News tagged with 'EPA'

BP stations around the U.S. are suffering from sluggish sales and destruction of the BP logo, and the oil giant is reaching out to help. Were 1,800 veterans exposed to HIV and hepatitis at a veterans hospital in Missouri? Some injury related headlines around the web for Wednesday June 30.

Flame retardants, found in the blood of pregnant women are correlated with lower levels of thyroid stimulating hormone. The malfunction is linked to miscarriage, premature birth and intrauterine growth retardation.

They didn't want to litigate but a Miami couple has become the first to win a lawsuit over a single home made with defective Chinese wallboard. A Miami-Dade jury awarded the couple $2.5 million in damages and expenses. They had sought over $4 million.

Many jokes are going around about the nutritional content of SpaghettiOs which are now the subject of a Class I recall, the most serious, by the Department of Agriculture because some of the canned kid food may not have been properly cooked. No one has been made sick.

Valproic acid (Depakote) is prescribed to control the seizures of epilepsy, but for pregnant women the drug can cause birth defects if taken in the first trimester.

A published report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that 67% of the outpatient centers visited had at least one lapse in infection control. An estimated 100,000 people die from hospital-acquired infections every year.

Workers trying to clean up crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico are reporting respiratory problems nausea and headaches. Meanwhile BP has failed to act on an order by the Environmental Protection Agency to switch to a less toxic dispersant to break up the oil.

Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife have filed his second lawsuit against Baxter Healthcare over the near-death experience of their twins over a drug mix-up at a Los Angeles hospital. The labels of the two drugs were never changed even though the drug maker knew they had caused prescription errors that led to the death of three infants, the complaint says.

Corexit hasn't been tested for its toxicity on wetlands, marine life or people, yet BP is dispensing the dispersant liberally in the Gulf of Mexico in a desperate effort to contain the massive oil spill. The EPA has given the company until midnight Thursday to stop using it.

Triclosan is everywhere, put into everything from pajamas to toothpaste, toys and trash bags as an antimicrobial agent. And consumers love to buy anything that fights germs. Now with the encouragement of environmental groups, triclosan is being reviewed by the FDA with a skeptical eye as an endocrine disruptor, a pollutant, and contributor to antibiotic resistance.

Toyota projects more than $3 billion in profit for this fiscal year while repairs are rolling along. Still outstanding is the question about glitches in the computer software that drives the car and may be behind deadly unintended accelerations.

"Best Friends" charm bracelets for children sold in the jewelry store, Claire's, are being removed from store shelves after an investigation by the Associated Press found they contained high levels of the toxic metal, cadmium. Those levels have now been confirmed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The environmental and industrial exposures to cancer are grossly underestimated finds a panel advising the president on cancer causes.

AstraZeneca is fined $520 million for illegally marketing the anti-psychotic drug, Seroquel for uses not approved by the FDA, including for use among the elderly and adolescents.

The EPA plans on tightening requirements or labeling on pet flea and tick treatments after 44,000 adverse reactions were reported in 2008.