Environmental Health Perspectives articles from February 2005

Environmental Health Perspectives archives from February 2005

Satellite remote sensing can improve chances of achieving sustainable health.(Guest Editorial)
February 1, 2005... The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is a welcomed cooperative in an era when we are becoming "data rich but knowledge poor." With the proliferation of satellite platforms, each monitoring different characteristics of the...

Note from the editors: toxicogenomics update.(Editorial)
February 1, 2005... EHP is continually evolving to meet the needs of our readership. Our intention in publishing a separate section in toxicogenomics for the past 2 years has been to feature research in this emerging field and to use our news articles as an...

Ozone: unrealistic scenarios.(Perspectives / Correspondence)
February 1, 2005... Knowlton et al. (2004) argued that increasing temperatures associated with climate change will increase urban ozone and related health risks. They have disregarded important factors in reaching this conclusion. During the last 20 years,...

Ozone: Kinney et al. respond.(Perspectives / Correspondence)
February 1, 2005... We appreciate the interest taken by Schwartz et al. in our recent article (Knowlton et al. 2004) and welcome the opportunity to respond to their comments. Although they raised several important issues regarding ozone trends, we do not believe...

Inappropriate influence by industry on EHP news article.(Perspectives / Correspondence)
February 1, 2005... We are disturbed at the recent revelation that, before its publication, an EHP Science Selection article on the toxic rocket fuel additive perchlorate (Rennet 2002) was substantially revised by a paid consultant to the perchlorate industry to...

Errata.(Perspectives / Correspondence)(Correction Notice)
February 1, 2005... Siemiatycki et al. have detected some errors in their review of occupational carcinogens published in the November 2004 issue of EHP [Environ Health Perspect 112:1447-1459 (2004)]. Specifically, they inadvertently included in their list of...

Building a tsunami warning system.(Natural Disasters)
February 1, 2005... The 26 December 2004 tsunami that devastated coastal areas in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Somalia was produced by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake 155 kilometers southwest of northern Sumatra. The...

Arctic climate: the heat is on.(Global Warming)
February 1, 2005... In November 2004, the Arctic Council, a coordinating body of the eight Arctic nations (Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia, and the United States) released its Arctic Climate Impact Assessment: Impacts of a Warming Arctic...

NASA for nature.(The Beat)
February 1, 2005... In November 2004 the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and NASA announced the formation of a partnership to use NASA's data, images, and remote sensing capabilities to help the IUCN in its efforts to conserve biodiversity around the world. NASA...

Global warming on the streets.(The Beat)
February 1, 2005... The British government launched an advertising campaign in October 2004 to educate the public about the potential dangers of climate change. The 6 million [pounds sterling] campaign kicked off with the publication of a report detailing the...

Millennium Development progress report.(The Beat)
February 1, 2005... The United Nations has issued a progress report on the Millenium Development Goals, which were set in September 2000 in an attempt to halve world poverty by 2015. Most countries appear on track to halve the number of people without access to...

New clue to heat stress.(Systems Biology)
February 1, 2005... The human body cools itself by increasing blood flow to surface areas and by sweating. When these cooling responses fail, the result may be heat-related injuries such as heat stroke or even death. Although the consequences of impaired heat loss...

The colic connection.(Environmental Tobacco Smoke)
February 1, 2005... The ancient Greeks were the first to describe infant colic, a condition of inconsolable crying that may afflict as many as 28% of U.S. infants, yet the root causes of this malady remain a mystery. Among the theoretical risks are milk and soy...

The Earth Observing System.(ehpnet)
February 1, 2005... In 1991, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) embarked upon the extensive and comprehensive Earth Science Enterprise, a program to help us better understand what is happening on the Earth's surface. The centerpiece of the...

Machu Picchu makeover.(The Beat)
February 1, 2005... The World Bank announced a $5 million loan in September 2004 to go toward protecting the area around Machu Picchu, one of Peru's main tourist and cultural areas and a World Heritage Site. The Peruvian government is contributing an additional...

World progress up in smoke?(The Beat)
February 1, 2005... Up in Smoke, released in October 2004 by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, asserts that global warming could make it impossible to achieve the Millenium Development Goals set in 2000 by the United Nations, and could even...

Green guide for health care.(The Beat)
February 1, 2005... The first-ever sustainable design guidebook for hospitals was released on 22 November 2004 by the Austin, Texas-based Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems. The product of a two-year multistakeholder development process, the guide is...

School's in for summer.(Environews / NIEHS News)
February 1, 2005... While many of her classmates were waiting tables at restaurants during the summer of 2004, Alicia Smith was in an NIEHS lab investigating how exposure to sodium arsenite regulates the procarcinogenic and proinflammatory enzyme cyclooxygenase 2....

Taking action in Northern Manhattan.(beyond the BENCH)
February 1, 2005... Residents of Northern Manhattan face exposure to a multitude of environmental hazards, ranging from those within the home (such as lead-based paint, pesticides, pest allergens, and mold) to a myriad of neighborhood exposures (including two...

Breastfeeding and the risk of childhood leukemia.(Headliners / Childhood Cancer)
February 1, 2005... Kwan ML, Buffler PA, Abrams B, Kiley VA. 2004. Breastfeeding and the risk of childhood leukemia: a meta-analysis. Public Health Rep 119:521-535. Leukemia is the leading cause of cancer deaths in children under age 15 in the United States,...

Terra Cognita: using earth observing systems to understand our world.(Environews / Focus)(Cover Story)
February 1, 2005... Who would believe that a butterfly, by flapping its wings in Peru, could set off a chain of events leading to a monsoon thousands of milesaway? This familiar notion from chaos theory may seem absurd even as it raises a worthy point: Everything...

America's oceans: a blueprint for the future.(Environews / Spheres of Influence)
February 1, 2005... The nation's coasts and oceans are undervalued as an economic force, their ecological value is often misunderstood, and as a resource they are often poorly managed. Around the nation, coastal communities are growing at an explosive pace, but...

Aquatic alchemy.(Environews / Innovations)
February 1, 2005... The average Earthbound American, estimates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), uses nearly 24 gallons of water daily for personal uses such as drinking, toilet flushing, hygiene, and cleaning. International Space Station (ISS) crew...

In the thick of air pollution: particles may contribute to atherosclerosis.(Environews / Science Selections)
February 1, 2005... Fine particles damage more than just the lungs--the effects reach all the way to the inner lining of the arteries, report researchers from the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, led by Nino Kunzli [EHP 113:201-206]....

Airborne bacteria in CAFOs: transfer of resistance from animals to humans.(Environews / Science Selections)
February 1, 2005... Antibiotics are used in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to treat and prevent livestock disease and to bolster animal growth and the nourishment efficiency of feed. These nontherapeutic uses involv2e long-term, low-level dosing...

Topophilia and quality of life: defining the ultimate restorative environment.(Environews / Science Selections)
February 1, 2005... Mental stress is increasingly recognized as an environmental contributor to disease burden in many parts of the world. One way people try to reduce mental stress is through features of the built environment. Architects often give us "nature" in...

Will investments in large-scale prospective cohorts and biobanks limit our ability to discover weaker, less common genetic and environmental contributors to complex diseases?(Research / Commentary)
February 1, 2005... Increasing the size of prospective cohorts and biobanks is one approach to discovering previously unknown contributors to complex diseases, but it may come at the price of concealing contributors that are less common across all the participants...

Developmental neurotoxicity of pyrethroid insecticides: critical review and future research needs.(Research)
February 1, 2005... Pyrethroid insecticides have been used for more than 40 years and account for 25% of the worldwide insecticide market. Although their acute neurotoxicity to adults has been well characterized, information regarding the potential developmental...

Airborne multidrug-resistant bacteria isolated from a concentrated swine feeding operation.(Research)
February 1, 2005... The use of nontherapeutic levels of antibiotics in swine production can select for antibiotic resistance in commensal and pathogenic bacteria in swine. As a result, retail pork products, as well as surface and groundwaters contaminated with...

Topophilia and the quality of life.(Research)
February 1, 2005... With this research I tested the hypothesis that individual preferences for specific ecosystem components and restorative environments are significantly associated with quality of life (QOL). A total of 379 human subjects responded to a...

Developmental exposure to low-dose PBDE-99: effects on male fertility and neurobehavior in rat offspring.(Research)
February 1, 2005... In utero exposure to a single low dose of 2,2',4,4',5-pentabromodiphenyl ether (PBDE-99) disrupts neurobehavioral development and causes permanent effects on the rat male reproductive system apparent in adulthood. PBDEs, a class of flame...

A revised probabilistic estimate of the maternal methyl mercury intake dose corresponding to a measured cord blood mercury concentration.(Research)
February 1, 2005... In 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted a revised reference dose (RfD) for methyl mercury (MeHg) of 0.1 [micro]g/kg/day. The RfD is based on neurologic developmental effects measured in children associated with exposure...

Metals in urine and peripheral arterial disease.(Research)
February 1, 2005... Exposure to metals may promote atherosclerosis. Blood cadmium and lead were associated with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in the 1999-2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). In the present study we evaluated the...

Comparison of ultrastructural cytotoxic effects of carbon and carbon/iron particulates on human monocyte-derived macrophages.(Reasearch)
February 1, 2005... In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the presence of iron in carbon particulates enhances ultrastructural perturbation in human monocyte-derived macrophages (MDMs) after phagocytosis. We used 1-[micro]m synthetic carbon-based...

Exposure to PCBs and p,p'-DDE and human sperm chromatin integrity.(Research)
February 1, 2005... Persistent organochlorine pollutants (POPs) such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p'-DDE), the major metabolite of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), are stable lipophilic compounds widely found in...

An approach to evaluation of the effect of bioremediation on biological activity of environmental contaminants: dechlorination of polychlorinated biphenyls.(Reasearch)
February 1, 2005... The effectiveness of bioremediation efforts is assessed traditionally from the loss of the chemical of interest. In some cases, analytical techniques are coupled with evaluation of toxicity to organisms representative of those found in the...

Use of ecotoxicological tools to evaluate the health of New Bedford Harbor sediments: a microbial biomarker approach.(Research)
February 1, 2005... We have been investigating microbial communities in sediments from New Bedford Harbor (NBH), Massachusetts, USA, for a number of years. NBH is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency--designated Superfund site heavily contaminated with...

Urinary creatinine concentrations in the U.S. population: implications for urinary biologic monitoring measurements.(Research)
February 1, 2005... Biologic monitoring (i.e., biomonitoring) is used to assess human exposures to environmental and workplace chemicals. Urinary biomonitoring data typically are adjusted to a constant creatinine concentration to correct for variable dilutions...

Ambient air pollution and atherosclerosis in Los Angeles.(Research)
February 1, 2005... Associations have been found between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The contribution of air pollution to atherosclerosis that underlies many cardiovascular diseases has not been...

A case of Bowen's disease and small-cell lung carcinoma: long-term consequences of chronic arsenic exposure in Chinese traditional medicine.(Environmental Medicine / Grand Rounds)
February 1, 2005... Chronic arsenic toxicity occurs primarily through inadvertent ingestion of contaminated water and food or occupational exposure, but it can also occur through medicinal ingestion. This case features a 53-year-old lifetime nonsmoker with chronic...

Chlorpyrifos accumulation patterns for child-accessible surfaces and objects and urinary metabolite excretion by children for 2 weeks after crack-and-crevice application.(Children's Health)
February 1, 2005... The Children's Post-Pesticide Application Exposure Study (CPPAES) was conducted to look at the distribution of chlorpyrifos within a home environment for 2 weeks after a routine professional crack-and-crevice application and to determine the...

Organochlorine pesticides and male genital anomalies in the child health and development studies.(Children's Health)
February 1, 2005... Increasing rates of cryptorchidism and hypospadias in human populations may be caused by exogenous environmental agents. We conducted a case-control study of serum levels of p,p'-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its major metabolite,...

Relation of trihalomethane concentrations in public water supplies to stillbirth and birth weight in three water regions in England.(Children's Health)
February 1, 2005... We investigated the association between total trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and risk of stillbirth and low and very low birth weight in three water regions in England, 1992-1998; associations with individual trihalomethanes (THMs) were also examined....

Global gene expression profiling in whole-blood samples from individuals exposed to metal fumes.(Toxicogenomics)
February 1, 2005... Accumulating evidence demonstrates that particulate air pollutants can cause both pulmonary and airway inflammation. However, few data show that particulates can induce systemic inflammatory responses. We conducted an exploratory study using...

Centers for oceans and human health.(Announcements / NIEHS Extramural Update)
February 1, 2005... The NIEHS and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have collaboratively launched four new Centers for Oceans and Human Health and in doing so have established a new paradigm for linking the health and rich resources of the Earth's oceans with...

Fellowships: Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.(Announcements / Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
February 1, 2005... Fellowships: Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research The purpose of this program announcement (PA) is to increase the number of biomedical scientists who are pursuing research involving human embryonic stem cells (HESCs). The recent availability of...

Scholarly works in biomedicine and health.(Announcements / Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
February 1, 2005... The National Library of Medicine (NLM) awards small grants for the preparation of book-length manuscripts and other scholarly works of value to U.S. health professionals, public health officials, biomedical researchers, and historians of the...

Metals in medicine.(Announcements / Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
February 1, 2005... The objective of this program announcement (PA) is to encourage research that bridges the areas of inorganic chemistry and medicine in continuation of PA-01-071. The National Institute of General Medical Science (NIGMS) is joined in this...

Calendar.(Announcements)(Calendar)
February 1, 2005... 2005 March 1-3 March, Tue-Thu. 19th National Conference on Chronic Disease Prevention and Control-Health Disparities: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities. Atlanta, Georgia. Information: 770-488-5131, email: chronicconf@cdc.gov,...

Biomedical Applications of Proteomics.
February 1, 2005... Biomedical Applications of Proteomics Edited by Jean-Charles Sanchez, Garry L. Corthals, and Denis F. Hochstrasser Weinheim:Wiley-VCH, 2004. 435 pp. ISBN: 3-527-30807-5, $186 cloth This book is aimed clearly at those wishing to understand...

New books.(Announcements)
February 1, 2005... A Guide to Methods in the Biomedical Sciences Ronald B. Codey New York:Springer-Verlag, 2005. 166 pp. ISBN: 0-387-22844-6, $69.95 A Land on Fire: The Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom James David Fahn New York:Basic...