Beech-Nut Nutrition, a popular brand of baby food, is voluntarily recalling a lot of its rice cereal because it contained levels of arsenic above federal guidelines.

In the recall notice posted on the Food & Drug Administration website this week, Beech-Nut also has announced it will no longer sell the rice cereal and says it has "decided to exit the market for Beech-Nut branded Single Grain Rice Cereal."

After losing out on an entire summer to the pandemic last year, Americans are eager to lather up with sunscreen and head to their nearest beaches now that vaccines have stifled coronavirus transmission in the U.S.

But a recent report found dozens of popular sunscreen products have been contaminated with a chemical, called benzene, that is known to cause cancer.

Wisconsinites and fans of uncooked meat, here is your annual holiday health warning.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is urging residents to put down their cannibal sandwiches, also known as raw meat sandwiches, tiger meat or steak tartare.

"Many Wisconsin families consider them to be a holiday tradition, but eating them poses a threat for Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Campylobacter and Listeria bacteria that can make you sick," the department wrote in a Facebook post Saturday, which it called its annual reminder. "Remember, ground beef should ALWAYS be cooked to an internal temperature of 160° F."

A company that supplied a federal school lunch program sold juice with high levels of arsenic and used rotten fruit in their product, the FDA charged in a new lawsuit, according to a report.

In the suit, which was filed in federal court in Washington state against the company Valley Processing, food safety inspectors said they found high levels of arsenic in 17 batches of apple juice and two batches of pear juice during a 2019 inspection, The New York Times reported.

Investigators also found high levels of a toxin produced by rotting or moldy apples and pears in the company’s juice, according to the report.

Taking a quick dip in a river or creek is a nice way to spend a warm afternoon, and rarely would you imagine that hopping into some seemingly freshwater could result in severe sickness or death days later. For an increasing number of very unfortunate people in North and South Carolina, that’s become a troubling reality.

Reports out of the Carolinas reveal that the prevalence of a bacteria called Vibrio is increasing steadily and has been over the past decade or more. A person can become infected after swimming in or touching water that is contaminated with the bacteria, but it’s what the bacteria does once it’s in your body that is truly frightening.

Humans, like nature itself, abhor a vacuum—and there’s been no vacuum lately quite like the tedious months of COVID-19 quarantine. In nature, air rushes in to fill the empty space. In the time of pandemic, it’s been alcohol. That, at least, is the finding of a new survey of American adults conducted by the RAND Corporation and published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open. But the study bears close reading.

From the very start of the pandemic, it was clear that alcohol was going to be the medication of choice for a lot of Americans, especially during the early days when panicky shoppers were hoarding toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bottled water, and groceries. During the week ending March 21, national alcohol sales increased 54% from the same week a year before and online sales leapt a staggering 262%.

The question was, with more alcohol on hand—and plenty more available as soon as stores began to reopen but stay-at-home guidelines remained in place—would people actually consume more? The answer, according to the RAND researchers, who surveyed a sample group of 1,540 adults, was: And how.

It’s the season for all things spooky, and you know what people in my line of work think is really scary? A COVID-19 superspreader at a crowded costume party! Boo!

While many epidemiologists like me are currently living out a horror movie version of their careers, we’re also trying to figure out how to make normal life work in a world that seems upside-down. I am also a mom, and Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love the creativity. I love that I can be anything I want for a day with no risk and no commitment. In years past, I have dressed up as the Wicked Witch of the West, the worm from Labyrinth, Luna Girl from PJ Masks, and queen of the zombie prom. So I’m here with good news: Halloween is not canceled.

Xanax will soon come with a new warning label, the New York Times reports. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration announced it will now require benzodiazepines, a class of common psychiatric drugs, to feature labeling that reflects the drugs’ high risk for abuse and addiction.

Historic wildfires which ravaged California throughout August and September may cause 3,000 early deaths, according to research from academics at Stanford University.

This year there have been over 8,100 wildfires that have burned well over 3.7 million acres in California. Since August 15, when California's fire activity elevated, there have been 26 fatalities and over 7,000 structures destroyed.

On Sunday, 17,000 firefighters were still at work, battling 25 wildfires in the state.

Now academics have concluded that the wildfires, from August 1 to September 10, were responsible already for at least 1,200 deaths in California - and may, over the next month, cause a total of 3,000 deaths.

One in three parents doesn't intend to have their child vaccinated for the flu this season, according to a new poll, despite the potential threat of a second wave of COVID-19 cases.

Health officials have increasingly emphasized the importance of vaccinations this year, in part to limit stress on the health care system during the coronavirus pandemic. If the flu is not controlled, officials say hospitals may become overwhelmed by dealing with both.

Despite this, 32% of parents say their child is "unlikely" to get a flu vaccine, according to the recent National Poll on Children's Health.

For years, scientific studies have warned pregnant women about the possible effects of toxoplasmosis (a disease found in kitty litter) on their unborn child.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that toxoplasmosis can lead to serious illnesses such as blindness, hearing loss, mental disabilities, and psychosis.

Most children do not show symptoms of toxoplasmosis. If they show any symptoms, they usually include swollen lymph glands, fatigue, and muscle aches.

In teens, it can cause chorioretinitis, which is a rare symptom that consists of blurred vision and dark spots floating in front of your child's eyes.

Let’s imagine we were giving an award for the worst social problem in the world today. Do you have any nominations?

Did I hear someone say international conflict? Racial prejudice maybe? Environmental destruction anyone? Millions of homeless refugees? Exploitation of women? Turns out there’s one problem that connects all of those, and it’s one you hardly ever hear politicians talk about.

Overpopulation may not be root of all evil, but it is indeed at the root of many of the world’s other miseries.

Just do the math. As a minimum, every additional person needs a certain quantity of food to eat and clean water to drink. Extra people could, in theory, live without clothes on their backs or roofs over their heads, but most of us would not wish for a world with more people, if they had to live homeless and naked against the elements. Beyond basic needs for food, water, and shelter, more people need more energy -- to light their homes and cook their food, and if that level is reached, they’ll be in the market for still more -- to power their refrigerators and washing machines. At moderate levels of economic development, people start to desire cell phones, big screen televisions, and cars to drive. And at the highest levels, they want second homes and vacations in far-away destinations, which they reach by flying on gas-guzzling airplanes.

One solution is to simply open our borders, to allow more of the world’s desperate people to come to the United States, England, the Netherlands, and Germany. That is the case Samantha Power made in her painful stories of the desperate people she encountered as a journalist and later as U.N. ambassador, which triggered the earlier open letter. The statistics seem to indicate that most immigrants are not criminals or terrorists, but are, compared to those who grow up in first world countries, actually more eager to work long and hard hours. Cafaro acknowledges the obvious -- that the opportunities in a first world country are substantially greater than those in a third world country. And if you are rich or middle class American, there are benefits from immigrants – cheaper labor and better bottom-lines on stock dividends (as large corporations have used the availability of cheaper immigrant labor to break unions, and drastically cut salaries and benefits for their employees). But Cafaro notes that those economic benefits to middle and upper-class Americans translate into severe costs for the poorest Americans. Middle-class people are generally out of touch with how those economic benefits to them translate into the hefty costs associated with unemployment or underemployment among African-Americans, poor whites, and native Hispanics. Many of these less fortunate groups have lost the union jobs that permitted their parents to live reasonably comfortable lives. This in turn leads to loss of health care benefits, and many other unpleasant downstream consequences.

First onions, now shrimp: Making ceviche this summer is turning out to be a total nightmare. (Along with everything else.) The FDA has announced a major recall of frozen shrimp sold to large grocery chains including Costco and Kirkland. The questionable crustaceans are said to be potentially infected with salmonella—an organism that can cause fever, nausea, upset stomach, and even fatality in some rare cases.

The recall went into effect last Wednesday and includes various sizes of frozen cooked, peeled, and deveined shrimp sold in 1-, 1.5-, and 2-pound retail bags that originated from Kader Exports. The shrimp is said to have been distributed starting in late February through the middle of May and then sold by major grocery chains nationwide. A full list of the recalled products containing Kader Exports frozen shrimp can be found here.

An emergency proclamation requiring face masks in stores and restaurants in Stillwater, Oklahoma, was nixed after store and restaurant owners received threats.

The proclamation was issued Thursday. Among other things, the order made businesses require patrons to cover their faces to combat the spread of coronavirus.

But on Friday, Mayor Will Joyce softened the rule to encourage, not require, face coverings, after several reports emerged of employees being verbally abused and being threatened with physical violence while trying to enforce the order -- all in just three hours of the rule going into effect.

"Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view," said City Manager Norman McNickle in a statement. "It is further distressing that these people, while exercising their believed rights, put others at risk."

McNickle went on to explain the importance of face coverings in preventing the spread of coronavirus. The masks have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

Last weekend, the New York Times wrote a piece about Matt and Noah Colvin, the Tennessee brothers who drove 1,300 miles across two states to buy thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packages of antibacterial wipes so they could resell them online at unconscionably inflated price points. (Matt listed those $1 bottles of Purell on Amazon for anywhere between $8 to $70 each.)

Amazon ultimately yanked Colvin's listings, citing the company's policy against price-gouging. And on Saturday afternoon, just hours after the Times' piece went live—and subsequently, viral—the Tennessee attorney general's office sent its own investigators to Matt Colvin's house to deliver a cease-and-desist letter, reminding him of the state's own law that prevents state residents from charging "unreasonable prices for essential goods and services [...] in direct response to a disaster." Before the weekend was over, Colvin was the subject of a state investigation, he'd been permanently banned from eBay, and the storage company where he kept his ultra-selfish hoard told him that he couldn't rent from them anymore. He was also essentially forced to donate all of the hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes that he'd bought, with a local church collecting the bulk of it, and the state attorney general's office taking the rest of it. All of the products will be redistributed to people who will actually use them, not profit from them.