Environmental Health Perspectives articles from April 2007

Environmental Health Perspectives archives from April 2007

Using nutrition for intervention and prevention against environmental chemical toxicity and associated diseases.(Commentary)(Report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Nutrition and lifestyle are well-defined modulators of chronic diseases. Poor dietary habits (such as high intake of processed foods rich in fat and low intake of fruits and vegetables), as well as a sedentary lifestyle clearly...

Biodiesel exhaust: the need for health effects research.(Commentary)(Report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Biodiesel is a diesel fuel alternative that has shown potential of becoming a commercially accepted part of the United States' energy infrastructure. In November 2004, the signing of the Jobs Creation Bill HR 4520 marked an...

Hormesis and its place in nonmonotonic dose-response relationships: some scientific reality checks.(Review)(Report)
April 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: This analysis is a critical assessment of current hormesis literature. I discuss definitions, characterization, generalizability, mechanisms, absence of empirical data specific for hormesis hypothesis testing, and arguments that...

Ambient and microenvironmental particles and exhaled nitric oxide before and after a group bus trip.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... OBJECTIVES: Airborne particles have been linked to pulmonary oxidative stress and inflammation. Because these effects may be particularly great for traffic-related particles, we examined associations between particle exposures and exhaled...

Cyclooxygenase-2 induction by arsenite through the IKK[beta]/NF[kappa]B pathway exerts an antiapoptotic effect in mouse epidermal Cl41 cells.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Arsenic contamination has become a major public health concern worldwide. Epidemiologic data show that long-term arsenic exposure results in the risk of skin cancer. However, the mechanisms underlying carcinogenic effects of...

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopic evidence of glial effects of cumulative lead exposure in the adult human hippocampus.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Exposure to lead is known to have adverse effects on cognition in several different populations. Little is known about the underlying structural and functional correlates of such exposure in humans. OBJECTIVES: We assessed the...

Air pollution and mortality in Chile: susceptibility among the elderly.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: The estimated mortality rate associated with ambient air pollution based on general population studies may not be representative of the effects on certain subgroups. The objective of the present study was to determine the influence...

Mortality among pesticide applicators exposed to chlorpyrifos in the Agricultural Health Study.(Research)(Report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Chlorpyrifos is one of the most widely used organophosphate insecticides in the United States. Although the toxicity of chlorpyrifos has been extensively studied in animals, the epidemiologic data are limited. OBJECTIVE: To...

Up-regulation of tissue factor in human pulmonary artery endothelial cells after ultrafine particle exposure.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Epidemiology studies have linked exposure to pollutant particles to increased cardiovascular mortality and morbidity, but the mechanisms remain unknown. OBJECTIVES: We tested the hypothesis that the ultrafine fraction of...

Mammary gland development as a sensitive end point after acute prenatal exposure to an atrazine metabolite mixture in female Long-Evans rats.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Atrazine (ATR), a widely used chlorotriazine herbicide, inhibits a number of endocrine-dependent processes, including gonadotrophin surges and mammary gland development in rats. Chlorotriazine herbicides are rapidly metabolized in...

In utero exposure to environmental tobacco smoke potentiates adult responses to allergen in BALB/c mice.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Fetal stress has been linked to adult atherosclerosis, obesity, and diabetes. Epidemiology studies have associated fetal exposure to maternal smoking and postnatal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) with increased asthma...

Ontogenetic alterations in molecular and structural correlates of dendritic growth after developmental exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: Perinatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is associated with decreased IQ scores, impaired learning and memory, psychomotor difficulties, and attentional deficits in children. It is postulated that these...

The NIEHS Environmental Health Sciences Data Resource Portal: placing advanced technologies in service to vulnerable communities.(Research)(National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)(Report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Two devastating hurricanes ripped across the Gulf Coast of the United States during 2005. The effects of Hurricane Katrina were especially severe: The human and environmental health impacts on New Orleans, Louisiana, and other Gulf...

Identification of genes implicated in methapyrilene-induced hepatotoxicity by comparing differential gene expression in target and nontarget tissue.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Toxicogenomics experiments often reveal thousands of transcript alterations that are related to multiple processes, making it difficult to identify key gene changes that are related to the toxicity of interest. OBJECTIVES: The...

Vermiculite, respiratory disease, and asbestos exposure in Libby, Montana: update of a cohort mortality study.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Vermiculite from the mine near Libby, Montana, is contaminated with tremolite asbestos and other amphibole fibers (winchite and richterite). Asbestos-contaminated Libby vermiculite was used in loose-fill attic insulation that...

Pulmonary biomarkers based on alterations in protein expression after exposure to arsenic.(Research)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: Environmental exposure to arsenic results in multiple adverse effects in the lung. Our objective was to identify potential pulmonary protein biomarkers in the lung-lining fluid of mice chronically exposed to low-dose As and to...

Perinatal bisphenol a exposure increases estrogen sensitivity of the mammary gland in diverse mouse strains.(Research)(Report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Studies of low-dose effects of xenoestrogens have yielded conflicting results that may be attributed to differences in estrogen sensitivity between the rodent strains examined. Perinatal exposure of CD-1 mice to low doses of the...

Genetic polymorphisms influencing arsenic metabolism: evidence from Argentina.(Research)(Report)
April 1, 2007... The susceptibility to arsenic-induced diseases differs greatly between individuals, possibly due to interindividual variations in As metabolism that affect retention and distribution of toxic metabolites. To elucidate the role of genetic...

Case report: potential arsenic toxicosis secondary to herbal kelp supplement.(Environmental Medicine)(Case study)
April 1, 2007... CONTEXT: Medicinal use of dietary herbal supplements can cause inadvertent arsenic toxicosis. CASE PRESENTATION: A 54-year-old woman was referred to the University of California, Davis, Occupational Medicine Clinic with a 2-year history of...

Correction.(Correction notice)
April 1, 2007... In their discussion of the variation of arsenic content of kelp supplements from batch to batch in the conclusion of the original manuscript published online, the authors stated that three samples they tested were all from the same bottle....

Dose-response relationship of prenatal mercury exposure and IQ: an integrative analysis of epidemiologic data.(Children's Health)(Report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Prenatal exposure to mercury has been associated with adverse childhood neurologic outcomes in epidemiologic studies. Dose-response information for this relationship is useful for estimating benefits of reduced mercury exposure. ...

Correction.(Correction notice)
April 1, 2007... In the Abstract, the sections "Primary analysis" and "Discussion," and Table 5, the 95% CI for estimate of childhood IQ was -0.387 to -0.012 in the original manuscript published online. It has been corrected here.

Parental smoking modifies the relation between genetic variation in tumor necrosis factor-[alpha] (TNF) and childhood asthma.(Children's Health)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Polymorphisms in the proinflammatory cytokine genes tumor necrosis factor-[alpha] (TNF) and lymphotoxin-[alpha] (LTA, also called TNF-[beta]) have been associated with asthma and atopy in some studies. Parental smoking is a...

Smoking during pregnancy affects speech-processing ability in newborn infants.(Children's Health)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Tobacco smoking during pregnancy is known to adversely affect development of the central nervous system in babies of smoking mothers by restricting utero-placental blood flow and the amount of oxygen available to the fetus....

Elevated blood lead concentrations and vitamin D deficiency in winter and summer in young urban children.(Children's Health)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: It is widely recognized that blood lead concentrations are higher in the summer than in winter. Although the effects of some environmental factors such as lead in dust on this phenomenon have been studied, relationships to...

Health effects of exposure to natural arsenic in groundwater and coal in China: an overview of occurrence.(Mini-Monograph)(Report)
April 1, 2007... Between 2001 and 2005, 21,155 of 445,638 wells in 20,517 villages in 292 counties in 16 provinces from China, or 5% of wells, were found to contain > 50 [micro]g/L arsenic (As) by field testing with the Merck As kit. We achieved quality...

Arsenic and fluoride exposure in drinking water: children's IQ and growth in Shanyin county, Shanxi province, China.(Mini-Monograph)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Recently, in a cross-sectional study of 201 children in Araihazar, Bangladesh, exposure to arsenic (As) in drinking water has been shown to lower the scores on tests that measure children's intellectual function before and after...

Urinary arsenic metabolites in children and adults exposed to arsenic in drinking water in Inner Mongolia, China.(Mini-Monograph)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: We report the concentrations and distributions of urinary arsenic (As) metabolites in 233 residents exposed to 20, 90, or 160 [micro]g/L inorganic arsenic (iAs) in drinking water from three villages in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China,...

Unventilated indoor coal-fired stoves in Guizhou province, China: cellular and genetic damage in villagers exposed to arsenic in food and air.(Mini-Monograph)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Inorganic arsenic (iAs) is a well-known human carcinogen recognized by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Currently, most iAs studies in populations are concerned with drinking water...

Unventilated indoor coal-fired stoves in Guizhou province, China: reduction of arsenic exposure through behavior changes resulting from mitigation and health education in populations with arsenicosis.(Mini-Monograph)(Report)
April 1, 2007... We the report results of a coordinated mitigation effort aimed at reducing arsenic (As) exposure in three counties of Guizhou province, China. Mitigation occurred in 2005 and encompassed 21 villages with 47,000 inhabitants, who were exposed to...

Climate change: healthy solutions.(Guest Editorial)
April 1, 2007... In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Houghton et al. 2001) concluded that climate is changing, humans are contributing, weather has become more extreme, and biological systems on all continents and in the oceans are...

A new venue for the Director's Perspective.(DIRECTOR'S PERSPECTIVE)(National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
April 1, 2007... Two years ago this month I began writing this column for EHP. As the new NIEHS director, my goal for this column was to maximize communication with the environmental health sciences community about my vision, goals, and strategy for the...

Risk of lymphohematopoietic malignancies in uranium miners.(Correspondence)(Report)
April 1, 2007... Rericha et al. (2006) analyzed data from Czech uranium miners with respect to incidence of malignancies of the lymphohematopoietic system. Their results, however, do not correspond with those of two recent studies on German uranium miners...

Lymphohematopoietic malignancies in uranium miners: Kulich et al. respond.(Correspondence)(Report)
April 1, 2007... We read with interest the comments by Mohner regarding the analysis and interpretation of the case-cohort study of Czech uranium miners (Rericha et al. 2006). He noted that our results do not agree with two recent German studies that also...

Ozone and semen quality.(Correspondence)(Report)
April 1, 2007... Sokol et al. (2006) reported an inverse association between environmental ozone and sperm concentration. They performed longitudinal analyses of > 5,000 semen samples from 48 semen donors over a 2-year period and concluded that exposure to...

Ozone and semen quality: Berhane and Sokol respond.(Correspondence)
April 1, 2007... We thank Bonde for his interest in our article (Sokol et al. 2006) and for drawing to our attention the literature on the effects of the welding occupation on male fertility. Although we agree with Bonde that the findings in the occupational...

Fetal lead exposure and infant mental development index.(Correspondence)(Clinical report)
April 1, 2007... All of the authors of Ronchetti et al. (2006) read with great interest the article of Hu et al. (2006); their excellent experimental data fully supports the hypotheses and conclusions we reported in an our recent literature review on lead...

Infant mental development index: Hu et al. respond.(Correspondence)
April 1, 2007... We thank Ronchetti for his comments on our recent article (Hu et al. 2006). We are aware of what he noted was the wide scatter of points surrounding the correlation line of plasma lead in relation to mental development index (MDI) score....

Erratum.(Correction notice)
April 1, 2007... The November 2006 Focus article "Fertile Grounds for Inquiry: Environmental Effects on Human Reproduction" [Environ Health Perspect 114:A644-A649 (2006)] contains a potentially misleading typo on page A646. The National Survey on Family Growth...

Red tide chokehold.(MARINE AND COASTAL SCIENCE)
April 1, 2007... The waters of the Gulf of Mexico regularly erupt with algal blooms known as Florida red tides, caused by overgrowth of the dinoflagellate Karenia brevis. These particular red tides release potent neurotoxins called brevetoxins. Several recently...

Mining for glyceollins.(WOMEN'S HEALTH)(Report)
April 1, 2007... In recent years, agricultural scientists have begun to explore novel strategies for isolating plant compounds of potential medicinal value. One such strategy involves exploiting the defense mechanisms of the plant in order to elicit the...

Global map of malaria risk.(The Beat)(Malaria Atlas Project)(Report)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Scientists from the University of Oxford and the Kenya Medical Research Institute have just completed the first data-gathering stage of the Malaria Atlas Project, which will identify populations most at risk for malaria and predict the...

China top C[O.sub.2] producer by 2010.(The Beat)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... An International Energy Agency report issued in November 2006 estimates that China will overtake the United States as the largest producer of carbon dioxide by 2010, a decade sooner than earlier studies projected. A large percentage of the...

Airline rules stir up controversy.(The Beat)(carbon dioxide emission)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... In December 2006 the European Commission proposed new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the airline industry. Such emissions have increased 87% since 1990, and by 2020 are expected to more than double over present levels. The...

New voice for the environment.(INITIATIVES)(National Association of Evangelicals)
April 1, 2007... Intelligent design or Darwinian evolution? Life created in seven days or evolving over billions of years? Religion and science have traditionally been at loggerheads over issues like these, but in January 2007 a group of scientists and...

Toxic legacy.(PESTICIDES)(prenatal exposure)
April 1, 2007... An ongoing prospective cohort study in New York City reveals for the first time that prenatal exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos damages children's neurodevelopment with negative impacts on cognition, motor skills, and possibly behavior....

Climate Institute.(ehpnet)
April 1, 2007... The Washington, DC-based Climate Institute is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to inform a broad spectrum of decision makers around the world about climate change, to raise international awareness of the issue, and to identify...

The sting of climate change.(The Beat)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... The number of people treated for jellyfish stings in Australia doubled to 26,000 between 2005 and 2006. An Australian jellyfish expert warns that the number of people stung each year could continue to rise as rising ocean temperatures may...

Antimicrobial nanoparticles to be regulated.(The Beat)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... The U.S. EPA announced in November 2006 that it would begin regulating consumer items made with nanoparticles of silver, the first time the agency has regulated any nanomaterial. Among the products made with these bactericidal nanoparticles are...

Asbestos found in Korean subways.(The Beat)(Brief article)
April 1, 2007... Inspectors with the Seoul Metro subway in South Korea found asbestos in passenger-accessible sections of 17 of 30 subway stations they inspected in the winter of 2006. This follows a January 2004 Environment International study that found that...

Children's health centers: Past, Present, and Future.(NIEHS News)
April 1, 2007... A physician who conducted some of the first studies documenting the effect of lead poisoning on children. An epidemiologist studying the effects of exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES). A toxicologist pointing out the many different chemical...

Ragweed subpollen particles reach deep into lungs.(Allergies)(Report)
April 1, 2007... Bacsi A, Choudhury BK, Dharajiya N, Sur S, Boldogh I. 2006. Subpollen particles: carriers of allergenic proteins and oxidases. J Allergy Clin Immunol 118:844-850. During the flowering season, high humidity and moisture trigger the release...

Healthy Home, healthy community.(BEYOND THE BENCH)(environmental health promotion; Rochester Healthy Home museum)
April 1, 2007... We like to think of home as a safe haven, but sometimes this shelter can harbor a wide range of health hazards. Children living in urban, low-income, and minority neighborhoods are often at greater risk of exposure to home-based health hazards...

Driven to extremes: health effects of climate change.(FOCUS)
April 1, 2007... Last year was one for the record books. In 2006, the United States experienced the warmest surface temperature since 1895. It was also the eleventh year since 1995 to rank among the warmest worldwide ever recorded. The decade prior saw many...

A changing climate of litigation.(Spheres of Influence)
April 1, 2007... Frustrated by perceived federal reticence to act on the growing scientific evidence of climate change, state governments and environmentalists are increasingly turning their attention to the courts. Broad consensus has developed about the...

Solar thrill: using the sun to cool vaccines.(Innovations)(SolarChill fridge)
April 1, 2007... Using the sun to keep vaccines cool? It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but this is exactly the technology being developed by a partnership between UNEP OzonAction, UNICEF, the WHO, the Danish Technological Institute, Greenpeace, the...

Methylmercury and IQ: dose-response estimate of prenatal effect.(Science Selections)(Report)
April 1, 2007... Methylmercury, the most biologically active mercury compound, is well known to cause serious health effects, particularly to the developing fetal nervous system. Effects can include attention deficits as well as IQ, motor, memory, and language...

Peril of the shallows? Elevated arsenic in kelp supplements.(Science Selections)(Report)(Case study)
April 1, 2007... Kelp, widely consumed in Asian countries, is a growing part of the U.S. supplement market. It generally is marketed as a concentrated source of iodine and other essential minerals. Because kelp is a nutritional supplement and not a drug, the...

Door of perception: NIEHS portal shows way to better disaster response.(Science Selections)(National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
April 1, 2007... Hurricane Katrina--which killed 1,300 people, disrupted the lives of 650,000, and produced an estimated $125 billion in recovery and reconstruction costs--brought the need for better disaster response into sharp focus. In this issue,...

A modified effect on asthma: ozone and secondhand smoke outweigh genetic influence.(Science Selections)
April 1, 2007... Individual variations in genes, known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), help to explain why some children are more susceptible to asthma and allergies. But does exposure to ozone or secondhand smoke alter this genetic susceptibility?...

Human Genes and the Environment Research Training Program.(NIEHS Extramural Update)
April 1, 2007... The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) announce the new Human Genes and the Environment Research Training Program, a component of the NIH Genes and the...

Methodology and measurement in the behavioral and social sciences R01).(Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
April 1, 2007... The behavioral and social sciences offer insights into the comprehensive understanding of human health, including disease etiology and treatment, and the promotion of health and well-being. To encourage the investigation of the impact of social...

The Navajo people and uranium mining.(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally, and Esther Yazzie-Lewis Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. 210 pp. ISBN: 0-8263-3778-3, $29.95 The Navajo People and Uranium Mining, edited by Doug Brugge, Timothy Benally, and...

New books.(Announcements)(environmental health)(Bibliography)
April 1, 2007... Analysis of Global Change Assessments: Lessons Learned Committee on Analysis of Global Change Assessments, National Research Council Washington, DC:National Academies Press, 2007. 206 pp. ISBN: 0-309-10544-7, $38.48 ...