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Monthly Archive

Congress Blocks Ideologues From Health Agencies

By EWG

Maybe President Bush still had a New Year’s hangover when he signed this particular appropriations bill into law on January 3rd. The bill funding the Health and Human Services Agency contained a tiny rider (compliments of Sen. Durbin of Ill.) that means agencies like the FDA, NIH, and CDC may actually get back to using science to protect public health. The rider says that political ideology can’t be a hiring criteria, and that sins of scientific omission and commission in the service of political goals will not be tolerated. The Union of Concerned Scientists breaks the news here.

FDA: We Don't Know What's in Tuna Cans

By EWG

Apparently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relies on the same sources of information as the general public to learn what's in popular foods: the newspaper. Just two weeks after the Chicago Tribune ran a three-part series on mercury in seafood (including findings in locally purchased fish), top FDA mercury official David Acheson admitted that the FDA didn't know that canned light tuna can contain yellowfin tuna, which is especially high in toxic mercury.

The heavy metal mercury gets into our bodies from seafood consumption and harms the brains of developing children and babies. Public health groups have long urged the FDA to provide clear warnings to women of childbearing age about how much seafood they can safely eat.

The Tribune reports: "We will definitely look at it through our office of seafood and determine whether there is something that requires further pursuit," Acheson said. He could not say exactly what the investigation would entail or whether the agency would conduct additional testing of canned tuna.

Environmental Working Group researchers exposed the FDA's coverup of their own focus group results in which Agency scientists warned women about mercury in tuna. To see how much tuna you can safely eat to keep your level of mercury at a safe level, use EWG's tuna calculator: http://www.ewg.org/issues/mercury/20031209/calculator.php

To read EWG's research, please visit http://www.ewg.org/issues/siteindex/issues.php?issueid=5010.

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