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In January 2005, New York governor George Pataki issued an executive order mandating the use of so-called "green" cleaning products in all state agencies and authorities; he later extended his order to New York schools. According to an Associated Press notice, the governor signed legislation putting his orders into law, effective September 1, 2006. So now we can all breathe a sigh of relief when standing for hours in a queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles or any other state offices, right?

On March 29, 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a revised set of Guidelines for Carcinogenic Risk Assessment to replace those adopted in 1986. The revisions reflect a gradual evolution of the process by which EPA performs risk assessment for possible cancer-causing agents.

For over a year, the FDA has held adamantly to its stance that repeated delays in deciding whether to approve the over-the-counter sales of the "morning after" pill, Plan B, have nothing to do with abortion politics. Much of the science community, however, is finding this harder and harder to believe.

An August 25, 2005 dispatch from ChemWeek.com describes ACSH's petition to stop the EPA from using high-dose rodent tests alone to dub things "carcinogens" (and a longer version of the piece appears in the August 24/30, 2005 issue of the affiliated print magazine Chemical Week):

While the ongoing tension between Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields as well as a book by the latter have recently drawn attention to postpartum depression, the issue of depression during pregnancy is often neglected. Roughly the same percentage of women (14.5%) experience depression during pregnancy as after giving birth.

Ideology scored another victory over public health and sound science last week when seven New Jersey legislators obtained a court order barring needle exchange programs in the state. The crusading seven, led by Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union) claim that such programs, which allow drug users to exchange their dirty needles for new sterile equipment, encourage the use of illicit drugs and do nothing to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

A study on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests released in yesterday's Journal of the American Medical Association confirms what ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan has been saying since 1992 -- PSA tests promise more than they can deliver. For years, men have been conditioned to think that if their PSA result is below 4.0 ng/mL, they do not have to be concerned about prostate cancer. But in fact, there is no cutoff PSA value that is reliable for accurately ruling out cancer in some patients and detecting it in others.

Maybe you're a smoker. Maybe you used to smoke a pack a day but quit twenty years ago (congratulations!). Maybe you're not a smoker but you've lived with one for many years. Maybe you've never touched a cigarette, but you're alarmed that Dana Reeve, a never-smoker with a healthy diet, was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Should you get screened?

This booklet, based on a more technical report, examines the scientific evidence underlying claims of those for and against the regulation of mercury emissions, with the aim of determining the impact, if any, such regulation will have on public health.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has come under fire recently over a study it published that reported that fetuses probably cannot feel pain before the 29th week of pregnancy. It is not the science itself that is being called into question. Rather, it is the employment history of the study authors. One of the authors, Dr. Eleanor Drey, performs abortions and is the medical director of an abortion clinic. Another author, Susan Lee, is a medical student who worked at one time in the NARAL Pro-Choice Legal Department.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs, circumcision, and growth hormones seem like unlikely heroes in the fight against HIV/AIDS, but three new studies (1) suggest that they may be just that.

When reading the medical news, you might want to start asking for a second opinion. A report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that it is not unusual for medical studies to contradict one another: 16% of highly-cited original clinical studies were contradicted by subsequent ones, and another 16% were shown by later trials to have overstated results.

An article in the November 12, 2005 Boca Raton News by John Johnston summarizes bird flu points made by ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
"Public awareness about the possibility of a pandemic of avian flu has soared, but so has misinformation," according to Dr. Elizabeth Whelan president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).
Dr. Whelan listed the top 10 things the ACSH believes everyone should know about avian flu:

This article appeared on NationalReview.com.
President Bush unveiled the administration's new plan Tuesday in preparation for a possible onslaught of the dreaded "bird flu" pandemic in America. He and Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt seem to be bending over backward, allocating at least $1.2 billion for stockpiling millions of doses of new vaccine. But what are we going to get for that money?

New York, NY -- November 14, 2005. Scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) once again present an analysis of the natural foods that make up a traditional holiday dinner. Results indicate that our favorite foods are loaded with chemicals that can cause cancer in laboratory animals when administered in very high doses -- but none of these "carcinogens" are manmade or added to the foods. Instead, they occur naturally. But ACSH scientists have good news: these natural "carcinogens" pose no hazard to human health -- nor, for that matter, do manmade ones.

This piece appeared in the Washington Times and on Spiked-Online.

Much has been written in the past two weeks on editorial pages and blogs -- including this one -- about the travesty of the upcoming presentation of the Harvard School of Public Health's highest award, the Julius Richmond Award, to environmental activist Erin Brockovich. But no commentator to date has identified the real victim of this ill-suited award: the credibility of all public health scientists.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S.), a fatal neurodegenerative disease for which there is no effective treatment, is something of an orphan disease in America despite the approximately 5,600 cases that are diagnosed each year. But A.L.S., also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, has been garnering some long-overdue attention lately. Project A.L.S., a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding A.L.S.

Efforts to link environmental factors to cancer have foundered recently, as highlighted in an article by New York Times science reporter, Gina Kolata.

Thursday, November 17, 2005 is the Great American Smokeout -- but many not-so-great American doctors are neglecting to tell their patients to quit smoking.
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control released the latest statistics on smoking rates. The tone was generally self-congratulatory, and indeed, when matched against the marketing might of Big Tobacco, a decline in smoking from 21.6% in 2003 to last year's 20.9% is an accomplishment, even if some 44 million Americans remain smokers.

We have known and worked with Dr. Gil Ross for various periods of time during his almost eight years at the American Council on Science and Health. Some of us have worked with Gil during his entire tenure, others for shorter periods. We are unanimous in our support for him personally and in our enthusiasm about his performance at ACSH.

A September 22, 2005 editorial in the Lincoln Journal Star echoes skepticism voiced on ACSH's HealthFactsAndFears blog about California's anti-fat legislation:

A Sunday, November 27, 2005 article by Jennifer D'Angelo describes books touting French and Japanese diets but notes the skepticism of Dr. Ruth Kava:
But Dr. Ruth Kava, [nutrition] director of the American Council on Science and Health Nutrition, is skeptical.

Ted Balaker, editor of the Reason Foundation's Privatization Watch newsletter, interviewed HealthFactsAndFears contributor Dr. John Dunn, physician and toxicology expert, in Vol. 29, No. 3, 2005, on the topic of exaggerated air pollution fears:
What do you think of the public's understanding of environmental health risks?

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently won a case against Eli Lilly & Co. when the company agreed to plead guilty and pay $36 million in connection with illegal promotion of its pharmaceutical drug Evista. What did the company do to earn such a penalty?