Scientists have known for decades that drinking water contaminated by fertilizer nitrates can pose a threat to infants by undermining the ability of their blood to carry oxygen. The condition, known as ‘blue baby syndrome,” led federal regulators to impose an environmental standard of no more than 10 parts per million, or ppm, for nitrates in public water supplies.
Obesity rates in the U.S. have hit staggering new levels, according to recent data: 40 percent for adults and 20 percent for 12-to-19-year-olds.
The CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which combines interviews and physical examinations to measure rates of disease across the entire nation, also revealed persistent disparities across different race-ethnicity groups.
Overall breast cancer death rates dropped 39 percent between 1989 and 2015, averting 322,600 breast cancer deaths during those 26 years. And while black women continue to have higher breast cancer death rates than whites nationally, death rates in several states are now statistically equivalent, perhaps reflecting an elimination of disparities in those states.
Thanks to earlier detection –through screening and increased awareness— and better treatments, a woman's risk of dying of breast dropped 38 percent between the late 1980s and 2014, translating into 297,300 fewer breast cancer deaths during that time.
A Los Angeles jury today ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay damages of $417 million to a 62-year-old woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on years of using the company’s baby powder for feminine hygiene.
A new study from American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers finds eleven of the 15 cancers with the most impact on healthy years of life lost in the United States are closely-associated with two preventable risk factors: smoking and alcohol.
Smoking leaves its “footprint” on the human genome in the form of DNA methylation, a process by which cells control gene activity, according to new research in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, an American Heart Association (AH) journal.
A new report calls attention to cancer in people with mental illness, suggesting that healthcare system and societal factors are just as critical as individual lifestyle factors— linked to smoking and obesity—that lead to health disparities among this group. The report appears early online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
While there has been substantial progress in some cancer control efforts in the past several decades, like reductions in smoking and increased utilization of cancer screening, progress in some areas is lagging, according to a new report.
