Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and this year the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) is calling attention to concussions, which are often overlooked, ignored, or not taken seriously. To help boost awareness of concussions and the threats they pose, especially to children and adolescents, the BIAA is launching a year-long education and advocacy campaign called under the banner “A concussion is a brain injury. Get the facts.”

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Earlier this month, the Associated Press exposed yet another disturbing Chinese trade secret when it reported that some manufacturers in China are making children’s jewelry with the highly toxic metal cadmium. Children’s jewelry now joins the growing list of dangerous and sometimes deadly products pouring into the United States from China – a list that includes toys covered with lead paint, pet food and baby formula tainted with melamine, sulfuric drywall that has ruined thousands of homes, and other poorly made or defective merchandise.

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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the world’s largest retailer, is pulling items of children’s jewelry known or suspected to be manufactured with high levels of toxic cadmium from store shelves. The move follows an Associated Press investigation published earlier this week which found some China-based manufacturers were creating children’s jewelry with varying amounts of cadmium — a heavy medal considered by the federal government to be one of the most toxic substances on earth.

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On the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s priority list of the 275 most toxic substances in the environment, the heavy metal cadmium is ranked seventh. Unfortunately, in an investigative report, the Associated Press found that cadmium is being used in large quantities to make children’s jewelry and other products that are sold in the United States. The country of origin for almost all of these products is China.

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The federal government has launched a new section of its web site called the Drywall Information Center. The agency developed the section in an effort to field consumer questions and complaints about the influx of tainted Chinese-made drywall to the U.S. that occurred in 2006 and 2007 when domestic drywall supplies ran low.

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Spurred by a request by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the investigational antiviral intravenous drug peramivir for use in certain adult and pediatric patients with confirmed or suspected 2009 H1N1 influenza (swine flu) who are admitted to the hospital.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a public health alert Thursday after finding errors with the measurements on the dosing dispenser included in Tamiflu packaging. Tamiflu is the brand name of Oseltamivir, an antiviral prescription drug used to treat people infected with the influenza virus. Produced by Swiss global health care company F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Tamiflu has been used extensively throughout the world during the last decade to help curb the spread of the flu virus within patients.

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Food safety authorities and microbiologists arrived at Nestle’s Danville, Virginia plant to investigate the likely presence of E. coli bacteria in refrigerated cookie dough products. The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been baffled by the bacteria’s presence in the cookie dough because it is a type of food unlikely to contain E. coli.

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The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating reports of E. coli illness caused by consumption of Nestle’s Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products. Nestle’s U.S. operations announced today that it was voluntarily recalling the Toll House products.

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On July 10, 2002, Susan Riddle was driving with her family when a drunk driver’s SUV landed on her windshield. Riddle’s husband and son emerged from the vehicle unharmed, but Susan was not as fortunate. Kent Riddle had to perform CPR on his wife as he waited for help to arrive. Having sustained a serious traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the crash, Susan would spend weeks in a coma, months in a hospital, and years in rehabilitation. Her fascinating story was told in BE Healthy magazine.

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