A regulation allowing the use of brominated vegetable oil in food was revoked Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after the agency concluded the additive was unsafe for human consumption. Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) contains bromine, which is found in fire retardants. Small quantities of BVO have been used legally in some citrus-flavored drinks in the United States to keep the flavor evenly distributed, the FDA explained in a news release announcing the ban, which takes effect Aug. 2. The agency first proposed the ban in November. But BVO was banned in the U.K. in 1970, followed by India in 1990, the E.U. in 2008 and Japan in 2010, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In 1970, the FDA concluded that its use in food was not generally recognized as safe because of toxicity concerns. Following that decision, the agency began regulating BVO as a food additive while also conducting safety studies, Reuters reported. The results of that research prompted the ban. Some experts said the ban was long overdue. “The FDA’s decision to ban brominated vegetable oil [BVO] in food is a victory for public health. But it’s disgraceful that it took decades of regulatory inaction to protect consumers from this dangerous chemical,” Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement. …  read on >  read on >

Screening for chronic illnesses like diabetes or fatty liver disease could one day be as simple as checking the temperature of your nose, eyes or cheeks. The temperature of different parts of the face are associated with various chronic diseases, researchers reported July 2 in the journal Cell Metabolism. Armed with an AI-driven thermal camera, doctors could one day use this simple approach to detect diseases earlier in humans, researchers said. “Aging is a natural process,” researcher Jing-Dong Jackie Han with Peking University in Beijing, China, said in a news release. “But our tool has the potential to promote healthy aging and help people live disease-free.” The research team had previously used facial structure to estimate how slowly or quickly a person’s body is aging, relative to their actual age. For this effort, they analyzed facial temperatures of more than 2,800 Chinese people ages 21 to 88 to see if those readings could be used to judge their health. Researchers fed the people’s data into an AI program, which identified key facial regions where temperatures were significantly related to age and health. Metabolic disorders like diabetes and fatty liver disease cause higher eye area temperatures relative to healthy people, results show. Likewise, high blood pressure causes elevated cheek temperatures, researchers said. Researchers suspect this increase in temperature around the eyes and cheeks is caused by…  read on >  read on >

In a case that will test the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authority to approve or reject new vaping products, the U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday it will weigh whether the agency was legally allowed to ban flavored e-cigarettes. In recent years, the FDA has declined to approve flavored vapes, saying they pose a health risk because they encourage young people to use e-cigarettes. But they remain widely available on the U.S. market. Meanwhile, vaping companies claim the agency got it wrong, arguing that their products can be used to help people stop smoking traditional cigarettes. E-cigarette makers have filed lawsuits around the country challenging the FDA’s decisions, NBC News reported. While the FDA has won most of those cases, it appealed to the Supreme Court after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a January ruling in favor of two vape companies seeking to have their products approved. That appeals court concluded that the FDA failed to correctly assess the companies’ requests in violation of a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act, NBC News reported. “The Supreme Court should overturn the Fifth Circuit decision because it is misguided and, if left to stand, would cause significant harm to public health and especially to the health of our kids,” Yolonda Richardson, president and CEO of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in a statement.…  read on >  read on >

As bird flu continues to spread among U.S. dairy cows, reassuring new government research finds the pasteurization process widely used in the industry effectively kills all bird flu virus in milk. In a health update posted Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the results are the latest to show that pasteurized grocery store milk remains safe from the highly pathogenic avian virus H5N1.  “These results complement the FDA’s retail sampling study, in which all 297 samples of dairy products collected at retail locations were found to be negative for viable H5N1 HPAI virus,” the agency said in its update. “Collectively, these studies provide strong assurances that the commercial milk supply is safe.” The most recent research came about because scientists at the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) were trying to replicate the exact conditions under which milk is pasteurized in this country. “We had a lot of anecdotal evidence. But we wanted to have direct evidence about HPAI [H5N1] and bovine milk,” Dr. Don Prater, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, told CBS News. “So, we began to build this custom instrument that replicates, on a pilot scale, commercial processing [of milk].” Earlier research had not been quite as convincing: Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that some bits of infectious bird flu virus were…  read on >  read on >

All Diamond Shruumz edibles have been recalled after the company found high levels of a mushroom toxin in them that may have sickened 39 people in 20 states. The recall includes Diamond Shruumz cones, chocolate bars and gummies “because such products contain muscimol, a chemical found in mushrooms of the genus amanita,” California-based Prophet Premium Blends stated in its announcement. “Muscimol could be a potential cause of symptoms consistent with those observed in persons who became ill after eating Diamond Shruumz products,” the company added. Reported symptoms include seizures, agitation, involuntary muscle contractions, loss of consciousness, confusion, sleepiness, nausea and vomiting, abnormal heart rates and high/low blood pressure.  Of the 39 illnesses reported so far, 23 patients had to be hospitalized, with the latest illness reported June 23, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. States with cases include Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Tennessee. The FDA first advised consumers not to eat Diamond Shruumz microdosing chocolate bars two weeks ago, warning that people in four states had fallen ill. Some had to be intubated. The recalled products were distributed nationwide through retail stores and mail order.  Back in late May, Prophet Premium received the first two complaints of people becoming ill after eating an entire chocolate…  read on >  read on >