Environmental Health Perspectives articles from March 2002

Environmental Health Perspectives archives from March 2002

Environment economics and human health: efficient pollution control requires that society make value judgments concerning the dollar value of lower mortality and morbidity rates. (Perspectives: Editorial).
March 1, 2002... Environmental economics has made numerous contributions to both the theory and the applied problems surrounding pollution control. Given that the primary benefits of controlling most pollutants are health benefits, there is a close link between...

Visual contrast sensitivity as a diagnostic tool. (Correspondence).
March 1, 2002... In "Possible Estuary-Associated Syndrome: Symptoms, Vision, and Treatment," Shoemaker and Hudnell (1) advocated use of the visual contrast sensitivity (VCS) test as a biomarker to diagnose possible estuary-associated syndrome (PEAS) and to...

Visual contrast sensitivity: response. (Correspondence).
March 1, 2002... We are pleased to respond to the letter from Swinker and Burke regarding our paper "Possible Estuary-Associated Syndrome: Symptoms, Vision, and Treatment" (1), which was published in EHP as a Grand Rounds in Environmental Medicine article....

How do paper houses stack up? (Sustainable Development).
March 1, 2002... In the tale of the Three Little Pigs, children learn that houses made of heavy brick or wood are preferable to those made of lightweight straw. That axiom is being challenged by the reemergence of a building material known as fibrous cement, or...

Men at work--sperm on break. (Reproductive Toxicology).
March 1, 2002... Men who are regularly exposed to moderate to high levels of organic solvents on the job may increase their chances of having a low active sperm count, or reduced sperm motility, report Canadian and British researchers in the October 2001 issue...

Worse for women. (The Beat).
March 1, 2002... On the heels of an earlier survey finding that women are more likely than men to have severe persistent asthma, a new survey of U.S. women with asthma has found that the condition profoundly affects of the lives of female sufferers. Of 500...

Magic mushrooms. (The Beat).
March 1, 2002... Mushrooms are serving a new purpose besides flavoring dishes and sheltering leprechauns. In a promising alternative for toxic waste cleanup known as mycoremediation, strains of mushrooms are being bred to speed up their natural process of...

U.S. Army's new weapon. (The Beat).
March 1, 2002... To make equipment-heavy military operations more fuel-efficient, the U.S. Army's National Automotive Center, along with industry and academic partners, is developing new fuel cell technologies. Technologies currently being tested include...

On the surface: a good idea for killing germs. (Infectious Disease).
March 1, 2002... Consider the travels of the lowly cold germ: First, it latches onto a hand swiping across a drippy nose. From the hand, it makes a cool getaway onto a doorknob, and from there to the hand of another guy, who scratches his own nose and then gets...

Problems with the solution. (Chemical Exposures).
March 1, 2002... Two chemicals singled out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for their potential to damage the ozone layer may also cause human health problems. Based on animal data, one of these chemicals, 1-bromopropane (1-BP), was recently...

Electronic Library of Construction Occupational Safety and Health. (Forum).
March 1, 2002... In the year 2000, construction work had the highest number of fatal work injuries to date, with 1,154 deaths. The construction industry encompasses a wide variety of occupations, and construction workers face not only inherent physical...

The curse of copper. (The Beat).
March 1, 2002... Heavy metal waste generated millennia ago still plagues areas of southern Jordan today. British researchers F. Brian Pyatt and J. P. Grattan found that even though the copper and lead waste from the mining activities of the Babylonians,...

World's lakes on the wane. (The Beat).
March 1, 2002... Many of the world's 5 million freshwater lakes (90% of usable freshwater resources) are at risk of ecologic death, according to William Cosgrove, vice president of the World Water Council. In a November 2001 speech in Otsu, Japan, he said that...

EU gets a taste of new food rules. (The Beat).
March 1, 2002... In November 2001, the EU announced new, stricter limits for dioxins, furans, and PCBs in human food and animal feed. These chemicals, formed as by-products of chemical processes, can cause cancer and reproductive and immune system disorders in...

Allergies a la Carte: is there a problem with genetically modified foods? (NIEHS News).
March 1, 2002... What's in a name? Ask genetically modified (GM) foods. They go by many names, ranging from the sinister ("Frankenfoods") to the adoring ("super crops"), depending on who's doing the naming. Although there are clear benefits to the use of this...

The current of Red Tide Research. (NIEHS News).
March 1, 2002... An interdisciplinary group of scientists from federal and state government, academic, and research institutions have completed the first phase of data collection for human exposure to aerosolized brevetoxins during red tide events. Brevetoxins...

Under construction: building a safer industry. (Focus).
March 1, 2002... Construction is a risky occupation--on a daily basis, construction workers face environmental exposures to many dangerous materials and practices. Drillers, sandblasters, drywall sanders, and brick masons risk inhaling particles of dust, sand,...

Sustainable business makes dollars & sense. (Spheres of Influence).
March 1, 2002... The last decade has marked a radical change in the business of environmental sustainability, say activists and industrialists alike. On the wane--albeit far from extinct -- are "greenwashing" campaigns in which corporations promote sometimes...

The hottest thing in remediation. (Innovations).
March 1, 2002... Scientists and engineers are exploring a new way to decontaminate soil at toxic waste sites by literally turning up the heat on pollutants. By beating the ground using electricity or steam, contaminants are volatilized or otherwise...

Linking emissions to admissions: P[M.sub.2.5] and respiratory health. (Science Selections).
March 1, 2002... It may seem self-evident that living close to a busy street with its many automotive pollutants can have adverse effects on respiratory health, but documenting such a relationship with sufficient rigor to be considered scientifically valid has...

The paths of chlorpyrifos: quantifying aggregate exposures. (Science Selections).
March 1, 2002... Chlorpyrifos, once one of the most widely used pesticides in the United States, was banned from home and garden use in June 2000 after federally mandated risk assessments concluded that children are more sensitive to the pesticide than...

How earplugs can help your heart: health effects of noise pollution. (Science Selections).
March 1, 2002... Noise exposure can lead to small increases in blood pressure readings and possibly even increases in cardiovascular disease prevalence, conclude researchers from the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, the...

Metabonomics: mining for metabolites in biofluids. (Extramurally Speaking ...).
March 1, 2002... Metabolites are the products and by-products of the many intricate biosynthesis and catabolism pathways that exist in humans and other living systems. Historically, measurement of metabolites in human biofluids has been used for the diagnosis...

Fellowships, grants, & awards.
March 1, 2002... Dissertation Research Grants for Underrepresented Minorities in the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of Genetics Research This PA is meant to stimulate and encourage underrepresented minority doctoral candidates from a variety...

Calendar.
March 1, 2002... April 2-5 April, Tue-Fri. SESHA 2002: Semiconductor Environmental Safety & Health Association 24th Annual Symposium and Exhibition. Palm Springs, California. Information: Lori Strong/Sue Burk, 1313 Dolley Madison Boulevard, Suite...

New books.
March 1, 2002... Changing by Degrees: The Potential Impacts of Climate Change in the East Midlands Simon Shackley, Jim Kersey, Rob Wilby, Paul Fleming Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2001, 308 pp. ISBN: 0-7546-1140-X, $79.95 Contaminated...

Appraisal of knowledge and attitude of Akwa Ibomites toward a sustainable environment in Nigeria. (Commentary).
March 1, 2002... Developing countries are constantly and continuously confronted with a myriad of health and environmental problems that threaten the efforts to establish and maintain safe air and water supplies. Nigeria, in general, and Akwa Ibom State, in...

Impact of current Good Manufacturing Practices and emission regulations and guidances on the discharge of pharmaceutical chemicals into the environment from manufacturing, use, and disposal. (Research Review).
March 1, 2002... The current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) and effluent emission (use and disposal) regulations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and manufacturing effluent discharge and emission regulations of the U.S. Environmental...

A combined analysis of the short-term effects of photochemical air pollutants on mortality within the EMECAM project. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... In recent years, some epidemiologic studies have attributed adverse effects of air pollutants on health not only to particles and sulfur dioxide but also to photochemical air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide and ozone). The effects are usually...

Environmental organochlorines and semen quality: results of a pilot study. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... There have been numerous studies that suggest that sperm concentrations (sperm counts) are declining in men. However, other studies suggest that sperm counts are not declining or may be increasing in some areas. Although there is disagreement...

Analysis of aggregate exposure to chlorpyrifos in the NHEXAS-Maryland investigation. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... As part of the National Human Exposure Assessment Survey (NHEXAS) in Maryland, we collected indoor air, carpet dust, exterior soil, and duplicate diet samples from a stratified random sample of 80 individuals to evaluate aggregate daily...

Circulating testosterone and prostate-specific antigen in nipple aspirate fluid and tissue are associated with breast cancer. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... Preliminary evidence has associated testosterone and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) with breast cancer. Our objective was to determine whether a) testosterone levels in nipple aspirate fluid (NAF), serum, or breast tissue are associated with...

Sexually dimorphic behavioral responses to prenatal dioxin exposure. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... Pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats received a single oral dose of 0, 20, 60, or 180 ng/kg 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin on day 8 of gestation. Each litter contributed a single male-female pair trained to press a lever to obtain food pellets...

Partitioning of benzene in blood: influence of hemoglobin type in humans and animals. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... Earlier studies have shown that air/blood partition coefficients (PCs) for many volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) are much higher in rat blood than in human blood. It has been suggested that the discrepancy could be attributed to the fact that...

The relationship between lead in plasma and whole blood in women. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... Studies have suggested that plasma lead levels may better reflect the toxicologically labile fraction of circulatory Pb that is more freely available for exchange with target tissues than do Pb levels in whole blood. Studies have also reported...

Octylphenol (OP) alters the expression of members of the amyloid protein family in the hypothalamus of the snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina serpentina. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... The gonadal estrogen estradiol-17[beta] ([E.sub.2]) is important for developing and regulating hypothalamic function and many aspects of reproduction in vertebrates. Pollutants such as octylphenol (OP) that mimic the actions of estrogens are...

Octylphenol and UV-B radiation alter larval development and hypothalamic gene expression in the leopard frog (Rana pipiens). (Articles).
March 1, 2002... We assessed octylphenol (OP), an estrogenic endocrine-disrupting chemical, and UV-B radiation, a known stressor in amphibian development, for their effects on hypothalamic gene expression and premetamorphic development in the leopard frog (Rana...

Cancer in wildlife, a case study: beluga from the St. Lawrence Estuary, Quebec, Canada. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... A population of approximately 650 beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) inhabits a short segment of the St. Lawrence estuary (SLE). Over 17 years (1983-1999), we have examined 129 (or 49%) of 263 SLE beluga carcasses reported stranded. The major...

Effect of motor vehicle emissions on respiratory health in an urban area. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... Motor vehicles emit particulate matter < 2.5 [micro]m in diameter (P[M.sub.2.5]), and as a result, P[M.sub.2.5] concentrations tend to be elevated near busy streets. Studies of the relationship between motor vehicle emissions and respiratory...

Mitochondrial membrane potential: a novel biomarker of oxidative environmental stress. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... Epidemiologic analyses, traditionally based on long-term cohort or case-control studies, provide retrospective causal associations between exposure to a particular environmental stressor and an exposure-related disease end point. Recent...

The association between noise exposure and blood pressure and ischemic heart disease: a meta-analysis. (Articles).
March 1, 2002... It has been suggested that noise exposure is associated with blood pressure changes and ischemic heart disease risk, but epidemiologic evidence is still limited. Furthermore, most reviews investigating these relations were not carried out in a...

Childhood cancer and agricultural pesticide use: an ecologic study in California. (Children's Health Article).
March 1, 2002... We analyzed population-based childhood cancer incidence rates throughout California in relation to agricultural pesticide use. During 1988-1994, a total of 7,143 cases of invasive cancer were diagnosed among children under 15 years of age in...