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Health researchers have long acknowledged the limitations of self-reporting in studies of health in the home and have consequently sought various methods to broaden research beyond self-reporting in efficient and productive ways. Our two independent research studies, one in Copenhagen, Denmark (2015), and one in Providence County, Rhode Island, in the United States (2015-2016), illustrate how health researchers can adapt an everyday material culture approach used in anthropology to fit the needs of health and wellbeing studies, particularly when it comes to home-based research on health behavior. Our two studies both utilized one particular household object-the refrigerator-to help explore everyday eating habits in various types of households. By analyzing these separate studies together, we found that using the refrigerator in object-elicitation exercises and photographing the refrigerator provided insights that enhanced the interview process, thereby efficiently addressing some of the limitations of interviews and self-reporting. We also found that the refrigerator was a useful comparative tool both within our individual studies and across our research contexts. We conclude that the refrigerator and other everyday use objects are useful methodological tools in health-related studies in the home, and propose that regularly utilizing the refrigerator may help researchers interpret qualitative data about nutrition and eating habits., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Using ethnographic data from Providence County, Rhode Island, this paper explores yoga as a bodywork practice that is part of everyday health and wellbeing routines in middle class households. In this context, participants define their bodywork practices as individual activities that answer health and wellbeing needs, but notably discuss bodywork in terms of their everyday social experience. Along with other bodywork activities, yoga emerges as a shared social practice that links participants to their partners, children, and other intimates, facilitating a sense of togetherness by allowing time and space for autonomy. By giving atmospheric and sensory attention to the ethnographic data, the paper further reveals how domestic intimacy is cultivated via the generation of bodily heat and positive energies and that yoga may tacitly facilitate such atmospheres. In this way, yoga can help households meet an American need for self-development and autonomy while still facilitating a far more enduring human need for intimate connection. Ultimately yoga is characterized as a pragmatic bodywork practice that blends self-development and social intimacy through shared energetic encounters.

The talc industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have asserted that talc has been asbestos-free since 1976 when the industry created a voluntary specification for the asbestos content of cosmetic talc. However, recent evidence reveals that cosmetic talc is not and never was asbestos-free. This narrative review examines the talc industry's role in delaying and ultimately blocking federal regulation of cosmetic talc from the 1970s to today. We review primary source material, including corporate documents released in recent litigation and FDA documents released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. Our results indicate that the talc industry exerted considerable influence over three key areas: regulatory proceedings at the FDA; testing methods and the manipulation of test results (including undisclosed results); and press coverage and the medical literature. The talc companies' actions and FDA indifference have had a lasting effect on consumer health, including the regulation of talc by other government agencies.

Objective: Asbestos is a known cause of ovarian cancer. We report 10 cases of serous ovarian cancer among users of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) asbestos-containing "cosmetic" talc products., Methods: We conducted an asbestos exposure assessment during talc application and analyzed surgical tissues and talc containers for asbestos and talc., Results: Talc was found in all cases and tremolite and/or anthophyllite asbestos was found in 8/10 cases. The asbestos fibers found in the "cosmetic" talc containers matched those found in tissues. We estimated inhaled asbestos dose ranged from 0.38 to 5.18 fiber years., Conclusion: We provide evidence that the inhaled dose of asbestos/fibrous talc from "cosmetic" talc use causes ovarian cancer. The unique combination of the types of asbestiform minerals detected in cancerous tissue and "cosmetic" talc is a fingerprint for exposure to asbestos-containing talc.

Product warnings are theoretically designed to reduce injuries associated with occupational, environmental, or consumer product exposures. Unfortunately, in an effort to protect sales, some companies have produced media and information to falsely reassure their customers about the risks associated with their products. These tactics have been termed "anti-warnings." We reviewed corporate documents uncovered in litigation alongside other historical publications to ascertain the types of anti-warnings used by Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) regarding their asbestos products. Our review finds that UCC went to great lengths to confuse their customers and make their particular asbestos product-which contained short-fiber, chrysotile asbestos-look safe. We discuss three primary communications methods UCC used: industry-produced publications, sales force direct communication with customers, and public speeches. These examples provide further insight into how corporations encourage uncertainty about the risks associated with their products. Understanding anti-warning methods is critical for the implementation of future policies that protect consumer, worker, and environmental health.

In 1995, Dell and Teta published a cohort mortality study of asbestos molding compound workers at a Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) plastics manufacturing plant in Bound Brook, New Jersey. They reported that the factory workers were exposed to "asbestos (mostly chrysotile)," implying that the asbestos used at the Bound Brook plant occasionally contained amphiboles. However, UCC statements and testimony from recent litigation indicate that the Bound Brook plant exclusively used short fiber chrysotile asbestos. These recent documents also point to lower exposures than those reported by Dell and Teta. This chrysotile-only cohort should be included in analyses of chrysotile potency., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Background: The dust diseases silicosis and asbestosis were the first occupational diseases to have widespread impact on workers. Knowledge that asbestos and silica were hazardous to health became public several decades after the industry knew of the health concerns. This delay was largely influenced by the interests of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) and other asbestos mining and product manufacturing companies., Objectives: To understand the ongoing corporate influence on the science and politics of asbestos and silica exposure, including litigation defense strategies related to historical manipulation of science., Methods: We examined previously secret corporate documents, depositions and trial testimony produced in litigation; as well as published literature., Results: Our analysis indicates that companies that used and produced asbestos have continued and intensified their efforts to alter the asbestos-cancer literature and utilize dust-exposure standards to avoid liability and regulation. Organizations of asbestos product manufacturers delayed the reduction of permissible asbestos exposures by covering up the link between asbestos and cancer. Once the decline of the asbestos industry in the US became inevitable, the companies and their lawyers designed the state of the art (SOA) defense to protect themselves in litigation and to maintain sales to developing countries., Conclusions: Asbestos product companies would like the public to believe that there was a legitimate debate surrounding the dangers of asbestos during the twentieth century, particularly regarding the link to cancer, which delayed adequate regulation. The asbestos-cancer link was not a legitimate contestation of science; rather the companies directly manipulated the scientific literature. There is evidence that industry manipulation of scientific literature remains a continuing problem today, resulting in inadequate regulation and compensation and perpetuating otherwise preventable worker and consumer injuries and deaths.

Background: The dust diseases silicosis and asbestosis were the first occupational diseases to have widespread impact on workers. Knowledge that asbestos and silica were hazardous to health became public long after the industry knew of the health concerns. This delay was largely influenced by the interests of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife)., Objectives: To understand how MetLife influenced the science and politics of asbestos and silica exposure in the first half of the twentieth century., Methods: We examined previously secret corporate documents produced in litigation, deposition, and trial testimony, as well as published scholarship., Results: MetLife established itself as an authority in public and industrial health in the early part of the twentieth century, gaining the trust of the public and government. They were able to use this trust and authority to avoid financial loss, including the firing of sick workers, and avoid legal liability by organizing a network of experts to testify on their behalf in silica- and asbestos-related damage suits. They further manipulated the results of scientific findings from major research institutions, delaying important knowledge about the asbestos-cancer relationship. They also influenced law and public policy through writing and implementing worker compensation laws in numerous states and concocting an arbitrary "protective" standard to monitor asbestos exposure. This standard was known by MetLife to not protect against disease., Conclusions: The actions of MetLife and its allies had real human and scientific consequences and an effect on the industry lasting until now.

State of the art is a legal concept that describes what was known as knowable by experts including manufacturer's state of knowledge about the potential hazards of their product(s) at a point in time. In 2004, Paustenbach et al. published a state-of-the-art review that describes the development of knowledge about asbestos hazards to brake mechanics performing asbestos brake installation and maintenance. Paustenbach et al.'s review, however, omits important pieces of corporate knowledge, dismisses several historical scientific conclusions and ignores the way experts have applied the results of scientific research to protect workers and consumers handling asbestos brakes. By taking their state-of-the-art review out of the legal liability context, Paustenbach et al. create a misleading version of events that fails to properly address the question of what asbestos brake manufacturers knew or should have known about the potential hazards of their brakes to mechanics over time. Without proper presentation of this information, judges and juries cannot adequately assess whether these companies had a duty to warn or take other action to prevent injury to those exposed to their asbestos brakes.