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“More than 130 studies have linked BPA (bisphenol A) to breast cancer, obesity, and other disorders.” Thus concludes a report from President Obama’s 2010 Cancer Panel which was released in April.

Why should this worry you? Because BPA is a chemical compound that is practically inescapable in modern American life. It is used in plastic bottles, where it is known to break down and contaminate the liquid contents. It is sprayed inside of the vast majority of our country’s canned goods, and has routinely been detected in staggering levels in the food it is supposed to be protecting. Cash register and credit card receipts are covered in BPA. In fact, 92% of the food and drinks in the U.S. that come in plastic or metal packaging contain BPA.

Even small amounts of BPA can act as “endocrine disruptors,” altering your body chemistry in alarming ways.

“Hundreds of independent peer-reviewed scientific studies have found harm from low doses of BPA,” Laura Vandenberg, a BPA researcher at Tufts University said in a recent statement.

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Image by Joel Bedford via Flickr

On Monday, the US Supreme Court sided with 6,000 African-Americans in the city of Chicago who say that the city’s hiring test to become a firefighter summarily discriminated against them. The court action clears the way for the would-be firefighters to sue.

While the court heard a reverse discrimination case last year in which white firefighters in New Haven, Ct. contested the removal another hiring test that African Americans on the force claimed had kept them from being promoted, the two incidents have a decidedly common thread:  for blacks in America, rising in the ranks of the fire department has proven disproportionately elusive to most every other profession in the country (and certainly more than any blue collar ones).

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Straight outta YouTube comes a fitting visual announcement of the death of Paul Gray, the masked bass player for the masked band known as Slipknot.

No, you don’t have to watch the whole thing. But what’s fascinating to me is that this guy “deepwater909″ likens the death of Gray to that of Michael Jackson, another great mask wearer of our times.

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Say it with me: There is no scientific evidence that shows ANY link whatsoever between childhood vaccines and an increased risk of developing autism.

None. Zero. It’s a myth.

Today, the person most responsible for having spread that falsehood (save, perhaps, for Jenny McCarthy) can no longer practice medicine in the United Kingdom.

The U.K.’s General Medical Council today stripped Dr. Andrew Wakefield of his title. In February, The Lancet, the journal where Wakefield had published his bogus study, retracted the research, saying it was utterly false.

Yes, the internet took Wakefield’s claim and ran with it. As a result, vaccination rates have plummeted. So, spread the word, hysteria won round one. Perhaps reason will now mount a comeback.

Part transparent corset, part frilly baby doll, Venus Williams’ new fashion-forward (?) outfit is redefining the limits of acceptable tennis garb. Williams wore a similar design one week earlier, but in a different color, at the Madrid Masters.

The verdict on the get-up, with its flesh-toned underwear, has been decidedly mixed. Williams, whose own EleVen label designed the outfit, said the concept was to create “illusion.” Certainly, she succeeded on that task.

So what is your take? Is this budding designer’s new out fit a smash or a swing and a miss?

For more pics of the outfit, click here.