Infusing foods with smoke can impart delicious nuanced flavors, but could also come with an unwelcome side of carcinogens. To reduce the carcinogen content of smoked foods, researchers took a lesson from the automobile industry, running the smoke through a zeolite filter to remove harmful compounds. It worked, and with a happy bonus: superior smoke flavor.
Smoking’s Toll on Health Is Even Worse Than Previously Thought, a Study Finds (Published 2015)
A new analysis suggests that an additional 60,000 deaths a year in the United States are linked to smoking.
How Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick The Habit : Short Wave
Magic mushrooms — they're not just for getting weird with your friends. Researchers are increasingly looking at psychedelics to treat conditions such as depression and addiction.
Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say
New study: We should stop fighting marijuana legalization and focus on alcohol and tobacco instead
CSPI's Food Additive Safety Ratings
CSPI's Chemical Cuisine database rates additives—used to preserve foods or affect their taste, texture, or appearance—from 'safe' to 'avoid.'
Pollution · Patrick Collison
Air pollution is a very big deal. Its adverse effects on numerous health outcomes and general mortality are widely documented. However, our understanding of its cognitive costs is more recent and those costs are almost certainly still significantly under-emphasized. For example, cognitive effects are not mentioned in most EPA materials.
Tobacco funded research: how even journals with bans find it hard to stem the tide of publications
A Feast of Poison
How would I go if I tried to convince you that most food contains poison? You might nod and agree but I am not talking about processed junk laced with manmade chemicals, but rather this is all abou…
Is Sugar Toxic? (Published 2011)
That it makes us fat is something we take for granted. That it might also be making us sick is harder to accept.
Shaping Preferences with Pigouvian Taxes
A Pigouvian tax is a tax that is imposed to correct an externality, which arises when a person engages in behavior that harms others without their consent. Pigouvian taxes are popular among academics—with prominent economists and legal scholars arguing for their imposition on myriad goods and activities that harm third parties, like carbon emissions and alcohol. Policymakers have recently been receptive to at least some of these arguments as evidenced by taxes imposed on or proposed for a variety of externality-generating goods, including guns, plastic bags, and sugary drinks.The conventional economic rationale for Pigouvian taxes assumes that they affect behavior by increasing the prices of taxed goods and not by altering people’s underlying preferences for them. For example, a carbon tax reduces driving by making gasoline more expensive, but it otherwise leaves people’s desire to drive unchanged. This conclusion follows from the standard assumption in economics that people’s tastes and preferences are fixed and determined exogenously to public policy.Contrary to standard analysis, I argue that Pigouvian taxes can in fact shape preferences and that policymakers should consider using them for that purpose. A carbon tax, for instance, would not only make driving more expensive, it might also modify preferences such that people develop a taste for alternative modes of transportation—making driving less desirable, even if we ignore the increase in gas prices.I make an original contribution to the literature on Pigouvian taxes by explaining in detail the psychological mechanisms through which these taxes can alter preferences. I also argue that once we relax the assumption of fixed preferences, the already strong case for Pigouvian taxes often becomes even more compelling. Specifically, preference endogeneity means that the loss in consumer utility resulting from Pigouvian taxes will often be smaller than standard analysis suggests. Moreover, malleable preferences dramatically expand the potential scope for Pigouvian taxes and enhance their impact on behavior through a social multiplier effect that can make taxes more effective in achieving public policy goals than scholars have traditionally assumed. I illustrate these points in a variety of policy-relevant contexts, including environmental law, gun control, and public health policy.
Dietary Carbohydrates Impair Healthspan and Promote Mortality
The prospective cohort study, named PURE, found that in >135,000 participants from 18 countries, nutritive carbohydrates increase human mortality, whereas dietary fat reduces it, requesting a fundamental change of current nutritional guidelines. Experimental evidence from animal models provides synergizing mechanistic concepts as well as pharmacological options to mimic low-carb or ketogenic diets.
Study: Smoking pot doesn’t make you anxious or depressed
And it's definitely not as bad for your brain as the DEA says.
How worried should I really be about carcinogens?
Carcinogens seem to be everywhere, but how much do we really have to worry about them? Read on.
Smoke Signal
Smoke Signal is an event discovery and browsing application for the ATmosphere.
Why supermarket tomatoes tend to taste bland
New Evidence About the Dangers of Monsanto’s Roundup
Scientists have found evidence that the active ingredient of Roundup is more toxic when combined with other supposedly inert chemicals.
