Egg Recall Widens as Salmonella Sickens Hundreds
Most of us prefer our eggs sunny side up or scrambled—not tainted with salmonella. A nationwide recall of possibly-contaminated eggs was broadened to 380 million Wednesday, up from 228 million a week earlier. The eggs, produced by an Iowa farm, are linked to a salmonella outbreak that is thought to have sickened hundreds since May. Many of the recalled eggs have likely been cooked and eaten, but millions could still be on grocery store shelves or in our refrigerators. Consumers with recalled eggs should throw them out or return them for a refund, the FDA says. And stay alert to salmonella symptoms, which include stomach pains, diarrhea, and vomiting.
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Headache Relief: 6 Tricks to Ease the Pain
By one estimate, 1 in 25 adults and almost as many teenagers have at least as many days with headaches as without them. Many veterans of chronic headaches know exactly what will trigger the pain or make it more likely to happen, and take precautionary steps. They may avoid certain foods. They may take up yoga to offset stress at work. If sensitive to strong odors, they may ask friends and family to go light on perfume. Now researchers are learning that overall health is critical, too, U.S. News's Megan Johnson writes.
A study published Wednesday in Neurology links headaches with unhealthy lifestyle in teens, a group for which little data exists. Researchers in Norway looked at the relationship between three factors—smoking, weighing too much, and exercising too little—in adolescents ages 13 to 18. They found that any of those factors increased the likelihood of frequent headaches (by about 30 percent). Teens who fit all three categories were more than three times as likely as teens with no factors to be candidates for frequent headaches. There's no reason to think the results would not apply to adults. [Read more: Headache Relief: 6 Tricks to Ease the Pain.]
Preschoolers and Spray Cleaners Don't Mix
Parents may think they've childproofed the house, but household cleaners are still posing a risk to curious toddlers and preschoolers, despite years of effort to promote child-resistant packaging and safe storage of dangerous chemicals. The good news is that the number of children ages 5 and younger who landed in emergency rooms because of injuries caused by household cleaning products dropped by 46 percent from 1990 to 2006, according to a study in Pediatrics. But that still means that more than 10,000 children a year are being needlessly harmed by bleach, detergent, and other toxic yet common cleaners, writes U.S. News contributor Nancy Shute.
Spray bottles are the biggest culprit. The percentage of injuries caused by products in spray bottles rose from 30.3 percent in 1990 to 40.8 percent in 2006. That may be because products are more commonly packaged in spray bottles these days; was anyone using laundry pre-treatment sprays in 1990? But the researchers, at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and the Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center in Tucson, speculate that it may be that the shut-off valves on spray products are no match for a curious 4-year-old. And in many cases, the child injured was not the one wielding the spray bottle. It's easy to imagine the appeal of a spray-bottle war for children too young to realize that the liquid inside isn't harmless water. [Read more: Preschoolers and Spray Cleaners Don't Mix.]
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