The Environmental Protection Agency will review 20 flame retardants used in common household items, in response to mounting research linking these chemicals to cancer, neurological damage and other health effects. The EPA will conduct risk assessments on four of the chemicals under the existing Toxic Substances Control Act, legislation that the agency acknowledges needs to be reformed in order to better protect Americans from toxic chemicals.

The chemicals are used to increase a material’s resistance to fire and are present in a host of items, including mattresses, furniture, electronics, clothing and food. The EPA notes that the chemicals can persist in the environment, making their way into household dust and eventually accumulating in people’s blood — in fact, researchers have found 97 percent of people in the U.S. test positive for flame retardants in their blood.

Flame retardants have been studied extensively and linked to a multitude of health effects. The flame retardant Tris, which was banned in the 1970s from children’s pajamas but is still found in a host of items, has been associated with cancer and harm to the liver, brain and kidneys. Several of the chemicals have been found to be endocrine disruptors — one flame retardant was found to cause “extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects” in lab animals. One study found the presence of certain flame retardants in umbilical cord blood to be associated with slowed neurological development in children. In fact, flame retardants were included among more than 800 chemicals that constitute a “global threat” in a World Health Organization report last month.

The EPA’s announcement comes amid increased pressure to address the health affects of flame retardants. Officials in California are pushing legislation that would ban the chemicals in household furniture and baby products sold in the state. Last month, 23 Democratic senators wrote a letter to the EPA, urging it to address the dangers flame retardants pose to human health. In January, Gatorade announced it would be removing the flame retardant bromated vegetable oil in its products in response to complaints and a popular change.org petition. The EPA’s announcement also comes a year after promises by the agency to investigate the chemicals in response to a Chicago Tribune series investigating the chemicals.

According to a new Consumer Reports investigative study published Thursday, there is rampant variation in the price of generic drugs as large U.S. pharmacy chains — including CVS, Rite Aid, and Target — mark up the prices of generic drug versions for common medications by as much as 18 times what wholesale chains like Costco charge. That price variance ends up costing Americans, who spend an average of $758 out-of-pocket on drugs every year, hundreds of dollars in unnecessary spending each month.

Consumer Reports compiled the data by contacting hundred of pharmacies throughout the country and asking what their drug prices were for generic versions of Lipitor, Plavix, Actos, and other common medications. The results were striking, with pharmacy representatives claiming that the higher prices were necessary for covering overhead, and considering that selling medication constitutes most of their revenue and profit margins:

Costco was the least expensive overall, and you don’t need to be a member to use its pharmacy. A few independent pharmacies came in even cheaper, though their prices varied widely, as did grocery-store pharmacies. The online retailers Healthwarehouse.com and FamilyMeds.com also had very low prices. On the other end of the spectrum, CVS, Rite Aid, and Target had the highest retail prices. [...]

A representative of CVS told us that its retail drug prices reflect other services offered by the chain, including drive-through windows, automated prescription refill systems, free outreach programs to help make sure patients are taking their prescriptions correctly, and 24-hour pharmacies. Costco pharmacies, the cheapest overall, are open only from 10 a.m. to 7 or 8:30 p.m. and are typically closed on Sundays.

“Big-box stores such as Costco and Walmart use the pharmacy as a traffic builder for their stores, whereas traditional chain stores, such as CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens, make the majority of their revenue and profits from the pharmacy,” says Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, Ph.D., Pharm.D., a professor of pharmacy economics at the University of Minnesota.

The study’s full findings are illustrated in this chart:

The use of generic drugs — rather than their brand name counterparts — actually drives down spending on medications, consequently lowering Americans’ out-of-pocket costs and government spending on public insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But the Consumer Reports investigation suggests there are significantly more savings to be had.

This isn’t the first time generic drug makers have been in the news this week. On Monday, the Supreme Court took up Federal Trade Commission (FTC) v. Actavis — which one expert dubbed “the health care reform case of 2013″ — a case centering on the legality and antitrust implications of so-called “pay for delay” arrangements in which brand name drug makers pay off their generic drug counterparts to delay a drug’s generic version from entry into the market. If the FTC winds up winning that case, it could save Americans and the government billions of dollars on drug costs every year. But as this new report demonstrates, they could save much more if pharmacies stopped jacking up their rates to startling degrees.

A huge body of scientific evidence has already proven that the recommended vaccination schedule for U.S. kids is perfectly safe. But some pervasive myths about vaccines still persist — partially driven by dangerous right-wing fearmongering on the subject. Hoping to convince parents not to buy into the conspiracy theories, scientists continue to release new studies proving that it’s safe for them to vaccinate their kids on schedule, and reiterating that there’s no discernible link between vaccines and autism.

Some parents wonder if their kids are receiving too many vaccines too soon, and try to space out their children’s vaccinations so there’s more time in between their shots. In fact, up to 40 percent of parents take matters into their own hands and follow their own vaccination schedule rather that the one recommended by the CDC. But experts from the Institute of Medicine — a panel that advises the federal government on health policy — hope to change their minds. A new report from the Institute of Medicine confirms that the current childhood vaccination schedule is nothing to worry about, and it’s not a good idea to refrain from following it:

But delaying shots only prolongs the time that babies and children are vulnerable to “devastating diseases,” says co-author Pauline Thomas, an associate professor of preventive medicine at New Jersey Medical School.

“There is ample evidence that it’s not safe not to follow the schedule,” Thomas says. “It’s well known that in places where vaccines are delayed or missed, that’s where we are beginning to see vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks.”

Although the majority of doctors stand firmly behind vaccination, the issue is hotly debated among parents, particularly those too young to remember scourges like measles, polio and whooping cough. To address parents’ concerns, the Institute of Medicine has conducted more than 60 studies of vaccine safety since the 1970s.

Since children are required to receive the bulk of their vaccination before entering kindergarten, most of their shots are concentrated in their toddler years. Children receive up to 24 vaccines by their second birthday, and end up getting vaccinated against 14 different infectious diseases by the time they’re five. But it’s not randomly assigned. The CDC’s schedule is based on scientific testing that takes into account children’s immune systems, what they’re exposed to at different stages of their lives, and how the antibiotics interact with each other in the human body.

Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, explained to USA Today that parents’ fears are simply unfounded. “The concept that you are going to overload a child’s immune system by giving too many vaccines at once makes no sense,” Hotez said. “When you play with vaccine schedules, you are playing with fire.”

In the two centuries since vaccines were first developed, they have nearly eradicated over a dozen of what used to be the most common infectious diseases in the U.S. Some vaccines, like the flu shot, aren’t foolproof — but they can still help lower the risk. 90 percent of the U.S. children who died from the flu this past winter didn’t get vaccinated for it.

A celebrity-driven PSA that’s been making the rounds on television and subscription services like Hulu urges Americans to stuff Easter baskets this Sunday with toys — rather than the traditional high-sugar, high-fat candies like chocolate bunnies. The ad presents itself as a campaign to “save the bunny” while encouraging parents to shift away from giving kids the unhealthy treats.

Watch it:

It’s worth noting that the project is sponsored by Mattel, Fisher-Price, and various other toy-makers, and the campaign’s webpage directs visitors to retailers that sell their products, so there is an obvious financial motive at play here.

However, while candy consumed on one day out of the year is a mere drop in the bucket compared to other factors feeding into America’s obesity crisis, such as the over-consumption of fast foods and unhealthy school lunches, the empirical data suggests that there is some merit to the movement. Figures compiled by online retailers and the National Confectioners’ Association show that Americans purchase 120 million pounds of Easter candy annually — and the vast majority of it is particularly unhealthy foods like chocolate:

Holidays in general are a gold mine for chocolate makers — particularly for corporate giants Hershey and Mars, the two companies that produce 70 percent of all chocolate. Hershey’s webpage is currently pushing chocolate products such as the aforementioned bunnies, Cadbury cream eggs, and a variety of other sugary concoctions for Easter Sunday. Most chocolate products in the U.S. are actually made up mostly of Monsanto-produced corn.

A Philadelphia-area abortion doctor is currently on trial for murder, based on gruesome reports about the illegal techniques that he and his staff used to perform late-term abortions for desperate, low-income women. Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s high-profile case is sparking understandable outrage, as evidence has emerged that he may have taken advantage of vulnerable women, violated multiple medical codes, and performed inhumane surgeries.

According to prosecutors, Gosnell’s clinic went 17 years without an inspection — and abortion opponents are leveraging that to go after other abortion clinics that have no affiliation with Gosnell or his crimes. “Unfortunately and tragically in Pennsylvania, facilities were going uninspected for years,” Maria Gallagher, a lobbyist with the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, said in reference to the ongoing trial. That’s a big reason why abortion opponents like Gallagher were able to push Pennsylvania legislators to tighten restrictions on abortion clinics in 2011, updating state law to require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as outpatient surgery centers. According to NPR, Gosnell’s case was “mentioned frequently” as Pennsylvania lawmakers considered, and ultimately approved, the unnecessary new restrictions.

If proven guilty, there’s no doubt that Gosnell and his staff committed horrific crimes. But the knee-jerk reaction to his murder trial — the assumption that most abortion doctors aren’t adhering to medical standards, and that the women who visit health clinics are in grave danger of receiving unsafe care — is off-base. In fact, as the right-wing pushes for tighter abortion clinic standards to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, that crusade could end up having exactly the opposite effect.

Pennsylvania’s abortion clinic restrictions fit into a larger anti-choice effort across the country that is solely intended to force abortion clinics to close their doors. In states like North Dakota, Virginia, Indiana, Mississippi, and Texas, abortion opponents are pushing legislation to force abortion clinics to adhere to unneccesary new regulations in the name of “ensuring women’s safety.” That sounds like a noble goal. But these measures — known as the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP — aren’t really about ensuring women’s safety at all. As Mississippi’s Republican governor once admitted behind closed doors at an anti-choice event, TRAP laws are about indirectly restricting women’s access to abortion by shutting down health clinics.

In Pennsylvania specifically, one Planned Parenthood affiliate was forced to spend nearly a half a million dollars to get two of its clinics into compliance with the new regulations. That involved unnecessary updates like installing hands-free sinks, replacing the floors, and updating the air-conditioning system. The affiliate’s CEO, Dayle Steinberg, explained to NPR that the state’s stricter requirements didn’t actually do anything to improve the care provided to the women at her clinics, where the complication rate is already less than one-tenth of 1 percent. “They were thinly disguised as improving patient safety, when really it was about increasing the cost for abortion providers — hoping that some of them wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Steinberg said.

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Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Justice Department bowed to tobacco industry-led legal challenges against their graphic anti-smoking ad campaign depicting the visceral consequences of tobacco-fueled chronic illness. That was a major blow to the public health initiatives included in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 — landmark tobacco regulation legislation signed by President Obama at the beginning of his first term.

But the federal government is not giving up on its efforts to discourage smoking. This week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a series of new videos and graphics that highlight the negative effects of tobacco use on both smokers and their loved ones:

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Low-income Americans in the South, where states impose some of the nation’s most restrictive Medicaid eligibility requirements, are being forced to put off the medical care they need because they can’t afford it. According to a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine, the American adults who don’t qualify for Medicaid assistance in their states are simply forgoing care — an issue that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which seeks to extend public health insurance to the low-income people who can’t currently qualify for it, can help address.

Obamacare’s expansion seeks to standardize Medicaid eligibility levels throughout the country, since there’s currently a huge range of different Medicaid eligibility rates across different states. Some states define Medicaid eligibility so narrowly that families of three making just $5,000 per year aren’t considered poor enough to access public health insurance. Researchers used county-level data to confirm — predictably — that the low-income people in those states are less likely to get medical care. The problem was the worst in Florida and Texas, which have the greatest prevalence of residents delaying their health care services:

As the map shows, the county-level prevalence of delayed care has huge ranges across the country. Just 6.5 percent of the people in Norfolk, MA, are putting off their medical treatment, compared to a staggering 40.6 percent of the people who live in Hidalgo, TX.

Those numbers are directly related to whether states are defining their Medicaid pools by Obamacare’s expanded definition, and allowing people with annual incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line to access coverage. In states that have set their Medicaid eligibility levels at or above 133 percent of the federal poverty line, fewer people are delaying care. If every state accepted the health law’s expansion of the program, each Medicaid program would be set at that level, and the map above wouldn’t have nearly as much variation.
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In an attempt to illustrate the negligible impact of the recent across-the-board spending cuts resulting from sequestration, several Fox News anchors spent Friday morning bemoaning the amount of federal funding designated for comprehensive sex education. According to Fox’s Gretchen Carlson and her two co-hosts, the sequester must not have had a serious impact on the federal government since it’s still able to find $350 million to fund “Planned Parenthood-style” sex ed classes in public school — an amount that Fox suggests would be better served by funding White House tours for the next 100 years:

CARLSON: Here is a story you may scratch your head over, because it’s our daily edition of “what sequester?” The federal government is spending apparently $350 million for Planned Parenthood-style sex education programs in western states, including Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, for sex education programs starting now in kindergarten. [...]

STEVE DOOCY: It’s so shocking because we remember the sequester, it was all about it’s going to end everything, we’ll have to close the White House tours, we’ll have to close some small airport towers and things like that. So they did that, and a whole other list of things. Yet, they’re still able to find $350 million for this program that is comprehensive and graphic. And essentially what it does is it talks about how no sex is unsafe unless it causes pregnancy. [...]

ERIC BOLLING: Now we find another $350 million is going to this program for kids as low as five years old. It’s absolutely insane. $350 million, do you know how long that would keep the white house tours going? 100 years! The White House could be open for as long as us and our grandchildren would be around. Instead, they’re going to learn — I don’t even want to know what they’re teaching them.

STEVE DOOCY: Well, no type of sex is wrong. The only unsafe behavior is getting pregnant. That’s what it’s all about. $350 million!

Watch it:

Cable news has been obsessed with the sequester’s impact on White House tours. But it’s unclear where the Fox hosts’ $350 million number is coming from. Federal funding to support comprehensive, evidence-based sexual education programs comes from several different sources: discretionary funding awarded to President Obama’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative, grants under Obamacare’s Personal Responsibility Education Program, and funding for the Centers for Disease Control to continue its HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns.

Planned Parenthood affiliates may apply for those federal grants to implement voluntary sexual education programs in public schools, which typically include resources to encourage at-risk youth to use contraception, maintain healthy relationships, and lower their risk of STDs and pregnancy. But the federal government does not actually have any requirements that sex ed classes must operate in a “Planned Parenthood style.” In fact, there are no federal guidelines whatsoever requiring school districts to teach evidence-based sex ed courses — and the states that choose not to do so are the same states that have high rates of teenage pregnancies and STDs.