Environmental Health

"The mystery of how horsemeat got into Findus beef lasagne has led to an international hunt already taking in four countries.

"Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using strategies similar to those employed by the tobacco industry to undermine public health policies, health experts said on Tuesday."

"There's a global campaign to force meat producers to rein in their use of antibiotics on pigs, chickens and cattle. European countries, especially Denmark and the Netherlands, have taken the lead. The U.S. is moving, haltingly, toward similar restrictions. Now the concerns about rampant antibiotic use appear to have reached China, where meat production and antibiotic use have been growing fast."

"OAKLAND -- The pediatric inpatient unit was quiet, except for the deep, relentless coughing. It was the sound of asthma -- asthma out of control."

"Critics call on FDA and EPA to review popular anti-microbial's safety in light of new science."

"Cancer death rates among African American men declined faster than those of white men in the last decade, even though overall survival rates for black men and women remained the lowest of all racial groups for most types of cancer, according to a recent report."

"The use of antibiotics in food animal production slightly increased and antibiotic resistant bacteria in meat products remained an issue 2011, according to two sets of data released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday."

"One of the oldest known workplace dangers is breathing in tiny bits of silica, which is basically sand. Even the ancient Greeks knew that stone cutters got sick from breathing in dust. And today, nearly 2 million American workers are exposed to silica dust in jobs ranging from construction to manufacturing."

An asthma inhaler rigged to a GPS device? Just as this new medical tech device may help researchers determine the precise triggers of asthma attacks, the emerging field of geomedicine promises to help correlate environmental conditions with health risks.

"COTTRELLVILLE, Mich. -- The fight has been under way for several years, but the momentum may have peaked on a night in June 2011. That was the night of a community meeting in Marine City to discuss a startling spate of rare kidney cancers identified in area children -- one as young as 5 months."