Illinois Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
Eating fast food wrapped in PFAS laden food packaging may be a one-two punch for your prostate. A new study conducted by scientists at the University of Illinois has found that PFAS exposure together with a high-fat diet causes malignant prostate tumors to grow much faster than those without exposure to the chemical.
The scientists in the study performed several experiments. In one they exposed malignant human prostate cells to PFOS and PFBS and compared them to malignant prostate cells that were not exposed. The cancerous cells replicated three times faster than the control group when exposed to PFOS and 5 times faster when exposed to PFBS.
In a follow-up experiment, they injected mice with the malignant human prostate cells and fed them either a high-fat diet or a control diet. Some of the mice also received doses of PFOS, a common form of PFAS that has previously been linked to cancer. As expected, the mice fed a high-fat diet exhibited faster tumor growth than mice in the control group. The mice exposed to PFOS who ate the control diet had even faster tumor growth than the mice fed a high-fat diet. But the mice who were exposed to PFOS and fed a high-fat diet had the fastest rate of tumor growth of all.
Recent news reports have revealed that a benzene leak at Ford’s Assembly Plant in Flat Rock, Michigan has contaminated the sewers in a 4-square-mile—and possibly larger—area of the city. As a result of the benzene leak, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) is recommending that residents who live in the area bounded by I-75 to the east, Gibraltar Road to the north, Cahill Road to the west, and Woodruff Road south, evacuate until further notice. Initially, 10 homes and one school were evacuated, but now, because it is unclear which homes may be at risk, the MDHHS is recommending that the entire neighborhood evacuate.
Summer is here, along with beach days, afternoons at the neighborhood pool, tropical vacations, and lathering up in sunscreen. As you head out into the summer sun, however, it might be worth doing some research before grabbing any old bottle of sunscreen off the shelf. 
UPDATE: The Collins Law Firm. P.C. and Miner Barnhill & Galland, P.C. have filed a class action lawsuit against Chemtool Incorporated on behalf of residents affected by the explosion and fire that caused them to be evacuated from the area.
California has long been regarded as one of the most environmentally progressive states in the country, which is why it is no surprise that they are one of the states leading the charge against the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. In March of this year, California announced its intent to label two of the most widely used PFAS–PFOS and PFOA–as chemicals that cause cancer in humans and to study four other PFAS– PFDA, PFHxS, PFNA, and PFUnDA– for reproductive toxicity.
Baby food has been facing some much-needed scrutiny lately. A recently released Congressional report disclosed that many top baby foods, both organic and non-organic, are contaminated with dangerous levels of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. This is especially concerning since both the World Health Organization and the 
We should be able to expect that products that are widely available for purchase are safe to consume but, unfortunately, this is not always the case. When you reach for a can of fizzy, sparkling water the last thing you want is to unknowingly be ingesting toxic chemicals with each sip, but that may be exactly what you are doing. 
The images are everywhere on the news; protesters, exercising their Constitutionally protected right to free speech, fleeing from clouds of tear gas thrown by the police. What we have seen protesters enduring in recent months has been downright inhumane. Setting aside the fact that protesters are being abused by law enforcement for no justifiable reason, the “riot control agents”–often referred to as tear gas–that the police are using on protesters, have been banned from international warfare by the Geneva Protocol since 1925. So why on earth do we still allow tear gas to be used on citizens by the very people who are meant to protect them?