Sleep deprivation has been linked to motor vehicle accidents, industrial accidents and medical errors. It has also been linked to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, anxiety, reduced problem-solving capacity, memory lapses, an increased risk for the common cold and even premature death.

Recent data published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, while not cutting new ground in this area, has helped to quantify the extent of the problem among Americans, as well as its impact on car crashes. The news is not good.

According to the CDC report, between 50 and 70 million US adults suffer from chronic sleep deprivation and related disorders. Those estimates came from a study which found that 35% the nearly 75,000 adult participants in a 12-state sleep study reported getting less than 7 hours of sleep per night. Nearly 40% of these people claimed to doze off inadvertently at least once a day.

Furthermore, people who averaged less than 7 hours were more likely to nod-off while driving a car. Overall, nearly 5% of respondents said they had fallen asleep while driving during the last year. According to the CDC, this phenomenon causes 1,550 highway deaths and 40,000 injuries per year.

The numbers are probably higher than this, according to Allan Pack, who directs the Center for Sleep at University of Pennsylvania. “Most of us believe that there are a lot more fall asleep crashes than reported,” he said in an interview. “It’s probably not reported accurately because a number of states don’t even having a ‘falling asleep while driving’ tick in the box when reporting a car crash.” (more…)

A thousand people live in McCullom Lake Village and 14 of them have developed brain cancer. That’s between 2 and 20 times more than would be expected based on the reported incidence of brain cancer in the general population.

Just a case of bad luck?

“Absolutely not,” according to Aaron Freiwald an attorney who represents local residents in lawsuits against the multinational chemical company Rohm and Haas.

The billion dollar company has operated a production facility in McCollum Lake Village since 1963. The plant produces everything from pesticides to plastics, and byproducts of these processes cause cancer.

Rohm and Haas admits it dumped toxic byproducts into an 8 acre pit on its property for 20 years before ceasing the practice in 1979. There was nothing illegal about that practice at the time.

This May, the county tested 14 of the town’s water wells for contamination. They all came up clean.

To which the residents counter that no testing was done back when Rohm and Haas was dumping the chemicals. “They knew that there were chemicals in there – that they were dangerous,” Freiwald told CBS. 

And besides, there are more than 14 wells in town.

Meanwhile, it’s possible there’s a second brain cancer cluster at a Rohm and Haas plant in Philadelphia, where 12 research scientists died of the disease in the past 30 years. Five of them worked along the same hallway. 

“That could be a coincidence,” Dr. Phil Lewis told CBS.

(more…)

When spectators at Republican rallies spewed venomously at the Big O last week, the news overshadowed another story of possible fraudulent behavior by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a large voter registration group that targets likely Democratic voters.

Already this year, ACORN has signed up 1.3 million new voters.  But officials in a dozen states have raised concerns regarding at least 10,000 registration forms submitted by ACORN. In one Ohio county for example, ACORN registered one person 17 times. In Las Vegas last week, police raided ACORN’s offices and hauled off computers and documents.

Pursuing the story, CBS interviewed ACORN workers. Many said ACORN pressured them to increase their registration numbers, and this encouraged fraudulent activities such as transcribing names from phone books, creating fake names, using non-existent addresses, signing up dead people and registering inmates.

“Rumors of ACORN’s voter fraud have been greatly exaggerated and to a large extent manufactured,” ACORN’s chief organizer Bertha Lewis told the New York Times.  She added that ACORN informed officials about bogus registrations collected by its workers and dismissed the people in question.

Expect the story to evolve along two fronts this week: how much fraud took place, and what do we make of the Big O’s connections to ACORN, which include his campaign’s $800,000 payment to an ACORN-affiliated consulting firm last spring.

In January, the FDA warned against giving over-the-counter cough and cold medicines to children less than 2 years of age. Officials said at the time that they planned to release recommendations covering children up to age 11. Later, experts retained by the FDA voiced concerns about the efficacy of OTC drugs in kids between the ages of 2-6, but the FDA issued no further warnings.

Instead, the FDA held hearings on the matter last week. Pediatricians in attendance called for a ban on use of the drugs in children. They noted there is no evidence that they work in children and they prompt 7,000 ER visits each year due to side effects and overdoses from active ingredients such as decongestants.

John Jenkins, the FDA’s new drug director, rejected calls for the ban. Parents would simply give adult-strength versions of the same drugs to their kids, he said, adding “We don’t see a public health emergency here as far as an inherent risk of the products.”

Jenkins then said the FDA would make no recommendations on the matter for years to come.

US families spend $300 million per year on OTC cold remedies for children. In any given week nearly 10% of US children receive them. Utilization is highest among kids aged 2-5 years. Novartis (Triaminic), Johnson & Johnson (Tylenol Plus Cold) and Wyeth (Robitussin) all play in the market for OTC remedies to children. They voluntarily halted marketing to babies and toddlers even before the FDA’s January warning, but claim the medicines are safe for kids older than the age of 2.

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