Health and Science

"Since 2007, when EWG published its first Sunscreen Guide, many sun protection products sold in the US have become safer and federal regulators have cracked down on some of the worst phony marketing claims. Two-thirds of the products we examined offer inferior sun protection or contain worrisome ingredients like oxybenzone, a hormone disruptor, or retinyl palmitate, a form of vitamin A that may harm skin. And despite scant evidence, the government still allows most sunscreens to claim they help prevent skin cancer. Over the course of 12 years, EWG has uncovered mounting evidence that one common sunscreen chemical, oxybenzone, poses a hazard to human health and the environment. It is an allergen and a hormone disruptor that soaks through the skin and is measured in the body of nearly every American." more »

The study estimates a death rate of 14.3 deaths per thousand between September 20 (date of Hurricane Maria) and December 31, 2017, up from a rate of 8.8 deaths per thousand at the same time in 2016. About one-third of the reported deaths in the households surveyed in the study were attributed to delayed or prevented access to medical care. The mortality rate in Puerto Rico rose by 62% after Hurricane Maria, according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. more »

The NIH Pain Consortium was established to enhance pain research and promote collaboration among researchers across the many NIH Institutes and Centers that have programs and activities addressing pain. The consortium supports initiatives, development of research resources and tools. This symposium features NIH supported researchers whose work has made an important contribution to pain research.   more »

A researcher collected her own blood and forged the labels so it would appear to be samples from nearly 100 people, according to a new finding of research misconduct released today by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI). The former researcher at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center swapped her own blood samples for those taken from 98 human subjects. The misconduct affects two grant progress reports and two papers; one paper has already been retracted, and the former “research interviewer” — Maria Cristina Miron Elqutub — has agreed to correct or retract the other.  more »