Environmental Health Perspectives articles from January 2007

Environmental Health Perspectives archives from January 2007

Farewell and best wishes.(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... With publication of this issue, I have reached a long-planned retirement from the NIEHS and Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The mission of EHP is to serve as a forum for the discussion of the interrelationships between the environment...

Editorial note: new interim editor-in-chief.(Editorial)(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... With this issue, Kenneth S. Korach becomes interim editor-in-chief of EHP. Korach is director of the Environmental Diseases and Medicine Program, chief of the Laboratory of Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology, and chief of the Receptor...

Emerging research on endocrine disruptors.(DIRECTOR'S PERSPECTIVE)
January 1, 2007... For more than three decades, the NIEHS has been one of the recognized leaders in the world in the study of endocrine disruptors, substances that mimic or alter hormonal effects in the body. In the 1970s, NIEHS scientists pioneered research on...

PPAR[alpha] and effects of TCE.(Correspondence)
January 1, 2007... We would like to offer a different opinion on the ideas presented in the article by Keshava and Caldwell (2006). The authors indicated that their article summarized scientific literature published since an earlier U.S. Environmental Protection...

PPAR[alpha] and TCE: Keshava et al. respond.(Correspondence)
January 1, 2007... We appreciate the opportunity to discuss the issues raised by Klaunig et al. in their letter. First, we reiterate that, given the mini-monograph's scope (Chiu et al. 2006), our article (Keshava and Caldwell 2006) was intended not to...

Aspartame not linked to cancer.(Correspondence)
January 1, 2007... In an article published in the March 2006 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) Soffritti et al. (2006) of the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences (ERF) reported that aspartame was associated with an...

Aspartame: Soffritti responds.(Correspondence)
January 1, 2007... As communicated in his letter, Abegaz represents Ajinomoto Corporate Services LLC. Ajinomoto, which holds 45% of the market share for worldwide aspartame production (Ajinomoto 2006), is well known for its aggressive and effective defense of its...

Children's health/regional collaboration to reduce lead exposure in children.(Correspondence)
January 1, 2007... As Safi et al. (2006) discussed, environmental contamination does not stop at international boundaries. An excellent example of a collaborative effort to address regional environmental exposures is that of the public health communities in...

Flawed ethics recommendations of the U.S. EPA's Human Studies Review Board.(Correspondence)
January 1, 2007... The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new rule to protect human research subjects has generated scientific, ethical, and legal controversy (Burton 2006). Addressing pesticide studies submitted by third parties to the U.S. EPA for...

Environmental stain fading fast.(PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS)
January 1, 2007... Shocked that chemical offshoots of his company's products were winding up in polar bears and seals, the CEO of 3M put an end to the existing version of Scotchgard[R] in 2000. Business observers were struck by how quickly this multinational...

Forest fire fallout.(MERCURY)
January 1, 2007... In the summer of 2005, wildfires raged over 3.4 million hectares of Alaska and Canada's northern boreal forests, according to combined figures from the Canadian Large Fire Database and the Alaska Large Fires Database. It was the region's second...

Building on fly ash waste.(RECYCLING)
January 1, 2007... The quantity of fly ash--a waste product from coal smoke--is growing along with the steady global increase in coal use. According to Obada Kayali, a civil engineer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australian Defence Force Academy,...

Dilemma for trachoma treatment?(INFECTIOUS DISEASE)
January 1, 2007... The WHO estimates that trachoma has blinded approximately 8 million people worldwide and threatens the vision of 84 million more, primarily in developing countries. Now a report in the 27 September 2006 issue of JAMA claims that treatment with...

Hazardous hookahs.(The Beat)
January 1, 2007... Trendy waterpipe cafes have sprung up across the Middle East and are starting to appear in the United States, especially in college towns. According to Georgetown University researcher Christopher Loffredo, patrons of these spots often think...

Asthma puts the squeeze on purses.(The Beat)
January 1, 2007... Asthma-related medical costs in the United States have been estimated at nearly $12.7 billion per year. A new study published in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine has used figures from a large...

Sewage in saltwater.(The Beat)
January 1, 2007... The UNEP released its State of the Marine Environment: Trends and Processes report in October 2006. This look at oceans and coastal zones states that although a great deal of progress has been made over the past 20 years in reducing oily wastes...

How much water did your food require?(The Beat)
January 1, 2007... During World Water Week in August 2006, Anders Berntell, head of the Stockholm International Water Institute, suggested that labeling foods to show the amount of water used to produce them could raise awareness among consumers about how much...

Copper and nickel in Chinese soil.(The Beat)
January 1, 2007... The economic boom in China has increased the consumption of metals by the country's industrial and manufacturing sectors. A new Australian and Chinese industry-sponsored research effort was launched in Beijing in September 2006 with the aim of...

Too many full tanks?(The Beat)
January 1, 2007... According to DHHS data, the weight of the average American increased by more than 24 pounds between the years 1960 and 2002. In the October-December 2006 issue of The Engineering Economist, scientists from the University of Illinois at...

NIOSH safety and health topic: lead and lead exposure in adults: a guide for health care providers.(ehpnet)
January 1, 2007... Given the well-documented toxicity of lead, it is important to understand how to identify and avoid exposure. NIOSH and the New York State Department of Health are two entities that have posted lead-related information on the Internet in an...

The chosen ONES: awards fund young investigators.(NIEHS News)
January 1, 2007... A major goal of the 2006 NIEHS Strategic Plan encompasses the institute's desire to "recruit and train the next generation of environmental health scientists." To begin to achieve that goal, the NIEHS has unveiled a new annual grants program...

A new tool to trace genetic susceptibility.(NIEHS News)
January 1, 2007... Just like individual people, various mouse strains come in different sizes and colors, and with different predispositions to disease. Since more than 99% of human genes can be matched to analogous mouse genes that have similar functions,...

PCB exposure affects antibody response in vaccinated children.(Immunity)
January 1, 2007... Heilmann C, Grandjean P, Weihe P, Nielsen F, Budtz-Jorgensen E. 2006. Reduced antibody responses to vaccinations in children exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls. PLoS Med 3(8):e311. Although children are known to display varied antibody...

Prevention pays for farmworkers.(BEYOND THE BENCH)
January 1, 2007... Many agricultural growers use pesticides to protect crops and ensure satisfactory yields. Although the United States has some of the strictest laws governing pesticide applications and re-entry into fields after application, a number of studies...

The weight of lead effects add up in adults.(Focus)
January 1, 2007... Lead toxicity is not a problem of the past, nor is it the exclusive domain of children. In fact, lead continues today to pose a serious threat to the health of many U.S. adults. It's true that in the United States, environmental lead levels...

Beyond batteries portable hydrogen fuel cells.(Innovations)
January 1, 2007... Mention hydrogen fuel cells, and most people envision hydrogen-powered cars as an alternative to the gas-guzzling and polluting internal combustion engine. In fact, many much smaller applications also could benefit from this nonpolluting...

Tamiflu swan song? Building resistance to top avian flu drug.(Science Selections)
January 1, 2007... As the WHO has begun warning of the potential for an avian flu pandemic, governments worldwide have been stockpiling Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate). Tamiflu minimizes flu symptoms and duration by preventing the virus from escaping the cells it...

Does closeness make the heart grow weaker? Heart attacks and proximity to local traffic.(Science Selections)
January 1, 2007... Growing evidence links heart attacks with short-term exposures to vehicle exhaust from nearby streets. Now some of the first evidence that long-term exposures also are a culprit has been published by a team of Massachusetts researchers [EHP...

Ahead by a hair: preterm delivery and maternal mercury intake.(Science Selections)
January 1, 2007... Pregnant women often receive confusing information about whether or not they should consume fish and fish oils. Protein and unsaturated fatty acids in fish confer health benefits. Yet numerous studies have suggested that fish consumption is a...

Signs for girls: biomarkers of common exposures.(Science Selections)
January 1, 2007... Urinary biomarkers are useful measures of environmental agents in the body. However, little is known about levels of such biomarkers in children and how they may vary by race, age, body mass index, and sex. A three-city pilot study reported...

Recipient of the 2006 Karen Wetterhahn Memorial Award.(NIEHS Extramural Update)
January 1, 2007... The Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP) is pleased to announce that Ms. Alicia R. Timme-Laragy of Duke University is the recipient of the ninth annual Karen Wetterhahn Memorial Award. The award was presented to Ms. Timme-Laragy on 12...

CAM at minority or health disparities research centers (R21).(Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
January 1, 2007... The purposes of this initiative are to: 1) stimulate high-quality, preliminary studies of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) at institutions committed to minority health research or health disparities research, as evidenced by having...

Research Project Grant (Parent R01).
January 1, 2007... The Research Project Grant (R01) is an award to support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by named Project Directors/Principal Investigators (PDs/PIs) in areas representing the investigators' specific interests and...

What's Toxic, what's Not.
January 1, 2007... By Gary Ginsberg and Brian Total New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 2006. 384 pp. ISBN: 0-425-21194-0, $15 What's Toxic, What's Not is a great book and one that fills an unmet need for accurate information presented in a nontechnical...

New books.(Announcements)
January 1, 2007... Air Pollution XIV J.W.S. Longhurst, ed. Billerica, MA:WITpress, 2006. 824 pp. ISBN: 1-84564-165-5, $423 Chemicals as Intentional and Accidental Global Environmental Threats Lubomir Simeonov, Elisabeta Chirila, eds. New...

Source of funding and results of studies of health effects of Mobile phone use: systematic review of experimental studies.(Review)(Clinical report)
January 1, 2007... OBJECTIVES: There is concern regarding the possible health effects of cellular telephone use. We examined whether the source of funding of studies of the effects of low-level radiofrequency radiation is associated with the results of studies....

Ethical and scientific issues of nanotechnology in the workplace.(Review)
January 1, 2007... In the absence of scientific clarity about the potential health effects of occupational exposure to nanoparticles, a need exists for guidance in decisionmaking about hazards, risks, and controls. An identification of the ethical issues involved...

The effects of components of fine particulate air pollution on mortality in California: results from CALFINE.(Research)
January 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: Several epidemiologic studies provide evidence of an association between daily mortality and particulate matter DESIGN: We obtained daily data from 2000 to 2003 on mortality and P[M.sub.2.5] mass and components, including...

Polychlorinated biphenyls and their hydroxylated metabolites (OH-PCBs) in pregnant women from eastern Slovakia.(Research)
January 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: Our aim in the present study was to characterize and quantify the levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and specific polychlorobiphenylol (OH-PCB) metabolites in maternal sera from women delivering in eastern Slovakia. ...

Albumin adducts of electrophilic benzene metabolites in benzene-exposed and control workers.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Metabolism of benzene produces reactive electrophiles, including benzene oxide (BO), 1,4-benzoquinone (1,4-BQ), and 1,2-benzoquinone (1,2-BQ), that are capable of reacting with blood proteins to produce adducts. OBJECTIVES: The...

Lead and [delta]-aminolevulinic acid dehydratase polymorphism: where does it lead? a meta-analysis.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Lead poisoning affects many organs in the body. Lead inhibits [delta]-aminolevulinic acid dehydratase (ALAD), an enzyme with two co-dominantly expressed alleles, ALAD1 and ALAD2. OBJECTIVE: Our meta-analysis studied the effects...

Maternal fish consumption, mercury levels, and risk of preterm delivery.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Pregnant women receive mixed messages about fish consumption in pregnancy because unsaturated fatty acids and protein in fish are thought to be beneficial, but contaminants such as methylmercury may pose a hazard. METHODS: In...

Environmental estrogens induce mast cell degranulation and enhance IgE-Mediated release of allergic mediators.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Prevalence and morbidity of allergic diseases have increased over the last decades. Based on the recently recognized differences in asthma prevalence between the sexes, we have examined the effect of endogenous estrogens on a key...

A case-control analysis of exposure to traffic and acute myocardial infarction.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Long-term exposure to particulate air pollution has been associated with an increased risk of dying from cardiopulmonary and ischemic heart disease, yet few studies have evaluated cardiovascular end points other than mortality. We...

Tracking patterns of enteric illnesses in populations and communities.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Enteric illness arising from contaminated water and food is a major health concern worldwide, and tracking the incidences and severity of outbreaks is still a challenging task. Most developed and developing countries have...

Nonenzymatic functions of acetylcholinesterase splice variants in the developmental neurotoxicity of organophosphates: chlorpyrifos, chlorpyrifos oxon, and diazinon.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Organophosphate pesticides affect mammalian brain development through mechanisms separable from the inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzymatic activity and resultant cholinergic hyperstimulation. In the brain, AChE has two...

Polybrominated diphenyl ether levels in the blood of pregnant women living in an agricultural community in California.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Recent studies have raised concerns about polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardant exposures to pregnant women and women of child-bearing age in the United States. Few studies have measured PBDEs in immigrant...

Increased rate of hospitalization for diabetes and residential proximity of hazardous waste sites.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Epidemiologic studies suggest that there may be an association between environmental exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and diabetes. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that residential...

Prenatal bisphenol a exposure induces preneoplastic lesions in the mammary gland in Wistar rats.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Humans are routinely exposed to bisphenol A (BPA), an estrogenic compound that leaches from dental materials, food and beverage containers, and other consumer products. Prenatal exposure to BPA has produced long-lasting and profound...

New insight into intrachromosomal deletions induced by chrysotile in the gpt delta transgenic mutation assay.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Genotoxicity is often a prerequisite to the development of malignancy. Considerable evidence has shown that exposure to asbestos fibers results in the generation of chromosomal aberrations and multilocus mutations using various in...

Screening for developmental neurotoxicity using PC12 cells: comparisons of organophosphates with a carbamate, an organochlorine, and divalent nickel.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: In light of the large number of chemicals that are potential developmental neurotoxicants, there is a need to develop rapid screening techniques. OBJECTIVES: We exposed undifferentiated and differentiating neuronotypic PC12...

Potential risks associated with the proposed widespread use of Tamiflu.(Research)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: The threat of pandemic influenza has focused attention and resources on virus surveillance, prevention, and containment. The World Health Organization has strongly recommended the use of the antiviral drug Tamiflu both to treat and...

Grand rounds: an outbreak of toxic hepatitis among industrial waste disposal workers.(Environmental Medicine)
January 1, 2007... CONTEXT: Industrial waste (which is composed of various toxic chemicals), changes to the disposal process, and addition of chemicals should all be monitored and controlled carefully in the industrial waste industry to reduce the health hazard...

Grand Rounds: could occupational exposure to n-Hexane and other solvents precipitate visual failure in Leber hereditary optic neuropathy?(Environmental Medicine)
January 1, 2007... CONTEXT: Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) is a maternally inherited loss of central vision related to pathogenic mutations in the mitochondrial genome, which are a necessary but not sufficient condition to develop the disease....

Pilot study of urinary biomarkers of phytoestrogens, phthalates, and phenols in girls.(Children's Health)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Hormonally active environmental agents have been measured among U.S. children using exposure biomarkers in urine. However, little is known about their variation by race, age, sex, and geography, and no data exist for newly developed...

Hair manganese and hyperactive behaviors: pilot study of school-age children exposed through tap water.(Children's Health)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Neurotoxic effects are known to occur with inhalation of manganese particulates, but very few data are available on exposure to Mn in water. We undertook a pilot study in a community in Quebec (Canada) where naturally occurring high...

Effect of community of residence on neurobehavioral development in infants and young children in a flower-growing region of Ecuador.(Children's Health)
January 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: In this study we compared neurobehavioral development in Ecuadoran children living in two communities with high potential for exposure to organophosphate (OP) and carbamate pesticides to that of children living in a community with...

Household pesticides and the risk of Wilms tumor.(Children's Health)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND: Previous epidemiologic studies have suggested that exposure to pesticides in utero and during early childhood may increase the risk for development of childhood cancer, including Wilms tumor, a childhood kidney tumor. ...

Risk factors for acute leukemia in children: a review.(Mini-Monograph)(Disease/Disorder overview)
January 1, 2007... Although overall incidence is rare, leukemia is the most common type of childhood cancer. It accounts for 30% of all cancers diagnosed in children younger than 15 years. Within this population, acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) occurs...

Infectious etiologies of childhood leukemia: plausibility and challenges to proof.(Mini-Monograph)
January 1, 2007... Infections as well as environmental exposures are proposed determinants of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), particularly common precursor B-cell ALL (cALL). Lines of investigation test hypotheses that cALL is a rarer result of...

Investigating childhood leukemia in Churchill County, Nevada.(Mini-Monograph)(Disease/Disorder overview)
January 1, 2007... BACKGROUND. Sixteen children diagnosed with acute leukemia between 1997 and 2002 lived in Churchill County, Nevada, at the time of or before their illness. Considering the county population and statewide cancer rate, fewer than two cases would...

Genetic studies of a cluster of acute lymphoblastic leukemia cases in Churchill County, Nevada.(Mini-Monogragp)
January 1, 2007... OBJECTIVE: In a study to identify exposures associated with 15 cases of childhood leukemia, we found levels of tungsten, arsenic, and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene in participants to be higher than mean values reported in the National Report...

An update on cancer cluster activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.(Mini-Monograph)
January 1, 2007... The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to be aware of the need for response to public concern as well as to state and local agency concern about cancer clusters. In 1990 the CDC published the "Guidelines for...