Modern Bacteria are Resisting Treatment by Antibiotics When penicillin was first discovered to cure diseases in the 1930s, it seemed a miracle. Some thought you couldn’t get too much of a good thing. One Asian brothel routinely fed penicillin prophylactically to its workers, hoping to prevent infections. But some Neisseriea gonorrheoeae, the bacterium that causes […]
Natural Eye Care Offers Alternatives to Glasses and Contact Lenses
Meat Irradiation Gets the Green Light, But is It Safe? Would you eat a fast-food burger that had been “nuked”—exposed to nuclear radiation in order to kill pathogens such as salmonella? Maybe you just did. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light to the irradiation of beef and other meat […]
Are We Threatening Our Intelligence with Chemical Pollution? The 101st Congress declared the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain” to focus attention on the most vulnerable of human organs. But after 10 years of intensive research focusing on chemical threats to mental development, have we learned anything? Yes. Although average IQ scores have continued to […]
Our Seafood Is Increasingly Contaminated With Toxins If, like Oprah Winfrey, mad cow disease has made you swear off hamburgers, you might be eating more fish instead. Fish are touted as a low-fat, healthy food that can help prevent heart disease and other illnesses. But recent reports saying that as little as a half can […]
These days, people are spending more time outdoors for sun, sport and recreation–at precisely a time when depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer (caused by the release of chlorofluorocarbons [CFCs] from aerosols, refrigerators and air-conditioners) is putting us at greater and greater risk of sun damage.
It's in Our Water and in Our Toothpaste. Should We Worry? Since the 1940s, municipal water supplies across the United States have been routinely dosed with fluoride. Even if you don't live in the half of America that adds fluoride to the water supply to help prevent tooth decay, low doses of fluoride occur naturally […]
Synthetic Perfumes, Colognes and Scents Are Turning Up Noses Have you ever wondered which personal fragrance or perfume will make you the most attractive? If the person you're trying to attract happens to be a member of the Sierra Club, then the answer is probably none. In California last year, the club's San Francisco and […]
Alternative Medicine is a More Natural Approach to Health
Country Living May be Hazardous to Your Potency When epidemiologist Shanna Swan began comparing fertility in urban versus rural men, she thought she knew what she would find. Just as corn, sorghum and soybeans grow better in central Missouri’s hills and hollers than in a polluted parking lot in urban New York, Los Angeles or […]
