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FEAR!
Please be scared. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), an influential environmental watchdog, would appreciate it if you would please be scared of the latest supposed monsters in your closet, cleaning products. Of course, it would be easier to be scared if EWG had supplied any supporting facts and context instead of insinuations to bolster their warnings.
On the other hand, insinuations are all that EWG has to offer. Consider the example of a floor cleaner that is described by EWG as "among the worst offenders." What makes the cleaner so bad according to EWG? It contains a chemical that is "suspected" by a UN regional economic panel of causing harm. Talk about grasping at straws.
Nonetheless, it's worth taking a look at what the product's OSHA-required Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) say about it. MSDSs include a Hazardous Materials Identification System (HMIS) rating for Health. The health hazard ranking scale runs from a high of four to a low of zero. The cleaning product's health hazard? Zero. "No significant risk to health."
If you don't have a vested interest in promoting fear, you should feel pretty good. When even the purported "worst" products are safe when used as directed, things aren't so bad.
Another product is spotlighted by EWG for containing citrus oils. Perhaps the NGO will next warn against eating oranges.
Although EWG's "Cleaners Hall of Shame" contains much silliness, it's even more notable for what it doesn't include. Such as the criteria that EWG uses for determining whether a cleaning product gets listed. That's right, for all their talk of transparency, EWG isn't providing any about their Hall of Shame selection process.
So, what does the Cleaners Hall of Shame consist of? A few unsupported claims and a secret selection process. Apparently EWG's new moto is "trust us, we're the experts."
The EWG list isn't about health hazards or protecting consumers, it's about publicity for EWG. And EWG's self-serving fear-mongering is the real shame.
See EWG Press Release
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Is Medicare's Competitive Bidding Program Killing Seniors?
"charts in the CMS report show that death rates were higher in Pittsburgh, where products are competitively bid, compared with Detroit, where there is no bidding." - Inside Health Policy
CMS claims that there are no adverse health consequences from their "competitive bidding" program for durable medical equipment. The numbers seem to be telling a different story.
An economist at the University of Maryland who studied CMS data concluded that,
"the CMS data through September 2011 show the impact of declines in utilization of Medicare
DME. In all cases, the result is a higher risk of death, a higher frequency of ER visits and hospitalization, and longer hospital stays."
Medicare beneficiaries and their families have left no doubt as to their views on the health consequences of the Medicare program. Comments from callers to CRE's hotline included:
"Yes, I am calling in regards to this competitive bidding. I think this is very unfair. First of all I'd like to know what about Congress? All the money that they make and are they not getting any benefits taken away from them. They get the best healthcare, they get the best of everything. This is not fair to the American people." - Detroit, MI
"I am calling regarding what has happened with being a witness to watching what my mother's had to go through just to get a piece of equipment for her sleep apnea monitor/machine and we have been to 3 different...companies trying to find out who could service here at this point. ... I think you can't Wal-Mart health care and what's the next thing, Euthanasia, that's what it looks like it is coming to." - Charlotte, NC
"What are you trying to do, take the very air I breathe? I have diabetes, I have a bone disease, I have a health problem, I'm on oxygen, I'm on insulin. My God, the next thing you take away from me is going to take my life. Alright go ahead and take my life. Take every other elderly person's life. Just put us out in the street and shoot us. That's the only next thing you can do." - Oxford, MS
The Department of Health and Human Services is planning to "vastly expand" competitive bidding for DME to almost all Medicare beneficiaries. American seniors and their families will bear the consequences of HHS's decision to expand the use of "competitive bidding" without even conducting a proper assessment of its impact.
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