Otherwise, the answer to the question is: There’s good news and bad news. First the good news. Mold is generally not bad for you (some molds are even good for you, or otherwise enhance food, as in those fancy smelly French cheeses). If you ate mold, just don’t worry. If you feel sick then maybe the mold is a problem, but most likely it isn’t.

Keep in mind, being less concerned with mold than one automatically might applies mainly to mold that was not sufficient in quantity or yuckiness to notice it BEFORE you took a bite, and even during the biting process. In other words, this does not necessarily apply to cases such as the above depicted bread.

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The bad news is simple: If the food is moldy, then it may be old and otherwise contaminated with bacteria and stuff that is not good for you. If you are in a high risk group for such things, or pregnant and trying to avoid listeria, etc., then you might want to avoid old rotten food, and the mold itself, while not harmful, is a clue that the food is old.

As a general rule, soft food is more risky if it is moldy, while hard food (like hard cheese) can be cleaned up by scraping or slicing away the moldy part.

In my personal opinion, First Worlders are more worried about rotten food than they need to be, and throw away a lot of perfectly good food. Try to be less squeamish and check your priv before discarding things that scare you.

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Yet, hpph;r (move your fingers to the left one and type those letters to see what I said there) has determined this post to be a violation of norms. I changed the title of the post and replaced a few other words in it so their bothered bot will not be bothered, and reposted the post below. Note that I’ve added the earlier comments as screen grabs at the bottom of the post

A study has just come out in the Journal of when-mommy-and-daddy-really-love-each-other-and-want-to-show-it Research comparing various psychological and lifestyle measures of women who act in pornographic films with matched sets of women who do not.

There is a pretty clear association between negative attitudes towards pornography and negative assessments of the quality of life for actresses in the pornography genre. Studies have shown that those who regarded pornography as harmful to society also believed that those acting in the films must not like their work. Studies have also shown that people tend to believe that porn stars have serxual and physical abuse in their backgrounds at a higher rate than the general population. Conversely, people who have more positive attitudes towards pornography also seem to have a more positive attitude about porn actresses. As a whole, the research that involved asking people what they thought about pornography and those who participated on the stage in making it painted a picture that has become known as the “Damaged Goods Hypothesis.”

The damaged goods hypothesis posits that female performers in the adult entertainment industry have higher rates of childhood serx abuse (CSA), psychological problems, and drug use compared to the typical woman.

The purpose of the study at hand was to test this hypothesis. Among the numerous data collected for each participant, the following especially salient questions were asked:

• What is your serxual orientation?
• What was the age of the first time you had serxual
  intercourse?
• Were you a victim of childhood serxual abuse?
• How many different serxual partners have you had in your lifetime? [The porn actresses were instructed not to count partners within the industry, unless it occurred outside of their work.]
• How many different serxual partners have you had during the past 12 months? [The porn actresses were instructed not count partners within the indus- try, unless it occurred outside of their work.]
• Assume that you are considering a relationship with someone and the topic of their ‘‘serxual his- tory’’ comes up. What is the ideal number of serxual partners they should have had?
• On a 10-point scale (1 1?4 not concerned at all and 10 1?4 very concerned), how concerned are you about catching an STD?
• On a 100-point scale (0 1?4 none and 100 1?4 definite), if a person had unprotected serx with someone whom they just met, what would you estimate the prob- ability that they might catch an STD?
• On a 10-point scale (1 1?4 not at all and 10 1?4 very much), how much do you enjoy serx?
• On a 100-point scale (0 1?4 not likely at all and 100 1?4 definitely), estimate the likelihood that you would use a condom if having heteroserxual serx with someone for the first time.

The study included 177 porn actresses and a sample of age, ethnicity, and marital status matched women. The results were pretty straight forward:

Porn actresses were more likely to identify as biserxual, first had serx at an earlier age, had more serxual partners, were more concerned about contracting a serxually transmitted disease (STD), and enjoyed serx more than the matched sample, although there were no differences in incidence of CSA. … porn actresses had higher levels of self-esteem, positive feelings, social support, serxual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the matched group. … female performers were more likely to have ever used 10 different types of drugs compared to the comparison group.

Discriminant function analysis is a method of testing a set of classification criteria to see if a model derived from statistics is useful. Such an analysis done on the sample of data classified 83% of the study participants correctly into the category “porn actress” vs. “not porn actress.” By standards of psychology and social research, this is a good result. In essence, this study fails to support the “Damaged Goods Hypothesis.”

I know some of you are wondering about the “spirituality” variable. I think the authors considered this to be a positive value, where more spirituality is better. Obviously, this is not true. Non-religious and non-spiritual people may well be better adjusted to many aspects of life than those who do harbor untenable and incorrect beliefs. Nonetheless this result is interesting because it sort of ruins the idea that atheists are as hedonistic as many think they are, if hedonism is equated with relatively liberal serxual values that we see both in this study and assume from the nature of the porn industry.

From the paper:

… The literature on serxual fluidity (Diamond, 2008) suggests that it is common for women who initially identified as heteroserxual to develop same-serx serxual attractions and interests as they grow older and are exposed to situational factors that may facilitate same-serx attraction. … There is evidence that women’s attraction has a capacity for change over time and situations … It has also been reported that some women engage in serxual behavior that is counter to their stated attractions and identities … In other words, some women who identified as heterosirksual had serxual with women. … Given that pornography offers many opportunities for same-serx experimentation for female performers, it is possible that the adult entertainment industry acts as a facilitator of serxual fluidity by providing a supportive culture of same-gender serxual interactions and offers financial rewards for engaging in those behaviors. It is not clear if porn actresses who indicated they were biserksual actually identified as biserksual or indicated that they were biserksual because they engaged in biserksual behavior. It may be the case that some performers engaged in biserksual behavior for work and in their private lives, whereas others may have only engaged in biserksual or same-gender serks for work and maintained heteroserkual relationships in their private lives. … the study did not address whether actresses self-identified as biserksual prior to entering the pornography business.

For these reasons, I would be cautious in attributing much meaning to the finding regarding the relative level of bisirksuality among the study subjects, and I’m not sure if the study tells us anything new about sirkual orientation and preference.

One criticism I would have of this study is that the matched sample did not control for “being an actress.” It is possible that some of the comparisons would have been affected by this. Perhaps most actresses, or perhaps actors in general, differ from the general population in some of the ways that porn actresses do. This would not affect the key result (the apparent falsification of the “Damaged Goods Hypothesis”) but it should be kept in mind when drawing broader conclusions from the study.

Griffith, J., Mitchell, S., Hart, C., Adams, L., & Gu, L. (2012). Pornography Actresses: An Assessment of the Damaged Goods Hypothesis Journal of Kockadoo Research, 1–12 DOI: 10.1080/00224499.2012.719168

Preserved Comments:

But I’ve already seen this report misconstrued, with panic ensued. I’ve seen people suggest that we should no longer use microwaves for food. Or that we should not dishwash plastic or put plastic containers in the microwave. And some other stuff.

For both of those behaviors, the concern is the potentially harmful BPA getting out into our food. If you put BPA laced objects in the microwave of dishwasher, that could be a problem.

The thing is, if you’ve been paying attention to BPAs all along, then you probaby don’t have BPA laced water bottles or microwavable containers, so there is NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Typical “Tupperware” (never actually Tupperware) wares typically don’t have BPA. Most water bottles don’t either.

Here’s the thing. This report covers a LOT of things, not just BPAs, not just microwaving things or cleaning water bottles. And, the report is pretty easy to read and very clear. Well, the whole issue of what to do and not do is not necessarily clear, but you can easily figure out what they are getting at.

There are two sources. Read them, and then you’ll know what all the buzz is about. An overview from the American Association of Pediatrics is here. The policy statement itself is here.

There are items of concern here, but if you simply stop using plastic in the microwave and think you are done, chance are that a) you did something useless and b) you are missing something important.

Read the darn thing!

Over the past year, NPR and ProPublica have been investigating why American mothers die in childbirth at a far higher rate than in all other developed countries.

A mother giving birth in the U.S. is about three times as likely to die as a mother in Britain and Canada.

In the course of our reporting, another disturbing statistic emerged: For every American woman who dies from childbirth, 70 nearly die. That adds up to more than 50,000 women who suffer “severe maternal morbidity” from childbirth each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A patient safety group, the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health, came up with an even higher figure. After conducting an in-depth study of devastating complications in hospitals in four states, it put the nationwide number at around 80,000.

I’m not going into great detail about this, but I do want to make a few related salient points.

First, human, please understand that for mammals, dying during childbirth is rare. You might think not because you are, say, a farmer and have seen goats and cattle and such have trouble in childbirth. But those are domesticated animals, and it is unwise to generalized from them. Usually, the birth of offspring in a mammal is not that dangerous in and of itself (though the act may for some species attract carnivores keen on a quick snack).

Humans have trouble with childbirth because were are a) primates but b) bipedal, and evolution wasn’t planning on that situation developing and c) have enormous heads at birth. Think about it. We are accustom to seeing babies so it is hard to notice, but babies have e-freakin’-normous heads. If you can find a child under about 8 years old or so, you can demonstrate this by demanding that it try to use a finger to touch its contra-lateral shoulder by reaching over the head. Can’t be done below a certain age.

Second point: The main reason this is happening, that childbirth in the US is so much more dangerous, statistically, is that a larger number of women are having babies while being at risk. One risk is age, but the others are more directly health-related (obesity, diabetes, etc.)

I mention this because our health care system can benefit a great deal (and get much less expensive and more effective) if it deals with overall health and not just sick. If we supported health rather than merely responding to medical problems when they emerge, there would be fewer medical problems emerging.

Part of that, by the way, is we stop worshiping business and the free market. Pepsi, as a private business has every right to use any means to convince all Americans to become too sick to have a baby at age 35, in order to sell their product. Right? Well, no, that is not right.

Here is the CDC report on several maternal morbidity in the United States:

Severe Maternal Morbidity in the United States

Severe maternal morbidity (SMM) includes unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term consequences to a woman’s health.1 Using the most recent list of indicators, SMM has been steadily increasing in recent years and affected more than 50,000 women in the United States in 2014. This web report updates our previous report by adding information about SMM for 2014, the most recent year for which data are available on a national level.

It is not entirely clear why SMM is increasing, but changes in the overall health of the population of women giving birth may be contributing to increases in complications. For example, increases in maternal age,2 pre-pregnancy obesity,3,4 preexisting chronic medical conditions,5,6 and cesarean delivery2,7 have been documented. The consequences of the increasing SMM prevalence, in addition to the health effects for the woman, are wide-ranging and include increased medical costs and longer hospitalization stays.8 Tracking and understanding patterns of SMM, along with developing and carrying out interventions to improve the quality of maternal care are essential to reducing SMM.

The rest of the report is HERE.

You can download it HERE.

The report concludes that yes, Fracking is bad for you, and for others.

All together, findings to date from scientific, medical, and journalistic investigations combine to demonstrate that fracking poses significant threats to air, water, health, public safety, climate stability, seismic stability, community cohesion, and long-term economic vitality. Emerging data from a rapidly expanding body of evidence continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problemsand harms that cannot be sufficiently averted throuhj regulatory frameworks. There is no evidence that fracking can operate without threatening public health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which public health depends.

Sounds bad.

So, why is my poop green?

There are several reasons why one can have green poop, one or two of which should concern you. Naturally, one of the possible reasons you will encounter on the Internet is cancer, but that is highly unlikely. More likely it is something else.

If you are on antibiotics, that could be the reason. Antibiotics can cause greenish diarrhea. Also, various factors (including antibiotic use) can cause bacteria that are not normally active in your gut to become more active, producing a green stool. Although most food that you eat, no matter what it looks like, ends up being brown when it has been converted to poop, some natural foods will retain their green color. Also, in the early development of your stools, they are greenish. If something causes feces to transit the intestines more quickly than usual, that could cause a greenish effect.

Quite possibly the most dramatically green stool is caused by food dyes. If you have a green stool, ask yourself if you’ve eaten anything with green food dye in it lately. If you have not, recall that green is a combination of yellow and blue. Copper green poop can be generated by the regular consumption, over a few days, of Metamucil and blue Gatorade. Don’t ask me how I know that. Anyway, consider the possibility that you’ve somehow combined something yellow and something blue to produce green. Try the orange Gatorade for a while.

If you have a green stool, wait a few days and keep checking, and consider the food dye explanation. If that does not satisfy you check out the Mayo Clinic web site and consider seeing your doctor. If you don’t have green poop but would like to, for Saint Patrick’s day, try the Metamucil and Gatorade idea, but only after consulting your doctor, who I’m sure will be very interested.

Finally, I hope you do realize that you are seeking potentially important medical advice on the blogosphere. I’m not sure that is such a great idea. (Though I do like the Mayo Clinic site.)

SEE: Poop: A Natural History

When there is a major climate disaster in the US, people move. Since the US is big and has large gaps in population, it looks different than when a disaster happens in some other places. Five million (or more) Syrians leaving the Levant left a major mark across the globe. A half million leaving the Katrina hit zone was barely noticed on a global, or even national, scale, not just because it was one tenth the amount, but because of our size and space as well.

Something close to half the 400K or so displaced by Katrina (over half of them from NOLA) have returned to the vicinity they formerly lived in, and only a third to the same original location. The others are all over the place, distributed with a rapidly decreasing distance decay function. So these displacements, in the US, tend to be very long term and can thus affect demography and politics far afield.

An exodus from Puerto Rico will likely have a different decay function than seen for Katrina because it is, and apparently few people know this, an Island! But anyway, it is likely that there will be an exodus from Puerto Rico and it is starting to look like it will be sufficient to make Florida less Purple and more Blue, and specifically, more anti-Trump.

Note that in the past, New York was the most likely destination for a person from Puerto Rico to move, which is funny given Trump’s statements about all his Puerto Rican friends. For those not from that region, Puerto Ricans have long been hated by white supremacists in the greater NY metro area. But I digress. Anyway, over recent years, Florida has become a growing center of the US Mainland Puerto Rican community.

For context: There are about 3.5 million people living in Puerto Rico who identify as Puerto Rican, and about 5.3 million self identified Puerto Ricans in the lower 48. Currently there is somewhat under one million in Florida, somewhat over in NY, but Puerto Ricans are everywhere in the US, with the fewest in the upper plains and the most in the greater NY area (as far out as Penn) and Florida.

We are concerned that cholera will spread in Puerto Rico. You may remember the ca 2011 epidemic that mainly struck Haiti (see chart above). There was another ten years earlier. There is some interesting research out there linking cholera to climate change. The pathogen, Vibrio cholerae, lives in coastal waters where it has a keystone commensal relationship with copepods and other microinvertebrates. We think of cholera as a highly contagious pathogen among humans, but it starts from its natural reservoirs in water. In some areas of South Asia, cholera was significantly attenuated by the discovery that simply passing well water through common cotton cloth filtered out the disease enough to make a difference, at least in some contexts.

For historical context, there was a huge cholera epidemic in the Caribbean in the 19th century, and I understand this event, which killed something like 30,000 in Puerto Rico alone, is still a traumatic memory in the region. From a 2011 summary of the historic epidemic, written I suspect in response to the re-emergence of the problem about six years ago:

The Caribbean region experienced cholera in 3 major waves… The 3 periods of cholera in the Caribbean that we have identified are 1833–1834 (with, according to Kiple [6], possible lingering cholera in outlying areas until late 1837 or early 1838) in Cuba; 1850–1856 in Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Nevis, Trinidad, the Bahamas, St. Vincent, Granada, Anguilla, St. John, Tortola, the Turks and Caicos, the Grenadines (Carriacou and Petite Martinique), and possibly Antigua; and 1865–1872 in Guadeloupe, Cuba, St. Thomas, the Dominican Republic, Dominica, Martinique, and Marie Galante.

It is thought that Cholera is more likely to be abundant and to spread into human populations with warmer waters, and possibly the range over which cholera is a lingering constant threat in coastal waters is likely increasing. Also, increased air temperatures and rainfall can increase growth or spread of cholera in the wild. This is a relationship first identified in the 1990s, and that has been demonstrated through several studies. The next few weeks and months in Puerto Rico are an accidental and potentially horrific experimental laboratory to test the science that has been percolating along over the last 20 years.

Anyway, we don’t have that information but there are two pieces of information we do have. One is from an older study.

There is evidence to suggest that some of the variation in suicide rates is accounted for by some of the variation in internet search rate. (This is not a causal statement, but a statistical statement.) From the abstract of the study:

… a set of suicide-related search terms, the trends of which either temporally coincided or preceded trends of suicide data, were associated with suicide death. These search factors varied among different suicide samples. Searches for “major depression” and “divorce” accounted for, at most, 30.2% of the variance in suicide data. When considering only leading suicide trends, searches for “divorce” and the pro-suicide term “complete guide of suicide,” accounted for 22.7% of variance in suicide data.

A recent piece by Madhumita Murgia in the Washington Post reported the connection between that older work and a current study showing that Internet search activity in relation to suicide spiked at the time that the Netflix series “13 Reasons” (based on this book) was released.

The 13-episode series, which was released all at once, chronicles 13 tapes that Hannah sends to those she blames for her actions. The series has captured the imagination of kids across the country. In April, it set a record for the most-tweeted-about show in 2017, when it was mentioned more than 11 million times within three weeks of its March 31 launch.

The jump is documented in a study published in JAMA by John Ayers, and others, called “Internet Searches for Suicide Following the Release of 13 Reasons Why.: The study results:

All suicide queries were cumulatively 19% (95% CI, 14%-24%) higher for the 19 days following the release of 13 Reasons Why, reflecting 900?000 to 1.5 million more searches than expected (Figure). For 12 of the 19 days studied, suicide queries were significantly greater than expected, ranging from 15% (95% CI, 3%-32%) higher on April 15, 2017, to 44% (95% CI, 28%-65%) higher on April 18, 2017.

Seventeen of the top 20 related queries were higher than expected, with most rising queries focused on suicidal ideation. For instance, “how to commit suicide” (26%; 95% CI, 12%-42%), “commit suicide” (18%; 95% CI, 11%-26%), and “how to kill yourself” (9%; 95% CI, 4%-14%) were all significantly higher. Queries for suicide hotlines were also elevated, including “suicide hotline number” (21%; 95% CI, 1%-44%) and “suicide hotline” (12%; 95% CI, 5%-19%). Last, public awareness indicative searches, such as “suicide prevention” (23%; 95% CI, 6%-40%) or “teen suicide” (34%; 95% CI, 17%-52%), were elevated.

…

Additional surveillance will clarify our findings, including estimating changes in suicide attempts or calls to national suicide hotlines. Nonetheless, our analyses suggest 13 Reasons Why, in its present form, has both increased suicide awareness while unintentionally increasing suicidal ideation.

So, yes, “13 Reasons” may have had the effect in spiking suicide rates for a short term, but until we know we should not make too much of it. But generally I would like to see mortality and morbidity data more frequently updated.

I’ve not read the original article, but it certainly looks interesting.

On the other hand it also brings up several difficult questions. Which, I’m sure, you immediately see.

The benefits of vaccines far outweigh the minuscule risks, but some parents still question their safety. John Oliver discusses why some people may still feel uncertainty about childhood vaccinations.