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Dangerous Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Found in U.S. Breast Milk Samples
Breast milk samples from mothers in Seattle contain alarming levels of dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals, including BPA, BPS, melamine, cyanuric acid, and triclosan, new peer-reviewed research has found. The chemicals present a serious risk to infants because they likely interfere with hormones that are critical to newborns’ proper development, and have been found to be harmful at very low levels of exposure.
About 92% of 50 samples were contaminated with at least one of the anti-microbials or plasticizers for which researchers checked. The same milk samples had previously been found to contain potentially dangerous levels of PFAS “forever chemicals” and flame retardants, which are also endocrine disruptors.
The cocktail of endocrine-disrupting chemicals is “concerning for a number of reasons”, said Ryan Babadi, a lead author of the peer-reviewed study, and senior scientist with the Toxic Free Future nonprofit.
Newborn Girls Appear Less Likely to Get Vitamin K, Hepatitis B Shots
Newborn girls were less likely to receive vitamin K prophylaxis and hepatitis B vaccination than newborn boys, according to a cohort study involving more than 93,000 babies. Female sex was associated with non-receipt of vitamin K prophylaxis and non-receipt of the hepatitis B vaccine, compared with male sex, reported Sarah Coggins, MD, MSCE, of CHOP Newborn Care at Pennsylvania Hospital, and colleagues, in JAMA Network Open.
Coggins told MedPage Today that she and her colleagues have been “trying to think of ways to address parental concerns and to identify factors associated with refusal of these important newborn care practices.” They noticed that parents who wanted a circumcision for a newborn boy often accepted vitamin K prophylaxis, “even if they were previously hesitant to accept vitamin K.”
“We were unfortunately not surprised that vitamin K refusal more commonly affected female newborns compared to male newborns,” Coggins said, noting, however, that “we were taken aback by the magnitude of this relationship.”
Nara Organics Recalls Baby Formula Sold at Target After Multistate Infant Botulism Outbreak
Nara Organics recalled its organic baby formula sold nationwide in Target stores and online Saturday after a multistate outbreak of infant botulism, federal authorities said.
Three babies between 2 and 5 months became ill in April and May in California, Pennsylvania and Washington after consuming Nara Organics Whole Milk Organic Powdered infant formula, which is also sold on Nara.com, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. They were hospitalized and treated with the FDA-approved treatment for infant botulism, the agency said.
Infant botulism is a rare but serious illness that occurs in babies under age 1, whose gut microbiomes are immature. It is caused when infants consume bacteria with spores that produce a toxin in the gut. Symptoms include constipation, poor feeding, drooping eyelids, weak muscle tone, difficulty swallowing and breathing problems, among others.
How Parents Can Talk to Their Kids About Vaping as FDA Authorizes Some Flavored E-Cigarettes
Ricky Resendez first tried e-cigarettes in eighth grade. By the time he got to high school, he was vaping daily. “It was just kind of normal,” said Ricky, a 17-year-old recent graduate in Superior, Wisconsin. “Kids were vaping in class, in the bathrooms, wherever.”
Nationally, nearly 6% of middle and high school students — amounting to 1.63 million kids — reported using electronic cigarettes in 2024, federal figures show. Although that is down from previous years, e-cigarettes remain the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, and nearly 9 out of 10 of kids choose flavored products. Some doctors are concerned that youth vaping rates may rise again.
The Food and Drug Administration recently announced its first authorization of fruit-flavored vapes intended for adults interested in quitting or cutting back on more harmful traditional cigarettes. The policy shift came after months of appeals to President Donald Trump from the vaping industry. An FDA memo released this week said these fruit-flavored e-cigarettes are not significantly better at helping smokers quit than tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes.
Inside the Race to Protect Children From AI
Lawmakers and regulators are scrambling to define how far the government should go in regulating AI chatbots used by children. AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, Gemini and Bing AI, have entered childhood faster than lawmakers have worked out what to do about them. A child can open one for homework help and, in the same exchange, begin treating it as something closer to a confidant.
The policy question is no longer whether to regulate children’s AI use, but how — while balancing safety and privacy concerns with free expression and access to information.
Florida forced that question into court on June 1, becoming the first state to sue OpenAI directly. State Attorney General James Uthmeier accused the company behind ChatGPT of marketing the chatbot as safe while concealing risks that it could steer vulnerable users toward harm.
Nearly Half of UK Girls Saw Harmful Social Media Content in a Week, Research Shows
Nearly half of girls and a third of all teenagers saw suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content on social media in a week, a study shows. The Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) research found that 47% of girls aged 13 to 17 encountered high-risk content during a seven-day period.
Only slightly fewer teens are seeing harmful content now (34%) than just before new safety measures came into force last summer (37%), the study found. The charity, set up in memory of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who took her own life in 2017 after viewing harmful content online, said the study showed children are still facing “a tsunami of harmful content”.
The findings are based on a survey of 1,825 UK children aged 13 to 17 conducted by MEL Research in April 2026 with support from the PSHE Association. They also showed that children with low wellbeing (57%) and those with special educational needs (40%) were found to be at even greater risk of seeing the content.
