Take a tip from the Canadians. In a new report, the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment recommends five actions that can help parents reduce the most common sources of toxic exposure in their kids. These …
BPA
No Decline in Sperm Counts After All, Danish Data Show
In the dystopian book and film Children of Men, human beings suddenly stop being able to have children. There’s no real explanation given for the change — though there’s talk of a precipitous decline in sperm count quality — but the loss of the ability to reproduce essentially robs humanity of its future, and leads to the utter …
Environmental Toxins Cost Billions in Childhood Disease
Back in 2002, Philip Landrigan and a team of other researchers at Mount Sinai Medical School estimated the annual cost of four childhood conditions — lead poisoning, cancer, developmental disabilities and asthma — that could …
BPA Exposure in Pregnancy May Be Linked to Childhood Asthma
Endocrine disruption, diabetes, obesity — to the list of ills potentially associated with exposure to the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), you can add one more: childhood asthma.
Want to Reduce Your Exposure to BPA? Cut Out Canned, Packaged Foods
(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.
Study: Even “BPA-Free” Plastics Leach Endrocrine-Disrupting Chemicals
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.
Family MattersPregnancy
Pregnant Women Awash in Chemicals. Is That Bad for Baby?
In addition to big bellies, pregnant women are toting around dozens of chemicals, including some that have been banned for decades and others used in flame retardants, sunscreens and non-stick cookware.
Study: BPA Exposure May Reduce Chances of IVF
Toxins love to get you while you’re young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it’s mature and comparatively fixed.
Dirty Money? Traces of BPA Found on Currency
To the long list of household items and other common objects contaminated with bisphenol A (BPA) — an endocrine disruptor linked to infertility, genital abnormalities, cancer and more — add something unexpected: money.
Can Overuse of Antibacterial Soap Promote Allergies in Kids?
Clean is good, especially when it comes to fending off germs, but is there such a thing as being too clean? Perhaps. Researchers based at the University of Michigan School of Public Health report that children who overuse …
Why Laptop Computing Might Not Be Great for Fertility
Sitting too long with a laptop computer on your lap may do more than cause toasted skin syndrome. New research suggests that men who hold a computer on their lap may create unsafe levels of testicular heat, which can potentially …
Canada Declares BPA Toxic. Is the U.S. Next?
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.
Family MattersParenting
Would You Like Some BPA With That Dental Sealant, Dear?
Over the summer, my second-grader apparently binged on BPA, that controversial chemical that may or may not act as a hormone disrupter, depending whom you believe.
No, he hadn’t been sipping from contaminated SIGG bottles or …