Chinese kitchen workers die from picking,cooking & eating deathcap mushrooms

A close friend of the two victims of a deadly death cap mushroom dish wants better warnings in the ACT about the dangers of picking wild mushrooms.

Tom O’Dea wants a public health campaign that will prevent future fatalities from the poisonous death caps, which claimed the lives of chef Liu Jun, 38, and kitchenhand Tsou Hsiang, 52.

Mr Liu and Ms Tsou died from liver failure after eating the death cap mushrooms in a stir-fry Mr Liu prepared after work at the Harmonie German Club in Narrabundah on New Year’s Eve.

Speaking after a memorial service for the pair at the weekend, Mr O’Dea said, ”We’ve got to make sure this never happens again.

”The message has got to be do not pick wild mushrooms.”

Signs warning people about death cap mushrooms already exist in parts of the ACT where the world’s most deadly mushrooms are known to grow.

ACT Health issued a reminder on New Year’s Day that Canberra residents should steer clear of death caps, and runs education campaigns in schools about the dangers of wild mushrooms.

Fact sheets about the mushrooms are also available on the Health directorate’s web page, and last year were published in a Chinese publication available in Canberra.

Representatives of ACT Health, including its chief officer Paul Kelly, met with members of Canberra’s Chinese community last week to begin discussions about whether public warnings about death cap mushrooms could be improved.

At Saturday’s memorial service, Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said further meetings would determine what steps could be taken. Canberra Multicultural Community Forum chairman Sam Wong, who is part of the consultations, said the ACT Government might have to consider more focused campaigns that target new Canberra residents, recent migrants or specific age groups, such as the elderly.

He said the message about the dangers of wild mushrooms could be made clearer through new multimedia advertisements, or by changing warning signs around the ACT so they could be understood by residents and visitors who did not speak English.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

FOOD CONTAMINATION CAUSES MANY DEATHS IN THE USA

Debbie Frederick hopes that her father’s death in last September in one of the most lethal outbreaks of food-borne illness in U.S. history will force the federal government to increase the safety of the country’s food supply.

It took more than ten years, a series of deadly outbreaks tied to foods like peanuts, spinach and ground beef, as well as a coalition of odd bedfellows — victims, public health advocates and food industry reps — to push through the first major restructure of food safety laws since the 1930s.

Advocates and other experts say the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) signed by U.S. President Barack Obama last January still has shortcomings and ware concerned that it will be watered down through a lack of finances.

The United States by all account has some of the safest food in the world. Still, approximateley one in six people get sick from eating tainted food products each year, according to the  Disease Control and Prevention groups.

“The whole system was built to react to people getting sick” or to discoveries of contaminated food, said Erik Olson, the Pew Health Group’s director of food programs.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates allmost all of the U.S. food supply, including melons and other produce, requires major structural changes to become primarily focused on prevention, as FSMA envisions. While lawmakers recently have given FDA more money for food programs, it still has a lot of catching up to do, Olson said.

Eighty-seven-year-old William Beach, Frederick’s father, lived in Oklahoma and was one of the 28 people killed by listeria infection after eating cantaloupe contaminated in what regulators called an “unsanitary” Jensen Farms packing plant in Colorado.

“My father was terrified … nobody should have to go like that,” said Frederick, a Phoenix aesthetician and newly minted activist who is the driving force behind her family’s lawsuit against Jensen Farms. “The system broke down. It shouldn’t have happened. This is very much a preventable thing.”

Herb Stevens, of suburban Denver, also became ill after eating tainted cantaloupe, but had survived. The World War Two veteran, 84, lived at home with his wife before falling ill and now requires full-time care.

“We’d like to see better food safety laws and more inspectors,” Jeni Exley, Stevens’ daughter, said in an interview. Her family is suing for current and future medical expenses.

THE TIGER HAS NO TEETH?

FSMA aims to be a step in the right direction.

The law requires FDA to set standards for produce safety and mandates more frequent inspections of domestic and foreign food processing facilities. It also gives FDA stronger enforcement tools, such as mandatory recall authority and the ability to cancrl the registration of a processing plant.

While inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture must be present at meat and poultry plants they regulate during operating hours, FDA had no frequency mandate for inspections prior to FSMA. As a result, lapses of as long as 10 years were not uncommon.

All high-risk domestic facilities, or those that handle foods with a high potential to cause harm, must be inspected within five years of enactment and no less than every three years thereafter, according to the FDA. In addition, the law rapidly steps up the number of required inspections for foreign facilities.

Jeff Almer and Randy Napier, who lost their mothers to the salmonella outbreak blamed for killing nine people and sickening 700 others who ate contaminated products from Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) in 2008 and 2009, fought to get FSMA passed and now are pushing more FDA funding.

“The needs are substantially greater than what is covered by current funding,” said Steven Grossman, deputy executive director of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, which said FDA’s food funding rose $52 million to $836 million in fiscal 2011.

The U.S. House of Representatives wants to cut that funding to $750 million in fiscal 2012, while the Senate is proposing increasing funding to $867 million. It is still not known where the final number will come out.

The issue is personal for Almer and Napier, who frequently work with reporters and button-hole lawmakers.

PCA, now bankrupt, is accused of knowingly shipping contaminated products in violation of federal law. The men want to see company President Stewart Parnell criminally charged & convicted.

Handing down an indictment of Parnell would “send a loud and clear message to producers of food to literally clean up their acts,” Almer said.

“We believe there is absolutely no basis for criminal prosecution,” said Parnell’s attorney Bill Gust, a partner at – Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore.

Napier said he has made at least six trips to Washington, D.C., since his mother’s death. Almer testified before Congress in 2009 and said he met with federal law enforcement representatives regarding the PCA criminal case.

WHY DOES THE SYSTEM WANT TO KEEP US POISONED & UNDER CONTROL?

We are what we eat. Some of us were fortunate enough to have been brought up in an age when mothers were homemakers and prepared meals of real food that tasted like real food.

Today, we are (most of us) being slowly poisoned by the food industry. Flavour enhancers, emulsifiers, stabilizers, and a host of toxic chemicals are now packaged into just about everything we eat.

Simply look at the ingredients list on any package of processed food – disodium EDTA, BHA, propylene glycol, dimenthyl sulfate – to name but a few. Years ago people never needed to add such dangerous toxins to their pies, soups, and stews, and they tasted a whole lot better than anything today.

Even our water supplies are deliberately contaminated with harmful fluoride – Fluoride is a known rat and cockroach poison. Another dangerous toxin – aspartame – is used extensively as an artificial sweetener. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is added to just about everything in packaged food – and especially in fast-food restaurants.

Why is this happening? MONEY, pure and simple, and the all-powerful pharmaceutical industry (heavily linked with the food industry) makes more money when people are unhealthy – the greatest profit when people are ill comes from the treatment, NOT the prevention or cure.

Sourced from Natural Health by Henry Sapiecha

WHO’s confused on BPA

The World Health Organization is the biggest fraud on the planet.

Study after study has concluded that BPA, a common chemical used in plastics and can linings, is making humans fat, sick, weak and dead.

It doesn’t take a lot of special skill to understand those studies — and I’ve told you about plenty of them myself over the years — but the WHO says all that research is just too “difficult to interpret.”

And because it’s so “difficult,” they just can’t form an opinion right now.

That’s either complete, utter hogwash… or a refreshing new level of honesty as the agency admits it’s not competent enough to understand basic science.

Either way, they’ve abandoned their responsibility to protect the public health. So allow me to do their job for them — again — and warn you to keep away from BPA as if your life depends on it… because it probably does.

Leaving no room for interpretation,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

Additional info below sourced by Henry Sapiecha

Bisphenol A (BPA), a compound in hard, clear polycarbonate plastics, is getting official scrutiny—and things are looking less than rosy for the controversial chemical. The U.S. government’s National Toxicology Program yesterday agreed with a scientific panel that recently expressed concern about physiological changes that occur in people when they ingest BPA that has leached from plastics into their food. The Canadian government is even considering declaring the chemical toxic, reports today’s New York Times. This could set the stage for banning it from plastic baby bottles, water bottles, and food containers. At the very least, some people will be even more eager to buy foods and beverages in BPA-free containers.

BPA has raised concerns because it appears to mimic the effects of estrogen, interfering with hormone levels and cell signaling systems. Previous studies have shown that people exposed to high levels of BPA have a greater risk of developing uterine fibroids, breast cancer, decreased sperm counts, and prostate cancer. Babies and children are thought to be at greatest risk from the exposure. In fact, the scientific evidence warrants “a higher level of concern than those expressed by the expert [scientific] panel for possible effects of bisphenol A on prostate gland, mammary gland and early onset of puberty in exposed fetuses, infants and children,” the NTP report concludes.

Not surprisingly, sales of BPA-free baby bottles spiked after yesterday’s news. “We tripled our sales overnight on the website and will be shipping an additional 300,000 bottles to Canada this week to meet an increased demand,” says Ron Vigdor, president of BornFree, which manufactures BPA-free bottles. He adds that Babies “R” Us also indicated that it would be increasing its order to U.S. stores.

Beyond switching baby bottles, another way to lower exposure to BPA is to avoid heating foods and liquids in plastic containers that contain the compound. The amount of BPA that leaches out, the NTP says, may depend more on the temperature of the liquid, food, or container itself than on the age of the plastic bottle or dish. Check out this story on BPA and babies and this story on BPA and plastic containers for more tips on minimizing your and your family’s exposure to BPA.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Lead poisoning may now kill off Frodo

Veterinarians fear a baby koala that survived a gunshot will succumb to lead poisoning.

The joey, named Frodo, was found on November 5 in Kenilworth, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, with 15 shotgun pellets lodged in her head and body, an Australia Zoo spokeswoman said.

Frodo’s skull was fractured and her stomach and intestines damaged in the attack.

She underwent two operations, but eight pellets are still lodged in her body.

Doctor Amber Gillett from the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital said some of the pellets were lodged in Frodo’s stomach and intestinal tract which they feared would lead to toxicity.

“The lead pellets are still a concern, although at this stage there is no evidence that poisoning has occurred, it is still our highest priority and will continue to be monitored,” Dr Gillett said.

Dr Gillett, who operated on Frodo, said the pellets were too hard to reach and won’t be operated on at this stage.

“I think we will leave them to see if they pass,” she said.

“If they don’t pass then she will go on treatment to prevent toxicity.”

The other pellets lodged in Frodo’s body are superficial and won’t cause any problems.

Despite the poisoning fears, Dr Gillett said Frodo was making good progress, and was even eating eucalyptus leaves on her own.

She also enjoys an enclosure with another baby koala, and the two often play.

“She’s climbing around the trees, looking like a normal koala now,” Dr Gillett said.

“She has a real fighting spirit in her.”

“Frodo is a very alert little girl and has been moving around freely by herself.”

She is expected to remain in care for a minimum of six to eight months or until she has reached pre-release size of four kilograms.

“Our aim is to get her back into the wild. She came in as a wild koala and as the law states, they need to be returned to the wild,” Dr Gillett said.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

High amounts of heavy metals found in China tobacco

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By Tan Ee LynPosted 2010/10/07 at 7:55 am EDT

HONG KONG, Oct. 7, 2010 (Reuters) — Some Chinese cigarettes contain amounts of lead, arsenic and cadmium that are three times higher than levels found in Canadian cigarettes, a study has found.

While consuming such heavy metals is widely known to be harmful to health, there is little research done so far about their impact when inhaled into the body.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Tobacco Control on Thursday, said more investigation was needed.

“While the per-stick levels of metals are what we measured, the real issue is repeated exposure. Smokers don’t smoke just one cigarette, but 20 or so a day every day for years because cigarettes are addictive,” wrote lead author Richard O’Connor of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York.

“These metals get into smokers along with a cocktail of other toxicants. The effect of cumulative exposure to multiple toxicants, including metals, is the public health question that needs to be sorted out.”

The researchers used Canadian cigarettes for comparison in their study because Canadian manufacturers and importers are required to test for metals content in tobacco, and Health Canada, the country’s public health agency, recently released data concerning this.

China has more than 320 million smokers and a million Chinese in the country die each year from tobacco-related illnesses. Smoking has been causally linked to hypertension, stroke, diabetes, cancer, heart and respiratory diseases, among others.

China has the world’s largest smoking population and is also the biggest producer of tobacco, manufacturing 2.16 trillion cigarettes in 2007, according to the Tobacco Atlas.

O’Connor and colleagues analyzed 78 varieties of popular Chinese cigarette brands and found significantly elevated levels of heavy metals, with some containing three times the levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic compared with Canadian cigarettes.

“The higher yields of cadmium and lead in cigarettes manufactured in China are worrisome given current smoking prevalence in China and China National Tobacco Company’s export ambitions,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

A member of the team, Geoffrey Fong from the University of Waterloo in Canada, said the heavy metals content was due to contaminated soil.

“Tobacco like other crops absorbs minerals and other things from the soil, so if the soil has cadium, lead or arsenic, they will be absorbed into the tobacco,” Fong said.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Deathstalker Scorpion Venom

Could Improve Gene Therapy

for Brain Cancer

Science (Aug. 11, 2010) — An ingredient in the venom of the “deathstalker” scorpion could help gene therapy become an effective treatment for brain cancer, scientists are reporting. The substance allows therapeutic genes — genes that treat disease — to reach more brain cancer cells than current approaches, according to the study in ACS Nano.

Miqin Zhang and colleagues note that gene therapy — the delivery of therapeutic genes into diseased cells — shows promise for fighting glioma, the most common and most serious form of brain cancer. But difficulties in getting genes to enter cancer cells and concerns over the safety and potential side effects of substances used to transport these genes have kept the approach from helping patients.

The scientists describe a new approach that could solve these problems. Key ingredients of their gene-delivery system are chlorotoxin, the substance in deathstalker scorpion venom that can slow the spread of brain cancer, and nanoparticles of iron oxide. Each nanoparticle is about 1/50,000th the width of a human hair. In tests on lab mice, the scientists demonstrated that their venom-based nanoparticles can induce nearly twice the amount of gene expression in brain cancer cells as nanoparticles that do not contain the venom ingredient. “These results indicate that this targeted gene delivery system may potentially improve treatment outcome of gene therapy for glioma and other deadly cancers,” the article notes.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Receipts covered in hormone-like chemical

Here’s a reality check for those of you who think you can avoid the toxic chemical bisphenol A: It turns out this toxic chemical has even been found in cash register receipts. That’s right: It’s not just cans and plastic bottles, friends – this poison is literally everywhere.

Researchers from the Environmental Working Group found this dangerous estrogen-like substance in 40 percent of receipts from places like Safeway, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, CVS, and KFC.

Even the hippy-friendly greenie paradise Whole Foods had BPA in its receipts. You just can’t trust anyone these days!

But if you think handling receipts with BPA is no big deal, think again. Swiss scientists say that two hours after exposure, 30 percent of the BPA from a receipt remained on the skin – and could no longer be washed away.

Nothing like a hormone boost with each purchase – and they don’t even charge extra for it.

Speaking of BPA, Duane wrote in to ask how to send a message to the government urging them to ban this toxic garbage. Here’s what you do, Duane: Write a letter and print it out. Don’t waste money on an envelope or a stamp – just run that letter right through your shredder.

That’s what the feds will do with it, because they don’t care about you or me. The dangers of BPA are well known and well documented – it’s been linked to everything from obesity and cardiovascular problems to reproductive harm and early puberty – and they’re deliberately ignoring all that evidence every single day they fail to act.

If you want to do something more productive with your time, get rid of everything that might contain BPA: Cans, bottles, jars with lids – if it doesn’t say “BPA free,” assume it’s BPA full.

There’s not much you can do about those receipts. I’d say leave them right there at the cash register, but in some places they’ll tackle you at the door if you don’t show a receipt on the way out. You might also need those receipts for warranties, returns and the taxman.

Does this mean gloves are mandatory

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Toxic ingredients in common soaps

Common antimicrobial soap ingredients can kill sperm and damage the female babymaking equipment – and now, a lawsuit-happy environmental group is suing the feds over it.

After all, they first proposed regulating these antimicrobial chemicals – triclosan and triclocarban – 30 years ago. They promised to act once they completed a study… but I’ll bet you can guess what happened next. They never bothered to study it.

That’s your government (not) at work.

So they ‘washed’ their hands of it, and today these completely unregulated toxic chemicals are free to go to town on your endocrine system, reproductive system, and more every single time you lather up.

As I’ve told you before, triclosan is actually a pesticide — not a soap. And when it gets in the water, fish die. With a chemical that powerful, your poor little sperm never even have a chance.

The group that filed the suit, the National Resources Defense Council, is the same organization that recently sued the feds over their lack of regulations on BPA. The FDA’s bureaucrats may do a whole lot of nothing, but the agency’s lawyers sure are keeping busy.

Don’t wait for the lawyers, bureaucrats, and environmental groups to sort this one out, because while these things might be bad news for people, fish and sperm, they’re not exactly terrorizing bacteria. Studies have found that antimicrobial soaps are actually no better at killing germs than the plain old soap – and the FDA has even admitted as much.

What’s more, the overuse of these soaps is helping to create drug-resistant superbugs… and boy do we overuse them: Triclosan residue is believed to be on 75 percent of Americans over the age of 6.

So do yourself and the rest of us a favor: Keep clean… but stick to plain old soap.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha