Environmental Health Perspectives articles from October 2006

Environmental Health Perspectives archives from October 2006

HEALing in New Orleans.(DIRECTOR'S PERSPECTIVE)
October 1, 2006... A year ago Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving devastation in its wake--whole communities ripped from their foundations, the displacement of thousands of people from their homes, and a...

OP pesticides, organic diets, and children's health.(Correspondence)
October 1, 2006... The importance of "judicious use of language in regard to public communication of pesticide health risks" (Lu et al. 2006b) is clearly recognized and acknowledged in recent letters from Avery (2006) and Lu et al. (2006b). Their correspondence...

OP pesticides, organic diets, and children's health: Lu et al. respond.(Correspondence)
October 1, 2006... Krieger et al. criticize the misrepresentation of our recent paper (Lu et al. 2006) with respect to the relevance to health risk reduction of dietary organophosphorus (OP) pesticide exposure in children. They argue that current OP exposures,...

Prolactin changes as a consequence of chemical exposure.(Correspondence)
October 1, 2006... We read with great interest the article by de Burbure et al. (2006) on health effects in children who live near nonferrous smelters in France, the Czech Republic, and Poland. We were especially interested in the inverse relationship found...

Prolactin changes as a consequence of chemical exposure: de Burbure and Bernard respond.(Correspondence)
October 1, 2006... We appreciate the letter from Alessio and Lucchini concerning the number and variety of toxicants able to affect serum prolactin levels. Reflecting on the wide variability of the currently available data, we would like to make two additional...

The new lore of spores.(ALLERGIES)
October 1, 2006... When it comes to allergies, not all fungi are created equal, according to a study by University of Cincinnati researchers published in the September 2006 issue of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology. Exposure to certain fungal spores can make...

Looking hard at early exposures.(MEETING REPORT)
October 1, 2006... Children's health was the focus of almost 30 different sessions at the International Conference on Environmental Epidemiology and Exposure, held 2-6 September 2006 in Paris. Exposure to environmental toxicants early in life, and even parental...

Too much of a good thing?(REPRODUCTIVE TOXICITY)
October 1, 2006... Pregnant women are famously exhorted to faithfully take their daily prenatal vitamins, which often contain iron and other minerals. But new research suggests that a weekly iron supplement coinciding with the renewal of the small intestine's...

Standards vary for EH curricula.(EDUCATION)
October 1, 2006... Environmental health science is getting short shrift in some K-12 schools, according to an analysis in the May 2006 Journal of Geoscience Education. Students in some states "study the air, water, rocks, plants, and animals, but don't study any...

Don't hold your breath for new inhalers.(The Beat)
October 1, 2006... In response to a federal push to remove chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from asthma inhalers by December 2008, some manufacturers have already stopped production of CFC-containing inhalers and are employing a new, more environmentally friendly...

A yen for better farm chemical rules.(The Beat)
October 1, 2006... Strict new rules for farm chemicals such as pesticides and veterinary medicines took effect in Japan on 1 June 2006. The rules establish maximum residue limits for 799 chemicals, more than triple the number previously regulated. A blanket limit...

Sounding off on school noise.(The Beat)
October 1, 2006... Many schools use sound amplification systems to help teachers be better heard in their classrooms, but according to a policy statement issued in June 2006 by the Acoustical Society of America, such systems actually make the situation worse. Use...

Blue Planet Run.(The Beat)
October 1, 2006... In the summer of 2007 Dow Chemical and the Blue Planet Run Foundation will cosponsor the first Blue Planet Run, a worldwide relay with runners coursing across 22 countries, 24 hours a day, for more than 3 months. The aim of the run is to raise...

Good science for girls.(The Beat)
October 1, 2006... Nearly 90% of U.S. engineers are male. To help bridge this gender gap, the New Jersey Institute of Technology has developed Femme, a program of five-week summer classes to encourage girls in grades 4-9 to aspire to careers in science and...

A bevy of biodegradables.(The Beat)
October 1, 2006... In an effort to help stem the massive stream of waste dumped into landfills, new corn-based plastic bottles have recently hit the market in Great Britain and the United States, where millions of plastic bottles are used each day. The containers...

Global initiative on Children's environmental health indicators.(ehpnet)
October 1, 2006... More than 22,000 people came together in the late summer of 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development. According to Using Indicators to Measure Progress on Children's Environmental Health: A Call to...

NTP draft brief on DEHP.(NIEHS News)
October 1, 2006... Questions about the safety of the plasticizer di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), particularly in regards to exposure during medical procedures such as transfusions, have swirled for decades, but especially in the last several years, given...

A two-way street: building lasting community connections.(BEYOND THE BENCH)
October 1, 2006... It is human nature to remain committed to endeavors in which one feels personally invested. For the parents and children involved in studies at the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research, most of...

Effects in infants from tobacco smoke, mold, and older siblings.(Respiratory Health)
October 1, 2006... Many environmental exposures have been confirmed to affect children's respiratory health, but few have been studied in very young children. Now NIEHS grantees Grace K. LeMasters, Jocelyn M. Biagini, and their colleagues at the University of...

Caring for children amidst chaos: guidelines to maintain health.(Focus)
October 1, 2006... It is a simple fact that young children are those most likely to die during humanitarian crises caused by famine, war, and natural disasters. Relief agencies are keenly aware of this and do their utmost to save as many young lives as possible...

Registering skepticism: does the EPA's pesticide review protect children?(Spheres of Influence)
October 1, 2006... When the EPA announced on 3 August 2006 that it had completed a 10-year review of U.S. pesticide safety, the agency issued a statement full of optimism from administrator Stephen L. Johnson: "By maintaining the highest ethical and scientific...

Embryonic insight: mouse histology in 3-D.(Innovations)
October 1, 2006... Histology, the study of how cells are organized into tissue, is a keystone of the biological sciences. For decades, histologists have depended upon methods such as the tried-and-true slides of stained tissue sections. Although much has been...

Swimming in allergens? Pool use and asthma.(Science Selections)
October 1, 2006... Atopic asthma (inflammation of the airways caused by exposure to airborne allergens) has become increasingly prevalent since the 1960s and is now the most common chronic childhood disease in the United States and many other industrialized...

This little PBDE went to market: estimating intake from grocery store foods.(Science Selections)
October 1, 2006... High concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) found in the U.S. population are a cause for concern because of these compounds' similarity to polychlorinated biphenyls. Unlike the latter, which have recently decreased in blood...

Faulty folic acid assumptions: prenatal supplements not always a good idea.(Science Selections)
October 1, 2006... Dietary folic acid supplementation in women of childbearing age has been a major public health success story, reducing the incidence of neural tube defects (NTDs) by an estimated 50-70%. The CDC currently recommends that all women of...

A backpack's worth of data: elevated teen cancer risks linked to air pollution.(Science Selections)
October 1, 2006... It is difficult to assess the cancer risks associated with exposures to air pollutants because much of the health focus has been on the major outdoor pollutants; far less is known about exposures inside homes and buildings, where pollutants may...

Building research capacity in developing nations.(NIEHS Extramural Update)
October 1, 2006... The NIEHS Strategic Plan for 2006-2011, New Frontiers in Environmental Sciences and Human Health, lays out a vision for establishing a global effort in the environmental health sciences. A central component of that vision is the establishment...

Power, justice, and the environment: a critical appraisal of the environmental justice movement.
October 1, 2006... Edited by David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2005. 339 pp. ISBN: 0-262-16233-4, $25 Over the past 18 years, hundreds of books have been published on the environmental justice movement (EJM); however, this...

New books.(Announcements)
October 1, 2006... A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment Warwick Fox Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2006. 400 pp. ISBN: 0-262-06255-0, $68 Analyzing International Environmental Regimes Helmut Breitmeier,...

Social ecology of children's vulnerability to environmental pollutants.(Commentary)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: The outcomes of exposure to neurotoxic chemicals early in life depend on the properties of both the chemical and the host's environment. When our questions focus on the toxicant, the environmental properties tend to be regarded as...

Stable isotopic tracing--a way forward for nanotechnology.(Commentary)
October 1, 2006... Numerous publications and reports have expressed health and safety concerns about the production and use of nanoparticles, especially in areas of exposure monitoring, personal use, and environmental fate and transport. We suggest that stable...

Ozone's impact on public health: contributions from indoor exposures to ozone and products of ozone-initiated chemistry.(Review)
October 1, 2006... OBJECTIVE: The associations between ozone concentrations measured outdoors and both morbidity and mortality may be partially due to indoor exposures to ozone and ozone-initiated oxidation products. In this article I examine the contributions of...

Adrenocortical response to stress and thyroid hormone status in free-living nestling white storks (Ciconia ciconia) exposed to heavy metal and arsenic contamination.(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Endocrine parameters have proven useful in the detection of early or low-level responses to pollutants. Although most of the studies on endocrine modulation have been focused on processes involving gonadal steroids,...

Saxitoxin puffer fish poisoning in the United States, with the first report of Pyrodinium bahamense as the putative toxin source.(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: From January 2002 to May 2004, 28 puffer fish poisoning (PFP) cases in Florida, New Jersey, Virginia, and New York were linked to the Indian River Lagoon (IRL) in Florida. Saxitoxins (STXs) of unknown source were first identified in...

Mortality and exposure response among 14,458 electrical capacitor manufacturing workers exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: We expanded an existing cohort of workers (n = 2,588) considered highly exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at two capacitor manufacturing plants to include all workers with at least 90 days of potential PCB exposure during...

Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) levels in an expanded market basket survey of U.S. food and estimated PBDE dietary intake by age and sex.(Research)
October 1, 2006... OBJECTIVES: Our objectives in this study were to expand a previously reported U.S. market basket survey using a larger sample size and to estimate levels of PBDE intake from food for the U.S. general population by sex and age. METHODS: We...

Cancer incidence among pesticide applicators exposed to dicamba in the Agricultural Health Study.(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: Dicamba is an herbicide commonly applied to crops in the United States and abroad. We evaluated cancer incidence among pesticide applicators exposed to dicamba in the Agricultural Health Study, a prospective cohort of licensed...

Nitrate intake does not influence bladder cancer risk: the Netherlands Cohort Study.(Research)
October 1, 2006... OBJECTIVES: N-nitroso compounds, endogenously formed from nitrate-derived nitrite, are suspected to be important bladder carcinogens. However, the association between nitrate exposure from food or drinking water and bladder cancer has not been...

Public health impact of extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields.(Research)
October 1, 2006... INTRODUCTION: The association between exposure to extremely low-frequency electric and magnetic fields (ELF) and childhood leukemia has led to the classification of magnetic fields by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a...

Blood lead levels and death from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer: results from the NHANES III mortality study.(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: Analyses of mortality data for participants examined in 1976-1980 in the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES II) suggested an increased risk of mortality at blood lead levels > 20 [micro]g/dL. Blood lead...

Organophosphate insecticides target the serotonergic system in developing rat brain regions: disparate effects of diazinon and parathion at doses spanning the threshold for cholinesterase inhibition.(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: In the developing brain, serotonin (5HT) systems are among the most sensitive to disruption by organophosphates. OBJECTIVES: We exposed neonatal rats to daily doses of diazinon or parathion on postnatal days (PND)1-4 and...

Neural tube defects and folate pathway genes: family-based association tests of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions.(Research)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: Folate metabolism pathway genes have been examined for association with neural tube defects (NTDs) because folic acid supplementation reduces the risk of this debilitating birth defect. Most studies addressed these genes...

Persistence of symptoms in veterans of the first Gulf War: 5-year follow-up.(Environmental Medicine)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: During the 1990-1991 Gulf War, approximately 700,000 U.S. troops were deployed to the Persian Gulf theater of operations. Of that number, approximately 100,000 have presented medical complaints through various registry and...

A cancer risk assessment of inner-city teenagers living in New York City and Los Angeles.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: The Toxics Exposure Assessment Columbia-Harvard (TEACH) project assessed exposures and cancer risks from urban air pollutants in a population of high school teenagers in New York City (NYC) and Los Angeles (LA). Forty-six high...

Chlorinated pool attendance, atopy, and the risk of asthma during childhood.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... The pool chlorine hypothesis postulates that the rise in childhood asthma in the developed world could result at least partly from the increasing exposure of children to toxic gases and aerosols contaminating the air of indoor chlorinated...

Reduction in asthma morbidity in children as a result of home remediation aimed at moisture sources.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... OBJECTIVE: Home dampness and the presence of mold and allergens have been associated with asthma morbidity. We examined changes in asthma morbidity in children as a result of home remediation aimed at moisture sources. DESIGN: In this...

Children show highest levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers in a California family of four: a case study.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), a major class of flame retardants, are ubiquitous environmental contaminants with particularly high concentrations in humans from the United States. This study is a first attempt to report and compare...

The economic impact of early life environmental tobacco smoke exposure: early intervention for developmental delay.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Early-life exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) can result in developmental delay as well as childhood asthma and increased risk of cancer. The high cost of childhood asthma related to ETS exposure has been...

Agricultural pesticide use and hypospadias in eastern Arkansas.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... INTRODUCTION: We assessed the relationship between hypospadias and proximity to agricultural pesticide applications using a GIS-based exposure method. METHODS: We obtained information for 354 cases of hypospadias born between 1998 and 2002...

Age- and concentration-dependent elimination half-life of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin in Seveso children.(Children's Health)
October 1, 2006... OBJECTIVE: Pharmacokinetic and statistical analyses are reported to elucidate key variables affecting 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) elimination in children and adolescents. DESIGN: We used blood concentrations to calculate TCDD...

An exploration of ethical issues in research in children's health and the environment.(Mini-Monograph)
October 1, 2006... The consideration of ethical issues relating to pediatric environmental health is a recent phenomenon. Discussions of biomedical ethics, research on children, and environmental health research have a longer history. In the late 1990s,...

Trials and tribulations of protecting children from environmental hazards.(Mini-Monograph)
October 1, 2006... Society is increasingly aware of the profound impact that the environment has on children's health. Not surprisingly, there is increasing public scrutiny about children's exposures to environmental hazards, especially for disadvantaged...

The politics of risk: a human rights paradigm for children's environmental health research.(Mini-Monograph)
October 1, 2006... A human rights paradigm for environmental health research makes explicit the relationship between poor health and poverty, inequality, and social and political marginalization, and it aims at civic problem solving. In so doing, it incorporates...

Privacy and ethics in pediatric environmental health research--part I: genetic and prenatal testing.(Mini-Monograph)
October 1, 2006... The pressing need for empirically informed public policies aimed at understanding and promoting children's health has challenged environmental scientists to modify traditional research paradigms and reevaluate their roles and obligations toward...

Privacy and ethics in pediatric environmental health research--part II: protecting families and communities.(Mini-Monograph)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: In pediatric environmental health research, information about family members is often directly sought or indirectly obtained in the process of identifying child risk factors and helping to tease apart and identify interactions...

Supplementing the traditional institutional review board with an environmental health and community review board.(Mini-Monograph)
October 1, 2006... BACKGROUND: Community-based research often involves additional ethical, legal, and social considerations beyond those of the specific individuals involved in the study. The traditional institutional review board (IRB) typically focuses on...