Earlier this summer, dozens of people reported that their boxes of Foot Loops and Apple Jacks contained strange odors and tastes. Some complained of nausea and diarrhea after consuming the cereal. The complaints prompted Kellogg to recall 28 million boxes of the iconic breakfast treats.

Kellogg subsequently blamed the problem on elevated levels of 2-methylnaphtalene, while adding that its experts found “no harmful material” in the cereals.

2-Methylnaphthalene may not be harmful, but it’s hard to know for sure. The FDA has no information about its impact on human health. Neither does the EPA, even though it has been asking the chemical industry to provide health information about 2-methylnaphtalene since 1994.

The EPA made the request 16 years ago because the chemical was being produced in massive quantities and finding its way into dozens, if not hundreds of consumer products.

The cereal recall has refocused attention on huge gaps in Federal regulators’ knowledge about chemicals in consumer products including food, children’s toys and clothing. According to the Washington Post, regulators don’t know squat about “the health risks posed by most of the 80,000 chemicals on the market today.”

The knowledge gap can be traced to the 1976 passage of the Toxic Substances Control Act which exempted 62,000 chemicals, including 2-methylnaphthalene, from regulatory oversight and stipulated that chemicals developed since then need not be tested for safety. Instead, manufacturers were encouraged to volunteer information concerning the health effects of their compounds and required to hand-over any data showing that a chemical harms health.

That created an enormous disincentive for manufacturers to test their chemicals.

Congress is working on legislation that would require companies to undertake health and safety assessments of existing chemicals and prove that new ones are safe before using them. The chemical industry thinks such laws could hamper innovation and competitiveness.

Pizaazz thinks it’ll take a US version of China’s melamine scandal before this legislation makes it to the President’s desk.

Recently, 5 scientists clambered into a steel capsule and shut the door behind them, unceremoniously beginning a scientific experiment designed to simulate a 520-day flight to Mars. Their mission is to help space crews of the future understand the stresses of interplanetary travel.

The all-male crew includes 3 Russians, a Chinese man, a Frenchman and an Italian-Colombian. They will execute a rigorous series of experiments and exercises, while being video-monitored the whole time by researchers from the European Space Agency, Russia’s Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and China’s space training center.

Conditions inside the capsule will mimic space travel in every respect, with the important exception of weightlessness.

The participants will communicate with “Earth” using an Internet connection that will be intentionally delayed and disrupted from time-to-time, to simulate likely communication outages during space travel. Their diet will consist of canned food similar to that consumed by astronauts on the International Space Station. They will shower once, and have 2 days off, per week except during simulated emergencies.

Of course, they can’t go far on their days off.

“For me, it will be mainly my family, the sun and fresh air,” French participant Romain Charles answered in response to a reporters question regarding what he will miss most during the project.

“Certainly, the crew is on its own here, with limited communications with the outside world,” the European Space Agency’s Martin Zell told the Washington Post. “They have to cope with a lot of conditions and organize themselves.”

Human beings are decades away from an actual Mars mission because of cost and technological barriers, including the creation of a lightweight shield to protect crews from space radiation.

Last week, 2 Iowa-based egg producers recalled more than half a billion eggs after federal investigators traced a recent salmonella outbreak to their production facilities. The outbreak began in May. So far, it has not been linked to any deaths.

The two companies are Wright County Egg, which recalled 380 million eggs that had been distributed across the nation, and Hillandale Farms, which recalled 170 million eggs that had been distributed to 14 states in the West and Midwest. According to the Washington Post, the companies use some of the same suppliers of feed and young chickens, a fact that may help investigators trace the source of the outbreak.

Hinda Mitchell, a spokesperson for Wright County Egg told the Post that her company “recognizes the significant consumer concern about the potential incidence of Salmonella Enteritidis…we continue to work cooperatively with FDA after our voluntary recall. This is consistent with our commitment to egg safety.”

It turns out that the Iowa-based DeCoster family owns or has close ties with both egg producers.

For what it’s worth, the Post reported yesterday that the family has a long history of run-ins with federal officials. In 1996 for example, another DeCoster-owned egg farm was dunned $3.6 million for health and safety violations after inspectors found employees handling dead chickens and manure with their bare hands.

Then, in 2001, Iowa’s Supreme Court cited the family as a “repeat violator” of its environmental laws, singling-out violations involving DeCoster’s hog-farms. Later that year, the family settled a complaint that company supervisors subjected 11 female workers to a “sexually hostile work environment,” including assault and rape.

What is more, in 2002 and again in 2008, OSHA cited the family for several violations that resulted in the exposure of workers to dangerous conditions.

Of course none of this is directly relevant to the salmonella outbreak…

The Affordable Care Act has catapulted the US Preventive Services Task Force from an obscure agency which produced unenforceable guidelines about screening and preventive services into one whose recommendations directly impact reimbursement.

The health reform law requires insurers to pay in full for services receiving an A or B recommendation from the Task Force. The flip-side is that insurers may not have to pay at all for services that are not recommended by the Task Force. As a result, the Task Force’ new best friends include lobbyists and disease advocates who want their priorities – things like screening for Alzheimer’s disease, HIV and diabetes or HIV – to get covered.

The American Diabetes Association, for example, is advocating that insurers be required to cover a broader population than current Task Force recommendations suggest. Current recommendations are that only patients with high blood pressure should be screened.

The HIV Medicine Association has made a similar argument to the Task Force. It claims that a key reason why 20% of people infected with HIV are unaware of that fact is because most insurers don’t cover the costs of testing.

“If you want to be evidence-based, lobbying doesn’t fit,” Ned Calonge, the chairman of the Task Force told the Washington Post. “My charge to members would be to stay true to the methods and the evidence.”

The Task Force, by the way, is the same one that caused a stir before the 2008 presidential election when it recommended that women should start receiving screening mammograms at the age of 50, rather than 40. That move was eventually trumped by an amendment to the Affordable Care Act which required insurers to cover mammograms for women in their 40s.

In the 4 months since the Deepwater Horizon blew up and oil began spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have been trying to understand the magnitude of the gusher’s ecological impact.

The gusher has been plugged thankfully, although there is no consensus on how much damage has been done. Some believe the gulf has largely avoided an ecological disaster. Others say that the spill has pushed already damaged ecosystems to the brink.

Take those ghastly pictures of oiled birds, for example. Officials say they’ve found only 1,200 of them, a fraction of the 35,000 that were discovered after the Exxon Valdez disaster. Of course, officials only count the birds they find. Some scientists believe the number is much higher.

“It’s an instinctive response: They’re hiding from predators while they recover,” Kerry St. Pé, told the Washington Post. St. Pe, who oversees a marsh protection program, added “They plan to recover, and they don’t. They just die.”

What about coastal marshes, whose oil-stained shores made regular appearances on the evening news? “The marsh grasses, the canes, the mangrove are dying,” Robert Barham, secretary of the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries told the Post. “There’s visible evidence that the ecosystem is changed.”

But the National Audubon Society’s Paul Kemp disagreed. According to him, the impact of the spill was small by comparison to the marsh’s existing problems.

“We have a patient that’s dying of cancer, and now they have a sunburn, too,” Kemp said. “What will kill coastal Louisiana is not this oil spill.” (It’s) what was killing it before this oil spill,” he explained, citing erosion and river-control projects.

There is also disagreement about the presence of “plumes” of dissolved or submerged oil offshore. Some scientists claim to have found underwater oil many miles from the gusher.  But an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said his agency found significant submerged oil only within 6 miles of the well.

“Right now,” John Valentine, a gulf researcher told the Post, “we should be more impressed by what we don’t know than what we do know.”

In years past, environmental catastrophes have helped environmental advocates win some of their biggest victories. In 1969, the Santa Barbara oil spill and images of a river on fire in Cleveland helped drive the passage of several anti-pollution laws. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez disaster helped spark a key clean-air law.

But this year, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, by far the biggest in US history, hasn’t had the same effect.

The Senate remains gridlocked on an energy bill. Public opinion has barely changed, and the demand for gasoline continues to surge.

It’s not that environmentalists aren’t trying. It’s just that they’re facing headwinds from a lousy economy, general mistrust of government and lingering suspicions from “Climategate,” which were sparked by since disproven allegations that environmental scientists were cooking their data to promote their views about global warming.

The dreadful economic tailspin has caused public officials and the public to back-off proposals that would lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, for example. Just 2 summers ago, gasoline cost $4-a-gallon, and millions cannot afford a return to such prices.

A related factor is the site of the oil spill. Louisiana residents, devastated by the calamity, have targeted BP rather than the oil industry itself, in part because the industry powers the state’s economy.

These issues are reflected in recent opinion polls which show that after the spill, only about 53% of people are concerned about climate change. That is unchanged from January, and down from 63% before the economy went south.

“It’s the short-term concerns overriding longer-term benefits” of greenhouse-gas laws, Ralph Izzo told the Washington Post. Izzo is CEO of the Public Service Enterprise Group, a New Jersey-based utility that supports carbon emission price control legislation.

A 10-pack of Vitaminwater costs about $10. Its maker, Glaceau, which also sells vitamin enriched water products like Smartwater and Vitaminwater Zero, sold 142 million cases in the US alone last year.

Vitaminwater sales are driven by cool packaging and product names like Focus, Revive and Connect. But are these products, and those of competitors like Propel and SoBe Life Water, nutritionally useful?

Eh, not really. The average-sized adult needs 6-8 8-oz. glasses of liquid per day, but tap water is just as effective for that purpose (unless you live in the District of Columbia, where lead may lurk in the water). As for electrolytes, only people that work-out vigorously for at least an hour need to replenish them.

“Vitaminwater is a marketing ploy,” Nancy Rodriguez, a professor of nutrition and a sports nutritionist at the University of Connecticut, told the Washington Post.

And a full bottle of Vitaminwater contains 125 calories; almost as much as a can of Coca-Cola (lower- and zero-calorie versions of these products are also available).

Well then, what about the vitamins themselves? Vitaminwater contains mostly B vitamins and Vitamin C, which are not stored in the body.

“Once you go beyond what you need, you urinate it out,” Lona Sandon, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association told the Post. “You’re peeing that money away.”

And you’re not getting the full spectrum of vitamins and nutrients that are contained in a One-a-Day or a Centrum, or better still, in a balanced diet.

“I would hate for someone to use Vitaminwater in lieu of eating fruits and vegetables,” said Sandon. “Whole fruit and vegetables contain phytonutrients and fiber that work together. You don’t find the same benefit in a bottle.”

Almost 9 years after letters laced with weapons-grade anthrax spores killed 5 people and inflamed fears about bioterrorism, the US still relies on a single anthrax vaccine maker that uses expensive, impractical, decades-old technology.

The company is Emergent BioSolutions, and its BioThrax vaccine is its only product. Emergent has copped $1.4 billion in federal contracts for the vaccine in the last decade alone.

Twice before, the Feds tried to find cheaper anthrax vaccines and increase the number of vaccine suppliers. In 2004, it awarded an $877 million contract to VaxGen, but aggressive lobbying by Emergent and manufacturing problems at VaxGen forced the Feds to void that contract.

A second RFP that was released last year by Barda–the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority–was halted after officials determined that no supplier could produce a vaccine quickly enough.

That was a setback for PharmAthene, a rival to Emergent. PharmAthene claims that heavy lobbying by Emergent scuttled what it thought was a sure win. Emergent spent $4 million in lobbying during 2009 to maintain its monopoly.

BioThrax requires the administration of 5 doses over 18 months, and costs the Feds $120 per person immunized. PharmAthene’s SparVax would cost $45 per person. That vaccine remains in testing, however. In fact, PharmAthene has no products on the market right now.

Barda is also hoping to lure some large consortiums into the field, including one involving Merck, GE and and the University of Pittsburgh, but they remain leery of the risks.

“The country needs an anthrax vaccine that requires fewer injections, produces fewer side effects and is made using modern techniques,” said former Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired a federal commission that questioned the nation’s bioterror readiness earlier this year.

UPDATE: At the time this post is being scheduled for publication, the Washington Post is reporting that Emergent BioSolutions will soon announce that it “received a contract worth up to $107 million to ready its anthrax vaccine for large-scale manufacture.

According to Emergent, the contract will pay for the company to develop and obtain regulatory approval for large-scale manufacture of BioThrax.

The award is based on an Emergent proposal that says the company can produce 26 million doses annually, a significant increase from the roughly 7 million to 9 million it generates today.”

The NIH has rejected a request to approve several dozen colonies of human embryonic stem cells for use by federally funded researchers. The lines were created by Reproductive Genetics Institute, a private infertility clinic based in Chicago. They contain mutations thought to be linked to several diseases including cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy and Huntington’s disease.

Many scientists believe that studies using these lines will reveal new information about the diseases, and perhaps lead to new treatments, but NIH Director Francis Collins nixed the proposal on grounds that the acquisition of the new lines violated his organization’s strict ethical guidelines.

The new stem cell lines were obtained from embryos donated by couples that were receiving treatment for infertility. The company decided against using them after tests revealed the genetic defects.

An NIH advisory panel tasked by Collins to evaluate the situation found however, that the consent forms used by RGI to secure the lines included unacceptably broad language and required couples to give up their right to sue the clinic for any cause.

Collins’ decision will limit research on the valuable cell lines to scientists who have secured private funding. The new NIH director did approve 8 other new stem cell lines, meaning that federally funded scientists have 75 different lines they can use for research.

“The NIH guidelines for reviewing stem cell lines for federal funding were set up to adhere rigorously to the well-established norms for informed consent,” Collins said in a statement. “It was painful for my advisory committee to recommend against approval of additional lines from RGI because of a consent problem, but rigorous guidelines are only meaningful if they are rigorously applied.”

It’s at least as likely that our country will be hit by a major, crippling Pearl Harbor-like cyber attack as it is that San Francisco will be hit by a magnitude 8 earthquake. So maybe people should take note of  a new report which suggests that we are woefully prepared to defend ourselves against it, or respond effectively if it happens.

The report was released last week by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security. Its overly optimistic title is, “U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team Makes Progress in Securing Cyberspace, but Challenges Remain.”

The report focuses on the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or CERT, which was created to coordinate the nation’s cyber-defense efforts. CERT is a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is specifically tasked to analyze and reduce cyber threats and vulnerabilities, disseminate cyber threat warning information, and coordinate cyber incident response activities.

According to the report, CERT is barely functioning, 7 years after it was established. 

To begin with, CERT is understaffed. Only 45 of the 98 positions approved for the emergency readiness team are filled. As a result, it relies on contractors to carry out the most basic activites like updating operating procedures. It basically can do nothing except process data for anomalies and react to breaches after the fact.

Want more? CERT has no strategic plan, let alone performance measures on which to assess progress. It also lacks the authority to assure its safety recommendations are implemented, even by the federal agencies it is supposed to protect.

Then again, even if CERT somehow morphs into a highly effective organization, it’s well to remember that the vast majority of the networks that make up our country’s cyber infrastructure are privately owned, and therefore beyond its auspices.

At least we can say we were warned.

Most people are born with 4 wisdom teeth, which normally descend below the gum line between the ages of 17 and 25. Wisdom teeth are believed to have been important to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whose coarse diet caused teeth to grind down and wear out.

The jaws of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were much larger than ours however, and for many of us there isn’t enough room in our mouths to accommodate the late-comers.

In these cases, wisdom teeth can become impacted (trapped in the jawbone) or erupt through the gum line only partially—a situation that predisposes to bacterial infections of the jaw, periodontal disease and tooth decay.

Of course, most people experience none of these complications, and the prophylactic surgical procedure designed to remove these risks can cause complications of its own. These include infections, postoperative bleeding and even perforated sinuses or nerve damage.

So how does one decide whether to have wisdom teeth removed, even if they are causing no problems? It turns out the scientific literature contains almost no guidance on the matter.

The American Dental Association for example, has not published guidelines for dealing with wisdom teeth. It prefers to let care givers decide on a case-by-case basis.

Thankfully, the NIH recently launched a study that might shed light on the subject. The study, led by Greg Huang of the University of Washington, will record the reasons given by general dentists when they suggest either pulling or keeping wisdom teeth, and then track patient outcomes for 2 years.

Meanwhile, Chevy Chase dentist Steven Kahan, who has dealt with the problem for 40 years, told the Washington Post, “It is the kind of thing where all of us make a somewhat educated guess.”

In the latest permutation of social networking, you are what you buy.

Sachin spent $4.98 at Starbucks. Jenna bought earrings for$3.19 from Target (“They dangle/match my new dress”). AllieJ purchased Kind of Blue from iTunes for $8.89 (“’So What’ is such a classic!”)

Twitter-like feeds like this are appearing on these new social networking sites, which include Blippy and Swipeley. The feeds permit—indeed, encourage—users to automatically broadcast purchases they make to the world. And that lets people reveal their personalities through their purchases. Some people think is a good thing.

Are you a Levis guy or a Polo jeans guy? McDonald’s or Taco Bell? Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks? Here’s your chance to let everyone, and I mean everyone know!

According to Philip Kaplan, the co-founder of Blippy, users share $1.5 million worth of their purchases each week on his site, and that number is growing rapidly. Users give the company access to their credit and debit card accounts, along with other online accounts like Netflix and iTunes. Blippy compiles and posts their purchases.

Users can block certain purchases from their profiles, but Blippy’s default settings are set to “share all.”

Blippy has focused on user acquisition rather than monetization so far, but it hopes that the data it’s collecting can be eventually sold to marketers looking to understand purchasing behaviors in various demographics.

Privacy experts wonder whether users fully understand what’s happening when they sign-up for the service (even though it’s explained completely in the Terms of Service). “It’s not just about a private exchange between friends. The business is basically about providing access to you to advertisers and marketers,” Jeff Chester told the Washington Post. “There are little strangers listening in,” added Chester, who works for the Center for Digital Democracy.

Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project added that “people often fail to remember who is in their network, even though you’ve created it yourself.”

Responding to complaints by high school and college students that free condoms being distributed by Washington DC health officials are of poor quality and too small, the city now intends to offer Trojan condoms, including extra-large versions, in addition to the less expensive Durex condoms it had  distributed exclusively until now. 

City officials decided it was worth the extra few thousand dollars per year to encourage sexually active teens to practice safe sex.

“We want to support the regularization of condom use citywide,” Shannon Hader, director of the city’s HIV/AIDS administration told the Washington Post. “We are promoting this idea that using condoms is healthy . . . to destigmatize condom use,  for kids (and) grown-ups.”

The District’s health department distributed 3.2 million condoms last year, including about 15,000 in schools, to its 600,000 residents. The program costs the city $165,000 per year. The city pays 5.7 cents per Durex condom, and will pay from 6 to 9 cents for the Trojans, depending on size.

Interested parties can get the condoms online or at more than 100 locations, including liquor stores, barbershops and youth centers. 

In a survey of high school students in the District last spring, most participants “felt Trojan brand condoms were of better quality and protection.” They regarded the extra large “Magnum” condom marketed by Trojan as the best because it was “thicker.”

Durexes were perceived by the students to most likely to “pop or break.”

Despite these perceptions, health officials agree that the condoms are equally effective in terms of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The recently enacted health reform law could cost taxpayers $115 billion more over the next decade than originally proposed, if Congress approves all spending proposals outlined in the legislation, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The increase would push overall costs of the law beyond $1 trillion, an amount the Obama administration has tried desperately to stay under.

The new law extends health coverage 30 million people that are currently uninsured, primarily through tax credits that can be used to purchase insurance via competitive markets that are scheduled to begin operations in 2014. The law was signed by President Obama on March 23 following a CBO estimate that it would cost $938 billion over the next decade, even as it cut the federal deficit by $143 billion.

According to the CBO, the incremental spending includes $10-20 billion in administrative costs, $39 billion directed at Native American health care programs, and $34 billion for local health centers.

Apparently, most folks knew about these additions before the law was passed, but they were not included because the spending was discretionary. Congressional Republican had argued that they should have been.

“Congress does not always act on authorizations that are put into legislation by drafters,” Kenneth Baer, a CBO spokesperson told the Washington Post. “Authorizations for discretionary spending are not expenditures.”

In its recent update, the CBO also mentioned that costs of the law could be higher still, since the law approved several programs for which specific funding levels have yet to be established.

Baer did suggest that the president would stipulate that any added spending would have to be offset by reductions in other programs. “The president made clear he will enforce that with his veto pen,” Baer told the Post.

Last week, Google released a list of governments that had requested various forms of private information from the search giant’s own data bases, and demands made by these governments to censor its applications or remove certain content.

Google said it disclosed the information in order to reveal an increasing trend by governments to block information on the Web. More than 40 governments censored Google-associated information in 2009, compared with just 4 in 2002.

“We at Google believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship online,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer told the Washington Post.

According to Google, Brazil and the US made the most requests. During the second half of 2009, these countries made more than 3,000 requests, particularly concerning YouTube and Orkut (a social networking site that is popular in Brazil). 

Germany was also near the top of the list. Most of that government’s requests concerned removing pro-Nazi material, according to the company.

Google’s figures are a bit difficult to interpret since Google counts a request to take down one Web address the same way as a request to remove hundreds of sites.

Google stated that many requests by governments seemed legitimate. Law enforcement agencies, for example, often request the removal of child porn sites or videos promoting violence or racial hatred.

Of note, Google’s disclosure included no information about China because, it said, China looks at “censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time.” China is known to have erected firewalls that  prevent its citizens from accessing certain information, and other technological barricades that prevent certain users from communicating with others.

Google’s report was not obviously related to its decision last month to pull its search business out of China.

The Food and Drug Administration wants to reduce salt consumption by Americans in an effort to cut morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease.

The unprecedented move would be implemented over a decade or more.

It would begin by quantifying salt content in processed foods and progress to the establishment of salt limits in various food categories. Subsequently, these would be ratcheted down over years so that consumers wouldn’t take notice.

At the moment, FDA classifies salt as “generally recognized as safe,” meaning that food producers can add as much as they want. All they have to do is report salt content on nutrition labels.

Americans’ salt consumption has risen steadily for 3 decades as they consume more processed foods and eat out more frequently. Most of us consume twice as much as the government’s daily recommended limit.

Scientists at Stanford and Columbia recently published a study showing that reducing salt intake by 3 grams per day could prevent tens of thousands of strokes and heart attacks per year.

The feds had heretofore tried to coax the food industry to voluntarily reduce salt and educate consumers about its risk. However, a recently released report by the Institute of Medicine has found these approaches have failed.

The FDA’s challenge is that, “historically, consumers have found low-sodium products haven’t been of the quality that’s expected,” according to Todd Abraham, an SVP of research and nutrition at Kraft Foods.

Meanwhile, Morton Satin, who directs technical and regulatory affairs for the Salt Institute, a trade group representing salt producers, believes regulation “would be a disaster for the public.” He added that the scientific evidence linking salt consumption to cardiovascular disease is mixed and that salt intake is not necessarily associated with health problems.