E-Cigarette Liquid Ingestions in Children.
An article recently appeared the weekly CDC Morbidity and Mortality Report (MMWR) that addressed eCigarette poisonings reported to Poison Control Centers across the country. One surprising finding from this data is that children less than 5 years old account for almost 2/3 of all poisoning cases. Below is the MMWR report… E-cigarette–associated cases reported to […]
Food Additive Emulsifiers are Deleterious to Health.
A new large prospective cohort study was just released in the British Medical Journal from a research group in France demonstrating that Food Emulsifiers that appear in most processed foods are harmful to health, especially, cardiovascular health. Here are the main points of the study that were summarized in Medscape, 9/15/23: METHODOLOGY: TAKEAWAY: IN PRACTICE: […]
The 4th Wave Of Polysubstance Fentanyl Overdose Deaths.
One of the consequences of an open Southern Border is the entrance into the U.S. of unprecedented amounts of illicit drugs. Additionally, much of these drugs have been spiked with lethal doses of fentanyl. Fentanyl is the most potent of all narcotics. On a dose:dose basis fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin, and 100 […]
How to Interpret a Urine Drug Test.
Urine drug tests (UDTs) are broken down into two separate categories, screening UDTs and confirmatory UDTs. Screening UDTs are immunoassay tests involving antibody technology. Screening UDTs have a higher risk of false positive and false negative results compared with confirmatory UDTs that are done by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Screening UDTs are inexpensive […]
FDA Clears First Over the Counter Fentanyl Urine Test.
Finally, we now have a rapid urine test for fentanyl. In the past, we had to send out suspected urine for a quantitative analysis that often took many days. Now, within minutes we will know whether an individual has the drug in his or her system. Here’s the communique. The US Food and Drug Administration […]
Toxic Chemicals Consumed in Food and Water.
If the pandemic served as a window into our health, what it revealed was a US population that is not only sick but also seemingly only getting sicker. Life expectancy is falling precipitously. Three fourths of Americans are overweight or obese, half have diabetes or prediabetes, and a majority are metabolically unhealthy. Furthermore, the rates of allergic, inflammatory, autoimmune diseases, and stress-related […]
Despite 2013 Ban Ubiquitous Chemical May Still Causes Human Cancer.
Although banned in 2013 as a probably human carcinogen, a group of chemicals called polybrominated biphenyl ethers are still around— in soil, food, and in our blood. PBDEs are a group of compounds that were used as flame-retardants mainly in plastics, and they were also used extensively in the latter part of the 20th century in […]
Body Packing of Narcotics Hypothetical Case Study
A 22-year-old man with no significant medical history is transferred from the airport to the emergency department (ED) in a semiconscious state after returning from a 3-week vacation in a malarial zone. According to one of his traveling companions, the patient was at his baseline mental status when boarding the plane for the return trip home. He […]
Plastic & Microplastic Pollution and the Kidney/Urinary Tract.
Plastics and microplastics have always been a concern of Environmental Toxicologist, and both animal and human research has been conducted over the past 50 years with an eye to determining the consequences of various forms of exposures, both acute and chronic.Although a 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) report concluded that microplastics in drinking water posed […]
Fentanyl Deaths Seen in Emergency Departments.
One of the consequences of an open Southern Border is the entrance into the U.S. of unprecedented amounts of illicit drugs. Many of these drugs have been spiked with lethal doses of fentanyl. Unbeknowst to the drug user, they will consume fentanyl without even knowing it. This is the source of most accidental deaths secondary […]