California lawsuit demands Carefree and parent company Edgewell remove chemicals or add warning label

Carefree menstrual pads are contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, which presents a threat to the reproductive health of women using the products, a new lawsuitfiled in California state court alleges.

The suit demands Carefree and its parent company, personal care product giant Edgewell, remove PFAS from the products or put a warning label on its packaging.

The exposure is potentially a “big health problem”, said Vineet Dubey, an attorney representing Ecological Alliance, a consumer advocacy group which brought the suit.

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Fueled by profit-driven private equity, the booming dental implant industry is facing fierce criticism for what some call reckless and horrendous practices that leave patients in pain. Experts like Harvard’s William Giannobile and periodontist Luiz Gonzaga warn that clinics are pressuring patients into costly and unnecessary implants, often removing healthy teeth that could be saved.

Becky Carroll’s experience with ClearChoice was a nightmare. She alleges that during her $31,000 implant surgery, her anesthesia wore off, leaving her conscious and in agony, while the misaligned implants rendered her unable to chew. Nationwide, lawsuits recount similar ordeals, yet companies like ClearChoice and Aspen Dental deny any wrongdoing.

“We are dealing with a contrast here that will either advance women’s health or put it in a sort of retrograde,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said.

Research into women’s health also receives far less funding than that focused on health conditions that mostly affect men. One 2021 study found that in almost three-quarters of cases, diseases that mainly affect women are underfunded for the amount of people they impact and illnesses that primarily affect men are overfunded.

First-of-its-kind research highlights need for change to regulation, as humans almost always exposed to mixtures

Mixtures of different types of PFAS compounds are often more toxic than single chemicals, first-of-its-kind research finds, suggesting humans’ exposure to the chemicals is more dangerous than previously thought.

Humans are almost always exposed to more than one PFAS compound at a time, but regulatory agencies largely look at the chemicals in isolation from one another, meaning regulators are probably underestimating the health threat.

“Our point is that PFAS needs to be regulated as mixtures,” said Diana Aga, a study co-author with the University of Buffalo, which partnered with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.

A new study examining a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity found that use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023. During that same period, there was a 25.6 percent decrease in patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery to treat obesity.

The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public Health, is published in JAMA Network Open.

“Our study provides one of the first national estimates of the decline in utilization of bariatric metabolic surgery among privately insured patients corresponding to the rising use of blockbuster GLP-1 RA drugs,” said senior author Thomas C. Tsai, a metabolic bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

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A study published in Science found that low sugar intake during pregnancy and early childhood can reduce the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension in adulthood. The researchers used data from the U.K. Biobank to compare the health outcomes of individuals born before and after the end of World War II sugar rationing. The study suggests that reducing sugar consumption early in life can have significant health benefits, including delayed disease onset and improved quality of life.

• A proposed class action lawsuit was filed against McDonald’s on Tuesday — at least the third suit the chain faces over an E. coli outbreak linked to its Quarter Pounders. 
• The suit alleges that McDonald’s fell short in its duty to provide food that’s safe for consumption. 
• The plaintiffs seek damages totaling more than $5 million.

Cooking with any plastic is a dubious enterprise, because heat encourages potentially harmful plastic compounds to migrate out of the polymers and potentially into the food. But, as Andrew Turner, a biochemist at the University of Plymouth recently told me, black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid.

In 2018, Turner published one of the earliest papers positing that black plastic products were likely regularly being made from recycled electronic waste. The clue was the plastic’s concerning levels of flame retardants. In some cases, the mix of chemicals matched the profile of those commonly found in computer and television housing, many of which are treated with flame retardants to prevent them from catching fire.

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Drug overdoses are already a leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S. Research shows as many as 1 in 20 women use addictive substances at some point during their pregnancies. A study by the National Institutes of Health found "substance use during pregnancy is prevalent." Opioid use by pregnant women had already quadrupled before fentanyl hit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, public health experts warn that xylazine poses a fast-growing threat to women, their fetuses and newborns.

"Almost 100% of our drug supply is fentanyl and 80% to 90% of that fentanyl is adulterated with xylazine," said Dr. Elizabeth Krans, a physician and researcher at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh.

An unconditional cash transfer of $100 monthly may enhance health outcomes for cancer survivors experiencing food insecurity, according to research in JNCI Cancer Spectrum. The study involved 17 patients with breast or gynecologic cancer at the University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center. Those receiving the cash transfer reported better physical health and diet quality, with fewer food insecurity indicators. At 3 months, none in the cash transfer group reported severe food insecurity, compared to the usual care group. Additionally, 80% of the cash transfer group consumed at least 2.5 cups of fruits and vegetables daily, versus 22% in the usual care group.

A Wisconsin pizzeria has apologized after customers were urged to throw out pizzas purchased from them due to contamination with THC, the main psychoactive substance in cannabis.

The contaminated food, from Famous Yeti's Pizza in Stoughton, is thought to have been served this week between Monday, October 21 and Thursday, October 24, Public Health Madison & Dane County reported.

Transplant experts are seeing a spike in people revoking organ donor registrations, their confidence shaken by reports that organs were nearly retrieved from a Kentucky man mistakenly declared dead.

It happened in 2021 and while details are murky surgery was avoided and the man is still alive. But donor registries in the U.S. and even across the Atlantic are being impacted after the case was publicized recently. A drop in donations could cost the lives of people awaiting a transplant.

“Organ donation is based on public trust,” said Dorrie Dils, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, or OPOs. When eroded, “it takes years to regain.”