Please check the CHE-WA web site anytime to stay abreast of the latest postings, news and events: http://washington.chenw.org .
(For more upcoming events, please see our calendar: http://www.chenw.org/events.html.)
November 3, 2005
3:15 p.m. at Sequim Public Library, 7:00 p.m. at the Port Angeles Public Library in the Carver Meeting Room (Lauridsen and Chase Streets
Sequim and Port Angeles, Washington
This investigative documentary film focuses on the known and suspected causes of breast cancer. The investigators are eight women living with breast cancer who have traveled the country interviewing scientists and physicians in breast cancer research and treatment. This provocative film explores the connections between breast cancer and radiation, electromagnetic fields, pesticides, plastics and hormones. Rachel's Daughters, named for Rachel Carson, offers a scientifically rigorous and intensely affecting view of this growing epidemic now affecting both women and men and at increasingly younger ages. Pam Tazioli, the Washington State Coordinator for Breast Cancer Fund, will be available for questions following the film.
November 4th, 12:00 - 5:00 pm
William Gates Hall; Magnuson / Jackson Room
Reception to Follow
Pre-registration (no charge) required
This first university-wide Conservation Colloquium will be a chautauqua showcasing the breadth and depth of explorations of this vital issue currently being conducted throughout the university. This event, featuring presentations from two dozen faculty throughout the UW, will emphasize connections between schools, departments and individuals and foster a sense of identity among our conservation scholars.
For more information, please visit http://depts.washington.edu/cbcomm/colloquium/ or contact conscoll@u.washington.edu . You can register online at: http://depts.washington.edu/cbcomm/colloquium/Reservation.htm.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
6:00-9:00 p.m
Glaser Auditorium, Swedish Medical Center/First Hill
747 Broadway
Seattle, Washington
Hosted by the Breast Cancer Fund & the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition
A panel discussion on the harmful chemicals present in everyday cosmetics and the steps we can take to remove cancer-causing chemicals and reproductive toxins and other chemicals linked to serious health effects from our personal care products.
Panelists
For more information or to RSVP visit http://breastcancerfund.org/seattleforum or contact Pamela@breastcancerfund.org or 206-524-4405.
November 10, 2005
7:00 p.m.
Seattle, Washington
at Antioch University campus, 2326 Sixth Avenue
The Center for Creative Change at Antioch University Seattle presents Hubert Locke, 2005-06 Distinguished Visiting Fellow. "Few terms are as popular or as widely used today as 'social justice,'" says Locke. "But what does it mean and to what does it point? Is social justice simply one ore liberal buzzword or slogan in a society prone to ideological sound bytes or is there a serious and significant reality that underlies the phrase?" In addition to teaching a three-quarter series exploring social justice in the center, he brings his voice and his legacy of activism and scholarly perspective to this interdisciplinary center as it continues to grow. Locke has more than 30 years of experience in higher education as a professor and senior administrator. He is dean emeritus of the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, as well as former vice provost for academic affairs. His most recent book is titled Searching for God in Godforsaken Times and Places: Reflections on the Holocaust, Racism and Death (2003). This event is free and open to the public
Website: http://www.antiochsea.edu/events/Locke.html
Contact: Debra Alderman, 206-268-4906 or dalderman@antiochseattle.edu
English and Spanish versions available at the IFCS website: http://www.who.int/ifcs/champions/Children/Children.htm A French version will be available shortly.
Prepared by the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) Children and Chemical Safety Working Group, October 2005
IFCS Secretariat
c/o World Health Organization
20 Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
tel: +41 22 791 3650 / 3873; fax: +41 22 791
email: ifcs@who.int; website: www.ifcs.ch
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-0/113022390610970.xml&coll=1
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
By Tom Hester, Star-Ledger Staff
Child health advocates will release a report today criticizing New Jersey's efforts to test youngsters for lead poisoning, even as a new $50 million inspection and removal program is unveiled by the state.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Association for Children of New Jersey will detail a five- year study done with the state's Medicaid office that shows the percentage of New Jersey's 550,000 low-income children tested for lead poisoning climbing, but that more coordination is needed among state agencies to combat the problem and educate parents, according to people close to the issue.
The report becomes public as the state Department of Community Affairs launches a $50 million program to inspect 850,000 houses and apartments for the detection and removal of lead paint over the next five years.
"I applaud the goal (the DCA's inspection program), but we need to focus on testing," said Mary Coogan, assistant director of Association for Children. "The state gets hung up on the process. Agencies do not coordinate well. Once children are tested and they identify a child has an elevated lead level, even if it does not reach the poison level, it can still have a negative impact on the child. They still need to be case-managed."
Acting DCA Commissioner Charles Richman said his department is prepared to spend $10 million or more annually to provide loans to landlords of buildings with three or more residences to remove lead paint, to finance temporary shelter for people forced to move and for public education. He said landlords who fail to remove lead paint within a month of failing an inspection could face fines ranging from $500 to $5,000.
"Hopefully, this will be very successful," Richman said. "We have always been reactive; now we are trying to create a system where we intervene. By 2010, we hope to virtually eliminate lead as a hazard for children."
The state Department of Health and Human Services reports that 181,265 children under age 2, or 75 percent of that population, were tested for lead poisoning last year. Of that, 780 children were found to have a dangerous level of lead in their bodies, and another 4,220 tested positive for the problem.
In 1994, there were 4,757 children found with dangerous levels of lead in their bodies.
"It is definitely challenging to get all departments working together, but I do not necessarily see it as a failure," said Suzanne Esterman, a Human Services spokeswoman. "We expect the testing rates to be higher for 2004 and as we go on they will just keep getting better."
The Health Department, according to a spokesman, has given out 30,000 home testing kits to people in 18 cities and towns, including East Orange, Irvington, Newark, Orange, Plainfield, New Brunswick, Montclair and Perth Amboy.
State law mandates every child in the state be tested for lead paint, but child health activists maintain many parents are not aware of the serious health issue.
If not detected early, children with high levels of lead in their bodies can suffer from damage to the brain and nervous system, behavior and learning problems, slowed growth, hearing problems and headaches. While all children can be affected, child activists say those from low-income and minority families face the greatest risk. Lead is also harmful to adults who can suffer, among other things, from pregnancy and reproductive problems, high blood pressure, muscle and joint pain and nerve disorders.
Matthew W. Gillman, M.D.
New England Journal of Medicine, October 27, 2005, Volume 353 Number 17 :1848-1850
At first glance, it may seem implausible that your mother's exposure to stress or toxins while she was pregnant with you, how she fed you when you were an infant, or how fast you grew during childhood can determine your risk for chronic disease as an adult. Mounting evidence, however, indicates that events occurring in the earliest stages of human development - even before birth - may influence the occurrence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, cancers, osteoporosis, and neuropsychiatric disorders.
More than 40 years ago, Widdowson and McCance1 discovered that rat pups that were undernourished during the three weeks of lactation gained weight more slowly over their lifetime than control pups did, even though they had access to ad libitum diets after weaning. In contrast, an identical duration of an energy deficit between 9 and 12 weeks of age had only a short-term effect on weight gain. These experiments showed not only that an environmental insult in early life could have long-term, irreversible consequences, but also that the insult must occur during a critical period in development to have maximal effect.
In the years since, investigators have induced such developmental programming of adverse health outcomes in many animal species with the use of diverse interventions, ranging from the modification of the maternal (or even the grandmaternal) diet to the prenatal administration of glucocorticoid hormones, ligation of the uterine artery, experimentally produced anemia, and alteration of postnatal growth.2 These perturbations can result in the adverse development of organs or organ systems directly or in adaptive responses that may be beneficial in the short term but deleterious in the long run. Because such experiments in animals involve environmental changes, they do not address purely genetic influences, but epigenetic processes may play a key role in the mechanisms underlying these phenomena.2
Although experiments in animals illustrate the principle that adult health outcomes can trace some of their roots to early development, the extent to which similar developmental processes explain variations in human health outcomes remains unclear. The first generation of epidemiologic studies found intriguing associations between birth weight and disease outcomes decades later.3 Researchers have found consistent inverse associations between birth weight and a central distribution of body fat, insulin resistance, the metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and ischemic cardiovascular disease.4 Moreover, the phenotype of lower birth weight coupled with a higher body-mass index in childhood or adulthood appears to be associated with the highest risks of these outcomes. This pattern holds, for example, for insulin resistance in children eight years of age in India,5 blood pressure among Filipino adolescents,6 the metabolic syndrome among white and Mexican-American adults,7 and coronary heart disease among Welsh men and among American women who are nurses.8,9
In this issue of the Journal, Barker and colleagues,10 taking advantage of unusually extensive data from Finland on childhood growth and adult outcomes, present a detailed analysis of this pattern. As compared with members of the cohort in whom heart disease outcomes did not develop, those who were hospitalized for or died from coronary heart disease had relatively small body size during the first two years of life, then grew more rapidly through 11 years of age. This growth pattern also predicted elevations in biomarkers for insulin resistance, which is a risk factor for coronary disease. Adjusting for variables that represent social and economic circumstances in adulthood did not appreciably change the results. Although some differences appeared to be present between the affected boys and girls in patterns of growth during infancy, the limited number of cardiac events among women precludes strong inferences.
Together with published results from India showing that an increasing body-mass index through adolescence confers an excess risk of impaired glucose tolerance in early adulthood,11 the findings of Barker et al. provide evidence that for those with a relatively low birth weight, excess weight gain during childhood and adolescence portends a particularly poor prognosis for the development of coronary heart disease in adulthood.
One issue that remains unresolved is the role of early postnatal growth from birth to two years of age. In contrast to the findings of Barker et al., recent observational studies of full-term infants and randomized trials involving premature infants suggest that accelerated weight gain during infancy, even during the first weeks of life, can result in overweight, insulin resistance, and high leptin levels and blood-pressure levels one to two decades later.12,13 Some of the discrepancies between the studies may have resulted from the limitations of body-mass index to represent true fatness, variable loss to follow-up, and differences in infant growth from one era to another. Furthermore, published intervention trials are restricted to premature infants. Getting the right answers, however, is more than an academic issue. If rapid weight gain in infancy is indeed harmful to adult health, then clinicians and public health professionals are faced with many challenges, including those of overcoming cultural stereotypes suggesting that "a big baby is a healthy baby," considering whether growth charts based largely on formula-fed infants are still appropriate, questioning whether to continue using energy-enriched formulas for premature infants, and devising more effective strategies to promote the duration and exclusivity of breast-feeding.
Beyond reproducing the observation that lower birth weight is associated with heart-disease outcomes, Barker et al. do not address the area of research most readers will associate with Professor Barker's name - the prenatal origins of adult disease. Birth weight is easily measured and is available from historical records, but if the truth be told, it is a dreadful marker of prenatal etiologic pathways.14 Fortunately, a new generation of epidemiologic studies directly examine the effects of prenatal determinants on postnatal health outcomes, irrespective of birth weight. Investigators have recognized that the initially invoked concept of maternal undernutrition is a simplistic model of prenatal influences. They now consider perturbations anywhere along the entire fetal-supply line, which includes not only maternal diet but also uteroplacental blood flow, placental function, and fetal metabolism.
Recent studies of maternal diet during pregnancy indicate, for example, that the higher a mother's intake of fish, if the fish is low in mercury content, the higher the child's score will be on a test of cognition,15 and the higher the mother's calcium intake, the lower the child's blood-pressure level will be.16 Despite the known relationship between smoking and reduced fetal growth, maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of obesity in the offspring.17 Experiments in animals show that reduced activity of the placental enzyme 11-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 programs hypertension and hyperglycemia in the offspring, as a result of excess fetal exposure to glucocorticoids.18 Gestational diabetes (which is associated with higher birth weight) leads to fetal hyperinsulinemia and is associated with obesity and impaired glucose tolerance in the growing child.19 The treatment of gestational diabetes is effective in reducing adverse perinatal outcomes,20 but its long-term effectiveness in reducing obesity-related consequences in the offspring is not known, and evidence with regard to strategies to prevent gestational diabetes is scarce. Indeed, for most of the epidemiologic associations described to date, the extent to which interventions that are intended to modify risk can improve long-term health is not yet clear.
In populations of the world that are undergoing the nutritional and epidemiologic transition to Western styles of diet, sedentary behavior, obesity, and chronic diseases, the ominous pattern that Barker et al. identify - lower birth weight followed by excess weight gain in childhood - is both common and liable to persist for the foreseeable future. It is therefore imperative that, along with vigorous efforts to optimize childhood growth, researchers and policymakers identify, quantify, and evaluate strategies to modify prenatal and perinatal determinants of adverse adult health outcomes. These are the goals of the field of inquiry known as the developmental origins of health and disease, which is now represented by a learned society, the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, and by yearly interdisciplinary congresses that are devoted to catalyzing a rapid expansion of research and policy initiatives. Slowly but surely, investigators in this field are learning ways by which ensuring the well being of women of reproductive age and their newborn children can have substantial health-promoting effects in the next generation.
Supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (HL 068041).
Dr. Gillman reports having received grant support from Sanofi Aventis and Mead Johnson Nutritionals.
Source Information
From the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health - all in Boston.
References
Climate change conferences are convening in Seattle and British Columbia this week.
By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
October 27, 2005
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1027/p03s01-ussc.html
SNOWCAPS: Shrinking glaciers and smaller snowpacks on mountains like Oregon's Mount Hood are hurting the region's economy, according to 52 economists from around the US.
ASHLAND, ORE. - It's unlikely that Seattle's 605-foot Space Needle will be under water any time soon, or that Alaska will become as famous for its fruit trees and berries as Oregon is.
But there are growing indications that the Pacific Northwest, from Oregon to British Columbia to Alaska, is warming up faster than elsewhere on the planet - a trend that's likely to accelerate, according to scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Glaciers and snowpacks in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains are shrinking. So is Arctic sea ice in Alaska, where the permafrost in some areas is turning mushy. Record- setting temperatures in Anchorage this summer reached a balmy 79 degrees F. Water levels in Puget Sound are rising. Annual patters of stream flow are changing in ways that could adversely impact irrigation, domestic water supplies, fish runs, and hydropower production, while increasing the risk of forest fires and tree-killing insects.
In Seattle and Victoria, British Columbia, this week, agency officials, scientists, tribal leaders, and others are participating in major conferences addressing climate change.
"Even the most conservative scenarios show the climate of the Pacific Northwest warming significantly more than was experienced during the 20th century," the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group reported last week. The Puget Sound region warmed at a rate "substantially greater" than that of Earth's average surface air temperature, the scientists found.
Brad Ack, director of the Puget Sound Action Team, a partnership of federal, state, and tribal agencies that commissioned the report, likens what's happening to a "slow-motion natural disaster."
"This is often talked about as something that's going to happen," says Mr. Ack. "But what this shows is that this is already happening. We're well into climate change."
Economists in the region warn that this could come with a big price tag. Global warming "is likely to impose significant economic costs," 52 leading economists from around the country warned in a recent letter to government and business officials in Oregon.
"The adjustments that businesses, households, and communities will have to make are without precedent," the economists wrote. "Many changes seem largely unavoidable, and some are clearly imminent."
That's mainly because of diminishing snowpacks due to warmer winter temperatures. Snowpacks act as water "banks" throughout the region, but smaller snowpacks mean reduced river and stream flows in the summer, which negatively affect agriculture, forestry, tourism, and hydropower - major portions of Oregon's $121 billion economy.
Changes in nature from global warming also can exacerbate environmental problems, especially the natural balance in ecosystems and the wildlife they include.
"Climate change is an additional stress to systems that have already been affected and changed by human activities," says Amy Snover, a research scientist and member of the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group.
Politically, the region - sometimes referred to as "Cascadia" - appears to have heard the message.
Since February, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has been pushing his colleagues in city halls around the country to sign the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.
That pact commits them to meet or exceed the Kyoto Protocol standards, reducing greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. So far, 186 US mayors - from Issaquah, Wash. to Laredo, Texas to Schenectady, N.Y. -- have signed on.
While it still relies heavily on hydropower dams for electricity (which have environmental problems of a different sort - mainly profound damage to ecosystems that support endangered salmon and other wildlife), Washington State has been building wind farms in its wide-open spaces east of the Cascade Mountains.
In Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) is pushing state lawmakers and reluctant auto dealers to adopt California's tougher emission standards for motor vehicles, enacted last year. If Oregon takes that step, Washington State, which shares the market for cars and trucks with its neighbor to the south, will do so also.
Portland, Ore. and surrounding Multnomah County have nudged carbon dioxide emissions to a level below 1990, a first for any major American city.
With help from two new light-rail public transit lines, the planting of some 750,000 carbon-absorbing trees, financial incentives for energy-efficient "green" buildings, and weatherization of more than 10,000 apartments and houses, per capita emissions in Portland dropped 13 percent over the past 10 years. Nationally, there's been an increase of about 1 percent per capita.
Mayor Tom Potter, the city's former police chief, drives a Prius hybrid and promotes Portland as a bike-friendly city with 750 miles of bicycle paths.
Still, officials and scientists around the region agree that more needs to be done.
"We can no longer stop this," says Ack. "We can hope to ameliorate it by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, but we cannot stop this. So either we ignore it and suffer, or we prepare for it and suffer less."
Urged on by the group of economists, the region's elected officials and agencies now address climate change here on the basis of the "precautionary principle" - acknowledging that they do not know everything about the long-range effects of global warming, but are taking steps now before it's too late.
"It's about hedging," says Dr. Snover. "It's about risk management. It's about acknowledging that uncertainty is not going to go away, expecting to meet surprises, being prepared for that change and designing flexibility right in."
"Living on Earth" - Air Date: Week of October 28, 2005
Scholars predict fifty million people will be displaced within five years by rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, and other serious environmental change. The term "environmental refugees" has increasingly been invoked over the last two decades to describe growing waves of people displaced by environmental problems. Host of "Living on Earth," Steve Curwood, talks with Andrew Simms. He's the Policy Director of the New Economics Foundation in the United Kingdom and the author of a recent book entitled, "Environmental Refugees: The Case for Recognition". Link: http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=05-P13-00043&segmentID=2