Merck & Co. will start cutting checks for former users of its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx next month after announcing Thursday that it will fund a $4.85 billion settlement expected to resolve roughly 50,000 lawsuits.

Starting this month, officials from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) will begin recruiting participants for the East Metro Perfluorochemical (PFC) Biomonitoring Study. The study will directly measure the amount of the PFCs in 200 participants who live in the east metro area, where the drinking water has been found to contain the chemicals.

Continuing concern about possible contamination from chemicals produced at 3M's Cottage Grove facility has state health officials seeking volunteers for a study of perfluorochemical levels in residents near the plant and several landfills.

Federal safety regulators are investigating reports of front passenger seat airbag failures in roughly 330,000 BMW cars and SUVs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Office of Defect Investigation reports that "the passenger frontal airbag may malfunction and render the passenger airbag inoperative."

Frontal-impact airbags are something we take for granted in today's automobiles. But today's front airbags differ radically from the airbags of 1996, the year they became a federally required safety feature. What's more, depending on the age and the brand of vehicle you're driving, you could have one of several types of front airbags -- all of which have different benefits and risks. And as we've all heard, some can be a serious danger to your child should he or she be sitting in the front seat during a collision.

New crash test regulations adopted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are expected to be a boon for airbag manufacturers, and will likely double the volume of airbag sales as the regulations are phased in over the next several years. The new regulations require automakers to meet greater head and chest safety standards, which the agency says will lead to the installation of both side curtain and torso airbags.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says frontal airbags have saved thousands of lives since the federal government started to require this safety feature on all passenger vehicles in 1998. Frontal airbags, however, deploy with tremendous force, NHTSA says. And that explosive power -- generally at a speed of up to 100 mph -- can cause serious or fatal injuries to children and small adults who sit too close to the steering wheel or dashboard.

Vehicles in which air bags have been deployed are sometimes refurbished with false or faulty replacements and resold to unsuspecting customers, the Automotive Occupant Restraints Council said today.

Department of Veterans Affairs watchdogs have concluded that the department failed to alert veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in a timely manner to the dangers posed by a drug it was prescribing, VA officials acknowledged Wednesday under sharp questioning from lawmakers.