Personal Injury Archive
Pet Turtles, Salmonella and the Ban No One Knows About
October 30th, 2009. By Hunter West
There’s a ban on small pet turtles?
Really?
Okay, so the ban is only on pet turtles less than four inches in diameter. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enacted the ban after reports surfaced that children were putting the cute little things in their mouths. However, it wasn’t a choking hazard that seemed to drive the ban.
No, it was the fact that children became sick after coming into contact with their pet turtle in such an intimate fashion.
Sick with salmonella from turtles.
Turtles carry salmonella, it seems—originating in their feces, according to a recent MSNBC report. So children, by placing the baby turtles in their mouths, were coming into direct contact with salmonella.
So they were banned 34 years ago.
Just the small ones, mind you. In 1975.
Oh, you didn’t know either? Join the club. Few consumers know about the ban—and fewer vendors appear to be enforcing the ban, or complying with it. According to MSNBC small turtles
Mesothelioma Treatment: How do you get there?
October 21st, 2009. By AbiK
I just read a post by a blogger named Deon Scott. He posts about asbestos a fair amount—you could say it’s his passion, though I’m sure he’d rather have a different passion: his father suffered and died from asbestos mesothelioma.
Deon posted recently about air transportation for mesothelioma patients—and it caught my eye. While asbestos exposure, and subsequently asbestos mesothelioma years later, can occur almost anywhere, it’s likely that it is more prevalent in areas where big manufacturing is. And often those areas are more rural or remote—not right near a big city—and particularly not near some of the larger and more well-known medical facilities that may be able to provide more treatment options for mesothelioma patients.
Given the statistics on mesothelioma—the American Cancer Society put the estimate for new mesothelioma cases in 2008 at 2,000 - 3,000 with an average survival rate of less
3 Alarming Asbestos Facts
October 20th, 2009. By AbiK
Do I sound alarmist? or more aptly, alarmed? I am. I was writing an article on Asbestos and Asbestos Mesothelioma—and the more I researched the more alarmed I became. If you’re like me, asbestos mesothelioma—while indeed an awful, deadly disease—seemed to be something that only shipyard workers, miners, construction workers and veterans had to fear. Or I associated it with legal ads that start out “Have you or a loved one….” But a little research yields some pretty alarming facts about asbestos—and it’s changed my opinion about who’s really affected by asbestos exposure into “this means YOU”.
Asbestos Alarm 1: Asbestos is in more places than you think
A little tooling around the EPA site gave me the following:
The EPA estimates that there are asbestos containing materials in most of the nation’s approximately 107,000 primary and secondary schools and 733,000 public and commercial buildings.
Damaged ACM (asbestos-containing material) is more likely to release fibers than non-damaged ACM. In a 1984 survey, EPA found that approximately 66 percent of those buildings that contained asbestos contained damaged ACM.
With three young kids sitting (right now!) in a school building that was built between 1930 and 1950, when asbestos was widely in use, those two statements above are giving me pause. I understand that asbestos removal is not always the best course of action as it can create a problem where perhaps one did not exist—however, that second statement—the one indicating that approximately 66% of buildings with asbestos contain damaged asbestos—i.e., the kind
Man Bites Dog…Dog Awestruck
October 1st, 2009. By Hunter West
Be warned. This story has teeth.
What would be your reaction when you see a much larger and stronger dog (and a breed that carries the perception of being vicious) attacking a smaller, meeker dog?
A: Scream.
B: Call the SPCA, or the Police
C: Attempt to pull them apart and stop the attack
D: Nothing
For a man from Saskatoon, a city located in Western Canada, there needed to be one more letter to that stack noted above.
E: Bite Dog.
As in, give him a piece of his own medicine.
Doggonit, if it didn’t work too.
Here’s the story, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Early in September
KFC sued for doin’ Chicken half-right
September 29th, 2009. By AbiK
Kentucky Fried Chicken (which hopped on board the acronym branding bandwagon to be hip in the hood a few yeas back and so now is known as KFC) is the target of a lawsuit filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in California.
The issue, which has been in the courts for several years now with several fast food chains including Burger King and McDonald’s, centers on the presence of PhIP—a chemical byproduct of cooking meats at high temperatures.
According to a report on SFGate.com, PhIP was added to California’s list of carcinogens in 1994—and as such, it falls under California’s Proposition 65 which requires a business to warn customers if they are being exposed to a substance that can cause cancer or birth defects.
And that’s what’s at the heart of the current lawsuit against KFC—the warning, or lack thereof.
Lest you think that the PCRM is some small, CA-based enclave of lotus-pose-lovin’ quacks (I say that as a yoga practitioner so back off), it’s actually based out of Washington, DC and claims
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