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FRIDAY, Sept. 15, 2023 (HealthDay News) – If you have a Chuckle & Roar Ultimate Water Beads Activity Kit, a child’s toy made by Buffalo Games and sold exclusively at Target, throw it out.The toy is being recalled due to serious ingestion, choking and obstruction hazards after one infant died and another was injured and required surgery.Together, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Buffalo Games LLC, of Buffalo, N.Y., announced the recall of about 52,000 of the kits on Thursday.The hazard is that if one of these water beads is ingested, it expands. It can then cause choking and obstruction inside a child’s body.This could lead to severe discomfort, vomiting and dehydration, and even death.A 10-month-old died in July in Wisconsin after swallowing water beads. A...

FRIDAY, Sept. 15, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- That beautiful park you walk through could be hiding dangerous levels of lead. So, too, could the soil under the play equipment where your children slide and swing.New research in the United States finds that urban parks built on sites where waste was incinerated could be hotspots for lead.“We found that city parks and playgrounds built on the site of a former waste incinerator can still have greatly elevated levels of lead in their surface soils many decades after the incinerator was closed,” study co-author Daniel Richter, a professor of soils at Duke University School of the Environment, said in a university news release. Lead exposure has been linked to potential long-term health problems, especially in children. It can affect the...

THURSDAY, Sept. 14, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- A new study is adding to evidence that the party drug "ecstasy" can boost the benefits of talk therapy for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).In a clinical trial, researchers found that three months of talk therapy, assisted by carefully monitored doses of ecstasy (MDMA), worked significantly better than therapy alone.Of 52 patients who completed MDMA-assisted therapy, about 87% were considered responders. That meant they had meaningful reductions in the recurring nightmares, flashbacks, crippling anxiety and other symptoms that plague people with PTSD.In fact, 71% no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis by the study's end. That compared with a rate of 48% among the 42 patients given talk therapy plus a...

THURSDAY, Sept. 14, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Premenopausal women who have surgery to remove the ovaries (oophorectomy) and fallopian tubes may face chronic medical conditions and a decline in physical functioning, new research warns.“The study is important because it emphasizes information that we already know, and that is that …premenopausal bilateral oophorectomy [PBO] is not good for women's health, and it's associated with increased odds of a number of chronic diseases,” said Dr. Stephanie Faubion, director of women's health at the Mayo Clinic, which led the study.Ovaries may be removed for a number of reasons, including cysts and endometriosis, a condition caused by uterine cells growing in other parts of the body. Women who test positive for the a certain BRCA gene mutation...