Health

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Grad student measures hazardous levels of air pollution at cigar show

Byoliveridley

Sure makes my graduate work in air quality seem a little tame!

The man behind the subterfuge (Researcher 2, male) was Ryan David Kennedy, 34, a scrappy Canadian graduate student with crooked glasses who is studying the impact of tobacco on air quality.He crossed the border at Buffalo on Monday morning and on Tuesday crashed the giant cigar party and trade show sponsored by the publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

At a Cigar Show, an Air-Quality Scientist Under Deep, Smoky Cover – New York Times

Well, what did he find? Particulate matter readings four times higher than “hazardous”. Sometimes I think of strapping on a sampler and going to the local bar just out of curiosity. I can leave the bar if it gets smoky, the bartenders and wait staff can’t. I don’t see why this is not a clear case of hazardous working conditions leading to an immediate indoor smoking ban.  but what do I know, I’m just a scientist!

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Canada loves asbestos (in third world lungs)

Byoliveridley

In a normal world, when something is severely restricted in your country, you would not export it to another country under the pretense that used under certain, very restricted conditions, your product only causes a moderate increase in cancer.

While the federal government projects an image of being a helpful, international Boy Scout on issues ranging from peacekeeping to nuclear proliferation, Canada has a peculiar relationship to asbestos.

globeandmail.com: Asbestos shame

But we don’t live in a normal world, because asbestos is exported from Canada to India where it is added to cement.

Tushar Joshi, a noted New Delhi occupational health expert, is flabbergasted over asbestos sales by a country of Canada’s stature. “As a developed country, you expect more civilized behaviour,” Dr. Joshi says. Canada’s activities are “beyond comprehension,” he adds, calling Ottawa’s promotion of asbestos “a black spot on a sparkling white dress.”

yes, well said. It is very mysterious that asbestos use in India went up in the 1980s just as evidence about its incredibly destructive effects on respiratory systems had curtailed use in most of the first world. Clearly, third world lungs are not as important as Canadian lungs.

Asbestos is one area where Canada lags even behind the US. And Canada’s environmental practices are going to come under increasing scrutiny as climate change unfreezes the great white North and exposes the resources underneath.

Canada, the world is watching.

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Lead and Crime

Byoliveridley

leadcrime.jpg

The next time Giuliani tries to take credit for the decrease in violence during his tenure as NYC’s mayor, send him this chart.

The NY Times shines some light on Jessica Reyes’ excellent work linking decreased lead exposure to a drop in violent crime in the US. The decreased lead exposure, of course, was from the phase-out of leaded gasoline from the American market. BTW, Nascar still uses leaded gasoline in its cars, nice going, guys.

The answer, according to Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an economist at Amherst College, lies in the cleanup of a toxic chemical that affected nearly everyone in the United States for most of the last century. After moving out of an old townhouse in Boston when her first child was born in 2000, Reyes started looking into the effects of lead poisoning. She learned that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less intelligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive (Emphasis Added).

Lead exposure at an early age (2-3 years) is especially significant as this is an age where personality development occurs and any interference in neuron development and apoptosis (death!) can cause permanent changes in personality. This excellent review article summarizes the effects of lead on neuronal development.

Reyes’ research mentions that while decreased lead exposure was very well correlated with violent crime (accounting for 56% of the reduction in crime), no correlation was found to property crimes (such as theft). This of course makes intuitive sense. A property crime is usually premeditated whereas violence is usually impulsive (excluding serial killers, of course). It is more likely that a budding criminal sets out to steal a car than to beat somebody to pulp. It is when the crime goes wrong that the probability of a violent crime increases. An individual with damaged impulse control is then more likely to seek a violent way out of the bad situation.

Our society (like most) views violent crime as a moral issue, a matter of good and evil that is determined by your “character”. So, a simple chemical correlator to violent crime that can explain a majority of the commission of violent acts goes a long way in undermining this whole notion of morality and crime. Of course, there are other sociological factors at play which need to be addressed. But it is heartening to know that beyond all the complicated and recalcitrant social issues that underly crime, there’s a ubiquitously evil pollutant lurking that can be eliminated. I am guessing that this line of reasoning is not going to be very popular among the “tough on crime” types that perpetrate our political airwaves these days.

Reference

Reyes, Jessica Wolpaw (2007) “Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 (Contributions), Article 51.

U.K Hospitals – Get that filthy tie out of here!

Byoliveridley

It may be no surprise to some that doctors frequently transmit diseases amongst patients in hospitals. And bugs in hospitals, raised on a steady diet of antibiotics, tend to be hardy, drug resistant and deadly. Among the many sensible things doctors need to do (ahem, wash your hands doc!), turns out that the clothes you wear make a difference. So, in the U.K, where they worry about these things, doctors are being issued a dress code. Read on for some biting criticism of that most pointless of neck appendages.

U.K. hospitals issue doctors’ dress code – Yahoo! News

“British hospitals are banning neckties, long sleeves and jewelry for doctors — and their traditional white coats — in an effort to stop the spread of deadly hospital-borne infections, according to new rules published Monday.

Hospital dress codes typically urge doctors to look professional, which, for male practitioners, has usually meant wearing a tie. But as concern over hospital-borne infections has intensified, doctors are taking a closer look at their clothing.

‘Ties are rarely laundered but worn daily,’ the Department of Health said in a statement. ‘They perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonized by pathogens.’

Please frame that statement, ties are pointless, ties perform no beneficial functions, down with ties!

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Men – An Endangered Species due to Endocrine Disruptors.

Byoliveridley

Why, it’s a girl, how surprising!!

Man-made chemicals blamed as many more girls than boys are born in Arctic | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap).
The scientists, who say the findings could explain the recent excess of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, are widening their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in Russia, Greenland and Canada to try to discover the size of the imbalance in Inuit communities of the far north.

In the communities of Greenland and eastern Russia monitored so far, the ratio was found to be two girls to one boy. In one village in Greenland only girls have been born.

Why are the upper latitudes especially vulnerable? Two reasons, firstly, atmospheric currents carry pollutants from the Mid-Latitudes (i.e the US, China and Europe) to the higher latitudes of the Arctic. Secondly, the pollutants they measured, PCBs, are persistent and stable (which is why they were used in the first place) and accumulate in the fat tissue of animals. So, predator fish on top of the food chain (the large oily ones) tend to accumulate a lot of these compounds. When you live in the Arctic, you tend to eat a lot of fish. So, these people are getting slammed.

I tell you, Children of Men is not as far fetched as it sounds! Though I think the high levels these people accumulated in their system may not be representative of the rest of the world (vegetarian diets, for instance would be lower in persistent pollutants unless you consumed a ton of milk products), it is still a very scary story.

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Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors

Byoliveridley

Thinking about implanting an RFID microchip under your skin? Don’t do it! Why would the FDA approve something that was linked to cancers in rats?

Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors – washingtonpost.com:

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients’ medical records almost instantly. The FDA found ‘reasonable assurance’ the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005’s top ‘innovative technologies.’

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had ‘induced’ malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

‘The transponders were the cause of the tumors,’ said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

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Shaming People into Pooping Indoors

Byoliveridley

Meanwhile, in the other India, people still poop outdoors…

Using shame to change sanitary habits – Los Angeles Times

Every morning before sunrise, Ravi Shankar Singh, a cheerful man known to his neighbors as “Luv” Singh, sets out to patrol the potholed roads and rice fields of this north Indian village. He carries a whistle and a flashlight. He sings while he walks. The village’s self-appointed sanitation guardian, Singh is on the lookout for anyone squatting in the fields or alleys, using the cover of darkness to do what millions of people have always done across India: defecate outdoors. After years of programs to increase the number of latrines in villages, the government still has not managed to eradicate a practice that is cited in the spread of water-borne illnesses and parasites, such as diarrhea and hookworms. Critics say the obstacle is not so much the shortage of latrines, though that, too, remains a problem for nearly half of India’s rural population. The main challenge is getting people to use the facilities they have. Singh says he’s found a way. When he spots someone squatting, he lets loose with a blast on his whistle. Or shines his light on the offender. Or both.

This is clearly a serious public health issue and one that is linked to many avoidable deaths from disease. I am not sure if blowing whistles at people is an ethical way to do it. In a country where actual toilet facilities are still rare, and the people who grew up in this scarcity have internalized the fact that they have to “externalize” their poop, just providing facilities and shaming them is not enough.

Just as with most things in India, no easy answers, I guess the right combination of education (especially targeting the young), enforcement through fines, and most importantly, saturation coverage of clean and easily available toilets would eventually work.  But it will take time, and of course, public urination is a completely  different beast!

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Diacetyl hits the big time

Byoliveridley

It’s well known that occupational exposure to various pollutants including pesticides, manufacturing raw materials, and in this case, flavoring agents, is a serious problem affecting millions of factory and farm workers all over the world.

Which is why it is interesting when one case of a man contracting an illness possibly linked to at-home diacetyl exposure makes much more splashy news than the well documented cases of many workers dying of such exposure at work. It is unfortunate, but people working at factories and in farms are somehow expected to handle higher levels of exposure and risk. The assumption is that they are protected by agencies such as OSHA, and that they will provided with protective wear, etc. But, when the agencies drop the ball on protecting workers, it takes an “escape” of the incident into the ambient realm for the news agencies to pick it up as a headline.

I guess the good thing now is that this diacetyl issue is blown open, and should result in reform, because alternatives are available.

Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit – New York Times

A fondness for microwave buttered popcorn may have led a 53-year-old Colorado man to develop a serious lung condition that until now has been found only in people working in popcorn plants.

Lung specialists and even a top industry official say the case, the first of its kind, raises serious concerns about the safety of microwave butter-flavored popcorn.

“We’ve all been working on the workplace safety side of this, but the potential for consumer exposure is very concerning,” said John B. Hallagan, general counsel for the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States, a trade association of companies that make butter flavorings for popcorn producers. “Are there other cases out there? There could be.”

A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration said that the agency was considering the case as part of a review of the safety of diacetyl, which adds the buttery taste to many microwave popcorns, including Orville Redenbacher and Act II.

Meanwhile, ConAgra, the biggest manufacturer of popcorn, announces plans to drop diacetyl at some undetermined “later date”. Weird, their website’s currently down!

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The Pump handle and Diacetyl

Byoliveridley

The Pump Handle looks at the response of various government agencies (notionally charged with protecting American people) to increasing information about the danger of diacetyl exposure, certainly to workers in the flavoring industry, and recently, to consumers of microwave popcorn. An excellent post, deserves wider reading!


Popcorn Lung Coming to Your Kitchen? The FDA Doesn’t Want to Know « The Pump Handle

The CDC, FDA, OSHA, EPA – federal agencies charged with protecting public health – each received a letter in July alerting them to the possible serious respiratory hazard to consumers who breathe in fumes from their artificially butter-flavored microwave popcorn. The warning should have resulted in some action by these agencies, but instead, they’ve done virtually nothing.

It appears that the Bush Administration’s efforts to destroy the regulatory system are succeeding; the agencies seem unable to mount a response to information that a well-functioning regulatory system would immediately pursue. The agencies aren’t even trying to connect the dots.

Read on. I moved to the US in 1997 and I’ve noticed a stark difference in the performance of the government agencies named here. I have no doubt that the agencies will eventually bounce back under the right circumstances, but it is disheartening how far agencies such as the EPA, once regarded as models of well run government (at least to a developing country!) have fallen.

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Chemical Warfare

Byoliveridley

This story from a local Chicago TV station does an excellent job of documenting the chemical weapons dropped on Vietnam by the United States in the 1960s, the effects they still have on Vietnam, and the Americans who handled these so called “defoliants”.

cbs2chicago.com – Agent Orange: A View From Vietnam

During the eight years of the Vietnam War that the U.S. Military dusted the Vietnamese landscape with Agent Orange, it was only intended to kill vegetation. It was a combination of two herbicides 2,4D and 2,4,5T mixed together into the most potent plant killer ever made. It was spread over 3 1/2 million acres of forests and crops to kill the trees and vegetation so the United States troops could see the enemy. The Armed Forces were told it was harmless. But in March 1978, Bill Kurtis broke the story on CBS 2 that American veterans of Vietnam who had been exposed to Agent Orange were complaining of illnesses, birth defects among their children, skin rashes, cancer, nervous problems and respiratory problems.

orange3_small.jpgPeople tend to blame dioxins for all the health effects. But 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, constituents of Agent Orange, are no spring chickens. Exposure during spraying, especially of the grossly excessive amounts that rained down upon Vietnam, can cause various health effects as well, not to mention long-term devastation of entire ecosystems.

Side note: New Zealand, in 2004, apologized to New Zealand’s “veterans” for their exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Not a word to the Vietnamese, of course.

Side note 2: A US Federal court, in 2005, dismissed the first claims brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs against Dow Chemicals and Monsanto, here was the government’s  reasoning:

In a brief filed in January, it said opening the courts to cases brought by former enemies would be a dangerous threat to presidential powers to wage war.

Translation: We reserve the right to drop chemical weapons on our “enemies”, and doing anything to abrogate this right is “dangerous”.

Image courtesy of Reuters shows a Vietnamese child, one of many with birth defects associated with Agent Orange exposure.