The Food and Drug Administration found substantial levels of a worrisome class of nonstick, stain-resistant industrial compounds in some grocery store meats and seafood and in off-the-shelf chocolate cake, according to FDA researchers.
A federal toxicology report last year cited links between high levels of the compounds in people's blood and health problems, but said it was not certain the nonstick compounds were the cause.
The levels in nearly half of the meat and fish tested were two or more times over the only currently existing federal advisory level for any kind of the widely used man-made compounds, which are called per- and polyfluoroalykyl substances, or PFAS. The level in the chocolate cake was higher: more than 250 times the only federal guidelines, which are for PFAS in drinking water.
FDA spokeswoman Tara Rabin said the agency thought the contamination was "not likely to be a human health concern."
Diet may lower risk of breast cancer death
For the first time, a large experiment suggests that trimming dietary fat and eating more fruits and vegetables may lower a woman's risk of dying of breast cancer.
The results came from a rigorous test involving 49,000 women over two decades. Healthy women who modified their diets for at least eight years and who later developed breast cancer had a 21% lower risk of dying of the disease compared to others who continued to eat as usual.
However, that risk was small to start with and diet's effect was not huge, so it took 20 years for the difference between the groups to appear. The diet change also did not lower the risk of developing breast cancer, which was the study's main goal.
Still, doctors say the results show a way women might improve their odds of survival.
More blacks got timely cancer care after ACA
Research suggests that states that expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act eliminated racial differences in being able to quickly start on treatment after a diagnosis of advanced cancer.
Yale researchers used electronic health records on 36,000 U.S. patients. Before the law, 5% fewer blacks were starting treatment within a month of their cancer diagnoses. In states that expanded Medicaid, that difference went away.
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