EU sets 2011 deadline to ban mercury exports
Environment ministers from the European Union, the world’s largest producer of mercury, called on Friday for exports of the toxic substance to be banned by 2011.
Europe also wants to phase out the use of the metal in thermometers and improve global efforts to stop the dumping of the dangerous liquid metal.
Mercury poisoning can harm the nervous system, brain and kidneys and even cause death. Pregnant women are advised to limit intake of some fish due to mercury pollution in the sea.
Guidant tells doctors not to implant some devices
Guidant Corp. on Friday said it advised doctors to stop implanting some of its defibrillators, which U.S. regulators may recall, sending the medical device maker’s shares down nearly 11 percent.
Continuing reports of problems with the company’s key cardiac devices have pressured the stock and raised concerns that Guidant’s deal to be acquired by Johnson & Johnson may be in jeopardy.
Guidant shares fell to $61.20 on the Inet electronic brokerage before the market opened, down 10.8 percent from Thursday’s close of $68.60 on the New York Stock Exchange.
ABCD predicts stroke risk after ‘mini-stroke’
A scoring system based on a patient’s age, blood pressure, clinical features and duration of symptoms - the ABCD score - can be used to estimate the risk of a full-blown stroke in the 7 days after a TIA or ‘mini-stroke’, British investigators report.
Apart from identifying patients who should get emergency care, the risk score will also be useful for raising people’s awareness of the symptoms of stroke, Dr. Peter M. Rothwell, from the University of Oxford, and his colleagues note in their report in The Lancet medical journal.
Flu pandemic could kill half million in US
Half a million Americans could die and more than 2 million could end up in the hospital with serious complications if an even moderately severe strain of a pandemic flu hits, a report predicted on Friday.
But the United States only has 965,256 staffed hospital beds, according to the report from the Trust for America’s Health.
During a chemical fire, evacuation may not be best
Evacuation of local residents during a chemical air pollution incident is not necessarily the best way to prevent exposure to toxic fumes, according to UK investigators.
“Unplanned evacuations where a lot of folks are moved around have the potential for both psychological and physical problems,” Dr. Sanjay Kinra, from the University of Bristol, told Reuters Health.
Cheese from Mexico linked to TB-like infections
Several New York City cases of a type of tuberculosis that normally affects cattle appear to be due to fresh cheese made from unpasteurized cow’s milk in Mexico, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
Infection by Mycobacterium bovis, the culprit in these cases, used to be common before milk pasteurization but is a rarity these days.
