Governor Kate Brown of Oregon signed House Bill 2220 on May 6, 2019, to allow dentists in Oregon to administer vaccinations including MMR, HPV, and influenza shots to their patients during dental checkups

Dentists will need to be certified in order to administer the vaccines. They will need training on vaccination and they will have to comply with state vaccine storage and reporting regulations.

Dentists in Minnesota and Illinois can administer influenza vaccines to adults only. Oregon is the first state in the U.S. to allow dentists to vaccinate patients of any age or to vaccinate with more than only the flu shot.

Before dentists start vaccinating patients, the Oregon Board of Dentistry needs to figure out how to implement the new rules safely. Board director Stephen Prisby says one of the issues to be addressed is how dentists will know what vaccines their patients already received.

They won’t have all the vaccine history of a patient. They’ll have to communicate with the primary health care provider or have access to those records. So that’s one of those wrinkles we’ll have to be addressed in rules.

Stephen Prisby

Recommended:

• How To Heal Your Gut
• How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

On January 30th Tyson recalled 36,420 pounds of chicken nuggets due to potential rubber contamination. On March 22 Tyson Foods recalled approximately 69,000 pounds of frozen, ready-to-eat chicken strips

Now Tyson is recalling more of their chicken strips for a total of 11.8 million pounds due to pieces of metal found in the product by consumers.

This is an addition to the chicken strips the company recalled in March. Tyson said the additionally recalled chicken strips were manufactured at the same location that the initial batch was made, with before-use dates between Oct. 1, 2019, and March 7, 2020.

Tyson says that the majority of the chicken strips have already been consumed without any known incidents.

The top three meat producers (Tyson, Perdue, Pilgrim’s Pride) have issued multiple recalls For beef and chicken due to metal, plastic, rubber, and wood contamination.

Recommended: How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System

The world is finally realizing the dangers of glyphosate in our food system. Costco is planning to ban glyphosate from their stores, and Bayer is facing a plethora of lawsuits for the cancer-causing herbicide.

The world is also beginning to understand the problems with our food system and we’re starting to seriously look for alternatives to factory farmed meat.

We love the idea of meat-alternatives in an effort to adopt a more ecologically friendly and human approach to feeding the population. We have to find alternatives to factory farming. And the meat-alternative that’s all the rage today is the Impossible Burger. Burger King is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide this year. White Castle, Hard Rock Cafe, Red Robin, Cheesecake Factory, and hundreds of other restaurants already have the Impossible Burger on their menu.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Unfortunately, the Impossible burger is not a healthy or environmentally conscious alternative to beef. Mom’s Across America reports that the Health Research Institute Laboratories found levels of glyphosate in the Impossible burger to be alarmingly high.

The total result (glyphosate and its break down AMPA) was 11.3 ppb. Moms Across America also tested the Beyond Meat Burger and the results were 1 ppb. These are levels eleven times higher than levels within the Beyond Meat Burger.

We are shocked to find that the Impossible Burger can have up to 11X higher levels of glyphosate residues than the Beyond Meat Burger according to these samples tested. This new product is being marketed as a solution for “healthy” eating, when in fact 11 ppb of glyphosate herbicide consumption can be highly dangerous. Only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate has been shown to alter the gene function of over 4000 genes in the livers, kidneys and cause severe organ damage in rats.**** I am gravely concerned that consumers are being misled to believe the Impossible Burger is healthy.”

Zen Honeycutt, Executive Director of Moms Across America

Related: How to Avoid GMOs – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Soy and wheat crops that are often heavily sprayed with glyphosate. The CEO of Impossible Foods recently announced that the soy patties will be made using GMO soy. Previously the Impossible Burger was being made with a textured wheat protein, but in order to meet demand, they switched to a non-GM soy protein concentrate, and are now switching to genetically engineered soy. The CEO & Founder of Impossible Foods, Pat Brown, said that GM soy is “the safest and most environmentally responsible option that would allow us to scale our production and meet demand.”

One the switch is made to GM soy the glyphosate levels in the Impossible Burger are likely to rise. Genetically-modified soy is a “Roundup Ready” product.

Common Drea,s broke down the CEOs clams in an excellent article titled, 6 Reasons Impossible Burger’s CEO Is Wrong About GMO Soy.

As most already know, in what may go down as the worst acquisition in the history of business, Bayer bought Monsanto last year for $63 billion. While Monsanto has become Bayer’s biggest mistake, you’ve got to hand it to Monsanto for knowing when to sell. Since the buyout, Bayer has been embroiled in litigation, with plaintiffs winning lawsuits showing that glyphosate likely caused their cancer.

Mom’s Across America reported that on January 18:

Elizabeth Desiree of Washington state posted on Facebook that she just got a call from an employee at Costco and he told her that Costco would no longer be selling Roundup. She had written him a letter and he was calling her back. I was excited but reserved my excitement. There is so much fake news these days. I called the headquarters, and after two days of messages and calls, I did finally confirm with three people that Costco was not ordering Roundup or any glyphosate-based herbicides for the incoming spring shipments. They would not be selling it in any stores, all across America. This is HUGE! How fantastic! One employee mentioned that they had looked into organic alternatives first and were happy with the results. More than one employee mentioned the lawsuit (Johnson V Monsanto) for part of the reasoning. They said they just felt like it was the right thing to do.

Mom’s Across America

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Costco has not released a statement. But the company has been a progressive leader in many respects. They have been known for taking better care of their employees and their environmental initiatives. In 2014 Huffington Post article, Costco was ranked second to Google on employee satisfaction. And they are one of the largest sellers in the country of organic foods, and they support farmers that are transitioning to organic growing practices.

Considering the amount of food Costco sells, this should amount to a considerable loss in revenue for the makers of RoundUp, not to mention other stores that will likely follow suit.

Two weeks ago a California jury awards two plaintiffs $2.055 billion dollars in damages. The jury awarded $2 billion in punitive damages and $55 million in compensatory damages. This is Bayer’s third loss in court from lawsuits over glyphosate. The first judgment was reported in August of 2018, where judges awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million). The second happened in March of this year, where a San Francisco jury found in favor of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman to the tune of $80 million in damages.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

The damages award will probably be reduced thanks to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that limit the punitive to compensatory damages ratio at 9:1.

Bayer is now looking forward to more than 13,400 pending U.S. lawsuits seeking damages from glyphosate use, and that number is likely to keep rising for some time.

In a new study, volunteers had their food consumption monitored for a month. When they ate “ultra-processed food,” they consumed 500 more calories a day compared to when they ate unprocessed foods.

Ultra-processed foods have become the staple of our modern diet in the U.S. These foods make up 57.9% of food consumed in the United States. Ultra-processed foods are made with cheap industrial ingredients. They’re high in fat (typically trans fats), refined sugars, and refined salt. They are typically made with wheat, genetically modified corn, and genetically modified soy, and the foods almost test high in glyphosates. Organic foods can also be ultra-processed. The US National Institutes of Health believes ultra-processed foods affect hunger hormones in the body, leading people to eat more than they otherwise would.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. It’s said to be the first randomized, controlled study to show eating ultra-processed foods causes people to eat more and gain weight.

There are debates about what should define an “ultra-processed food” but lead researcher Dr Kevin Hall said is quoted as saying [it’s like] “…pornography – it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it”. BBC listed what they consider to be ultra-processed foods:

• Mass-produced packaged breads and buns
• Sweet or savoury packaged snacks including crisps
• Chocolate bars and sweets
• Sodas and sweetened drinks
• Meatballs, poultry and fish nuggets
• Instant noodles and soups
• Frozen or shelf-life ready meals
• Foods made mostly or entirely from sugar, oils and fats

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

The study had twenty people live in a laboratory for a month. For two weeks half of the team consumed ultra-processed meals and the other half were given unprocessed meals. The diets were switched for last two weeks of the study. The participants ate as much food as they wanted. Researchers monitored what they ate.

Participants on the ultra-processed diet averaged 508 calories more per day and gained an average of 2 pounds over the two-week period. People on the unprocessed diet lost about 2 pounds on average throughout the two-week period.

In February of 2018 French researchers suggested a link between highly processed foods and cancer. A research team at the Universite Sorbonne Paris Cite took food surveys to find out what foods people were consuming. The participants were followed for an average of five years.

The results showed that for a 10% increase in ultra-processed food consumption cancer diagnosis increased by 12%.

The hits keep coming for pharmaceutical giant Bayer and their popular herbicide Roundup as a California jury awards two plaintiffs $2.055 billion dollars in damages. The verdict came in the case of Alva and Alberta Pilliod of Livermore, Calif., who say that three decades of exposure to Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are the cause of their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Each plaintiff received $1 billion in punitive damages and an additional 55 million in collective compensatory damages. Bayer refuted the jury’s findings in a statement released on Monday,

Bayer is disappointed with the jury’s decision and will appeal the verdict in this case, which conflicts directly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s interim registration review decision released just last month, the consensus among leading health regulators worldwide that glyphosate-based products can be used safely and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, and the 40 years of extensive scientific research on which their favorable conclusions are based.”

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Not the Only One

This is not the first successful verdict against Roundup within the last year, all of them occurring in California. The first judgment was reported in August of 2018, where judges awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million). The second happened in March of this year, where a San Francisco jury found in favor of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman to the tune of $80 million in damages.

California Dreaming

In every statement following the verdicts against them, Bayer has cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) classification of glyphosate as non-carcinogenic. Until recently, that was powerful evidence for the pharmaceutical corporation. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer listed glyphosate as cancer-causing. There were strenuous objections from then Monsanto and the EPA, but emails released in an early 2017 lawsuit suggested that prominent employees at the government agency had suppressed research unfavorable to glyphosate. The State of California recognized glyphosate as carcinogenic in July 2017. Since then, lawsuits against the herbicide have gained increasingly more traction.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

Money on the Mind

Three juries have found in favor of plaintiffs vs. Bayer, and there are anywhere from 4,000 to 11,000 lawsuits pending. It remains to be seen if spending large quantities of money on court cases will be enough for Bayer to pivot to a different product or begin to take responsibility for their product. Monsanto made $1.9 billion in gross revenue from herbicide products in 2015. The current bill for Roundup cases is $2.213 billion dollars. Is it enough?

Sources:

• California Jury Awards $2 Billion To Couple In Roundup Weed Killer Cancer Trial – NPR
• Jury returns $2 billion verdict against Monsanto for couple with cancer — the biggest so far – CNN
• Bayer statement on jury’s decision in California State Glyphosate Trial – Bayer
• EPA Says Roundup Is Safe While Bayer Is Losing Millions In Lawsuits – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

Poured-in-place (PIP) rubber surfacing is the most popular playground surface in city parks and school playgrounds. At first glance, recycled rubber from shredded tires seems like a greener, safer choice.

But more kids are suffering from concussions. The CDC studied national data from 2001 to 2013 for playground injuries. More than 200,000 kids go to the emergency room for playground-related injuries every year. The rates of traumatic brain injuries have increased since the implementation of rubber mulch in playgrounds.

The increase in brain injuries could be due to increased awareness of the potential seriousness of concussions and the need for treatment. It’s also possible that more children are playing in playgrounds, and therefore we are seeing an increase in injuries. But some experts think that the rubber surface provides a false sense of security and that kids are more likely to take greater risks leading to more injuries.

The researchers can’t explain why serious head injuries are increasing. ‘We can only make assumptions’ ” Bell said.

Dr. Jeneita Bell

There are also concerns of toxicity in the rubber mulch. Researchers tested lead levels for soil, sand, wood mulch, and rubber surfaces for 28 playgrounds. Their findings report that rubber playground surfaces averaged up to triple the lead levels of the other playground surfaces. The study team also found higher levels of lead in soil. They determined that from a toxicity standpoint sand may be the safest choice for playgrounds.

Recycled rubber may also contain other toxic substances, including but not limited to:

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) – a group of chemicals that are formed during the incomplete burning of coal, oil, gas, wood, garbage, or other organic substances)

Phthalates –  a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible, known to affect hormones

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – may damage the liver, kidneys, central nervous system, and may cause cancer

Playgrounds use a variety of materials to protect children against injuries. However, we should always consider the full suite of health effects associated with materials that children come into contact with.”

Study author Nick Arisco of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston