REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic
+Environmental Health | June 9, 2011

Arsenic, Chicken and Old Regulatory Standards

By Bryan Walsh

Now, before, I get started on this post, I want everyone to take a deep breath. O.K.? So it turns out that a common drug given to chickens — 3-Nitro, also known as Roxarsone — contains arsenic. You know, arsenic, that popular poison often found with old lace.

+Environmental Health | March 30, 2011

Want to Reduce Your Exposure to BPA? Cut Out Canned, Packaged Foods

By Bryan Walsh
Shana Novak / Digital Vision via Getty Images

(Updated) There’s a lot we don’t know about bisphenol-A (BPA), a common chemical used in food packaging and polycarbonate plastics that may also mess with hormones.

+Environmental Health | March 8, 2011

Study: Even “BPA-Free” Plastics Leach Endrocrine-Disrupting Chemicals

By Bryan Walsh
David McNew/Getty Images

Plastics. They seem so…inert. Slow to erode or decay, with a biodegradation time measured in the hundreds of years, plastics appear cut off from the organic environment in the way that no other product is, safe and secure and sterile.

+Environmental Health | October 28, 2010

Flame Retardants in Everyday Products May Be a Health Hazard, Scientists Say

By Bryan Walsh
David Seed Photography/Getty Images

Here’s a fact to brighten your Thursday: you have a much smaller chance than your grandparents of bursting into flames.

+Environmental Health | October 14, 2010

Canada Declares BPA Toxic. Is the U.S. Next?

By Bryan Walsh
Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

Yesterday Canada—with very little fanfare—declared the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) a toxic substance, both to the environment and to public health.

+Doctors & Nurses | October 7, 2010

In Illinois, Sex-Offending Doctors Continue Practicing With No Oversight

By Meredith Melnick
Leonard Gertz/Corbis

Sex-offending doctors and health professionals in the state of Illinois have been allowed to continue practicing on probation, virtually unmonitored, according to a long-term investigation by the Chicago Tribune.

+Regulation | June 14, 2010

FDA: At-Home DNA Tests Should Be Regulated

By Tiffany O'Callaghan
© Jacob Halaska/Monsoon/Photolibrary/Corbis

In early May, national pharmacy chain Walgreens indefinitely delayed sales of an at home genetic test kit after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that kit had not been proven safe or effective, and that further inquiry was needed to determine whether it fell into a category of medical device that requires FDA regulation. [...]

+Public Health | May 19, 2010

An FDA proposal for improved transparency

By Tiffany O'Callaghan

In a 67-page proposal for a way forward toward more transparency, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration task force suggested broad changes that would increase public access to information about the oversight and regulatory process for everything form pharmaceuticals and food products to medical devices and tanning beds.