates by Governors and local politicians (and reinterpreting their recommendations, as only the CDC, master of "government speak" can do best), it is not a time to completely let down our guard. Let's look at the numbers. As of this writing, approximately 100,000 Americans are newly diagnosed with Covid-19 EVERY DAY while almost 2,000 of us are still dying from this dreadful disease every single day. Unless that statistic changes, we would lose almost 3/4 million Americans a year from Covid-19. To put that in perspective, according to the CDC, between 12-52,000 Americans die every year from the flu. And, while we have made tremendous gains in our vaccination rates, still about 1/3 of our eligible population remains to be vaccinated at all...think about it...that's over 100 million Americans who are still not, and likely to never get vaccinated. And, if you want to think about this from a global citizen's point of view, only 63% of the world's population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. And that statistic drops to a shocking 12.9% of people in low-income countries having received at least one dose.

And, before we celebrate too wildly about the supposed retreat of Covid-19 from a frightening pandemic to a manageable endemic, let's not forget that only three months ago, Omicron was only known to American mathematicians as a Greek letter. Since December 1, when it came to us from South Africa, it spread throughout the U.S. faster than a California wildfire gone awry, infecting both the vaccinated (even many with booster shots) and the unvaccinated, although with more serious effects in the latter group. Any respectable epidemiologist or infectious disease expert will tell us that, given that about 40% of the world's population is still unvaccinated, representing over 3 billion people, there is a lot of room for the next variant...and make no mistake, there will be a next varant...to spread and grow, possibly with even more capability than Omicron, to dodge our current vaccination protocols.

In short, until the world achieves immunity from vaccination (or sadly, infection), we still need to keep our guard up, at least somewhat, depending upon the infection rates and vaccination rates in our neighborhood, village, county, state and country (since many of us can't wait to start traveling again, hoping we don't expire before our miles). I can't and won't tell you what to do with your life and the risk calculations you may still be calculating. I can only tell you what I am doing, which is keeping my mask on in most indoor settings, especially when crowds are likely present (e.g., supermarkets, museums, movies, theatres, clubs, synagogues, etc.). I am also, as we move into Spring and Summer, going to do most of my restaurant dining outdoors. For me, these simple precautions will make me feel safer and, hopefully, keep me and those around me safer not just from Covid-19, but from the common cold and flu, neither of which have struck me in the 2 years that I have been masking up.

WARNING: SPACE HEATERS NEED SPACE OR THEY CAN KILL YOU!

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 21:16:06 GMT

Earlier this month, a horrific fire erupted in a Bronx, NY apartment and quickly spread throughout a 19 story building killing 17 people, including 8 children, in one of the most deadly fires in New York City history. All of the victims died from smoke inhalation. According to the FDNY, there were several space heaters running at the time of the fire in the second-floor duplex apartment, and all of them had apparently been left on for days. Exacerbating the damage from the apartment at ground-zero was the apparent malfunction of a self-closing door that was left open, allowing the smoke to spread throughout the entire building.

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), fixed position and portable electric space heaters account for approximately 3500 residential fires a year with 60 deaths and 340 injuries. However the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimated that electric-powered space heaters (fixed-position or portable) were associated with an annual average of 9,680 fires, 172 deaths, 742 injuries, and $248 million in property losses. The NFPA report lists: “Heat source too close to combustibles,” as the leading factor contributing to ignition for electric space heater fires, in an estimated 28 percent of the fire incidents. The presence of combustibles provides the fuel and the potential to initiate a fire. A more recent report by the NFPA (January 2021) concluded that during a five year period (2014-2018), fire departments responded to almost 50,000 residential fires involving portable space heaters resulting in 500 civilian deaths and 1350 injuries. According to the NFPA, almost 1/2 of all residential fires are caused by portable space heaters as well as a staggering 81% of all deaths and injuries.

Whatever statistics you choose to rely upon, there can be no escaping the simple fact that space heaters can be a very deadly source of fire in your home, especially if you don't follow some vitally important safety rules about their proper use.
Keep anything that can burn at least 3 feet from heat sources

Never leave a space heater unattended. Turn off when leaving a room or sleeping
Never plug a space heater into an extension cord; plug directly into the outlet
Only use space heaters on level, flat surfaces on the ground
Have a qualified service professional inspect your heating system annually
Install and maintain carbon monoxide alarms
Never use a space heater or any appliance with a damaged cord
Never use a space heater to cook food, dry clothes or warm linen (or other object)

In addition to the above safety rules, manufacturers have also stepped up their game to improve the safety of the heaters themselves by installing, in some cases, infrared sensors which can detect objects that may be too close to the heater or set off an alarm (or shut off heater) if temperature gets too hot or even turn off heater if it tips over.

Since most residential fires occur in the winter months of December, January and February, and half of those fires involve a space heater, your life and the lives of your loved ones may depend upon using a space heater equipped with necessary safety devices and following the above safety rules.
_________________________________
Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

IT'S TOY SAFETY AWARENESS MONTH!

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 20:10:19 GMT

This month, the Toy Association has launched its first-ever "Toy Safety Awareness Month, the purpose of which is to educate parents and caregivers about safe toy shopping, safe product selection and safe play at home. The initiative will also encourage Toy Association members and others in the play industry to share helpful safety tips with consumers on their social media channels, websites, and in stores.

“As we approach the holidays, toys are top-of-mind for parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other caregivers who plan to make the season magical for the kids in their lives,” said Adrienne Appell, senior vice president of marketing communications at The Toy Association. “The timing is also right to remind families of essential safety advice to help ensure playtime is both fun and safe once the gifts are unwrapped and throughout the year. That’s why we are launching Toy Safety Awareness Month and encourage the entire play community to get involved! We are looking forward to sharing our play safety messages with a wide audience of parents and caregivers this holiday season and to highlighting the toy industry’s commitment to safe play,” added Appell.

When we consider the recent statistics from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) on deaths and emergency department (ED) treated injuries associated with toys, it is easy to understand why the Toy Association made its decision to focus on toy safety. In 2020, CPSC's staff received reports of 9 toy-related deaths among children 14 years of age or younger involving a balloon, a rubber ball due to airway obstruction, a stuffed toy in an unsafe sleep environment, choking or inhalation on small parts of a toy and suffocation in a toy chest. In addition to these fatalities, an estimated 200,000 toy-related injuries were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments, and males accounted for 57% of these injuries. Of the estimated 200,000 toy-related injuries, 75% were sustained by children 14 years of age or younger, 73% were sustained by children 12 years of age or younger and 40% by children 4 years of age or younger. 42% of the injuries were classified as lacerations, contusions, or abrasions, and 47% were injuries to the head and face area, the most commonly affected area of the body. The good news is that 93% of the ED-treated, toy-related injury victims were treated and released. Nonmotorized scooters were associated with the most estimated injuries among all toys for all ages, but building sets was responsible for most injuries to children 4 years of age or younger.

With these alarming statistics in mind, here are just a few safety tips provided by the Toy Association that parents may want to keep in mind when purchasing toys for any children, their own or others:

Check toys for age, skill level and developmental appropriateness
Look for labels that assure you the toys have gone through a safety inspection.
Do NOT give toys with ropes, cords or heating elements.
Do NOT give toys with small parts. If the piece can fit inside a toilet paper roll, it is not appropriate for kids under age 3.
Gifts of sports equipment should always be accompanied by protective gear. (e.g., give a helmet with a bicycle, give arm and leg protective gear with roller blades, etc.)

In short, remember that safe toys are sturdy, unbreakable, washable and non-toxic. Unsafe toys have strings, small parts, sharp points and electrical parts. If you keep these and other safety tips in mind, you and your children should enjoy not only a joyful holiday season but equally, if not more important, a safe season. Remember, the more informed you are, the safer you will be.

Happy Holidays from The Warnings Doctor!

DO NOT TAKE THESE WARNINGS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT!

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:23:04 GMT

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently warned us that we are eating too much salt, but has only recommended that we reduce the amount of sodium in our diets. In short, we are drowning in a sea of salt and we need our own lifeboats to save ourselves. Five years ago (2016) the FDA issued a draft guidance that set our daily sodium intake at 2300 milligrams, about 1 teaspoon of salt/day. While accepting this guideline from the FDA, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommended that people at high risk of hypertension (high blood pressure) should aim for 1500 milligrams/day. Perhaps in a bow to the reality of our typical high sodium diets brought on mostly by what we eat from a salt-obsessed food industry (70% of the sodium we consume comes from added salt in foods we buy in stores and restaurants), the FDA now is seeking to lower our daily sodium consumption from about 3400 milligrams (mg) to 3000 mg/day, about a 12% reduction over the next 2-3 years.

The AHA immediately challenged the FDA's new guidance by calling the FDA's action a "step forward" but "not low enough", calling for them to strongly recommend a 2300 mg/day maximum. They contend this would prevent almost 1/2 million new cases of cardiovascular disease and save $40 billion in health-care costs over a 20-year period. Will this new guideline work? Janet Woodcock, Acting Director of the FDA, believes it will and said the FDA will closely monitor the actions of industry and "if needed, additional action might be taken by the agency." Food critics, such as noted author and nutrition researcher, Marion Nestle have savaged the FDA's recommendation stating, "The first issue is that this is voluntary. Food companies don't have to pay any attention to it at all!"

As I have pointed out in my new book, MURDER, INC.: HOW UNREGULATED INDUSTRY KILLS OR INJURES THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS EVERY YEAR...AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT! , the food industry will not voluntarily assume the expense of discontinuing a successful food product or changing the industrial processes needed to reduce the amount of sodium in their food products, once again choosing profits over safety. The FDA must be more aggressive in mandating, not recommending, limits on salt in foods and then requiring, just as they did with sugar, a more transparent label so the public can actually understand what they are eating.

Since I am somewhat doubtful the FDA will ever adopt sodium mandates, at least in the near future, I believe we have to take action ourselves to protect ourselves and our families. Apparently the FDA agrees because Susan Mayne, who directs the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, has said, "We're really relying on the public to ask for these (low-sodium foods) and be positive about them because that will help drive us toward a healthier food supply." In other words, the FDA has told us we are on our own! The trouble with this advice is that sodium is found in virtually everything we eat or drink, and most of us aren't trained in nutrition and food safety. As Yogi Berra used to say, "I don't know what I don't know!" For that reason, as The Warnings Doctor, I will identify at least some of the foods you may want to limit in your diet due to their very high sodium content. I do so with the caveat that we all need sodium in our diet as necessary electrolytes that help balance the fluids in our body as well as playing a key role in normal nerve and muscle function. The challenge we face, especially if we have high blood pressure, is to avoid excessive amounts of sodium, such as that found in the following foods:

Shrimp . A 3-ounce serving of frozen shrimp has 800 mg of sodium, about 1/3 of your daily minimum; fresh shrimp, however, has only 100 mg of sodium for the same amount.
Soup. Canned or restaurant soups have at least 700-800 mg/one cup serving. Most restaurant servings are at least 2 cups. Buy only low sodium soups and avoid them at a restaurant.
Ham . A 3-ounce serving of ham has almost 1200 mg of sodium, and most people eat at least a 6-ounce serving, thus consuming their daily recommended intake of sodium in just one serving of ham. The same could be said for most cold cuts and salami even has almost 1000 mg of sodium in only a 2-ounce serving...and that's without the bread!
Bread . Most white breads (e.g., Pepperidge Farms Hearty White Bread) have about 1400 mg/2 slice serving. This means that every slice of bread has as much salt as a small bag of potato chips. If you're still doing the math with me and want a salami sandwich on white bread, with 4-ounces of salami, an average serving, you will consume 3400 mg of sodium...and that's not including the 200 mg for the mustard!
Pizza. Depending on what ingredients you put on your pizza, an average slice of pizza from a restaurant has about 1000 mg of sodium; it's slightly less if your buy a frozen pizza and cook it at home...about 800 mg. Since most of us eat 3 slices at a time, we have equaled or more than exceeded our daily limit of sodium...and that's in addition to the sugar in a slice of pizza, which is the equivalent to the amount found in an oreo cookie.
Salad Dressing. Most commercially available salad dressings have an average of 500-600 mg of sodium/2 tablespoon serving. If you look hard, you may find low sodium dressings, but an easier solution is to use olive oil and vinegar, both of which are virtually sodium free.
Processed Cheese. American cheese and Velveeta are the best sellers in this category and can have as much as 1000 mg/serving of just two slices. A better option is to buy lower sodium natural cheeses such as swiss, mozzarella, goat and ricotta which can have as little as 1/4 that amount.
Sauces. The grand champion of sauces is Soy Sauce which has a whopping 1000 mg of sodium/2 tablespoon serving. Barbecue sauce and tomato sauce are not far behind with almost 800 mg/typical serving. Obviously, the low sodium options of these sauces would be preferable.
Hot Dogs and Other Processed Meats. Just one hot dog can have as much as 1300-1400 mg of sodium with similar numbers found in other processed meats such as bratwurst and sausages. Avoiding these foods is the best solution.
Bagels . One bagel has between 400-600 mg of sodium, depending on its flavor. As a Jew this might be heresy, but I am reserving bagels for a once a year treat when I break my Yom Kippur fast.

You can learn more about this topic on my podcast, EXPOSED! In the episode, "Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet / Interview with Michael Jacobson, Ph.D.," we pull back the curtain on salt to reveal essential health, nutrition, and food safety tips to help keep you and your loved ones safe.

My list could go on, but this should give you a good head start on lowering the amount of sodium in your diet. Your heart will thank you even if your taste buds will take a little time to adjust.

WARNING: YOU ARE NOT A HORSE OR A COW!

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 13:39:16 GMT

The last two issues of this newsletter were devoted to a humorous review of some of the silliest warnings provided by product manufacturers over the last several years. On August 21 of this year, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was forced to tweet the following warning to Americans:

You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.

Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19

Using the Drug ivermectin to t reat COVID-19 can be dangerous and even lethal. The FDA has not approved the drug for that purpose.

When I first saw this tweet, I thought, "Seriously! You can't make this stuff up!" But here we are approaching the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century, and our government's foremost food and drug regulatory agency felt it necessary to issue such a public warning. Rather than get into the political climate in the U.S. that might have led so many Americans to believe they can take a drug approved for horses and other animals rather than a vaccine approved for its safety and effectiveness in preventing COVID-19, I will present a summary of the science behind the FDA's not-so-humorous tweet.

First of all, what is ivermectin and what is it supposed to be used for? Certain animal formulations of ivermectin such as pour-on, injectable, paste, and "drench," are approved in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals. For humans, ivermectin tablets are approved at very specific doses to treat some parasitic worms, and there are topical (on the skin) formulations for head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.

However, the FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical attention, including hospitalization, after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for livestock. Here is what you need to know about ivermectin:
The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals. Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.
Currently available data does not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing.
Taking large doses of ivermectin is dangerous.
If your health care provider writes you an ivermectin prescription, fill it through a legitimate source such as a pharmacy, and take it exactly as prescribed.
Never use medications intended for animals on yourself or other people. Animal ivermectin products are very different from those approved for humans. Use of animal ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in humans is dangerous.
There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. It is not okay.

Even the levels of ivermectin for approved human uses can interact with other medications, like blood-thinners. You can also overdose on ivermectin, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension (low blood pressure), allergic reactions (itching and hives), dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma and even death.

The most effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 include getting a COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to you and following current CDC guidance.

Talk to your health care provider about available COVID-19 vaccines and treatment options. Your provider can help determine the best option for you, based on your health history.

----------------------

Check out my latest podcast "EXPOSED! An Exclusive Look Behind the Curtain of Corporate Greed"

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It". Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

MORE SILLY WARNINGS FOR YOUR LATE SUMMER ENJOYMENT

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 19:48:28 GMT

Last month, thanks to our friends at the Readers Digest, I published ten of the silliest warnings I have ever seen. Not to be outdone, Readers Digest has another 11 intended to provide you with some more summer fun. Please enjoy and pass them around to your friends, family and colleagues.

1. Warning label on a box of rat poison:

2. Warning label on a “vanishing ink” marker:New Paragraph

3. Warning label on an iron-on shirt pattern:

4. Warning label on a Razor scooter:

5. Warning label on a hairdryer:

6. Warning label on a package of fireplace logs:

7. Warning label on a brass fishing hook:

8. Warning label on a can of pepper spray:

9. Warning label on a cartridge for a laser printer:

10. Warning label on a letter opener:

11. Warning label on a bar of soap:

SILLY WARNINGS FOR SUMMERTIME HUMOR

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 20:17:11 GMT

Thanks to our friends at the Reader's Digest, I thought you might like some humor to tide you over this summer as we face the challenges arising from the Delta Variant. Please enjoy these silly warnings and promise me you won't engage in their prohibited behaviors.

1. Warning label on a wheelbarrow:

2. Warning label on a baby stroller:

3. Warning label on a thermometer:

4. Warning label on Apple’s website:

5. Warning label on a Chipotle truck:

6. Warning label on a carpenter’s electric drill:

7. Warning label on a takeout coffee cup:

8. Warning label on a jet ski:

9. Warning label on a bottle of dog medication:

10. Warning label on a dishwasher:

WARNING: A SUMMER OF FUN CAN LEAD TO A SUMMER OF DEATH...IF WE AREN’T CAREFUL

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 17:19:02 GMT

Now that summer is officially here and we are all looking forward to its natural rewards, especially after a year and a half of being cooped up to avoid exposure to Covid-19, it is only natural that we humans can’t wait to enjoy pools, beaches, water and amusement parks, locations which harbor some of our fondest memories...but also locations which present some of our greatest risks for harm or worse. While famed sports broadcaster, Warner Wolf, was fond of saying, “Let’s roll the tape!”, I am fond of saying, “Let’s look at the statistics!”

While pools and other bodies of water may indeed be a source of summer fun and pleasure, they present a particular risk of danger both to toddlers/young children and teens, especially males. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), approximately 300 children age 1-4 years old, drown every summer in a private swimming pool. Drowning is the leading cause of death for young children, according to the National Safety Council, and the real tragedy is that most of these deaths are very preventable. How many times have we heard the post-mortem wailings from parents or other supervisors of a child claiming, “I only turned away for a second/minute!” As cliched as it sounds, “It only takes a second!” Here are a few water safety precautions that may prevent your child from drowning in a residential pool or other body of water:

Never leave your child alone; if you have to leave, take your child with you
While age-appropriate swim lessons for your child may be beneficial, such lessons do not make your child “drown-proof”
Lifeguards aren’t babysitters; always keep your eyes on your child
Never consume alcohol or other substances when watching your child
Always have a first aid kit and emergency contacts handy
Get training in CPR
If a child is missing, always check the water first

There are approximately 1000 spinal cord injuries each year in the U.S. due to shallow water diving
90% of all diving injuries cause a spinal cord injury which results in paralysis
Most injuries occur to males aged 15-25
Most injuries occur while diving into six feet of water or less
Three out of four injuries occur in lakes, rivers, oceans and other natural bodies of water

Additional statistics of interest: 6500 adolescents/year are brought to hospitals with diving-related injuries both from in-ground and above-ground pools. Half of these injuries occurred during a pool party where alcohol or drugs were involved and almost all (80%) took place in shallow water of less than four feet mostly due to headfirst dives...WITH NO WARNING SIGNS POSTED AT THE POOL. I designed the following No Diving sign now recommended by the National Spa and Pool Institute and other organizations.

Drownings and diving injuries may not be a risk at most amusement parks, but serious injuries and deaths from other risks may be just as prevalent. According to the CPSC, approximately 30,000 permanent and mobile amusement park injuries/year result in a visit to an emergency room. The International Association of Amusement Parks places the number of injuries at about 1500/year, but that only includes data from permanent parks that don’t move around the country. The truth is that nobody really knows because there are NO Federal Regulations for amusement parks. It’s mostly up to the states, many of which only require annual inspections and many of those states leave it up to the park itself to self-inspect and report voluntarily if anyone gets injures. In other words, the fox is running the henhouse with regards to amusement park safety, which means it’s up to each of us to monitor the safety of ourselves and our loved ones.

While most amusement parks post a buffet of signage and loud speaker announcements restricting rides to customers of allowed ages, heights, weights and medical conditions, the ultimate enforcement of these safety rules is typically left in the hands of high school and college teens, 16-18 years old, whose main responsibility is to take tickets from riders, not to act as trained safety officers. While conducting a study of amusement park warnings, I interviewed a number of these teens and asked them why they didn’t enforce the park’s posted warnings. The overwhelming response was, “I didn’t want to embarrass the customer.” In other words, the amusement park’s last enforcer of safety had chosen avoiding embarrassment over avoiding the risk of injury or death.

Yes, summer can be a time of great fun and great joy...as long as we make our own safety and that of our loved ones our highest priority.

SHOULD AUTONOMOUS CARS COME WITH WARNINGS?

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 01:31:42 GMT

In my new book, Murder, Inc., I tell the following story:

In May, 2016, 40-year old Joshua Brown became the first person to die "behind the wheel" of an autonomous car when his Tesla Model S, cruising on Autopilot, crashed into an oncoming tractor trailer that was making a left turn, the car going right under the trailer section and hitting a fence and a power pole before coming to rest. In the ensuing investigation into the cause of the crash, Tesla acknowledged that its onboard camera failed to recognize the white broadside of the trailer against a bright sky, and therefore the Model S consequently failed to brake to a stop to avoid the collision. However, in a final report in which NHTSA looked at several other Tesla Autopilot incidents involving injuries in addition to the fatal Brown crash, the agency concluded that it "did not identify any (safety-related) defects in the design or performance" of Autopilot, or "any incidents in which the systems did not perform as designed." In short, NHTSA concluded that, although Autopilot did not prevent the accident, it performed as it was designed and intended, and therefore did not have a defect, and did not warrant a product recall by Tesla. In other words, the car didn't cause the crash. Huh?

Upon release of their report, NHTSA spokesman Bryan Thomas said, "Not all systems can do all things. There are driving scenarios that automatic emergency braking systems are not designed to address." If that's the case, I think it's fair to say that the limitations of the system caused Joshua Brown's fatal car crash. In a final statement that seems to run diametrically counter to the whole idea of the fully autonomous vehicle, Thomas insisted that "Autopilot requires full driver engagement at all times." NHTSA has, in fact, strongly warned automakers about naming and marketing semiautonomous driving systems in ways that lead consumers to believe that they can mindlessly let the car drive itself while they sit back reading the paper or texting on smartphones while trying to drink superheated coffee without scalding themselves. Because you can't do that! And it may be decades before you will be able to do that, if it ever happens at all.

Apparently the American people are just fine with this. According to a new Brookings Institution survey, 61% of adult Americans stated that they would not feel comfortable riding in a self-driving car, 52% believe that autonomous vehicles still actually require some level of human control and 75% would much rather drive a car than ride in an autonomous car and want Congress to try and put the brakes on driverless cars.

Maybe these statistics were impacted by news from Uber, who until 2020, had been committed to developing a fleet of autonomous cars, but recently sold its self-driving car business to Aurora Innovation, a startup founded by the former head engineer of Google's pioneering self-driving car project. Perhaps not a coincidence, but just two years prior to Uber's decision to leave the autonomous car business, on March 18, 2018, an Uber self-driving SUV accompanied by a safety driver, Rafaela Vasquez who was streaming an episode of "The Voice" while on a road in Tempe, Arizona and was distracted for most of the time while driving, struck and killed a pedestrian, 49 year-old Elaine Herzberg while she was crossing the street, outside the crosswalk, with her bicycle. The Uber car only detected Herzberg 5.6 seconds before the impact. During their investigation of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) showed that Uber's autonomous test vehicles were involved in 37 crashes 18 months prior to the Arizona incident. Apparently, Uber self-driving cars didn't know pedestrians could jaywalk. Prosecutors ruled that Uber wasn't liable for Herzberg's death, however, that didn't stop her family from suing Uber, the city of Tempe and the State of Arizona. Uber promptly settled the case while litigation against the city and state continues.

What does this mean for the future of autonomous vehicles in the United States? First and foremost, Elon Musk was wrong when he said in 2015 that "self-driving cars that can drive anywhere will be here in 2-3 years." He wasn't alone in erroneous prognosticating. In 2016, Lyft CEO John Zimmer predicted that these vehicles would "all but end car ownership by 2025"...4 years from today. The truth is that most experts today aren't sure when, if ever, individuals will be able to purchase steering-wheel free cars that drive themselves off the lot. According to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, it will require a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI), which almost no one is predicting will arrive anytime soon, in order to produce self-driving cars. Even Elon Musk may have seen the light. According to the WSJ, Musk recently tweeted, "A major part of real-world AI has to be solved to make unsupervised, generalized full self-driving work." "Translation: For a car to drive like a human, researchers have to create AI on par with one."

SHOULD LEGAL MARIJUANA HAVE A WARNING LABEL?

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:22:43 GMT

For millions of Americans April 20, or 4/20 is a national holiday intended to celebrate a drug that remains illegal at the Federal level in the U.S. At the State level, it is a totally different story. Almost 90% of Americans (approximately 300 million of us) live in states where marijuana is legal for either recreational or medical use. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia allow recreational pot use while 36 states allow its medical use. Let me be very clear: I am not here to politicize or moralize about whether or not marijuana should be legal either in selected states or throughout the country. This point may soon be moot because the Biden Administration, along with the Democratic Congressional leadership, have already signaled support for the decriminalization of marijuana. However, as The Warnings Doctor, it is my professional duty to be concerned about and make consumers aware of possible "hidden hazards" they may confront with the products we buy and/or use, and to advocate for warnings on or with those products so that consumers can make informed choices when they are buying or using said products. Such is the case with marijuana.

When we buy a box of cereal, we are now told all of the ingredients in the cereal, along with the amounts of those ingredients. For example, a 1/2 cup serving of Grape Nuts has 5 grams (a little more than a teaspoon) of sugar and 6 grams of protein, along with 7 grams of dietary fiber (about 1/4 of what we need, on average, in a typical day).

When we buy a bottle of wine, not only are we told its vintage and alcohol volume, but also there is a warning label advising pregnant women, drivers and machine operators not to drink the product while pregnant, driving or working.

And, of course, we all know that cigarettes have had a Surgeon General's warning since the 1960's. Not only are marijuana products devoid of any such warnings, at the Federal level, at least, the agency most likely to provide guidance about such warnings, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has their hands tied because, under Title 21, Section 811 of the US Code, marijuana is still considered a controlled substance. As long as pot is illegal at the Federal level, the FDA can't provide or enforce regulations that might actually keep us safe if we consume it.

What would those regulations, and subsequent warnings, if needed, look like? Consider that if you are stopped by a police officer for driving under the influence, the officer can administer a breathalyzer to you, and in most states, if your blood alcohol level (BAC) exceeds .08, you can be charged for driving while intoxicated. This determination is based upon science, research, regulations, etc. We know that drivers are more likely to get into accidents if their BAC exceeds .08, and we have a measuring system available (a breathalyzer) to accurately determine your level. Let's substitute weed for alcohol. You are still stopped by a police officer, perhaps because you were weaving while driving. There is no equivalent to a breathalyzer, and even if there were, what would it be measuring and what would be the maximum tolerable limits of whatever the substance(s) being measured turned out to be? The truth is that we don't have answers to these questions, thus leaving the police officer to make a totally subjective decision, a decision that could vary from officer to officer and present a nightmare for prosecutors to make their case in court.

The questions facing a puzzled police officer are the same questions we all must face as marijuana becomes legalized throughout the U.S.: How much pot does it take to get someone stoned? Does this vary by age, height, weight, ingestion of other foods or beverages, amount of sleep deprivation, ingestion and interaction with other chemicals (legal or otherwise), etc. And, if you are stoned, should there be restrictions placed on your behavior, such as driving, going to classes or work, swimming, using any machinery or engaging in other recreational activities? Putting aside the myriad of behavioral norms and rules a nanny pot state may impose (if they could), what about warnings related to the actual ingredients and amounts of those ingredients present in your pot-infused products? Why should you be required to know the amount of sugar present in your gummy bears but not have a clue as to the amount of THC (the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis) in those same candies? Shouldn't you know the expected effect the amount of THC in your gummy bears might produce (and how long it will typically take both for these effects to be realized and to last)? If you are required to know the number of carbs in your muffins, shouldn't the amount of THC be labeled in those same muffins (or space cakes)? I find it totally ironic that the same consumers who are demanding to know the ingredients and nutritional values of their food products, not to mention if they are GMO or Gluten-free, are not storming the FDA with similar demands for all pot products.

In fairness, many states have instituted their own packaging and labeling requirements, some more restrictive than others. For example, Arizona's only labeling requirement is that the packaging be child resistant, while Alaska requires not only the labeling of the amount of THC in the product but also a series of warnings even more detailed and restrictive than alcohol warnings, highlighting marijuana's intoxicating, habit forming and addictive effects, its impairment of judgment, potential health risks and the need to avoid driving or its use if pregnant. The main concern is that there is no uniform set of rules, guidelines and warnings for all states to follow, thus leaving consumers to make their own decisions without serious scientifically-based warnings to help guide those decisions. If there are, as I believe, hidden hazards present with the consumption of pot products without proper labeling or instructions, we consumers will not be able to make informed choices about whether to buy or how to safely use such products. Happy 4/20 Day!

OPENING DAY: A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 18:19:26 GMT

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have been a Red Sox Season Ticket Holder since 1972, making this the 49th season I have had the privilege of owning two tickets in storied Fenway Park, typically, with either my daughter, Michelle, or my son, Marcus, at my side cheering for our beloved BoSox. However, this year, mostly due to Covid restrictions, I have not renewed my cherished nuggets, waiting until my family and I feel it's totally safe to resume outdoor activities involving potentially crowded circumstances. The Red Sox may not wait for my decision, just as they didn't when they allowed Mookie Betts to join the Dodgers (that's a cheap shot at the Sox management whom I already messaged earlier this year), and resell my former seats...but I doubt it, given the tepid response to date in purchasing tickets.

Actually, I commend the Sox (and virtually all other major league teams) for adhering to very strict Covid-driven safety guidelines to help them determine how best to resume playing baseball this year, and most importantly, how to do so as safely as possible with fans in the stands, even on a limited basis, Most teams have decided to limit total attendance to 10-20% of total capacity, depending upon local ordinances and whether the game is being played indoors or outdoors, require fans to produce evidence of either a complete Covid vaccination protocol or a very recent (usually within 48-72 hours) Covid negative test result. Some teams are even administering rapid Covid tests as fans enter the stadium. As further evidence of their commitment to fan safety, they are requiring all fans to wear masks over their noses and mouths throughout the game except when seated in their own seats consuming food or beverage. No food may be consumed other than in the fans' seats. Tailgating and carry-in food are prohibited and fans are encouraged, by ample signage, to walk in certain directions, keeping at least 6' apart as they enter and leave the stadium or their seats.

And, speaking of seats, fans will be spread out throughout the ballpark. For example, Fenway Park's capacity is 37,731 and the Red Sox have decided to allow only 12% of seating capacity (about 4500 seats) to be used by fans, located in pods of 2-4 (with an occasional pod of 6 for larger families), and all pods separated by at least 6-20 feet from another pod, And to ensure fan complicity with assigned seating, the remaining approximately 33,000 seats will be zip-tied so nobody can occupy those seats. Other safety protocols exist, including using prepackaged condiments, keeping fans waiting in food lines at least 6' apart, using contactless payment options, installing plexiglass at each cash register as well as in the first two rows near the playing field to keep fans away from players and ballpark staff before, during and after the game. Sorry, kids, no more rushing during pre-game to get an autograph from your favorite players...at least not this year. And, of course, our fan favorite...hand washing/disinfectant stations will be located throughout the ball park.

In my opinion, despite my decision to put my season tickets on hold for this year, the Red Sox and most other major league teams are attempting to provide as safe an environment for fans as possible, recognizing that it's impossible to remove all risks. Sadly, that is not the case with the Texas Rangers who play their home games at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, with a seating capacity of 40,300. How ironic that the Rangers' ballpark's seating capacity is almost as high as the 45,000 Texans who have, to date, lost their lives from Covid. As the rest of the nation (and MLB teams) are struggling to fight the coronavirus, the Texas Rangers have mirrored the reckless lead of their Governor, Greg Abbott who has declared Texas wide open for businesses of all stripes, with no attendance limits, or...don't step on my personal freedoms...mask requirements. Once they got the green light from their devil-may-care Governor, the Rangers wasted no time announcing that they were intent on selling all 40,300 tickets for their April 5 home opener against Toronto, defying all logic and totally frustrating all local health authorities who, given the 8% positivity rate in Tarrant County, home to Globe Life Field, warned repeatedly about the possibility of still another "super-spreader event".

Yes, the Rangers announced they would install a mask mandate throughout the park, EXCEPT when eating or drinking in the fan's seat, and yes, they would adopt most of the safety protocols I identified above that the Red Sox and other teams have incorporated (e.g., no tailgating, no food can be brought into the park, cashless and/or digital ticketing and food/beverage purchase, no player autographs, cleaning stations throughout the park, etc.). However, by allowing full capacity to attend their games, the Rangers may as well have adopted NO safety protocols due to the high density seating of fans, crammed into seats only inches away from other fans, most of whom will be eating or drinking in their seats during significant portions of the game, without masks, of course, thus placing everyone in their vicinity at risk for Covid. A mask mandate with full capacity in crowded conditions may be a sure-fire way to reduce a mask's effectiveness. Even Texas' other MLB team, the Houston Astros, have agreed to reduce seating capacity at Houston's Minute Maid Park to 50% (approximately 20,000), still high by most standards, but not as outrageous as the "throw caution to the wind" Rangers.

Yes, indeed, a tale of two cities: Boston and its Red Sox versus Arlington and its Rangers. One city and team committed to providing as safe an environment as possible for their employees and fans and another who has chosen to play Russian Roulette with the safety of their ticket holders. Although I have chosen to put my own season tickets on hold, at least for the near future, I applaud the Red Sox and other MLB teams for their actions promoting fan safety and, as The Warnings Doctor, I can only urge the Rangers to reconsider their reckless decision, which can only lead to illness and possible death for some of their equally reckless fans.

Biden Administration Signals An End to Trump’s Deregulatory Nightmare

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 21:36:52 GMT

Within hours of being sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden signed an Executive Order designed to protect worker safety in the age of Covid, specifically requiring OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) to protect workers and ensure equity in enforcement of worker safety statutes and rules. In other words, Biden was telling OSHA to do what the former administration failed to do, namely to do their job and protect workers. As we all know, President Biden, also within hours of his inauguration, issued a mask mandate for all government employees and on all government sites, including the White House, as well as mandating mask-wearing during all forms of interstate travel (bus, train, plane, etc.)...all in the name of public safety.

Probably sensing that there was a new sheriff coming to town, the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission), one week before the Biden swearing-in, issued the first major U.S. consumer penalty in almost three years against North Carolina-based Kidde Company, manufacturer of a very popular fire extinguisher. Kidde was fined $12 million when the CPSC determined that they failed to report significant fire-extinguisher defects in a timely manner to the CPSC, thus violating Federal Statutes that call for product manufacturers to report any known defects associated with their products to the CPSC. The problem with their popular fire extinguishers was linked to defective plastic handles which either failed to discharge or required dangerously excessive force to operate, according to the CPSC, who linked one death directly to the failure of a Kidde extinguisher to operate properly. In 2017, Kidde recalled approximately 38 million extinguishers manufactured since 1973 and sold at WalMart, Home Depot, Amazon and elsewhere. Their problem wasn't the recall; their problem was that they waited too long to notify the CPSC and at least one consumer advocate, Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, believes their failure to notify the CPSC was intended to "minimize the extent of the defective fire extinguisher." Could this be still another example of a greedy corporation placing their profits over your safety? Shocking!

What's also shocking is that this penalty was ONLY THE SECOND MAJOR PENALTY HANDED OUT BY THE CPSC SINCE TRUMP TOOK OFFICE! Aside from Kidde, the only other major penalty administered by the nation's top consumer watchdog agency was a $27 million fine against ATV manufacturer, Polaris, in 2018 for a fire hazard linked to their ATV's. Perhaps, in what could be the understatement of the year, consumer advocate and legislative director at the Consumer Federation of America, Rachel Weintraub, concluded that "Enforcement has been down under the Trump administration, not only at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but at many, many agencies."

The penalty against Kidde could signal a big shift in enforcement, establishing meaningful regulations intended to protect consumers, certainly not a concern of the Trump presidency which left the CPSC practically rudderless without any permanent head since 2018. As further evidence of his scorn for consumer safety and the CPSC, Trump in 2019 tried to nominate Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry executive who pushed to relax rules on toxic chemicals at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as the new head of the CPSC. Fortunately, the Senate blocked this dangerous nomination, leaving Robert Adler, a holdover from the Obama administration, as Acting Chair of the CPSC.

In addition to searching for a strong consumer advocate to head the CPSC, Biden is also searching for a strong scientist to lead the FDA, which many believe was heavily politicized by outgoing Commissioner Stephen Hahn. The current acting FDA Commissioner, Janet Woodcock, a longtime drug regulator and career civil servant, is currently viewed as the frontrunner for the position. Further evidence of Biden's intention to lead on consumer, environmental and public safety is his pick to head the EPA, Michael Regan, head of North Carolina's Department of Environmental Quality, whose opening remarks to Congress included a pledge to "restore science and transparency at the agency while focusing on marginalized communities and combating climate change with a strong sense of urgency."

All of these fines, executive orders, appointments and nominations definitely signal that Trump's deregulatory nightmare, which led to thousands of deaths and injuries, may finally be over. I first wrote about the threat and consequences of haphazard deregulations in the February, 2017 and June, 2017 issues of this newsletter. And, in the October, 2018 issue, I stated that "regulators need to regulate." Let's hope that this new administration recognizes the need for meaningful regulations (and their enforcement) from the government agencies that have been specifically designed to protect consumers, workers and the general public from potentially bad actors who, when left to their own desires, would prefer to place their profits over our safety.

Check out my book "Murder, Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It" . Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle & Audiobook on Amazon now.

Have You Heard?

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 20:35:58 GMT

Murder, Inc. , an Amazon Bestseller and Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020, is now available as an audiobook! The audiobook is a transformative multimedia experience that serves as a distinctive form of storytelling.

The audiobook for Murder, Inc. is like a stylish, illuminating long-form podcast that is expertly produced. Nothing brings a story to life better than a brilliant narrator, vivacious voiceovers, and elaborate production value. Linguistically rich, the audiobook’s inflections help the listener pick up on certain meanings, emotions, case studies, and situations from the text.

Nationally acclaimed singer, songwriter, music producer, and narrator Marcus Goldhaber brings the book to life with his melodic, electrifying voice. In addition, the voice of Erin Brockovich is 2020 Helen Hayes award-winning Broadway and Shakespearean actress, Shirine Babb . Produced by Creative Director David Alan Kogut, the audiobook contains bushels of bonus content .

Critically, the audiobook provides a nuanced, sensory experience for listeners that accentuates data and information surrounding safety, travel, health, warning labels, and much more for a better understanding of the meaning and application of specific situations.

Even for people who love books, finding the opportunity to read can be a challenge. Many of my clients at Goldhaber Research Associates LLC as well as collaborators in the media industry simply don’t have the time to sit down and read a book. Those professionals, including leading trial lawyers, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and on-air talent work long hours and travel often.

Murder, Inc. the audiobook can be enjoyed on a smartphone, iPad, computer or in the car. The audiobook provides direct access to essential health and safety facts and figures that listeners can receive and absorb while doing other tasks like exercising, traveling, commuting, doing chores or working. The chance to multitask makes people feel more productive, connected, and in control of their time.

In today’s complex world and with the novel coronavirus pandemic, the amount of information people need to know to stay up-to-date on safety and health information is increasing. The audiobook for Murder, Inc. allows one to speed listen, and therefore make the most of their time.

I encourage you to turn up the volume and enjoy the audiobook for Murder, Inc. ! My goal is for you to gain knowledge and hear about safety guidance and warning tips to make your life healthier and more fulfilled. You can order the audiobook for Murder, Inc. now exclusively with Aud ible and Amazon or visit murderincbook.com/audiobook .

Take a listen to some samples here.

And remember, the more informed you are, the safer you will be.

TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY....AND SAFE

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 20:39:25 GMT

Decades ago, when I was a little boy aged 7, I begged my mother for a BB Gun as a gift during the coming week of Chanukah. Like most kids my age, our heroes were Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger, all of whom had not only namesake horses (Hello Trigger, Champion, Topper and Silver) but also guns worthy of their superhero status in the world of 1950's television. I not only wanted but absolutely had to have my first BB gun in order to gain the trust and acceptance of my fellow superhero wannabe's in my neighborhood. Sadly, my grandmother (Nana) who ruled our roost with an iron hand and a fierce dry mop felt otherwise and literally told my mother, "He'll shoot his eyes out!" (decades before Ralphie Parker's teacher, Miss Shields, and even Santa Claus told 9-year old Ralphie the same thing in the immortal film, "A Christmas Story.").

Nana was right, and although she didn't know it at the time, she probably was the major influence that helped shape my values as "The Warnings Doctor." Decades later, I find myself joining thousands of other safety advocates eagerly awaiting the annual announcement from W.A.T.C.H. (World Against Toys Causing Harm), which, according to its website, is:

"a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about dangerous children’s products and protecting children from harm. W.A.T.C.H. informs the public about the dangers present in many toys, children’s products, and recreational activities." This year's "winners" should not only surprise but also alarm you, especially if you are about to buy toys for your children or grandchildren that include sickening green slime, accessories to plastic animals that could choke a child or Black Panther claws that could cause eye or facial injuries.

According to a statement released by W.A.T.C.H., “Although intended for fun and entertainment, many toys contain hidden hazards unnecessarily putting children at risk of injury or death,” I know, especially during this critical phase of fighting Covid-19 during which families with children are desperately looking for ways to distract and entertain their offspring, toy safety is absolutely paramount. " Shockingly, classic toy dangers, such as small parts, strings, projectiles, toxic substances, rigid materials, and inaccurate warnings and labels, continue to reappear in new generations of toys putting children at risk,” the organization said. If that statement doesn't cause you concern for the safety of your kids, consider these statistics, again brought to us by the safety experts at Boston-based W.A.T.C.H. There are an estimated 240,000 toy-related injuries to children each year and a child is brought to the emergency room every three minutes for a toy-related injury.

In fairness, The Toy Association, an industry trade group has a different opinion about W.A.T.C.H. and its annual list of dangerous toys:

“By law, all toys sold in the United States must meet 100+ rigorous safety tests and standards,” the association said in a statement. “However, WATCH does not test the toys in its report to check their safety; their allegations appear to be based on their misrepresentation of the mandatory toy standards — and of the priority the toy industry puts on safe and fun play.”The Toy Association said parents and others should always choose age-appropriate toys, encourage safe play, and make sure they purchase toys from reputable manufacturers and sellers.

Whether you believe W.A.T.C.H. or the Toy Association, I believe you need to know the "Ten Worst Toys of 2020" and their potential dangers because, as The Warnings Doctor, I strongly believe that "The More Informed You Are, The Safer You'll Be."

Here they are:

1. Calico Critters Nursery Friends. Potential choking hazards.

2. Missile Launcher. Potential for eye and facial injuries

3. Marvel Avengers Vibranium Power FX Claw. Potential for eye and facial injuries.

4. Gloria Owl. Potential for ingestion.

5. WWE Jumbo Superstar Fists. Potential for blunt force and impact injuries.

6. Sci-Fi Slime. Potential for chemical-related injuries.

7. Boomerang Interactive Stunt UFO. Potential for propellor-related injury.

8. Boom City Racers. Potential for eye and facial injuries.

9. My Sweet Love Lots of Love Babies Minis. Potential choking hazard.

10. Star Wars Mandalorian Darksaber. Potential for blunt force and eye injuries.

From all of us at Goldhaber Research Associates, we wish you and all of your loved ones a very Happy and Joyful AND SAFE Holiday Season!

DANGER: WINTER IS COMING... AND NOT IN THE GAME OF THRONES

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 15:51:10 GMT

John Steinbeck's last novel, published in 1961, was entitled "The Winter of Our Discontent", a title that came from the first two lines of William Shakespeare's "Richard III": "Now is the winter of our discontent..." Whether Steinbeck foretold the future 60 years ago or Shakespeare 428 years ago, we are definitely facing a tragic Covid winter of discontent. As I write this newsletter towards the end of October, 2020, almost 9 million Americans (at a minimum) have contracted Covid-19 and sadly, 227,000 of them have died. And, we are doing worse at fighting Covid than most of the world. While the United States represents 4% of the world's population, we account for approximately 20% of the Covid cases and deaths. Clearly, what we are doing isn't working, and according to the latest predictive model from the highly respected University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), if our behavior as a nation doesn't sharply change, we could be facing over 511,000 deaths by the end of February, 2021. That means, we would more than DOUBLE the number of deaths we have experienced after eight months of Covid-19 in THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS.

The same institute (IHME), in a recent study, predicted that we could save 130,000 lives if 95% of us wore masks whenever we came into contact with people, especially within a 6-10 foot range of us. The lead author of the study and the Director of the IHME, Christopher Murray stated, "We think the key point here is that there's a huge winter surge coming...and universal mask use can reduce an individual's risk of contracting Covid-19 by as much as 40%." Dr. Murray is first to say that the model's conclusions are based, among other factors, on our behavior. Simply stated, if we want to avoid catastrophic death tolls, we, as a society, must adopt mask-wearing as a routine and continuous practice for the foreseeable future.

And, how long will that be? Our nation's leading expert on viruses and vaccines, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now predicts that IF we have a safe and effective vaccine approved by the FDA by the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021, it will probably take most of 2021 until sufficient numbers of us have access to and have chosen to use the vaccine...no certainty according to polls which indicate only about 1/2 of us would take a Covid-19 vaccine. Dr. Fauci and other infectious disease experts are somewhat confident that of the more than 150 coronavirus vaccines in various stages of development around the world, perhaps 1-2 of the 5 leading candidate vaccines now in Stage 3 testing, may soon be ready for FDA Emergency Use Authorization, possibly by the end of this year.

What does that mean? If a safe and effective vaccine is authorized for emergency use by the FDA, it probably will be immediately distributed to first responders, health care workers and law enforcement professionals, along with those at the highest risk of exposure and a deadly outcome, seniors in nursing homes and hospitals. Although the government, through Operation Warp Speed, has committed to producing 300 million doses of at least 1-2 of the vaccine finalists even before the safety and efficacy results are in, this is a gamble that could be lost if the results are not positive. However, even if the FDA concludes, after being advised by an independent board of health and scientific experts, that 1 or more vaccines is safe and effective and ready for distribution, it will take several months, perhaps even an entire year to distribute the vaccine to all who want it.

What's important to realize is that no vaccine will be 100% effective. Think of the flu shot. Only about 1/2 of us get one every year even though it may only be about 50-60% effective in preventing the flu, depending on the type of flu strain and its severity in the U.S. We may, in fact, need TWO doses of the winning Covid-19 vaccine(s), thus requiring over 600 million doses to be manufactured and distributed, again, assuming most of us choose to be vaccinated.

In short, we all hope for and want a vaccine for Covid-19, certainly as soon as possible. But the reality is that it could be the better part of a year before not only is a vaccine developed that is safe and effective, but that enough of us choose to be vaccinated for it to be effective throughout the United States. Another dose of reality: most vaccines take 10-15 years to develop, and the fastest ever developed, for the mumps, took scientists four years. While we may want to see the glass as 1/2 full, I for one, am committed to wearing my mask for at least another year so that our "winter of discontent" is somewhat diminished. Just remember, folks, your health affects my health and my health affects your health. WEAR YOUR MASK!

Murder Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year... and What You Can Do About It will be released on audiobook in November, narrated by acclaimed Jazz vocalist, Marcus Goldhaber and featuring Broadway actress and 2020 Helen Hayes Award winning actress, Shirine Babb as Erin Brockovich.

Available exclusively at Amazon, Audible and iTunes, get the audiobook of Murder, Inc. for yourself, your loved ones, and your co-workers just in time for the holidays!

You can listen to a few clips now on the website.

AUDIOBOOK COMING SOON

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:45:43 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that the audiobook of Murder Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year... and What You Can Do About It will be released on November 1, 2020.

The audiobook was recorded by Marcus Goldhaber, my son, and produced by Creative Director David Alan Kogut.

You can listen to a few clips now on my website.

The book may be purchased at Amazon.

WILL FAMILIARITY BREED CONTEMPT FOR COVID-19 WARNINGS?

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 13:54:02 GMT

More than three decades ago, I published several scholarly articles about what I and other scholars in the fields of communication, human factors and psychology called "the familiarity effect." Very simply, I concluded that those people with the most familiarity (i.e., experience) using a product or experiencing an event or phenomenon would be among those least likely to follow warnings about any dangers or risks they might confront. For example, swimmers with the most experience diving into a pool would be the least likely folks to follow "no diving" signs posted, even prominently, at the pool. Or college students who have been spending every weekend at a house party are not likely to follow "no drinking" warnings, if indeed they were announced by the host of a new party they were attending for the first time. What I fear the most today is that the "familiarity effect" may be starting to infiltrate our Covid-19 weary populace.

As I write this newsletter, Governor Andrew Cuomo of my home state, New York, has been proudly posting week after week of extremely low statewide infection rates well under 1% of the almost 100,000 people/day New York State has been testing, by far the largest number of people being tested in the United States and even more significant, the lowest infection rate in the country. While New York is probably the most successful state in the U.S. to bend the Covid-19 curve, Governor Cuomo is not resting on his laurels and claiming, as others in leadership positions have incorrectly shouted, "Mission Accomplished!" Quite the contrary, as Governor Cuomo publishes his daily good news reports, rather than taking a victory lap, he ever so sternly and gently (as only he can do) warns New Yorkers, "This thing isn't over yet!" He constantly reminds us all to "mask up" (with a now national PSA campaign well underway), "keep our distance", "stay outside as much as possible" "wash or sanitize our hands constantly" and "avoid crowds, especially in indoor settings." At the same time, seven months after we first heard of this virus and contrary to decisions made by many too-eager states, Cuomo has still kept indoor dining and bars off limits in NYC, prevented crowded venues such as theaters, concert halls, operas, sports venues from opening at all, while installing very strict crowd-regulated procedures for phased openings of museums and outdoor venues such as zoos, botanical gardens and even schools.

All of the above sounds great, except for "the familiarity effect." As Shakespeare so eloquently wrote, beware of being "hoisted by your own petard." Our success story may actually lead to our own downfall...if WE are not careful and start to become complacent with our own success. We can't let down our guard, or, as Cuomo is fond of saying, "we can't take our foot off the gas pedal" (of safety). We must not fall victim to the "familiarity effect." What are some examples that may apply to you, especially if you live in a town, city, region or state where there has been a recent decline in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations or infection rate? Perhaps you have been relying upon food delivery both for meals and/or your shopping needs and you decide to venture outside to an outdoor restaurant. Depending on your acceptable risk tolerance, you decide to go to a restaurant which has plastic shields at right angles that separate tables that are at least 6 feet apart from each other. That may be better than going to a restaurant without such protections. Or, perhaps you are a senior who wants to go shopping at your favorite grocery store but haven't done so in months. Be sure they have "senior hours" where you are less likely to be shopping in crowds. Since this is still the middle of summer, many of you want to go to the beach. You should still keep socially distant from other beachgoers and avoid crowded situations...and, as hot as it is outside, keep your mask handy for situations where you may confront others, especially within 6 feet of you. You may miss hanging out at a bar with friends, but there literally is no way to do that safely at the present time. I could list dozens of examples, but you get the idea.

The "familiarity effect", as it relates to Covid-19, simply means that your familiarity with the community safety results and your own personal success, to date, coupled with our natural desire as social beings to socialize...at almost any cost...may cause you to ignore Governor Cuomo's and others' warnings. We cannot let our familiarity breed contempt for the Covid-19 warnings. Yes, we all have different levels of risk tolerance, and yes, we are paying a high price to follow the warnings, and yes, my own research predicts that if the cost to comply with warnings is high, warning compliance tends to be low, but we must not reduce our vigilance. REALITY CHECK: even when we have a vaccine or many great therapeutics, it will take many months, perhaps even more than a year, to distribute a vaccine to sufficient numbers of us so that we can resume even some of our prior pre-Covid-19 lives. Until then, we must learn to live with the virus and follow the advice of our scientists and health officials...and only government leaders who model after Andrew Cuomo's sage advice, "This thing isn't over yet!"

WARNING: SWIMMING DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS REQUIRES SAFETY PROTOCOLS

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 17:03:37 GMT

Summer is here and that means it's time to go swimming! But, like everything else we do today, we must filter our decisions about swimming through the lens of COVID-19. Is it safe to swim? Can the virus be transmitted through water? Can I go to the beach or to a pool or a water park? Will my kids be safe? I could actually fill this entire newsletter with your very reasonable questions and safety concerns surrounding swimming, but in the interest of brevity, I have selected just a few of the more pressing concerns we all probably have. The simple answer is that it's safe to swim provided we follow the usual safety protocols with which, by now, we are all quite familiar.

For obvious reasons, we should avoid crowds at the beach or at the pool.

There is no evidence that the COVID-19 virus can spread through water found in hot tubs, pools, spas or water play areas, mostly because of the chlorine and bromine used to disinfect the water, which also kills the virus. While some diseases like cholera and typhoid can be transmitted through water, they are bacterial infections. COVID-19 is a viral infection transmitted primarily through droplets when people, for the most part, cough, sneeze, shout or sing. It would be highly unusual for a respiratory disease, such as COVID-19, to be transmitted through water.

However, if you are swimming and a person near you coughs, sneezes, shouts, etc., you could inhale their droplets and spread the virus. Since the virus spreads from person to person contact, you should definitely practice social distancing while swimming in a pool, lake or even in the ocean. Even if you restrict swimmers to no more than one person in a lap pool at a time, if there are multiple lap areas roped off, swimmers must be careful not to interact while swimming with other swimmers. The greater risk at a pool will occur when the swimmer is entering or leaving the pool and coming into contact with other people. That is why best practices may include limiting the number of people in a pool area, especially a lap pool area, to no more than one person/roped off swimming area at a time and no visitors without masks and social distancing present in the pool area at all. The real problem occurs in general swimming/recreational pool areas where physical distancing is almost impossible to maintain. Those kinds of pool activities may have to be totally eliminated, at least for now. As far as hot tubs, go, I have been in many during my life, and I don't recall even one such tub where I could maintain social distancing. Draw your own conclusion!

Clearly, the most dangerous time for you at the pool or the beach is not while you are swimming, if you follow the above safety instructions. Your greatest risk will occur while entering, leaving or socializing on the pool deck, play area, around the spa or on the beach. The virus can definitely spread from person to person on the pool deck or as children and adults play and relax at beaches or lakes, mostly due to the close contact we may have if the beaches or pool decks are not adequately enforced for proper social distancing and/or mask-wearing. Yes, I know it's hot at the beach and a mask may be uncomfortable, but I definitely recommend wearing a mask when close contact with people is unavoidable.

Local public health authorities will hopefully work with pool and beach authorities and make good decisions about whether or not to open pools, lakes and beaches and provide us all with proper safety guidelines that will allow us all to enjoy a fun AND safe summer filled with lots of swimming and relaxing days at the beach or pool.

TO WARN OR NOT TO WARN, THAT IS THE SAFETY QUESTION

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 17:19:19 GMT

The coronavirus story, to date, has been a warnings story the likes of which I have never seen before in my 43-year career as a warnings expert. On a good day, most warnings professionals would do cartwheels if we got 20-30% compliance with safety warnings. In fact, the literature in my field has overwhelmingly concluded that most warnings fail to get either the attention of or compliance by their intended audiences. Certainly, we have discovered key demographic differences over the years as to which groups are more likely to follow warnings (e.g., older people, women, people who are more risk aversive, people with low familiarity with a product or situation, people who perceive warning compliance to be of low cost in terms of their time, dollars or ego and/or perceive a product or situation to be hazardous) and those less likely to follow warnings (e.g., teens and young 20-year olds, males, people with a high school degree or less, risk-takers, people familiar with products or situations, perceive a high cost to comply or fail to perceive a product or situation as hazardous). But, in general, as a society, we tend to pick and choose our own poison, and more often than not, while most of us don't drink bleach or lysol, we do tend to err on the side of either not perceiving or ignoring warnings, or both.

But, as the vernacular seems to go, this time feels different....or at least, it did for a while. Before Memorial Day and despite the politicizing of the coronavirus by The White House, the American public, in overwhelming numbers, voted with their voices, masks and feet to follow health and safety guidelines provided by national folk hero, Anthony Fauci and select truth-telling Governors, led by Andrew Cuomo and Mike DeWine. If the polls were accurate, between 75-90% of the public believe that face masks and coverings, along with social distance practices would help protect them from getting infected by the coronavirus. And most either always or most of the time follow their beliefs. And the best available research, readily available from the CDC, confirms the public's opinion and beliefs. A recent issue of the prestigious medical journal, Lancet, published a study by Dr. Derek Chu and his colleagues which concluded that maintaining social distance of 6 feet or more reduced the chance of virus transmission to less than 2%. They further concluded that wearing a face covering or even a paper surgical mask can be 75-80% effective in preventing transmission. Of course, the best safety triad involves keeping socially distant, wearing a mask or face covering and frequently washing or disinfecting your hands. Until Memorial Day, most Americans got it!

And then, the perfect storm hit. The sun came out, many politicians eagerly pushed the economy to the front of the line while drowning out the scientists, and the protests began. False prophets, interested only in their own profits, offered promises of instant and even dangerous cures (hydroxychloroquine with a shot of lysol), warp speed vaccines, viruses that would magically fade away into the summer heat, coupled with clarion calls to protest any state whose governor had the nerve to put safety over short-term economic gain. In some states, mostly in the South and Southwest, scientists and doctors, the arbiters of truth and protectors of our very lives, were demonized and even threatened, while weak politicians led by selfish, uninformed voices from Washington encouraged people to ignore the very safety warnings that had protected our populace through Memorial Day. And who is ignoring the warnings, especially in those regions I referred to above? The very same people that my research and others have predicted and wrote about in our studies for the last 40 years: younger people, males, people with a high school degree or less, people who incorrectly think they are familiar with the virus and are convinced that the virus isn't as hazardous as first believed (dare I say, "fake news?") and who think the cost to comply (keep wearing masks and keeping social distance) is just too high a price to pay for their ego and masculinity to endure, even at the risk to their own health and that of their loved ones.

If the demographics of those most likely ignoring safety warnings about the coronavirus sound familiar to you, I doubt it's from reading the warnings scientific literature. It's because they are almost the same demographics that pollsters have consistently described as our current President's "political base". As a warnings expert who has worked for over 43 years to prevent injuries and protect lives, I find it unconscionable, even obscene, that our President is not only ignoring the warnings from our health and scientific authorities (most obviously by refusing to role model for all of us, the need to wear a mask, especially when social distancing is challenging), but he is encouraging, even applauding a large segment of our population to engage in behaviors that are highly risky and could lead to serious health consequences or even death. Just as the pied piper led throngs of eager children expecting a cheery and fun outcome, only to be horrified by the kidnapper-in-disguise, so does it seem that our President, through his magical and ignorant thinking and false prophecies, is leading his poorly informed and eager "baseniks" over a cliff that might seriously injure or even kill many of them.

Our nation is at a turning point with regards to the coronavirus. We have to decide whether to follow the warnings or not. As Governors Cuomo and DeWine have shown us, it is not a false choice between being safe and being gainfully employed. We can be both and, in many states, my own included (New York), we are following the scientific data and heeding the warnings, while we cautiously but steadily regain our economy. Our loved ones, especially our parents and grandparents, will thank us for listening to and following the warnings.

THE WARNINGS DOCTOR PODCAST

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 19:08:03 GMT

Apologies for the delay of our May Newsletter. It's been a busy month!

We have launched THE WARNINGS DOCTOR Podcast with Dr. Gerry Goldhaber. Tune in to learn about what every consumer desperately needs to know in order to avoid serious injury or even death. You'll hear about the ways in which consumers, government regulators, and corporations must interact to keep you and your loved ones safe. With Dr. Gerry Goldhaber you can always find a new prescription to keep us all safe in an ever-evolving and sometimes more dangerous world. And remember, the more informed you are, the safer you will be.

Launching our new podcast is an amazing interview with:
Former FDA Reviewer Joshua Sharlin, PHD on Science, Safety & COVID-19

Dr. Joshua Sharlin describes the critical regulatory and compliance-related issues in cases involving FDA-regulated companies. He also addresses drug safety, clinical trials, and the FDA's role in the race for a coronavirus vaccine. Dr. Sharlin shares unique insights with Dr. Gerald Goldhaber about the job that manufacturers and even journalists play as the hunt for a COVID-19 cure heats up globally. And remember, the more informed you are, the safer you will be.

Following up next is:

"Do Good's" Anne Bahr Thompson Describes How to Balance Corporate Purpose & Prosperity

"We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them," Epictetus remarked. Brand Citizenship® – a win-win-win solution mutually beneficial to people, society, and the bottom line - is a core principle addressed in this business-savvy podcast. Anne Bahr Thompson works with business leaders, social entrepreneurs, and impact investors aligning purpose and profit – to strengthen loyalty, engage employees, amplify social impact, and deliver on the SDGs. Brands which don't live up to their purpose or values will be called out. In the era of coronavirus, businesses can help build national coalitions and collaborations to fight COVID-19. For more than 25 years Anne has counseled families and leaders across sectors – including companies, nonprofits, and foundations – to connect more deeply with purpose and values, identify a social mission, crystallize operating principles, and collaborate with like-minded partners. Businesses and leaders need to step in when government breaks down in order to reform society, the economy, and the planet in deeply meaningful ways.

Please stay tuned to wherever you get your podcasts for many new upcoming episodes bringing new and exciting and informative subjects on a regular basis!

IT'S COME TO THIS...

Wed, 06 May 2020 18:40:51 GMT

April 2020 was another difficult month for all of us. It also featured a warning no one thought they would ever need to issue:

Danger: Do Not Drink The Bleach/Lysol.

Stay safe!

PLAY-at-home-BILL

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 16:31:55 GMT

It's been a difficult March 2020. We could all use a little humor at this time in our lives.

Be Well and Stay Safe...6 Feet Apart.

CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 13:50:16 GMT

I was honored to have been featured recently in the "Corporate Crime Reporter", a weekly newsletter in Washington, D.C. Below is the the soundcloud preview and written introduction to my recent interview with Russell Mokhiber, editor of the publication.

You may stream the preview:

The written introduction is included below.

Murder Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year... and What You Can Do About It will be available March 18, 2020 everywhere books are sold.

GERALD GOLDHABER ON HOW UNREGULATED INSTURY KILLS OR INJURES THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN EVERY YEAR

Gerald Goldhaber calls himself the warnings doctor.

Not the warnings nanny — the warnings doctor.

"I'm not the warnings nanny," Goldhaber told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. "I'm the warnings doctor. I'm not here to say — do this and don't do that. I'm here to say — do whatever you want, it's America. But do it with informed choice. Be an informed consumer. And unfortunately, we are not there yet. You have a corrupt government agency system under a President who is deregulating everything in sight. And as a result, companies are given a free ticket to keep it going. I'm telling industry — if you tell the truth, the customers will not flock away. They will stay with you. They may even respect you. And you will save over $1 trillion a year. That's the cost of litigating product liability cases. And almost all of them have a failure to warn claim. Those claims would be hard to litigate if you told the truth."

Goldhaber is the author of a new book titles — Murder Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year –And What You Can Do About It.

"We're exposed on a daily basis to life-threatening hazards of which we're often unaware," Goldhaber writes. "From defective airbags that can explode and kill us to poisonous additives in food, we're often the unknowing victims of corporate malfeasance and shamefully incompetent government oversight."

In the book, Goldhaber examines the outcomes when corporate profits trump public safety. He uncovers the history of government regulatory agencies leaders who come and go from the same industries they're asked to regulate.

"And while our modern conveniences make life easier and more enjoyable than previous generations, we also face new dangers of the digital age. The hacking of autonomous cars, misuse of private information collected by smart devices, and renegade programming glitches in smart homes and offices are just a few scenarios confronting us in the near future. The companies who produce these innovations need to ensure they're fail-safe, or face hefty lawsuits if and when things go wrong."

"Principal disclosure of hidden hazards is an industry — and regulatory — neccessity. We can only make informed choices and avoid needless injury and death when we know all the facts."

As an expert witness in product liability cases, Goldhaber sees how the system forces settlements instead of allowing plaintiffs to take cases to trial.

"I have been involved in many cases — and I'm involved in some cases now — where I have argued — this is crazy to settle this case," Goldhaber said.

"The facts are strong. Both sides want to settle as fast as they can. I often joke with other expert witnesses in the field — we are not expert witnesses. We are settlement experts. One side is trying to get the price up, the other side is trying to get the price down. We are being used as mediation settlement experts. It is rare that we get to trial."

Can you give us specific examples where this is happening?

"Settlements are done secretly. Nobody tells me how much money was involved in settling cases because of the non disclosure agreements. But when I hear that there is a settlement, I get nervous. I'm an expert whose opinions are backed by science. I go to court and give those opinions."

"Both sides can't trust the jury. It's the runaway jury idea. We don't know what the jury will do so we might as well play it safe. The statistics don't lie — 97.5 percent of all products cases settle. It's two in a hundred that actually go trial."

Do you have any remorse for participating in such a system?

"The reason I wrote the book is to help make things safer for people so they don't get injured or killed. When I leave a defense case, I tell my clients — you dodged a bullet here. Let's make it better. The standard is adequacy of warning, not excellence. I've told every single client — can we make it better? So, no I don't regret it. I'm trying to make it better."

"In writing this book, I'm not trying to tell every company to close shop. I'm telling them — make it better."

You have described a reactive system. What's a better system other than a reactive system?

"A proactive system. Anticipating ahead of time. Let's change it from reacting to lawsuits to preventing lawsuits. People sue because they get hurt or their families get killed. We are doing a much better job in making safer products than we did fifty years ago. But let's tell people what the risks are proactively."

"Coincidentally, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has formed an initiative to encourage companies to anticipate hazards before they manufacture products. I met the guy in charge of this in a diner outside of Ralph Nadre's Tort Museum in Winsted, Connecticut. We stopped in thei greasy spoon to have breakfast, and there was nobody in there except this other guy from the IEEE, who was also visiting the Tort Museum."

Where has a proactive model worked?

"Daikin. The world's first or second largest commercial air conditioning manufacturers from Japan. They wanted to come into the United States. Their lawyer was an American lawyer who heard about me. They asked me to come in. The Japanese executive came here and they didn't understand the culture of lawsuits and litigation. The Japanese didn't think they could ever get sued. I simply said the way Tom Hanks said it in the movie Philadelphia — how can I get hurt? Tell me as a sixth grader, how can I get hurt or killed by this product? And who is at risk?"

"We identified who is at risk — the person who installs or maintains these air conditioners. That person can get electrocuted or scalded or they can lose a finger. We figured out where and how to warn. We tested the warnings. We put the warnings on. And they have not been sued at all. I can't guarantee they won't get sued. But as of this interview, they have not been sued."

ARE WE PAYING FOR THE ERA OF PROGRESS WITH OUR LIVES AND HEALTH?

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 20:11:44 GMT

Below is the forward by Michael R. Lemov, former counsel to the House Commerce Committee for motor vehicle and product safety, written for my new book, coming out next month.

Murder Inc.: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year... and What You Can Do About It will be available March 18, 2020 everywhere books are sold.

The 20th century—and, so far, the 21st—have been, by most measures, a triumph of new and improved products, industrial progress, and marketplace innovation. We have some better and faster motor vehicles, mostly purer foods and drugs, and millions of new, efficient homes to live in. But are they really better, newer, and faster? What is the downside—to our health, safety, and lives—of this forward march of our civilization? How can we have the benefits and not pay for them with our lives and health?

This is the issue squarely put by Dr. Gerald Goldhaber in this book. The author is highly qualified to make that judgment. He is a teacher, lecturer, and expert advisor to government and industry in the analysis and disclosure to the consumer of the use and safety of home, workplace, and consumer products.

His answer to the question of our real progress is a qualified yes, but with major warnings about hidden dangers and a new threat to the worker, consumer, and the environment due to the aggressive deregulation efforts of the current administration.

Why do some companies produce products that are poorly designed and often flat-out dangerous? Why does the government have to be a revolving door for the industries it is supposed to be watching on our behalf? Why are the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other safety agencies generally underfunded and unable to adequately protect workers and consumers? Is it partially our own fault as consumers and voters?

The author suggests answers to these questions in this book. We are partly to blame. But he offers a methodology for the three groups (manufacturers, government, and consumers) involved in product safety production, use, and warnings to reduce the dangers in the future.

Murder, Inc. educates purchasers, workers, and users to take steps to protect themselves and, hopefully, induce companies to use proactive production methods and recognize that the public wants safer products and will pay for them.

Dr. Goldhaber closes with an appeal to all parties to work together in a “triad” of cooperation to reduce death and injury on the roads, in the home, in the workplace, and in the environment. He notes that principled disclosure by manufacturers would be a major step. It is an approach that the author suggests is essential since it appears the government is exposing all of us to greater risk and injury.

This review of the safety of the products we use daily is a book for our times. We need to read and understand it. While we benefit from this era of progress, we are all at great risk, especially when our government is determined to let us down.

Michael R. Lemov, former counsel to the House Commerce Committee for motor vehicle and product safety, is the author of Car Safety Wars: One Hundred Years of Technology, Politics, and Death (Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2015) and People’s Warrior: John Moss and the Fight for Freedom of Information and Consumer Rights (Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2011). Mr. Lemov is currently a Member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Auto Safety and was the primary author of the Consumer Product Safety Act.

THIS THANKSGIVING, BE GRATEFUL YOU AREN'T THESE GUYS!

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 20:35:32 GMT

Special Thanks to Doug Kenney and https://www.boredpanda.com

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving filled with peace, love and happiness!

MURDER, INC AVAILABLE SOON

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 19:52:19 GMT

"I want to say thank you for writing this important book. We have begun to ask ourselves, “What can I do?” Well, your book has a great deal of information that we didn’t know — and then you lay out what it IS that we can do."

– INTRODUCTION BY ERIN BROCKOVICH

"Murder, Inc. educates purchasers, workers, and users to take steps to protect themselves and, hopefully, induce companies to use proactive production methods and recognize that the public wants safer products and will pay for them.

This review of the safety of the products we use daily is a book for our times. We need to read and understand it. While we benefit from this era of progress, we are
all at great risk, especially when our government is determined to let us down."

— MICHAEL R. LEMOV
AUTHOR OF THE CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY ACT

"Making former officials in the supplement industry become the chief regulators of that industry at the FDA is like having the fox guarding the henhouse."

— MICHAEL JACOBSON
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

ABOUT MURDER, INC

In this hard-hitting expose, Dr. Gerald M. Goldhaber examines the outcomes when corporate profits trump public safety. He uncovers the dismal history of government regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us, but instead appoint leaders who come and go from the same industries they’re tasked to regulate. And while our modern conveniences make life easier and more enjoyable than previous generations, we also face new dangers of the digital age. The hacking of autonomous cars, misuse of private information collected by smart devices, and renegade programming glitches in smart homes and offices are just a few scenarios confronting us in the near future. The companies who produce these innovations need to ensure they’re fail-safe, or face hefty lawsuits if and when things go wrong.

Principled disclosure of hidden hazards is an industry – and regulatory – necessity. We can only make informed choices and avoid needless injury and death when we know all the facts. Dr. Goldhaber recommends twelve steps to take control of our safety, and outlines a model of corporate responsibility and government regulation that balances public safety measures and company profits to the benefit of all.

CHILDREN UNDER 6 SHOULD AVOID ALL SUGARY DRINKS!

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 13:34:49 GMT

According to the New York Times (September 19, 2019, p.A10), scientists from the advocacy group Healthy Eating Research, with input from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry have announced new guidelines for what children under the age of 6 should be drinking. The bottom line is that these young children should only drink milk or water and totally avoid any type of sugary drink, including fruit juices, chocolate milk and popular plant-based beverages such as almond, rice or oat milk, which can be high in sugar and low in protein. These recommendations recognize that children develop beverage preferences at an early age. If those preferences are based upon a diet filled with sugary drinks, these children may be entering a path toward becoming overweight or obese, a fate that now plagues almost 1/3 of children and adolescents in the United States. Scientists, health care professionals and nutritionists have been telling us for years that obesity significantly increases our risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and even some cancers. If parents avoid giving their children sugary drinks during their first 5 years, they will have increased the likelihood that their children will develop a preference for non-sugary drinks as they age, resulting in a healthy diet that can last a lifetime.

The new recommendations are broken down by age group:

BIRTH TO SIX MONTHS: Infants should drink only breast milk or infant formula. They should avoid juice, milk and low-calorie sweetened beverages.

6 TO 12 MONTHS: Babies should still mostly drink breast milk or infant formula. Once they start eating solid food, they can start sipping water. They should still avoid juice, milk, flavored milk, transition formulas, low-calorie sweetened beverages, plant-based beverages, sugar-sweetened beverages, caffeinated beverages.

12 TO 24 MONTHS: Children should drink one to four cups of water daily and they can start drinking plain pasteurized whole milk. They can drink no more than 4 ounces of 100 percent fruit juice per day (which can be watered down). Avoid all other beverages, especially sugar-sweetened beverages, flavored milks, etc.

2 TO 3 YEARS OLD: Toddlers should drink one to four cups of water daily and transition to fat-free or low-fat (1 percent fat) milk. They should drink no more than 4 ounces of 100 percent juice and avoid any other drinks.

4 TO 5 YEARS OLD: These toddlers should drink 1.5 to five cups of water a day, skim or low-fat milk, and no more than four to six ounces of 100 percent fruit juice. They should not be given any other drinks.

These guidelines may seem strict, but when you realize that 19% of children in the United States are obese and about 1/2 of all 2 to 5-year-olds drink sugary beverages EVERY DAY, these guidelines will offer our children a healthier future, a future that all parents should want for their children.

UPCOMING WEBINAR AND NEW BOOK

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 14:26:22 GMT

I am pleased to present a webinar “What Should an Expert Look for in a Client?” with EXPERTS.COM on Sep 18, 2019 at 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada).

WEBINAR DESCRIPTION - Interested in finding the right attorney? Need to improve your communication regarding objectives, timetable and fees? Have you had an experience with an unfortunate surprise? Has an attorney deliberately kept bad information from you? If any of these questions resonate, we encourage you to join us for a FREE WEBINAR to answer these questions and more!

I have signed a contract with Publish Your Purpose Press to Publish my 11th book Murder, Inc: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It . My book is in its final editing stages at this time and we expect publication in 2020.

Here’s a little taste of my book, drawn from the book’s jacket, including Erin Brockovich’s introduction. We will keep you posted as we get closer to publication.

In this hard-hitting expose′, Dr. Gerald M. Goldhaber examines the outcomes when corporate profits trump public safety. He uncovers the dismal history of government regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us, but instead appoint leaders who come and go from the same industries they’re tasked to regulate. And while our modern conveniences make life easier and more enjoyable than previous generations, we also face new dangers of the digital age. The hacking of autonomous cars, misuse of private information collected by smart devices, and renegade programming glitches in smart homes and offices are just a few scenarios confronting us in the near future. The companies who produce these innovations need to ensure they’re fail-safe, or face hefty lawsuits if and when things go wrong.

Principled disclosure of hidden hazards is an industry – and regulatory – necessity. We can only make informed choices and avoid needless injury and death when we know all the facts. Dr. Goldhaber recommends twelve steps to take control of our safety, and outlines a model of corporate responsibility and government regulation that balances public safety measures and company profits to the benefit of all.

Murder Inc.

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 13:59:35 GMT

How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It

I am thrilled to announce that I have signed a contract with Publish Your Purpose Press to Publish my 11th book Murder, Inc: How Unregulated Industry Kills or Injures Thousands of Americans Every Year...And What You Can Do About It. My book is in its final editing stages at this time and we expect publication in 2020.

For those who can’t wait, here’s a little taste of my book, drawn from the book’s jacket, including Erin Brockovich’s introduction. We will keep you posted as we get closer to publication.

Do you assume the products you buy, the food you eat, the medicines you take, and the cars you drive are safe? Think again. We’re exposed on a daily basis to life-threatening hazards of which we’re often unaware. From defective airbags that can explode and kill us to poisonous additives in food, we’re often the unknowing victims of corporate malfeasance and shamefully incompetent government oversight.

In this hard-hitting expose′, Dr. Gerald M. Goldhaber examines the outcomes when corporate profits trump public safety. He uncovers the dismal history of government regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us, but instead appoint leaders who come and go from the same industries they’re tasked to regulate. And while our modern conveniences make life easier and more enjoyable than previous generations, we also face new dangers of the digital age. The hacking of autonomous cars, misuse of private information collected by smart devices, and renegade programming glitches in smart homes and offices are just a few scenarios confronting us in the near future. The companies who produce these innovations need to ensure they’re fail-safe, or face hefty lawsuits if and when things go wrong.

Principled disclosure of hidden hazards is an industry – and regulatory – necessity. We can only make informed choices and avoid needless injury and death when we know all the facts. Dr. Goldhaber recommends twelve steps to take control of our safety, and outlines a model of corporate responsibility and government regulation that balances public safety measures and company profits to the benefit of all.

A Note from Erin Brockovich

We have become comfortable and complacent, and I oftentimes think we believe that Superman, the EPA, or some agency that is in place will come and automatically fix the issues we are having. But we’re just now waking up and realizing that isn’t true. We have started to ask ourselves, “What can we do?” And that’s the thing—we can do something about it.
This book is a good first step, filled with explanations and stories, a great deal of information that we didn’t know, and a how-to road map for what it is we CAN do.

It has subtle humor and is told in a way that we can understand, giving us the tools we need to push forward and become aware that WE have to ask the questions and WE have to know how and where to go look, and not take for granted that someone has our backs.

In the new industry we live in—with all the technology we have—we are able to find out things faster than ever, to sort through information, to become more self-aware, and to protect ourselves better than ever. That is a good thing, but most won’t know how to use that technology for research. This book is a wonderful tool that can help people navigate their way through a plethora of information. We must learn that with technology and using our own motivation, we might just change companies and their way of doing business. By being the watchdog, being informed, and fighting back, we the consumers get more and more savvy to what is really going on.

I want to thank Gerry for writing this important book. Great job!

Erin

SOMETIMES NO WARNING CAN SAVE US FROM OURSELVES!

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 13:41:24 GMT

Special Thanks to Doug Kenney and https://www.boredpanda.com

WHEN OPEN AND OBVIOUS ISN'T OPEN AND OBVIOUS

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 14:22:32 GMT

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PROVIDING PRODUCT WARNINGS?

It is almost axiomatic in the field of warnings, supported by Federal Codes and Regulations as well as most states’ litigation codes, that product warnings are not required for hazards that are so open and obvious that the typical consumer or employee would recognize the hazard without an oral or written (or both) warning to put the person at risk on notice, so, hopefully, they can make an informed choice, the ultimate goal of most warnings. The classic example taught in most law schools is that we don’t have to warn consumers and product users that knives are sharp because that fact should be readily apparent to the typical knife purchaser and/or user. Most newborn’s parents would support the claim that playing with matches can lead to starting a fire which may have dire consequences for all involved. Although most new parents don’t expect their infants to be aware of this (or any) hazard, my wife, Marylynn and I spent many hours of our two children’s early childhood engaging them in demonstrations and hard lessons of the dangers of fires, a lesson they have carried with them for decades, and, as a result, would be hard pressed to deny the open and obvious nature of a fire hazard and the conditions under which it presents itself.

Unlike my children’s learning curve that led, in their case, to a wise conclusion about the hazards of fire, with many products, the hazards, despite claims of defense attorney advocates that the product’s hazard in question (whether it’s a knife, hot coffee, diving into shallow water, misusing a major piece of equipment on a construction site, consuming excessive amounts of added sugar in our diets or, on the lighter side, folding an infant’s carriage without removing the infant (which actually won an award one year for the silliest warning in the U.S.), upon closer inspection and research, may NOT be so open and obvious, and thus may actually need warnings to alert consumers to the real hazard(s). This newsletter will also highlight the balance warnings experts typically seek when trying NOT to dilute the safety landscape with truly open and obvious and, thus, unnecessary warnings, while at the same time, attempting to develop warnings for hazards that, while not deeply hidden from consumers, still haven’t shed enough light on the hazard to provide consumers with the informed choice they should always be entitled to prior to buying and/or using a product. And this challenge is multiplied when the product is used at the workplace where supervisors and/or co-workers, knowledgeable about a product’s hazard (from training, certification, operator manuals, industry codes/standards or government regulations), exercise authority over new or temporary employees (who aren’t typically exposed to the above information) but, nevertheless, are asked or ordered to do work assignments that may place them at risk for injury or death, but haven’t been told anything about the potential hazard(s), and thus are denied the opportunity to make an informed choice. This is particularly harmful, since it would deny this employee the right to refuse to do any job that he or she believes may put them in harm’s way. Let’s use some examples to illustrate my main point that too often the claim of “open and obvious hazard” may be much more nuanced than what might initially have been assumed.

Let’s take the case, taught regularly in many law schools, of the infamous claim in 1992 by McDonald’s that it was open and obvious that their coffee was hot when 79 year old Stella Liebeck, after buying a cup of coffee at a McDonald’s drive-through window in Albuquerque, NM, spilled her coffee on her lap, while stopped in the parking lot to add sugar and cream, and suffered very serious third-degree burns. After several weeks of lambasting poor Stella as the poster child for frivolous lawsuits, including almost nightly taunts from late night comedy hosts, Jay Leno and David Letterman, the truth started to leak out, mostly thanks to trial documents. It turns out that McDonald’s own market research had found that coffee drinkers wanted their coffee just as hot when they got to work as when they picked it up at their local McDonald’s drive-through window. In order to satisfy their consumers, they decided to raise the temperature of their coffee 30-40 degrees higher than their competitors, reaching temperatures as unbelievably high as 190 degrees (F), hot enough to cause dangerous third degree burns to just about anybody who spilled their coffee on themselves, even through clothes, IN JUST 3 SECONDS! Liebeck endured third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, including her inner thighs and genitals—the skin was burned away to the layers of muscle and fatty tissue. She had to be hospitalized for eight days, and she required skin grafts and other treatment. Her recovery lasted two years. Adding insult to injury, the trial revealed that over 700 other people had previously suffered similar consequences to Stella from spilling McDonald’s boiling hot coffee on themselves, BUT McDonalds had made a strategic decision to withhold that information from the public and the appropriate regulatory agency, the CPSC, by quickly settling all prior lawsuits and demanding plaintiffs sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), which prevented anyone from talking about the settlements, their injuries and thus, helping to perpetuate the obvious lie that McDonald’s hot coffee was a known, obvious hazard requiring nothing more than a mild “Coffee Hot” statement on their foam coffee cups. McDonald’s, in short, chose Profits Over Safety and, as unbelievable as it sounds, to this day, McDonald’s has NOT lowered the temperature of their coffee, contending that ONLY 700 customers had burned themselves compared with billions of cups of coffee they sold annually (showing they relied only on statistical risk of injury data and ignoring the other side of a hazard analysis, namely the severity of the hazard’s potential consequences (very dangerous third degree burns). Did McDonald’s (and other fast food coffee retailers) come clean with consumers and at least warn them that their coffee was heated to a very dangerous 190 degrees? Nope. They settled for a very light warning that totally ignored the real hazard of the dangerously high temperature and, instead opted for the bland statement: “Caution: Contents Hot.”

In my opinion, this poor excuse for a warning by McDonald’s keeps the consumer totally in the dark about the real hazard from their McDonald’s coffee. And, that, folks, by definition, is a HIDDEN, NOT AN OPEN AND OBVIOUS HAZARD. The real question for McDonald’s to answer to their public is: HOW HOT IS HOT?” So far, they have not answered this question. Another example may help reinforce my point that some open and obvious claims by manufacturers may need to be re-examined.

This week, I bought a new Cuisinart Blender/Food Processor with a warning on the cardboard protective wrap surrounding the blade (and again in their instructional manual) that the blade was dangerously sharp and must be avoided by human contact. This raises the question, like McDonald’s, HOW SHARP IS SHARP? While this seems to go against the very example law schools now use to illustrate open and obvious hazards, it actually is a legitimate question. I was recently hired in a case where a woman lost a digit while using her new Mango Slicer to cut her mango. Examination by expert engineers and designers of such products has revealed that the manufacturer’s blade was not just “knife sharp” but by several degrees, very dangerously sharp to the point it might have been confused with a guillotine. Finally, in the construction example I referenced earlier, a hazard that may be open and obvious to trained, certified, well informed equipment operators and supervisors may not be open and obvious, and, in fact, totally hidden, from union-supplied day laborers who undergo no such training. Equipment manufacturers like to blame (as they should, especially with the HazCom and other communications requirements for employers to inform their employees about workplace hazards) the construction company that employs these day laborers for inadequate safety protocols as well as relying on the old salt, the day laborer should have recognized the open and obvious nature of the equipment misuse on his or her own, even if the immediate supervisor gave an order that placed the employee in harm’s way....except that he wasn’t aware of his dire situation at the time. In effect, the dangerous assignment which exposed him to risk of serious injury or death was “hidden” from him. I agree that the first responsibility for warning the employee must come from the employer (the construction company). However, a manufacturer who places warnings about claimed “open and obvious hazards” in their operator and general safety manuals (neither of which, most day laborers ever see or read), should also consider, almost as a warning of last resort, placing a prominent, conspicuous warning on its equipment (as they typically do for other warnings that appear in their manuals) because they know or should know that not all construction companies fulfill their OSHA-mandated responsibilities to provide a safe work place and to warn about potential hazards. Even though on-product warnings do not have an exemplary record of influencing consumer or employee behavior, this does not exempt a manufacturer from at least making the effort, acting as a “warner of last resort” to those workers uninformed about potential hazards and whose bad luck placed them at a construction company with poor safety protocols. Such warnings not only may protect the uninformed temporary worker, but they also may serve as a reminder to even those with much training, certifications and years of experience confronting equipment hazards.

I hope the above examples will teach us all that what we think or used to think of as an open and obvious hazard may have such nuance to that concept which should influence safety personnel to err on the side of caution and provide warnings for such cases. Each situation calls for study and research and serious discussion that balances the need to avoid warning dilution, while, at the same time, not hastily dismissing such situations as not requiring warnings because of the claimed open and obvious nature of the hazard.

OPIOID DRUGS' LITIGATION HAS A STRONG FAILURE TO WARN CLAIM

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 18:01:02 GMT

It is no secret that in the U.S. over the last 30 years, Americans on a very wide scale have become addicted to Opioids, including such popular prescription drugs as OxyContin, Hydrocodone and Morphine, originally prescribed as pain killers. Millions of Americans suffer from pain and often resort to prescribed opioids to treat their conditions. However, they have also been subject to the dangers of prescription misuse, opioid use disorder and overdose.

Since the 1990s, when the amount of opioids prescribed to patients began to grow, the number of overdoses and deaths from prescription opioids has also increased. Even as the amount of opioids prescribed and sold for pain has increased, the amount of pain that Americans report has not similarly changed. The number of opioid prescriptions written in the United States in the past decade is staggering, averaging approximately 4 billion prescriptions per year. From 1999 to 2017, almost 218,000 people died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids. Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids were five times higher in 2017 than in 1999. How did we go from a nation that respected opioids only to be used as a small part of a person's pain management program to a nation where millions of its citizens are addicted to opioids long after their utility to curb pain has vanished.

Before addressing this issue, consider just one small example of how prescriptions ordered, pills sent from manufacturers and dispensed all too willingly by doctors and/or pharmacists affected just one small town in America. During 10 months in 2007, one pharmaceutical distributor, McKesson, shipped three million prescription opioids to a single pharmacy in a small West Virginia town with only 400 residents. This couldn't have happened without an eager drug company counting its profits, never mind that they are, in effect, acting as nothing more than a drug dealing cartel, run by executives no different than El Chapo or Pablo Escobar. But they aren't alone. Corrupt doctors, some of whom take a cut of the prescription drugs' profits by selling them on the streets through their own network of local drug dealers and pharmacists willing to overlook the massive amounts of obviously excessive opioid pills being peddled throughout their community are also complicit. And finally, this flood of opioids lands in the hands of no longer pain-infused former patients who have now morphed into full blown addicts needing not only their normal "fix" but ready to easily move on to the next level needed to fill their addictions, supplied by heroin or fentanyl or even more deadly chemicals. Now, multiply this West Virginia town's pill deluge and its resulting drugged-up hopelessly addicted victims by rural towns, prosperous suburbs and large cities across America and you may see the scope and enormity of our nation's crisis...and it is a crisis! In just one year (2015), a total of 793 million doses of opioid medications were prescribed, meaning that every man, woman and child in our country could have received as many as 68 pills each, depending on the prescription.

While politicians try to understand and grapple with this crisis, the legal community is taking strong action that, while it won't help the addicted...that's the role of our health, wellness and counseling communities...can at least seek punishment and long overdue compensation from the drug pushers at the top of the opioid food chain, the manufacturers and distributors who, without adequately warning physicians, pharmacists and, of course, patients about the dangerously addictive nature of their products, with cold, mathematical logic, flooded America with pills that, in many cases, weren't needed, for the sole purpose of increasing their profits. Their motto was proudly proclaimed as PROFITS OVER SAFETY: FULL STEAM AHEAD! It has been estimated that the opioid drug business is worth over $10 billion/year to big pharma. Enter the lawyers and their lawsuits.

It seems the drug manufacturers borrowed a page from the tobacco industry and set up and financed an "independent scientists group" whose sole mission was to convince the health care community and their patients that opioids were a safe method to curb unwanted pain in patients...without warning about the dangerously addictive nature of the drugs, not to mention that other, less addictive drugs, could easily have been an alternative in a patient's pain management program. Lawyers representing towns, cities, counties and States (e.g., New York, Massachusetts) are considering a legal theory of declaring the drug companies and their opioid products a "public nuisance" because they interfere with the public's health and safety, therefore adversely affecting the entire community/county/State, etc. In Johnson County, Texas, e.g., the complaint their attorneys filed stated the conduct of the drug companies was "abnormal, dangerous and out of place in its surroundings and constitutes a public nuisance." Their complaint (and those of other public entities) contends that the drug companies conspired to unlawfully market in massive amounts, opioids whose major purpose with this kind of over-the-top marketing could only be to reach people who had no medical need for these pills, but with easy access to them, would more than likely fall into the morass of addiction. Lawyers contend that the defendant drug companies knew this, were aware of the risk to addicting entire communities, and still, WITHOUT ANY WARNINGS about the known risk of addiction, continued to push their drugs upon an unwitting, certainly at first, audience of future addicts. In another page borrowed from state and localities' successful litigation against the tobacco industry, the cities, counties and States in the opioid litigation are seeking very extensive damages to cover the costs of treating their addicted populations and for resources to prevent future generations from becoming the next generation of addicts. And, many municipalities, in addition to seeking civil damages, are also filing criminal charges against the senior management both of the manufacturers and their distributors. We can only hope that the litigation process will bring to heel the biggest drug cartel in the history of the world.

BIG BOX RETAILERS CAN BE SUED IN FAILURE TO WARN LITIGATION

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:52:14 GMT

In a typical failure to warn claim, plaintiffs' attorneys go after a product's manufacturer, usually claiming some kind of product defect that rendered the product hazardous to consumers and that the manufacturer failed to warn consumers of the dangers associated with the product. Defendants' attorneys usually counter that the product is not hazardous (or that the hazard is open and obvious) and, therefore, any warning they provided (or failed to provide) was either adequate or unnecessary. Plaintiffs' lawyers who only sue the manufacturer may be missing an important target in their litigation: the big box retailer who actually sells the product to the ultimate consumer of the product. The theory behind my proposition is that large retailers are basically in the real estate business. Instead of selling buildings, they are selling (or renting) shelf space, the availability of which is limited, for obvious reasons. So, just like a potential home buyer or renter must narrow their choices down from possibly several attractive housing choices, so does a large retailer have to choose among potentially hundreds (or more) of available products to put on their shelves. How do they do this?

If an actress wants a role in a Broadway play, they must audition for the part, usually in front of producers, directors, casting directors, writers, etc. who look for certain characteristics or traits in the actress to help them make their decision. Such is also the case when a manufacturer wants to convince a large retailer (e.g., Home Depot, Best Buy, Walmart's, Bed Bath and Beyond, or even Amazon...who has digital shelves) to put their product(s) on their shelves. The manufacturer basically auditions for the retailer's space by trying to convince decision makers for the retailer that their product meets the criteria set by the retailer and made available to the manufacturer typically in a guide book that contains lists of such criteria (e.g., profitability, availability, speed of delivery, product safety and product packaging requirements, among others). Some retailers even have separate product safety guidebooks and even employ their own staff who decide about safety issues, including what warnings are adequate as to their content, visibility and location.

Some large retailers may initially try to use "the dropped shoulder technique" as their defense: "Don't blame me, it's the manufacturer's responsibility to provide adequate warnings; we just pass on their warnings." If you're a plaintiff's lawyer, don't buy into that defense. Perhaps a couple examples may help.

In one case, I was working for a plaintiff's lawyer in Houston who sued the manufacturer of a work light that reached extremely high temperatures when used as intended, and in this case, the use was to illuminate the interior of a ship's hull while the plaintiff was sandblasting to remove rust from the hull. Shortly after the light was turned on inside the hull, the heat from the light ignited combustible fumes found in the interior, killing one worker and severely injuring another. The manufacturer of the light, in my opinion, had virtually no conspicuous warning to alert consumers of the very real danger of the light reaching temperatures approaching 1200 degrees F. The retailer, one of the nation's largest home products' big box retailers, at first claimed they just passed on the manufacturer's warnings. However, during discovery which included document production and deposition testimony, it became readily apparent that the retailer had not only a manufacturer's handbook containing many paragraphs describing their expectation that the manufacturer must follow all product standards and regulations relating to warnings and packaging, but also must meet the retailer's own standards (outlined in detail in a separate safety guide they made available to all auditioning manufacturers, which even included graphics appropriate for any warnings....all devised by their own full-time safety employees. Their goose was cooked when I testified that this retailer was actually "in the warnings business" and could prevent a product from reaching their shelves which didn't meet their standards. Ironically, a few years later in a separate case involving a different product, a ladder, sold by the same retailer, the retailer tried the same dropped shoulder defense, and even produced a ladder expert from their company who denied knowledge of such guidebooks or safety experts within the company. It may be that this ladder expert was being truthful in her ignorance rather than deceptive. I call this a case of "the left side didn't know what the right side was doing." Nevertheless, their goose was also cooked when I produced the documentary evidence.

Finally, even large digital retailers are vulnerable to claims of failure to warn about hazards found in products they sell on their digital shelves. Such was the case when a plaintiff purchased a dangerous pet that required a metal cage to avoid having the pet get loose and cause potential damage not only to home furnishings but also to humans. When the plaintiff conducted a search within the digital retailer's website for a cage to house this pet, a mesh cage appeared as one possible (and inexpensive) option. The plaintiff bought this product, resulting in the pet easily chewing through the mesh and seriously injuring the plaintiff's infant. There were no warnings on the digital retailer's website about this very hazardous possibility, and immediately after the lawsuit was filed, the retailer attempted to pull the product by deleting it from being listed as appropriate for this particular pet...but not before my client, the plaintiff's attorney, had procured a screen shot of the product listed for sale on the digital retailer's "shelf." Their goose was also cooked, and, no, the pet was not a goose.

The lesson both for big box retailers and their attorneys, as well as for eager plaintiffs' lawyers looking to add defendants to their lawsuits is quite simple. The retailer may indeed be a ripe target in a failure to warn claim, and should pay attention to the adequacy of the manufacturers' warnings BEFORE renting or selling their valuable shelf space to them. It's not just about the profitability of the product. More importantly, it's about the safety of the consumer.

WARNING: AMUSEMENT PARKS MAY NOT BE THAT AMUSING

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 16:01:03 GMT

A man was riding on a roller coaster in an amusement park that is part of a national chain when his cell phone fell out of his pocket and landed in a restricted area of the park. Despite warning signs near the roller coaster that said if you drop your phone, please see the attendant immediately and do not attempt to retrieve it yourself, and despite several warning signs on the fence (topped with barbed wire) that blocked off the restricted area from the public and said: “Danger, Restricted Area. Do Not Enter This Area. You Could be Seriously Injured or Killed,” this man climbed the fence, cut the barbed wire, jumped over the fence and began to look for his cell phone. Just as he found his cell phone (located under the coaster’s track) and picked it up off the ground and stood up to go back to the fence, the coaster arrived.....I’ll let you fill in the rest in case young children are reading this! You don’t have to be a warnings expert to figure out whose fault this accident was and if a better set of warnings would have prevented this accident. I guess cell phones really are addictive!

A couple of years before this incident, an obese man weighing over 300 pounds ignored several warning signs stating clearly that the ride (another roller coaster) was not intended for anyone over 200 pounds. As he approached the coaster, the attendant noticed his size and simply asked him, “Did you read the signs?” The man answered “Yes,” and the attendant let him on the ride. As you might imagine, the rider had a lot of difficulty putting on his safety belt, which promptly unsnapped just as the coaster was going down the steepest hill on the ride, sending our rider flying. Again, I don’t have to describe the details of his demise. Unlike our stubborn fence climber, this victim, who ignored several warning signs, could have and should have been stopped from riding the coaster by the attendant. Most attendants at amusement park rides, especially in the summer, are teens working in a part-time capacity, typically with limited training and perceived authority. Nevertheless, it is their responsibility to assert their authority as “the guardian of the gate” and refuse entry to anyone who does not physically meet height, weight and age requirements for a ride. When the attendant was interviewed after the incident and asked why he didn’t stop the obese customer from going on the coaster, he replied, “I knew he shouldn’t go on the ride because of his weight, but I didn’t want to embarrass him and cause a scene in front of other patrons, so I just asked him if he saw the signs.” Yes, the customer was wrong to try and go on the coaster, ignoring several weight restriction signs, not to mention his own common sense when he experienced extreme difficulty putting on his safety belt, but this kind of response should have been foreseeable to the park’s managers and ride attendants alike. When a hazard is foreseeable, as this one surely was, it is the responsibility of the park not only to post conspicuous warnings about the hazard, but also to enforce the signs’ safety instructions. Given the choice, the attendant should have chosen embarrassing the customer over placing him at risk of death!

Unlike the above two incidents where the patrons intentionally ignored the warnings, in the following incident, the patron couldn’t understand the warnings that were posted in English because he only spoke Spanish. On the surface, one might assume that the park wasn’t at fault because they might claim if they posted it in Spanish, maybe the next person spoke Chinese or Portuguese or French, etc. However, under closer inspection of the facts, you might understand why posting the warnings in Spanish is not just a good idea, it may be a life-saving idea that should be required, especially at national attractions. 41 million Americans speak Spanish and only 57% of them understand English; Spanish is second only to English as the language spoken the most in the U.S.; and Spanish is the fastest growing language in the U.S. Many corporations and government agencies regularly translate their warnings into Spanish (e.g., Airline warnings on TV monitors, airport warning signs, a host of consumer products, etc.). These facts should have convinced an amusement park to translate their warnings into Spanish, especially if their demographics show that a large number of their customers are Hispanic.

The above incidents aren’t alone. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, approximately 30,000 amusement park injuries result in a visit to an emergency room. This estimate includes both permanent and mobile parks. An industry trade group (The International Association of Amusement Parks) places the annual number of injuries at about 1500, but that only includes data from permanent parks that don’t move around the country. The truth is that nobody really knows because there are NO Federal Regulations for amusement parks. It’s mostly up to the states, many of which only require annual inspections and many of those states leave it up to the park itself to self-inspect and report voluntarily if anyone gets injured. Until this industry is subjected to a set of national standards/codes and regulated at the Federal Level so that all parks are required to meet a common set of standards and rules, including those that apply to safety warnings and instructions, it is up to each of us to manage our own safety and that of our loved ones.

WE DODGED A HUGE BULLET WITH TRUMP'S GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 16:50:07 GMT

President Donald Trump proudly announced in a December Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders that he would own this shutdown. Now that it's over, after the longest shutdown in U.S. history...35 days...we should all take a collective breath about what didn't happen during this shutdown that Trump initiated in order to fulfill a campaign promise to build a "big, beautiful, concrete wall across our 2,000 mile Southern Border....and Mexico would pay for it." Relax! I'm not going to write about the pro's and con's of building a wall as part of our overall border security strategy. But, what I am going to point out is just how lucky we as a country were during this extended shutdown.

Although a few airports closed runways or put brief halts on departing and arriving aircraft, causing enormous lines at airports and forcing passengers to arrive almost 3 hours prior to the departure of a domestic flight, and even longer for an international flight, with all the TSA and Air Traffic workers "calling in sick", we were very lucky that no planes crashed into each other or had risky landings that could easily have resulted in disaster. Although FBI agents, forced to work without pay, complained of what they believed would harm ongoing investigations, including tracking potential terrorists. Think about this for a moment. Trump had demanded a border wall to increase our border security, and yet, our best law enforcement organization, the FBI, was forced to curtail investigations into potential terrorist operations in the Homeland. And, again, we dodged a bullet in that there was no terrorist attack in the U.S. during the shutdown. If the shutdown had gone another week or two, the IRS would not have been able to send out our tax refunds on a timely basis; despite Trump mandating these workers show up, again without pay, over 40,000 called in "sick".

No greater example of the impact of a government shutdown on all of our lives, during the shutdown, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was forced to cut back or postpone mandatory food inspections on foods for American consumers. While the FDA announced they were postponing inspections on low risk products, such as cookies and crackers which are rarely linked to food-borne illness. However, we all remember the recent romaine lettuce crisis that delivered, along with the lettuce, a risky strain of bacteria that sickened people in 11 states. And those contaminated lettuces somehow snuck through the FDA's normal inspection process. Imagine if the shutdown continued, how many foods would get through the inspection process (forced to be cut back due to a lack of inspectors calling in "sick." Consider that under the best of circumstances (without a government shutdown), the FDA typically inspects only 50 of the more than 80,000 high risk food sites containing things like fish or chicken. USDA inspectors inspect about 8,000 facilities, and last week, during the shutdown, they did so without pay.

When I say we dodged another bullet, there are approximately 3,000 of us who die annually here in the U.S. from food-borne illnesses. That alone is only a fraction of the almost 3 million Americans who die in a typical year, but this does NOT include the fact that almost 150 Million million of us suffer through, and typically recover, from symptoms of food-borne illnesses (which we fondly call "food poisoning"). In another example, just before the shutdown began, and in time for our holiday season, last December more than 200 people fell ill (84 of them hospitalized) from a salmonella outbreak linked to raw turkey products. Another 52 people from 26 states and the District of Columbia also got ill. Before the CDC identified the source of the contaminated turkey, 216 people in 38 states and the D.C. became sick, and one died from California. Imagine how either the romaine lettuce or raw turkey episodes could have grown to catastrophic levels of illness and possible death, if the CDC workers, working without pay, had also called in "sick."

Yes, we dodged not just one bullet, but several during this recent government shutdown. For example, if the shutdown had not ended, millions of Americans who depend on food stamps to eat, may not have gotten their stamps, causing a nutritional/food crisis the likes of which we have never seen in the U.S. The lesson to be learned is simple and basic: the U.S. Government should never be shut down, especially for political purposes. We may have dodged a few bullets this time, but maybe we won't be so lucky if this happens again.

IS YOUR CELLPHONE CAPABLE OF CAUSING A DEADLY BRAIN TUMOR?

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 16:34:07 GMT

In the January, 2010, November, 2010 and June, 2011 issues of this newsletter, I raised the question of whether or not our cell phones were capable of causing a rare form of brain cancer developed from a glioma tumor. While solid research findings were scarce, I did report on the UN's World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)'s decision to classify cellphones as "possibly carcinogenic" based on scientific data linking the heaviest users of cellphones to possible brain cancer. IARC then proceeded to label cellphones as a Category 2B device, meaning cellphones are possibly carcinogenic. The U.S. reaction to the WHO study and recommendations, as provided by both the FDA and the FCC, the agencies responsible in the U.S. for regulating the cellphone industry, was to basically ignore the WHO report and issue their own statement declaring that no significant body of research has shown cellphones to be dangerous to users. This conclusion was slightly, if not significantly, jolted when earlier this month, the National Toxicology Program released the results of a decades long study of how rats/rodents responded to heavy doses of radiation from cellphones. They found positive but relatively modest evidence that radio waves from some types of cellphones could raise the risk that male rats develop brain cancer.

While the scientists behind the report stand by their overall conclusion, it is important to note that the exposure levels and durations were much greater than what you or I typically encounter when we use our phones. Further, since the study began in the Clinton administration, some of the cellphones used in the study are from old technology not in use today. Not to be deterred, the Toxicology Program is continuing its studies with newer phones. Tune in!

Some localities (e.g., Maine and the City of Berkely) have passed legislation requiring cellphones sold in those localities to have a warning about the amount of radiation associated with the use of these phones (the actual term used is the "Specific Absorption Rate" or SAR). As a service to our readers, we have decided to let you know which cellphones emit the greatest amount of radiation and which the least. If you are worried about even the possibility of a link between radiation from cellphones and brain cancer, you may want to consider buying a cellphone from the "least" radiation list. The FCC suggests (without any evidence) that we limit our exposure to 1.6 watts per kilogram. Regardless of your level of concern, I continue to recommend that all of us reduce the amount of time on these devices (and get back in touch with good old-fashioned face-to-face "warm flesh not cold plastic" communication) and for any use of the cellphone, use a head set and keep the phone itself away from your body, especially your ears/head.

REGULATORS NEED TO REGULATE

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 15:25:35 GMT

In my latest book, MURDER, INC.: HOW UNREGULATED INDUSTRY KILLS OR INJURES THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS EVERY YEAR....AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, I propose a safety triad that, if all parties in the triad participated equally as to their proposed responsibilities, we might turn the tide from an unsafe country to a less unsafe country....initially. What do I mean by this? Think of a three-legged stool that distributes the weight of a person sitting on the stool, equally among the three legs. But what would happen if we leaned heavily to one side of the stool, essentially spreading the weight that was once borne by three legs to the two legs remaining braced to the floor. Unfortunately the third leg is no longer contributing to the stability of the stool, which may actually collapse because the two remaining legs may not be able to handle the amount of weight that was intended to be equally distributed among all three legs. In my book, I assign a name and specific responsibilities to each member of the safety triad (or, by analogy, to each leg of the stool): Manufacturers; Consumers; and Regulators. The main responsibility of the manufacturer (in the context of safety) is to design, manufacture and market a safe product and to communicate any potentially hazardous risks to their employees and/or customers so that they can avoid injury, or even death. Despite our expectations that manufacturers will understand and act in a positive manner to "warn" us about potential hazards, their consequences and steps we need to take to avoid being harmed by hazardous conditions designed into their product(s), the reality may not quite match our expectations.

Of course, not all manufacturers act or have acted in a moral and ethical manner and have consistently placed PROFIT OVER SAFETY, often resulting in unnecessary injuries and/or deaths, including even some catastrophic events. When this happens, this is where the second leg of the stool is supposed to kick in, namely the regulators whose main job is to regulate manufacturers by proposing rules that regulators believe will help reduce the likelihood of injury associated with a manufacturer's products. We see this interaction between regulators and manufacturers almost daily, for example, in the auto industry where manufacturers' claims of the best car since Swiss cheese often fall prey to the regulators...National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recalls defective cars OR when the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) bans all three wheel ATV's due to their dangerous instability OR the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules that a pharmaceutical company must add a black box warning on its drug so that the public will understand the possible side effects associated with their new miracle drug. In other words, we, the consuming public have come to expect that just as our parents protected us from all the harms and evils threatening a toddler or youth, so will the regulatory agencies responsible for the safety of the products, vehicles, food and drugs we buy and/or consume, protect us from all the evils or unexpected flaws in these products and their sometimes catastrophic consequences. But, what if these agencies don't do their job? Possibly they were too cozy with the manufacturers they were to regulate OR, possibly the regulators, ignoring their independent charge as neutral overseers of a greedy corporate environment only too eager to sacrifice safety for the profits resulting from such actions, received new marching orders, possibly from their boss in the White House.

Unless you have enjoyed a Rip Van Winkle nap for the last two years, that is exactly what you have seen happen here in our country under the leadership of a President who has systematically, mostly through executive orders, delayed, dismissed or rolled back several hundred, perhaps even a few thousand government regulations, many of which were intended to protect our safety, our homes, our transportation systems and our environment, resulting in the threat (and even the reality) of newly injured or killed American workers and consumers. With the assistance of a long-standing Washington, DC creation, The Revolving Door, which summons as new regulators to DC, the very people whom they are supposed to regulate. I did a study of ALL senior regulators installed since the creation of all safety-related agencies and found that 68% of all senior regulators had either come from or went to the same industry they were to regulate. Apparently, this is the one area where bipartisanship has not lost its way because over the decades, the votes to confirm almost all of these obviously conflicted (by the revolving door) regulators was consistently unanimous. This sounds to me like the "rigged system" that Donald Trump has been howling about for the last two years. In one of the most egregious examples of Trump's deregulatory frenzy, our President has tabled for more study the FDA's recent (after many years of research and comments) recommendations for changes to our food chains's labeling of nutritional ingredients. This callous act of ignoring the recommendations of dozens of experts, scientists and nutritionists will negatively affect millions of diabetics in the U.S. who applauded the FDA's recommendation to consolidate all added sugar in a food product and label it all as "added sugar" to replace the prior collection of technical/scientific terms such as "high fructose corn syrup" or my favorite, "Evaporated Cane Syrup."

The third leg of my safety triad is you, the worker and/or the consumer. who when faced with a greedy corporation and a totally conflicted regulator must take steps, mostly self-educational, to protect you and your family. That means going to the library, reading newspaper stories, making phone calls to regulators and manufacturers alike, reading warning and safety labels and instructions, joining consumer advocacy groups. In other words, if the people who make unsafe products and the government regulators can't or won't do their jobs, we the people must take charge of our own safety, gather as much information as possible, so that we can make informed choices for us and our loved ones. We have no other choice, especially under the current administration.

YOUR CLOTHING MAY BE TOXIC

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 17:33:10 GMT

CNN once conducted an experiment whose goal was to find out if it was possible to eliminate the threat of toxic pesticides used by farmers to grow many of our fruits and vegetables. The idea behind the experiment was that by the time these foods were on sale at our local supermarkets, they would have been removed by whatever means people in the food chain do to remove deadly toxins. CNN arranged to use a power washer to hose down several non-organic conventional fruits and vegetables at a local supermarket, foods that were exposed to pesticides at some point (or points) in their developmental process from farmer to our tables. After power washing all of the produce in a large section of the store, CNN removed samples and had them assessed for the presence of and amounts of (if any) of toxic pesticides. To cut to the chase, CNN found that virtually all of the pesticides (and their residue) were still on the targeted foods. CNN concluded that power washing made no significant difference in the removal of potentially toxic pesticides and chemicals.

This week, I was asked to address the topic of potential hazards associated with the clothes we wear often on a daily basis. My research revealed that much of our commonly worn clothing is coated with seriously toxic chemicals, some examples of which I will detail later in this newsletter. Further, just like the fruits and vegetables sprayed with pesticides, the chemicals on our clothing are also virtually impossible to remove, thus exposing us on an almost daily basis to not just these toxic chemicals, but to the daily, and often accumulated risk of exposure to deadly carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, risks to our kidneys, livers, reproductive and DNA issues, as well as serious environmental damage.

Before we explore some of these potentially deadly toxins in our clothing, let’s ask the leadoff question: What benefits are we trying to achieve with our clothing (besides just following God’s orders from the Garden of Eden? Think, for a minute about how many of you wouldn’t hesitate to desire whiter sheets or underwear with stains removed, wrinkle free handkerchiefs and tablecloths without any shrinkage, or water-resistant or even stain resistance for our favorite jeans or sweaters, or proper tanning for our leather clothes (and even couches)! After all, we take all of these benefits for granted without even one thought about how they are achieved. Well, the rest of this newsletter hopefully will shed some light on these “benefits” and may give you some pause about what you wear and how you take care of your clothing.

Lets’s start with conventional cotton (shirts, sheets, pants, handkerchiefs, etc.). Cotton is grown with genetically modified seeds and sprayed heavily with Roundup (in which the primary ingredient is glyphosate, linked directly to cancer. Many textiles contain chlorine bleach, formaldehyde, VOC’s (volatile organic compounds, PFC’s (per fluorinated chemicals), ammonia and/or other harmful chemicals. Additionally, heavy metals, PVC, and resins, which are involved in dyeing and printing processes are used. There are toxic chemicals used to make clothing wrinkle or shrinkage-free, flame resistant, waterproof, stain resistant, mildew resistant, or cling free. All fabrics can accept these toxic finished, so to avoid them, you need to specifically select products that haven’t been chemically finished. Without going into the science, some chemicals used in detergents eventually break down into a form which accumulate in the environment via the water supply and are highly toxic to fish and ocean wildlife.

Here are a few options that can help you avoid or at least minimize yours and our environment’s exposure to deadly toxins and chemicals:

1. Look for GOT-certified organic cotton and wool--free of pesticides, herbicides, NPE’s and GMO’s and dyed without harmful chemicals such as chlorine bleach, formaldehyde and heavy metals. 2. Look for clothing made with Tencel which is made from the cellulose extracted from eucalyptus, a renewable resource. Choose Tencel over rayon or bamboo textiles, both of which are created using heavily toxic chemicals.

If neither these two options (or others I haven’t listed here) are not available for you, perhaps I can refer you to the section of Genesis that precedes the appearance of the snake and where we find Adam and Eve relying upon leaves (hopefully leaves without toxins).

You may be thinking: Surely our government regulators are on top of this and will prevent our clothing from attacking us! If, especially during the Trump era of deregulatory frenzy, you think that such agencies as the FDA, EPA and CPSC are protecting us, I suggest you read the past issues of any major newspaper in the past year to see how Trump has systematically engaged in a deregulatory frenzy that has eliminated many rules and regulations specifically intended to keep us safe. I will address the failure of our regulatory agencies to protect us in the next issue of this newsletter

WHEN IS A WARNING NOT A WARNING?

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 17:33:08 GMT

I am on my annual summer vacation at Cape Cod where I typically enjoy all that you would expect Cape Cod to offer any tourist seeking plenty of sunshine, great ocean views and water sports including swimming, diving, sailing, fishing, water skiing, jet skiing, kite sailing, kiting, etc. and, of course, feasting on anything fish or clam….my favorites include clam chowder (not too creamy lest you miss the distinct clam broth that makes a chowdah a chowdah) and large Ipswich big bellied fried clams (seared and not too doughy, lest you miss the sumptuous taste of the bellies’ succulent juices as you bite into its rich base at the bottom of a long, tender clam neck. Readers: don’t be alarmed! This is not going to turn into a food review, although I proudly claim authorship of “Goldhaber’s Gourmet Greats”, a culinary ride through Albuquerque, N.M.’s best restaurants in 1972. No, this is a newsletter about safety and warnings related to hazards I and others would not normally expect to encounter, especially on a vacation celebrating its 50th year in the same destination….and, yet here I am, confronting two hazards that I had little idea existed, let alone any “effective” warnings about these two hidden hazards.

1. Hot Tub Hazard: Pregnant Women Should Significantly Limit or Avoid Time in a Hot Tub. It is well known that all people whose decision making and physical well being may be impaired by alcohol or drugs should not be in a hot tub. It is also well known that hot tubs present a drowning hazard to unsupervised children who are naturally drawn to virtually any body of water. What is not well known is the hazard that time in a hot tub presents to pregnant women. Hot tubs typically present temperatures ranging from 100 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Exposure to temperatures in this range can actually be hazardous to the fetus in a pregnant woman. Given the existence of this “hidden hazard”, a warning should be conspicuously placed on the hot tub that any user can easily see, read and understand, especially if the potential user is pregnant or a family member or close friend of a pregnant woman who may want to use the hot tub. Note that I used the word “conspicuously” to describe the placement of such a warning. While on my vacation, I photographed the following warning on a hot tub I encountered.

EXHIBIT 1:

As you can plainly see in this photograph, the warning cannot be plainly (conspicuously) seen. While it is prominently located on the front (and only) entrance to the hot tub, the actual language about the hazard to pregnant women has clearly faded and is virtually impossible to read, probably due to being subjected to the elements such as wind, salt, sand and water itself. The lesson here is that this and any warning must be constructed so that it is AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE conspicuous to potential users of the product at the time of use. This means that the materials used in constructing the warning (e.g., protective metals, plastic coverings, weather resistant paints or embossings, etc.) should be selected by considering, as a highly significant factor, the environment where the product is to be used.

2. Seal Hazard: Dead Seals Washed Up on Beach May Signal Presence of Great White Sharks. Cape Cod is a well known refuge year-round for 2 of the approximately 30 species of seals found in the world: harbor and grey seals, the females of which typically give birth to their “pups” in late spring or summer. Because these seals are found in such abundance along the shores of Cape Cod, they attract many types of sharks, also looking for abundance in meals, namely seals, and these sharks now include even Great White Sharks, which can grow to an average of 15 feet and weigh as much as 5,000 pounds. Recently while we were walking on our Cape beach, my children and I discovered a dead seal on the beach.

EXHIBIT 2:

After reporting the seal to IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare), their team arrived, inspected the seal and pointed out the clear teeth marks from a Great White Shark which apparently killed the seal for a meal. The presence of Great White Sharks in the waters of Cape Cod, despite the Jaws movies, is still a hidden hazard requiring a warning to the thousands of tourists who don’t normally confront or think about seals and sharks, just as the family from Kansas, who tragically lost their toddler at Disney World, weren’t normally thinking about alligators. Thus, it follows that conspicuous warning signs should be present on popular beaches frequented by many tourists, especially in known seal breeding areas at Cape Cod. Lest you panic at the mere mention of the word “shark” (especially Great White Sharks), be aware that Great Whites are primarily interested in a seal meal, not a human, for lunch or dinner. The reason for the warning is because if humans panic merely at the mention of sharks, they may also panic at the sight of a shark, Great White or other, and do something rash to anger a shark, causing that shark to attack the human.

DID WE MISS WARNING SIGNS THAT MAY HAVE PREVENTED THE PARKLAND, FLORIDA SHOOTING?

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 17:33:07 GMT

As a nation, we have been plagued as no other with an epidemic of gun violence that on an average day has taken 96 lives. Furthermore, for every gun violation death in the U.S., two more people are seriously injured. I am not here to debate the best solutions for reducing or eliminating this hazardous condition, especially as it affects our beloved children. Rather, I am here to suggest that had we as a country paid focused attention on early warning signs leading to a potential disaster, perhaps the disaster caused once again by gun violence, could have been avoided.

We all know by now the sometimes cliched expression, “if you see something, say something.” That’s fine (if we can agree on what we think we saw and who we should tell) but this slogan does not absolve us from paying attention to a myriad of other meaningful warning signs that, if noticed and followed, might have prevented many deaths or injuries from gun violence. So, what warning signs may we be missing?

First of all, 80% of school shooters told someone of their plans either directly or through the myriad social media platforms available to all of us. In fact, prior to the Parkland shootings, the shooter had literally advertised his plans through a variety of hateful, even illustrated postings including his own statement that he intended to bring guns to his former High School. One would hope that those who read his social media outbursts or heard from him directly, would warn local health officials and/or law enforcement agencies.

According to the anti-gun violence group, Sandy Hook Promise, some of the most important warnings signs of a pending gun violence disaster include:

Being over aggressive and/or lacking self-control.
Chronic social isolation or social rejection typically from bullying.
Threatening behavior such as bringing a gun to school or bragging to friends about an upcoming attack.
Mental illness and/or behavioral shifts, including a mental illness diagnosis or major changes in a person’s eating, sleeping or other daily activities.
Anti-social behavior such as severe destruction of property or hostility toward law enforcement.
A strong fascination or obsession with firearms (e.g., the Florida shooter actually had ten guns in addition to an AR-13, a weapon of war with capabilities of firing as many as 50 shots/minute (not exactly the kind of gun we need to hunt deer or protect our homes).

There is no guarantee that observing and reporting some or even all of these early warning signs would, with certainty, have prevented many of our nation’s horrific mass shootings in the last 20 years. But one thing we know for sure is that there will be many more mass shootings. While Congress and local governments either cynically or seriously debate potential solutions to this crisis, we the people have to take matters into our own hands by vigilantly looking out for the above and possibly other warning signs and immediately reporting them to health or law enforcement authorities. Our lives and those of our children demand our involvement in preventing such tragedies.

TRUMP USES NAFTA NEGOTIATIONS TO UNDERMINE NEEDED FOOD WARNINGS

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 02:49:28 GMT

Donald Trump hasn’t hidden his disdain for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but now it is revealed in a recent New York Times story (March 21 2018, Pg.A-1,9) that the Trump Administration is trying to block an effort by other members of NAFTA (especially Mexico and Canada) from implementing highly conspicuous warnings to consumers about junk food containing high amounts of sugar, salt and fat. The new warnings being discussed by representatives from Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina and Columbia are modeled after the apparently highly successful use by Chile, since 2016, of colors, shapes and easily understood symbols, including a black stop sign symbolizing dangerous amounts of sugar, salt or fat. (See Figure 1)

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) predictably is arguing for voluntary labeling programs and was quoted by the Times as stating it “supports a modernized NAFTA that will ensure standards are based on science, minimize unnecessary trade barriers, and benefit consumers in all three countries.” Although the U.S. Trade Representative’s spokesman, Emily Davis, told the Times, “the United States supports science-based labeling that is truthful and not misleading,” the degree of collusion between the Trump Administration and the GMA (which consists of executives from, among others, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo). For example, the Trump Administration, after the FDA implemented major changes to its food and nutritional label requirements (set to go into effect July, 2018), has delayed these vitally needed changes until January, 2020, claiming industry needed more time to produce the new labels. This is a patently ridiculous claim, which could lead to the death of thousands of diabetics from heart disease. What could possibly be untruthful or “misleading” about a food label that conspicuously and clearly tells the truth about the amount of sugar, salt and fat in a food product!

In several prior issues of this newsletter (e.g., March, 2013, July, 2014 and June, 2017), I have pointed out the dangers of sugary drinks and other products and the need for clear labeling, including warnings to help consumers understand what they are eating or drinking. This is very important because the FDA has determined that 77% of consumers actually pay attention to food labels while they are shopping. I have even recommended to the FDA that food products not only list the total amount of added sugar (which is now part of the delayed label implementation) but that they also list the amount of sugar in TEASPOONS INSTEAD OF GRAMS since only 5% of Americans understand the metric system. Why is the GMA insisting on using the metric system when they know this is like speaking Greek to a nation that mostly speaks English! Their answer is laughable. They told the FDA that they are actually doing a service to Americans by helping them to learn the metric system. The truth is that the GMA doesn’t want us to know how much sugar is in our food. If you knew the average 20 ounce bottle of a sweetened soft drink (whose label lists 60 grams of sugar) actually has 15 teaspoons of sugar , how many of those drinks would you consume?

When I first started writing about the need for better food labeling and warnings, the FDA reported that 70% of us were overweight and 33% of us were obese. Today, 70% of us are still overweight, but the rate of obesity has increased to 40% . (FYI, obesity is defined as having a body mass index of 30% or more.) Given the dramatic increase in obesity in America over the last decade, perhaps the GMA will finally recognize that our current food labeling system, despite the high number of Americans who look at the label, is not effective. Or, have they decided, along with the Trump Administration, that once again in America, industry must put PROFITS OVER SAFETY!

WARNINGS CAN PREVENT DROWNINGS AND SERIOUS INJURIES CAUSED BY SHALLOW WATER DIVING IN RESIDENTIAL POOLS

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 02:37:21 GMT

Spring is finally here (at least in NYC) and summer is just around the corner. Before you run to open your pool or visit a friend or family member’s pool, especially if you have young children, be aware that this is also the time of year where 300 children age 1-4 years old, will drown in a private swimming pool. According to the National Safety Council, drowning is the leading cause of death for young children. Most parents probably have pool safety on their mind when their child is about to go into a pool, but with most drownings in a pool, the parent or supervisor of the child typically tells the authorities: “I only turned away for a second/minute!” Parents are cautioned all the time about pool safety, but drownings still occur. Always be aware and be in the present moment with your children. Here are a few water safety precautions that may prevent your child from drowning in a residential pool:

Never leave your child alone; if you have to leave, take your child with you
Find age-appropriate swim lessons for your child, but keep in mind that lessons do not make your child “drown-proof”
Lifeguards aren’t babysitters; always keep your eyes on your child
Never consume alcohol when watching your child at a pool
Always have a first aid kit and emergency contacts handy
Get training in CPR
If a child is missing, check the water first

Every pool and every warm summer day holds the possibility of new, fun summer experiences. All you need to add is your undivided attention.

But infant pool drownings are not the only hazard you may face in a residential pool. Diving into shallow water, especially in residential swimming pools, presents a unique set of factors that call for very strong actions. Research studies have shown that most serious pool diving injuries occur among young men (15-25), typically inebriated without eating much food, during efforts to “show off their skills” to their friends or dates. The National Spinal Cord Injury Data Research Center has estimated that 800 people each year are rendered quadriplegics as a result of diving injuries, and the tragedy is that most of these injuries could have been prevented with an adequate warning and safety program. First of all: NOBODY SHOULD DIVE INTO ANY BODY OF WATER THAT IS LESS THAN 8-9 FEET DEEP! That means that nobody should ever dive into an above ground pool, most of which are 3-4 feet deep. Given that most of these injuries occur with young men who are inebriated or reckless or risk takers, you must post the strongest possible warning signage in several visible areas around the pool or on the top fringe of the pool’s liner. A sample of such a sign appears in Figure 1.

I designed this sign and it is now recommended by the National Spa and Pool Institute, among other organizations.

But posting such a sign, even in several locations, may not be enough to prevent diving injuries. Since most injuries are often to first time visitors to the pool, many of whom are guests of the pool owners’ children, the pool owners must not only carefully and forcefully train their children about the no diving in shallow water rule, but they must stress that their children communicate this rule to their guest and friends. Obviously, alcohol and safe swimming don’t mix. And finally pool owners/parents must make it their top priority to be present at their pool whenever their children are bringing guests, especially first time guests.

If you follow the above warnings and safety information, your experience at the pool this summer should be mostly about fun. Happy swimming!