Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:35

Does drinking out of plastic water bottles bad for your health?  Some recent research suggests that the answer just might be yes.  The concern started with the email circulating about Cheryl Crow and her concern about dioxins leaching into water bottles which she believes caused her to get breast cancer.

Below is the email, and our surprising findings:

Following is the comments sent from a friend of mine. I would appreciate your analysis:  facts or myth…thanks…Don

No matter how many times you get this E-mail, 
Please send it on!!!!
Bottled water in your car is very dangerous!
On the Ellen show, Sheryl Crow said that this is what caused her breast cancer. 
It has been identified as the most common cause of the high levels of dioxin in breast cancer tissue..

Sheryl Crow's oncologist told her: women should not drink bottled water that has been left in a car.
The heat reacts with the chemicals in the plastic of the bottle which releases dioxin into the water. Dioxin is a toxin increasingly found in breast cancer tissue.
So please be careful and do not drink bottled water that has been left in a car.

Pass this on to all the women in your life. This information is the kind we need to know that just might save us!
Use a stainless steel canteen or a glass bottle instead of plastic!
LET EVERYONE WHO HAS A WIFE / GIRLFRIEND / DAUGHTER KNOW PLEASE!

This information is also being circulated atWalter Reed Army Medical Center ..
No plastic containers in microwaves.
No plastic water bottles in freezers.
No plastic wrap in microwaves.

Dioxin chemical causes cancer, especially breast cancer.
Dioxins are highly poisonous to cells in our bodies.
Don't freeze plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic.
Recently the Wellness Program Manager atCastle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard.

He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating food in the microwave using plastic containers....
This especially applies to foods that contain fat.

He said that the combination of fat, high heat and plastic releases dioxin into the food.

Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Pyrex or ceramiccontainers for heating food. You get the same result, but without the dioxin.
So, such things as TV dinners, instant soups, etc., should be removed from their containers and heated in something else. 

Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper.. It's safer to use tempered glass, such as Pyrex, etc.

He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the styrene foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons... 

Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Cling film, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave.
As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food.
Cover food with a paper towel instead.
This is an article that should be sent to anyone important in your life!

This email has been debunked by other websites as an urban myth, (Snopes, wrong again!) but in fact plastic bottles do present a potential health hazard, not from dioxin but from estogenic compounds in the pastic that leach into the water:

PET bottles potential health hazard

Wednesday, 29 April 2009Emily Sohn
Discovery News

Water bottles made from PET plastic leach compounds that mimic the hormone estrogen raising questions about their safety, say German researchers.

Previous research has focused on plastics containing the chemical bisphenol-a (BPA). During that time regular PET plastic water bottles have maintained a reputation as safe, at least as far as human health is concerned.

But new evidence suggests that PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, may not be so benign after all.

Scientists at Goethe University in Frankfurt found that estrogenic compounds leach from the plastic into the water.

Eight weeks later, female snails living in plastic bottles had more than twice as many embryos inside their bodies compared to the glass-grown snails.'

German mineral water comes from natural springs. So, to see if the estrogenic compounds were actually coming from the water itself, Wagner emptied the bottles and replaced the water with a pure snail medium and a tiny species of snail that is especially sensitive to estrogenic compounds.

So unless you are like the octo-mom and need to double up on your embyos, its probably better to avoid the plastic!

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:35

The Tommy Hilfiger is a racist hoax e-mail has been circulating for over 15 years--we originally received it in the late 1990s, and it is among the original memes on the Internet that used a celebrity name to spread a vicious rumor.  We spoke with Tommy's lead counsel back then who told me that the firm had been battling the rumor for years and had even called in the FBI to find out who started it. But to this day noone knows the original source.

The Hilfiger e-mail circulates about twice a year, every year--and poor Tommy Hilfiger has to refute the same thing each time. It is no doubt perpetrated by competing fashion designers who can't keep up with Hilfiger's popularity in the urban market, and this editor wishes it would stop. If you see this in your e-mail, reply to all and tell them to hit DELETE.

Here is the email forward we received in 1999:

From: Walter Arnold <sculptor@mcs.net>

I couldn't find this one on your site, so it should be added. Chicago Tribune, Tuesday Jan. 12, 1999, section 1 p. 17 contains a refutation of the hoax by Leonard Pitts of Knight Ridder/Tribune. He says that a spokeswoman for Oprah Winfrey states that "Tommy Hilfiger has never appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show". (and also, variation on the rumor puts him making statements on a CNN show, but CNN spokesperson said that is a lie).

Here's the e-mail hoax:

>Hello Everyone!

> I thought maybe this is worth sharing with you all!

> IM SURE MANY OF YOU WATCHED THE RECENT TAPING OF THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW WHERE HER GUEST WAS TOMMY HILFIGER. ON THE SHOW SHE ASKED HIM IF THE STATEMENTS ABOUT RACE HE WAS ACCUSED OF SAYING WERE TRUE. STATEMENTS LIKE IF HE'D KNOW AFRICAN-AMERICANS, HISPANICS AND ASIANS WOULD BUY HIS CLOTHES HE WOULD NOT HAVE MADE THEM SO NICE. HE WISH THESE PEOPLE WOULD *NOT* BUY HIS CLOTHES, AS THEY ARE MADE FOR UPPER CLASS WHITE PEOPLE. HIS ANSWER TO OPRAH WAS A SIMPLE "YES". WHERE AFTER SHE IMMEDIATELY ASKED HIM TO LEAVE HER SHOW. MY SUGGESTION? LETS GIVE HIM WHAT HES ASKED FOR. LETS NOT BUY HIS CLOTHES!

>LETS PUT HIM IN A FINANCIAL STATE WHERE HE HIMSELF WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD THE RIDICULOUS PRICES HE PUTS ON HIS CLOTHES.

>> >>> >BOYCOTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>> >>> >BOYCOTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>> >>> >BOYCOTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>> >>> >PLEASE SEND THIS TO ANYONE YOU KNOW WHO SPENDS THEIR HARD EARNED

>MONEY ON CLOTHES MADE BY SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT RESPECT THEM AS A PERSON OR A PEOPLE!

The Truth: Tommy Hilfiger had never appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show until 2006, when she finally cleared up the rumor in this interview:

Oprah: Let's break this down. Tommy, in the 21 years that we've been on the air, have you ever been on the show before today?

Tommy: Unfortunately, not.

Oprah: And when you first heard it, Tommy, what did you think?

Tommy: I didn't believe it. … Friends of mine said they heard the rumor. I said, 'That's crazy. That can't be. I was never on The Oprah Show. I would never say that.' And all my friends and family who know me and people who work with me and people who have grown up with me said that's crazy.

Oprah: Well, did you ever say anything close to that? Where do you think this originated?

Tommy: I have no idea. We hired FBI agents, I did an investigation, I paid investigators lots of money to go out and investigate, and they traced it back to a college campus but couldn't put their finger on it.

Tommy says his clothing company's intention has always been the exact opposite of what that rumor says. "I wanted to sell a lot of clothes to a lot of people," he says.

"It hurt my integrity, because at the end of the day, that's all you have. And if people are going to challenge my honesty and my integrity and what I am as a person, it hurts more than anything else," he says. "Forget the money that it has cost me."

Not only is he a fashion icon, Tommy is also the founder of a summer camp for inner city children and one of the driving forces behind the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Fund—a group dedicated to creating a monument to the slain civil rights leader in Washington, D.C. They're holding a fundraising concert on September 18, 2007, in New York City.

"The next time somebody sends you an e-mail or somebody mentions this rumor to you, you know what you're supposed say to them?" Oprah says. "You're supposed to say, 'That's a big fat lie.'"

From The Tommy Hilfiger corporate site in 2002:

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:35

Devon James has still no produced any proof that her alleged sex tape with Tiger Woods exists, and now has made racist comments about a man who claims she paid him to make a porn movie in which she repeatedly called him "Tiger."

According to RadarOnline:

The porn star who claims to have made a sex tape with Tiger Woods went on a racist rant - along with her husband - against the man who is alleging the tape is fake and that he was hired to impersonate Tiger for it, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.

EXCLUSIVE: Read The Racist Facebook Exchange

Devon James and her husband Nick are selling what they're boasting is James' sex tape with Tiger.

They have a Web site that is taking preorders, but they have yet to produce evidence the tape actually exists.

PHOTOS: Tiger Woods And Wife Elin Through The Years

Now, Devon and Nick have called Teneal Goyco, the man who says he was hired to impersonate Tiger, the "N" word.

They spewed racist taunts at Goyco in a Facebook exchange that was intended to be private, but was reviewed by RadarOnline.com.

PHOTOS: Sexy New Singles

"We have never even met your n**ger a**," Nick wrote, adding that he wants to fight Goyco.

And, while threatening to sue Goyco, he wrote: "what you gonna run away from process server... I heard black people are fast but not that fast."

Nick also added: "I'll beat that bell pepper nose off your lying black a** motherf**ker."