Login
Her Children Were Sick. Was It ‘Forever Chemicals’ on the Family Farm?
Allison Jumper’s family was a picture of healthy living. Active kids. Wholesome meals. A freezer stocked with organic beef from her in-laws’ farm in Maine.
Then in late 2020, she got a devastating call from her brother-in-law. High levels of harmful “forever chemicals” had been detected on their farm and in their cows’ milk, and they were getting shut down.
At first, Jumper worried only about her in-laws’ livelihoods. But soon, her mind went somewhere else: to her own children’s mysterious health issues, including startlingly high cholesterol levels.
“Then it hit me,” she said at her home in Durham, New Hampshire. “Could it be the beef?”
Unknown to them, her family’s beloved organic farm had been fertilized decades earlier with sewage sludge tainted by a dangerous class of chemicals linked to certain cancers, liver disease and a host of other health problems.
Their cattle had grazed on contaminated pastures, making the beef and milk too dangerous to eat.
Yet her family had been eating it for several years.
Pandemic-Era Babies Do Not Have Higher Autism Risk, Finds Study
Children born during the first year of the pandemic, including those exposed to COVID-19 in utero, were no more likely to screen positive for autism than unexposed or pre-pandemic children, found researchers from Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is the first report on autism risk among pandemic-era children.
“Autism risk is known to increase with virtually any kind of insult to mom during pregnancy, including infection and stress,” says Dani Dumitriu, associate professor of pediatrics and psychiatry and senior author of the study.
“The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic had pediatricians, researchers, and developmental scientists worried that we would see an uptick in autism rates.
But reassuringly, we didn’t find any indication of such an increase in our study.”
Virus Linked to Rare Paralyzing Illness in Children Could Spike in US, Wastewater Data Suggests
Wastewater samples have shown elevated levels of a respiratory virus that has been linked to paralysis in some children, sparking concerns about potentially rising cases in the U.S., according to a report from WastewaterSCAN.
The virus, enterovirus D68, is one of “100 non-polio enteroviruses,” according to Cleveland Clinic’s website.
While the virus itself is common, neurological complications are “relatively rare,” the clinic noted.
“It circulates in the summer, like all its other enteroviral cousins, but this one causes a specific problem,” Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital in New York, told Fox News Digital.
Paternal Gut Health May Affect the Physical and Mental Health of Offspring
Florey researchers have shown, for the first time, that a father’s gut health plays a role in offspring physiology and behavior.
Co-lead author and Research Lead of The Florey’s Mental Health Mission, Professor Anthony Hannan, said the findings in mice, as well as his lab’s previous work, have potential implications for men planning families, suggesting that their nutrition and health could affect their future children.
“We’re used to hearing that women need to look after their physical health for the sake of their baby. Our discoveries in mice, and emerging findings in humans, suggest that it’s important that men do so too,” Professor Hannan said.
The latest research, published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, found the depletion of the gut microbiota of male mice was associated with changes in their sperm that significantly affected offspring.
Republicans and Democrats Just Came Together to Protect America’s Kids | Opinion
Something extraordinary happened this summer.
During one of the most divisive periods in modern U.S. history, Senate Republicans and Democrats came together almost unanimously to advance legislation that protects America’s children.
This bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, requires internet companies to keep children’s safety in mind when designing the online platforms they use — something required of every other industry.
This new bill focuses specifically on the platforms’ design — not their content.
Since senators likely do not agree about what content should be online, the bill instead provides a much-needed, common-sense response to new evidence that social media companies knowingly designed their products with features that exploit the still-developing brains of children and cause them harm.
Now, Big Tech is doing everything it can to kill the bill in the House of Representatives.
Why? Money.
The six most popular social media platforms earned roughly $11 billion in just one year from advertising that targets children, according to a recent study from Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital authors.
