Household Hazards

How everyday products make us sick.

by Paul D. Blanc, M.D., M.S.P.H.

That Golden Touch

This past week, a major environmental victory went by barely noticed. A Japan-based pesticide giant, Arysta LifeScience announced withdrawing from the U.S. all of its methyl iodide-containing fumigant formulations. What this means is that this toxic-chemical golden-touch will never be reaching out to grab hold of California’s strawberry fields or any other U.S. crop. Read More

Strip Show and Tell

California recently issued a “hazard alert” following an occupationally-related death from methylene chloride poisoning. Though it's restricted in Europe, this chemical is still widely used industrially in the U.S. Methylene chloride is also commonplace in a number of consumer products available for use in the home. Read More

The Biggest Source of Contemporary Mercury Poisoning

In his State of the Union address, President Obama stated “I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning.” Why? Read More

The Iowa that Isn't in the News

Despite all of the hubbub about Iowa, in particular the influence of religious activism in presidential politics, one fundamental (as opposed to fundamentalist) characteristic of the state that is rarely mentioned is that it is the heartland for home environmental radon gas exposure. Read More

Solving the Solvent Question

A study on Parkinson Disease has raised disturbing questions about the role that certain common chemical solvents may play in leading to this potentially devastating neurological disease. The chemical solvents, trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, are used commonly in a number of workplaces abd are allowed on the market in household consumer products. Read More

Downsides of Dry Wall

Drywall construction should be familiar to anyone who has watched at least one episode of any of the ubiquitous reality shows featuring remodeling to live in, move in, sell, sell better, or flip. The downsides of drywall are not highlighted in these paeans to the glories of gypsum sandwiched between paper sheets. Read More

Top Picks for Hazards

I recently had a call from a junior health reporter doing a story on household toxins. An editor had assigned her the topic and was keeping the cub reporter on a fairly short leash: she was supposed to come up with a list of top hazards to worry about, but also a matching list of worries that were “overblown.” Read More

Spare That Tree!

"Imprelis" is an iconic brand name, subliminally suggesting an archaic order of noble rank as in one of the players on Game of Thrones. Just as in the cable TV series, you don’t want this character paying a visit to your manor house. Imprelis is a new, purportedly “eco-friendly” landscaping herbicide linked to an emerging horticultural holocaust. Read More

Arm the Deer

I was recently asked by an old friend of mine whether I knew anything about the potential hazards of something I had never heard of called galaxolide. Galaxolide is a major player in the fragrance industry, one of a group of synthetic chemicals known generically as artificial musk. And it has a lot of environmental scientists worried. Read More

Ask Dr. Laundry

Having been invited to give a presentation at an upcoming scientific congress on the topic of cleaning agents and allergy on-the-job, I found that I needed to brush up on the subject. As it turns out, this is a very broad topic but not a bit esoteric. In fact, it’s all too much an everyday affair. Read More

Happiness is a Warned (Nail) Gun

Nail guns are ubiquitous in construction jobs and commonplace in that hands consumers. New research has documented the extent to which this equipment is posing a serious injury hazard – and how easily this risk might be mitigated. Read More

If The Glove Fits

A news item relegated to the local section of the New York Times caught my attention. The New York City Fire Department found that it had nearly a million dollars worth of defective fire-safety gloves on its hands. The back-story would be fitting for the dramatic plotline of a modernist morality play in the tradition of Ibsen or even Arthur Miller. Read More

How You Take It Makes the Poison , Too

It was announced that a new review of a series of previous studies found that zinc supplements might indeed shorten the duration of the common cold. Read More

Dose Makes the Poison

Nearly every bathroom medicine cabinet has its own stash of pain killers, with acetaminophen alone or in a combination product leading the pack. For a long time, the veritable acetaminophen smorgasbord of products on the market has been more of a problem than solution in health care. The FDA finally decided to do something about it. Read More

A Virus in the Cross-Hairs

Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a novel viral infection formerly unknown in humans. Fortunately, this was not a mutated influenza strain threatening an outbreak of pandemic proportions. It wasn't even such a new virus... Read More

A Century of Progress

Just over a week ago, a fire in a 10-story garment factory killed at least 29. The fire started on the 9th floor. Some of the trapped victims jumped to their deaths. Just shy of 100 years ago, a fire in a 10-story garment factory killed 146. The fire started on 8th floor. Many of the trapped victims jumped to their deaths. Read More

A tale of two mothballs

A 44-year old was found prostrate in his apartment. He had developed bizarre behavioral symptoms over 2 weeks leading up to his collapse. An MRI scan documented severe central nervous system deterioration. The patient's doctors were at a loss to explain the cause of his pathology until it eventually came to light that he had mothball substance abuse. Read More

A Few Updates from the Recent News

The day after I posted my last blog entry highlighting the silica sunflower seed snafu at the Tate Modern Museum in London, the front page of the New York Times arts section featured a major report on Ai Weiwei's ill-fated installation, making me think about other news updates touching on the content of previous blog entries of mine. Read More

A tale of two exposures: consumers and those who supply them

Some of my occupational medicine colleagues and I did not share completely in the general euphoria following the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners, taking note that Mario Gomez (at 63, the eldest of the group) was reported to have silicosis. This is a progressive and life-threatening lung disease that evolves after prolonged exposure to silica-containing rock dust. Read More

Pipe Nightmares

The September natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California that killed seven and destroyed nearly forty homes has raised many unanswered questions. The most obvious concern, of course, is that there may be other similar disasters waiting to happen. The personal choice between using a gas or electric cooking appliance in the home is one thing - any quick check-in with foodie websites will teach you what a hot-button item that topic is - but individual preference doesn't matter much if your home is blown apart from the outside in. Read More

Workstation Woes

This summer, a leading workplace health journal published a report of an emerging problem in office workers. This relatively new condition carries the ominous sounding name, "Lipoatrophia semicircularis." By comparison, carpal tunnel syndrome comes trippingly off the tongue. Lipoatrophia semicurcularis (let's just call it LS) simply means a semi-circular line of wasting or atrophy involving fat deposited near the body's surface. This appears as an arching, narrow depression in the skin, typically manifested on the front of thighs (although it can be on the arms, too). This unusual condition was only first reported in the medical literature a few decades ago and seemed to be extremely rare. Rare, that is, other than in certain populations of modern office workers. Read More

Black gold, tainted gold, and rare earth

In the aftermath of the deadly BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, the public mind has been appropriately concentrated on the hazards of natural resources extraction. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association online commentary by my colleague Dr. Gina Solomon highlights the potential physical and mental health dangers arising from oil spills, as well as the chemicals used to clean them up This includes the residual risks that might come up through the food chain and on to the dinner table of seafood consumers. Read More

Not Trying to be Peevish

A recent New York Times report carried the somewhat tongue-in-cheek header, “Add to the Recall List: Millions of Frozen Mice.” The story concerned an international epidemic of a serious diarrheal illness, salmonella, linked to contaminated reptile food in the form of frozen mice. These wholesome snacks for snakes had been internet marketed by a company aptly named MiceDirect. This outbreak may be noteworthy in part because of its internet flourish, but it is, in fact, but one example of a variety of potential human health issues linked to pet ownership. Read More

Strawberry Fields Forewarning

This week the California legislature will be taking up the question of methyl iodide. Methyl iodide is a highly toxic chemical fumigant that California agribusiness is chomping at the bit to start using. A prime crop will be the valuable strawberry fields of the state - the nation's big producer of ever larger and seemingly less tasty berries. But this is not a matter of taste. It's a matter of health and safety. Read More

Denture Adhesives Bite Back

In 2009, a hyper-specialized biomedical journal called NeuroToxicology published a fascinating piece of poison sleuthing. The article documented a disturbing series of 11 cases all of whom shared an unusual and crippling constellation of troubles comprised of profound impairment of the nervous system and an inability to produce an adequate number of blood cells. Read More

Work-Related Asthma: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

As an occupational and environmental medicine research physician, an important part of my work focuses on asthma, trying to figuring out how much of the burden of this disease can be laid at the doorstep of the workplace. My studies, and those of others, have consistently indicated at least 15% of adult asthma - three in twenty cases - may be attributable to workplace causes. It is a hard question to study, because health care providers rarely ask the questions that might make the connection between work activities and health problems such as asthma. Now, recent bureaucratic meddling may make it even harder to get good data on this important question. Read More

What becomes of the broken-hearted?

Less than 2 weeks after Valentine's Day, the New York Times ran a front page exposé on the strong links between job loss from manufacturing plant closures and heart attacks among those dealing with sudden unemployment To experts in the field of occupational and environmental health this link is hardly a revelation, but one need not rely on technical expertise for confirmation. Common wisdom draws similar conclusions from the wider human experience - one is reminded of the answer to the folk song riddle, what can cry without tears? (A heart...) Read More

Drugs acting as toxins; toxics masquerading as drugs

Recently, the Centers for Disease Control reported an alarming outbreak of bone marrow toxicity in multiple U.S. States, primarily in the southwest. The potentially life-threatening problem manifest as a paucity of infection-fighting white blood cells, a condition called agranulocytosis. This is a common and expected side-effect of cancer chemotherapy and can also occur following the use of certain prescription medications Read More

Playing with Cadmium

We are learning once again that imported Chinese toys mean risky playthings and that the "watchdog" agency meant to protect U.S. consumers seems to have been curled up asleep, oblivious to the public health trespass. Read More

Bhopal, 1984 – West Virginia near-miss, 2008

December 3, 2009 marked the 25^th anniversary of the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. The event was marked by local protests in India and by worldwide media notice. Commentators emphasized the death toll (at least 10,000, with many estimates higher after taking into account delayed mortality) and Union Carbide-Dow Chemical corporate culpability (there is still an Indian arrest warrant out for the former Union Carbide chief executive officer). But most reports ignored the fate of the Institute West Virginia facility that also handled the same chemical that caused the Bhopal damage. Read More

Paul D. Blanc, M.D., M.S.P.H., is Professor of Medicine and Endowed Chair in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

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