Scientists rank chemicals according to exposure levels

Researchers developed a mathematical
model to see which chemicals people
are exposed to the most.

An overwhelming number of chemicals from household and industrial products are in the environment – and hundreds are in our bodies.

But for most of them, scientists have yet to determine whether they cause health problems.

Now they've taken the first step toward doing that by estimating which substances people are exposed to the most. Their new method is published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

John F. Wambaugh and colleagues note that the risks to human health of any given substance depend primarily on two factors: the potential hazards a chemical presents, and how much of it people are getting exposed to.

But public data on these variables are lacking for many substances already in widespread use.

About 80,000 chemicals are registered in the U.S. under the Toxic Substances Control Act, and industry adds 700 to 1,000 new chemicals every year.

Directly measuring how much of these substances people are getting exposed to would be a Herculean task requiring the time-consuming analysis of thousands of blood or urine samples.

Wambaugh's team sought a more practical approach.

The researchers developed a mathematical model to predict which household and industrial chemicals people are exposed to the most.

They based their method on answering five simple questions about the substances, such as whether they are used in consumer products or whether they are pesticides.

They used this approach to rank nearly 8,000 chemicals, from highest potential exposure level to lowest.

While a few of the top 10 were familiar compounds such as DEHP, a common phthalate that has been shown to cause reproductive problems in rodents, most were substances that scientists know very little about.

The researchers say the ranking could help prioritize future efforts that aim to understand potential health risks of thousands of chemicals.

Source: American Chemical Society via EurekAlert!


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Nursing home infection rates climbing: Study

Nursing home infections can be reduced,
researchers say.

Nursing home infection rates are on the rise, a study from Columbia University School of Nursing found, suggesting that more must be done to protect residents of these facilities from preventable complications.

The study, which examined infections in U.S. nursing homes over a five-year period, found increased infection rates for pneumonia, urinary tract infections (UTIs), viral hepatitis, septicemia, wound infections, and multiple drug-resistant organisms (MDROs).

"Infections are a leading cause of deaths and complications for nursing home residents, and with the exception of tuberculosis we found a significant increase in infection rates across the board," said lead study author Carolyn Herzig, MS, project director of the Prevention of Nosocomial Infections & Cost Effectiveness in Nursing Homes (PNICE-NH) study at Columbia Nursing.

"Unless we can improve infection prevention and control in nursing homes, this problem is only going to get worse as the baby boomers age and people are able to live longer with increasingly complex, chronic diseases."

Herzig and a team of researchers from Columbia Nursing and RAND Corporation analyzed infection prevalence from 2006 to 2010, using data that nursing homes submitted to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

While UTIs and pneumonia were the most common, infection prevalence increased the most – 48 percent – for viral hepatitis. Herzig presented findings from the study at IDWeek 2014 in Philadelphia.

More research is needed to determine the exact causes behind the increases in infection prevalence, Herzig said.

But there are several relatively simple interventions that have been proven to help reduce the risk of infection – and that families should look for when selecting a nursing home for a loved one.

UTIs, far and away the most common infection in nursing homes, increased in prevalence by 1 percent, the study found. UTIs can be prevented by reducing the use of urinary catheters and increasing the frequency of assisted trips to the toilet or diaper changes for residents who are unable to use the bathroom.

Families evaluating which nursing home to choose for a loved one should ask what protocols are in place to decrease catheter use, and they should also ask how the staff cares for residents with diapers, Herzig said.

"Nobody wants to think about diapers, but even if your loved one enters the nursing home able to use the bathroom independently, they may need assistance down the line. Seeing how well toileting needs are met is one way to assess infection risk."

Pneumonia climbed in prevalence by 11 percent, the study found. For pneumonia, and other infections that can spread through the air or contact with contaminated surfaces, proper hand hygiene is essential for prevention.

Residents, visitors, and staff should all have easy access to sanitizer or soap and water to clean their hands and be encouraged to do this frequently.

"When you walk into a nursing home for the first time, you should easily spot hand sanitizer dispensers or hand-washing stations," Herzig said. "If you don't see this, it's an indication that infection control and prevention may be lacking at the facility."

MDRO infection prevalence increased 18 percent, the study found. Screening for MDROs is an important tool for reducing the risk of MDROs, Herzig said. Families should ask whether residents are routinely screened for bacteria like C. difficile and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

While some nursing homes may only screen residents who are symptomatic or at high risk for infection, routine screening of all residents upon admission is likely to be more effective, Herzig said.

In addition, it's worth asking whether a nursing home has private rooms to allow for isolation if necessary and whether families are consulted when their loved one shares a room with a resident who has an infection.

"Isolation is a common way to contain MRSA and other infections in hospitals, but in nursing homes this isn't as common because these facilities are tailored to residential needs. If the nursing home does have rooms for isolation, it suggests a more robust approach to infection prevention and control."

Source: Columbia University

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Researchers focus on asthma's mystery triggers

Environmental factors may affect non-allergic asthma.

Researchers are making interesting new discoveries about a particularly confusing type of asthma.

Doctors increasingly are recognizing that as many as half of asthma sufferers have a form of the lung disease known as nonallergic asthma.

Some medications that help control symptoms of the more familiar allergic asthma aren't as effective in nonallergic patients.

There is still much that isn't understood about allergic asthma, which is brought on by an overactive response of the body's immune system to food, pollen and other allergens.

Even more mysterious is the cause of nonallergic asthma, which doesn't involve an immune-system response. Symptoms for both forms of the disease typically include constricted airways, wheezing and coughing.

Researchers also continue to discover substances in the environment that appear to increase the risk for developing asthma.

One of the latest studies, from New York's Columbia University Medical Center, found an association between asthma rates and phthalates, chemicals used in many plastic products that have raised health concerns.

The scientific hunt for the causes of asthma reflects concern about the puzzling rise in rates of the disease.

In the U.S., the percentage of the population diagnosed increased in 2010 to 8.4%—or more than 25 million adults and children—from 5.5% in 1996, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 1.8 million people visited a hospital emergency department in 2010 for asthma-related treatment.

Scientists studying nonallergic asthma say greater understanding of the molecular pathways in this form of the disease could lead to new targets for drug development.

Stefan Worgall, chief of the pediatric pulmonology, allergy and immunology division at Weill Cornell Medical College, and his colleagues recently discovered that when a normally occurring type of fat, known as sphingolipids, isn't embedded properly in the cell walls in the lungs of mice, the airways constrict.

Dr. Worgall says the finding could help explain why obesity is a risk factor for asthma. Obese people tend to exhibit abnormalities in sphingolipids, he says.

Currently, Dr. Worgall and his team are measuring sphingolipid levels in the blood and breath of asthmatic children. Early findings suggest the levels appear abnormal, he says.

Jeroen Douwes, director of the Centre for Public Health Research, at Massey University in New Zealand, believes nonallergic-asthma patients might have particularly sensitive nerves in the lungs that tell the brain at a lower-than-normal threshold that a noxious substance is in the air and airways need to be constricted.

TAKE A BREATH

Asthma rates have been rising for years, for reasons that aren't understood.

• About 8.4% of people in the U.S. had asthma in 2010, up from 5.5% in 1996.
• Boys are more prone to asthma than girls. But as adults, more women have asthma than men.
• Black children are twice as likely as white children to have asthma.
• Symptoms of asthma can include coughing, chest tightness, wheezing and difficulty breathing.
• Dust, mold, pets, exercise and strong emotions are some common triggers of asthma attacks.

—Source: CDC

Some previous studies suggest some asthmatics have an inappropriate neural response, which might translate into greater sensitivity, says Dr. Douwes. He is currently reanalyzing samples from previous studies of children followed since birth for asthma and allergy symptoms to look for evidence of neural activation.

An oversensitive neural pathway would help explain such mysteries as why dust or pollen can trigger an asthma attack without causing an allergic reaction and why stress has been found to bring on attacks in some people, Dr. Douwes says.

Not all asthmatics respond to traditional asthma medications. Corticosteroids, such as prednisone, for instance, are usually administered with an inhaler and in other forms to prevent asthma attacks.

The drug is generally effective in people with allergic asthma because it dampens the body's immune response to an allergen. People with nonallergic asthma often get less relief from corticosteroids.

Instead, these patients might be given another type of drug called a beta-agonist, such as albuterol and levalbuterol, which works by relaxing lung muscles.

Environmental factors are among the most studied causes for both types of asthma.

In a recent study of phthalates, researchers studied 300 women and their children living in New York's inner city, where asthma rates are relatively high.

The study measured phthalate levels in the women's urine during pregnancy and in the children at ages 3, 5 and 7 years old.

After taking into account other risk factors, such as maternal smoking, the researchers found significantly higher rates of asthma among the children whose mothers had the greatest levels of phthalates during pregnancy, says Rachel Miller, a co-author of the study and an allergist, pulmonologist and environmental health sciences professor at Columbia University Medical Center.

But there wasn't a correlation between asthma and the children's own exposure to phthalates in the early years after birth, according to the study, which was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in September.

"It's assumed that the prenatal period is going to be your most susceptible period [for disease], including lung development," says Robin Whyatt, a study co-author and a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health.

The researchers cautioned that while the study found an association between phthalates and asthma, it didn't prove causation.

The finding is "potentially very important because exposure to phthalates is widespread," says Neil Pearce, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who studies asthma but wasn't involved in the phthalate study.

The CDC says people are widely exposed to phthalates but the chemical's impact on human health isn't known and needs more research. Phthalates have been found to affect the reproductive systems of lab animals, according to the CDC.

Phthalates, which make plastics flexible, among other functions, are found in many household products from vinyl flooring to certain types of plastic food containers and scented candles, but aren't listed on labels.

Dr. Whyatt says that to minimize phthalate exposure, people shouldn't microwave in plastic containers and should store food in glass instead.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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People near fracking wells list health concerns

People living close to fracking wells reported more
health issues, researchers say.

People living near natural-gas wells were more than twice as likely to report upper-respiratory and skin problems than those farther away, says a major study on the potential health effects of fracking.

Nearly two of every five, or 39%, of those living less than a kilometer (or two-thirds of a mile) from a well reported upper respiratory symptoms, compared to 18% living more than 2 kilometers away, according to a Yale University-led random survey of 492 people in 180 households with ground-fed water wells in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The disparity was even greater for skin irritation. While 13% of those within a kilometer of a well said they had rashes and other skin symptoms, only 3% of those beyond 2 kilometers said the same.

"This is the largest study to look at the overall health of people living near the wells," says lead author and University of Washington environmental health professor Peter Rabinowitz, who did the research while at Yale.

The study focused on Washington County, part of the Marcellus Shale where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is widely used to extract natural gas.

"It suggests there may be more health problems in people living closer to natural gas wells," but it doesn't prove that the wells caused their symptoms, he says, adding more research is needed.

Fracking, combined with horizontal drilling, has spurred a U.S. boom in oil and natural-gas production. It blasts huge amounts of water — mixed with sand and chemicals — deep underground to break apart shale deposits and extract gas and oil from the rock's pores.

Prior peer-reviewed studies have linked fracking to possible birth defects, higher lung disease risks, methane contamination in drinking water and elevated endocrine-disrupting chemical activity in groundwater. Some environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, oppose fracking, saying it has insufficient safeguards.

Yet the oil and gas industry defends fracking as a safe way to bolster the U.S. economy and lessen the nation's dependence on foreign sources of energy.

At the time the research was conducted in the summer of 2012, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said there were were 624 active natural-gas wells in the survey area, 95% of which used fracking. The study received funding from private foundations, including The Heinz Endowments.

This article has been edited for length.
Source: USA Today

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Air contaminants vanishing into walls hamper lab experiments

Models of particle pollution have
been inconsistent, researchers say.

Models trying to predict airborne particle pollutants have been inconsistent over the past decade.

Some airborne particles can vanish into the walls of laboratory chambers, which could explain discrepancies in air pollution experiments. The findings of a new study suggest that models of particle pollution have been off for about a decade.

For their tests, researchers evaporated toluene, an ingredient of car exhaust that can form secondary organic aerosols, in a Teflon chamber.

Unlike previous researchers, they added “seed particles” such as ammonium sulfate. Adding these particles increases the aerosols that form when toluene vaporizes.

When there are no seed particles, the vapors end up sticking to or dissolving into the chamber walls, said Chris Cappa, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, and co-author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

“The walls of these chambers act as a sponge for the vapors,” Cappa said.

The findings of a new study suggest that models of particle pollution have been off for about a decade.

Cappa said that previous lab studies have underestimated secondary organic aerosol formation by about two to four times.

These aerosols, which are a byproduct of volatile organic compounds from vehicles and the burning of fossil fuels, are a major part of fine particle pollution.

Known as PM2.5, these particles can penetrate people’s lungs and disrupt their heart.

The discovery could explain why models that have tried to predict particulate levels from emissions inventories have not jibed with levels actually measured in the air.

“Accounting for such losses has the clear potential to bring model predictions and observations of organic aerosol levels into much closer agreement,” the authors wrote.

Laboratory models are often used to estimate regional air quality. And in the past 20 years, scientists have incorporated aerosols into climate models, too, because they can scatter or absorb radiation from the sun.

Aerosols that scatter sunlight would have a cooling effect, while those that absorb it have a warming effect.

The study was limited in that only one compound was tested. However, Cappa said the results should hold true for other aerosol precursors and the researchers plan on testing more.

The experiment doesn’t mean that regional air pollution is underestimated because scientists also use observations from the atmosphere.

“It’s not quite fair to say we’ve been underestimating impact of air pollution, but from a modeling standpoint we’ve been limited in our ability to properly set up strategies for improving air quality,” Cappa said.

Source: EHN

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Cancer risk was unknown to people in EPA studies

The EPA is studying the effects
of particles and fumes

The EPA, which warns of dangers from diesel exhaust and tiny particles in its rules to cut pollution, recruited people for tests on those pollutants in 2010 and 2011.

Consent forms they got didn’t mention cancer because the agency considered the risks minimal from short-term exposure, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a report.

“When justifying a job-killing regulation, EPA argues exposure to particulate matter is deadly, but when they are conducting experiments, they say human exposure studies are not harmful,” Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter said in a statement, reacting to the report.

The EPA’s test practices have been criticized by Republicans who say the agency contradicts itself in explaining its rules and testing safety, and called for the human testing to be shut down.

The watchdog said the EPA followed “applicable regulations,” and proposed procedural changes, not a shuttering of the research.

“The agency should inform study subjects of any potential cancer risks of a pollutant to which they are being exposed,” according to the report, conducted after complaints from the lawmakers.

EPA to improve consent forms

The agency pledged to improve its consent forms and set up better plans for reacting to “adverse events and unanticipated problems” in response to the watchdog’s recommendations.

In the past decade, the EPA did 13 studies of particulate matter and four studies on diesel exhaust at its North Carolina laboratory, the report said.

Each study would include 20 to 40 people in a chamber where pollution is set to levels similar to Los Angeles or New York. Blood, heart and lung functions are monitored for about two hours. Long-term effects are unlikely because the tests are so short, according to the agency.

The exposures “reflect a balance between being high enough to produce biological responses but not so high as to produce clinical responses,” the report said.

The EPA said its studies on people, which have been conducted for more than 40 years, provide detailed biological information on how pollutants affect individuals.

“We are in the process of embracing their recommendations,” Bob Kavlock, deputy assistant EPA administrator for science, said in a blog post today.

“Thanks to their generous spirit and contribution of time, our research volunteers play a vital role in helping EPA scientists advance the cause of protecting the health of all Americans.”

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

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Smoking ban shows quick results

Research shows smoke-free public places
improve children's health, even before birth.

The number of premature births and children’s hospital visits for asthma dropped significantly in parts of the United States, Canada, and Europe barely a year after they enacted smoking bans, researchers reported in The Lancet recently.

The new analysis combined the results of 11 studies encompassing more than 2.5 million births and nearly 250,000 asthma attacks.

Experts called it the best evidence to date that legislation creating smoke-free public places and workplaces improves children’s health, even in the womb.

The results are “very impressive,” said Dr. Brian Mercer, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, who noted that half a million American babies are born prematurely each year.

“If you could prevent 10 percent, you’d prevent nearly 50,000 premature babies in the U.S. alone each year,” said Dr. Mercer, who was not involved in the study.

After an exhaustive review of relevant studies spanning 38 years, the researchers analyzed five that looked at perinatal and child health after local smoking bans in North America and six studies conducted after national bans in Europe.

Hospital visits for childhood asthma and premature births both declined about 10 percent in the year after smoking bans took effect, the researchers found.

The investigators also pooled data from two studies and found a 5 percent reduction in the number of children born very small for their gestational age after the introduction of smoke-free laws.

An earlier analysis of the impact of smoking bans on adult health demonstrated a 15 percent reduction in cardiovascular events.

The new report offers “another very good reason to institute smoking bans in public places,” said Dr. Muktar Aliyu, an associate professor of health policy and medicine at Vanderbilt University who has studied birth outcomes linked to maternal smoking.

Only 16 percent of the world’s population is covered by comprehensive smoke-free laws, and 40 percent of children worldwide are routinely exposed to secondhand smoke.

About half of Americans are protected by complete smoke-free policies in workplaces, restaurants and bars, according to the Americans Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, a nonprofit group.

The new analysis did not prove that smoke-free laws caused the improvements in children’s health. And the researchers didn’t evaluate other factors, like taxation of tobacco products and advertisement bans, which could have contributed.

The authors note that further studies are needed to estimate the effect of smoke-free laws on respiratory tract infections in children, a major problem of secondhand smoke. The authors also cite a “pressing need” for studies of tobacco control laws in low- to middle-income countries.

Source: NY Times. This article has been edited for length.

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A safer alternative to flame retardants: Milk proteins

Upholstered furniture and plastics often
contain flame retardant chemicals. 

Casein, a protein left over from cheese production, could be an ecofriendly and nontoxic alternative to current phosphate-based retardants

Many compounds currently used as flame retardants in upholstered furniture and plastics have come under scrutiny for their potentially harmful effects on the environment and human health.

Since manufacturers often rely on flame retardants to meet fire-safety standards for certain products, many have looked for nontoxic compounds as alternatives.

Now, researchers in Italy have demonstrated that caseins — proteins found in milk that are a by-product of cheese production — may fit the bill.

Some types of flame retardants, such as organophosphate esters, get their fire-blocking properties from their high phosphorus content. When they burn, a polymer layer of phosphoric acid forms and creates a char that blocks heat transfer to unburned areas of the material, slowing the spread of the fire.

Jenny Alongi of the Polytechnic University of Turin and her colleagues decided to investigate a family of proteins called caseins as alternative flame retardants because they contain a large number of phosphate groups.

Caseins are found in the whey that’s a by-product of cheese production, so in countries that produce a lot of cheese, such as Italy and France, the proteins are cheap and abundant, Alongi says.

Burn test results encouraging

The team coated three materials—cotton, polyester, and a blend of 65% polyester and 35% cotton—with the proteins by soaking the fabrics in distilled water mixed with casein powder. The researchers then submitted the samples to a battery of flammability tests.

The results were encouraging: In cotton- and polyester-only fabrics treated with caseins, flames extinguished themselves, leaving 86% of the cotton and 77% of the polyester unburned. The cotton-polyester blend burned completely but took 60% more time to do so than the untreated material.

The flame-retardant properties of caseins also compared well to those of ammonium polyphosphate (APP), a flame retardant used for fire proofing polyolefins and polyurethanes.

The caseins effectively form a char layer on the fabric samples. But unlike APP, they don’t produce toxic fumes during combustion.

Before caseins can be used as flame retardants, researchers need to work out many issues, such as preventing the proteins from washing off materials.

The team is now testing light-curable resins and molecules such as urea that could bond the casein molecules to the surface of the fabric, Alongi says. Another problem is that materials treated with caseins smell rancid.

Alongi and her colleagues are looking for ways to remove the molecules associated with casein that produce the odor.

The caseins performed well compared to current flame retardants, says Jacob de Boer, an analytical chemist at VU University Amsterdam, who has investigated the impact of organophosphorus flame retardants on the environment. He hopes the team pursues the research further.

Source: Chemical & Engineering News

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Scientist speaks out against herbicide manufacturer

Biologist Tyrone Hayes said he was prevented from
sharing his research results on a certain pesticide.

Tyrone Hayes found some evidence that a widely used herbicide may have harmful effects on the endocrine system.

But when he tried to publish the results, the chemical’s manufacturer launched a campaign to discredit his work.

Tyrone Hayes was first hired in 1997 by a company, which later became agribusiness giant Syngenta, to study their product, atrazine, a pesticide that is applied to more than half the corn crops in the United States, and widely used on golf courses and Christmas tree farms.

When Hayes found results Syngenta did not expect — that atrazine causes sexual abnormalities in frogs, and could cause the same problems for humans — it refused to allow him to publish his findings.

A new article in The New Yorker magazine uses court documents from a class action lawsuit against Syngenta to show how it sought to smear Hayes’ reputation and prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from banning the profitable chemical, which is already banned by the European Union.

Watch the interview here.

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Chemical exposure and brain development: Researchers set to study effects

EPA awards more than $3 million to researchers

The goal of the studies is to improve
chemical safety: EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced over $3 million in grants to research institutions to better understand how chemicals interact with biological processes and how these interactions may lead to altered brain development.

The studies are focused on improving EPA’s ability to predict the potential health effects of chemical exposures.

“This research will transform our understanding of how exposure to chemicals during sensitive lifestages affects the development of the brain,” said Lek Kadeli, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

“By better predicting whether chemicals have the potential to impact health and human development, these grants will not only advance the science necessary to improve chemical safety but protect the well being and futures of children in this nation.”

These grants focus on developing better adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), which are models that predict the connection between exposures and the chain of events that lead to an unwanted health effect.

AOPs combine vast amounts of data from different sources to depict the complex interactions of chemicals with biological processes, and then extend this information to explain an adverse health effect.

EPA expects to use the knowledge gained from this research to develop efficient and cost-effective models to better predict if and how exposure to environmental chemicals may lead to developmental neurotoxicity.

Recipients of EPA’s funding for developmental neurotoxicity adverse outcome pathway research include:

1. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C.
2. The University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.
3. University of California, Davis, Calif.
4. Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.

These awards are advancing the science and technological capability to model and predict how chemicals behave when they come into contact with biological systems.

This improved understanding supports the Agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment and amplifies the impact of its chemical safety research efforts.

EPA’s chemical safety research is accelerating the pace of chemical screening, helping to protect vulnerable populations and species, developing solutions for more sustainable chemicals and using computational science to understand the relationship between chemical exposures and health outcomes.

Source: EPA

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More wildfires may mean poorer air quality

An increase in wildfires can affect human
health and respiratory conditions.

As the American West, parched by prolonged drought, braces for a season of potentially record-breaking wildfires, new research suggests these events not only pose an immediate threat to people's safety and their homes, but also could take a toll on human health, agriculture and ecosystems.

The study, appearing in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, could help societies map out a plan to mitigate these effects in wildfire-prone regions.

Matthew D. Hurteau and colleagues point out that wildfires naturally occur in many areas around the globe.
In response, human societies have harnessed the power of fire to better control wild blazes and minimize damage. But climate change also can impact the number and severity of wildfires.

Understanding how these factors influence each other is crucial so that people can better prepare for the future and perhaps lessen the effects of the blazes.

Previous studies have estimated the effect of climate change and population growth on wildfire patterns and the risk of damage to buildings and homes in California. Hurteau's team wanted to expand on those findings and investigate six possible future climate scenarios.

Using several different models, they estimated that by 2100, emissions from wildfires in California will grow by 19 to 101 percent. They found that climate, not population growth or development, will likely be the driving force behind these increases.

However, a rise in wildfires still will mean significant societal challenges, such as higher pollution levels, which can affect human health and aggravate respiratory conditions. Poor air quality also can lower crop yield, and forest health could suffer.

Source: American Chemical Society via AAAS

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New ways to detect diseases that are linked to polluted air

More diseases from air pollution uncovered by improved data material

Breathing polluted indoor air can
make us sick, studies show.

Good health and personal registers in combination with model calculations of air pollution down to an individual address has helped Danish researchers to become among the very best in the world to detect harmful diseases deriving from polluted air

At rest, we breathe approx. 12-15 times per minute, and for each inhalation we change approx. one litre of air. Depending on the activity level, this makes up a daily quantity in the order of twenty cubic metres of air that - with its content of pollution in the form of particles and different gases - can make us ill depending on how polluted the air is.

Asthma attacks, wheezing, cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer are some of the more glaring examples of diseases we - in worst case - can get from the domestic air.

The list of injuries due to air pollution in Denmark is long. This appears from a brand new article that professor Ole Hertel from Aarhus University, has written with a number of Danish colleagues at University of Copenhagen, the Danish Cancer Society and Aarhus University.

"So the list of diseases detected in Denmark is long, but it does not mean that we have the world's most polluted air. This is to be found in Asia, Africa and South America. Here, you typically find a yearly mean value of the particle pollution (PM10) of 50-200 micrograms per cubic metres of air, while the content in Copenhagen and other Western European Megacities typically is at a lower level - about 20-50 micrograms per cubic metre. But even in a "moderately polluted" air as we call it in Danish towns and cities, we find many serious injuries which come from the air that we breathe every day," explains Ole Hertel.

Studies on polluted air and health effects

In the article "Utilizing Monitoring Data and Spatial Analysis Tools for Exposure Assessment of Atmospheric Pollutants in Denmark", Ole Hertel and his colleagues review the Danish experiences in combining measurements and models.

By combining measurements on relatively few but well-chosen places with advanced models for spreading of air pollution, the researchers can calculate the air pollution down to the individual addresses.

Hertel and Co. review a number of Danish studies of the coherence between air pollution and injuries to health.

A total of nine short-term studies have been published in Denmark, where researchers have demonstrated respiratory and cardiovascular diseases after episodes with increased air pollution, etc.

Similarly, eleven studies demonstrate long-term injuries due to air pollution, e.g. lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and mortality.

Improved information, surprising results

The scientists' ability to detect a wide range if different types of damages of the Danes' health is due to the fact that Danish researchers represent some of the very best to demonstrate illnesses caused by air pollution on human health.

This is obvious when we look at the model for spreading of air pollution, OSPM, which was developed by Danes and is now used in approx. twenty countries. This is also why Ole Hertel was invited to give an overview of the diseases detected to be a consequence of the air pollution in Denmark, first on a major international conference and afterwards in book form.

Ole Hertel points out one of the Danish results as particularly notable:

"It came as a surprise to me that the studies showed a connection between air pollution and diabetes. It is rather new information that air pollution can cause diabetes, and we are working on finding a biological explanation for this correlation. This is an example of the fact that our very detailed way of working in Denmark leads to precise results."

Source: AAAS


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Researchers develop new early warning system for toxins

Turkeys inspire smartphone-capable sensor for airborne chemicals

Turkey skin can shift color.
Photo courtesy of Tom Curtis/
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Some may think of turkeys as good for just lunch meat and holiday meals. But bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley, saw inspiration in the big birds for a new type of biosensor that changes color when exposed to chemical vapors.

This feature makes the sensors valuable detectors of toxins or airborne pathogens.

Turkey skin, it turns out, can shift from red to blue to white, thanks to bundles of collagen that are interspersed with a dense array of blood vessels. It is this color-shifting characteristic that gives turkeys the name "seven-faced birds" in Korean and Japanese.

The researchers say that spacing between the collagen fibers changes when the blood vessels swell or contract, depending upon whether the bird is excited or angry.

The amount of swelling changes the way light waves are scattered and, in turn, alters the colors we see on the bird's head.

Seung-Wuk Lee, UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering, led a research team in mimicking this color-changing ability to create biosensors that can detect volatile chemicals.

"In our lab, we study how light is generated and changes in nature, and then we use what we learn to engineer novel devices," said Lee, who is also a faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The researchers created a mobile app, called the iColour Analyser, to show that a smartphone photo of the sensor's color bands could be used to help identify toxins of interest. They described their experiments in a study to be published Tuesday, Jan. 21, in the journal Nature Communications.

Sensors that give off color readings are easier to use and read than conventional biosensors.

However, the major ones in development elsewhere can only detect a limited range of chemicals and, according to the researchers, they can be very difficult to manufacture.

"Our system is convenient, and it is cheap to make," said Lee. "We also showed that this technology can be adapted so that smartphones can help analyze the color fingerprint of the target chemical. In the future, we could potentially use this same technology to create a breath test to detect cancer and other diseases."
         
In copying this turkey-skin design, Lee and his team employed a technique they pioneered to mimic nanostructures like collagen fibers. The researchers found a way to get M13 bacteriophages, benign viruses with a shape that closely resembles collagen fibers, to self-assemble into patterns that could be easily fine-tuned.

The researchers found that, like collagen fibers, these phage-bundled nanostructures expanded and contracted, resulting in color changes. The exact mechanism behind the shrinking or expanding phage bundles is still unclear, but it's possible that the small amount of water in the phage is reacting to the chemical vapors, the researchers said.

The turkey-inspired biosensors were exposed to a range of volatile organic compounds, including hexane, isopropyl alcohol and methanol, as well as vapor of the explosive chemical TNT, at concentrations of 300 parts per billion. The researchers found that the viruses swelled rapidly, resulting in specific color patterns that served as "fingerprints" to distinguish the different chemicals tested.

The researchers showed that the biosensor's specificity to a target chemical could be increased by genetically engineering the DNA in the M13 bacteriophage to bind with sites specific to TNT.

The biosensor was then exposed to two additional chemicals, DNT and MNT, which have similar molecular structures to TNT. The engineered biosensor successfully distinguished TNT from the other chemicals with distinct color bands.

The biosensors were also able to signal changes in relative humidity, ranging from 20 percent to 90 percent, becoming redder with moister air and bluer with drier air.

The study lead author is Jin-Woo Oh, a former postdoctoral researcher in Lee's lab and now an assistant professor in the Department of Nanomaterial Engineering at Pusan National University in South Korea.

The National Science Foundation, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration and Agency for Defense Development in South Korea, Korea's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and Samsung helped support this work.

Source: University of California, Berkeley via EurekAlert! 

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Lack of fracking data a concern: Scientists

Scientists warn about lack of studies
on fracking, or hydraulic fracturing.

A group of scientists and other academics investigating the environmental, climate change and social impacts of oil and gas development, particularly hydraulic fracturing, are calling for both state and federal governments and the oil and gas industry to be more transparent and provide more data about the energy drilling and production processes.

The scientists, each presenting at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco, said it is difficult to determine the effects of energy development on water and the climate because little data about fracking are available and energy companies keep their energy extraction and production technology under wraps.

No representatives of the energy industry were present at the AGU presentation.

“The rapid scale of fracking has outpaced the scientific information we have on fracking and the regulatory response we have on unconventional oil and gas development,” said analyst Pallavi Phartiyal of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

A general lack of data and energy industry funding of scientific studies present significant barriers to scientific understanding of the impacts of fracking, she said.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is the injection water, sand and chemicals into underground shale formations to crack the rock to release trapped crude oil and natural gas into surface-level wells.

“Release of data is still very, very difficult,” said Pennsylvania State University geosciences professor Susan Brantley, referring to the availability of consistent water quality data in Pennsylvania that would allow scientists to fully assess the extent to which the Marcellus shale gas boom may be contaminating groundwater in Pennsylvania.

“I do think my main conclusion is we need to get the data to be more accessible,” she said.

Energy companies decline to give data to scientists

Independent scientists have been asking the industry for data about their technology and operations, but energy companies decline to provide it, Brantley said.

Florida State University College of Law assistant professor Hannah Wiseman said there is a need for more data about energy development to improve both science and the public dialogue about fracking.

“Good technology can reduce the risks that have been discussed previously,” she said, adding that a good well casing can prevent methane from leaking.

“But the public and scientists need more information on the technology currently being used and available in order to understand how they impact risk," she said. "We need more information about what the environment around well sites currently is like. We need to know what is added or changed. We often lack baseline data. We need to understand what is occurring at well sites, what emissions are coming from well sites.”

Cornell University civil and environmental engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, who was representing six of his colleagues and their work, said his team’s research shows there are numerous questions about oil and gas development that are unanswered because there is too little information available.


Also unknown is whether there’s a connection between higher health care costs in a region and the public’s exposure to hydrocarbons there, he said.

Lack of data and states’ inconsistent regulation of energy development and willingness to engage the public about fracking lead to confusion among the public about what the risks of energy development really are, he said.

The energy industry and state governments should not be allowed to overrule a community’s right to self-determination as permitted in home-rule provisions in state constitutions, he said.

Source: Climate Central

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Researchers tackle office air problems

Scientists develop intelligent door seal that prevents poor indoor air quality

Heated debates and no agreement in sight: the eight employees sitting in a small conference room have come together to get an important project moving. But after an hour, some of them have trouble focusing on the discussion, and some are even beginning to become drowsy.

Conference room meetings can lead to poor IAQ

No wonder: the air in the conference room is stuffy and stale, and increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) are making them tired and robbing meeting participants of their concentration.

There's only one solution: air the room out. Or else rely on the intelligent door seal system that has now been developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS in cooperation with the Athmer Company.

Users of the system not only spare themselves the effort of regular airing: the door seal is also cold air's worst enemy, insulating to provide a perfect indoor climate.

Indoor concentrations of CO2 are still a problem, particularly in newer buildings.

"Modern buildings are becoming increasingly airtight," according to Hans-Jürgen Schliepkorte, group manager at Fraunhofer IMS in Duisburg. On the one hand, better windows and construction materials provide effective insulation - an issue that was long a major concern. But air quality was overlooked in the process.

"In many cases, the supply of fresh air still comes through an open window," Schliepkorte points out. "This has consequences for the energy efficiency."

Sensor measures CO2 concentration in the air

The electronically controlled door seal developed by IMS engineers opens or closes based on the CO2 concentration in a room. A CO2 sensor records concentrations in the air.

If this value exceeds a certain threshold, a tiny motor moves a spring to open the door seal at the bottom of the door leaf. The seal raises to permit an exchange of air inside the room. At the same time, the system uses building based measurement and control technology to activate the ventilation system to extract stale air from the room.

"Our standard is based on the Pettenkofer value of 1000 ppm (parts per million)," Schliepkorte explains.

It was Max von Pettenkofer who investigated indoor air quality in the middle of the previous century and identified the CO2 value that, if met or exceeded, makes people begin to feel unwell indoors.

Opening a window is not always
desirable or possible in offices.

Today's rules and guidelines based on DIN for the workplace set 1500 ppm as the upper limit and recommend a CO2 concentration of 1000 ppm.

"We can achieve this with the aid of the intelligent door seal – without having to open doors or windows," Schliepkorte observes.

The door seal system is electronically coupled with building measurement and control systems. If a ventilation system or for that matter a heat recovery system has been installed, they can additionally be activated based on indoor CO2 concentrations and temperatures.

"The system always calculates the best compromise between good indoor air and optimal utilization of energy efficiency," Schliepkorte says.

Beginning in June of this year, it will be in use in the Fraunhofer inHaus-Center in Duisburg, an innovation workshop for application oriented and market based research for systems in rooms and buildings.

Indeed, Fraunhofer researchers have already set their sights on further applications: in the future, the door seal may well also help regulate humidity in residential and commercial buildings. This may soon make mold in the home and dry eyes in the office a thing of the past.

Source: EurekAlert! and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft 

Improve office air quality for higher productivity

Poor indoor air quality at the office has been linked to higher rates of absenteeism, but also to decreased productivity and lower morale.

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Cleaner air in chemical laboratories

Laboratory workers and those in nearby buildings may
be affected by poor indoor air quality.

Indoor air quality in chemical laboratory facilities can be a major concern. Older laboratories in schools or universities may expose workers to a range of contaminants.

In extreme cases, the air exhausted from labs can also affect the air quality inside nearby buildings.

Many different variables interact to change the air quality in labs, including:

• Research protocols
• Work practices and individual behaviors
• Laboratory housekeeping
• Design and operation of the HVAC system

Experts agree that concern is warranted, since even low level chemical exposures can cause discomfort in laboratory workers.

In chemical labs, workers may be exposed to a wide range of chemicals, including chlorinated solvents, ketones, benzene and derivatives (toluene and xylene) as well as other contaminants.

Complex facilities with complex indoor air concerns

Laboratories are complex facilities that require substantial planning and development to provide good indoor air quality at all times.

Most labs have negative pressure relative to non-lab spaces such as corridors and offices, meaning that there is less air supplied into the room than is leaving through the hood exhaust.

Some laboratories, like clean rooms, require positive pressure, however.

Indoor air quality can become a concern if chemical exhausts are cluttered or used inappropriately, if chemicals are inadequately stored or disposed of and if workers are unaware of risks or are mishandling chemicals.

Experts recommend facility staff and user training, routine air sampling, a variable air volume system and other safety precautions.

Source: Steve M. Hays, “Indoor Air Quality in Chemistry Laboratories”, 1999 (PDF)

Cleaner air in chemical laboratories

The RSU air cleaners belong to
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The air cleaners can be configured for negative and positive pressure, if needed, and they can also be attached to fume hoods to draw the air through a deep-bed activated carbon filter and other filters to remove airborne fumes and gases, including chemicals such as benzene, xylene, toluene and more.

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Cleanup method for dangerous chemicals in the textile industry

Is it possible to end up with clean water
after the textile dying process?

Clothing and fabrics are often defined by their color and patterns – but the textile dying process is one of the most environmentally hazardous aspects of the textile industry.

During the dying process, harmful chemicals are used and released into the ambient air and the environment, as waste is often disposed of in rivers and on agricultural land.

A new, environmentally friendly purification process developed by Biotechnology doctoral student Maria Jonstrup at Lund University promises a much greener way of getting rid of the chemicals by leaving only clean water at the end.

The research has been tested only at the lab, not at the factory, but "in the long term it should be possible for textile factories in India, China and Bangladesh to use the technique. If it works on a laboratory scale it is quite likely that it will also work in a real-life situation", Jonstrup says in a news release.

The new method combines two types of purification processes, one biological and one chemical.

In the biological step, microorganism break down the dyes in a reactor and the chemical step involves the use of small amounts of iron and hydrogen peroxide in combination with UV light.

The research will next be tested in larger volumes of water to reflect industry conditions, and researchers will try to use sunlight instead of UV.

Source: Lund University news release

Capture airborne chemicals and other toxins in industrial applications

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Cashiers may be at higher risk of BPA exposure

Study to examine BPA
exposure in cashiers.

A lot of people rely on their part-time or full-time jobs as cashiers in stores, supermarkets or other types of businesses to make a living or supplement their income - but experts are worried that they could be exposed to high levels of a potentially toxic chemical.

Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences want to know if the high levels of bisphenol A, or BPA for short, on the slick receipt paper that many cashiers handle on a daily basis should be a reason of concern.

They are asking cashiers to volunteer to have blood and urine samples to be taken for the study.

What is BPA?

BPA is a common ingredient in durable plastics, like those used to make hard plastic water bottles and to line food cans. Recently, reports have been published about experts expressing concerns that BPA exposure might be much higher than previously thought.

There is some conflicting evidence that BPA can cause developmental damage in children and reproductive problems in adults, but more research is needed.

Some types of thermal paper used in cash registers are coated with BPA, and the chemical easily rubs off onto your fingers when you touch them.

In their new study, the NIEHS team will measure levels of BPA in the blood and urine of volunteer cashiers, said Stavros Garantziotis, who is directing the research.

Testing BPA levels before and after a cashier's shift will show how much BPA was absorbed into a cashier's body while he or she was working.

While there are some alternative paper sources using such substances as bisphenol S, not much is known about the effects of these chemicals, either, the experts warned.

Source: News Observer

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Green advances in paper mill industry

Paper mill waste can be used to make
industrial foams, says researcher.

A grad student in agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has developed a method to use paper mill waste to produce ecologically friendly, industrial foams from renewable resources, a recent press release states.

Foams are used for numerous day-to-day uses, including in the manufacture of furniture and car interiors. In many composite material applications, they are used as core material in "sandwich" panels to achieve high strength, weight reduction, energy dissipation and insulation.

Conventional foams are produced from polymers such as polyurethane, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Since all of these current foams rely on fossil oil, they present a clear environmental disadvantage.

Shaul Lapidot, a Ph.D. student of Prof. Oded Shoseyov, along with his laboratory colleagues at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University in Rehovot, has formulated a procedure for production of nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC) from paper mill waste.

NCC is further processed into composite foams for applications in the composite materials industry as bio-based replacement for synthetic foams.

Paper mill waste gets new purpose

The process of paper production involves loss of all fibers with dimensions lower than the forming fabric mesh.

Consequently around 50% of the total fibers initially produced are washed away as sludge. In Europe alone, 11 million tons of waste are produced annually by this industry, creating an incentive for finding alternative uses and different applications for the wastes.

Lapidot has found that fibers from paper mill sludge are a perfect source for NCC production due to their small dimensions which require relatively low energy and chemical input in order to process them into NCC.

He also developed the application of NCC into nano-structured foams. This is further processed into composite foams for applications in the composite materials industry to be used as bio-based replacement for synthetic foams.

The NCC foams developed by Lapidot and his colleagues are highly porous and lightweight.

Additional strengthening of the foams was enabled by infiltration of furan resin, a hemicellulose-based resin produced from raw crop waste, such as that remaining from sugar cane processing, as well as oat hulls, corn cobs and rice hulls.

The new NCC reinforced foams display technical performance which matches current high-end synthetic foams.

Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 


Working in the pulp and paper industry?

Pulp and paper mills use a variety of chemical substances that are potentially hazardous to human health. They affect not only the workers but also the surrounding communities.

While many dangerous chemicals have been eliminated or reduced in the paper industry, including asbestos, exposure to hazardous materials may still happen at any stage in the paper-making process.

It has been shown that workers often encounter gaseous sulphur compounds, chlorine and chlorine dioxide, which can cause respiratory and cardiovascular health concerns, but which have not been linked to cancer.

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Related Posts:

• Examining the link between pulp and paper mills and cancer
• Pulp and Paper News: Report says green chemical industry to soar

  

The search for safer chemicals

Synthetic chemists should take more
responsibility to avoid the development
of toxic chemicals, researchers say.

Is there such a thing as a safe chemical?

With more than 80,000 chemicals being produced in the United States alone, it is difficult to accurately predict one chemical’s effects on human individuals.

Nevertheless, in order to increase the odds of manufacturing safer chemicals, chemists are urged to avoid certain molecular properties that are likely to lead to toxicity.

According to a recent article in Nature News, leading researchers are asking for a more responsible approach to developing safer chemicals and the change the ways chemists have become used to.

Chemists should consider toxicity earlier, researchers say

Traditionally, when chemists design new detergents, shampoos, paints and lubricants, they don't immediately consider whether their molecules will have toxic side effects because that was left to toxicologists further down the production line.

The researchers show in a paper published in Green Chemistry that synthetic chemist need to obey two key rules of thumb to greatly reduce the chances of a molecule being highly toxic to fish and aquatic organisms.

Decades of safety tests have generated enough data for researchers to learn how chemicals produce toxic effects, and computer models are picking out the molecular properties that underlie this activity.

 "Rather than measuring how bad something is after it's made, and then going back to the drawing board, you can start to design molecules in what is likely to be a safer chemical space," says Paul Anastas, one of the co-authors.

A long way to go for safer and greener chemicals

The design of inherently safer molecules is a goal that Anastas has been working towards for years. He is well known as one of the co-founders of the 'green chemistry' movement, which aims to cut down on toxic chemicals and processes.

He admits that there are many aspects of toxicity (such as reproductive toxicity) that are currently not sufficiently well understood for design 'rules' to be created that would steer past them.

Other researchers warn that there is still a long way to go before toxicity can be accurately predicted for all chemicals.

Source: Nature News 

Chemicals and human health

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