RUTHFULLY YOURS

THIS IS THE MOST SENSIBLE PUBLIC HEALTH ORGANIZATION …..RSK

AMERICAN COUNCIL ON SCIENCE AND HEALTH

 

NYC’s Plan for Student Health: Take Away Food

New vending machine contracts for New York City public schools are expected to be approved today. The contracts come with numerous restrictions ostensibly designed to promote healthier choices for students.

“This is an amazing story,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “No artificially sweetened drinks allowed. Sodium in snacks will also be restricted to 200 mg. I’m not advocating a high-sodium diet, but 200 mg is ridiculous. They go on to say that calories from fat and sugar will be restricted, as though they are worse than other calories in general. Most importantly, previous vending machine contracts brought in $35 million of revenue for the schools, so they’re going to take a serious financial hit. They were already restricting physical education and athletics programs because they were underfunded. I assume they are taking these steps to try and address the obesity epidemic, but they don’t even consider the importance of exercise. This wrongheaded and unscientific new policy will be more likely to hinder rather than aid the fight against obesity in our kids.”

H1N1 Myths

According to the New York Times, officials are attempting to debunk several common rumors about the H1N1 flu since the vaccine became available yesterday: “Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an afternoon news conference that the most common misperceptions are that this flu should ever be called a ‘mild disease,’ that the vaccine is untested, and that it has arrived too late.”

“Dr. Frieden is right about all three of these points,” says Dr. Ross. “Like any other flu, the novel H1N1 can be mild, but it can also be severe or fatal. We just don’t yet know how serious it will be. The same production methods and testing procedures have been used for this vaccine as have always been used for the seasonal flu vaccine. It has been tested on thousands and thousands of people, and it is safe. While it is unfortunate that it was not available earlier, it is far from ‘too late’ to make a difference. A large majority of the population has not been exposed to this virus yet.”

Attack of the Herbicide

Charles Duhigg of the New York Times could barely contain his giddiness at the opportunity to revisit the subject of the herbicide atrazine and its habit of being present in drinking water in insignificant quantities. You may recall that Dr. Whelan already addressed his previous false alarm on the issue. Apparently, the EPA is second-guessing itself, because Duhigg reports today that they have agreed to study atrazine extensively all over again.

“This is obviously based on the recent scare report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Charles Duhigg’s headline emblazoned on the front page of the New York Times in August,” says Dr. Ross. “The EPA is feeling pressure from activist groups and has decided to kowtow to their demands and conduct more tests. The facts remain that atrazine is the most common herbicide, it has been used for fifty years and studied numerous times, and the EPA has already said that it is safe when used as approved. But now that the EPA is flush with cash, they will study it again at behest of the NRDC and the New York Times. I predict their findings will duplicate the previous findings of the EPA and numerous other studies and determine once again that atrazine is safe as it is currently used.”

American Council on Science and Health