Elevated lead levels found in cinnamon products, report finds
(NEW YORK) — Elevated levels of lead have been found in 12 of 36 ground cinnamon products and spice blends, according to a Consumer Reports article published Thursday.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not set lead-level thresholds for spices, but three of the products exceeded a proposed cutoff set by the American Spice Trade Association, and 12 exceeded a more stringent cutoff level set by New York State.
The level of lead identified in these products is not likely to pose an immediate health risk. There are trace levels of lead and other heavy metals in many of the foods we eat.
The problem, experts say, can come from repeat exposure or exposure to higher levels, especially for children or pregnant women.
Because of these health concerns, the FDA is actively monitoring ground cinnamon supplies and has recently alerted the public about certain products.
Last year, a major recall of apple cinnamon pouches with high lead levels led to health problems in at least 90 confirmed cases. This year, the FDA has released multiple health alerts for ground cinnamon products with elevated lead levels.
In July, several New York distributors recalled ground cinnamon products that were potentially contaminated with increased levels of lead.
The cinnamon tested in the Consumer Reports investigation included store-bought cinnamon and other cinnamon-containing spice mixtures. Again, three of these products had levels exceeding a proposed cutoff set by the American Spice Trace Association. When contacted by Consumer Reports, two of the three companies (Paras and EGN) said they would withdraw those products from the market.
Cinnamon may have a higher lead level risk because cinnamon trees grow for years before their bark is harvested, giving them more time to absorb lead in the soil.
In small amounts, lead exposure may not lead to any symptoms, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that significant or chronic lead exposure can cause various health issues including hypertension, kidney dysfunction, or cognitive issues in adults, and central nervous system damage like seizures and developmental defects such as learning disorders or other long-term health problems in children.
Doctors say there is no known safe level of lead for children.
(NEW YORK) — A new report by March of Dimes found that over 5.5 million women live in U.S. counties experiencing limited to no access to maternity care resources that include hospitals or birthing centers, obstetric care or obstetricians.
The report is the latest by the maternity care-centric nonprofit to highlight a worsening state of maternity care in the U.S., with a rise in closure of hospital obstetric units contributing to what the organization calls “a growing maternal and infant health crisis.”
March of Dimes estimated that more than 2.3 million women of reproductive age live in counties deemed to be maternity care deserts, with approximately 150,000 births in these counties. More than three million additional women live in counties with limited maternity care access.
“We’re going from bad to worse. We already have the worst maternal mortality rate of our industrial peer countries, and we know that access matters,” Dr. Amanda Williams, March of Dimes’ chief medical officer, told ABC News. “If we don’t have access, then we don’t even have a chance.”
Maternity care deserts have a significant impact on health outcomes for expecting women. Data shows that women in maternity care deserts have a 13% chance of experiencing preterm birth, and receive inadequate prenatal care at higher rates, according to the report. Low-income and women of color are disproportionately affected.
People in maternity care deserts have to travel approximately 2.6 times further to receive care than those who live in counties where care exists, and early data has found that ob-gyns are leaving states with strictest abortion bans, Williams said.
“As the report suggests, the Dobbs decision — the effects of which have yet to be fully realized — is likely playing a major role in the already shrinking ob-gyn workforce in many rural areas of the country,” Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement.
“As we continue to find ways to increase access, we must also vigorously combat legislative interference in the practice of medicine so that clinicians are free to practice without fear of criminalization and patients are able to get the care they need and deserve in the communities they live and raise their families in,” the statement continued.
Approximately 35% of all U.S. counties are now considered maternity care deserts, having no birthing facilities or obstetricians. North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Oklahoma and Nebraska are the most impacted states, according to March of Dimes.
Since 2022, over 100 counties experienced a decline in maternity care access, totaling over 100 hospitals closing their obstetric units, resulting in delayed access to emergency care and forcing families to travel farther to receive critical care, according to the report.
Between 2015 and 2022, the prevalence of pre-pregnancy hypertension rose by over 80%, according to March of Dimes. Preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition that causes a pregnant woman’s blood pressure to rise, can lead to preterm birth, stroke, seizure, and other complications for expecting women.
In maternity care deserts, the rates of pre-pregnancy hypertension was 1.3 times higher than counties with full access to care, according to the report.
Leveraging telehealth services, improving reimbursement policies for obstetric services at hospitals, and improving access to midwifery services are some of the policy solutions to improve care, Williams noted.
“Not only are there people, a lot of people who live in these maternity care deserts, there are beautiful things, just as in the natural desert, you might find a gorgeous flower or cactus,” Dr. Williams said. “There are churches, there are community centers, there are community based organizations. And so we need to figure out how in healthcare and in public health, we can partner with some of those organizations to be able to extend care to those who live in maternity care deserts.”
(NEW YORK) — As two NASA astronauts gear up for a months-long unplanned stay on the International Space Station (ISS), they may also be increasing their risk of radiation exposure.
Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, who performed the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner, took off on June 5 and were only supposed to be in space for about one week.
However, several problems have arisen with the spacecraft, pushing their return to February 2025 aboard Space X’s Crew-9 Dragon spacecraft.
Space radiation is different from radiation experienced on Earth. It’s made up of three kinds of radiation: particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, particles from solar flares and galactic cosmic rays, NASA said.
Earth is surrounded by a system of magnetic fields, called the magnetosphere, that protects people from harmful space radiation. However, the higher a person is in altitude, the higher the dose of radiation they are exposed to.
“It’s an order of normal magnitude,” Dr. Stanton Gerson, dean of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, told ABC News. “As you move [into] the atmosphere, you have increased radiation exposure.”
Due to prolonged exposure, astronauts can be at significant risk for radiation sickness and have a higher lifetime risk of cancer, central nervous system effects and degenerative diseases, according to NASA.
“In low earth orbit where the ISS is, astronauts are at least partially protected by the magnetosphere that protects Earth from the radiation exposure of deep space,” Dr. Rihana Bokhari, acting chief scientific officer at Baylor College of Medicine’s Translational Research Institute for Space Health, told ABC News.
“However, they do have a greater radiation exposure than those on Earth because the ISS passes through areas of trapped radiation in their orbit,” she continued. “Butch and Suni, since they are on the ISS, will not be exposed to enough radiation to seriously cause large impacts on body systems but the long duration exposure to greater radiation than on Earth could lead to an increase in the risk of cancer.”
Crews aboard the ISS receive an average of 80 mSv to 160 mSv during a six-month stay, according to a 2017 NASA report. Millisieverts (mSv) are units of measurement for how much radiation has been absorbed by the body.
Although the type of radiation is different, 1 mSv of space radiation is roughly the same as receiving three chest X-rays, the federal space agency said.
By comparison, a person on Earth receives an average of 2 mSv every year from just background radiation, NASA said.
Gerson said it’s fair to take the NASA estimates and cut them in half. This means for a three-month stay, the astronauts have a cumulative average risk of receiving 40 mSv to 80 mSv.
What’s harder to determine is the episodic risk from factors including solar flares, he said.
“There’s spike risks because there’s episodic waves of solar radiation and deep space ionic radiation that come through the magnetic field, and luckily Earth has a strong magnetic field that blocks a lot of that,” Gerson said. “If you’re on the other side of the moon, you don’t have that.”
Gerson added that NASA has done a good job of checking up on astronauts after they return to Earth as the agency and other researchers have learned more about how radiation affects the body and what signs to look for.
(NEW YORK) — Cases of whooping cough are more than three times higher this year than they were at the same time last year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
So far this year, there have been 10,865 recorded cases of whooping cough, or pertussis, compared to the 2,918 recorded during the same time in 2023, CDC data shows.
The number of cases is closer to the 8,271 cases of whooping cough recorded this time in 2019, indicating a return to pre-pandemic levels.
Doctors said that reported cases of whooping cough were lower than usual over the past few years, likely due to COVID-19 mitigation measures including masking, remote learning and social distancing.
“During the pandemic itself, we really had a low point in transmission of pertussis, and that was just because of all of the social distancing and isolation,” Dr. Mike Patrick, an emergency medicine physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, told ABC News. “If kids aren’t around each other, and also around adults, then they’re not able to pick up the disease, since it’s an infectious disease and transmitted from one person to another.”
“So, I think, we’re just getting back up there because people are back doing the normal things that we do, and that’s just the pattern that we see with the vaccine that we have. But I will say, without the vaccine, we’d see a whole lot more pertussis than 10,000 cases,” he added.
Dr. Lori Handy, an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the uptick in cases of whooping cough post-pandemic is similar to those seen in the U.S. with other diseases as mitigation measures started to disappear.
“I honestly think it was a little surprising that it took this long, recognizing we lifted [many] measures close to two years ago,” she told ABC News. “I think many folks remember the increase in RSV cases that we saw back in 2022, so this has lagged behind some other respiratory infections, but definitely now has resurfaced and looks very typical to 2019.”
Whooping cough is a very contagious respiratory illness caused by a type of bacteria called Bordetella pertussis.
These bacteria attach to the cilia — the tiny, hair-like structures found on the surface of some cells –of the upper respiratory system that help clear mucous and other debris in the airway, and release toxins. The toxins damage the cilia and cause the upper airways to swell, according to the CDC.
“You get airway swelling and a terrible, terrible cough because the cilia aren’t working, and so your body resorts to coughing to try to keep stuff out of the lungs and to bring things up,” Patrick said. “Oftentimes, babies will have a little bit difficulty breathing. They’re having the cough…and then they take a big, deep breath, because they hadn’t breathed during all those coughs, and that’s why it’s called whooping cough, because that’s the [sound] when they’re coughing.”
Whooping cough is spread from person-to-person through coughing and sneezing. Infected people can be contagious for weeks without knowing they have whooping cough.
Early symptoms often resemble a common cold — runny nose, cough and low-grade fever — and typically last for one to two weeks. Symptoms, however, can progress to rapid, violent coughing fits that can last up to 12 weeks.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics and receiving treatment early can reduce the severity of the infection. Most whooping cough symptoms can be managed at home, according to the CDC.
Although anyone can contract pertussis, infants under age one, pregnant women and immunocompromised people are at highest risk for severe illness.
“In the younger kids, and especially in infants, they can have apnea, so they stop breathing. They can be hospitalized in the intensive care unit, and unfortunately, children can and have died from pertussis,” Dr. Robert Frenck, a professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio, told ABC News. “So, these are not innocuous infections. They can be very serious, and they can be deadly.”
A vaccine for whooping cough was introduced in the late 1940s and the number of cases each year has since dropped dramatically, decreasing more than 90% compared to the pre-vaccine era.
Before the vaccine, there were an estimated 200,000 cases annually among children and up to 9,000 children died, according to the CDC.
There are two types of vaccines currently used to protect against whooping cough: diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine for babies and children younger age 7 and tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap) vaccines for older children, adults and pregnant women.
A recent report from the CDC found that exemptions for routine childhood vaccination among kindergartners during the 2022-23 school year were at the highest level ever, including for the DTaP vaccine. Frenck said the increase in whooping cough cases are a reminder that vaccines are effective, but said he doesn’t discourage vaccine-hesitant patents from asking questions.
“Parents want to do what’s best for their children, and so they want to keep their children healthy,” he said. “Unfortunately, there has been a fair amount of misinformation about vaccines to where people are confused. So, my recommendation really is to talk with your health care provider, ask your questions, get your answers, feel comfortable about having your children vaccinated. Vaccines are well-tested, vaccines are safe, vaccines are protective.”
Handy said she also encourages everybody who is eligible to get vaccinated and for health care providers to be on the lookout for pertussis cases
“For health care providers … recognize this is back, like five years ago, and the only way we will detect it is by testing it and then using our public health measures to prevent spread,” she said.