public health

The first internal dispute of the Macron administration showcased the contrasting views of France’s agriculture and environment ministers over a law that bans the use of neonicotinoid insecticides starting in 2018.

Almost a third of the world population is now exposed to deadly heatwaves that are a result of climate change, says a study published in Nature Climate Change.

Seven U.S. cities, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, have adopted so-called soda taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages since November 2014. Now researchers say they’ve identified three factors for success in such efforts.

Consumption of sugary beverages is down for the second year in a row in Mexico, suggesting "that the results of such a tax may be far more long-lasting," says the New York Times. It says a study published on the Internet by Health Affairs found a 5.5 percent decline in sales of sugary drinks in 2014, the first year of the tax, and sales in 2015 were 9.7 percent lower than in 2013, the year before the tax took effect.

A CDC study found "a striking gap in health between rural and urban Americans," says the agency's director Tom Frieden. Rural Americans are more likely than city-dwellers to die from the five leading causes of death – heart disease, cancer, accidental injury, chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke – which account for more than 60 percent of deaths, according to the study published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report

In "the opening shot of 2017," health advocates filed suit in federal court in Oakland, Calif., accusing Coca-Cola and the trade group American Beverage Association of deceiving consumers of the health risk of sugary drinks and saying there was no link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity, says Quartz. Coca-Cola said the lawsuit was "legally and factually meritless."

The newest locality to approve a tax on sugary beverages is also the largest — Cook County, home to 5.2 million people including the city of Chicago. The Cook County Board approved the 1-cent-per-ounce tax on a 9-8 vote with board president Toni Preckwinkle breaking a tie, said the Chicago Tribune.

The American Beverage Association, a soda industry group, said it will suspend payments to health experts speaking against soda taxes on social media, said the Associated Press.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the beverage industry is spending millions to convince voters that the proposed soda tax will raise their grocery prices, not just the cost of sugary drinks, says Bridget Huber in FERN’s latest story, produced with PRI’s The World.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told a soda industry group, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter, to stop using him in its campaign against soda taxes in California's Bay Area, says Politico. Sanders says he has not taken a position on referendums in San Francisco and Oakland and it is "false" and "misleading" for the American Beverage Association to feature him in advertising.

In a study of the Berkeley's first-in-the-nation soda tax, researchers found that lower-income residents had reduced their consumption by 21 percent, compared to the pre-tax days, the Los Angeles Times reported. The study, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health, looked at the impact of the tax in the first five months after it went into effect.

A growing body of evidence shows that regulators’ assumptions about the safety of glyphosate, commonly sold as Roundup, are based on outdated science, according to a team of environmental and public-health experts in a statement appearing in the journal Environmental Health.

A "soda tax" of 1 cent per teaspoon of sweetener would be levied under a bill unveiled by Rep Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, with the revenue used in programs to reduce obesity, diabetes and other health losses due to sugar-sweetened beverages. "There is a clear relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and a host of other health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay," said DeLauro in a statement.

Researchers say obesity rates for children ages 2-5 dropped to 8 pct from prev 14 pct in a decade's time, a welcome change from what has been called the U.S. obesity epidemic.