Urgent recall of 1,700,000 air conditioners over fears they harbour mold
About 1.7million air conditioners have been recalled in the US over concerns that they may harbour mold.
Midea voluntarily recalled its popular U and U+ Window air conditioners on Thursday because 'pooled water in the air conditioners can fail to drain quickly enough, which can lead to mold growth', stated a notice from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
The company has received at least 152 reports of mold in air conditioners, according to the independent federal regulatory agency responsible for protecting people from getting injured by consumer products.
In 17 cases, customers reported experiencing symptoms including allergic reactions, respiratory infections, sore throats, coughing and sneezing, related to exposure to mold.
The air conditioners are made to fit in windows and measure roughly 22 inches wide by 14 inches high.
They were sold from March 2020 to May of this year, and were priced from $280 to $500.
Customers with the affected items should contact Midea immediately for a free repair or a refund based on purchase date or manufacture date. More Trending
'Mold exposure poses risks of respiratory issues or other infections to some consumers,' stated the CPSC.
The air conditioners were sold under numerous brand names.
The units under recall were manufactured in China and Thailand.
It comes just a day after DR Power Equipment recalled about 7,100 of its battery-powered chainsaws sold in the US after receiving 20 reports of fire and burn incidents.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
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NBC News
6 hours ago
- NBC News
Trump's ban stalls lifesaving treatment for Haitian children who need to travel for surgery
Leaders of an aid organization that has sent more than 100 Haitian children with serious cardiac conditions to the U.S. for heart surgery said President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from 19 countries will stall or cancel lifesaving procedures for at least a dozen children or young adults. The ban, which goes into effect Monday, has led to widespread uncertainty for many and drawn condemnation from international leaders. The proclamation issued Tuesday offered exceptions for those who are lawful permanent U.S. residents and those traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup and the Olympics, among other examples. No such mention was made for cases of medical necessity, such as those who are seeking treatment in the U.S. through the International Cardiac Alliance. The International Cardiac Alliance 's total waitlist for Haitians, ranging from infants to young adults, totals at least 316 people who need heart surgery, said Executive Director Owen Robinson. Some are placed in hospitals in the Dominican Republic and occasionally the Cayman Islands. But there are currently five open surgical slots in the U.S. 'Some of them might be able to wait a few months, and others, if they don't go now, they're going to pass away very quickly,' Robinson said. The president's executive order adds that the secretary of state can issue exemptions for visas in cases that 'serve a United States national interest.' It is unclear if clients of the International Cardiac Alliance with medical needs would fit into that description. Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to a request for comment on the matter. 'We do have kids die every week waiting because there's not a lot of international slots for these kids,' Robinson said. Some of the children in the program travel directly from their home country to the U.S., undergo surgery, and then return to Haiti. But for many Haitians, international travel requires multiple levels of logistical wrangling, Robinson said. Some patients and their parents who can secure surgeries in other countries must apply for a visa to the U.S., travel here, and then head to their eventual destination. The United States' travel ban now throws a wrench in that process. Fabienne Rene, 16, was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease in February. Because of her condition, Fabienne, who lives in Port-au-Prince, cannot even attend school since she experiences shortness of breath, said her father, Fignole Rene. The 'bad news' he received about the travel ban causing the postponement or potential cancellation of his daughter's travel through the U.S. to the Dominican Republic is 'really disturbing and breaking my heart,' he said. 'I was not waiting to hear something like that,' Rene, 53, said in Creole through a translator. 'We know for sure that there is nowhere in Haiti we can have this possibility. The only option that we have was just waiting to have an open door from the Cardiac Alliance.' He also said the news will be troubling for his family to hear and that they don't know 'where they will find another open door that can give her a chance.' Robinson said the U.S. Embassy in Haiti recently informed him that it most likely wouldn't be able to issue any visas due to the travel ban. In the past, the embassy has repeatedly issued visas for Haitian children to travel to the U.S. for care. The office of Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., has offered to reach out to the State Department to see if the children can receive exceptions, he added. Dr. John Clark, a pediatric cardiologist at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio who has worked with the ICA, said many children in impoverished countries like Haiti suffer from Fabienne's condition because they are not seen by a doctor and treated for the common illness strep throat. Untreated, recurring strep infections can lead to rheumatic heart disease. St. Damien Pediatric Hospital in Port-au-Prince received visiting pediatric surgical teams from 2015 to 2019, Robinson said. Now, dangerous conditions in Haiti prevent doctors from other countries from entering or providing care. Meanwhile, Haiti does not have enough doctors practicing there, and the loss of opportunities for a medical education in Haiti only perpetuates the problem, Clark said. Clark participated in a surgical mission there in 2019, when visiting U.S. doctors were performing two heart surgeries per day, he said. A drastic rise in gang violence — including an attack on one of the hospital's ambulances and a worker being stoned to death — ended most medical missions to Haiti. Gang violence has only escalated since then, United Nations figures show, particularly after the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, and more than half of Haitians live below the poverty line. The country is also plagued with government corruption, gang violence and food insecurity, as well as vulnerability to natural disasters, including a devastating 2010 earthquake that killed at least 220,000 people. Lack of adequate health care also fuels diseases like cholera, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. 'I hope things can calm down one day enough that we can get back there [to Haiti],' Clark said. 'But right now, there's no way for us to go back down.' Andrice Boncoeur of Port-au-Prince received free open-heart surgery at CEDIMAT Cardiovascular Center in the Dominican Republic to repair a valve when he was 9 years old. That procedure, however, was only meant to be a temporary solution. Now, plans for Andrice, 16, to travel through the U.S. for more permanent surgery have been disrupted. On Thursday, Andrice's father, Andre Boncoeur, said he had not yet told his son about the travel ban preventing him from passing through the U.S. Boncoeur said he knows 'something can change at any time.' Still, children like Andrice do not have much time to wait. In April, Andrice was once again hospitalized for three days at Haiti's Centre Hospitalier Eben-Ezer for heart failure. Boncoeur said his family has spent 'everything that we had' and that their funds are 'almost gone.' He said he hopes the situation will change so that his son, who aspires to become a pastor, 'can have a chance to live his life as a normal kid.' Clark, Robinson and the patient's parents all agree it comes down to the Trump administration's willingness to accommodate the sick children. 'These children are somebody's child and somebody's grandchild and they don't have access to lifesaving care,' Clark said. 'Is there any room for compassion?'
New Statesman
12 hours ago
- New Statesman
How Britain fell into the K-hole
When we hear that Elon Musk was prescribed ketamine, as he admitted in 2024, what are we supposed to conclude? Is it a sign that ketamine has entered the mainstream of 21st-century culture? Is it a part of a Silicon Valley wellness vogue, or illicit drug culture? Does it connect to Musk's nihilistic right-wing politics, or to the rainbow psychedelia of Burning Man? Is it therapy, or is ketamine itself the problem? Ketamine has certainly entered the mainstream of cultural reference, and the mainstream of recreational life, in the UK as well as the US. An estimated 269,000 Brits aged 16-59 years old used the drug in the year ending March 2024. But despite its prevalence, there remains little consensus about what the drug represents, or indeed what it actually does. Opium had Thomas De Quincey, acid had Hunter S Thompson, but no laureate of ketamine has yet emerged to guide the curious reader through the experience or share the insights that changed their life. Casual observers may have some impression of what a ketamine user looks like from the outside – somewhere on a spectrum from stumbling to comatose – but little idea of the state of consciousness they are experiencing. But we might have expected this. Unlike, say, cannabis, cocaine or mushrooms, ketamine has no deep history or hinterland: it is a product of pharmaceutical modernity. In the last 50 years, however, it has been put to many different uses, accruing layers of meaning that bleed across one another: from medicine to drug of abuse, dancefloor high to mystical experience. Its multiple identities mirror the broad spectrum of its effects. Depending on the dose and method of administration, it can be anything from a mild and pleasant giddiness to a white-knuckle ride into another dimension. Nonetheless, there is something about the experience of ketamine that is uniquely resistant to description. It lacks the signature qualities of other psychedelics; there are no recognisable visual motifs or classic movie depictions of ketamine trips. Its hallmarks are a dissociation of mind from body, felt in large doses as an intense acceleration into an inner space where sensation, dream and memory blur. Time and space become unmoored, reality seems to be constantly shifting; after 20 minutes or so, the pace slows and the external world gradually reasserts itself. The experience is pin-sharp and vivid in the moment but elusive in hindsight, like returning to consciousness after an anaesthetic. Which, in fact, is exactly what's happening. In its original incarnation ketamine was a surgical anaesthetic, developed by Parke-Davis (once America's oldest and largest drug maker) and first deployed in the early 1970s, notably in the Vietnam War. It was ideal for military use because, unlike most anaesthetics of the day, it didn't require continuous infusion or special breathing apparatus: a simple intramuscular injection was enough to separate consciousness from body for the duration of an emergency procedure. Its disadvantage, however, was what became known as 'emergence reactions': on regaining consciousness, patients complained of confusion and nightmarish hallucinations. A new generation of anaesthetics, notably Propofol, soon came onstream to replace it, and ketamine found its place in veterinary surgeries, where the patients registered no complaints about its side effects. My first sight of ketamine was in the late 1980s, in the south of France, when a troubled rich-kid movie producer from California produced a medical vial of clear liquid and a needle and announced that this was the latest miracle treatment for substance abuse. He had been given it by John Lilly, the cybernetics and consciousness researcher who had famously taken huge doses of LSD in a sensory deprivation tank. 'Vitamin K', as it was often referred to in these circles, was one of several novel mind-altering compounds that had recently emerged from the clandestine West Coast network of underground chemists and psychotherapists. Others, most of them known by a cryptic alphabet soup of initials, would turn out to include MDMA, or ecstasy. If emergence reactions were unwelcome in Vietnam, to the psychedelic underground they were not a bug but an infinitely fascinating feature. Lilly was among the early adopters to discover that 150mg of injected ketamine, around a quarter of the full anaesthetic dose, catapulted the user almost immediately into an experience comparable in intensity to the peak of a huge LSD trip. Taking multiple doses in his sensory deprivation tank, Lilly left his body 'floating in a tank on the planet Earth' and conversed with extra-terrestrial intelligences as they ushered him through an ever-expanding series of alternate universes. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Gradually a new generation of researchers, including the psychiatrist Karl Jansen, based in Maudsley Hospital in London, began to investigate ketamine's phenomenological properties by interviewing users and recording their testimonies. Subjects spoke of immersion in dazzling white light, rollercoaster rides through the cosmos, lucid dreams, telepathy, meeting their higher selves and becoming God. Jansen wrote a book, Ketamine: Dreams and Realities (2004), and joined a small vanguard of therapists who took advantage of ketamine's status as a licensed medicine to incorporate the experience into psychotherapy, harnessing it to treat alcohol and other addictions. By this time, however, it was clear that ketamine had its own addictive potential. John Lilly was taking it compulsively to connect with his extra-terrestrials, and became convinced that he was a time traveller from the year 3001; his friends and family were obliged to stop him from trying to return to the future for good by hiding his supply and eventually checking him into a psychiatric hospital. Another early advocate was Marcia Moore, a yoga teacher and therapist who explored the drug extensively with her anaesthetist husband, and whose memoir Journeys into the Bright World (1978) remains one of very few sustained attempts to write the ketamine experience. Moore likely froze to death after taking a huge dose in a snow-covered forest in Washington state, and her husband withdrew her book from circulation. By the early Nineties ketamine had entered the UK and was circulating in London, along with the new wave of 'designer drugs', among the psychedelic vanguard of the ecstasy generation. I remember its first devotees as cerebral types, often maths, chess or computing obsessives who became compulsive explorers of its Escher-esque inner worlds. They were astonished to learn that people were taking it in techno clubs: how could you dance while you were having an out-of-body experience? But ketamine, not for the last time, was in the process of taking on another identity, together with a new physical form. The pharmaceutical vials of liquid solution were being replaced by wraps of powder, thanks to the discovery that ketamine was legally available from veterinary suppliers in India. A litre could be brought back on a plane in a drinking water bottle and, when evaporated in a low oven, converted into a mound of fluffy, crystalline white needles, which would cover the cost of the next exotic holiday. The convenience of the powder form made ketamine a staple of dance and rave events. Small sniffs or 'bumps' could be shared on the dancefloor and, especially when combined with ecstasy, produced an agreeably woozy, floaty sensation, like dancing on the moon. It could equally be mixed with cocaine, the cocktail known as a Calvin Klein ('C' plus 'K'), which tempered its dissociative effects with a stimulant and euphoric buzz that sharpened physical, verbal, social or sexual engagement. [See also: Inside the psychedelic elite] All this time ketamine had been quasi-legal, a licensed veterinary product but not a banned drug: a status reflected in its seemingly obligatory media labelling as a 'horse tranquillizer'. By 2005, however, its presence had become too conspicuous to ignore, and it was added to class C of the controlled drug schedules by Tony Blair's government. The effect, as usual, was the opposite of control. Organised crime moved in to supply it along with MDMA and cocaine, spreading it further into the mainstream of the era's booming drug culture. At first, the risk of addiction was considered the main danger of ketamine. The occasional deaths associated with it were typically the consequence of temporary incapacity, for instance drowning in the bath under its influence, a risk now all too familiar after Matthew Perry's highly publicised death in 2023. But in 2007, an entirely unsuspected risk of chronic use was described for the first time: 'ketamine bladder', a syndrome of damage to the lower urinary tract, which in serious cases requires reconstructive surgery or a urostomy bag. In its days as a surgical anaesthetic, patients had never used ketamine regularly enough to make this side effect apparent. From this point on, it became a significant health harm for a growing cohort of heavy users. The mid-2000s was the era that shaped ketamine's enduring image: at once illegal, medically risky, and wildly popular. Its ascendancy as a club drug was indicated by the emergence of dubstep, a genre that was immediately identified as both cause and effect of its spread. Like the drug itself, the sound combined a compulsive rush with a dislocated, mechanised aesthetic, darker and more disembodied than the ecstasy-fuelled styles that preceded it. The term 'wonky' emerged to describe both the music and the chemical dissociation that enhanced it. Literary accounts of ketamine remained elusive, but the drug now had its bespoke soundtrack. In 2014 the UK government responded to its growing popularity by raising its legal status to class B. Since then, levels of use have continued to climb, most sharply among 18- to 24-year-olds, whose usage has tripled in the last nine years. Yet ketamine continued to shapeshift. Just as it consolidated its image as a cheap and disreputable club drug, the psychedelic renaissance arrived with grand claims for its potential as an adjunct to psychotherapy, amplified by celebrity endorsements across the spectrum from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ryan Reynolds, Michael Phelps to Sharon Osbourne. Unlike psilocybin, MDMA and the other psychedelics being promoted for this purpose, it had the advantage of being already licensed as a medicine, which meant that psychotherapists could administer it legally. In the US, particularly California, ketamine clinics mushroomed into a healthcare sector now valued at almost $4bn. Their use of the drug was off-label, meaning that it was only accessible to private patients, typically at hundreds of dollars per dose. Some now offer it by mail order and administer the accompanying therapy via a phone call; others sell it with no therapy component at all. The first UK ketamine clinic, Awakn, opened in Bristol in 2020, charging £6,000 for a course of injections in a clinical setting for the treatment of anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction. But it closed down in 2024 because of struggles to recruit private patients, and following an allegation of sexual misconduct against its most prominent practitioner. There are, however, many who have found ketamine invaluable for treating depression and PTSD without professional help. How it works is unclear – psychiatrists often resort to the old metaphors used for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), 'whacking the TV set' or 'shaking the snow globe' – but it seems to offer a jolt that disrupts fixed and overly rigid patterns of thinking. If its action is essentially physiological, as this suggests, it's no surprise that many choose to self-medicate rather than seek mental healthcare that is unaffordable for most and unavailable on the NHS. There is no waiting list for ketamine. With the advent of the dark web, and now the profusion of social media channels such as Telegram and bot sites that make it simple to call up 24-hour delivery via your phone, the drug is more readily available than ever. Jeet Heer recently reaffirmed in the Nation that it is 'the drug of our time', as cannabis was to the Sixties or cocaine to the Seventies. But its prevalence doesn't reflect a single social trend so much as the diversity of niches it has colonised across 21st-century culture. In different doses and contexts, it can be a social lubricant or an intense visionary experience, a blast of sublime confusion or a psychiatric medication. For all these, its essential promise is that it will – reliably, briefly and relatively safely – make reality feel very different. Web-based distribution has personalised and atomised the contexts in which ketamine is used; it is now, like the internet itself, something of an every-drug. Many of the niches it now occupies existed already, created by other substances. As a relief from depression or anxiety, it serves a similar purpose to sedatives such as Xanax or Valium; as a rocket ship to inner space, it rivals other short-acting psychedelics such as DMT; as an aid to psychotherapy, it compares to MDMA or psilocybin; as a dancefloor party-starter, to cocaine. At the most desperate end of the spectrum, it has established itself firmly in the bargain-basement niche for oblivion-seekers once claimed by glue and solvents. The pandemic played havoc with drug supply chains and mass socialising, but ketamine seems to have benefited from it: wastewater surveys suggest that its use in Britain has increased as much as 85 per cent in the last few years. For those who withdrew into their screens and their bedrooms, it was private and easily manageable even at large doses, and it has now overtaken MDMA in popularity among 18- to 24-year-olds. For those who find social events enervating or overwhelming in the wake of the lockdowns, it offers a 20-minute respite in the corner of a crowded party. For others, it makes it easier to tolerate bleak living conditions, overcrowding and fuel poverty. Underpinning all these selling points is a simple one: ketamine remains cheap, at £20 a gram or less, enough for a mind-bending session for a few friends at less than the price of a round of beers. In a sense it has become the alcohol of drug culture: ubiquitous and multi-purpose, both social and antisocial. Like alcohol, the balance of its health consequences is undoubtedly negative, but it's not hard to understand its appeal as a holiday from reality, an accompaniment to a wide range of pleasures, or a palliative for what ails you. [See also: British psychiatry on the brink] Related
Metro
18 hours ago
- Metro
Urgent recall of 1,700,000 air conditioners over fears they harbour mold
About 1.7million air conditioners have been recalled in the US over concerns that they may harbour mold. Midea voluntarily recalled its popular U and U+ Window air conditioners on Thursday because 'pooled water in the air conditioners can fail to drain quickly enough, which can lead to mold growth', stated a notice from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The company has received at least 152 reports of mold in air conditioners, according to the independent federal regulatory agency responsible for protecting people from getting injured by consumer products. In 17 cases, customers reported experiencing symptoms including allergic reactions, respiratory infections, sore throats, coughing and sneezing, related to exposure to mold. The air conditioners are made to fit in windows and measure roughly 22 inches wide by 14 inches high. They were sold from March 2020 to May of this year, and were priced from $280 to $500. Customers with the affected items should contact Midea immediately for a free repair or a refund based on purchase date or manufacture date. More Trending 'Mold exposure poses risks of respiratory issues or other infections to some consumers,' stated the CPSC. The air conditioners were sold under numerous brand names. The units under recall were manufactured in China and Thailand. It comes just a day after DR Power Equipment recalled about 7,100 of its battery-powered chainsaws sold in the US after receiving 20 reports of fire and burn incidents. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Donald Trump calls Elon Musk 'the man who has lost his mind' and won't talk to him MORE: Coca-Cola recalls Topo Chico mineral water over fears of bacteria MORE: Donald Trump and Elon Musk might make peace – but it will never last
