Posts by Heather Gehlert

Heather Gehlert is a managing editor at AlterNet.

President Poised to Ban Toxic Chemicals in Kids' Toys
Posted by Heather Gehlert, AlterNet on August 7, 2008 at 4:34 PM.

In the next few weeks, President Bush is expected to sign into law the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act, long-awaited legislation that would ban toxic chemicals called phthalates from children's toys and other products. The Senate voted to approve the bill last week in the face of growing pressure from concerned parents and public health advocacy groups like the Breast Cancer Fund.

"This is a David and Goliath victory," Janet Nudelman, director of program and policy for the Breast Cancer Fund, said in a statement. "Public health advocates and parents were up against big oil and the chemical industry, and we won. This should serve as a wake-up call to industry: chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects have no place in children's products."

To find out more about phthalates or the much-needed regulation of the chemical industry, visit http://www.breastcancerfund.org.

How Toxic Is Your Car?
Posted by Heather Gehlert, AlterNet on July 26, 2008 at 3:40 PM.

The average American spends an hour and a half in a car every day, and may be at risk for long-term health problems from toxic chemicals inside the vehicle, a new report from the Ecology Center found.

The report, released this week, shows that most vehicles' seats, carpet, armrests, steering wheel, dashboard and other parts all give off potentially harmful chemicals, including bromine, chlorine and lead.

The Ecology Center tested more than 200 popular 2008- and 2009-model vehicles as well as over 60 child car seats.

Among the worst vehicles were the VW Beetle convertible, Lincoln Navigator SUV and Suzuki Forenza. Among the best were the Toyota Camry Solara, Chevy Cobalt and Honda Accord.

You can find out how safe your car is or learn more about toxicity in car seats by visiting healthycar.org.

Pushing Prescriptions: How the Drug Industry Sells Its Agenda at Your Expense
Posted by Heather Gehlert, AlterNet on July 18, 2008 at 2:27 PM.

The drug industry, Washingtons's largest lobby, spent more than $189 million on lobbying last year, a recent investigation from the Center for Public Integrity shows. That's up 32 percent since 2006 and -- get this -- nearly three times the amount they spent on lobbying in 1998, the first for which year complete data is available.

CPI's report, Pushing Prescriptions: How the Drug Industry Sells Its Agenda at Your Expense, also shows that Big Pharma has significantly upped its campaign contributions to Democrats since their November 2006 win. Nearly half of that money went to members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, House Committee on Ways and Means, and Senate Committee on Health, Education and Labor -- all of which are supposed to regulate the pharmaceutical industry.

Apparently, all that cash did the trick. The drug companies' intense lobbying -- I wish we could just say "bribing" and call it what it really is -- has sped up the drug approval process (arguably decreasing the attention given to drug safety), delayed the entry of lower cost generic drugs to the market, increased direct-to-consumer advertising (which has risen 20-fold in the last 10 years), created incentives for performing drug testing on kids, and resulted in a serious conflict of interest by "making the FDA dependent on the industry it regulates for budgetary resources."

Read the full report here.

Big Oil Wants to Keep Toxins in Your Child's Toys
Posted by Heather Gehlert on July 11, 2008 at 4:17 PM.

Far too many children's toys contain phthalates -- chemicals that help make plastic toys soft and flexible but also have known links to birth defects, fertility problems, early puberty, and breast and testicular cancer. A Congressional conference committee is considering banning the toxins, but Exxon Mobil, which manufactures one of the primary phthalates in toys, is using its millions of dollars in lobbying power to put up a fight. Four members of the Congressional committee are undecided. Help them make up their minds by writing them and encouraging them to vote "yes" on this amendment.

For more information about the amendment or phthalates, visit the Breast Cancer Fund.

National Day of Protest Against Health Insurance Corporations
Posted by Heather Gehlert on June 16, 2008 at 7:29 AM.

More than 47 million Americans don't have health insurance (with millions more under-insured), employer-based health insurance is on the decline, and soaring medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States.

The statistics are sobering. The time for action is now.

Thursday, June 19 is a national day of protest and your chance to push back against health insurers that put profits before people. Protests are being planned in locations across the United States, from California to Kentucky, and will coincide with the annual convention of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a powerful lobby that wants to stop health care reform efforts.

Visit www.guaranteedhealthcare.org to join the fight and www.healthcare-now.org/june19.html to find more information on exact locations and times of protests in your area.

Mystery Meat Macrophotography: An Up-Close Look Processed Meat
Posted by Heather Gehlert, AlterNet on April 17, 2008 at 2:00 PM.

"Mystery meat" gets its name for good reason. To get a sickeningly close look at the makeup of processed meats, check out this photo tour by Mike Adams. All products were purchased from Wal-Mart, and all images are untouched (except to correct brightness and contrast). A list of ingredients accompanies each "food" item. Yum!

Romney: I'm pro-choice; no wait, I'm pro-life
Posted by Heather Gehlert on May 4, 2007 at 3:56 PM.

There is something hilarious to me about seeing 10 aging white men in suits stumble over their own words as they try but fail to eek out even one intelligent thought about abortion. No, make that hilarious and sad.

Last night as I watched the "values" portion of the Republican presidential debate in California, I laughed and cringed in equal amounts -- struggling to take the candidates' comments seriously.

Asked if the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed would be a good day for America, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said, "It would be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom." Perhaps Sen. Brownback is not aware that women are -- wait for it -- people too.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Rom Tancredo (R-Col.) said it would "the greatest day in this country's history."

I'm sure Tancredo must have forgotten about other important events like, say, ending slavery.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

A call to put presidential debates on YouTube
Posted by Heather Gehlert on April 26, 2007 at 2:15 PM.

Eleven years ago, presidential candidates began relaying campaign messages on the Web. Four years later, in 2000, they started accepting campaign contributions online. And now, thanks to a recent bipartisan alliance, video footage of campaign speeches could become widely available on the Internet.

Large numbers of organizations and grassroots activists released letters this week to the Republican and Democratic National Committees, asking them to urge debate sponsors to make all debate video footage available for any member of the public to access, share, reuse and blog about freely.

C-SPAN has already announced that it will allow expanded use of its video, and now progressives and conservatives alike are hoping others will follow their lead.

"This is about the Internet empowering the little guy in our democracy," Adam Green, of MoveOn.org Civic Action, said in a statement. "The big TV networks should not be the only ones determining which sound bites are newsworthy after a debate -- everyday people should be able to put candidates positions on YouTube and share them with others without fear of breaking the law."

Right now, television networks retain exclusive rights to debate footage. In years past, this didn't matter because, even if people wanted to share video content, they did not have a forum to do so. But now, with highly trafficked Internet sites like YouTube, it simply doesn't make sense to keep that footage out of the public domain.

For anyone who wants to see the Web become more democratic, you can show your support for the proposal by calling the DNC (202-863-8000) or the RNC (202-863-8500).

MySpace to enter news business
Posted by Heather Gehlert on April 20, 2007 at 11:14 AM.

Without further commentary, here's the AP story from Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun:

The popular online hangout MySpace is entering the news business with a feature that lets its users determine what items other members see.

MySpace News brings to a much larger audience the user-recommendation capabilities already available through Digg and Time Warner Inc.'s Netscape. It also marks the site's further inroads into becoming an Internet portal akin to Yahoo Inc. and others.

Unlike Digg and Netscape, which rely heavily on user submissions, MySpace will also scan thousands of Web journals and news sites and group results by categories such as sports and politics. MySpace will go further than Google Inc.'s news offering by letting users vote on items, helping to determine what makes the front or section pages.

As part of the service, MySpace will pull and display headlines from the outside news sites, a practice that contributed to legal challenges against Google. The search engine leader recently reached a settlement with Agence France-Presse and earlier with The Associated Press, although no lawsuit had been filed by the AP.

MySpace, like Google, would let publishers exclude their items from the site, said Dan Strauss, whose group helped develop the news service. He also said MySpace would be helping to drive traffic to the news sites, bringing MySpace readers who might not otherwise be visiting.

The feature, which was expected to debut Thursday as a "beta" test, uses technology developed by Newroo, which MySpace parent News Corp. bought last year. Strauss said items from News Corp., which owns the Fox network and other media outlets, won't get special treatment.

Eating too much red meat could increase breast cancer risk
Posted by Heather Gehlert on March 28, 2007 at 1:05 PM.

If animal cruelty, environmental degradation and a growing Type II diabetes epidemic aren't enough reasons to be cautious about eating red meat, here's another: A study published in the November 2006 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has found a correlation between red meat consumption and hormone-fueled breast cancer.

The results, part of the Nurses Health Study II conducted by Harvard University researchers, were based on an analysis of 90,000 premenopausal women between ages 26 and 46. Researchers followed the women for 12 years, tracking their red meat intake, and found that as red meat consumption increased, so did the risk of breast cancers fueled by the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

According to an article published in Kansas City infoZine, "After adjusting for established risk factors, including weight, alcohol, and consumption of fruit, vegetables and dairy foods, the researchers found that women who reported eating more than one and a half servings of red meat per day had almost twice the risk of developing hormone receptorpositive cancer compared with women who reported eating three servings or less of red meat per week."

The study researchers note that the use of hormones in cattle production could be at least partly responsible for the link between meat-eating and hormone-driven breast cancers. About two-thirds of cattle raised in the U.S. today are injected with growth hormones.

The correlation between red meat and breast cancer might also to do with the way the meat is cooked.

"Studies suggest one reason for the increased cancer risk relates to the heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that form when red meat is cooked at high temperatures (like frying and grilling), especially well-done," writes Karen Collins in the infoZine article. "In laboratory studies, HCAs bond to estrogen receptors and create estrogen-like effects. In earlier research with women past menopause, those who consistently ate hamburger, beef steak and bacon very well done -- thus getting high levels of HCAs -- had more than four times the breast cancer risk of women who consumed these meats rare or medium done. ...

"Although red and white meat both form HCAs when cooked at high temperatures, red meat is higher in a particular kind of easily absorbed iron, called heme iron. Laboratory studies suggest that heme iron may increase colon cancer risk by damaging the colon lining and increasing the growth of precancerous cells. Several population studies link higher heme consumption with greater colon cancer risk. Scientists say that heme iron may interact with estrogen in enhancing initial development of breast tumors."

The meat's fat content could be another culprit: "Several studies link higher fat intake with higher levels of estrogen and a substance the body can convert to estrogen," Collins writes. "Higher saturated fat consumption seems to raise levels of insulin, a hormone that may promote development of breast cancer regardless of estrogen sensitivity.

More research needs to be done to determine which risk factors -- meat type, cooking method, fat content, bovine growth hormones -- relate most closely to breast cancer. Although this study leaves some questions unanswered, for now, it's probably a smart idea for women to limit how much red meat is in their diet. A little prevention can go a long way.

E. Coli, Salmonella and Rat Poop -- Oh, My!
Posted by Heather Gehlert on March 16, 2007 at 4:31 PM.

Congress requires twice-yearly health inspections of school cafeterias to help prevent outbreaks of food poisoning, but recent data from the Dept. of Agriculture shows that this isn't always happening.

The data, obtained by the Associated Press, revealed that one in 10 schools didn't get inspected at all last year, and 30 percent only received one inspection.

Although that doesn't necessarily mean there will be more cases of food poisoning, the inspections are an important preventative public health measure. Inspectors are supposed to enforce temperature regulations, ensuring that hot foods are kept hot enough and cold foods are kept cold enough. They are also supposed to monitor employee hand-washing and keep the yuck factor under control, making sure things like rat pellets aren't finding their way into the food.

Here's the data from the Dept. of Agriculture, as reported by the AP:

94,132 schools reporting in the 2005-2006 school year:

• Ten percent, or 9,498 schools, were not inspected at all.
• Twenty-nine percent, or 27,184 schools, were inspected once.
• Sixty-one percent, or 57,450 schools, were inspected at least twice.

No data was reported by 7,309 schools.

The missed visits mirror a drop-off in food safety inspections by the Food and Drug Administration. A recent AP analysis found FDA inspections fell by nearly half between 2003 and 2006.

When inspections don't happen in cafeterias, it's not the school's fault. Cafeteria workers don't inspect themselves. It's up to state and local health authorities to schedule inspections, and many health departments are severely understaffed, particularly those in small towns and rural areas.

Congress changed the required number of inspections from one to two during the 2005-2006 school year, and the regulation applies to all schools that participate in the federal school lunch program, which provides free and reduced-price meals to low-income children. That's essentially all public schools, and about half of the nation's 60 million students eat lunches prepared at school.

What does your doctor sell out for?
Posted by Heather Gehlert on March 1, 2007 at 1:17 PM.

How much influence could a free pen have over what medication your doctor prescribes for you? What about a cup of coffee? A couple of baseball tickets? A couple of baseball tickets from a 20-something woman wearing a short skirt and Rembrandt smile?

Think about it because the drug industry is. And they're convinced these gifts work otherwise they probably wouldn't have approximately four drug sales representatives for every doctor. Or spend twice as much on marketing as they do on research and development. Or have two drug lobbyists for every legislator in Washington.

None of this would be a problem if the drugs worked well, were safe and didn't cost much. But a new documentary from Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau called Money Talks: Profits Before Patient Safety shows that's far from the case.

After all, there's no need to heavily market a cheap drug with known benefits (e.g. Aspirin), and, I'm guessing a cure for cancer would sell itself.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Healthy Crisco?
Posted by Heather Gehlert on February 16, 2007 at 4:32 PM.

Smuckers, the manufacturer of Crisco, announced last month that it will be eliminating nearly all trans fat from its shortening.

According to an article in Consumer Reports, each 1-tablespoon serving of Crisco shortening "will contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fat, instead of its original 1.5 grams."

This is big news considering Crisco pioneered the development of industrially created trans fat. Although some trans fat occurs naturally (in cow milk, for example), most of today's trans fats are the byproduct of partially hydrogenating plant oils -- a process that, according to Wikipedia, was developed in the early 20th century and became commercialized in 1911 with the introduction of Crisco.

Before they became linked to coronary heart disease, partially hydrogenated oils were wildly popular because they are handy for baking and can help increase a product's shelf life.

The Consumer Reports article states that the new Crisco is still just as effective for baking and tastes pretty much the same:

To see just how well the new shortening stacked up against the older one, Consumer Reports' testers baked two blueberry pies, using both formulations. Crumb for crumb, they found the two desserts to be practically interchangeable: Both formulations produced crusts that were flaky, had a mild flavor, and were relatively easy to work with.

But, trans fat or not, the reformulated Crisco is not exactly healthy. Each serving still contains 3 grams of saturated fat.

And Crisco's new labels may be misleading to consumers. Although the reformulated Crisco still has small amounts of artery-clogging trans fat, the company can now claim zero grams of trans fat on its product labels because the FDA only requires manufacturers to disclose trans fat if the amount exceeds 0.5 grams per serving.

A new option makes DSL and cable look like chopped liver
Posted by Heather Gehlert on February 4, 2007 at 2:53 PM.

A new option in Internet service -- fiber-optic broadband -- is making cable look about as antiquated as dial-up. Called FiOS, the service is much faster and, perhaps more important, offers consumers more choice in a not-so-competitive marketplace.

According to an article in the February 2007 issue of Consumer Reports Magazine, fiber-optic broadband outperforms cable, DSL, satellite broadband and dial-up in speed, reliability and tech support. But the most notable difference is in speed.

For example, a 5-megabyte MP3 file takes about 33 seconds to download using low-cost DSL. That same file takes 10 seconds to download with cable and only 1 second with fiber. A 50-megabyte file containing digital photos takes 5.5 minutes with DSL, 1.7 minutes with cable and 10 seconds with fiber.

The larger the file, the bigger the difference. A 5-gigabyte high-definition movie takes 9 hours to download with low-cost DSL, 2.8 hours with cable and only 17 minutes with fiber.

Most users probably don't need that kind of speed right now, but it's something to consider if you often download large video or sound files. And fast Internet will likely only increase in demand as the Web houses more downloadable files.

The fiber service is offered only by Verizon and is pricier than its competitors. However, the very threat of competition to cable and phone companies could help drive down costs. Already, cable has lowered the price of its broadband in markets where Verizon has moved in.

It's probably too soon to tell exactly what kind of effect fiber will have. Right now, it's only available in approximately 6 million homes in the United States.

More choice in broadband will probably take years before becoming available to the masses. Besides fiber, Consumer Reports says future possibilities include "Internet service over power lines and independent wireless systems that can beam the signal across cities."

To find out what services and providers are in your area, check out www.dslreports.com/prequal.

What happens to your emails when you die?
Posted by Heather Gehlert on January 26, 2007 at 1:38 PM.

According to articles in Forbes and Foreign Policy magazine, estate planners are advising their clients to include emails and online passwords in their wills. Without these provisions, online service providers will not grant family or friends access to digital property, some of which could be valuable.

The Foreign Policy article states that, more and more, these cases are landing in court:

In 2005, a Michigan judge ordered Yahoo! to release the emails of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq to his family after they filed suit. Chris Sprigman, a University of Virginia law professor, says that's just the beginning. "There will be a flood of these cases cropping up," he says.

These cases can be sticky because unlike traditional assets, digital property does not have laws to point to, only agreements.

Forbes lists these basic differences between traditional and digital assets:

• Digital assets can be created and defined by contract.
• Some digital assets are subject to intellectual property law.
• Many digital assets can be endlessly duplicated.
• Digital assets may be stored in a tangible asset such as a computer and therefore may affect the value of the machine.
• In general, digital assets are licensed, not sold, and rights usually aren't transferable.

New laws are emerging to govern digital property, but they lag behind the breakneck speed of technology.

In the meantime, here are some tips from Forbes to help you protect your digital assets:

Separate personal and business e-mail accounts, even if this means opening up several Yahoo! Mail, Microsoft Hotmail or Google Gmail accounts. Make the addresses and passwords known to your executor or anyone who will need the information after your death. If a file contains sensitive information you wish to keep confidential, make arrangements to have your executor delete it after your death.

Make plans in advance for joint access to vital e-mail accounts and information stored online or protected by a password in a computer. Leave a list of the locations of such information with your executor. This can be as simple as writing things down, sealing it in an envelope and marking it "To Be Opened Upon My Death."

Save all contracts covering the handling of your digital assets. This will help your lawyer sort things out if things get sticky.

In financial matters, balance personal security with the needs of your heirs. Protect your encrypted information, but make sure a trusted person can locate it and handle it as you wished after your death.

Make provisions to renew key URLs after your death because you don't want to lose www.familybiz.com simply because a family member didn't know it was time to re-up. It's unclear that a URL is property that a secured creditor can seize, but in the meantime be sure all fees are paid after your death.