Earth Activism

Commentary: U.S. House of Representatives Passes Bill To Weaken EPA Clean Air Rules

Two bills are currently working they way through the U.S. Congress in an attempt to stay activation of new air pollution regulations propagated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, namely additions to the NESHAP, Cement MACT, and Boiler MACT standards scheduled to take effect in the next few months. The new regulations will require most facilities to install updated dust collection systems to meet more stringent emissions levels. The pair of bills, the Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act of 2011 and the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011, are part of a larger effort by conservatives to curtail the so-called "aggressive" agenda of the EPA. Several different EPA rule sets are covered by the bill, but the main three are the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPs), Boiler MACTs (Maximum Available Control Technology), and Cement MACTs which covers emissions from the manufacture of cement. The standards are either new, or updates to existing EPA regulations. The EPA NESHAPs cover the six basic air pollutants the EPA regulates, carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter e.g. dusts smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), lead, and ozone. These rules were recently revised to include stricter limits.
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Curbing Cooking Smoke That Kills More People Than Malaria

Environmental hazards sicken or kill millions of people — soot or smog in the air, for example, or pollutants in drinking water. But the most dangerous stuff happens where the food is made — in peoples' kitchens.
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25 Years of Toxic Right to Know

On the 25th anniversary of the law that created the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson was joined by New Jersey Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez to celebrate improved transparency and environmental quality since the legislation passed in 1986. TRI was established through legislation authored by Senator Lautenberg and signed into law as part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). The measure requires owners of facilities to report annually on the amount of toxic chemicals that have been released into the air, water or land. These facilities are also required to report how they dispose of chemicals that are not released into the environment.
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Cost of Thai floods rises, crisis not over for Bangkok

Thailand's budget deficit would be far higher than planned because of the worst flooding in 50 years, the government said on Tuesday, and people in Bangkok were told not to drop their guard even if the immediate danger to the capital had passed. Flooding in the north, northeast and center of the country has killed at least 315 people since July, damaged large areas of farmland and closed huge industrial estates this month. The cabinet approved an increase in the budget deficit to 400 billion baht ($13 billion) for the fiscal year from October 1, up from the initially agreed 350 billion, Industry Minister Wannarat Channukul told reporters. Deputy Prime Minister Kittirat Na Ranong said the government would look at ways to borrow "several hundreds of billions of baht" to fund the recovery effort. He did not go into details. "The cabinet assigned the finance minister and me to issue a law for the big borrowing," he said.
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Why the Black Death Was the Mother of All Plagues

Plague germs teased from medieval cadavers in a London cemetery have shed light on why the bacterium that unleashed the Black Death was so lethal and spawned later waves of epidemics.
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Sense Of Smell Is Physiological, Not Psychological, Study Shows

Different strokes for different folks? Not necessarily, at least not when it comes to smells: A new research from the Weizmann Institute in Israel shows that odors can be rated on a scale of pleasantness. The findings that were published in Nature Neuroscience Journal reveal a correlation between the response of certain nerves to particular scents and the pleasantness of those scents. Based on this correlation, the researchers could tell by measuring the nerve responses whether a subject found a smell pleasant or unpleasant.
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Deadly Thai floods close factories, threaten Bangkok

Nearly 200 factories, including one run by Japanese car maker Honda Motor Co Ltd, closed in the central Thai province of Ayutthaya because of flooding, which could threaten Bangkok this week, officials said on Sunday. About 261 people have died since late July in flood-related incidents, the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said. Some 2.3 million people have been affected in the worst flooding to hit parts of Thailand in 50 years, mainly in the center, north and northeast. The Rojana estate in Ayutthaya province, run by Rojana Industrial Park Pcl, was flooded after a wall of sandbags failed to hold back water overnight. "All 198 factories at Rojana have to be closed because the water is about 5.1 meters high," Industry Minister Wannarat Channukul told Reuters.
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Mosquitos love Florida budget cuts

James David's job of controlling mosquitoes in a part of Florida that Spanish explorers once dubbed "Los Mosquitos" is often futile. But this year, the fight "feels like a sort of hand-to-hand combat," said David, the mosquito control and coastal services director for St. Lucie County in southeast Florida. In the past two years, David's local government has cut 42 percent of mosquito control funding and a quarter of his staff. This year, the state slashed its contribution to local mosquito control by half. Just weeks ago, with a line-item veto, Republican Governor Rick Scott closed a university mosquito lab that David had relied on for pesticide research. All this comes as most local mosquito control officials agree the mosquito situation is the worst they have seen since 1998, when El Nino caused rampant rains and the pesky insects that come with them, said Shelly Redovan, executive director of the Florida Mosquito Control Association. "It's a bad mosquito year," Redovan said. "And when you've also got reduced funding, it's going to be tough."
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Pivotal study in Africa: HIV meds prevent HIV infection

With a result that will fundamentally change approaches to HIV prevention in Africa, an international study has demonstrated that individuals at high risk for HIV infection who took a daily tablet containing an HIV medication – either the antiretroviral medication tenofovir or tenofovir in combination with emtricitabine – experienced significantly fewer HIV infections than those who received a placebo. The Partners PrEP Study (for pre-exposure prophylaxis) was led by the University of Washington’s International Clinical Research Center.

Adult HIV prevalence, based on data from UNAIDS 2008 global report. Image Credit: Grcampbell

The Partners PrEP Study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, involves 4,758 HIV serodiscordant couples (couples in which one partner has HIV and the other does not) from nine research sites in Kenya and Uganda. The study was designed to find out whether tenofovir (TDF) or tenofovir combined with emtricitabine (FTC/TDF) would reduce the risk of acquiring HIV for persons who had an HIV-infected sexual partner.

Of the 4,758 couples enrolled in the study, one-third of the HIV uninfected partners were randomly allocated to receive TDF, one-third FTC/ TDF, and one-third a matching placebo. The study was double-blind, meaning that both study participants and the researchers who interacted with them did not know which treatment the participants were receiving. All study participants received a comprehensive package of HIV prevention services, which included intensive safer sex counseling (both individually and as a couple), HIV testing, free condoms, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and monitoring and care for HIV infection.

Connie Celum, a principal investigator, said:

This study is the largest study to date looking at the effectiveness of PrEP. This study demonstrates that antiretrovirals are a highly potent and fundamental cornerstone for HIV prevention and should become an integral part of global efforts for HIV prevention.

A young woman in Africa awaits HIV test results. Image Credit: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Through May 31, 2011 a total of 78 HIV infections occurred in the study: 18 among those assigned TDF, 13 among those assigned to FTC/TDF, and 47 among those assigned placebo. Thus, those who received TDF had an average of 62% fewer HIV infections, and those who received FTC/TDF had 73% fewer HIV infections than those who received a placebo.

Dr. Jared Baeten, co-chair of the study, said:

This is an extremely exciting finding for the field of HIV prevention. Now, more than ever, the priority for HIV prevention research must be on how to deliver successful prevention strategies, like PrEP, to populations in greatest need. We are incredibly grateful to the investigators, site teams, participants, and communities for their dedication to this research and to HIV prevention. The level of investment and motivation from each of these groups was tremendous.

TDF and FTC/TDF were statistically similar in their levels of protection against HIV, and reduced HIV risk in both women and men. Importantly, PrEP was found to be safe: the rate of serious medical events was similar for those assigned to TDF, FTC/TDF, and placebo.

Ten percent of women annually became pregnant during the study and were discontinued from the study. Pregnancy rates were similar across the three arms, and there was no evidence that TDF or FTC/TDF was associated with pregnancy complications.

Image Credit: jonrawlinson

In the study, adherence to the daily PrEP medication was very high – more than 97% of dispensed doses of the study medications were taken. More than 95% of participants were retained in study follow-up.

An independent group of experts that monitored the study recommended – due to the strong HIV prevention effect seen – that researchers make results of the Partners PrEP Study public and discontinue the placebo arm of the study. The group also recommended that the study continue: those receiving TDF and FTC/TDF will remain on those medications, and those receiving a placebo will start receiving TDF or FTC/TDF.

The medications used in the Partners PrEP Study are marketed by Gilead Sciences, Inc. under the brand names Viread® and Truvada®. They are available generically in many countries at prices as low as approximately 25 cents (U.S.) per tablet. Gilead Sciences donated study medication but did not provide funding or otherwise participate in the design, implementation, or analysis of the Partners PrEP Study.

HIV serodiscordant couples are in urgent need of prevention strategies. In sub-Saharan Africa, a substantial fraction of new HIV infections occurs among HIV serodiscordant couples. The Partners PrEP Study is the first to show that PrEP reduces HIV risk in heterosexual men and women. The results are critically important for Africa, where the majority of new HIV infections occur.

Bottom line: An international study led by the University of Washington’s International Clinical Research Center has demonstrated that individuals at high risk for HIV infection who took a daily tablet containing an HIV medication – either the antiretroviral medication tenofovir or tenofovir in combination with emtricitabine – experienced significantly fewer HIV infections than those who received a placebo pill. Connie Celum was a principal investigator of the study, which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Serodiscordant couples in Uganda and Kenya participated in the double-blind study.

Via EurekAlert

Mothers and children in sub-Saharan Africa

Advice to drink 8 glasses of water a day 'nonsense,' argues doctor

The recommendation to drink six to eight glasses of water a day to prevent dehydration "is not only nonsense, but is thoroughly debunked nonsense," argues GP, Margaret McCartney in this week's BMJ (British Medical Journal). There is currently no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water, she says, yet the "we-don't-drink-enough-water" myth has endless advocates, including the NHS.
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Chemicals Found in Household Products Linked to Thyroid Hormone Disruption

Phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA) are chemicals that are commonly found in plastics and household products such as solvents and cleaners. Being common in places that people live and eat, they will eventually make their way into the body. A new large study out of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has linked the abundance of these chemicals in the human body with thyroid function. Disrupting the thyroid's proper functioning can affect many important body systems such as reproduction, metabolism, and energy levels.
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Hungary introduces 'fat tax' to boost nation's health

Food considered to be unhealthy, including crisps, soft drinks and chocolate bars, are now subject to a new tax in Hungary. The new law, introduced on 11 July, is aimed at "improving the health of the nation". Initially called 'the hamburger tax', the measure was dubbed 'crisps tax' or 'fat tax' after the Hungarian government decided that it would not affect fast food restaurants.
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Robert Langer on targeted drug delivery for future medicine

Robert Langer of M.I.T. helped pioneer targeted drug delivery systems. They are a way of getting drugs to specific parts of the body – even a specific kind of cell. Dr. Langer builds these systems using polymers – long chains of molecules such as those in plastics or rubber – which he engineers at a microscopic scale. He spoke with EarthSky’s Beth Lebwohl about his work and about the future of targeted drug delivery. This podcast is part of the Thanks To Chemistry series, produced in cooperation with the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Generous sponsorship support was provided by the BASF Corporation. Additional production support was provided by The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, DuPont, and ExxonMobil.

How does targeted drug delivery benefit people?

Let’s say somebody has cancer. You’d like the cancer drug to go right to the target – right to the cancer cell – and to no other cell in the body. That would benefit people because the drug would be a lot more effective. It wouldn’t have the side effects that you get when a drug goes all over the body.

Right now, if you need to take a drug, the drug goes all over the body. That’s why a lot of times, when we take some drugs, we get side effects, sometimes bad effects. Sometimes we get sick to our stomach. Sometimes we get headaches. It all depends on the drug.

You can use targeted drug delivery as long as you know where you want to go in the body. Let’s say you want to try to treat heart disease, and you want it to go to a blood vessel. We’ve done some work on that as well. There are other diseases as well – inflammatory diseases and so forth – but you’d need to have the right targets in the body.

Single polymer chains as recorded using an atomic force microscope (Wikimedia Commons).

You work with polymeric drug delivery systems. What are polymers? Why use polymers to bring drugs to a specific part of the body?

When you hear of things like polyesters, those are polymers. Plastics are polymers, and rubber is also a polymer. Polymers are incredibly versatile. So you can use them, and you can make them into all kinds of shapes and forms, including nanoparticles. It’s their versatility that makes them so helpful.

And what are nanoparticles?

Nanoparticles are tiny little particles – smaller than a micron – much smaller than the width of a human hair. So they’re very, very tiny. But because they’re tiny, they have the ability to get into cells. And so, if you put drugs in them, they may – if you design them correctly – allow the drug to get into the cell you want.

You can also make polymers that are very safe so that they can be good carriers for drugs. We’ve often designed these polymers so that they degrade into things like water and carbon dioxide or things that come out in the urine that are very, very safe.

Here's one example of how targeted drug delivery works. Targeted drug delivery capsules (red) stick to the cancer cells expressing the A33 antigen (blue), while avoiding the cells that don’t express the antigen (green). (NPG Asia Materials)

How does it work? How does a polymer help in developing a targeted drug delivery system?

A polymer at a molecular level is just a really long molecule made up of much smaller molecules. What’s special about it is that you can control all its chemical properties. For example, you might want to adjust the polymer’s degradation rate. Does it degrade fast or slow? If you’re trying to release a drug, you could design the polymer so it might release the drug fast or slow. A third thing that you might want to regulate is its mechanical strength. And all these are possible to do by adjusting the polymer properties.

We basically have worked out new ways to design nanoparticles that you can inject into the body – that can travel around the body for a long time – but ultimately find the tumor or other diseased state. They take the drug right to where you want and not to any of the places where you don’t want it. Or at least they greatly restrict the drug from going to any of the places you don’t want it.

What breakthroughs have occurred in recent years to cause a polymeric drug delivery system to hold so much promise now?

There have been a number of breakthroughs. Some are in materials science, and some are in biology. Examples in materials science are new methods of making nanoparticles of just the size and shape you want.

I understand there is a potential of this technology to deliver drugs straight to our DNA or RNA.

That’s one of the big areas that we’ve looked at – using these nanoparticles to deliver genes or substances that turn genes off. Either turning genes on or turning genes off.

Let me give an example. If somebody had heart disease, they might have a high level of cholesterol. And there are certain genes that you can shut down that will make you have less cholesterol. That’s one of the things we’ve been working on. Or let’s say somebody had cancer, and the cancer cells are starting to invade through other tissues, causing a lot of harm to the patient. We’re working on genes that can prevent that invasion from occurring.

When will we start to see targeted drug delivery systems become commonplace and affordable? Can you give me a timeline?

It’s very hard to know. Personally, I think it’ll take many, many years. I don’t have a timeline, but anytime you develop new medicines it takes a long, long time. The medicine has to go through so many safety trials and human clinical trials. There’s great progress being made, but there’s also a lot of work ahead of us.

Polymer delivery systems are already making a big impact in transdermal patches. They’re in pills. They’re in different implants. They’re in stents. So they’re in a lot of things.

But targeted drug delivery is something that’s more in the future. There are clinical trials with them that have just started. I think in the next five to ten years you’ll see examples where they are being used clinically and having a big impact. At least I hope so.

I understand you can use these systems in other fields, for example, agriculture.

Yes. It’s not so much that you do targeted nanoparticles for agriculture but you do controlled release [using polymers]. For example, if somebody is delivering pesticides to crops, they might just dump them from airplanes. The pesticide all comes at once and might cause bad effects to the land. It might not work as well. It would be much better if you could deliver the pesticide at a relatively steady rate over a long period of time. That’s what controlled release is. It’s delivering things generally at a relatively steady rate over a long period of time. That’s something that we and others have developed some general principles on, which are being applied, for example, in delivering pesticides to crops – and for all kinds of things.

Dr. Robert Langer (NIH)

What’s the most important thing you’d like to tell Earth Sky’s global audience about targeted delivery systems using the long similarly structured chains of molecules known as polymers?

Polymeric drug delivery systems that are targeted really offer new hope for a variety of medical treatments. It’s a way of taking a drug that might normally go throughout the body and not work that well – and maybe cause a lot of side effects – to potentially go right to where you want it, say a cancer cell, and work better on killing that cell and not having the side effects.

Listen to the 90-second and 8-minute podcasts of EarthSky’s interview with Dr. Robert Langer on targeted drug delivery systems (see top of page.) For this and other free science interview podcasts, visit the subscribe page at earthsky.org. EarthSky is a clear voice for science.

Incredible: The Gift of Regaining Sight!

High up in the mountains of Nepal, life seems idyllic. Rising up from lush cloud forests at lower altitudes, to bare summits that literally take your breath away. Yet living at altitudes of over 4,000meters (13,000feet) the proximity to nature is so close, that the mountain people who live there are being effected by a factor that only ever seems beneficial: light. In Human Planet's Mountains episode, the BBC Earth team trekked up high into the impressive landscape to document the work of two Doctors who were literally changing people's lives, in just 24 just hours. Through dedication and sheer ingenuity, Drs. Ruit, Tabin and their team developed a procedure that can see the cataracts that have left large numbers of people blind for two years or more, can be removed and replaced. Allowing them to see their homes, families and friends once again.
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Fenugreek seeds now targeted for blame in E. coli outbreak in Europe

After throwing blame on Spanish cucumbers and then European sprouts, officials now report that a single shipment of fenugreek seeds from Egypt may be the culprit in a deadly E. coli outbreak that has infected thousands and killed 49 people in Europe, plus one Arizona man. According to Reuters on July 5, 2011, the European Union has banned import of certain seeds and beans from Egypt as a result of the identification. Egyptian officials Ministry of Health officials have asserted that their test results turned up no signs of the E. coli bacteria.

Genetically modified E. coli give an unearthly glow in a test tube. Photo credit: Ryan Kitko, via Flickr.

Most of the infections with this specific E. coli strain have occurred in Europe and North America. The six infected Americans, including the Arizona man who died, had all recently been traveling in Europe, the epicenter of the outbreak. The strain has proved particularly powerful in its attack, causing a usually rare condition in which the kidneys will shut down, leading to death. It also has proved particularly controversial, as the blame for its presence shifted from cucumbers in Spain to sprouts and now to Egyptian fenugreek seeds. These seeds, according to EU officials, were used to grow sprouts for consumers. The ban on the Egyptian imports is in place until October 31.

The E. coli strain in question, STEC (which stands for Shiga-toxin–producing E. coli) O104:H4, has two traits that have contributed to its deadly capacities. It makes a toxin called Shiga that brings on watery diarrhea and can lead to severe and deadly kidney problems. Shiga can destroy red blood cells that in turn damage the kidney, resulting in the hemolytic uremic syndrome that has been a key feature of the outbreak. In fact, while previous outbreaks involving Shiga-pumping E. coli have produced rates of hemolytic uremic syndrome of between 5 and 10%, this latest sprout-linked E. coli plague has yielded rates that may be as high 25%, leaving health officials dismayed. Furthering their concern is the affected population, which includes a large proportion of young people. Kidney complications with Shiga poisoning have historically been more common among the very young and the very old.

Fenugreek sprouts, the latest identified source of the European E. coli outbreak. Photo via Opencage.info.

Possibly facilitating and exacerbating this toxic Shiga load is the fact that these bacteria have an unusual ability to stack up on each other like bricks on the intestinal wall. This bacterial bricklaying may have helped them more efficiently offload Shiga into the body, leading to higher rates of the severe symptoms and death. Researchers have suggested that the bacteria, notorious for gene swapping, may have developed the bricklaying technique first, then later picked up a virulent Shiga pumping gene, a double whammy that has made them doubly deadly.

This outbreak is certainly not the first in which E. coli infections have ended in kidney failure and death. A spinach-borne outbreak in 2006 also caused some deaths related to kidney failure, while a water-borne outbreak in 1999 and others in the early 1990s were related to Shiga-producing E. coli. In those cases, the strain in question was the deadly and infamous (at least in public health circles) strain 0157:H7 of the bacteria. Now, it seems, thanks to its bricklaying abilities, STEC O104:H4 may have taken center stage, whether from Egpytian fenugreek seeds or some other source, as a deadly food-borne threat to human health.

Jorge Galan reveals Salmonella’s stealth, and also its Achilles heel
How bacterial dirigibles might someday target disease

Colon cancer screening saving lives, says CDC

How old are you? If you’re age 50 to 75, have you had your colon cancer screening? This testing can save your life, and it makes colon cancer one of the most preventable cancers around.

Need proof? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that from 2003 to 2007, cases of colorectal cancer dropped from just over 52 of every 100,000 people to just over 45 of every 100,000 people. That means 66,000 fewer cancers in four years. Even more important, that translated into 32,000 fewer deaths.

Photo credit: SCA Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget

Rates vary from state to state. For example, people in Utah seem to have relatively low rates of colorectal cancer and related deaths, while in North Dakota, almost 57 of every 100,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer. States that have the highest rates of screening saw the deepest drop in death rates, and the CDC says that screening is responsible for about half the drop in death rates.

A flat polyp growing on the wall of a colon, identified during colonoscopy. Photo credit: Stephen Holland, MD, via Wikimedia Commons.

I happen to be one of the deaths that didn’t happen. In 2007, I went to my gastroenterologist with symptoms that included bleeding. Erring on the side of caution—I was not 50 at the time but 39—my GI doctor ordered a colonoscopy. To what I think was his great surprise, he found a very large, flat, precancerous polyp. Even during the fuzzy recovery post-op, I remember his telling my husband that the symptoms that brought me to him saved my life. Without that colonoscopy, my doctor said, I’d have been dead in 5 years. That five years is now, and I’m still here and polyp free.

In spite of that and about 31,999 other success stories, colorectal cancer remains the second deadliest cancer in the United States, coming up behind lung cancer. Colorectal cancer still kills about 53,000 people each year.

Want to avoid growing this in your colon? Get screened. Photo credit: Emmanuelm at en.wikipedia

Anyone who turns 50 should have a screening, but still only about 65% of people hitting that critical age have the screening. That leaves about 22 million people ignoring this important preventive care. Strangely enough, a major factor in whether or not someone gets appropriate screening is their doctor. According to the CDC, a doctor’s recommendation for screening can spur a patient to do so, while a lack of recommendation is a main reason patients don’t do it.

Screening can range from annual testing for fecal blood—called fecal occult (hidden) blood testing—to sigmoidoscopy every five years, which looks at the lower part of the colon and the rectum, to colonoscopy, the gold standard screening that covers the entire colon, top to bottom. Colonoscopy screening has a bad reputation. Yes, there’s a prep, and nope, it’s not a ton of fun. I’ve done it five times now. Guess what? It’s one day that could give you many, many days of life. The better your prep, the better the ability of your GI doc to see what’s in that colon of yours.

Yes, you have to drink something like this. Quickly. No, it's not fun. But it's better than colon cancer. Photo via Flickr.

What’s your doctor looking for? Polyps. Many polyps are on little stalks and can be clipped out right then and there. Some polyps are like mine—flat and carpet like—and require deeper anesthesia and a longer time for removal. Either way, getting those things out before they go rogue and eat into and through your intestinal wall is critical to preventing death from colon cancer.

Who needs to be screened? Anyone who’s age 50 to 75 needs screening at regular intervals, often a colonscopy every 10 years as long as nothing turns up. But people like me require screenings more frequently—within one year of finding the precancerous polyps or worse, then at three years, then every five years as long as I get the all clear. And, if you have a family history of colon polyps, you may need testing even before age 50. For example, my siblings should start their screenings earlier than age 50 thanks to my own experience. Luckily, and as the CDC report on colorectal cancer diagnosis and death rates emphasizes, thanks to screening, I’m still around to tell them that.

Can parsley and celery help fight breast cancer?
Ken Hunter explains why cancer is so hard to cure

Yellowstone River water not toxic from spill, according to EPA

Water downstream from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline that leaked oil into the Yellowstone River showed no detectable levels of toxic petroleum chemicals, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents released on Saturday. But Montana environmental officials told Reuters that in the week since the spill at least five people have been treated at local hospital emergency rooms for symptoms including dizziness and respiratory distress after being exposed to fumes from oil. "There could be many more," said Mary Ann Dunwell, spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. Reports of spill-related illnesses are being compiled by the state's epidemiologist.
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Africa drought endangers 500,000 children

The lives of half a million children in the Horn of Africa are at risk, international aid agencies said on Friday, as the worst drought in decades forces thousands of people to flee their homes each day. High food prices and the driest years since the early 1950s have pushed many poor families in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti into desperate need, UNICEF said. "We have over two million children who are malnourished. Half a million of these children are in a life-threatening condition at this stage -- a 50 percent increase over 2009 figures," UNICEF spokesman Marixie Mercado told a news briefing. Child malnutrition rates in some camps are at least 45 percent, triple the emergency threshold, Mercado said. Child mortality rates are also very high. "At one camp in Ethiopia it is above the emergency threshold of four deaths per 10,000 children per day and that is also the case in the Turkana district of Kenya," she said.
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Autism study implicates womb environment

An oft-asked question in biology classes used to be “Is it nature or nurture?” Loosely translated, the question means, Are genes or the environment responsible for what you see? No human condition may have split people more on this question than has autism. Are genes responsible, or is the environment behind it? Recent research published July 4, 2011, in Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that, as with so many answers to the nature vs nurture question, it’s a fairly even interaction of the two, one that probably starts in the womb.

The researchers with the California Autism Twins Study, led by Standford’s Joachim Hallmayer, looked at 192 pairs of twins, at least one of whom was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The twins were all born between 1987 and 2004. Fifty-four of the twin pairs were monozygotic, meaning they were genetically identical. The remaining 138 twin pairs were dizygotic (fraternal), meaning they were only 50% genetically related. All of the twins obviously shared a womb before birth.

Does autism start with genes but complete in the environment of the womb? Photo credit: Niloy, photographing children at the Autism Welfare Foundation in Dhaka, via Flickr.

The study split ASDs into “strict autism,” meaning a classic and intense form of autism, and “broad autism,” a more expansive definition that encompassed what some people consider to be “higher-functioning” autism. The researchers used statistical modeling to determine that the environment was responsible for just over half of the traits among the twin pairs with strict autism and for almost 60% among the pairs falling within the broader definition.

They concluded that the genetic contribution to either strict or broad autism was just under 40%. Based on their evaluation, they found that “Susceptibility to ASD has moderate genetic heritability and a substantial shared twin environmental component.” The “shared” environment at work in the autism of the twin pairs, according to the authors, was most likely the womb and probably explains about 55% of what underlies autism. They describe genetic factors as playing an “important” role, but emphasize that shared environment in the womb.

What happens in the womb that contributes to autism?

What in the womb could influence brain development and lead to the spectrum of differences called autism? The possible answers to that question could literally fill an entire book, but they include parental age, infections the mother may have had, the fact of the multiple pregnancy, or about one million things that have yet to be identified. The womb is a strange and mysterious place where we first start to take shape thanks to an understructure of DNA upon which environment begins to act from the moment the sperm and egg meet. Thanks to this careful assessment from Joachim Hallmayer and colleagues for the California Autism Twins Study, scientists at least may have narrowed down the location—if not the timing or much else—of the environment itself.

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Philip Landrigan: Everyday chemicals might scramble hormones’ signals

Dr. Helen Caldicott: Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown Much Worse Than Chernobyl

Although several months have passed since the devastating earthquake and tsunami occurred in Japan, the resulting nuclear power plant crisis, and the effect on the world environment is still far from over. The health risks caused by the meltdown of nuclear fuel rods in at least three reactors actually melting down will be felt for hundreds of years to come.
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Incredible Images from the Land of the midnight sun

What is it like to live in a place where there is never-ending sunlight? BBC Assistant Producer Willow Murton describes how when days have no end, the midnight sun becomes a state of mind.I pull off my eye mask and open my eyes. The sun shines bright above me. I look at my watch. Three o’clock in the morning? I sit bolt upright, lifting my head from the make do pillow. Reindeer hair sticks to my cheek. Simon the sound recordist mutters as he rigidly stares out ahead of us. Beth the researcher alongside us is, like me, struggling with sleep deprivation and the daylight. I am still trying to focus my eyes in the dazzling night of the Arctic summer. Suddenly I see the figures along the ice edge. Five men, spread out along the horizon, all poised, waiting...watching for their target. Simon swears. We aren't hunters but we know the rules. We mustn't do anything, we mustn't move, cannot move from our dogsled bed. I spot our tripod and camera, no cameraman anywhere nearby. I am filled with a dreadful nauseous realization – this could be the moment that we have spent over a year working towards. Months of careful negotiations and awkward logistics all for us to sleep through our only possible chance of filming a narwhal hunt. We can only sit and watch in confused disbelief... At that moment, the silhouette of a whale crests the ice edge. I wonder how on earth I am going to explain this to the team back in Cardiff. Surreal scenes like this are surely what you are supposed to wake from rather than wake up to. It's late Spring in Northern Greenland, there is no reference to time as the sun never sets so the days blend into each other. In the full glare of the midnight sun this is a place where anything seems possible and where dreaming and being seem to meet.
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4th of July Parades, Fireworks, and Waste

It's not the Fourth of July without a parade and fireworks — plus lots of trash and some not-so-healthy toxins and pollutants. Rhode Island prides itself on hosting the oldest parade in the nation. The Bristol tradition draws some 100,000 spectators, who leave behind about 64 tons of trash, according to the Department of Public Works. Progress has been made in recent years to control waste by requiring vendors to haul out their own garbage. Stapling paper yard-waste bags to trees and telephone poles along the parade route also has encouraged spectators to help with the clean up of bottles, cups, balloons and other debris. "We flood the parade route with those bags and it's a huge help," said Jim Sylvester of Bristol's DPW. None of the waste, however, is sorted for recyclables. It's not well known, or at least not well publicized, that fireworks — from sparklers to professional displays — leave behind a fair amount of waste, while releasing noxious gases and heavy metals.
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Flip a switch, cure type 2 diabetes?

Imagine that you could flip a light switch and cure diabetes. Thanks to work from scientists Haifeng Ye, Marie Daoud-El Baba, Re-Wang Peng, and Martin Fussenegger, that illuminating analogy may not be that farfetched. This group, publishing June 24, 2011, in the journal Science, has linked light sensitivity to a protein involved in regulating blood glucose.

Could melanopsin and blue light make insulin injections a thing of the past for people with type 2 diabetes? Photo credit: Jill A. Brown, via Flickr

Light carries energy, and that energy can transfer to molecules and make them move. We’ve got light-reactive proteins in our eyes, for example. One of these is called melanopsin. You may have heard of taking melatonin to regulate a sleep cycle. Melanopsin registers the fading light of the day or brightening light of the dawn to keep our daily rhythms humming along rhythmically. When light strikes melanopsin, the molecule changes shape. This shape change triggers a cascade of changes in nearby molecules, just as one falling domino can trigger a cascade of falling dominoes. In our cells, the dominoes are other molecules. Usually, the point of the cascade is to trigger a response to whatever started it in the first place, which in this case was light.

But what if we took our triggering melanopsin domino and placed it in front of a different set of molecules? Light would still make it change shape and kick off a cascade of reactions. But the different cascade would have a different outcome.

Playing around quite seriously with these possibilities, Fussenegger and colleagues placed their melanopsin domino at the beginning of a cascade that ends with production of a Very Important Protein (VIP) called glucagon-like peptide 1. This molecule with the long name has an equally long resume. Among its many jobs is stimulating release of insulin, the hormone that ushers glucose from the blood into cells. People with type 2 diabetes often don’t have enough glucagon-like peptide 1.

The same applies to mice with type II diabetes. But linking the melanopsin trigger to the cascade of molecules responsible for making glucagon-like peptide 1 changed all that. Researchers placed a few hundred tiny transparent capsules packed with cells containing the melanopsin switch into the abdomens of the mice. Then, they flipped the blue-light switch. The blue light turned on the melanopsin, which then kicked off the VIP-making cascade. The diabetic mice suddenly showed much better control of their blood sugar and had higher insulin levels. Pardon me while I get all sci-geek verklempt. That is cool, cool stuff.

If this light-switch therapy eventually makes its way from mice to people—always a big IF—there seems to be no limit to what could be done with the melanopsin domino. Beyond diabetes, any disease rooted in the failure of a protein production pathway might be a target for a melanopsin kickstart. Thanks to the work of Haifeng Ye, Marie Daoud-El Baba, Re-Wang Peng, and Martin Fussenegger, we someday could be a light switch away from effective therapy for intractable diseases like diabetes.

Aaron Kowalski on an artificial pancreas for diabetes
Paul Robertson searching for the cause of Type 2 diabetes

Who better than Australians to identify a snakebite ointment?

Leave it to the Australians, people who live fang to foot with the world’s deadliest snakes, to find a way to use an ointment for the pain of anal fissures against snakebites instead. Dirk Van Helden of the University of Newcastle in Australia had the idea that fast-moving venom of some snakes might hit a molecular roadblock from such an ointment. The idea worked, and van Helden and colleagues published their findings in the June 26, 2011, issue of Nature Medicine in an open-access paper.

This unassuming Eastern Brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis) is one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Photo credit: John Tann, via Flickr.

Why turn to an ointment for anal fissures? The ointment contains nitroglycerin, or glyceryl trinitrate. It’s got good old nitric oxide in it, the stuff that’s probably now best known for its role in curing erectile dysfunction, relaxing blood vessels in a certain area so that they can more easily become…congested. In excruciating anal fissures, nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels, reducing pain. Nitric oxide also happens to interfere with fluid transport in the lymphatic system.

Some—but not all—snakes inject venom with molecules so large, they can’t enter the bloodstream via the tiny capillaries around the bite. Instead, they rely on the larger passageways of the lymphatic system. Australia boasts…if that’s the right word…a lot of snakes that make venom like that. Take, for example, the brown snake. In spite of its almost colorless name, it happens to be one of the deadliest snakes in the world. Getting medical help within minutes of a bite is literally the difference between life and death.

Just getting the venom for such studies takes...courage? Takes something. Photo credit: Ernie and Katie Newton Lawly, via Flickr.

That anal fissure ointment may help buy more of those minutes. Based on the work of van Helden’s group, applying the ointment within seconds of the bite can double the time until symptoms appear. In people, the researchers only measured the traveling time of a harmless, radiolabeled fluid to mimic snake venom. Application of the ointment considerably extended the time it took the fluid to travel from the foot to the groin, from less than a half hour to almost an hour. In snakebite minutes, that can mean a lifetime.

Photo credit: Russ Bowling

They also turned to rats and real venom to test the idea further. Again, applying ointment within seconds of venom exposure slowed down the venom’s course through the rat, adding an extra 30 minutes to the time before symptoms appeared.

All of this is great for snake-risky people who live in Australia, where snakes produce lymphatic-loving venom in abundance. But for others around the world at risk of snakebite, say, from a cobra or a black mamba (!), the fissure cream is less likely to help, as their venom less helpfully contains small molecules that don’t need the lymph system to get where they’re going.

That said, Dirk Van Helden and the other authors recommend trying the nitric oxide ointment approach with other kinds of venoms to see if its benefits might go beyond brown snake bites. Alternatively, one could just avoid Oz or brown snakes altogether.

Bob Reed:’Giant snakes are here now, doing ecological damage”
Egyptian cobras are slippery escape artists

Learning drives need for sleep, even in flies

In a sleep study of fruit flies, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison found evidence to support the idea that a learning brain growing new synaptic connections requires more sleep. They also demonstrated that the gene FMR1 (fragile X mental retardation 1) plays an important role in sleep and renormalizing the brain. Results of the study appear June 24, 2011 in the journal Science.

Drosophila melanogaster. Image Credit: Botaurus

The study looked at three neuronal circuits in the brains of fruit flies and provides evidence for the theory that synaptic homeostasis is one of the key reasons all animals need sleep.

In one experiment, researchers took young fruit flies that spent the first days of their lives alone in single tubes too small to allow flying. Then they released them in groups into a large lighted chamber that allowed them to fly around together for their 12-hour day.

All the flies grew more synapses while they were awake for several hours, the research shows. But this was especially true for flies in the enriched environment – these grew new branches with many new synapses. After their enriched awake time, the flies were put back into the single tubes and slept much longer for at least one day. Their synapses returned to normal size after sleep.

Flies who experienced the rich awake state but were deprived of sleep continued to have synapses that were larger and denser.

Chiara Cirelli, associate professor of psychiatry at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, said:

Sleep prunes back the new synapses; you have to create space for synapses to grow again or you can’t learn again the next day. Even more importantly, the pruning saves energy, and for the brain, energy is everything. Learning without sleep is unsustainable from an energy point of view.

Research shows that after a big day, this little guy needs some sleep. Image Credit: shioshvili

The UW researchers also looked at how gene FMR1 affects sleep. When this gene is not expressed in humans, the result is Fragile X syndrome, a cause of autism and mental disabilities. People with Fragile X syndrome have difficulty sleeping.

The researchers found that when FMR1 is over-expressed – that is, when more FMR1 protein is present in the brain – the increase in synapse number during awake time does not occur, and the need for sleep declines. (Previous work had shown that FMR1 probably facilitates the pruning of synapses.)

Cirelli explained:

This suggests that if the synapses are already down-regulated, there is less need for sleep. It is more evidence for the theory that sleep is driven by the need to reduce the brain’s energy needs.

Bottom line: Researcher Chiara Cirelli and colleagues at UW-Madison studied three neuronal circuits in the brains of fruit flies and found evidence supporting the idea that synaptic homeostasis is one of the reasons all animals need sleep. They also found evidence of gene FMR1′s role in renormalization of synaptic connections. Results of their study appear in the June 24, 2011 issue of Science.

Via EurekAlert

Do power naps give you energy?