PAGE 2
Headline: Come January, there won't be enough doctors to go around!

Reality check: Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 14 million Americans should become insured next year, compounding an existing physician shortage. (We already need about 16,000 more doctors, according to one estimate, and the Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a shortfall of 45,400 primary care physicians by 2020.) But if you already have insurance and an established relationship with a doctor, you likely won't notice any change. The newly insured may simply face longer wait times (averaging one to two months) for an initial visit, says Elbert Huang, MD, associate professor at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Headline: Your dishwasher is brimming with toxic mold!

Reality check: One 2013 study tested kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms in 177 homes and found that dishwashers were the number one place for black yeast mold. But that doesn't mean your dishes are covered in microscopic specks of the icky stuff—black yeast was found on the rubber seal of the door, where food gets splattered but doesn't wash away with each cycle. True, the mold can produce toxins that trigger lung infections, says Kellogg Schwab, PhD, the director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Water and Health, but unless your immune system is already weakened, the levels found in the average dishwasher won't make you sick.

More Health News

NEXT STORY

Next Story