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PFAS Chemicals Can Be Detected In Canadian Food Packaging – Should You Be Worried?

Posted by on Mar 30, 2023 in Chemistry | Comments Off on PFAS Chemicals Can Be Detected In Canadian Food Packaging – Should You Be Worried?

A new paper notes that they can detect per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances - deemed by environmental activists as "forever" chemicals because they persist from to eight years - in 42 samples of food packaging. Like food bowls that are compostable and sustainable and better for the environment than plastic.

Ironically, this new detection, and resulting scare, happened because consumers demanded alternatives to plastic after environmental public relations campaigns saying all the fish were dying. Most foods will not be safe in paper(1) unless you eat them right away. And yet the alternative is now claimed to be worse than the thing they wanted replaced.

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The Racism Of Virtual Pollution

Posted by on Mar 28, 2023 in Atmospheric | Comments Off on The Racism Of Virtual Pollution

When smog was prevalent, it was easy to see. Particulate matter 10 microns in size hover in the air, the famous London Fog was not natural moisture, it was PM10 pollution. In one event, nature combined with smog in London to kill 12,000 people.

After that, wealthier nations engaged in pollution control, and then PM10 and its health issues began to dissipate. In the 1990s and with much cleaner air, pollution activists and allied epidemiologists began to 'define pollution down.' PM2.5 was suddenly the new goalpost, they said, and showed air quality maps with red and orange to prove it.

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Ivermectin Same As Placebo In Clinical Trial

Posted by on Mar 22, 2023 in Pharmacology | Comments Off on Ivermectin Same As Placebo In Clinical Trial

If you buy TheraFlu or some other product and swear it helps, you may be right. The placebo effect is real and while OTC "remedies" and supplements can be sold with no proof needed, to be called actual medicine it can't simply work as poorly as a sugar pill.

Yet about 30 percent of the time, people who take a placebo do feel better, the same way people who eat food labeled Non-GMO feel better taking a nocebo. Neither is improving health but a lot of things can sound like science or health if you look at statistics and create correlation.

That's epidemiology, an entry point to science, and epidemiology findings led to continued interest in various off-label treatments for COVID-19, such as ivermectin.(1)

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Did The President Save Or Doom Alaska This Week?

Posted by on Mar 17, 2023 in Energy | Comments Off on Did The President Save Or Doom Alaska This Week?

President Biden issued another slap to those oil-guzzling Republicans intent on ruining Gaia, or he enraged environmentalists by letting oil-guzzling Republicans ruin bucolic Alaska, all in one day.

Even in the same minute.

Which was it? Neither, and that is a problem with corporate media. To get you to see an ad and get them paid they have to write a headline that is most appealing to you - and if you are someone in the middle, you quickly receive both.

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Neuroimaging: From Dead Fish To Diagnostics?

Posted by on Mar 15, 2023 in Neuroscience | Comments Off on Neuroimaging: From Dead Fish To Diagnostics?

For decades, functional magnetic resonance imaging, looking at changes in the brain's blood oxygen, has over-promised and under-delivered, which made it a punching bag in the science community. People in the field tried to claim changes in pretty pictures meant more neurons working and suggested that meant X part of the brain controls Y behavior. It was never a valid link.

By 2009, a paper even showed how easy it was to use a dead fish to make interpretations about emotion, and achieve the sought-after "statistical significance." Gone was the promise of clinical information that might help with depression, cognitive decline, and brain disorders, and the reason was humans.(1)

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Reese’s Is Making A Vegan Peanut Butter Cup – Here Are 3 More Ways To Make Candy Sound Healthy

Posted by on Mar 10, 2023 in Public Health | Comments Off on Reese’s Is Making A Vegan Peanut Butter Cup – Here Are 3 More Ways To Make Candy Sound Healthy

Hershey is rolling out Reese’s Plant Based Peanut Butter Cups this month, and it is a great idea. Plant-based foods are all the rage - unless the entire market is about to collapse - and people who like vegan stuff are willing to overpay for food they can then annoy everyone at parties by going on and on about.

Weren't peanut butter cups already vegan? No, they contain milk and vegans say any milk produced by an animal is bad. This new thing swaps out the milk for highly-processed oats and continues their efforts to appeal to everyone with money to spend on their belief system.

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Reese’s Is Making A Vegan Peanut Butter Cup – Here Are 3 More Ways To Make Candy Sound Healthy

Posted by on Mar 10, 2023 in Public Health | Comments Off on Reese’s Is Making A Vegan Peanut Butter Cup – Here Are 3 More Ways To Make Candy Sound Healthy

Hershey is rolling out Reese’s Plant Based Peanut Butter Cups this month, and it is a great idea. Plant-based foods are all the rage - unless the entire market is about to collapse - and people who like vegan stuff are willing to overpay for food they can then annoy everyone at parties by going on and on about.

Weren't peanut butter cups already vegan? No, they contain milk and vegans say any milk produced by an animal is bad. This new thing swaps out the milk for highly-processed oats and continues their efforts to appeal to everyone with money to spend on their belief system.

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Solar Power May Get Environmentalists To Accept GMOs

Posted by on Mar 9, 2023 in Energy | Comments Off on Solar Power May Get Environmentalists To Accept GMOs

Farms have a lot of open land and that has made them ideal for solar power installations. For example, though it is in defiance of the bucolic imagery sold by food and solar marketing groups, which show lush farms with an old tractor on one side and panels on homes charging an $80,000 Tesla on the other, New York has large-scale solar installations on 40 percent of their farms while up to 84 percent of farms will be great for solar.

Not just because of open land but because farms make solar more efficient also.

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Polio Still Exists And COVID-19 Showed Why WHO May Make It Impossible To Kill

Posted by on Mar 6, 2023 in Immunology | Comments Off on Polio Still Exists And COVID-19 Showed Why WHO May Make It Impossible To Kill

Smallpox is no longer with us, but what gets left out of United Nations history is that smallpox was eradicated in spite of the World Health Organisation saying it could never happen, not due to UN leadership. It was driven by US advocates who went around UN bureaucracy, all while being told it was a waste of time and money.

Polio has long been gone from the US as well, and the efforts that made it possible could help the world, but the challenges in achieving that are both cultural and structural.

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The Subsidies Paradox: Affordable Food Versus The Environment

Posted by on Mar 1, 2023 in Environment | Comments Off on The Subsidies Paradox: Affordable Food Versus The Environment

Food and energy are strategic resources and since conventional energy like oil is presumably finite, its extinction first said to be 30 years ago, the rationale has been to subsidize and mandate alternatives like solar and wind schemes.

Food is also subsidized because it is a strategic resource but the curve is going the other way. Instead of being depleted 'real soon' as environmental PR gurus like Jeremy Rifkin successfully convinced journalists to repeat about oil decades ago, we have so much food that for the first time in human history poor people can afford to be fat. And with affordable food, culture improves, as do lives. The world exceeded UN targets for improvement of the poor by nearly half a decade.

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