Daily Science Dose

Now we have to wonder what is replaing the BPA...

Last week, Chicago one-upped the FDA by banning Bisphenol-A in products like sippy-cups, baby bottles, and all those things that parents think are safe for their babies, because you know, if they were not safe, the Government would do something about them, right?

Wrong.

The debate over BPA is long and storied, and one of those he-said-she-said affairs. The FDA has held true to one line: That there is little evidence that BPA is harmful to humans. And that the amounts of BPA exposure are so insignificant that no one needs to worry their pretty little heads about it.

But that doesn’t exactly fill the rest of us with confidence…In fact, it seems that even the Chicago ban faced pressure from the American Chemistry Lobby, I mean, American Chemistry Council. And you know money talks in governmental circles. Looking at Chicago as a microcosm for the whole debate over BPA is telling as to what kind of fight we have on our hands when it comes to protecting our kids (and ourselves).

From the Sun-Times:

Last year, [Manny] Flores [(1st)] and Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) got nowhere with a more sweeping version that would have banned nearly all products made with BPA used by children under the age of 7.

The softer version approved Wednesday narrows the ban to “any empty bottle or cup specifically designed to be filled with food or liquid to be used primarily by a child under the age of 3.”

Former Ald. Terry Gabinski (32nd), one of Burke’s closest friends, is a registered lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council. The group has publicly lobbied against the ban and behind-the-scenes for a softer version of it. — Chicago Sun-Times

Will the Chicago BPA ban end up repealed like the Chicago Fois Gras ban? Well, fois won’t kill you, and maybe neither will BPA. But — and maybe I am crazy in thinking this — if there is a chance of this chemical leaching from our sippy-cups into the high-fructose corn syrup-laden juices we feed our kids, then shouldn’t we err on the side of caution? There is no real need to produce plastics that contain BPA, so why are we clinging to them like our guns and religion?

Good job, Chicago. Even if your ban is largely symbolic, it is step in the safer direction.

Bisphenol A, BPA, Bisphenol-A, plastics, baby products, baby bottles, children, childrens health, chemicals, FDA, Chicago, ban, dangerous chemicals, government

If you have ever been to Yellowstone National Park, you may have noticed that rotten-egg smell around the myriad hot springs and geysers. Well, that intoxicating aroma is just that, in toxicating. Ok, it’s not necessarily the aroma that is toxic, but some of the stuff in the hot springs are toxic, including arsenic.

Huh, hot springs have arsenic in them? Why is it possible for me to soak my lily-white butt in them?

Ok, not all hot springs are quite as acidic as some of the hot springs in Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin. That is where researchers from Montana State University concentrated their surveys of a certain one-celled algae named Cyanidioschyzon that grew in mats on the top of the pools of hot water. Tim McDermott, a prof at MSU, noticed years ago that the mats that nearly took over small pools in the winter virtually disappeared by summer. And like any good scientist, he wanted to know why.

It seems that the algae — red algae — had a little trick up its sleeve. Cyanidioschyzon can chemically change the arsenic that is found in these hot springs, and the more acidic the water, the more arsenic is there for the red algae to “eat.”

The cyanidioschyzon “oxidizes, reduces and converts arsenic to several forms that are less toxic than the original.” This finding has some rather serious implications. It may point out new ways for life to exist in extreme conditions, even those on other planets or moons.

“It gives us insight into how life adapts to extreme environments,” Rosen added. “If life can grow at high temperatures and high concentrations of heavy metals like arsenic, life might be able to evolve on other planets or moons such as Titan or Enceladus.”

McDermott said the scientists conducted basic research that may have implications someday for acid mine drainage and acid rock drainage remediation efforts.

“Any time you learn anything about eukaryotic algae and their potential application for bioremediation, that’s always good,” he said.–Terra Daily (SPX)

Arsenic is one of the more toxic by-products of coal-mining, so if there is some way that a teensy weensy little microbe can break down toxic forms of arsenic into less harmful variants, then this could be a very important discovery in terms of bioremediation of toxic sites and waste ponds.

algae, arsenic, toxic, Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone, hot springs, geysers, mining, cyanidioschyzon, Montana State, Norris Geyser Basin

After reading this next study, I am kind of wondering as to why looking at toenail clippings would be the preferred method for measuring the level of arsenic in a human body. Is it because it is easy and non-intrusive, cheap, and a part of the body that is ripe for the study of bioaccumulation? Or is it some foot fetish’s odd way of getting his jollies? I’m hoping it’s the first reason.

Anyway, without further ado, today’s dose is about toenails and arsenic and England. England was the original hotbed for environmental degradation back in the earlier years of the Industrial Revolution — you know, lots of mining and no consideration of producing and disposing of rather nasty waste by-products. Well, some of that nasty stuff was arsenic, and in addition to that, there were arsenic mines that also lead to a issue of arsenic pollution in Great Britain.

Scientists from the University of Leicester, Notthingham Trent University, and the British Geological Survey have developed a relatively easy and painless (although perhaps a little gross) way to measure environmental arsenic in a person’s body — toenails. Toenails grow slowly, building matter and along the way picking up chemicals and in this case, elements that accumulate in our bodies. Add a little acid to those nails, let them dissolve and a little “inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry” and you’ve got yourself a good way of finding out how much arsenic that person has been exposed to over long periods of time.

Mark Button [of the University of Leicester] added: “This preliminary research indicates that people living close to a former arsenic mine have elevated levels of arsenic in their toenails. However, the potential health risks in this case, if any, are not yet clear and no arsenic related health issues have been reported. A large-scale and more detailed biomonitoring study is required to confirm these initial results.”

Dr Jenkin, lecturer in Applied Geology at the University of Leicester said: “This is the first time that the chemical form of the arsenic in the toenails has been measured - that can tell us something about how it got in there and possible risk factors. — SPX via TerraDaily

The only problem with the testing is that as of yet, the researchers are not quite sure how “concentrated” the amount of arsenic in a toenail is and how that affects the measurement of said arsenic. It could be that the human toenail concentrates arsenic and makes it look as though there are high levels, when in fact it’s very low levels over a longer period of time. That makes it harder to determine how it relates to harmful effects that can occur from exposure to arsenic, like cancer of the lungs or kidneys.

But it’s a start…

arsenic, toenails, bioaccumulation, chemicals, mining, waste, England, Industrial Revolution, Leicester, Nottingham Trent, University, British Geological Survey, cancer

This news is a couple of weeks old at this point, but it’s never too late to complain about it, nonetheless.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is obviously still griped with the Bush-era, pushover-for-Big-Business philosophy when it comes to regulating children’s toys and other products. I guess when it comes to testing for lead, some prices are too high.

Last (this) year when all those toys were (are) being recalled, Congress in their infinite wisdom decided to pass some legislation to protect consumers against manufacturers and their distributors when it comes to taking short cuts or using cheaper and more dangerous materials in the manufacture of children’s goods. Sounds good, yes? Well, it would be if our government would bother to enforce some rules every now and then.

The CPSC decided to give manufacturers and distributors another year before they have to start testing products before selling them to an unwitting public. That’s right, another year before said companies will have to test for lead in the paint used on your kids toys. You’d think that for starters the Consumer Product SAFETY Commission would want a company to test their products before someone gets sick or before the costs of a massive public recall. But no, it’ll be another year before anyone will be testing your child’s toys.

According to the LA Times article on the subject, the CPSC spokesperson said that to start testing today would not be feasible and the time frame was unrealistic.

Ensuring the safety of products given to our smallest and most vulnerable citizens should always be feasible. But again, it is just another example of a business’ bottom-line coming before your safety and health.

Larry Mestyanek, owner of Los Angeles company TAG Toys, thinks the stay will save him $50,000 in testing fees. He’s been fielding calls from customers every day asking whether his toys have been tested and whether he can explain the law, so he appreciates the reprieve.

But it’s too late to save money for Albert Lee, owner of boys clothing manufacturer Monster Republic in Los Angeles. He said he has been rushing to test his clothing since he heard about the law in mid-December. It cost him “a solid month of worry and stress,” plus a few thousand dollars, he said. — LA Times

Wow, $50,000 is worth more than a child's health...

Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC, recall, toy, children, health, lead, products, regulation, safety, testing, Congress

In a very creepy Children of Men kind of way, this recent development in the state of our world’s water resources could be the first step to lower fecundity in humans, which yes, in an extreme case like the world of 2027 in Children of Men, could lead to diminished birth rates.

Guess I’ll stop worrying about overpopulation…

A British joint-research project finds that increasing numbers of new chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals and fertilizers — the very things that make life worth living, am I right? — are showing up in our water supplies. These chemicals may have a rather harmful and decidedly less fruitful side effect on a man’s reproductive system.

And on a fish’s reproductive system. Studies in the past have shown that male fish are being “feminized” due to female hormones in the water supply. Certain hormones in the water are turning the fish into girl fish, kind of in some cases and literally in others. These estrogens are making it through the water treatment process after passing through women taking birth-control pills. To be fair, chemicals that act like estrogen also have the same effect on fish, and those chemicals are coming from industrial manufacturing.

Now, researchers are finding new chemicals they are calling “anti-androgens.” These are acting much like the estrogen and faux-estrogen. Androgens are male hormones like testosterone, and serve to support sperm production.

In fact, the researchers says they really don’t know where some of these chemicals are coming from.

“We have identified a new group of chemicals in our study on fish, but do not know where they are coming from. A principal aim of our work is now to identify the source of these pollutants and work with regulators and relevant industry to test the effects of a mixture of these chemicals and the already known environmental estrogens and help protect environmental health.” [quote from Lead author on the research paper, Dr Susan Jobling at Brunel University's Institute for the Environment]

Senior author Professor Charles Tyler of the University of Exeter said: “Our research shows that a much wider range of chemicals than we previously thought is leading to hormone disruption in fish. This means that the pollutants causing these problems are likely to be coming from a wide variety of sources.

“Our findings also strengthen the argument for the cocktail of chemicals in our water leading to hormone disruption in fish, and contributing to the rise in male reproductive problems. There are likely to be many reasons behind the rise in male fertility problems in humans, but these findings could reveal one, previously unknown, factor.”–SPX via TerraDaily

These anti-androgens are known to cause a condition called testicular dysgenesis syndrome. Even the name tells us what is going on — dys means “ill” and genesis means “birth“. The anti-androgens can cause developmental damage to the reproductive system in embryos and the syndrome is becoming more and more common unfortunately.

We are what we drink. The ultimate anti-androgens, Women.

Yet more bad news for our water supply.

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Nothing to do with topic, I just like the picture.

You may have heard something along the lines of pharmaceuticals showing up in our water supply, as so many of us are taking more than an aspirin and still calling our doctors for more. Well, the good news is that yes, pharmaceuticals are showing up in water and in great concentrations in what is removed from our water — sewage sludge. The bad news is that there is a lot more stuff in that sewage sludge than just antidepressants.

Biosolids and You

As the EPA says, “The terms sewage sludge and biosolids are used by EPA interchangeably, but others often use the term biosolids to describe sewage sludge that has had additional processing for land application.” So in this case, biosolids are solid and biological in origin, that is it comes from humans and animals. These biosolids are often converted to fertilizers as our poo and pee have lots of nitrogen and other beneficial nutrients. That’s why manure is used in organic farming, after all. Well, sometimes that manure is yours.

Or was yours, rather.

What the report says is that there is a whole lotta sh*t in our sewage sludge, and I’m not talking feces here. The EPA looked at samples from 74 water treatment plants in 35 states, and here’s what they were looking for in all that sludge.

Many of the 145 chemicals tested for were present nationwide. Biosolids from all of the 74 large treatment plants surveyed contained the same 27 metals, but only zinc, molybdenum, and nickel exceeded standards for application to fields. Almost all of the 11 flame retardants on the list were present in every sample. Twelve of the 72 pharmaceuticals were similarly ubiquitous.

Two of the most common drugs were the antibiotics triclocarban and ciprofloxacin. Although the average concentrations were similar to those in previous small-scale studies, several samples harbored up to 440 parts per million of triclocarban, which is added to antimicrobial soap and other personal care products. That’s almost 10 times higher than ever reported in biosolids and “astonishingly high,” Halden says. One question is whether the antibiotics harm soil microbes, or aquatic life if enough leaches into streams, Halden says. “We really don’t have the answer.” –Science

Remember how some people warned everybody about using antibacterial soaps because they would breed super germs? Seems like that was the least of our worries. If sewage sludge continues to accumulate antibiotics, and if that sewage were processed through into fertilizer, the antibiotics could end up creating major issues in agricultural soils which depend on beneficial microbes and bacteria to break down nutrients for crops.

And that’s just the downside to antibiotics…we haven’t even gotten into the other stuff yet.

EPA, sewage sludge, sewage, fertilizer, crops, soil, water, water treatment, antibiotics, antidepressants, water supply, waste, human, agriculture, chemicals, organic farming

I may have given up my subscription to TIME magazine last year, but I still read it online. I ran across this little article by Dr. Sanjay Gupta — who seems to be everywhere lately, media-wise. Gupta gives us his reasons for not legalizing marijuana.

The great debate over marijuana is one that makes no sense to me. Granted, marijuana may not be the best thing for your health, but the question over the legalization of marijuana should not be based on health consequences unless those that criminalize are also willing to criminalize other more harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco.

Oh, yeah, we tried banning alcohol and that didn’t go over so well. Crime rose and people still drank. Police departments were stretched thin and people still drank. Huh, sounds like the same thing with pot. People still smoke. But unfortunately, those caught with even what is considered a “personal” amount may face time in prison for it. And our prisons are overflowing due to drug crimes.

In last week’s article, Dr. Gupta brought up the upcoming ballot initiatives in Colorado and Nevada that will legalize the possession of marijuana for adults over 21 years of age. Gupta then explains why he would vote no on that initiative. He points out the obvious, that pot may possibly lead to addiction. Furthermore…

What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory. It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope?) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety. While many people smoke marijuana to relax, it can have the opposite effect on frequent users. And smoking anything, whether it’s tobacco or marijuana, can seriously damage your lung tissue. — Time

Ok, seriously, this is why you would vote no, Doctor?

The criminalization of marijuana is built on faulty reasoning. Lots of things are dangerous for us, but the government doesn’t spend millions of dollars every year enforcing ridiculously punitive charges against people that are getting high “off the books.” If you could grow your own tobacco, do you think the government and their corporate benefactors would allow you to do so? This “crime” is based on politics rather than science.

Alcohol is still legal, and I am sure that Dr. Gupta would agree with me that alcohol is much more dangerous in terms of potential for addiction and deleterious health consequences. Cigarettes are legal, so smoke damage can not be the real reason for pot being an illegal narcotic.

And what doesn’t cause depression and anxiety in people? And who cares if you are depressed, your drinking water has residual anxiety and depression pharmaceuticals, so you’re covered. Alright, that was glib, but if you think about it, smoking pot can be considered a form of “self-medication.” So why are researchers and scientists and eggheads looking into why people feel the need to self-dose? Another glaring lack of science in the criminalization of pot argument.

First, I would like to see some hard science to back up the reason that marijuana is illegal and alcohol and tobacco are fine. And for a doctor to not address that the ban on pot lacks the science to effectively show that pot is more dangerous than other legal controlled substances is just silly to me. I would have been more impressed if Dr. Gupta had called for similar bans on other more harmful substances that are sold to us ad naseum during sports events.

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That has to be one of the more literal titles I’ve used in a while…

Back in high school, I had a friend that smoked and lived with parents that smoked. She stank — so much so that my dad would ask her to remove her ubiquitous suede jacket (can’t fault her for being stylish) before coming into our house and leave it outside in the garage. I gave my dad sh*t about it, but secretly, I thanked him.

Seems Fritz was bringing in toxic substances with that coat — and probably her hair, her shirt, her shoes. Scientists are finally giving a name to that toxic residue from cigarettes.

Third-Hand Smoke

And it is just as dangerous as first- or second-hand smoke. That smell that lingers after your morning drag is toxic, and it clings to clothes, walls, furniture, carpets. The children that parents think they are protecting by not smoking around them may still be sucking on that cigarette when they crawl around the house, gum a toy, or sit in the car.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who heads the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said the phrase third-hand smoke is a brand-new term that has implications for behavior.

“The central message here is that simply closing the kitchen door to take a smoke is not protecting the kids from the effects of that smoke,” he said. “There are carcinogens in this third-hand smoke, and they are a cancer risk for anybody of any age who comes into contact with them.” — NY Times

Researchers from Mass General’s Children’s Hospital did a phone survey to see how many people knew about the dangers of third-hand smoke and how they smoked around their kids.

“Everyone knows that second-hand smoke is bad, but they don’t know about this,” said Dr. Jonathan P. Winickoff, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“When their kids are out of the house, they might smoke. Or they smoke in the car. Or they strap the kid in the car seat in the back and crack the window and smoke, and they think it’s okay because the second-hand smoke isn’t getting to their kids,” Dr. Winickoff continued. “We needed a term to describe these tobacco toxins that aren’t visible.”

Third-hand smoke is what one smells when a smoker gets in an elevator after going outside for a cigarette, he said, or in a hotel room where people were smoking. “Your nose isn’t lying,” he said. “The stuff is so toxic that your brain is telling you: ’Get away.’” — NY Times (again)

The study found that 65% of non-smokers and only 43% of smokers believed that “‘breathing air in a room today where people smoked yesterday can harm the health of infants and children.’” It’s scary that more than half of all smokers questioned didn’t think that cigarette residue would pose a health danger to their children. Children take in more air than adults, percentage-wise, and therefore usually feel the effects of environmental contaminants more profoundly.

And we wonder why so many kids have asthma?

Here’s a short list of the the many, many chemicals and toxic substances that can be found in cigarette residue.

Gee, and I was worried about flame retardants…

cigarettes, smoke, second-hand smoke, third-hand smoke, children, health, danger, toxic substances, arsenic, lead, carbon monoxide, butane, hydrogen cyanide, toulene, polonium-210, asthma, carcinogens, flame retardants, environmental contaminants