An IPVM investigation found that disabling a security camera with a laser pointer is far harder than popularly believed. Only high-powered lasers held perfectly still for about 10 seconds could cause lasting damage, and testers struggled to keep a beam steady on a lens even from five feet away. Legal handheld laser pointers, capped at 5mW output under FDA rules, generally produce only temporary glare rather than permanent harm.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-18
The FDA has received at least two reports of deaths connected to unapproved, black-market versions of retatrutide, an experimental weight-loss drug still being developed by Eli Lilly and not yet approved for sale. CBS News reviewed documents describing one case involving a 41-year-old obese woman who died of cardiac arrest in July after obtaining the drug from an unverified source. The FDA has not confirmed the counterfeit drug was the definitive cause of death in either case, and an April Medpage Today report also described a non-fatal retatrutide overdose causing kidney injury and prolonged dehydration.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-17
The FDA has submitted an 'Interim Access Policy' on peptide drugs to the White House for review, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Associated Press. The policy would reportedly let the agency decline to enforce existing restrictions on certain peptides, reassuring compounding pharmacies that they won't face enforcement action if they begin producing them. This comes as FDA scientists are re-reviewing a dozen peptide drugs previously found in 2023 to lack sufficient safety and efficacy data.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-10-16
Bemotrizinol, or BEMT, a sunscreen filter that has been sold across Europe since 1999, has finally been approved by the FDA and is now appearing in American products. The ingredient absorbs both UVA and UVB rays, causes minimal skin irritation, and was first filed for FDA review back in 2005. Australian brand Ultra Violette launched a BEMT sunscreen online in late August before it hit Sephora stores in October, and Neutrogena followed in September with two BEMT-based face sunscreens.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-10-15
Sunscreens formulated with bemotrizinol (BEMT), a UV filter long used in Europe and elsewhere, are now available on US store shelves. It marks the first new sunscreen active ingredient to reach American retail in more than 25 years.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-14
KFF Health News documented cases of people suffering serious side effects after using gray-market peptides like BPC-157, sold as research chemicals rather than approved drugs. One user, Dylan Meetze, reported months of fatigue, anxiety and muscle spasms after nasal use for weightlifting performance; another, identified as Dominik E, described facial numbness and two months of migraines after combining BPC-157 with TB-4.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-14
A wearable device that vibrates the wrist to reduce tremor symptoms, originally built by MIT students in a 2017 product engineering course, has received FDA clearance for treating essential tremor in adults. The student team formally launched as Encora Therapeutics in 2020 and ran clinical trials, with one study finding 78 percent of participants reported benefits after 90 days of home use. Co-founder Daniel Carballo described the near decade-long process from prototype to clearance as difficult but rewarding.
news.mit.edu
· 2026-10-12
The FDA has proposed expanding its 'threshold of regulation' exemption, which currently applies only to food-contact materials like packaging, to allow chemicals to be added directly to food as flavorings, preservatives, emulsifiers and other additives without safety review, provided they fall below 0.5 parts per billion. The expansion was included in a Federal Register filing tied to the agency's recent move to close the separate 'generally regarded as safe' loophole, which Robert F Kennedy Jr and the FDA publicly touted as a win for food safety.
theguardian.com
· 2026-10-10
A viral video highlights a labeling practice called 'ingredient splitting,' where manufacturers divide sweeteners into multiple separate ingredients so each weighs less than the primary fruit ingredient. The creator points to Smucker's, where strawberries list first even though the product is said to be mostly sugar once various sweeteners are combined. The video says this tactic is legal and permitted by the FDA, and lists ten more popular American foods allegedly using it.
twitter.com
· 2026-10-09
Owlet, the FDA-cleared wearable baby monitor co-founded by Kurt Workman, Zach Bomsta and Jordan Monroe, has now monitored more than 2.5 million infants, tracking over 21 trillion heartbeats and two billion hours of sleep data. The company, which grew from zero to $20 million in revenue in its first year and went public in 2021, has also launched a Baby Safety Task Force to work with legislators, clinicians and other brands on industry safety standards.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-10-09
Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist known as the 'Godfather of AI,' said on the Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast that AI companies should be required to prove their products are safe to a federal regulator before public release, similar to drug approval. He noted that drug makers must spend roughly $1 billion proving safety to the FDA, and argued AI should face at least that level of scrutiny. Currently, AI firms rely on their own internal safety benchmarks rather than external review.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-10-08
A science journalist argues that confusing, contradictory health headlines—like claims that coffee or red wine are alternately good and bad—often stem from treating individual studies as standalone verdicts rather than weighing them against the broader body of evidence. The piece cites the FDA's September 2025 warning linking acetaminophen in pregnancy to autism, a claim later undercut by a comprehensive review finding no clear link, as an example of cherry-picked science causing needless alarm. It also notes that roughly 7 million scholarly articles were published in 2025, making it increasingly hard to separate rigorous findings from sloppy or contradictory ones.
aeon.co
· 2026-10-07
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