Ugh. Wow.
source:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S075333222301853X
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Well, I guess the mystery is solved. Lead chromate adulteration to boost weight and appearance of the spices.
Lead chromate is a vibrant yellow substance that has frequently turned up in turmeric sourced from India and Bangladesh. In a 2017 study by public health researchers at Boston University, 16 of 32 turmeric products bought in markets in the Boston area had lead levels over the FDAâs allowable lead level for candy (the FDA does not have guidelines for lead levels in spices, specifically).
I see two issues here. 1) Half f turmric samples were contaminated with lead chromate. 2) How can there be no standard for lead in a food product? âOh, thatâs a spice. Lead away!â
And finally, there is this:
âMy instinct is they didnât think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,â Jones said. âThey thought it was going to end up in places that did not have the ability to detect something like this.â
âSo what if we kill some kids? They live in third world countries, theyâre probably going to die anyway!â
So much here to be angry about!
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Vesta Fiery Gourmet Foods, Inc. issued a voluntary recall on Monday for five of its bottled hot sauces with varying degrees of heat, as they contain âundeclared wheat.â
This is a really big deal for celiac disease patients. And a bad look for the company.
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Amen amen and amen!
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OK, a couple criticisms first:
- They appear to be limiting this study to Rx antifungals, which are a teeny tiny part of the antifungal ecosystem. All those OTC jock itch/athleteâs foot/vaginal yeast meds are in largely the same class, and contribute far more to the problem.
- Getting a fungal culture is not a trivial thing. Culturing fungi is a bit tricky, and controlling the resultant spore production can be a bear. Itâs a specialty lab sort of thing, and can take a very long time to get results back, and frequently requires wrestling with insurance companies to get it covered.
and finally - The pressure on us PCPâs is immense. Many schools and especially sports teams will not allow kids back until they are âtreatedâ with something. They donât care what it is, just something so they can tick their boxes. And even if we want to get said culture, OTC stuff is always there, and urgent cares are more than happy to give out Rx meds.
So yeah, itâs a mess. It would be ideal to have an identified pathogen with sensitivities prior to treating, but barring some serious changes in the system, it ainât happening.
In better news:
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âIf you have a severe sore throat without a cough or other cold or upper respiratory tract infection symptoms, if you have fever with it, if youâre feeling generally quite unwell with these symptoms, then seek medical attention,â said Hota in an interview.
âŚ
Banerji says some of the signs that could indicate a strep infection include a very sore throat, a fine, sandpaper-like rash on the skin, extreme lethargy and fever. She says a runny nose and sneezing rarely indicate a case of strep.
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Cholera sucks, for starters. But my neice is working with the Peace Corps in Zambia currently, which causes some concerns here. Damn it, clean water should be a basic human right.
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https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00013-0/fulltext
Summary
Background
COVID-19 survivors may experience a wide range of chronic cognitive symptoms for months or years as part of post-COVID-19 conditions (PCC). To date, there is no definitive objective cognitive marker for PCC. We hypothesised that a key common deficit in people with PCC might be generalised cognitive slowing.
https://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/fulltext/S1934-5909(23)00442-3
Highlights
⢠hPSC-derived DA neurons are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection ⢠SARS-CoV-2 infection of DA neurons triggers cellular senescence response ⢠Several FDA-approved drugs were identified to rescue senescence of DA neurons ⢠Cellular senescence was found in substantia nigra tissues of COVID-19 patients
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According to data from the World Health Organization, the European region saw an over 40-fold rise in measles cases in 2023 as compared with 2022. The region tallied over 42,200 measles cases last year, compared with just 941 in 2022.
That is a terrifying number. Here we see a startlingly high number of European immigrants (especially Russian and Swiss, for some reason) who do not vaccinate their kids. We do not have a large Swiss emigree population, but we have a HUGE Russian community here. This is worrisome for the possibility of measles getting loose in that group. We are currently dealing with a pretty enormous chicken pox outbreak among the Russians, and something more dangerous is just waiting to come. Have I mentioned how much I hate this timeline? Because I hate this timeline.
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Important to know if you have a Phillips CPAP
Probably will not matter until somebody is held accountable, but this is a step in the right direction.
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My cynicism meter pegged, and Iâm going to go out on a limb and say that nobody will ever be held accountable, because they will always claim that the AI system theyâve been training in the basement on live data is for research purposes, and every denial was done by a human being on the merits, and you canât prove it wasnât and the onus is on you to prove it was on a case by case basis beyond reasonable doubt no we wonât provide you any information on internal processes and that whistleblower is a lying disgruntled ex-employee with grudges and mental health issues including paranoia whom you canât trust just look at these photos our investigators secretly took of them.
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âCannotâ or âmay notâ?
I donât believe the former, and donât believe the latter to be enforceable.
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Anybody paying attention will not be terribly surprised by this. But it is nice to have it all laid out nicely in black and white for those in denial.
Profit motive + healthcare = death, pure and simple.
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Ok, ok,ok This one might be TMI, so I will issue a CW: Yucky stuff ahead!
Doing a CME during lunch, because we are that weird, and ran across this lovely thought when reviewing pinworm infestations.
The male fertilizes the female and dies, and is then excreted in the stool. When the female is ready to lay her eggs, the female pinworm leaves the cecum and migrates the length of the colon to the rectal area. At night she exits from the bowel by crawling out the anus to lay her eggs on the skin of the perineum. Females migrate only at night (reason unknown) in a predictable sequence. The exodus most often begins about 30 minutes after the child or adult falls asleep. Each female lays an average of 11,000 eggs and then dies. Uncommonly, eggs in the perianal area will mature and re-enter the anus.
The eggs that the female pinworm nocturnally lays in the perianal area are clear, colorless spheres, flattened on one side, and very small (30 to 50 microns in size). Unlike the pinworm itself, the eggs are difficult for the naked eye to see. Once dislodged, they are light enough to float on air currents and are widely dispersed by moving air, for example, by shaking out bedclothes. Eggs can be inhaled or swallowed. Simply breathing the air in an infected childâs room may produce infection. Parents may not realize it, but eggs in large numbers can also be detected throughout the home of infected children and will be found on floors, windowsills, toys, and draperies. When infected children were detected at a boyâs school, a study showed 119 eggs/sq ft on the walls of the school dining hall, 305 on the classroom walls, and 5000 on the lavatory walls. In optimum conditions (a cool, moist environment with little ventilation), eggs remain viable for up to 3 weeks.
THere is your nightmare material for the week. Be sure to tip your server, and for Godâs sake wash your hands!!
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Oh wow. I knew about the nighttime egg laying. Some tip I read or our pediatrician told us: if pinworms are suspected, wake the kid up and examine about 45 min after sleep. Might see the worms, though an appt fast is best.
But airborne?! 
I admire your iron stomach. Risking a CME during lunch! The only risk I have with CLE is boredom or occasionally irritation at some stupid law.
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Yeah, we refer to that as âComing out to sit around the fire.â IF you see that, it is pretty much 100% accurate, but it is way easy to miss. The scotch tape test is better, but I will usually treat witht he right story.
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