These bulletins are now archived and searchable on the CHE-WA website: http://washington.chenw.org/bulletins.html. If you would like to join the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) and the CHE-Washington regional group, please complete the application at http://www.healthandenvironment.org/roles/register?&phase=registerform. Joining CHE means receiving up to four email messages a month from the CHE National listserv. CHE costs nothing to join and the benefit is shared information and opportunities for further engagement, if you choose. Be sure to mark that you want to join the Washington State Regional Group at the bottom of the application.
1) CHE-WA has recently launched an online searchable calendar of meetings, lectures, trainings, teleconferences and other events related to environmental health and justice. The calendar on the CHE-WA website lists events accessible without leaving the Pacific Northwest: http://www.chenw.org/cgi-bin/searchevents.cgi. Events during the upcoming three weeks or so are usually listed in this bulletin; to learn about future events, please visit the online calendar. For environmental health events from around the world, please see the companion calendar on the ICEH website: http://www.iceh.org/cgi-bin/searchevents.cgi. To submit an event to either calendar, please send details to ICEH: iceh@iceh.org
2) Updates on some CHE-WA working groups:
3) The next quarterly CHE-WA meeting will be held Friday September 14th from 10:00 a.m. to noon at Antioch University Seattle. Michael Lerner, PhD, founder and president of Commonweal and co-founder of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, will be our featured guest speaker.
July 12, 2007
9:00 a.m. PDT / noon EDT
This teleconference will focus on the evidence linking federal farm and food policies with chronic disease, especially including childhood obesity and other diet-related disease, but also environmentally related disease to which agricultural practices contribute. The 2007 reauthorization of the omnibus Farm Bill has made these links salient. Other factors, however, also contribute: ongoing budget cuts in federal food safety inspection and other programs; recent Institute of Medicine reports on school lunch programs, and media reports on the use of melamine and arsenic in the food supply. Speakers will highlight the scientific evidence on these links as well as the relevance of the precautionary principle in issues involving the food system and children's diets. This teleconference will last one hour and will be recorded for documentation purposes. Featured presenters are Dr. David Wallinga, director of the Antibiotic Resistance Project at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Dr. Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Child Obesity Research at Yale University. We will also hear a science update from Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network.
Website: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/articles/partnership_calls/1669
July 19 - 20, 2007
Portland, Oregon
at the Oregon Convention Center's Portland Ballroom 251
The conference will provide a dynamic forum for exploring issues related to community-based research partnerships, methods, funding and project planning, and the dissemination of findings. Effective models of CBPR from the northwest and throughout the country will be showcased. The conference will provide a forum for examining the role of CBPR in improving health and eliminating health disparities -- highlighting the voices of community members, researchers, funders and others working with underserved and underrepresented populations; build upon the knowledge and skills of participants interested in the application of CBPR for social change and improved health; explore the multi-faceted process of CBPR -- including partnerships, methods and ethics -- and to learn from partnerships that have addressed these challenges and opportunities; and explore local, state and national funding sources, including opportunities to hear directly from grant seekers and funders.
Website: http://www.nwhfevents.org/
July 26, 2007
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Seattle, Washington
at the Camp Long Environmental Learning Center Main Building, 5200 35th Ave. SW
Amy Goodman will speak on "Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders...". Lois Gibbs will present "25 Years of an Inspirational Journey: From Love Canal to the Nation." The legendary grassroots champion of environmental justice describes how society is moving away from counting the bodies resulting from bad industrial and pollution policies, to prevention, precaution and other winning strategies for a healthy, safe and economically sound future. Tzeporah Berman will speak on "Corporate Campaigns and the New Environmentalism: Places, People and the Fate of our Last Great Forests" and Paul Hawken will address "Biology, Resistance and Restoration: Sustainability as an Infinite Game." The brilliant author/entrepreneur/changemaker encourages us all to embrace a new type of "infinite game," one without losers that supports the future of life and a reimagined world of growth without inequality, wealth without plunder and work without exploitation.
Website: http://www.nweec.org/ea.htm
Contact: sluoma@nweec.org
CHE-Washington welcomes these new members:
For a searchable database of organizations with which CHE-WA members are affiliated, please visit http://washington.chenw.org/members.html.
The Lowell Center seeks an individual with technical, outreach and public policy skills to work with businesses looking to integrate clean production products and processes into their manufacturing systems and assist advocacy groups seeking to advance safer chemicals and products. This will include developing contracts for these services, managing day-to-day activities on contracts, conducting safer chemicals assessments and undertaking other analyses working with other Lowell Center for Sustainable Production programs or outside consultants. The candidate will also provide ongoing technical and research support to advocacy groups at global, national and state levels on international chemical and alternatives issues. The candidate will work closely with experts from the Lowell Center's sister organization and pioneering leader in safer production processes and products, the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute. The candidate will also build and coordinate a network of chemistry and engineering specialists to support projects with businesses and advocates in chemicals and alternatives assessment and implementing safer products and materials.
Minimum qualifications include a masters degree in engineering, toxicology or environmental sciences with a strong understanding of chemical hazards, assessment and management; three to five years experience in this field, with some experience within industry strongly preferred; and the ability to promote the program and solicit new working relationships as well as work in and expand existing networks of relevant specialists. The candidate must be comfortable working individually and in a team setting and possess creative problem-solving skills.
Contact Information: Joel A. Tickner, ScD, Assistant Professor, Department of Community Health and Sustainability
Project Director, Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, University of Massachusetts Lowell
One University Avenue
Lowell, MA 01854
Tel 978-934-2981
Fax 1-978-934-2025
from the Hartford [Connecticut] Courant
July 10, 2007
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-diesel.artjul10,0,3409419.story
Schoolchildren around the state will be able to breathe a little easier thanks to a decision by state leaders to fund a $10 million program to reduce diesel exhaust inside and around school buses. Diesel fumes from the tailpipes and engines of school buses expose children to a toxic mix of airborne particles -- including carcinogens. Even inside a bus, measurements show that pollutants can reach levels 10 times higher than in the air outside.
Article Summary: Federal officials have identified reducing diesel pollution as the single most cost-effective way to protect public health (after cleaning up dirty power plants). Diesel vehicles built in the current model year and in the future are required by federal law to be equipped with filters that will significantly reduce their emissions. Diesel engines can withstand decades of use, however, which makes the retrofitting of vehicles already on the road an essential piece of any clean-air strategy. The $10 million approved by the General Assembly will allow the installation of emissions controls on as many as 3,400 school buses around the state.
by Ishani Ganguli, Reuters, Scientific American
July 9, 2007
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=poor-nutrition-hurts-teen&chanID=sa003&modsrc=reuters
Teenagers who do not get enough of the nutrients commonly found in fruits and fish are more prone to underperforming lungs, asthma, coughing and wheezing, researchers reported on Monday. They found that teens with the lowest intake of fruit and especially vitamin C had weaker lungs compared to the others. Teens who ate less vitamin E, found in vegetable oil and nuts, were more likely to have asthma, Jane Burns and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health found. Based on these findings, Burns said that current recommended dose of vitamin C, 85 mg a day, may not be enough for teens to have healthy lungs.
Article Summary: So Burns and colleagues surveyed and tested 2,112 12th-graders from the United States and Canada. In keeping with previous surveys, they found that many teenagers ate less than the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, they reported in their study. Smokers who also shirked vitamin C increased their odds of coughing, wheezing and developing phlegm, Burns said. A quarter of the adolescents they surveyed were smokers. The researchers did not account for poverty and other factors that often distinguish less-healthy eaters and may explain their findings. Many previous studies have connected unhealthy eating habits with lung problems.
by Tara Parker-Pope, Wall Street Journal
July 9, 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118394176612760522.html
On July 9, 2002, federal government health officials announced that they had halted a major study of menopause hormones, saying the drugs increased a woman's risk of heart attack by 29%. But in the five years since, it's become clear that some aspects of what was initially reported from the $725 million Women's Health Initiative study were either misleading or just wrong. Although the government initially said the findings applied to all women, regardless of age or health status, additional data published in recent months show that the age of a woman and the timing of hormone use dramatically changes the risk and benefits.
Article Summary: While older women in the study did show a heart risk, women aged 50 to 59 who took a combination of estrogen and progestin or estrogen alone had a 30% lower risk of dying than women who didn't take hormones, and those who regularly used estrogen alone showed a 60% lower risk for severe coronary artery calcium, an important risk factor for heart attack. Although the WHI data clearly show that starting hormones at an older age is risky, what's not clear is whether the heart protection women get starting at a younger age will continue with long-term use. While most people now agree that hormones are a reasonable option for women to treat menopause symptoms like hot flashes, the bigger question is whether hormones should be considered in the armamentarium of drugs used for heart protection, along with blood pressure medications and cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which oversaw the WHI, firmly believes that menopause hormones shouldn't be used to prevent heart disease because of potential risk of blood clot, stroke and breast cancer. On the plus side, they may protect younger women's hearts, they definitely protect against hip fractures, they lower the risk for diabetes and may lower the risk for colon cancer.
The abrupt about-face in interpretation of the data has been attributed to use of different methods to analyze the voluminous body of data, according to officials from the National Institutes of Health. But critics, including some of the WHI's own investigators, say that NIH officials initially overgeneralized in large part because they excluded many of the study's own investigators and physicians from the first review. As a result, key questions that could have clarified the data far sooner weren't asked.
by Robert Miller, Danbury [Connecticut] News Times
July 8, 2007
http://www.newstimeslive.com/news/story.php?id=1058679&source=big_barker
Article Summary: Rather than spend money to maintain school playing fields -- the watering, the fertilizing, the turf replacement -- towns are now installing synthetic grass fields at their schools and parks. It may cost a few hundred thousand dollars, but once it's down, it's carefree. It doesn't need watering or fertilizer or pesticides. And it's safer when it comes to preventing accidents, said Phil Ross, director of buildings and grounds for the New Fairfield Board of Education. But what if the sun-baked rubber that makes those fields so safe and bouncy gives off fumes that kids -- especially young kids -- shouldn't be breathing? Environment and Human Health Inc., a North Haven-based advocacy group, is taking up this argument after advocating against pesticides and fertilizers, which synthetic fields don't need. The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, the New Haven-based institution that often serves as a research facility for the state, conducted some tests recently and found that when soaked with water, the rubber in the fields leach out some metals. They then subjected the rubber to low heat -- the kind a field might get on a summer day -- and found that the synthetic materials "out-gas" volatile organic compounds. The higher the temperature, the more out-gassing occurs. If synthetic turf fields do out-gas, the issue comes down to whether those gases are released at an exposure level that might be harmful to children. As with pesticides, he said, it's best to remember that smaller doses can still harm small children.
by Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post
July 8, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html?hpid=topnews
Article Summary: A recently released study concludes that there is a strong association between preschoolers' blood lead levels and crime rates 19 years later, when the preschoolers grow up. Declines in lead levels in several industrialized countries corresponded with later drops in crime rates, the study says. Other evidence has accumulated in recent years that lead is a neurotoxin that causes impulsivity and aggression, but these studies have also drawn little attention. In 2001, sociologist Paul B. Stretesky and criminologist Michael Lynch showed that U.S. counties with high lead levels had four times the murder rate of counties with low lead levels, after controlling for multiple environmental and socioeconomic factors. The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives. What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor. Most of the theories have been long on intuition and short on evidence. Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends. Because the countries phased out lead at different points, they provide a rigorous test: In each instance, the violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier. Nevin's finding may even account for phenomena he did not set out to address. His theory addresses why rates of violent crime among black adolescents from inner-city neighborhoods have declined faster than the overall crime rate -- lead amelioration programs had the biggest impact on the urban poor. Children in inner-city neighborhoods were the ones most likely to be poisoned by lead, because they were more likely to live in substandard housing that had lead paint and because public housing projects were often situated near highways.
by John Dodge, Olympian
July 7, 2007
http://www.theolympian.com/news/story/156624.html
Every day, industry and municipal sewage treatment plants dump 1 billion gallons of wastewater tainted with toxic chemicals and oxygen-robbing nutrients into Puget Sound and its tributaries. And it's all perfectly legal. The steady stream of wastewater from nearly 1,000 sources -- ranging from giant oil refineries to boatyards -- is allowed under a federal permitting system created with the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act. These National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits, as they are called, are described by many as licenses to pollute.
Article Summary: While the wastewater generated by industry and people receives far better treatment today than it did even 20 years ago, it continues as a major contributor to the pollution problems that plague Puget Sound. Gov. Chris Gregoire pointed to improvements at wastewater treatment plants and tighter controls over industrial waste discharges to Puget Sound as the top achievements in the past 25 years. But at the same time, millions more people live in the Puget Sound basin than before the plant improvements were made. And 1.4 million more people are headed this way by 2020. The failure to remove toxic chemicals from the wastewater entering Puget Sound has created a lasting legacy, including warnings to limit the amount of Puget Sound chinook salmon consumed because of contamination from mercury and PCBs and 23 marine areas and 19 freshwater areas in the Puget Sound region that violate water quality standards for toxic chemicals. Long-term pollution trends identified by Ecology's sediment monitoring team reinforce a growing conclusion: With lawn pesticides and fertilizers; exhaust-belching, oil-leaking vehicles; animal wastes and other contaminants carried to the Sound in storm water runoff, Puget Sound pollution is everybody's problem.
[Editor's note: See a related article about the contribution of drugs and personal care products to Puget Sound's pollution: http://www.theolympian.com/news/story/156645.html.]
by Anne Harding, Reuters
July 6, 2007
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2007/07/06/eline/links/20070706elin004.html
Pregnant women exposed to secondhand smoke are more likely than their unexposed counterparts to have children with psychological problems such as conduct disorder, attention deficits, and behavior problems, a study suggests. While such problems are known to be more common among children whose mothers smoked while pregnant, this study is the first to find that passive smoking poses a risk as well.
Article Summary: To separate the effects of cigarette smoke exposure from other factors, including genetics, the researchers looked at three groups of 7- to 15-year-old children, all of whom had serious psychiatric problems. Mothers of children in one group had smoked while pregnant, while mothers of kids in the second group didn't smoke but had been exposed to significant amounts of other people's cigarette smoke at home or on the job. Mothers in the third group didn't smoke and had no exposure to secondhand smoke. Children of smokers, as well as of women exposed to secondhand smoke, were much more likely than the offspring of non-exposed women to have externalizing behaviors, which include "acting out, getting in trouble, being aggressive, breaking rules," Gatzke-Kopp noted. Scientists believe such behaviors are controlled by the brain's dopamine system, which has been shown in animal studies to be damaged by fetal smoke exposure. The findings should not "panic people who may have been exposed eating in a restaurant or doing things on a limited basis where there might be smoke," Dr. Lisa M. Gatzke-Kopp, one of the study authors, told Reuters Health. Nevertheless, she added, the findings underscore the risks of chronic fetal exposure to other people's cigarette smoke, which may affect psychological as well as physical health.
from BBC News
July 5, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6272634.stm
Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for you than conventionally grown crops, US research suggests. A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found almost double the level of flavonoids -- a type of antioxidant. Flavonoids have been shown to reduce high blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke. Writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the team said nitrogen in the soil may be the key.
Article Summary: Flavonoids are produced as a defense mechanism that can be triggered by nutrient deficiency, such as a lack of nitrogen in the soil. The inorganic nitrogen in conventional fertilizer is easily available to plants and so, the researchers suggests, the lower levels of flavonoids are probably caused by overfertilization. Flavonoids have also been linked with reduced rates of some types of cancer and dementia. The Food Standards Agency says there is some evidence that flavonoids can help to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and they are currently carrying out a study to look at the health benefits in more detail. However, a spokesperson said there was no evidence that organic food was healthier. "Our long-standing advice on organic food is there can be some nutrient differences but it doesn't mean it's necessarily better for you."
by Tom Watson, Seattle Times
July 5, 2007
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003765103_ecoconsumer01.html
When your personal-care products could cause cancer, that's a little too personal. Most of us use 15 or more cosmetic and toiletry products each day, such as shampoo, skin cream, deodorant, sunscreen, nail polish and perfume.
Article Summary: Only 11 percent of chemicals in cosmetics have been assessed for health and safety by any U.S. government agency, says the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition, and one third of all personal-care products contain at least one chemical linked to cancer. Links to birth defects and other health problems have been made for some chemicals in these products, including formaldehyde, coal tar, phthalates, lead and mercury. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently completed a major makeover of its online Skin Deep cosmetics-safety database for consumers, listing ingredients in 25,000 products. The recent implementation in the European Union of the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH) legislation has caused some cosmetics companies to market different versions of products, with the U.S. versions containing chemicals not allowed in the EU. But as this becomes more difficult for manufacturers, both logistically and from a public-relations standpoint, more companies will likely remove targeted chemicals from their American products.
by Naomi Lubick, Environmental Science & Technology
July 5, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/july/policy/nl_endocrine.html
Article Summary: In mid June, the US EPA released its much anticipated draft list of compounds to screen for endocrine disruption. The long overdue list, which should have been completed in 1999, includes known and suspected endocrine disrupters. All selected substances are pesticides because of their potential for human exposure and their high production volumes. The compounds were not chosen because they are suspected endocrine disrupters, EPA emphasized. The draft list contains 73 substances: 69 pesticides and 4 inerts used in pesticide formulations. More than half of the compounds have known effects on the endocrine system or have proven antiandrogenic or estrogenic activity. Mark Maier, a toxicologist and health science policy manager with the pesticide industry trade association CropLife America, agrees. "There are really no surprises on the list," he says, referring to pesticides with the potential for exposure, but "the screening tests are redundant" and "unnecessary" because the pesticide manufacturers already test>p/ their products more comprehensively than any other industry does, including pharmaceuticals. "In some cases, endocrine activity may not be directly attributable to the parent compound" but instead to its metabolites, for example, Maier says, "so it could be missed by screening." He adds that no unknowns appear on the list. "The program evolved through a political process, not a scientific process," he says. Testing of mixtures is not yet in the mix, and EPA continues to delay work on the simpler single-compound tests. Advocacy groups are urging EPA to move on other compounds immediately because drinking-water contaminants that aren't on the draft list, such as nonylphenols and octaphenols in particular, have widespread potential for human exposure.
by Lisa Stiffler, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
July 2, 2007
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/322131_seafood03.html
Confused about which kinds of fish are safe to eat, Americans are skipping seafood all together -- and missing out on health benefits, said federal scientists in Seattle. To unmuddy the water, they're calling for a nationwide program to investigate seafood contamination and educate the public.
Article Summary: The national program would analyze seafood for dangerous chemicals and disease and track their changes over time. It would evaluate the food's health benefits -- which can include protecting against heart and Alzheimer's disease, and helping fetal brain development -- and weigh that against risks posed by contamination. The column came as state and federal agencies are raising numerous red flags over fish safety. Last week the U.S. government banned the import of some Chinese farm-raised seafood. Regulators testing the imported fish found antibiotics and potentially carcinogenic antifungal drugs that are banned here for use in farm-raised seafood. Local fish don't get a clean bill of health, either, as seen by recent warnings about Lake Washington fish and Puget Sound salmon due to contaminants including mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Rob Duff, manager of the Washington state Department of Ecology's Environmental Assessment Program, promotes regular testing of fish to watch for new risks -- including chemical flame retardants and pharmaceuticals. And because these and other chemicals can damage the brain during development and disrupt hormone function, Duff urges people to focus on those at greatest risk: women who are pregnant or of child-bearing age and young children.
[Editor's note: See a related article regarding contamination in Great Lakes sports fish at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070706.FISH06/TPStory/National.]
by Cheryl Hogue, Chemical & Engineering News
July 2, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/85/8527gov1.html
Article Summary: With the U.S. facing international pressure to ban exports of mercury, Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency are independently exploring options for permanent storage of the neurotoxic metal. The origin of the problem is basic: Domestic supply outpaces demand. Thousands of tons of mercury are now used at eight U.S. chemical plants that eventually will shut down, and the mercury at these sites will be recovered. Hazardous waste handlers keep mercury from polluting the environment by reclaiming the liquid metal from scrap electrical switches, thermometers, and fluorescent light bulbs. Meanwhile, the gold-mining industry continues to extract mercury from the earth as a by-product. Currently, excess U.S. supplies of mercury from these sources are sold internationally. Legislation before the House and Senate would outlaw these overseas sales. The proposed export ban is aimed at decreasing the supply of quicksilver on the world market because the mercury increasingly finds its way to small-scale gold miners in developing countries. Millions of these miners around the world are suffering from poisoning from mercury, which is relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain. Between 650 and 1,000 metric tons of mercury are released by small-scale gold mining every year, according to estimates by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). A House bill (H.R. 1534), introduced by Rep. Thomas H. Allen (D-Maine), and a virtually identical Senate measure (S. 906), introduced by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), are designed to help protect small-scale gold miners and the environment by putting a dent in the world's supply of mercury. A smaller supply, in turn, is expected to encourage these miners to move to mercury-free technologies, which are already available, for winnowing gold.
The Bush Administration opposes a ban on mercury exports, believing that the first priority should be given to pursuing demand management strategies. Under the aegis of UNEP, the U.S. government is involved in several projects worldwide to help stem the demand for mercury. For instance, EPA is helping to cut demand in Russia's chlor-alkali sector by reducing the amount of mercury that escapes from these plants and by encouraging these factories to convert to technologies that do not use mercury. The agency is also working with hospitals in China to eliminate the use of thermometers and blood pressure measuring devices that use mercury. REDUCTIONS in both supply and demand are necessary worldwide to encourage developing countries to shift away from technologies using mercury, said Linda Greer, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. If demand goes down without decreasing availability of the metal, supplies will go up, and the price will fall, making the use of mercury more attractive, she told the subcommittee. A U.S. export ban, argued Bruce Lawrence, president and owner of Bethlehem Apparatus, would encourage mining of mercury elsewhere in the world, especially in small-scale efforts using crude equipment that loses a large percentage of mercury to the air when ore is processed. U.S. chlor-alkali manufacturers say the government needs to settle issues about mercury storage before it halts international sales of the metal. Unlike nuclear waste, mercury can easily and safely be stored in a warehouse.
by Rebecca Blanton, Danville [Virginia] Register & Bee
July 1, 2007
http://www.registerbee.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=DRB%2FMGArticle%2FDRB_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351852227&path=!news
Article Summary: Pittsylvania County supervisors recently approved a request to allow the City of Danville's wastewater treatment plant to dump some of its sludge in the county landfill, sparking concern once again over whether or not "sludge is safe." The nasty stuff called municipal sludge is part human excrement, part kitchen leftovers, part cat litter, part soap, plus assorted toxic household chemicals, hospital waste and several millions of gallons of water from industries ranging from Goodyear to furniture strippers. sludge is typically treated by drying and adding lime before it is spread on land for fertilizing. Larger contents, such as rags, rocks and other solids, are screened out before the sludge is sent to a landfill. But sludge spread on land may still contain objectionable things such as chemicals, toxic metals, viruses, prescription drugs that were flushed down the drain and a variety of things that just aren't good for people. Once spread on land, animals, birds and the wind can blow and track toxins around. Sludge is not tested for all chemicals, and some may cause health problems such as Hepatitis B, allergic reactions, headaches, nausea and diarrhea, according to Harwood, a retiree living in the Chesapeake Bay area. "Treatment has little if any effect on the concentrations of pharmaceuticals, viruses, industrial chemicals and heavy metals present in the sludge," he added. "These substances can build up in the soil over time and go into the groundwater, shallow water wells and waterways where we get our drinking water."
by Tom Meersman, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
June 30, 2007
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1278413.html
Article Summary: Nearly 50 years after farmers first began spraying atrazine on their fields, the widely used herbicide is doing more than killing weeds. It's also stirring conflicts over how to balance the benefits of an effective farm chemical with emerging science about its potential effects on water, wildlife and human health. Even talking about atrazine can be contentious. Last week, for the second time in three years, a scientist said he was blocked from delivering a public speech about potential dangers of atrazine. Three proposals that would have tightened atrazine regulations and required more review of the herbicide's potential effects by the Minnesota Department of Health failed in the Legislature this year. While Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., a major manufacturer of atrazine, claims the state's monitoring shows no cause for public concern, Paul Wotzka, who worked for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture from 1990 to 2006 and has filed a whistleblower lawsuit regarding his firing, said in an interview last week that atrazine levels in the middle branch of the Whitewater River in southeastern Minnesota have reached 30 parts per billion -- 10 times higher than the state standard -- after spring rains wash the chemical from farm fields. The concentrations are dangerous not only for frogs and other aquatic organisms, Wotzka said, but are also likely to be contaminating groundwater and private wells in the area's fractured geology. High spikes of atrazine aren't considered violations of water quality standards because the standard is based upon average concentrations. Samuel Yamin, toxicologist for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, has raised numerous concerns about whether the state's water-quality standards for atrazine are too lenient. "We are concerned with high spikes in atrazine whereas the Minnesota Department of Agriculture is not," he said. The herbicide is persistent in the environment, Yamin said, and shows up commonly in wells and rivers that have been tested. In the early 1990s Wisconsin banned use of the chemical in about 1.2 million acres of farmland after groundwater in those areas showed atrazine contamination, according to a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. Questions about atrazine in the environment take on added importance this year because Minnesota farmers have planted corn on 8 percent more acreage than last season, largely because of higher demand from ethanol manufacturers.
by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth
June 29, 2007
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00026&segmentID=4
Irradiating fruits, vegetables and meats with as much as 15 million times the energy of a single chest X-ray kills disease-causing germs and extends the shelf life of foods.
Article Summary: For more than 40 years, a small part of the food supply in the U.S. has been treated with powerful radiation. Irradiation can kill off dangerous microbes, extend the shelf life of foods and reduce spoilage. And by federal law, foods that have been zapped must be labeled. But public apprehension about radiation has limited the demand for food that carries the irradiated label. Now the Food and Drug Administration is proposing sweeping changes that would relax labeling requirements. According to Dr. Urvashi Rangan, an environmental health scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union, the proposed changes allow for a few things: they would allow for food that had been irradiated not to be labeled as irradiated, especially where there's no change in something like taste. The other major change would allow companies to substitute other label claims in place of irradiated, such as electronically pasteurized or cold pasteurized. Dr. Rangan added that irradiating food does not make it radioactive. But it is helpful to understand that for example the maximum dose of irradiation on meat is about 4.5 kiloGrays, and that's equivalent to about 7 million chest X-rays. In the case of meat and other irradiated products that have fat in them, irradiation seems to cause a very unique radiolytic byproduct, changing the fat into something called 2-alkylcyclobutanones, or 2-ACBs, which when put into rats seem to cause cancer tumors in their colon.
Dr. Rangan continued: "A few years ago Consumer Reports looked at irradiated meat and tested over 800 samples of ground meat. They found that, while irradiation certainly lowered the levels of bacteria on those products, it didn't always kill all of the bacteria, in which case the products were probably safer, but they weren't necessarily safe. It really comes down to understanding that we're irradiating products in the first place is to control filth. It also may be of interest, and it's a slightly unappetizing thought to know, that meat that is unfit for sale, that is so contaminated that it would be illegal to sell it, can actually be stored, irradiated and then sold to the public after that. And that's a very big concern for us because what it does is it can mask bad hygiene problems."
by Michael Jamison, Missoulian
June 29, 2007
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/06/29/news/mtregional/znews08.txt
For five miles downstream of the Boulder, Colo., sewage treatment plant there are no male fish. In Pacific currents off the Los Angeles coastline, fish are too lazy to hunt, too laid back to bother with breeding. In south-central Asia, vultures are dying of drug overdoses.
Article Summary: The pharmaceuticals -- both over-the-counter and prescription drugs -- make their way into water systems because they are flushed (think leftover or out-of-date prescriptions) or because they pass through us and then are flushed. The endocrine disrupters -- mostly hormones and birth-control drugs -- pass the same way, and are known to disrupt endocrine systems in fish and birds, just as they do in humans. The personal care products -- musks and perfumes and sunblock -- enter the system through shower drains, then continue on through septic systems or municipal treatment plants. "All domestic sewage, regardless of your location on the globe, will contain pharmaceuticals," said Kate Miller. "If you can find a human being, you'll probably find pharmaceuticals in the environment." Miller works for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality as an engineer and a hydrologist. Recently, Miller was asked to go on a hunt for fecal contamination -- sewage, basically -- in Helena Valley groundwater. She was to use certain microbial markers, such as E. coli and coliphage, to sniff out the presence or absence of fecal taint. But the more she read about sewage-borne contaminants, the more she became convinced that more modern markers would make for a more interesting study. And so Miller added 28 man-made chemicals to her search target, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disrupters and personal care products. In her investigation, 32 of 35 drinking water wells tested positive for the chemicals, and 22 of the 28 compounds she chose to look for were found. The chemicals are persistent and tend to stick around for a while. While she acknowledges that she found very, very low doses that probably don't pose much of a health risk, in fact, no one knows. Neither does anyone know how low-dose drugs might affect fish and wildlife, or how a cocktail of drugs, even at low doses, might combine to cause some surprising cumulative effects. What she does know is that the combined action of several compounds can exceed the sum of the individual parts. And the longer an organism is exposed, the more sensitive it can become to the contaminant. And some compounds -- think antibiotics -- definitely overlap between species. And most drugs have multiple side effects, both known and unknown. Her immediate prescription is to stop flushing unused drugs, and to stop overusing drugs in general.
[Editor's note: Read a related article about this problem in Ontario at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070702.wontawater0702/BNStory/National/home.]
by Susan Page, USA TODAY
June 28, 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070628/a_global28.art.htm
Pollution and other environmental problems increasingly are seen as the leading threat the world faces, according to a massive survey of global public opinion released Wednesday. The United States is given much of the blame for those problems and the responsibility to respond to them. The Pew Research Center poll, taken in 46 countries and the Palestinian territories, found that people in countries as diverse as Canada, Peru, Ukraine, China and India identified environmental degradation as the greatest world danger, outranking concerns about nuclear weapons, ethnic hatred and AIDS.
Article Summary: More than 45,000 people were interviewed by phone or face-to-face for the survey, which used nearly 60 languages or dialects. The poll found sharply rising concern about environmental problems as the world's biggest threat. Majorities or pluralities in 34 of 37 countries where the question was asked identified the United States as the chief culprit. In the USA, pollution was ranked lower as a concern than in any other industrialized nation. Thirty-seven percent in the USA identified environmental issues as the top global threat, compared with 70% in China, and 52% in France. Americans were more likely to call nuclear proliferation or religious and ethnic hatred as leading dangers. Global concerns varied by region. The spread of nuclear weapons was an increasing concern in the Middle East while AIDS and other diseases continued to be seen as the dominant threat in Africa.
by Dan Shapley, Daily Green
June 28, 2007
http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/06/27/pesticide-body-burden-don%E2%80%99t-look-and-don%E2%80%99t-find/3046/
When the government tests for chemicals people carry around in their bodies, it doesn't check for the pesticides most commonly found on fruits and vegetables sold in grocery stores. Trace amounts of agricultural chemicals -- so-called "pesticide residue" -- show up on many fruits and vegetables grown with conventional farming techniques. Some of the most contaminated produce includes seasonal favorites like peaches, apples, nectarines and strawberries. Several fungicides, insecticides and herbicides used to grow those crops show up repeatedly on tests. Those pesticides are being consumed in small doses by a wide swath of the U.S. population. Whether they accumulate in the body -- and whether they cause any harm -- are questions that aren't being asked. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has conducted several "body burden" studies and found that dozens of industrial chemicals can be found in the average American's tissues, blood or urine. But the CDC looks for relatively few pesticides, and fewer of the pesticides most commonly found on fruits and vegetables.
Article Summary: The Environmental Working Group published its latest list of fruits and vegetables most and least likely to have pesticide residues in November. Most of the pesticides it shows most commonly appearing as residue are not on the CDC's list of chemicals it looks for in the bodies of Americans. But Carl Winter, director of the Food Safe Program at the University of California-Davis, said the level of exposure to pesticides on food is less than 10,000 times the level needed to make animals show a noticeable response in laboratory tests. Further, he said, most of the more modern pesticides found as residue break down quickly so would be unlikely to show up in body burden studies. Experts -- including Richard Wiles, executive director of the Environmental Working Group -- caution that fear of pesticide residue should not deter people from eating fruits and vegetables. And there are still good reasons for consumers to choose organic produce, even if Winter doesn't see pesticide residue as a health concern. He credited the public concern over pesticide residue with bolstering the organic movement, which in turn has paid dividends for the environment and farm workers. The Environmental Working Group's Wiles agreed, to a point. He sees pesticide residue as enough of an unknown that avoiding exposure is a wise choice. Testing for pesticides in people would help settle that debate, Wiles said. Because while some industrial chemicals found in biomonitoring studies turn out to be toxic, Wiles said, pesticides are designed to be toxic.
by Jeff Donn, Associated Press, Detroit News
June 28, 2007
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070628/LIFESTYLE03/706280359/1040
BOSTON -- Newborns face little risk of birth defects from antidepressants taken by many women early in pregnancy, say the reassuring findings of the two biggest studies of this controversial link. The research focuses on the class of drugs chosen most often for depression and anxiety, including the brands Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. Paxil carries a warning of possible heart defects in newborns, and experts don't expect the new research to change that. However, they find the new studies comforting for women struggling with depression.
Article Summary: The two studies -- one from the federal Centers for Disease Control and the other from Boston University -- use more cases of birth defects than previous research to consider links between the abnormalities and SSRIs. Together, the two studies looked at 19,471 newborns with birth defects and 9,952 without them. Neither study was able to tie SSRIs as a group to either heart defects or most other defects.
[Editor's note: See an article presenting an opposing view at http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-sci-ssri28jun28,1,2363102.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=4&cset=true.]
by Walt Bogdanich, New York Times
June 28, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/us/28tooth.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
After federal health officials discovered last month that tainted Chinese toothpaste had entered the United States, they warned that it would most likely be found in discount stores. In fact, the toothpaste has been distributed much more widely. Roughly 900,000 tubes containing a poison used in some antifreeze products have turned up in hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and even some hospitals serving the general population. The toothpaste was handed out in dozens of state institutions, mostly in Georgia but also in North Carolina, according to state officials. Hospitals in South Carolina and Florida also reported receiving Chinese-made toothpaste, and a major national pharmaceutical distributor said it was recalling tainted Chinese toothpaste. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to discard all Chinese-made toothpaste, regardless of the brand.
Article Summary: Officials of the Food and Drug Administration said toothpaste with even small amounts of the bad ingredient, diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison, had a "low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury" for children and people with kidney or liver disease. Officials said there had been no reports of illnesses caused by the toothpaste. Diethylene glycol is often used in Chinese toothpaste in place of its more expensive chemical cousin glycerin. Chinese regulators have said that toothpaste with small amounts of diethylene glycol is not harmful and that international concern is unjustified. Panama last year inadvertently mixed the poison made in China into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine, killing at least 100 people, prosecutors there said.
[Editor's note: See a related article about the difficulty of avoiding items made in China: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4933334.html.]
by Kellyn S. Betts, Environmental Science & Technology
June 27, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/june/science/kb_birthdefects.html
Article Summary: A new study by Katharina Maria Main of Rigshospitalet, part of the Copenhagen University Hospital, is the first to link elevated PBDE levels with a human birth defect. The study associates cryptorchidism, a condition in which one or both testicles fail to descend into the scrotum, with higher concentrations of PBDEs in breast milk. The incidence of cryptorchidism is increasing rapidly in some countries, which suggests that environmental factors may be involved, according to the paper. Main and her colleagues found that PBDE concentrations in the breast milk of Danish and Finnish mothers of sons born with undescended testicles were significantly higher than those in the breast milk of mothers of sons with normal testicles. Testicular cancer is the most severe symptom of testicular dysgenesis syndrome, which also includes cryptorchidism. In 2006, Swedish researchers linked early-onset testicular cancer with higher levels of maternal PBDEs. The new findings aren't clear-cut, because researchers saw no correlation between PBDE levels in the cord blood of infants in the study and the incidence of cryptorchidism.
by Naomi Lubick, Environmental Science & Technology
June 27, 2007
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/june/science/nl_pesticide.html
The sequence in which organisms are exposed to chemicals could matter just as much as dose and length of exposure, according to new research.
Article Summary: Most risk assessments consider only one chemical at a time when looking at toxicity or other deleterious effects. But mixtures are important, especially in agriculture, where farmers may apply different pesticides throughout the growing season that run off into streams in pulses. Roman Ashauer and colleagues at the Central Science Laboratory and the University of York (U.K.) studied exposure to the pesticides carbaryl and chlorpyrifos. Both act on the nervous system by targeting the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (better known as AChE). The experiment found significantly different mortality rates depending on the order in which freshwater shrimp were exposed to the pesticides. This experiment was "exactly what we want to see" in ecotoxicity and mixtures modeling, says Andreas Kortenkamp, head of the Centre for Toxicology at the University of London's School of Pharmacy. The paper's strength lies not only in pointing out that "order does matter if there are differences in recovery," Kortenkamp says, but also in indicating that modeling approaches can work in forecasting such sensitivities. Jim Lazorchak, an ecotoxicologist at the U.S. EPA in Cincinnati, said the team is "trying to explore modeling to predict realistic exposures, particularly for exposures to nonpoint sources of pesticides. Typical assessment methods don't incorporate timing and order, which are critical in assessing real-world situations, where even more stressors occur.
by Lisa Stiffler, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
June 26, 2007
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/321350_nailsalon27.html
Article Summary: The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday is awarding two local nonprofit groups $100,000 to help nail salons go green -- or at least greener. Salons use polishes, solvents and chemicals to make acrylic nails, some of which contain ingredients that can cause a range of health ailments including cancer, mental confusion and birth defects. The fumes and skin contact can pose a risk to salon workers and customers alike. The issue is a matter of environmental justice, an area of environmental protection that targets low-income and minority populations, who often bear the brunt of pollution and related threats. The three-year project will be a partnership between Cunniff's organization and the Seattle-based Community Coalition for Environmental Justice. His group will focus on the shop owners and workers, while the latter will address the customer side. The nonprofit groups will be researching chemicals that would be safer to use in the salons. They'll be figuring out if the alternative products are effective and readily available through distributors. Focuses of the project include lobby nail-polish makers to provide a safer product and installing equipment to reduce exposure to the chemicals, including simple fixes such as providing salons with stainless steel containers with tight-sealing lids for disposing cotton balls soaked in solvent.
by Sasha Aslanian, Marketplace
June 26, 2007
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/06/26/PM200706267.html
The flame retardant at the center of the environmental debate right now is called deca. It's a good flame retardant.
Article Summary: Deca effectively prevents plastics from burning once the fire source is removed. But the rap on deca is that it's spreading in the environment, and it's toxic. Deca is showing up in pretty much everyone's body. Flame retardant chemicals accumulate in human body fat, such as in breast milk. When industrial chemicals show up in breast milk, it gets people's attention. In 1998, American scientists started checking for flame retardants. They found levels 10 to 100 times higher than in Europe. Worse, the chemicals resemble some well-known environmental bad guys -- PCBs banned in the 1970s. Tom McDonald, a former toxicologist with California's Environmental Protection Agency, has studied the chemicals. He says it became very clear early on, looking at the structure and behavior similar to PCBs, causing harm to the developing brain in terms of behavior and memory in offspring, as well as alterations to the reproductive organs. Mark Rossi of Clean Production Action, a nonprofit that promotes safer chemicals, says the health care sector in particular has been demanding alternatives to deca. States will have to put emotions aside in order to measure the danger they see -- fires -- against a danger they can't see -- how flame retardants affect the developing brain. This year, nine states considered bans on deca and two -- Maine and Washington -- passed restrictions. The EPA lists it as a possible carcinogen, and in animal studies, it's been shown to harm brain development in rats and mice.
from Reuters
June 26, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN2635718820070626
The number of U.S. children with chronic health problems such as obesity has soared in the past four decades, foreshadowing increases in adult disability and public health-care spending, researchers said on Tuesday. More time in front of the television and use of other electronic media, decreased physical activity, increased time spent indoors, increased consumption of fast foods and sugar-sweetened beverages, and changes in parenting are all likely to blame, the researchers said. Writing in an issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association devoted to childhood chronic disease, researchers tracked rising rates of obesity, asthma and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, among U.S. children.
Article Summary: They based their estimates on government data and previously published research in scientific journals. "The expanding epidemics of child and adolescent chronic health conditions will likely lead to major increases in disability among young and then older adults in the next several decades, with major increases in public expenditures for health care and income support," the researchers wrote. In many children, chronic health conditions continue into adulthood and can be expected to raise health care costs while driving down quality of life, the researchers said. They added that while genetic bases have been described for obesity, asthma and ADHD, gene pool changes cannot explain the recent dramatic growth of these conditions. The researchers pointed instead to a host of behavioral and environmental changes.
by Liza Gross, PLoS Biology
June 26, 2007
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050193
Researchers say endocrine-disrupting chemicals can permanently harm the developing organism and may even promote obesity.
Article Summary: For most of his 30-year career, Fred vom Saal, a developmental biologist at the University of Missouri, studied the harmful consequences of tiny changes in natural hormone levels at critical periods during the development of the brain and reproductive tract. He began to include synthetic chemicals in his investigations when he learned that pesticides and other environmental contaminants caused reproductive defects in wildlife much like those seen in lab animals exposed to abnormal estrogen levels. During embryonic development, steroid hormones like estrogen control gene-expression programs to coordinate cell differentiation, growth, organogenesis, and metabolism. Adding extra estrogen -- whether foreign (exogenous) or natural (endogenous) -- can irreversibly alter these developmental processes by mimicking, blocking, or otherwise disrupting pathways that have been fine-tuned over millions of years to respond to minuscule changes in hormone levels. Exogenous estrogens interfere with developmental pathways; giving the mother these estrogens when prostate development is occurring raises fetal estrogen levels ever so slightly, with profound consequences in male offsprings' prostates. Vom Saal reported similar effects from a synthetic chemical still in mass production that his research focus, bisphenol A -- the building block of polycarbonate plastics. Bisphenol A molecules, which are joined by unstable bonds to form polycarbonates and resins, leach from containers exposed to heat or highly acidic or basic compounds.
Vom Saal's work has gone even further to show that bisphenol A activates androgen and estrogen receptor genes in the embryonic cells that give rise to prostate tissue. This gene activity permanently increases the number of androgen receptors so that cells become hyperresponsive to hormones for the rest of the life of the individual, according to vom Saal. In a 2005 commentary, vom Saal and Claude Hughes, a reproductive endocrinologist, identified 115 published studies on low doses of bisphenol A. They also found a troubling trend. Ninety percent of government studies found significant effects of bisphenol A at doses below the EPA's lowest adverse effect level, but not a single industry study found any effect. Many of the industry studies, they pointed out, either used a rat strain with very low sensitivity to estrogen or misinterpreted failure to find effects with positive controls. Vom Saal and Hughes urged the EPA to conduct a new risk assessment on bisphenol A. The EPA estimates safe human exposures to a chemical based on animal studies that find the lowest harmful dose and the highest benign dose, then dividing one of the doses by a safety factor to account for variable human sensitivities and uncertainties in extrapolating to humans. Endocrinologists know that hormones normally stimulate their receptors at low concentrations, while high concentrations can inhibit these pathways by saturating receptors. But the notion that a substance can produce effects at low levels that disappear at higher levels fundamentally challenges traditional toxicological approaches.