Your Bottled Water is Contaminated

Tests on leading brands of bottled water turned up a variety of contaminants, including cancer-linked chemicals three times higher than California's health standard, according to a study released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group. The findings challenge the popular impression — and marketing pitch — that bottled water is purer than tap water, the researchers say. However, all the brands met federal health standards for drinking water. And most of the detected contaminants are common in tap water, too. Lab tests detected 38 chemicals in 10 brands, with an average of eight contaminants found in each kind of bottled water. Tests showed coliform bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium. The two-year study was done by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, an organization founded by scientists that advocates stricter regulation. It bought bottled water in California, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. Researchers tested one batch for each of 10 brands. Eight of those did not have troubling levels of contaminants. But two brands did, so more tests were done and those revealed chlorine byproducts above California's standard. The researchers identified those two brands as Sam's Choice sold by Wal-Mart and Acadia of Giant Food supermarkets. n the Wal-Mart and Giant Food bottled water, the highest concentration of chlorine byproducts, known as trihalomethanes, was over 35 parts per billion. California requires 10 parts per billion or less, and the industry's International Bottled Water Association makes 10 its voluntary guideline. The federal limit is 80. Water researcher Dr. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment of the University at Albany, who had no role in the study, singled out trihalomethanes as the biggest concern because of strong research links to cancer. "These are levels that should not be in bottled water," he said. The researchers also said the Wal-Mart brand exceeded California's limit by five times for a second chlorine byproduct, bromodichloromethane. The Environmental Working Group said it notified California's attorney general of its intent to sue Wal-Mart. The group wants the company to label its bottles in California with a warning of cancer-causing chemicals. Wal-Mart did not respond to a request for comment. The chlorine byproducts, which studies have also linked to birth defects, presumably come from chlorine used as a disinfectant, which ends up in public water systems. Tap water is often repackaged and sold as bottled water, and the researchers say that was true of these two brands. "In some cases, it appears bottled water is no less polluted than tap water and, at 1,900 times the cost, consumers should expect better," said Jane Houlihan, an environmental engineer who co-authored the study. The researchers recommend that people who are worried use a carbon filter for their tap water

Can You Really Die of a Broken Heart?

Dying beside the love of your life and passing into eternity together is the stuff of legends, but it’s also a documented phenomenon among longtime couples. Studies around the world have shown that the rate of mortality spikes among bereaved spouses soon after their beloved has died. One study published last year by researchers at the University of Glasgow followed more than 4,000 couples and found that, on average, widows and widowers were at least 30 percent more likely to die of any cause in the first six months following a spouse’s death than those who hadn’t lost a partner. Another large study in Jerusalem found the bereaved spouse's risk of death during those first six months rose by up to 50 percent. “We see it all the time,” says Dr. Hope Wechkin, the medical director of Evergreen Hospice in Kirkland, Wash. “Often a patient will come on to [hospice] service and we find out their spouse has died six weeks earlier or so. … I think it’s about connection. For many people, their spouse represents their greatest sense of connection to this world.” Some theorize the toll of grief can be too much for those who are already aged and physically fragile. The more spiritually minded believe that the bond between some couples may be so strong that when one soul departs, the other chooses to follow. Others say there are medical causes at work. The No. 1 cause of death of a bereaved spouse is heart disease and sudden death, meaning the heart stops, says Dr. Lee Lipsenthal, an internist and expert in cardiac rehabilitation who founded Finding Balance in a Medical Life, a Marin County, Calif., organization that focuses on physician well-being. "Generally within 18 months is the risk period," says Lipsenthal, "It's relatively close to the death and it diminishes over time." Those who are elderly and physically fragile are more likely to die after the death of a spouse than a younger widow or widower, says Wechkin, whose own grandparents died less than two weeks apart. “The death of a spouse places you at risk … but context matters a lot,” she says. “If you’re perfectly healthy, your risk is very low.” Doctors have long known that stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine that are raised by grief can take a damaging toll on the body. But there may be other forces at play as well. Research shows that in some cases, one person’s heartbeat can affect, even regulate, another’s, possibly acting as a type of life support. In one such study, Rollin McCraty, research director at the Institute of HeartMath in Boulder Creek, Calif., looked at what happened to six longtime couples' hearts while they slept. Heart-rate monitors revealed that during the night, as the couple slept beside each other, their heart rhythms fell into sync, rising and falling at the same time. When the printouts of their EKGs were placed on top of each other, they looked virtually the same. “When people are in a relationship for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, they create sort of a co-energetic resonance with each other,” says Lipsenthal, who is the past director of Dr. Dean Ornish’s Preventative Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, Calif. “A simple analogy is two tuning forks, put next to each other. They create a co-resonant pitch. What happens when two people sleep together for 50 years? What happens when one goes away?” In recent years, another condition has come to light: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as “broken heart syndrome.” The condition nearly always follows a traumatic emotional loss, such as death of a spouse, parent or child and it primarily affects women. It causes chest pain and sudden heart failure, believed to be brought on by a surge of fight or flight hormones, says Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, a geriatrician at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Patients with the condition tend to recover faster than most other heart patients, says Messinger-Rapport. And if they survive the initial bout, it almost never recurs. “Is it possible to die of a broken heart?” says Wechkin. “Absolutely.”

On Fire In the Operating Room

MSNBC brings to our attention the latest under-reported operating room "accident" - surgical fires! I, for one, never thought that I might actually catch on fire while being operated on. It turns out, however, that surgical fires are at least five times as common as once thought, affecting between 550 and 650 patients a year, including 20 to 30 who suffer serious, disfiguring burns. Every year, one or two people die this way. In Pennsylvania, a state in which hospitals are required to report medical errors, fires occur in one in every 87,646 operations, according to the latest 2007 data. That amounts to 28 fires a year in Pennsylvania alone and allows researchers to estimate with greater certainty the incidents in the rest of the country. Surgical fires are still a tiny fraction of the 50 million surgeries performed each year. An excerpt of one patients horrifying tale (emphasis mine):

Rita Talbert's operation was supposed to be a simple thyroid surgery, three hours, in and out, in the spring of 2005. Instead, the Stafford, Va., woman woke up a week later in intensive care, in agonizing pain and horrified at the face she saw in the mirror. “I didn’t know it was me,” said Talbert, now 62. Her chin was gone; her nose was deformed. Her mouth was virtually melted, so damaged that after a dozen reconstructive operations, she still has trouble eating, drinking and breathing. There’d been an accident, the doctors explained. An electrosurgical tool had ignited oxygen inside a mask under surgery drapes during the operation, sparking flames that left second- and third-degree burns from Talbert’s chest to the top of her head. "It just caught fire," she said, still incredulous at the idea. "They didn't even know it had caught on fire."

The root problem seems to be one of communication between the surgeon and the anesthesiologist. In most incidents, the surgeon was not informed that oxygen (O2) was flowing under the surgical drapes. The problem is exacerbated when the surgeon does not inform the anesthesiologist he is going to power on a electrical device in the surgical area. Oxygen concentrations of 50 percent and higher will create a flash fire. About 65 percent of surgical fires occur on the upper body or inside a patient's airway, another quarter occur elsewhere on the body and less than 10 percent actually occur inside the body cavity. Whatever the source, the head and neck region is grimly suited to hosting fires, especially in a high-oxygen atmosphere. There’s the vellus, the peach fuzz on your face and head - each tiny hair burns like a tiny sparkler and propagates a ripple of flame across the face.

Why Tea Is Healthier Than Water

While nobody is running around extolling the virtues of cola as a replacement for water for daily hydration, researchers at Kings College London want to make sure you don't think every non-water drink is a poor substitute for water. After reviewing numerous studies on the benefits of drinking tea, they've concluded that tea is a superior drink.

Dr Ruxton said: "Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it's got two things going for it."

Many people have lumped tea in with other caffeine containing drinks such as coffee and colas, as a dehydrating drink. Not a concern, the research team says:

"Studies on caffeine have found very high doses dehydrate and everyone assumes that caffeine-containing beverages dehydrate. But even if you had a really, really strong cup of tea or coffee, which is quite hard to make, you would still have a net gain of fluid."

If you're interested in drinking more tea check out the health benefits of green tea and tips for properly steeping tea.