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"Since 2007, when EWG published its first Sunscreen Guide, many sun protection products sold in the US have become safer and federal regulators have cracked down on some of the worst phony marketing claims. Two-thirds of the products we examined offer inferior sun protection or contain worrisome ingredients like oxybenzone, a hormone disruptor, or retinyl palmitate, a form of vitamin A that may harm skin. And despite scant evidence, the government still allows most sunscreens to claim they help prevent skin cancer. Over the course of 12 years, EWG has uncovered mounting evidence that one common sunscreen chemical, oxybenzone, poses a hazard to human health and the environment. It is an allergen and a hormone disruptor that soaks through the skin and is measured in the body of nearly every American." more »

In the early 1900s, when women made up less than 20 percent of the total industrial workforce, one-third of the workers in shoe factories were women. Women became active in trade unions like the Daughters of St. Crispin, named after the patron saint of shoemakers, and the International Boot & Shoe Workers Union, participating in strikes to protest low wages and poor treatment. Considered radical for its time, by 1904 the Boot & Shoe Workers Union constitution called for “uniform wages for the same class of work, regardless of sex.” An intricately beaded shoe (c. 1915), stamped with the union seal, shows off the quality of American shoemaking. more »

The change is from regulating internet providers as “public utilities” to regulating them as most other businesses in the economy. We have had a long experience with public utility regulations where companies and municipalities have provided telephone, electricity and water services across the country. Tight regulation is great for such services that do not experience a lot of change – when was the last innovation in municipal water delivery, for example? With a rapidly changing product such as internet access, it is much tougher to have regulations that benefit consumers both in terms of price and innovation. more »

In a new study, Dr. Lisa Mosconi from Weill Cornell Medicine and her colleagues measured changes in brains over time. They performed baseline brain imaging in 34 people who ate a Mediterranean diet and 36 people who ate a Western diet. The volunteers ranged in age from 30 to 60 and showed no symptoms of dementia when the study began. The researchers then repeated the scans at least two years later. The study was supported by NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA). Results were published online in Neurology on April 13, 2018.  more »