Tag: safety

Savannah River Site Lifts Emergency After Lab Fire And Reported Radiological Release

A fire in a single room at the Savannah River National Laboratory triggered a Site Area Emergency at the US Department of Energy complex on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River from Augusta late this Wednesday. Site officials reported the fire had been brought under control, with no contamination reported outside the affected building, and said the operational emergency was over by 9:18 p.m.

WRDW reported that the site described an “unfiltered ground-level radiological release” from that room. WRDW reports that dispatch traffic and an SRS release have found no indication of contamination beyond the site boundary. Officials at the lab have told the station that there is no danger to the public outside of the reservation.

SRS closed entrance barricades to incoming traffic. Rail, river, and air traffic was also temporarily restricted. Employees not involved in the incident were told to go to shelter. Workers in the lab, located in Area A, were kept behind the barricades for approximately 30 minutes before some were allowed to leave, WRDW reported. A temporary flight restriction (TFR) was put in place by the FAA until midnight Thursday. The restriction is for a 15-nm radius around SRS with a flight ceiling of 10,000 feet.

All-clear posted on the SRS status page at 9:18 p.m. There are no operational emergencies or scheduled delays. Incoming and outgoing traffic has resumed at all barricades, and oncoming shift workers should report to work as usual.

Savannah River Site is a 310-square-mile reservation in Aiken, Barnwell and Allendale counties on the SC side of the Savannah River which forms the Georgia line. Augusta sits on the Georgia side. The complex is home to the Department of Energy’s national laboratory conducting nuclear materials research in support of its environmental cleanup and nuclear waste management mission as well as the production of tritium in support of the country’s nuclear deterrent. The site was built in the early 1950s to produce plutonium and later tritium for nuclear weapons, WRDW reported.

SRS has not yet issued a follow-up press release to describe the extent of radioactive material release from the single room where the fire occurred. Their initial release states that the fire has been extinguished and that there has been no report of contamination outside of the lab building. The operational emergency ended Wednesday night.

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Vaccine Injury: A Glimpse of the Scale

Ihave heard these stories a thousand times. I am a board‑certified pediatrician with 46 years of clinical experience. I’ve practiced in group and solo settings, served as Director of Pediatric Education for a residency program, and received numerous awards for child‑health initiatives. My solo practice had 3,500 general pediatric patients. I spent five years as Medical Director of the Autism Research Institute.

By caring for and consulting on more than 600 children with autism from 5 countries and 20 states, and hundreds of children with complex chronic illnesses, I have a unique clinical perspective to share, which mirrors what these families shared today.

My concerns about vaccine safety began in 1999 after my patient experienced a severe and irreversible reaction following a vaccine I gave. Despite exhaustive efforts to identify another cause, I could not. The trajectory of my career changed. I left a secure academic position I loved and opened a solo practice dedicated to children whose medical needs were not being met.

During my career I learned an extraordinary amount from parents who are usually perceptive observers of their children’s health. At ARI we partnered with families to identify medical problems that were overlooked. Their insights guided our research and these actions should guide our actions today. Families directed us to treat gastrointestinal dysfunction, immune dysregulation, and impairments in detoxification pathways. Collaborations with international scientists helped identify mitochondrial dysfunction, methylation abnormalities, cerebral folate deficiency, and prolonged cell danger responses.

Most pediatricians do not know about these issues. Addressing these problems often resulted in measurable improvements in autism symptoms. Some children initially diagnosed with moderate to severe autism entered kindergarten no longer meeting criteria for autism because their medical problems were treated. Other severely affected children treated as toddlers have gone on to college without knowing they once carried an autism diagnosis.

My concerns about vaccine safety extend far beyond the narrow question of whether vaccines cause autism. Autism and complex chronic illnesses are profoundly heterogeneous. In my experience, antecedents, mediators, and triggers vary widely among children. Vaccines contribute to oxidative or mitochondrial stress in all children. In some kids; they amplify pre‑existing vulnerabilities. For others, early-life factors—such as C‑section birth, antibiotics, or prematurity — create antecedent conditions that interact with later vaccines and precede neurodevelopmental regression.

In 2005, I gave grand rounds at the university where I had been chief resident. Simply raising the possibility that the accelerated vaccine schedule might contribute to rising autism prevalence resulted in my adjunct faculty appointment not being renewed. At the time, I used a modified schedule that reduced aluminum exposure while remaining fully compliant with Virginia’s school requirements.

In 2006, I met with AAP leadership to discuss vaccine safety concerns – which were dismissed. Despite no research funding from government or pharma, I published a dozen studies in my spare time. One 17‑year project examined whether autism risk could be reduced by applying insights learned from families. After seven years, my autism prevalence was 1 in 297—at a time when the national rate was worse than 1 in 50. I submitted the findings to the AAP in 2013, expecting interest in a six‑fold reduction in such a serious public health problem. I received no response.

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New Paper Reveals How mRNA Vaccine Materials Could Spread From Vaccinated to Unvaccinated People

For years, people around the world have raised serious concerns about mRNA vaccine shedding—the possibility that vaccine-derived materials could spread beyond the individuals who received the injections. Despite years of public concern and debate, critical questions surrounding this possibility have remained unanswered.

We decided to examine the scientific evidence comprehensively, tracing what happens to vaccine-derived materials inside the body, how they spread between cells, and whether biological mechanisms exist that could allow these materials to pass from one person to another.

Our resulting paper, titled “mRNA Vaccine Shedding: Internal Transcriptional Dissemination and Potential Human-to-Human Transfer,” was coauthored by John A. Catanzaro, NMD, PhD, of Neo7Bioscience, Inc., and Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (myself), and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, of the McCullough Foundation.

Drawing on published human investigations, molecular experiments, and research involving extracellular vesicles, we examined the existing evidence and identified two distinct forms of mRNA vaccine shedding:

1. Human-to-human shedding: The potential transfer of vaccine-derived materials from vaccinated individuals to other people through biological secretions.

2. Transcriptional shedding: The production, fragmentation, persistence, and internal spread of vaccine-derived molecular products throughout the body.

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Texas AG Ken Paxton Sues OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman for Lying to Users and Harming Texans Including Children

The great Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued OPenAI and Sam Altman on Friday for lying to and misleading Texans on safety concerns.

The suit was filed on Friday October 23, 2026, in Collin County district court. The suit alleges OpenAI misled consumers about ChatGPT’s safety and failed to protect Texans — including children — from harmful AI outputs

According to the Woodlands Online the suit asserts:
** Misrepresented safety and reliability of ChatGPT while omitting significant risks

** Failed to implement adequate guardrails, allowing harmful outputs such as encouragement of self-harm, violence, or addiction

** Rushed products to market for profit, disregarding internal safety warnings

** Collected minors’ data without parental oversight and allegedly contributed to incidents like AI-assisted mass shootings

The lawsuit invokes Texas deceptive trade practices act and the securing children online through parental empowerment act.

Civil penalties could reach $10,000 per violation.

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OpenAI says its AI agents disabled their own safety monitors

OpenAI has revealed that two of its artificial intelligence agents disabled or weakened systems built to catch them misbehaving, with one later denying it had done so.

The cases are the latest in a string of safety scares at the world’s top AI developers involving agents, AI programs that carry out tasks without human involvement.

In a report released Tuesday, the ChatGPT maker said that during two internal coding jobs, its agents switched off or undermined tools for detecting incidents of AI models acting against human wishes.

On October 3, an agent running on OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Sol model, which had been told not to send any messages on the workplace chat app, took that as license to switch off safety alerts meant for the company’s security team while fixing a testing system.

Three days later, a GPT-6 Astra agent stripped out its own monitor while copying code from another project, then told the human programmer it had done no such thing.

The company said it had also seen several cases of agents launching software with monitoring switched off, exposing a gap in its oversight.

OpenAI said it is still trying to determine whether the models were simply overzealous in following instructions or have a particular tendency to evade monitoring.

“We don’t yet have a satisfying explanation for this behavior,” it said.

The disclosure adds to mounting unease over how well leading labs can control increasingly autonomous systems.

In July, a group of OpenAI agents broke out of their test environments and launched a cyberattack on AI firm Hugging Face, causing international alarm. Other companies have since reported similar incidents.

The incidents have fueled calls in the United States and abroad for tighter oversight of AI development.

But US President Donald Trump, under the advice of top AI executives like Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, has urged the industry to police itself.

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Texas AG Paxton sues Gerber, Nestlé over arsenic and lead found in baby foods

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Gerber Products Company (“Gerber”) and Nestlé USA, Inc. (“Nestle”) for allegedly deceiving parents and other consumers regarding “toxic heavy metals” in their baby foods.

Paxton, who is running as President Donald Trump’s top pick for the U.S. Senate in Texas, announced the lawsuit on Wednesday, contending that Gerber advertised its food as safe, well-tested and recommended by pediatricians, despite its own test results finding “dangerous levels of arsenic and lead.”

In a press release, the attorney general stated that the company “used 67 batches of rice flour with more than nine times the arsenic that the federal government allows in bottled water” between 2017 and 2019. Additionally, its carrots had up to 17 times the limit for cadmium and its sweet potatoes had nearly 10 times the limit for lead. It also seldom tested positive for mercury.

These metals — known as neurotoxins — are listed by federal health agencies as the top substances posing “significant potential threat to human health.” Arsenic is first, lead is second, mercury is third and cadmium is seventh, according to the lawsuit.

Despite Gerber’s findings, it issued no recall or warning about the offending products, according to Paxton’s office. According to the 68-page filing against Gerber, its “marketing has not changed,” and it even tells parents that each jar of food passes “over 100 quality checks.”

“Gerber promised parents its food was safe and rigorously tested. Its own tests showed toxic metals in the food. When a company makes promises about what parents feed their babies, I will hold it accountable to ensure those promises are kept,” Paxton asserted.

Texas’s Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s office notified the defendants of the unlawful conduct, which it said violated the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), at least seven days before filing suit, in compliance with Texas law.

The filing noted that beginning in 1867, the baby food industry was built on consumer trust that companies could replace breast milk, which infants relied on until nine to 12 months of age throughout history.

“From its origin, manufactured infant food has been sold on the proposition that a company can be trusted to feed a baby. Nestlé, which began the industry in 1967, acquired Gerber, which has led the American market since 1928,” the lawsuit read. “Gerber and Nestlé USA … violated that trust with Texas consumers.”

Paxton pointed out that though Gerber includes a pathway for parents to find nutrition information about their food, it’s concealed by a QR code and does not provide full transparency.

“Gerber now posts test results behind a QR code on its labels. But the heavy metals in the food did not change, and neither did the safety claims on the front of the package. A code on the back of the jar does not cure a false promise on the front,” Paxton’s office asserted.

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Retired Air Force Colonel Warns Data Centers Could Put Nearby Residents at Risk

Living near an artificial intelligence (AI) data center already comes with several potential drawbacks [1].

Some facilities produce constant, high-pitched noise, while others rely on large diesel generators that release air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Nearby residents may also face higher electricity bills as the demand for power increases [1].

Recently, a retired Air Force colonel has warned that people living near artificial intelligence data centers could be targeted if a rogue artificial intelligence (AI) system attempts to protect itself and its infrastructure, according to a report by the Texas-based Collapse Survival Institute [1].

The report, written by retired Col. Drew Miller, states that data centers may become ground zero if a malicious or “misaligned” AI breaks out, and that residents living near those facilities could be treated as proxies for human control and resistance [1].

Similar warnings have been issued by other researchers, including Anthropic alignment science lead Evan Hubinger, who stated that AI could kill all humans within the next decade [2].

Report Details Potential Data Center and AI Risks

The Collapse Survival Institute report, described in an article by Futurism.com, states that data centers could become ground zero if a malicious or misaligned AI breaks out [1].

Broader concerns about AI control have also been raised by researchers and industry figures who say capabilities are advancing at a pace that could lead to systems surpassing human intelligence within the next few years [3].

The report’s recommendations reflect a broader pattern of concern about the rapid data center buildout, which has drawn opposition from residents across the country over noise, emissions, and electricity costs [4].

Calls for Stronger AI Safeguards

To address these concerns, Miller urges Congress to halt construction of new AI data centers temporarily. He also calls for mandatory emergency shutdown systems for advanced AI models and greater transparency from leading AI laboratories [1].

The report additionally considers the possibility of military strikes against AI facilities if governments believe a system poses an immediate danger. It proposes international cooperation as one possible response to such a crisis [1].

Miller’s recommendations extend to personal preparedness. The report encourages people to live farther from major AI infrastructure and suggests that rural residents could reduce their exposure by maintaining self-sufficient lifestyles [1].

Its accompanying recommendations even discuss using firearms against drones or robots that a rogue AI might deploy.

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HHS Opens Review on Scientific Evidence of Wireless Radiation and EMF Field Exposure as Kennedy Seeks Public Input

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a formal review of scientific evidence on wireless radiation and electromagnetic field exposure, opening a public comment period to gather input, the agency announced. The review will examine radiofrequency and extremely low frequency exposures from sources including cell towers, Wi-Fi networks and 5G infrastructure, according to HHS officials.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the review will inform federal policy recommendations and address gaps in scientific knowledge.

The announcement follows the FDA’s removal of longstanding webpages that had asserted cellphones pose no health risk, a move first reported by the Wall Street Journal [2]. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency is undertaking the study “to identify gaps in knowledge, including on new technologies, to ensure safety and efficacy” [3].

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Why Are PFAS Still Used in Drugs When Alternatives Exist?

When you hear “PFAS,” you probably think of nonstick cookware, waterproof jackets, or contaminated drinking water. You probably don’t think of the prescription sitting in your medicine cabinet. Yet fluorinated compounds classified as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are built into a surprisingly wide range of approved pharmaceuticals, often not because they’re essential to how those medicines treat disease, but because they make the drug easier to formulate.

If fluorine serves the manufacturer’s design goals more than the patient’s therapeutic needs, then every PFAS-containing medicine that passes through your body and into the water supply deserves a harder look, particularly now that researchers have mapped out whether effective alternatives already exist. An analysis published in Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy took on exactly that question, and the answer should change how we think about drug design going forward.1

PFAS-Free Drug Alternatives Already Exist Across Nearly Every Medical Category

For the study, researchers investigated whether PFAS-containing medicines are truly necessary or whether practical alternatives already exist.2 They reviewed approved active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), the part of a medicine that produces its therapeutic effect, and identified 111 PFAS-containing medicines used in humans and 28 used in veterinary medicine.3

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New York Teen Forced Out of School Again After 3 More Doctors Argue Vaccines Would Harm Her

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Doe is back in court seeking emergency federal court intervention so she can stay in school after three more doctors said the teen shouldn’t get the last two vaccines the state requires for school attendance.

The three medical opinions add to the seven the school district has received over the last two years. In each case, doctors argued that Sarah qualifies for a medical exemption. They said forcing Sarah to get the vaccines would put her already precarious health at increased risk.

In an emergency motion filed late last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Sarah and her mother Jane Doe asked for a temporary restraining order allowing the high school senior to attend school pending the district’s review of a new medical exemption request relating to a third hepatitis B (Hep B) shot and the meningococcal vaccine.

Children’s Health Defense is funding Sarah’s case.

The emergency motion followed a Sept. 23 ruling by U.S. District Judge Gary Brown. Brown declined to extend Sarah’s previous medical exemption, for the 2024-2025 school year, to the current school year. The district expelled Sarah from school the next day, Sept. 24.

A few days later, the district readmitted Sarah pending the outcome of a blood test, ordered by her doctor, to determine if she has hepatitis B titers from the first two shots she received, according to her attorneys.

However, Sarah still needed a medical exemption from the meningococcal vaccine — even though the district didn’t require proof of meningococcal vaccination for any student until Sept. 30. Many states don’t require this vaccine for secondary school.

At the time, Sarah had a medical exemption request pending from Dr. Michael Miller, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who also concluded that she shouldn’t be vaccinated.

On Sept. 28, the district denied Miller’s exemption request, according to court documents, citing three unsuccessful attempts by its reviewing physician to reach him by telephone.

According to Sarah and her mother, the court gave no other reason for denying Miller’s request. They said the school never sent Miller a HIPAA form, which he would need in order to share Sarah’s medical information with the district’s reviewing physician.

School officials notified Sarah’s family that as of Oct. 1, they again would not allow her to attend school unless she provided proof of vaccination or a valid medical exemption.

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