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Tag: carcinogens

  • Is Aflatoxin a Concern? | NutritionFacts.org

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    Is “toxic mold syndrome” a real thing? What do we do about toxic mold contamination of food?

    In recent years, mold has been blamed for all sorts of “vague and subjective” symptoms, but we have little scientific evidence that mold should be implicated. However, this “concept of toxic mold syndrome has permeated the public consciousness,” perpetuated by disreputable predatory practices of those making money testing homes for mold spores or testing people’s urine or blood. But all these tests are said to “further propagate misinformation and inflict unnecessary and often exorbitant costs on patients desperate for a clinical diagnosis, right or wrong, for their constellation of maladies…The continued belief in this myth is perpetuated by those charlatans who believe that measles vaccines cause autism, that homeopathy works, that fluoride in the water should be removed….”

    Mold toxin contamination of food, however, has emerged as a legitimate issue of serious concern, and mycotoxins are perhaps even more important than other contaminants that might make their way into the food supply. Hundreds of different types have been identified, but only one has been classified as a known human carcinogen, and that’s aflatoxin. The ochratoxin I’ve previously discussed is a possible human carcinogen, but we know aflatoxin causes cancer in human beings. In fact, aflatoxins are amongst the most powerful known carcinogens.

    It has been estimated that about a fifth of all liver cancer cases may be attributable to aflatoxins. “Since liver cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and mortality rapidly follows diagnosis, the contribution of aflatoxins to this deadly cancer is significant.” And once aflatoxin makes it into the food, there is almost nothing we can do to remove it. Cooking, for example, doesn’t help. Indeed, as shown below and at 1:50 in my video Should We Be Concerned About Aflatoxin?, once it makes it into crops or into the meat, dairy, and eggs from animals consuming those crops, it’s too late. So, we have to prevent contamination in the first place, which is what we’ve been doing for decades in the United States. Because of government regulations, “companies in developed countries…are ‘always sampling’ for aflatoxin,” resulting in nearly $1 billion in losses every year. That may get even worse if climate change exacerbates aflatoxin contamination in the Midwest Corn Belt.

    So, on a consumer level, it is more of a public health problem in the less industrialized world, such as in African countries, where conditions are ripe and farmers can’t afford to throw away $1 billion in contaminated crops. Aflatoxin remains a public health threat in Africa, Southeast Asia, and rural China, affecting more than half of humanity. This explains why the prevalence of liver cancer in those areas may be 30 times higher, yet it is not a major problem in the United States or Europe.

    Only about 1% of Americans have detectable levels of aflatoxins in their bloodstream. Why not 0%? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration works to ensure that levels of exposure to these toxins are kept as low as practical, not as low as possible. In California, for instance, there has been an increase in “unacceptable aflatoxin levels” in pistachios, almonds, and figs. Unacceptable in Europe, that is, so it affects our ability to export, but not necessarily unacceptable for U.S. consumers, as we allow twice as much aflatoxin contamination.

    Figs are unique since they’re “allowed to fully ripen and semidry on the tree.” This makes them “particularly susceptible to aflatoxin production.” It would be interesting to know about the fig-consuming habits of the 1% of Americans who were positive for the toxin. If figs were to blame, I’d encourage people to diversify their dried fruit consumption, but nuts are so good for us that we really want to keep them in our diets. The cardiovascular health benefits we get from nuts outweigh their carcinogenic effects; nut consumption prevents thousands of strokes and heart attacks for every one case of liver cancer. “Thus, the population health benefits provided by increased nut consumption clearly outweigh the risks associated with increased aflatoxin B1 exposure.”

    So, we’re left with aflatoxin being mostly a problem in the developing world, and, because of that, it “remains a largely and rather shamefully ignored global health issue….” Where attention has been paid, it has been largely driven by the need to meet stringent import regulations on mycotoxin contamination in the richer nations of the world, rather than to protect the billions of people exposed on a daily basis.

    Doctor’s Note

    This is the last video in a four-part series on mold toxins. If you missed the others, check the related posts below. 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Are the Effects of Ochratoxin Concerning? | NutritionFacts.org

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    The overall cost-benefit ratio for mycotoxins depends on which food is contaminated.

    Ochratoxin has been described as toxic to the immune system, developing fetus, kidneys, and nervous system, as well as being carcinogenic, but that is in animal studies. Ochratoxin “causes kidney toxicity in certain animal species, but there is little documented evidence of adverse effects in humans.” That’s why it’s only considered a possible human carcinogen.

    Big Ag assures that current ochratoxin levels are safe, even among those who eat a lot of contaminated foods. The worst-case scenario may be young children eating a lot of oat-based cereals, but, even then, “their lifetime cancer risk is negligible.” Individuals arguing against regulatory standards suggest we can eat more than 42 cups of oatmeal a day and not worry about it. Where do they get these kinds of estimates?

    They determine the so-called benchmark dose in animals—the dose of the toxin that gives a 10% increase in pathology—then, because one would want to err on the side of caution, divide that dose by 500 as a kind of safety fudge factor to develop the tolerable daily intake. For cancer risk, you can find the tumor dose—the dose that increases tumor incidence in lab animals by 5%—and extrapolate down to the ”negligible cancer risk intake,” effectively incorporating a 5,000-fold safety factor, as seen below and at 1:28 in my video Should We Be Concerned About the Effects of Ochratoxin?.

    It seems kind of arbitrary, right? But what else are you going to do? You can’t just intentionally feed people the stuff and see what happens—but people eat it regularly. Can we just follow people and their diets over time and see if those who eat more whole grains, like oats, for example, are more likely to have cancer or live shorter lives?

    What is the association between whole grain intake and all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality? Every additional ounce of whole grains eaten a day is associated with not only a lower risk for cancer mortality but also a lower risk of dying from all causes put together. Below and at 2:05 in my video are findings from all the big cancer studies. Every single one trended towards lower cancer risk.

    The bottom line is that you don’t find adverse effects confirmed in these population studies. This is not to say ochratoxin is necessarily harmless, but “any such risk does not outweigh the known benefits of wholegrain consumption.” In fact, healthy constituents of the whole grains themselves, like their antioxidants, may directly reduce the impacts of mycotoxins by protecting cells from damage. So, eating lots of fruits and vegetables may also help. Either way, “an overall healthy diet can play a significant role in mitigating the risk of contaminants in grain.”

    In summary, healthy foods like whole grains are good, but just not as good as they could be because of ochratoxin, whereas less healthful foods, like wine and pork, are worse because of the mycotoxin, as shown below and at 2:52 in my video. Ochratoxin was detected, for example, in 44% of tested pork.

    Doctor’s Note

    This is the third video in a four-part series on mold toxins. If you missed the first two, see Ochratoxin in Breakfast Cereals and Friday Favorites: Ochratoxin and Breakfast Cereals, Herbs, Spices, and Wine.

    Should We Be Concerned About Aflatoxin? is coming up next.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Are Raw Mushrooms Safe to Eat?  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Microwaving is probably the most efficient way to reduce agaritine levels in fresh mushrooms.

    There is a toxin in plain white button mushrooms called agaritine, which may be carcinogenic. Plain white button mushrooms grow to be cremini (brown) mushrooms, and cremini mushrooms grow to be portobello mushrooms. They’re all the very same mushroom, similar to how green bell peppers are just unripe red bell peppers. The amount of agaritine in these mushrooms can be reduced through cooking: Frying, microwaving, boiling, and even just freezing and thawing lower the levels. “It is therefore recommended to process/cook Button Mushroom before consumption,” something I noted in a video that’s now more than a decade old.

    However, as shown below and at 0:51 in my video Is It Safe to Eat Raw Mushrooms?, if you look at the various cooking methods, the agaritine in these mushrooms isn’t completely destroyed. Take dry baking, for example: Baking for ten minutes at about 400° Fahrenheit (“a process similar to pizza baking”) only cuts the agaritine levels by about a quarter, so 77 percent still remains.

    Boiling looks better, appearing to wipe out more than half the toxin after just five minutes, but the agaritine isn’t actually eliminated. Instead, it’s just transferred to the cooking water. So, levels within the mushrooms drop by about half at five minutes and by 90 percent after an hour, but that’s mostly because the agartine is leaching into the broth. So, if you’re making soup, for instance, five minutes of boiling is no more effective than dry baking for ten minutes, and, even after an hour, about half still remains.

    Frying for five to ten minutes eliminates a lot of agartine, but microwaving is not only a more healthful way to cook, but it works even better, as you can see here and at 1:39 in my video. Researchers found that just one minute in the microwave “reduced the agaritine content of the mushrooms by 65%,” and only 30 seconds of microwaving eliminated more than 50 percent. So, microwaving is probably the easiest way to reduce agaritine levels in fresh mushrooms. 
    My technique is to add dried mushrooms into the pasta water when I’m making spaghetti. Between the reductions of 20 percent or so from the drying and 60 percent or so from boiling for ten minutes and straining, more than 90 percent of agaritine is eliminated.

    Should we be concerned about the residual agaritine? According to a review funded by the mushroom industry, not at all. “The available evidence to date suggests that agaritine from consumption of…mushrooms poses no known toxicological risk to healthy humans.” The researchers acknowledge agartine is considered a potential carcinogen in mice, but then that data needs to be extrapolated to human health outcomes.

    The Swiss Institute of Technology, for example, estimated that the average mushroom consumption in the country would be expected to cause about two cases of cancer per one hundred thousand people. That is similar to consumption in the United States, as seen below and at 3:00 in my video, so “one could theoretically expect about 20 cancer deaths per 1 x 106 [one million] lives from mushroom consumption.” In comparison, typically, with a new chemical, pesticide, or food additive, we’d like to see the cancer risk lower than one in a million. “By this approach, the average mushroom consumption of Switzerland is 20-fold too high to be acceptable. To remain under the limit”—and keep risk down to one in a million—“‘mushroom lovers’ would have to restrict their consumption of mushrooms to one 50-g serving every 250 days!” That’s about a half-cup serving once in just over eight months. To put that into perspective, even if you were eating a single serving every single day, the resulting additional cancer risk would only be about one in ten thousand. “Put another way, if 10,000 people consumed a mushroom meal daily for 70 years, then in addition to the 3000 cancer cases arising from other factors, one more case could be attributed to consuming mushrooms.” 
    But, again, this is all based “on the presumption that results in such mouse models are equally valid in humans.” Indeed, this is all just extrapolating from mice data. What we need is a huge prospective study to examine the association between mushroom consumption and cancer risk in humans, but there weren’t any such studies—until now.

    Researchers titled their paper: “Mushroom Consumption and Risk of Total and Site-Specific Cancer in Two Large U.S. [Harvard] Prospective Cohorts” and found “no association between mushroom consumption and total and site-specific cancers in U.S. women and men.”

    Eating raw or undercooked shiitake mushrooms can cause something else, though: shiitake mushroom flagellate dermatitis. Flagellate as in flagellation, whipping, flogging. Below and at 4:48 in my video, you can see a rash that makes it look as if you’ve been whipped.

    Here and at 4:58 in my video is another photo of the rash. It’s thought to be caused by a compound in shiitake mushrooms called lentinan, but because heat denatures it, it only seems to be a problem with raw or undercooked mushrooms.

    Now, it is rare. Only about 1 in 50 people are even susceptible, and it goes away on its own in a week or two. Interestingly, it can strike as many as ten days after eating shiitake mushrooms, which is why people may not make the connection. One unfortunate man suffered on and off for 16 years before a diagnosis. Hopefully, a lot of doctors will watch this video, and if they ever see a rash like this, they’ll tell their patients to cook their shiitakes.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Eating to Downregulate a Gene for Metastatic Cancer  | NutritionFacts.org

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    Women with breast cancer should include the “liberal culinary use of cruciferous vegetables.”

    Both the Women’s Intervention Nutrition Study and the Women’s Health Initiative study showed that women randomized to a lower-fat diet enjoyed improved breast cancer survival. However, in the Women’s Healthy Eating and Living Study, women with breast cancer were also randomized to drop their fat intake down to 15 to 20 percent of calories, yet there was no difference in breast cancer relapse or death after seven years.

    Any time there’s an unexpected result, you must question whether the participants actually followed through with study instructions. For instance, if you randomized people to stop smoking and they ended up with the same lung cancer rates as those in the group who weren’t instructed to quit, one likely explanation is that the group told to stop smoking didn’t actually stop. In the Women’s Healthy Eating and Living Study, both the dietary intervention group and the control group started out at about 30 percent of calories from fat. Then, the diet group was told to lower their fat intake to 15 to 20 percent of calories. By the end of the study, they had in fact gone from 28.5 percent fat to 28.9 percent fat, as you can see below and at 1:16 in my video The Food That Can Downregulate a Metastatic Cancer Gene. They didn’t even reduce their fat intake. No wonder they didn’t experience any breast cancer benefit. 

    When you put together all the trials on the effect of lower-fat diets on breast cancer survival, even including that flawed study, you see a reduced risk of breast cancer relapse and a reduced risk of death. In conclusion, going on a low-fat diet after a breast cancer diagnosis “can improve breast cancer survival by reducing the risk of recurrence.” We may now know why: by targeting metastasis-initiating cancer cells through the fat receptor CD36.

    We know that the cancer-spreading receptor is upregulated by saturated fat. Is there anything in our diet that can downregulate it? Broccoli.

    Broccoli appears to decrease CD36 expression by as much as 35 percent (in mice). Of all fruits and vegetables, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli were the only ones associated with significantly less total risk of cancer and not just getting cancer in the first place, as you can see here and at 2:19 in my video.

    Those with bladder cancer who eat broccoli also appear to live longer than those who don’t, and those with lung cancer who eat more cruciferous veggies appear to survive longer, too.

    For example, as you can see below and at 2:45 in my video, one year out, about 75 percent of lung cancer patients eating more than one serving of cruciferous vegetables a day were still alive (the top line in red), whereas, by then, most who had been getting less than half a serving a day had already died from their cancer (the bottom line in green).

    Ovarian cancer, too. Intake of cruciferous vegetables “significantly favored survival,” whereas “a survival disadvantage was shown for meats.” Milk also appeared to double the risk of dying. Below and at 3:21 in my video are the survival graphs. Eight years out, about 40 percent of ovarian cancer patients who averaged meat or milk every day were deceased (the boldest line, on the bottom), compared to only about 20 percent who had meat or milk only a few times a week at most (the faintest line, on the top). 

    Now, it could be that the fat and cholesterol in meat increased circulating estrogen levels, or it could be because of meat’s growth hormones or all its carcinogens. And galactose, the sugar naturally found in milk, may be directly toxic to the ovary. Dairy has all its hormones, too. However, the lowering of risk with broccoli and the increasing of risk with meat and dairy are also consistent with the CD36 mechanism of cancer spread.

    Researchers put it to the test in patients with advanced pancreatic cancer who were given pulverized broccoli sprouts or a placebo. The average death rate was lower in the broccoli sprout group compared to the placebo group. After a month, 18 percent of the placebo group had died, but none in the broccoli group. By three months, another 25 percent of the placebo group had died, but still not a single death in the broccoli group. And by six months, 43 percent of the remaining patients in the placebo group were deceased, along with the first 25 percent of the broccoli group. Unfortunately, even though the capsules for both groups looked the same, “true blinding was not possible,” and the patients knew which group they were in “because the pulverized broccoli sprouts could be easily distinguished from the methylcellulose [placebo] through their characteristic smell and taste.” So, we can’t discount the placebo effect. What’s more, the study participants weren’t properly randomized “because many of the patients refused to participate unless they were placed into the [active] treatment group.” That’s understandable, but it makes for a less rigorous result. A little broccoli can’t hurt, though, and it may help. It’s the lack of downsides of broccoli consumption that leads to “Advising Women Undergoing Treatment for Breast Cancer” to include the “liberal culinary use of cruciferous vegetables,” for example.

    It’s the same for reducing saturated fat. The title of an editorial in a journal of the National Cancer Institute asked: “Is It Time to Give Breast Cancer Patients a Prescription for a Low-Fat Diet?” “Although counseling women to consume a healthy diet after breast cancer diagnosis is certainly warranted for general health, the existing data still fall a bit short of proving this will help reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence and mortality.” But what do we have to lose? After all, it’s still certainly warranted for general health.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Chemical Safety, Cultivated Meat, and Our Health  | NutritionFacts.org

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    More than 95 percent of human exposure to industrial pollutants like dioxins and PCBs comes from fish, other meat, and dairy.

    By cultivating muscle meat directly, without associated organs like intestines, the incidence of foodborne diseases “could be significantly reduced,” as could exposure to antibiotics, “pesticides, arsenic, dioxins, and hormones associated with conventional meat.” Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved seven hormone drugs to bulk up the production of milk and meat. “In the European Union, there exists a total ban on such use,” however. Even without injected hormones, though, animal products naturally have hormones because they come from animals. “Eggs, example given, contribute more to the dietary intake of estradiol [estrogens] than beef, whether the animal is legally treated with hormones or not.” After all, eggs come straight from a hen’s ovaries, so, of course, they’re swimming with hormones. But if you’re directly growing just muscle meat or egg white protein, you don’t need to include reproductive organs, adrenal glands, or any of the associated hormones.

    “Chemical safety is another concern for meat produced under current production systems.” There are chemical toxicants and industrial pollutants that build up in the food chain, such as pesticides, PCBs, heavy metals, and flame retardants, but there is no food chain with cultivated meat. We could produce all the tuna we wanted, with zero mercury.

    When the World Health Organization determined that processed meat was a known human carcinogen and unprocessed meat a probable human carcinogen, it wasn’t even talking about the carcinogenic environmental pollutants. When researchers tested retail meat for the presence of “33 chemicals with calculated carcinogenic potential,” like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides like DDT, and dioxin-like PCBs, they concluded that, in order to reduce the risk of cancer, we should limit beef, pork, or chicken consumption to a maximum of five servings a month.

    Why cultivate meat at all when you can just buy organic? Surprisingly, “consumption of organic meat does not diminish the carcinogenic potential associated with the intake of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).” A number of studies have recently compared the presence of environmental contaminants in organic meat versus conventional meat, and the researchers found, surprisingly, that organic meat was sometimes more contaminated. Not only organic beef either. Higher levels were also found in pork and poultry.

    If you look at the micropollutants and chemical residues in both organic and conventional meat, several environmental contaminants, including dioxins, PCBs, lead, and arsenic, were measured at significantly higher levels in the organic samples. As you can see below and at 2:56 in my video, The Human Health Effects of Cultivated Meat: Chemical Safety, the green is organic meat, and the blue is conventional. 

    Cooking helps to draw off some of the fat where the PCBs are concentrated, as shown here and at 3:01.

    Seafood seems to be an exception. Steaming, for example, generally increases contaminant levels, increasing contaminant exposure and concentrating mercury levels as much as 47 percent, as you can see here and at 3:15 in my video. Better not to have toxic buildup in the first place.

    More than 95 percent of human exposure to industrial pollutants like dioxins and PCBs comes from foods like meat, including fatty fish, and dairy, but the pollutants don’t appear magically. The only way the chicken, fish, and other meat lead to human exposure is because the animals themselves built up a lifetime of exposure in our polluted world, from incinerators, power plants, sewer sludge, and on and on, as you can see here and at 3:40 in my video.

    Unlike conventional meat production, a slaughter-free harvest would not only mean no more infected animals, but no more contaminated animals either. In terms of pollutants, it would be like taking a time machine back before the Industrial Revolution.

    Doctor’s Note:

    Cultivated meat means less contamination with fecal residues, toxic pollutants, antibiotics, and hormones; up to 99 percent less environmental impact; and zero pandemic risk. Cultivated meat allows people to have their meat and eat it, too, without affecting the rest of us.

    This is the final video in this cultivated meat series. If you missed the first two, check out the videos on Food Safety and Antibiotic Resistance.

    I previously did a video series on plant-based meats; see the related posts below.

    All videos in the plant-based meat series are also available in a digital download from a webinar I did. SeeThe Human Health Implications of Plant-Based and Cultivated Meat for Pandemic Prevention and Climate Mitigation.

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Is Stainless Steel or Cast Iron Cookware Best? Is Teflon Safe? | NutritionFacts.org

    Is Stainless Steel or Cast Iron Cookware Best? Is Teflon Safe? | NutritionFacts.org

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    What is the best type of pots and pans to use?

    In my last video, I expressed concerns about the use of aluminum cookware. So, what’s the best type of pots and pans to use? As I discuss in my video Stainless Steel or Cast Iron: Which Cookware Is Best? Is Teflon Safe?, stainless steel is an excellent option. It’s the metal chosen for use “in applications where safety and hygiene are considered to be of the utmost importance, such as kitchenware.” But what about studies showing that the nickel and chromium in stainless steel, which keeps the iron in stainless unstained by rust, can leach into foods during cooking? The leaching only seems to occur when the cookware is brand new. “Metal leaching decreases with sequential cooking cycles and stabilizes after the sixth cooking cycle,” after the sixth time you cook with it. Under more common day-to-day conditions, the use of stainless steel pots is considered to be safe even for most people who are acutely sensitive to those metals. 

    A little leaching metal can even be a good thing in the case of straight iron, like a cast iron skillet, which can have the “beneficial effect” of helping to improve iron status and potentially reduce the incidence of iron deficiency anemia among children and women of reproductive age. The only caveat is that you don’t want to fry in cast iron. Frying isn’t healthy regardless of cookware type, but, at hot temperatures, vegetable oil can react with the iron to create trans fats. 

    What about using nonstick pans? Teflon, also known as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), “is used as an inner coating material in nonstick cookware.” Teflon’s dark history was the subject of a 2019 movie called Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway. Employees in DuPont’s Teflon division started giving birth to babies with deformities before “DuPont removed all female staff” from the unit. Of course, the corporation buried it all, hiding it from regulators and the public. “Despite this significant history of industry knowledge” about how toxic some of the chemicals used to make Teflon were, it was able to keep it hidden until, eventually, it was forced to settle for more than half a billion dollars after one of the chemicals was linked to “kidney and testicular cancers, pregnancy-induced hypertension, ulcerative colitis, and high cholesterol.”

    “At normal cooking temperatures, PTFE-coated cookware releases various gases and chemicals that present mild to severe toxicity.” As you can see below and at 2:38 in my video, different gases are released at different temperatures, and their toxic effects have been documented. 

    You’ve heard of “canaries in the coal mine”? This is more like “canaries in the kitchen, as cooking with Teflon cookware is well known to kill pet birds,” and Teflon-coated heat lamp bulbs can wipe out half a flock of chickens. 

    “Apart from the gases released during heating the cooking pans, the coating itself starts damaging after a certain period. It is normally advised to use slow heating when cooking in Teflon-coated pans,” but you can imagine how consumers might ignore that. And, if you aren’t careful, some of the Teflon can start chipping off and make its way into the food, though the effects of ingestion are unknown.

    I could find only one study that looks at the potential human health effects of cooking with nonstick pots and pans. Researchers found that the use of nonstick cookware was associated with about a 50 percent increased risk of colorectal cancer, but that may be because of what they were cooking. “Non-stick cookware is used in hazardous cooking methods (i.e. broiling, frying, grilling or barbecuing) at high temperatures mainly for meat, poultry or fish,” in which carcinogenic heterocyclic amines (HCA) are formed from the animal protein. Then, the animal fat can produce another class of carcinogens called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Though it’s possible it was the Teflon itself, which contains suspected carcinogens like that C8 compound from the movie Dark Waters, also known as PFOA, perfluorooctanoic acid.

    “Due to toxicity concerns, PFOA has been replaced with other chemicals such as GenX, but these new alternatives are also suspected to have similar toxicity.” We’ve already so contaminated the Earth with it, though, that we can get it prepackaged in food before it’s even cooked, particularly in dairy products, fish, and other meat; now, “meat is the main source of human exposure” to these toxic pollutants. Of those, seafood is the worst. In a study of diets from around the world, fish and other seafood were “major contributors” of the perfluoroalkyl substances, as expected, given that everything eventually flows into the sea. Though the aquatic food chain is the “primary transfer mechanism” for these toxins into the human diet, “food stored or prepared in greaseproof packaging materials,” like microwave popcorn, may also be a source. 

    In 2019, Oral-B Glide dental floss was tested. Six out of 18 dental floss products researchers tested showed evidence of Teflon-type compounds. Did those who used those kinds of floss end up with higher levels in their bloodstream? Yes, apparently so. Higher levels of perfluorohexanesulfonic acid were found in Oral-B Glide flossers, as you can see below and at 5:28 in my video.

    There are a lot of environmental exposures in the modern world we can’t avoid, but we shouldn’t make things worse by adding them to consumer products. At least we have some power to “lower [our] personal exposure to these harmful chemicals.”

    This is the second in a three-video series on cookware. The first was Are Aluminum Pots, Bottles, and Foil Safe?, and the next is Are Melamine Dishes and Polyamide Plastic Utensils Safe?.

    What about pressure cooking? I covered that in Does Pressure Cooking Preserve Nutrients?.

    So, what is the safest way to prepare meat? See Carcinogens in Meat. 

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    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Report Finds Tobacco Industry Aware Of Harmful Effects Of Flicking Lit Cigarette Into Giant Trail Of Gasoline For Years

    Report Finds Tobacco Industry Aware Of Harmful Effects Of Flicking Lit Cigarette Into Giant Trail Of Gasoline For Years

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    BETHESDA, MD—According to a new report released Friday by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the tobacco industry knew about the harmful effects of flicking a lit cigarette into a giant trail of gasoline for years, but chose to remain quiet. “For decades, Big Tobacco knew that tossing just one lit cigarette a day onto a puddle of gasoline could cause massively averse health risks, yet they deliberately concealed that knowledge,” said report coauthor Gregory Cordova, who accused the industry of conspiring as early as 1959 to bury evidence that using their products to ignite a pool of gasoline, causing an entire city block to explode could be detrimental to consumers’ health. “Internal documents show the tobacco lobby funded their own studies attempting to prove that setting a pool of gas on fire with a cigarette was not only safe, but good for you. They even advertised to children, creating ads that depicted Joe Camel saying, “Sayonara, suckers!” while tossing a cigarette over his shoulder into a room doused in gasoline.” At press time, the National Institutes of Health were questioning how long the processed food industry had known that cyanide capsules could be dissolved in sugary soft drinks.

    Inspiring! Big Tobacco Execs Celebrate Teen Vaping With Epic PR Song

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  • Juul To Pay $462 Million For Its Role In Rise Of Underage Vaping

    Juul To Pay $462 Million For Its Role In Rise Of Underage Vaping

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    E-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. agreed to pay $462 million to settle claims by six U.S. states that it unlawfully marketed its addictive products to minors. What do you think?

    “They’ll have to market to a lot more kids to pay for this.”

    Joshua Meyer, Aviary Guard

    Inspiring! Big Tobacco Execs Celebrate Teen Vaping With Epic PR Song

    “Damn. I never would have made my kid quit if I knew there was going to be such a big payout.”

    Cleo Yardley, Bayonet Cleaner

    “Good. No company makes my kid look like a douchebag and gets away with it.”

    Anthony Champlin, Unemployed

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  • Emergency Technical Decon and Cool Clean Technologies Confirm Removal of Lithium From Firefighter Protective Clothing With CO2+ Cleaning Technology

    Emergency Technical Decon and Cool Clean Technologies Confirm Removal of Lithium From Firefighter Protective Clothing With CO2+ Cleaning Technology

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    EAGAN, Minn., April 4, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Emergency Technical Decon (ETD), a state-of-the-art cleaning solution provider tackling the high firefighter occupational cancer rates, in partnership with Cool Clean Technologies, a solution provider of liquid CO2 technology innovations, today released findings of a preliminary study investigating the removal of lithium residue or lithium-ion batteries (LIB) fire contamination from firefighter protective clothing using CO2+ cleaning technology.

    LIB fires generate a range of toxic combustion products, including but not limited to acids, soot, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), toxic gases, and metals such as cobalt and lithium products. As green technology’s presence increases and new solutions requiring lithium-ion batteries come to market, so do fire-related incidents surrounding their existence in communities. 

    Following protocols developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), ETD in conjunction with Cool Clean Technologies conducted a preliminary test to evaluate lithium removal efficiencies using CO2+ cleaning technology. The technology uses liquid CO2 with environmentally friendly cleaning proprietary detergents, which has been demonstrated to remove a wide range of hazardous residues from firefighter gear. The results proved successful, with an average lithium removal rate of about 80% from test samples.

    “We’re excited that the fire service finally has an option to address contamination from electric vehicle- and battery-related incidents and similar calls,” said Emergency Technical Decon President Mike Duyck. “Firefighters are responding to fires involving these technologies at a rapidly increasing rate with, until now, no solution that significantly removes these carcinogens from their protective gear. Water extractor washing techniques were failing, so we knew we had to push to find a solution quickly.”

    Using these test results as a baseline, ETD and Cool Clean Technologies look forward to continued innovation that increases the effectiveness of the removal of carcinogens and toxins with the aid of CO2+ technologies. 

    “We are pleased with the results of this first lithium removal study showing significant toxic residue removal from firefighter gear exposed to lithium-ion battery combustion products,” said Cool Clean Technologies R&D Director Nelson Sorbo, Ph.D. “As with other toxic compound removal capabilities, the goal is to reach complete decontamination of firefighter gear. Our team will be working hard to achieve this important milestone.”

    ETD has been verified by Underwriters Laboratory as an Independent Service Provider (ISP) under NFPA 1851, Standard on Selection, Care, and Maintenance of Protective Ensembles for Structural Fire Fighting and Proximity Fire Fighting, 2020 Edition. This preliminary study is a continuation of the company’s commitment to constant quality improvement and creating the best process possible to ensure firefighter health and safety. 

    About Emergency Technical Decon

    Emergency Technical Decon is a full service National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1851 verified ISP providing service to fire departments for advanced cleaning, inspection, and repair of firefighter turnout gear utilizing liquid CO2 for complete decontamination. For more information, visit www.etdecon.com

    Source: Emergency Technical Decon

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