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What Are Plasticizers, and Are They Bad for Our Health?
A plasticizer is a general term for a whole range of chemicals added to materials, typically plastic and rubber, to make them softer and more pliable. They’re found in countless everyday items like plastic shower curtains, shrink-wrap, PVC raincoats or flexible tubing and wire insulation for homes. Plasticizers, sometimes called phthalates, are also found in cosmetics, like nail polishes, lotions and shampoos. Here, they act as stabilizers, preserving and maintaining consistency. They can also help products like lotions resist water or last longer.
The use of certain plasticizers has been banned or severely restricted in places such as the EU, US, Canada and Japan due to their potentially harmful effects on human health or the environment. But they remain widely used elsewhere. Although restrictions are especially enforced when it comes to children’s toys, for example, in recent years, German researchers have reported unusually high levels of a strictly regulated plasticizer in young kids.
A breakdown product of the plasticizer mono-n-hexyl phthalate (MnHexP) was detected in 92% of urine samples from 259 children and adolescents taken in spring and summer 2025 across Germany.
Childhood Obesity at a Record High as MAHA Presses for Changes to Kids’ Diets
New data showed childhood obesity has hit a record high in recent years, while federal changes such as cuts to food assistance programs and a revamped food pyramid reignite debates over how to handle the issue. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report late last month showed more than 1 in 5 U.S. children and teenagers were obese between 2021 to 2023, compared to only 5.2 percent between 1971-1974. The number of children with severe obesity in recent years has hit 7 percent.
School meals, physical activity and weight loss drugs have all become talking points in the problem, which is a major issue in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement associated with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Experts point to school meals and increased activity as key ways to address childhood obesity, with research showing school meals are the healthiest eating options some students have all day.
“They’re noting that this increase in obesity occurred during COVID-19 and that jump in childhood obesity happened during the years when millions of kids lost access to reliable school meals. So, when schools closed for virtual learning, children lost a critical source of daily nutrition,” said Erin Hysom, senior child nutrition policy analyst on the Child Nutrition Programs and Policy team for the Food Research & Action Center.
America’s Vaccine Skepticism Is Starting to Show up in Health Data
When a baby is born in a hospital in the US, one of the first things that happens — usually within 24 hours — is a hepatitis B shot, which prevents a virus that can cause liver cancer. The newborn shot has been a standard practice nationwide since 1991, after earlier efforts at prevention kept missing the mark. In the decades that have followed, most parents haven’t thought twice about it.
But over the past two years, more and more parents have started saying no. Because the birth dose is given inside the hospital, before the family goes home, there’s no appointment to miss, no chance of a scheduling mix-up — ways other childhood vaccines can be missed. If a newborn didn’t get this shot, in most cases, someone actively declined or delayed it.
A study published on February 23 in JAMA puts a clear number on that shift. The researchers tracked 12.4 million newborns — roughly a third of all US births — across hospitals in all 50 states that use Epic, one of the country’s largest electronic health record systems. Using years of prior data, the researchers modeled where vaccination rates should have been heading, and compared those projections to what was actually happening. The study found that between 2023 and mid-2025, the share of newborns getting the hepatitis B birth dose fell from 83.5 percent to 73.2 percent.
Childhood Vaccination Rates in Wisconsin Continued to Fall Last Year, Data Shows
Childhood vaccination rates continued to decrease last year, according to annual data released by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) on Monday.
About two-thirds of all children, 66.9%, had the recommended vaccinations at age 24 months, down almost 2% from 2024.
The 2025 data released by DHS also looked at adolescent and adult vaccination rates
It showed minor decreases for adolescent vaccinations like the human papillomavirus (HPV) and tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap) vaccines. However, there were increases for the vaccine to prevent meningococcal disease (meningitis). Adult rates stayed steady.
About two-thirds of all children, 66.9%, had the recommended vaccinations at age 24 months. That’s down almost 2% from 2024.
Certified Colors No Longer in General Mills School Meal Items
General Mills, Inc.’s entire portfolio of foods for children in kindergarten through 12th grade are now made without certified colors, achieving the goal ahead of its summer 2026 commitment, according to the company. To rise to 100% from 98%, Minneapolis-based General Mills reformulated its Lucky Charms 25% less sugar cereal.
“We are proud to have reached this important milestone,” said Pankaj Sharma, segment president of North America Foodservice for General Mills. “As a trusted partner to schools for more than a century, this is yet another example of listening to their needs and providing great-tasting products from brands students love.” General Mills remains on track to remove certified colors from its US cereal portfolio by summer 2026 and from its full US retail portfolio by the end of 2027.
Teens Are Sleeping Less Than Ever and Screens Aren’t Primarily to Blame
The spring time change can mean waking up a little groggy. But the situation may be worse for many teenagers who appear to be getting less sleep than ever, according to a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That’s concerning because adolescents really need their beauty rest.
“Sleep plays a crucial role in adolescent brain development,” says Tanner Bommersbach, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s important for emotional regulation in teenagers and important for their overall physical and mental health.” Bommersbach says that it’s been clear for some time that teens are sleeping less now than they once did. But he and his colleagues wanted to know if that loss of sleep has been impacting certain groups of adolescents disproportionately.
They analyzed data from almost 121,000 high school students included in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey to understand trends in insufficient sleep, defined as less than eight hours per night. The bottom line is that things have gotten worse. Roughly three out of four American adolescents across all demographics reported insufficient sleep in 2023, which is up by 8% since 2007. This trend was driven by an increase in teens getting very short sleep of five hours or less, which swelled from 15.8% to 23.0% over that same time period.
Parents’ Stress May Be Quietly Driving Childhood Obesity, Yale Study Finds
Childhood obesity has been increasing in recent years. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, about one in five children and teenagers in the United States met the clinical definition of obesity in 2024.
Preventing obesity in children is not simple. For many years, the main approaches have focused on encouraging healthy eating and regular physical activity. Researchers at Yale now suggest that another important factor should be added to that list: reducing stress in parents.
A research team led by Yale psychologist Rajita Sinha found evidence that lowering parental stress may help reduce the risk of obesity in young children. “It’s the third leg of the stool,” said Sinha. “We already knew that stress can be a big contributor in the development of childhood obesity. The surprise was that when parents handled stress better, their parenting improved, and their young child’s obesity risk went down.”
The findings were published in the journal Pediatrics.
