Policymakers have eagerly promoted walking and bicycle riding as a way to get healthy exercise while reducing traffic congestion, air pollution and carbon emissions. But those activities are becoming increasingly dangerous in America.
More than 6,200 pedestrians were killed by traffic collisions in 2018, the last year for which federal statistics are available, continuing the rising trend of recent years.
With the U.S. increasingly dependent on foreign manufacturers for prescription and generic drugs, the Food and Drug Administration’s problem-plagued efforts to inspect overseas plants is under growing scrutiny. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office has raised serious concerns about the FDA’s foreign inspection program and whether it’s allowing overseas drug makers to conceal unsafe practices.
Air pollution is known to be a serious health risk –a cause of asthma, heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and a factor, according to the World Health Organization, in an estimated seven million deaths worldwide every year. A growing body of research suggests air pollution may also be harming our brains.
In recent years, new areas of study have opened up into how air pollution might affect our minds and the way we think and feel.
It’s been denounced as a dangerous snake oil remedy – akin to drinking bleach. It has caused at least two deaths and a number of serious injuries, and one of its marketers went to prison.
But nearly 10 years after the Food and Drug Administration first warned consumers about the dangers of Miracle Mineral Solution – which promises to cure everything from cancer to HIV/AIDS to the flu to autism – people are still taking it, and their numbers appear on the rise.
There is a broad scientific consensus that alcohol is a carcinogen, and that even moderate drinking increases one’s chances of getting cancer. But surveys show that most Americans remain unaware of that fact.
Now a coalition of consumer and public health groups have launched a long shot effort to put a cancer warning on alcohol bottles and cans.
