Environmental Health Perspectives articles from March 2005

Environmental Health Perspectives archives from March 2005

Lakes in crisis.(Editorial)
March 1, 2005... As Scott Fields points out in his Focus article (Fields 2005), the Great Lakes are one of the most important water resources on Earth. Together the five lakes contain around 20% of the surface freshwater on the planet. The Great Lakes basin is...

Pesticide spraying and health effects.(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... I noticed with interest the article "Pesticide Spraying for West Nile Virus Control and Emergency Department Asthma Visits in New York City, 2000" by Karpati et al. (2004). I am a physician who treats hundreds of patients with chronic illness...

Pesticides and health effects: Karpati et al. respond.(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... In her letter, Ziem raises the issue of exacerbations of respiratory illness and other health effects of pesticide exposure that we did not measure in our study (Karpati et al. 2004). Our analysis was designed to evaluate only whether a...

"Epidemiology of health effects of radiofrequency exposure".(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... In a recently published review (Kundi et al. 2004) on mobile phone use and cancer, we concluded that Epidemiological studies that approached reasonable latencies [time period between first exposure and diagnosis] consistently...

Epidemiology of radiofrequency exposure: Ahlbom et al. respond.(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... We thank Kundi for his comments on our review of the epidemiologic literature on health effects of radiofrequency exposure (Ahlbom et al. 2004). He points out, quite correctly, that our assessment of the literature differs from the one he and...

Listing occupational carcinogens.(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... The review by Siemiatycki et al. (2004) is extremely valuable, and I am sure I will refer to it often in the future. However, I would like clarification on the risk classification of some chemicals. In the text the authors state that some...

David Rall and the National Toxicology Program.(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... Concerning the 25 year history and milestones of the National Toxicology Program (NTP), McGovern (2004) failed to acknowledge the huge conceptual and leadership contributions provided by David P. Rall (1926-1999) in the creation, development,...

Potential selection biases.(Correspondence)
March 1, 2005... In a recent article we reported an association [adjusted odds ratios (ORs) in the range of 2-3] between the concentrations of specific phthalates in dust from children's bedrooms and doctor-diagnosed disease among children (Bornehag et al....

Streamside solution.(Remediation)
March 1, 2005... There are more than 3 million miles of streams in the United States, forming a significant part of our total watershed. Human activity frequently results in streamside vegetation being cut back or damaged, which can destabilize the stream bank...

Genes and sensitivity.(Chemical Exposures)
March 1, 2005... People who suffer from multiple chemical intolerances, a condition sometimes referred to as "multiple chemical sensitivity," report wide-ranging symptoms such as headaches, short-term memory problems, confusion, fatigue, depression,...

LAX pays its neighbors back.(The Beat)
March 1, 2005... A first-of-its-kind community benefits agreement was signed in December 2004, providing a benefits package worth millions in coming years to residents living near Los Angeles International Airport. The airport, the second largest industrial...

Cookstove monitors tested in Honduras.(The Beat)
March 1, 2005... Handmade wood-fueled cookstoves are widely used throughout the developing world. The smoky stoves produce large amounts of particulate matter inside the home, affecting the health of everyone living there, especially women and children, who...

Watch out, worms!(The Beat)
March 1, 2005... What do colorless, see-through, tube-shaped organisms made up of only 959 cells have in common with laboratory rats... and with humans? A new five-year, $4 million study at Duke University funded by the National Toxicology Program seeks to...

Investigating indoor air.(Meeting Report)
March 1, 2005... Americans spend about 85-95% of their time indoors, and in recent years, the indoor environment and its potential effects on health have become the subject of increasing research attention. Seeking to explore the existing knowledge and...

New chlorpyrifos link?(Cancer)
March 1, 2005... Chlorpyrifos, one of the most widely used organophosphate insecticides in the United States, is a known neurotoxicant, but is it carcinogenic too? A team of National Cancer Institute (NCI) researchers recently reported on the first...

Great Lakes Information Network.(ehpnet)
March 1, 2005... The Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN) is a partnership of public and private organizations managed by the Great Lakes Commission, an eight-state compact agency. The GLIN website, located at http://www.great-lakes.net/, serves as a central...

Overfishing and bushmeat.(The Beat)
March 1, 2005... Companies from the European Union fish heavily off the West African coast, with financial subsidies for fleets topping $350 million in 2001. Now a report published 12 November 2004 in Science states that declining fish stocks--down by at least...

Counting sea creatures.(The Beat)
March 1, 2005... It is believed that only 5% of the world's oceans have been explored so far, but new technologies are opening up new areas of the underwater world every day. In November scientists announced they had discovered 106 new species of fish in 2004...

Anchoring toxic "ghost ships".(The Beat)
March 1, 2005... The parties to the Basel Convention affirmed in October 2004 that aging oceangoing ships, often called "ghost ships," are to be considered toxic waste under international law, meaning they cannot be exported for dismantling. Until now such...

A center of a different stripe.(NIEHS News)
March 1, 2005... What do tiny black-and-white-striped zebrafish have in common with human beings? As it turns out, quite a lot. The zebrafish and other aquatic model organisms are helping researchers to better understand complex biomedical questions including...

Tox-in-a-Box.(beyond the Bench)
March 1, 2005... The Tox Ambassador--a scientist visiting from a nearby university--squeezes several drops of blue dye into three different-sized beakers of water. The audience of sixth-grade students can easily see that although the same amount of dye is put...

Lead accumulation may lead to cataracts.(Lead Exposure and Vision)
March 1, 2005... Schaumberg DA, Mendes F, Balaram M, Dana MR, Sparrow D, Hu H. 2004. Accumulated lead exposure and risk of age-related cataract in men. JAMA 292:2750-2754. Although lead toxicity in humans had been recognized for centuries, lead was widely...

Great Lakes: resource at risk.(Focus)
March 1, 2005... For centuries the Great Lakes have been treated callously. These five magnificent lakes--Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario--located along the eastern half of the Canadian-U.S. border have served as a virtual sewer catching waste from...

The Great Lakes: awash in policies.(Spheres of Influence)
March 1, 2005... When a national resource has 8,300 miles of shoreline and 6 quadrillion gallons of fresh water--making it the largest surface freshwater system on Earth--it's bound to attract some attention. Now surround that resource with eight states, two...

An ounce of prevention from a ton of tomatoes.(Innovations)
March 1, 2005... Tomato processors enhancing the health of consumers with their nutrient-rich tomato extract soon may enhance the health of their communities as they adopt a new, green technique for producing the precious substance. A team of researchers from...

Fewer frogs in Illinois: organochlorines may be to blame.(Science Selections)
March 1, 2005... To understand the worldwide decline in amphibian populations, many researchers are looking at the current use of industrial compounds that disrupt endocrine function and lead to impaired reproduction. But a group of researchers in Illinois...

Pesticides and SLE: is the link estrogenic?(Science Selections)
March 1, 2005... Autoimmune diseases are multifactorial in nature and likely involve both environmental and genetic components. Estrogen is one environmental component that has been studied in relation to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) based on a number of...

Choosing safe fish: too little data on the menu.(Science Selections)
March 1, 2005... In recent years, both the benefits and the potential health risks of eating certain types of fish have been well publicized. Consumption advisories by government agencies as well as media reports have raised public awareness of high mercury...

Can lessons from public health disease surveillance be applied to environmental public health tracking?(Commentary)
March 1, 2005... Disease surveillance has a century-long tradition in public health, and environmental data have been collected at a national level by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for several decades. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and...

Urinary trivalent methylated arsenic species in a population chronically exposed to inorganic arsenic.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Chronic exposure to inorganic arsenic (iAs) has been associated with increased risk of various forms of cancer and of noncancerous diseases. Metabolic conversions of iAs that yield highly toxic and genotoxic methylarsonite ([MAs.sup.III]) and...

Occupational exposure to crystalline silica dust in the United States, 1988-2003.(Research)
March 1, 2005... The purposes of this study were a) to summarize measurements of airborne (respirable) crystalline silica dust exposure levels among U.S. workers, b) to provide an update of the 1990 Stewart and Rice report on airborne silica exposure levels in...

Intersexuality and the cricket frog decline: historic and geographic trends.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Exposure to anthropogenic endocrine disruptors has been listed as one of several potential causes of amphibian declines in recent years. We examined gonads of 814 cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) collected in Illinois and deposited in museum...

Mercury in commercial fish: optimizing individual choices to reduce risk.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Most attention to the risks from fish consumption has focused on recreational anglers and on fish caught by individuals, but the majority of fish that people eat are purchased from commercial sources. We examined mercury levels in three types...

PCB exposure and in vivo CYP1A2 activity among native Americans.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Cytochrome P-450 1A2 (CYP1A2) is an enzyme involved in the metabolic activation of some carcinogens and is believed to be induced by xenobiotics. Very few studies, however, have investigated the association between environmental exposures and...

Binding of estrogenic compounds to recombinant estrogen receptor-[alpha]: application to environmental analysis.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Estrogenic activity in environmental samples could be mediated through a wide variety of compounds and by various mechanisms. High-affinity compounds for estrogen receptors (ERs), such as natural or synthetic estrogens, as well as low-affinity...

Occupational exposure to carbofuran and the incidence of cancer in the agricultural health study.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Carbofuran is a carbamate insecticide registered for use on a variety of food crops including corn, alfalfa, rice, and tobacco. An estimated 5 million pounds of carbofuran is used annually in the United States, and 45% of urban African-American...

Association of ambient air pollution with respiratory hospitalization in a government-designated "area of concern": the case of Windsor, Ontario.(Research)
March 1, 2005... This study is part of a larger research program to examine the relationship between ambient air quality and health in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. We assessed the association between air pollution and daily respiratory hospitalization for...

Necessity to measure PCBs and organochlorine pesticide concentrations in human umbilical cords for fetal exposure assessment.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Three types of tissue samples--umbilical cord (UC), umbilical cord serum (CS), and maternal serum (MS)--have often been used to assess fetal exposure to chemicals. In order to know the relationship of contamination between mothers and fetuses,...

Effects of air pollution on heart rate variability: the VA normative aging study.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Reduced heart rate variability (HRV), a marker of poor cardiac autonomic function, has been associated with air pollution, especially fine particulate matter [< 2.5 [micro]m in aerodynamic diameter (P[M.sub.2.5])]. We examined the relationship...

The role of syntrophic associations in sustaining anaerobic mineralization of chlorinated organic compounds.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Stable associations of syntrophic fermentative organisms and populations that consume fermentation products play key roles in the anaerobic biodegradatiun of chlorinated organic contaminants. The involvement of these syntrophic populations is...

Comparison of biostimulation versus bioaugmentation with bacterial strain PM1 for treatment of groundwater contaminated with methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE).(Research)
March 1, 2005... Widespread contamination of groundwater by methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) has triggered the exploration of different technologies for in situ removal of the pollutant, including biostimulation of naturally occurring microbial communities or...

Acceleration of autoimmunity by organochlorine pesticides in (NZB x NZW)[F.sub.1] mice.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder that affects women more frequently than men. In the (NZB x NZW)[F.sub.1] mouse, a murine SLE model, the presence or absence of estrogen markedly influences the rate of progression of...

Assessment of estrogenic endocrine-disrupting chemical actions in the brain using in vivo somatic gene transfer.(Research)
March 1, 2005... Estrogenic endocrine-disrupting chemicals abnormally stimulate vitellogenin gene expression and production in the liver of many male aquatic vertebrates. However, very few studies demonstrate the effects of estrogenic pollutants on brain...

Summary of a workshop on the development of health models and scenarios: strategies for the future.(Workgroup Report)
March 1, 2005... A workshop was convened in July 2003 by the Global Change Research Program, Office of Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to review current strategies for developing human health models and scenarios in the...

Vascular dysfunction in patients with chronic arsenosis can be reversed by reduction of arsenic exposure.(Environmental Medicine)
March 1, 2005... Chronic arsenic exposure causes vascular diseases associated with systematic dysfunction of endogenous nitric oxide. Replacement of heavily arsenic-contaminated drinking water with low-arsenic water is a potential intervention strategy for...

Children's exposure to volatile organic compounds as determined by longitudinal measurements in blood.(Children's Health)
March 1, 2005... Blood concentrations of 11 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were measured up to four times over 2 years in a probability sample of more than 150 children from two poor, minority neighborhoods in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Blood levels of benzene,...

Asthma and farm exposures in a cohort of rural Iowa children.(Children's Health)
March 1, 2005... Epidemiologic studies of farm children are of international interest because farm children are less often atopic, have less allergic disease, and often have less asthma than do nonfarm children--findings consistent with the hygiene hypothesis....

Home dampness and molds, parental atopy, and asthma in childhood: a six-year population-based cohort study.(Children's Health)
March 1, 2005... Previous studies of how parental atopy and exposure to dampness and molds contribute to the risk of asthma have been mainly cross-sectional or prevalent case-control studies, where selection and information bias and temporality constitute...

Racial differences in exposure to environmental tobacco smoke among children.(Children's Health)
March 1, 2005... Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among U.S. children. Despite African-American children's having a lower reported exposure to tobacco compared to whites, they suffer disproportionately...

Joining forces to understand Parkinson disease.(NIEHS Extramural Update)
March 1, 2005... Parkinson disease (PD) continues to be a high research priority at the NIEHS. The institute currently supports a broad scope of research, from molecular epidemiology studies of environmental risk and protective factors for PD to basic...

Fellowships: human embryonic stem cell research.(Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
March 1, 2005... 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 HESCs for federally funded research affords a...

Scholarly works in biomedicine and health.(Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
March 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.(Fellowships, Grants, & Awards)
March 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)
March 1, 2005... April 2-6 April, Sat-Wed. Experimental Biology 2005. San Diego, California. Information: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814 USA, 301-634-7000, Internet:...

Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities.
March 1, 2005... Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities By Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson Washington, DC:Island Press, 2004. 338 pp. ISBN: 1-55963-912-1, $60 cloth. The press has...

New books.(Announcements)
March 1, 2005... Basic Cell Culture Protocols, 3rd ed. Cheryl D. Helgason, Cindy L. Miller Totowa, NJ:Humana Press, 2004. 384 pp. ISBN: 1-58829-284-3, $125 Cell Migration in Development and Disease Doris Wedlich Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005....