A New Wellness Guru in the Senate?

Is Senator Charles Schumer angling to become the nation's first Wellness Czar? Over the past six months he's fired off a series of letters to the FDA that suggest he's fighting for citizens' right to a healthy world. And of course, being a senator, there are no doubt some hidden agendas at play.

• In June he sent a letter asking the FDA to look into concerns that sunscreen may be increasing skin cancer rates. 
• That same month, he asked the FDA to intervene in what's been dubbed "Honey Laundering"--alleged adulteration, misbranding and fraudulent mislabeling of honey coming from China. This letter, which resulted in FDA seizures, called for an "official definition of honey." (Why didn't we think of that?) 
• July found him asking the FDA to adopt stricter enforcement of health regulations for airline caterers. (Thanks Chuck, we couldn't have said it better.) 
• And in the same month, he prophetically raised a red flag to the FDA about alcohol-energy drinks, singling out the now infamous Four Loko. (Kids would have been protected if the FDA had only listened to him on this one.) 
• Just last week, he called on the FDA to impose a ban on alcohol-energy drinks, which is now in place in at least 5 states--with New York joining the list today.Schumer displaying his "wellness" chops.

Then yesterday--he even writes letters to the FDA on Sundays!--he fired off another missive. (You have to wonder if they've assigned one person to the job of opening Chuck's letters.) This time it's about reusable grocery bags. In a twist that conjures images of a chopstick-wielding Megamind intent on taking down Americans' I.Q. scores, Schumer drew attention to findings in Florida that reusable grocery bags from China are made with materials containing lead, a neurotoxin, that threatens to spoil groundwater around land-fills (that is, when people finally throw the reusable bags away). This time Schumer wants an investigation. 

In September one of the nation's largest grocery chains, Wegmans, recalled some of its reusable grocery bags due to the presence of "elevated levels of lead." Somewhere there must be a shipping container from China full of unusable reusable grocery bags. It used to be if we wanted to pull China's chain we'd mention Human Rights. Now we just raise the specter of their products causing health problems. So it would seem the world really does revolve around wellness.