How to find out the levels of plastic in your bloodstream
Carson died from breast cancer shortly after publication, so she never got to experience the future she predicted. Silent Spring has never been out of print and it would be wonderful to say humanity heeded her warnings. But, spoiler alert: we just got more toxic.
This isn't wholly surprising. Take plastic — the material with which we are most often in contact. Today 16,000 chemicals are available for manufacturers to choose from, ranging from fillers to finishing chemicals that make plastic bendy. About a quarter of these chemicals have been shown to be hazardous to human health and the environment so far. These chemicals can be endocrine disruptors (aka hormonally active agents), and some are associated with cancers and reproductive system disorders.
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While we may have safety data on individual chemicals, toxicologists warn that we don't know the true impact of combinations, which is called the 'cocktail effect'. Accumulating in us, these toxic chemicals form what's known as the 'body burden'. But how heavy is this burden? It is estimated that we eat, drink or breathe between 78,000 and 211,000 microplastic particles every year, and a recent study suggested the average brain could harbour a teaspoon's worth. So we could all be scared — and freeze. But instead it might be more practical to get testing. That's because toxic chemicals and microplastics are so ubiquitous that we can't hide from them. Neither can we predict their precise impact on our health; while plastics are associated with a host of serious diseases and illnesses, more research is needed to make conclusive connections.
What is known, as toxicologists are fond of saying, is that 'the dose makes the poison'. So minimising your exposure to toxic chemicals makes sense — but to do this you're going to need some data. There's an emerging market in home-testing kits. For instance, thanks to developments in detecting and identifying the type and origin of tiny bits of plastic, plastictox.co.uk now offers the first microplastics blood-screening test kit (£144). A dried-blood microscopy test is provided and you return your samples using the prepaid label back to SV Biotech in the Netherlands. If microplastics are detected (unless you've been hatched from an egg, this is likely), your results will be emailed within 2-4 weeks, providing detailed information on concentration levels and sizes.
Next you'll want to get a grip on those associated chemicals that make plastics bendy and turn up in sunscreens, such as phthalates, parabens and oxybenzone (also known hormone disruptors). For $299, millionmarker.com will dispatch a urine collection cup with instructions and packaging for the return shipping. Its lab will test for 13 hormone-disrupting chemical metabolites. Helpfully, it won't leave you stewing with the results: the price includes personalised follow-up recommendations on toxic-free lifestyle changes.
The long-term effects of PFAS, or so-called forever chemicals, which make things stain-resistant and heatproof, are causing a lot of concern. Traditionally tests have only been carried out in clinics and tend to be reserved for those with known exposure, such asfirefighters (firefighting foams contain high concentrations of PFAS). But the first pin-prick home tests are appearing, notably a 16-chemical test from empowerdxlab.com costing $279 that indicates how many PFAS have entered your system over time.
• The truth about microplastics: what the problem is and how to avoid them
Dr Tamsin Lewis, the founder of Wellgevity and the longevity lead for Solice Health, a concierge medical service, would like to see more standardisation around biomarker tests. She makes the point that the jury is still out on 'healthy' limits for concentrations of environmental pollutants such as microplastics: 'Do we measure this in your urine, your hair, your spit, your blood? What is the definable norm range, and for whom? Should we have age standard or sex standard limits? We're not there right now.' However, she acknowledges that we are on the crest of something big. 'Awareness is key and we're moving into a really interesting industry where we're not far off knowing what environmental pollutants we need to arm ourselves against and what supplements we need to take to protect ourselves against unavoidable exposure,' she says.
But what should we do when tests come back showing high concentrations? 'I encourage people to have a lot of dark, leafy greens in their diet' — research suggests chlorophyll may improve the liver's ability to excrete harmful toxins — 'and once every six weeks, some people like to take a glutathione [injection]. This is an antioxidant produced in cells,' Lewis says.
But for a really easy way to offload the toxins, keep it simple: 'Sweating is one of the best ways to encourage toxin burden relief,' she adds cheerfully. 'It's a highly effective means of reducing heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, tin and lead, and aluminium, which we're all exposed to.' In which case — keep your test results in perspective, but do sweat the small stuff.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘The film wouldn't even be made today': the story behind Back to the Future at 40
The actor Lea Thompson has had a distinguished screen career but hesitated to share it with her daughters when they were growing up. 'I did not show them most of my stuff because I end up kissing people all the time and it was traumatic to my children,' she recalls. 'Even when they were little the headline was, 'Mom is kissing someone that's not Dad and it's making me cry!'' Thompson's most celebrated role would be especially hard to explain. As Lorraine Baines in Back to the Future, she falls in lust with her own son, Marty McFly, a teenage time traveller from 1985 who plunges into 1955 at the wheel of a DeLorean car. Back to the Future, released 40 years ago on Thursday, is both entirely of its time and entirely timeless. It was a box office summer smash, set a benchmark for time travel movies and was quoted by everyone from President Ronald Reagan to Avengers: Endgame. It is arguably a perfect film, without a duff note or a scene out of place, a fantastic parable as endlessly watchable as It's a Wonderful Life or Groundhog Day. It also, inevitably, reflects the preoccupations of its day. An early sequence features Libyan terrorists from the era of Muammar Gaddafi, a caricature wisely dropped from a stage musical adaptation. In one scene the young George McFly turns peeping tom as he spies on Lorraine getting undressed. To some, the film's ending equates personal fulfilment with Reagan-fuelled materialism. It caught lightning in a bottle in a way that is unrepeatable. 'If you made Back to the Future in 2025 and they went back 30 years, it would be 1995 and nothing would look that different,' Thompson, 64, says by phone from a shoot in Vancouver, Canada. 'The phones would be different but it wouldn't be like the strange difference between the 80s and the 50s and how different the world was.' Bob Gale, co-writer of the screenplay, agrees everything fell into the right place at the right time, including the central partnership between young Marty (Michael J Fox) and white-haired scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). The 74-year-old says from Los Angeles: 'Oh man, the film wouldn't even be made today. We'd go into the studio and they'd say, what's the deal with this relationship between Marty and Doc? They'd start interpreting paedophilia or something. There would be a lot of things they have problems with.' Gale had met the film's director, Robert Zemeckis, at the USC School of Cinema in 1972 and together they sold several TV scripts to Universal Studios, caught the eye of Steven Spielberg and John Milius and collaborated on three films. The pair had always wanted to make a time travel movie but couldn't find the right hook. Then Gale had an epiphany. 'We put a time travel story on the back burner until I found my dad's high school yearbook and boom, that was when the lightning bolt hit me and I said, ha, this would be cool: kid goes back in time and ends up in high school with his dad!' Gale and Zemeckis pitched the script more than 40 times over four years but studios found it too risky or risque. But Spielberg saw its potential and came in as executive producer. After Zemeckis scored a hit with Romancing the Stone in 1984, Universal gave the green light. The character of Doc Brown was inspired by Gale's childhood neighbour, a photographer who showed him the 'magic' of developing pictures in a darkroom, and the educational TV show Mr Wizard which demonstrated scientific principles. Then Lloyd came in and added an interpretation based on part Albert Einstein, part Leopold Stokowski. Thompson was cast as Lorraine after a successful audition. She felt that her background as a ballet and modern dancer gave her a strong awareness of the movement and physicality required to play both versions of Lorraine: one young and airy, the other middle-aged and beaten down by life. 'I was perfectly poised for that character,' she says. 'I understood both the dark and the light of Lorraine McFly and understood the hilarity of being super sexually attracted to your son. I thought that was frickin' hilarious. I understood the subversive comedy of it.' Thompson has previously worked with Eric Stoltz, who was cast in the lead role of Marty at the behest of Sidney Sheinberg, a Universal executive who had nurtured Spielberg and put Jaws into production. But over weeks of filming, starting in November 1984, it became apparent that Stoltz's serious tone was not working. Gale recalls: 'He wasn't giving us the kind of humour that we thought the character should have. He actually thought the movie turned out to be a tragedy because he ends up in a 1985 where a lot of his life is different. People can argue about that: did the memories of his new past ripple into his brain, did he remember both his lives? That's an interesting conversation to have and it gets more interesting the more beer you drink.' Eventually it fell to Zemeckis to inform Stoltz that his services were no longer required. Gale continues: 'He said he thought that possibly Eric was relieved: it was not like a devastating blow to him. This is just hindsight and speculation but maybe Eric's agents thought that it would be a good career move for him to do a movie like this that had Spielberg involved. Who knows?' Stoltz's abrupt departure came as a shock to the rest of the cast. Thompson says: 'It was horrible. He was my friend and obviously a wonderful actor. Everybody wants to think that making a movie is fun and that we're laughing for the 14 hours we're standing in the middle of a street somewhere. 'But it's also scary because you need to feel like you've made a little family for that brief amount of time. So the minute someone gets fired, you're like, oh wait, this is a big business, this is serious, this is millions of dollars being spent.' Stoltz was replaced by the young Canadian actor Michael J Fox, whom Zemeckis and Gale had wanted in the first place, and several scenes had to be reshot. Fox was simultaneously working on the sitcom Family Ties so was often sleep-deprived. But his boundless charm, frazzled energy and comic timing – including ad libs – were the missing piece of the jigsaw. Thompson comments: 'He is gifted but he also worked extremely hard at his shtick like the great comedians of the 20s, 30s and 40s: the falling over, the double take, the spit take, the physical comedy, the working on a bit for hours and hours like the greats, like Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. Michael understood that. 'Being a dancer, I was fascinated and kind of weirdly repelled because it didn't seem like the acting that we were all trying to emulate: the De Niro kind of super reality-based acting that we were in awe of in the 80s, coming out of the great films of the 70s. I feel like Eric Stoltz, who is a brilliant actor, was trying to do more of that. Michael was the face of this new acting, especially comedy acting, which was in a way a throwback and a different energy.' It was this lightness of touch that enabled Fox and Thompson to carry off moments that might otherwise have seemed weird, disturbing and oedipal. When 1950s Lorraine – who has no idea that Marty is her future son – eventually kisses him inside a car, she reports that it is like 'kissing my brother' and the romantic tension dissolves, much to the audience's relief. Thompson says: 'It was a difficult part and it was a very dangerous thread to put through a needle. I have to fall out of love with him just by kissing him and I remember Bob Zemeckis obsessing about that moment. It was also a hard shot to get because it was a vintage car and they couldn't take it apart. Bob was also worried about the moment when I had to fall back in love with George [Marty's father] after he punches Biff. 'For those moments to be so important is part of the beauty of the movie. These are 'small' people; these are not 'great' people; they're not doing 'great' things. These are people who live in a little tiny house in Hill Valley and to make the moments of falling out of love and falling in love so beautiful with that incredible score is fascinating.' Back to the Future was the biggest hit of the year, grossing more than $200m in the US and entering the cultural mainstream. When Doc asks Marty who is president in 1985, Marty replies Ronald Reagan and Brown says in disbelief: 'Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice-president? Jerry Lewis?' Reagan, a voracious film viewer, was so amused by the joke that he made the projectionist stop and rewind it. He went on to namecheck the film and quote its line, 'Where we're going, we don't need roads,' in his 1986 State of the Union address. Thompson, whose daughters are the actors Madelyn Deutch and Zoey Deutch, was amazed by Back to the Future's success. 'But when I look at the movie, I do understand the happy accident of why it's become the movie it's become to generation after generation. The themes are powerful. The execution was amazing. The casting was great. The idea was brilliant. It was a perfect script. Those things don't come together usually.' And if she had her own time machine, where would she go? 'If I could be a man, I might go back to Shakespeare but as a woman you don't want to go anywhere in time. Time has been hard on women. So for me, whenever I'm asked this question, it's not a lighthearted answer. I can only give you a political answer.' The film ends with Doc whisking Marty and girlfriend Jennifer into the DeLorean and taking off into the sky. But Gale points out that the message 'to be continued' was added only for the home video release, as a way to announce a sequel, rather than being in the original theatrical run. Back to the Future Part II, part of which takes place in 2015, brought back most of the main characters including the villain Biff Tannen, who becomes a successful businessman who opens a 27-storey casino and uses his money to gain political influence. Many viewers have drawn a comparison with Donald Trump. Gale explains: 'Biff in the first movie is not based on Donald Trump; Biff is just an archetype bully. When Biff owns a casino, there was a Trump influence in that, absolutely. Trump had to put his name on all of his hotels and his casinos and that's what Biff does too. 'But when people say, oh, Biff was based on Donald Trump, well, no, that wasn't the inspiration for the character. Everybody has a bully in their life and that's who Biff was. There's nothing that resembles Donald Trump in Biff in Part I.' Back to the Future Part III, in which Marty and Doc and thrown back to the old west, was released in 1990. A year later Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 29. He went public with his diagnosis in 1998 and became a prominent advocate for research and awareness. He also continued acting, with roles in shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and in October will publish a Back to the Future memoir entitled Future Boy. Thompson, whose brothers both have Parkinson's, sees Fox twice a year. 'He's endlessly inspiring. He's very smart and he's done the spiritual work, the psychological work on himself to not be bitter about something awful happening to him but also be honest: this sucks.' Time's arrow moves in one direction but Back to the Future found a way to stage a comeback. One night after seeing the Mel Brooks musical The Producers in New York, Zemeckis's wife Leslie suggested that Back to the Future would make a good musical. Gale duly wrote the book and was a producer of the show, which premiered in Manchester in 2020 and has since played in London, New York and around the world. Gale says: 'It was total euphoria. The first time I saw the dress rehearsal with the DeLorean, before we had an audience, I went out of my mind how great it was, and then to see the audience going completely out of their minds with everything was just such a joyous validation. 'I'm so blessed to have a job where I get to make people happy. That's a great thing to be able to do and get paid for that. I don't ever take any of this for granted. I'm having a great time and the idea that Back to the Future is still with us after all these years, as popular as it ever was, is a blessing. I think about it all the time that if we had not put Michael J Fox in the movie, you and I probably wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.' Why, indeed, are we still talking about Back to the Future four decades later? 'Every person in the world wonders, how did I get here, how did my parents meet? The idea that your parents were once children is staggering when you realise it when you're about seven or eight years old. 'Your parents are these godlike creatures, and they're always saying, well, when I was your age, and you're going, what are they talking about, how could they have ever been my age? Then at some point it all comes together. If you have a younger sibling and you're watching them grow up, you realise, oh, my God, my parents were once screw-ups like me!' And if Gale had a time machine, where would he go? 'I don't think I would go to the future because I'd be too scared,' he says. 'We all see what happens when you know too much about the future. My mom, before she was married, was a professional musician, a violinist, and she had a nightclub act in St Louis called Maxine and Her Men. I'd like to travel back in time to 1947 and see my mother performing in a nightclub. That's what I would do.'
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Scientists warn US will lose a generation of talent because of Trump cuts
A generation of scientific talent is at the brink of being lost to overseas competitors by the Trump administration's dismantling of the National Science Foundation (NSF), with unprecedented political interference at the agency jeopardizing the future of US industries and economic growth, according to a Guardian investigation. The gold standard peer-reviewed process used by the NSF to support cutting-edge, high-impact science is being undermined by the chaotic cuts to staff, programs and grants, and by meddling by the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge), according to multiple current and former NSF employees who spoke with the Guardian. The scientists warn that Trump's assault on diversity in science is already eroding the quality of fundamental research funded at the NSF, the premier federal investor in basic science and engineering, which threatens to derail advances in tackling existential threats to food, water and biodiversity in the US. 'Before Trump, the review process was based on merit and impact. Now, it's like rolling the dice, because a Doge person has the final say,' said one current program officer. 'There has never in the history of NSF been anything like this. It's disgusting what we're being instructed to do.' Another program officer said: 'The exact details of the extra step is opaque but I can say with high confidence that people from Doge or its proxies are scrutinizing applications with absolutely devastating consequences. The move amounts to the US willingly conceding global supremacy to competitors like China in biological, social and physical sciences. It is a mind-boggling own goal.' The NSF, founded in 1950, is the only federal agency that funds fundamental research across all fields of science and engineering, and which over the years has contributed to major breakthroughs in organ transplants, gene technology, AI, smartphones and the internet, extreme weather and other hazard warning systems, American sign language, cybersecurity and even the language app Duolingo. In normal times, much of the NSF budget ($9bn in 2024-25) is allocated to research institutions after projects undergo a rigorous three-step review process – beginning with the program officer, an expert in the field, who ensures the proposed study fits in with the agency's priorities. The program officer convenes an expert panel to evaluate the proposal on two statutory criteria – intellectual merit and broader impacts on the nation and people – which under the NSF's legal mandate includes broadening participation of individuals, institutions, and geographic regions in Stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Applications from across the country which are greenlighted by the program officer are almost always funded, though may be subject to tweaks after revision by the division director before the grants directorate allocates the budget. That was before Trump. Now, Doge personnel can veto any study – without explanation, the Guardian has confirmed. 'We are under pressure to only fund proposals that fit the new narrow priorities even if they did not review as well as others,' said one current program officer. 'The NSF's gold standard review process has 100% been compromised.' Research aimed at addressing the unequal impact of the climate crisis and other environmental hazards is particularly vulnerable, according to several sources. New proposals are also being screened for any direct reference or indirect connection to diversity, equity or inclusion (DEI). 'NSF is being asked to make science racist again – which contradicts evidence that shows that diversity of ideas is good for science and good for innovation. We are missing things when only white males do science,' said one program officer. In addition to Doge interfering in new proposals, at least 1,653 active NSF research grants authorized on their merits have so far been abruptly cancelled – abandoned midway through the project, according to Grant Watch, a non-profit tracker of federal science and health research grants canceled under Trump. Multiple NSF scientists who oversee a diverse range of NSF programs described the grant cancellations as 'unprecedented', 'arbitrary' and a 'colossal waste of taxpayer money'. Almost 60% of the projects abandoned are in states which voted for Joe Biden in 2024, Guardian analysis found. Meanwhile more than one in nine cancelled grants – 12% of the total – were at Harvard University, which Trump has particularly targeted since coming to power in January. In addition, studies deemed to be violating Trump's executive orders on DEI and environmental justice – regardless of their scientific merit, potential impact or urgency – are being abruptly terminated at particularly high rates. It's not uncommon for the NSF and other federal research agencies to shift focus to reflect a new administration's priorities. Amid mounting evidence on the crucial role of diversity in innovation and science, Biden priorities included increased effort to tackle inequalities across the Stem workforce – and a commitment to target underserved communities most affected by the climate crisis and environmental harms. Trump's priorities are AI, quantum information science, nuclear, biotech and translational research. 'It's normal that a new administration will emphasize some areas, de-emphasize others, and we would gradually transition to new priorities. During the George W Bush administration there were shenanigans around climate change, but it was nothing like this kind of meddling in the scientific review process. You never just throw proposals in the garbage can,' said one current NSF staffer. 'Our mandate is to advance science and innovation. And we just can't do that if we're not thinking about diversifying the Stem workforce. We don't have enough people or diversity of thought without broadening participation – which is part of the NSF mission mandate,' said a former program officer from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science who recently accepted a buyout. 'It has been soul-sucking to see projects that went through the review process being changed or terminated over and over again,' they added. The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research from the NSF and other agencies has had a return on investment of 150% to 300% over the past 75 years, meaning US taxpayers have gotten back between $1.50 and $3 for every dollar invested. Trump's big, beautiful bill calls for a 56% cut to the current $9bn NSF budget, as well as a 73% reduction in staff and fellowships – with graduate students among the hardest hit. Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) announced that it will be moving into the NSF headquarters in Virginia over the course of the next two years. The shock announcement – which did not include any plans on relocating more than 1,800 NSF employees – has triggered speculation that the administration eventually plans to defund the agency entirely. For now, program officers are also being instructed to return research proposals to scientists and institutions 'without review' – regardless of merit and despite having been submitted in response to specific NSF solicitations to address gaps in scientific and engineering knowledge around some of the most pressing concerns in the US. This includes projects that have in fact undergone review, and others which can no longer be processed due to staff and program cuts, according to multiple NSF sources. In one case, a 256-page proposal by scientists at four public universities to use ancient DNA records to better forecast biodiversity loss as the planet warms was apparently archived without consideration. In an email seen by the Guardian, the NSF told Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist and principal investigator (lead scientist) based at the University of Maine, that all proposals submitted to the Biology Integration Institute program were returned without review. A second email said their specific proposal had been 'administratively screened' and the area of proposed study was 'inappropriate for NSF funding'. An estimated 40% of animals and 34% of plants across the US are currently at risk. The proposed study would have used an emerging technology to extract ancient DNA from lake sediments, ice cores and cave deposits to better understand which species fared better or worse when the planet naturally warmed thousands of years ago – in order to help model and protect biodiversity in the face of human-made climate change. Gill told the Guardian the team took great care to avoid any reference to DEI or climate change. The grant would have created much-needed research capacity in the US, which is lagging behind Europe in this field. 'Ancient DNA records allow you to reconstruct entire ecosystems at a very high level. This is a very new and emerging science, and grants like this help catalyze the research and reinvest in US infrastructure and workforce in ways that have huge returns on investments for their local economies. It's an absolute slap in the face that the proposal was returned without review,' Gill said. In another example, two academic institutions chosen to receive prestigious $15m grants for translational research – a Trump priority – after a 30-month cross-agency review process led by the engineering directorate and involving hundreds of people will not be honored. The proposals selected for the award through merit review will be returned without review for being 'inappropriate for NSF funding', the Guardian understands. 'This is complex, very high-impact translation science to achieve sustainability across cities and regions and industries … we're being instructed to put the principal investigators off, but nothing's going to get funded because there's DEI in this program,' said an NSF employee with knowledge of the situation. Meanwhile scores of other proposals approved on merit by program officers are disappearing into a 'black box' – languishing for weeks or months without a decision or explanation, which was leading some to 'self-censor', according to NSF staff. 'It's either NSF staff self-censoring to make sure they don't get into trouble, or it is censorship by somebody inserted in the scientific review process from Doge. Either way it's a political step, and therefore problematic,' said Anne Marie Schmoltner, a program officer in the chemistry division who retired in February after 30 years in the agency. In addition to distributing funds to seasoned researchers, the NSF supports students and up-and-coming scientists and engineers through fellowships, research opportunities and grants. This next generation of talent is being hit particularly hard under Trump, who is attempting to impose sweeping restrictions on visas and travel bans on scores of countries. The proposed 2026 budget includes funding for only 21,400 under- and postgraduate students nationwide – a 75% fall on this year. Like many scientists across the country, Gill, the paleoecologist, is not accepting new graduate students this fall due to funding uncertainty. 'That's a whole generation of young scientists who see no pathway into the field for them. I cannot stress enough how deeply upsetting and demoralizing these cuts are to a community of people who only ever wanted to solve problems and be of use.' Yet the NSF student pipeline provides experts for the oil and gas, mining, chemical, big tech and other industries which support Trump, in addition to academic and government-funded agencies. 'Industry is working on optimizing what they're doing right now, whereas NSF is looking 10, 20 years down the road. The US wants a global, robust economy and for that you need innovation, and for innovation you need the fundamental research funded by the NSF,' said Schmoltner. The NSF declined to comment, referring instead to the agency website last updated in April which states: 'The principles of merit, competition, equal opportunity and excellence are the bedrock of the NSF mission. NSF continues to review all projects using Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria.' The sweeping cuts to the NSF come on top of Trump's dismantling of other key scientific research departments within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Agriculture (USDA) and US Geological Service (USGS). The USGS is the research arm of the Department of Interior. Its scientists help solve real-life problems about hazards, natural resources, water, energy, ecosystems, and the impacts of climate and land-use change for tribal governments, the Bureau of Land Management, fish and wildlife services, and the National Parks Service among other interior agencies. Trump's big, beautiful bill cuts the USGS budget by 39%. This includes slashing the entire budget for the agency's ecosystems mission area (EMA), which leads federal research on species & ecosystems and houses the climate adaptation science centers. EMA scientists figure out how to better protect at-risk species such as bees and wolverines, minimize harmful overgrazing on BLM lands, and prevent invasive carp from reaching the Great Lakes – all vitally important to protect food security in the US as the climate changes. The EMA has already lost 25 to 30% of employees through Doge-approved layoffs and buyouts, and is now facing termination. 'We've already lost a lot of institutional memory and new, up-and-coming leaders. [If Trump's budget is approved], all science in support of managing our public lands and natural resources would be cut,' said one USGS program officer. 'Our economy is driven by natural resources including timber, minerals and food systems, and if we don't manage these in a sustainable way, we will be shooting ourselves in the foot.' Like at the NSF, the USGC's gold standard peer-review system for research approval and oversight is now at the mercy of Doge – in this case Tyler Hasson, the former oil executive given sweeping authority by the interior secretary. According to USGS staff, Hasson's office accepts or rejects proposals based on two paragraphs of information program officers are permitted to submit – without any dialogue or feedback. 'The gold standard scientific review is being interfered with. This is now a political process,' said one USGS scientist. A spokesperson for the interior department said: 'The claim that science is being 'politicized' is categorically false. We reject the narrative that responsible budget reform constitutes an 'assault on science'. On the contrary, we are empowering American innovation by cutting red tape, reducing bureaucracy and ensuring that the next generation of scientists and engineers can focus on real-world solutions – not endless paperwork or politically motivated research agendas.' The USGS, office of management and budget and White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Guardian is interested in hearing from US scientists and students impacted by the changes at National Science Foundation and other agencies, including on the impact on innovation in the US. Contact
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Oscar Mayer recalls turkey bacon products due to listeria concerns
Kraft Heinz Foods Company has recalled 367,812 pounds of its Oscar Mayer fully cooked turkey bacon products. The recall was announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service due to potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. Three specific Oscar Mayer Turkey bacon products, with various package sizes and use-by dates, are affected by the recall. There have been no reported illnesses linked to the recalled turkey bacon to date. Consumers are advised to either discard the affected products or return them to the place of purchase for a refund.
