Daily Science Dose

Credit: Ken Inomata/Kanazawa University

It seems that some Japanese researchers have figured out that genotoxic stress can cause hair follicles to go white, as it were. But it’s not that the stress actually causes the lack of pigmentation, but rather that the stress causes the cells to use up their pigmentation faster than they should, and once the pigment runs out, it’s silver city, baby.

Some years ago, a dermotologist in Japan, Emi Nishimura, discovered that hair follicles are filled with melanocyte stem cells. If you look at the base of that word, melan-, you may associate it with melanin, which gives animals and plants pigment. The melanocyte stem cells hang out in your hair follicle and whenever a new hair starts to grow, some of those stem cells become the melanocytes, or the cells responsible for your hair’s color. Some of the stem cells stay behind, so to speak, waiting for the next strand to come along. Ideally, your body should store enough of these little dabs of color to last your lifetime, but new research shows that stress to the DNA in the cells cause more of the melanocytes to join whatever hair is growing, leaving fewer and fewer color cells behind for the next hair.

Nishimura suspected that genotoxic stressors, such as radiation or harsh chemicals, might play a role in the stem cells’ fate, because they’ve been implicated in other signs of aging. She and colleagues at Japan’s Kanazawa University tested the idea in mice, which also gray with age. After exposure to cell-stressing x-rays or chemotherapy drugs, young mice went gray in an unexpected way. More of their melanocyte stem cells matured into color-producing melanocytes, depleting the store of stem cells. Instead of dying or being inactivated, the DNA-damaged cells matured before their time.

“The mature cells lose their regeneration capabilities,” Nishimura explains. “The mice then can’t produce enough pigment-making cells” and consequently go gray. Moreover, the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well. –ScienceNOW Daily News

So basically, genotoxic stress — that is anything from ultraviolet light to the natural division of the cell itself — damages your cells’ DNA, but it also leads to the “maturing” as it were. If the cell is mature, it is no longer dividing like cells do. If a cell is not dividing, it’s not reproducing itself. Is this early maturation process a defensive move on the part of damaged cells that shut down their reproductive processes in order to not pass on the damage (DNA defect) to its “children”?

Although, truth be told, I’m sure that this research will be used to prevent grey hair, rather than to prevent cancer. Hey, I’m a cynic.

cells, stem cells, grey hair, gray hair, going grey, DNA, cancer, cell division, cell maturation, melanocyte stem cells, Kanazawa University, Emi Nishimura, mice

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

As if pesticides were not bad enough, Bayer, you still insist on using a highly toxic and dangerous chemical to produce those pesticides. No other pesticide manufacturer is stockpiling methyl isocyanate (MIC), so why do you continue to endanger the health of your employees and to a lesser extent your neighbors by finding that it necessary to house large quantities of methyl isocyanate.

A little history…Methyl Isocyanate is an ester of isocyanic acid, a volatile and poisonous substance made up of one Hydrogen, one Nitrogen, one Carbon and one oxygen atom. You’d think that those four elements would produce nothing but good, but then you’d be wrong. Methyl Isocyanate is used in making pesticides such as Bayer’s trademarked Sevin (carbaryl), among other pesticides used in industrialized agriculture.

Methyl isocyanate is not the only chemical that Bayer can use to produce carbaryl, but it is the cheapest. So you see, it’s not that Bayer has to use MIC, it’s that it is more profitable to use MIC. And we all know that profits come before human health and safety.

A plant making Sevin in India accidentally released MIC into the surrounding area of the then-Union Carbide Ltd plant outside of Bhopal back in 1984. The death toll from that accident is estimated to be around 16,000. One of the consequences of one of the worst industrial accidents ever was that Union Carbide and other chemical companies phased out MIC as a major ingredient in those yummy pesticide.

Everyone except Bayer, that is. And then, last year, an explosion at a Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, West Virginia narrowly avoided another disaster. The fire at the plant was a mere 80 feet from the above-ground MIC storage tank. At the time, Bayer assured the public that the MIC was in an underground storage tank far away from the fire.

But it seems that Bayer was lying. And because they lied, that meddling Committee on Energy and Commerce is looking into why Bayer still feels the need to keep so much MIC around. The Institute, WV plant is the only plant in the US that still has a substantial (more than 10,000 pounds) inventory of MIC.

Bayer is being asked (nicely) to give the CEC an explanation why it has so much MIC lying around, if Bayer has even begun to think about not using MIC, and what it would cost to switch to alternative chemicals. I hope that the cost estimate is not being included, so we taxpayers can cough up the dough to help a very rich company pay for being safe.

Bayer, pesticide, Bhopal, gas, MIC, methyl isocyanate, toxic substance, chemicals, agriculture, India, industrial accident, Congress

Finally, the internet and wireless phones can be put to work on the side of good rather than just porn.

A test run of a new software suite called INSTEDD in Southeast Asia holds a world of promise when it comes to coordinating information across multiple users and agencies, locations, database configurations. Think of it as social networking among emergency and crisis workers and the people locally by anything from disease outbreaks to natural disasters.

I think everyone can agree that recent disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina has shown everyone that communication can be an effective key to mitigating the most profound effects of emergency situations. And as our methods of communication have expanded beyond telephones and telegraphs, so too must our tools for responding to disasters and epidemics.

As an example, the “test run” in Stung Treng Province, Cambodia was meant to simulate an outbreak of a disease scattered among many small villages throughout the region. Text messages, emails, and even blogs are useful tools to communicate, but with this new suite of three programs, INSTEDD can coordinate all methods of communication and can turn all that info into useful data for government agencies, relief workers, local residents, health officials, and anyone else who would be involved in relief efforts.

The INSTEDD suite consists of GeoChat, which “enables team members to communicate their position and important information using text messages, email or a web browser, with data instantly synchronized on every team members’ mobile phone or laptops.” The second component of the suite is Mesh4X, which translates all the different software among different agencies (stuff like which database software they use) among all the users. Finally, INSTEDD gives us Evolve, a tool that mines data and then provides vizualization tools like maps and charts to better understand all that information that is coming in now that all forms of communicating are linked up, with no software compatibility issues.

INSTEDD comes from a Palo Alto, California non-profit of the same acronym, which stands for Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters. INSTEDD has received money from Google, so it’s no surprise that Google Maps and Google Earth are part of the visualization tools.

natural disasters, emergency, relief, disease, outbreak, epidemic, Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters, INSTEDD, Google, Google Maps, Google Earth

A new study, one being praised for its thoroughness, shows that heavy red-meat eaters are at a higher risk of death from pretty much everything.

The National Cancer Institute looked at the cases of 500,000 patients and in particular questionaires they filled out detailing their intake of red meat and processed meats, as well as other factors like smoking, exercise, fondness for vegetables and fruits, how much they ate, yada, yada, yada. They split the respondents into five groups and the group you were in related to how much red and processed meat you ate. Level 1 the lowest, level five the highest.

It seems that over the years from 1995 to 2005, about 48,000 of the men in the study died, as well as almost 24,000 women. And guess what? A larger percentage of those heavy meat consumers died than the level 1’s.

The quintile who ate the most red meat had a higher risk for overall death, death from heart disease and cancer than the men and women who ate the least red meat.

The researchers said thousands of deaths could be prevented if people simply ate less meat.

“For overall mortality, 11 percent of deaths in men and 16 percent of deaths in women could be prevented if people decreased their red meat consumption to the level of intake in the first quintile,” [Rashmi] Sinha’s team wrote. –Reuters via Planet Ark

Well, what do you know… Red meat is bad for your health. I’m sure cows would agree with me here.

Not only does beef cost a hefty price in terms of your health, but do you know how bad the beef and meat industry is for the larger world? Pollution, water usage, crop diversion to animal feed, the flatulence…cows and pigs are dirty creatures. Chickens and turkeys are, too. Especially the way we raise them.

Not only that, but in the US, we consume far too much meat, due to our relative affluence and a snappy campaign from the Beef Industry to the tune of Aaron Copeland. There’s a lot of people in this world are vegetarians not by choice, but by necessity.

But in this land of meat and potatoes, and heart attacks, obesity, high cholesterol, hyper-tension, diabetes, cancer…when will we stop believing the ad campaigns? Just say no.

And I love the response from the American Meat Institute, an industry front.

But American Meat Institute executive president, James Hodges, said: “Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet and studies show they actually provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness that can help with weight control. Proper body weight contributes to good health overall.” –ibid.

Brilliant. I wonder how many of those heavy red meat consumers are achieving “proper body weight.”

red meat, processed meat, beef industry, National Cancer Institute, death, obesity, heart disease, cancer, pollution, water, Americans, health, food, agriculture

Yeah, when you take their cigarettes away…

No, but seriously, it seems that some bad behavior may not be because of crappy parenting — oh, wait. It is because of crappy parenting, namely smoking while pregnant. Some kids have a genetic variant that gets triggered by those prenatal smokes and those kids turn into bad kids.

A new study brought to us by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a subset of the National Institutes of Health) has shown that exposure to smoke before birth raises the risks for behavioral problems in children and teens. The tobacco affects the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene variant, which is associated with the monoamine oxidase enzyme. This enzyme happens to regulate those nice neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Something goes wrong in the regulating and well, you got yourself trouble, right here in River City.

And get this, the study shows that the increased risk for bad behavior is different for boys and girls. MAOA has another variant, -L, and if a boy has low MAOA-L activity, he is more likely to have disruptive behavior issues. Quite conversely for a girl — she is more likely to be bad if her MAOA-L is high-activity. The activity levels mean how much or little of the enzyme MAOA is being produced. Also, in girls, it seems that the high-risk girls are prone to reading emotional cues as aggressive, which in turn makes the girls lash back aggressively. And the more mothers smoked, the higher the risks for behavior problems.

The last National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2006-7) showed that 426,000 pregnant women aged 15-44 were current cigarette smokers. I hope those truth ads are helping reduce this number. But then again, if smoking while pregnant produces out-of-control teenage girls, maybe it’s not all bad — Ask Maury.

smoking, drugs, cigarettes, tobacco, prenatal, exposure, smoking while pregnant, monoamine oxidase A, MAOA, gene, enzyme, neurotransmitters, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health

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.

fertility, reproductive health, men, mens health, water, water pollution, androgens, anti-androgens, fish, feminizing, fecundity, Children of Men, overpopulation, sperm, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, hormones, estrogen, testosterone, manufacturing, chemicals, water treatment, testicular dysgenesis syndrome, embryos, developmental damage

Just when you did not think that the healthcare crisis in the United States could get any worse, some disturbing new information has been released by the National Institutes of Health could mean just that. Increased and better testing for Diabetes is showing that more and more Americans are at risk for this disease.

For a system that is already stressed and underfunded, diabetes is already a huge burden on the nation’s health. Putting more diabetes patients into a system that can hardly handle what patients it already has may prove to be disastrous for our current system.

Type 2 Diabetes is one of those diseases that preventative care could prevent. The idea behind preventative care is simple — educate people and teach them to care for their bodies in ways that will help to prevent certain lifestyle diseases. Of course, some people will get Diabetes no matter what, but in most cases of Type 2, healthy changes in lifestyle can be a game changer.

Let’s look at some numbers. The new survey looked at two studies which tested people in two ways. The Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG) test is the standard way to test for diabetes. It’s cheap and it’s quick, but it is not the most accurate test. The Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) is the newer diabetes test and it is more accurate and better at diagnosing diabetes in older patients as well as diagnosing a pre-diabetic condition that may or may not become diabetes (but usually does because most people don’t realize they are pre-diabetic and therefore do nothing to change their ways and prevent the onset of actual diabetes).

The survey says that 13% of adult Americans have Diabetes, but 40% of those people do not know it yet. The highest number is in the elderly and minority populations. Additionally, 30% of adults have pre-diabetes.

“We’re facing a diabetes epidemic that shows no signs of abating, judging from the number of individuals with pre-diabetes,” said lead author Catherine Cowie, Ph.D., of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), a part of the NIH. “For years, diabetes prevalence estimates have been based mainly on data that included a fasting glucose test but not an OGTT. The 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, is the first national survey in 15 years to include the OGTT. The addition of the OGTT gives us greater confidence that we’re seeing the true burden of diabetes and pre-diabetes in a representative sample of the U.S. population.” — NIH News

So, if these numbers are even kind of accurate, the percentage of American adults who could have Diabetes in the next decade or two could be 43%. That is crazy epidemic numbers. There is obviously something very, very wrong with our American lifestyle (which we are more than happy to export to everywhere).

Diabetes, healthcare, United States, National Institutes of Health, testing, type 2, health, disease, epidemic, pre-diabetes, Americans, lifestyle

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.

marijuana, crime, legalization, pot, Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Gupta, Time, Colorado, Nevada, ban, prison, alcohol, tobacco, politics, science, health, addiction, cigarettes, controlled substances, narcotics, drugs

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

In the past month, reports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Phillipines are detailing the troubling accounts of a resurgence of the Ebola Virus.

First, the Congo…

Nine people have died so far out of 21 people infected with the deadly Ebola virus, according to the Health Ministry in the DR Congo. Doctors without Borders has a higher estimate of 33 people infected That may not seem like such a big deal, except that Ebola tends to kill 90% of those infected. This is hardly the first time that Ebola has struck the West African nation.

Ebola was first documented in 1976 in Zaire, which was what the DR Congo at that time. The disease also afflicted people in the Sudan. Ebola is named after the Ebola River, which is very near the site where the disease was found. Below is a chart 2003 showing the number of people in red infected versus the number of deaths in black, appropriately enough.

If you have been paying attention to the news, you may have heard that some pigs in the Phillipines have also tested positively for Ebola. This needs some clarifying, as the pigs, or hogs, are infected with the Ebola-Reston Virus.

Ebola-Reston may be a subtype of Ebola, but so far, that is still to be definitely determined by researchers. Ebola-Reston gets its name from its similarity to Ebola, obviously, as it is a filovirus as is Ebola. Filoviruses are particularly nasty diseases in which long, slender RNA viruses attack the host’s blood vessels, causing them to rupture and at the same time prevent coagulation, which means that the victim will not stop bleeding.

Ebola-Reston gets the “Reston” from a Reston, Virginia lab where researchers first isolated the filovirus. So far, Ebola-Reston Virus has not caused serious illness in humans, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t. Previous to the recent outbreak, Ebola-Reston was thought only to infect monkeys. The virus’ move into the porcine world could be a normal move of the disease of which little is still known, or it could point to the much-sought “reservoir” of the disease, which has yet to be discovered.

The UN is beginning to investigate the Ebola-Reston virus in pigs…stay tuned.

Ebola, Ebola-Reston, virus, fliovirus, Congo, DR Congo, Zaire, Reston, Virginia

There is nothing I find more oxymoronic than the term “political science.” More often than not, politics and science are locked in battle, with politics trumping science.

When Good Science Is Ignored

With the upcoming election, it is hard not to be thinking of politics lately, and if you have read some of my previous posts, you will notice that I tend to think in political terms often when it comes to science. For example, what can the new President and Congress do to compensate for 8 years of bad science by way of the Bush Administration? Do you remember those days, less than 2 years ago, when Bush and his “scientists” claimed that global warming was a hoax, the science was bad, it wasn’t man-made, there wasn’t a consensus among scientists on the issue, it was the fault of alarmist environmentalists, etc, etc, etc…

Seems like global warming isn’t the only crisis that is worsening due to politics trumping good science. I ran across this article recently, and despite our nation’s growing (excuse the pun) obesity problem, it seems that the food industry is trying its hardest to undermine science. And why, you ask? Money, profits, returns to shareholders, call it what you want, I call it greed.

All that processed food Americans eat come from major corporations that all form a, shall we say, club. That club then goes to Congressional leaders asking them to let them market their products, however unhealthy, to kids. And by way of thanks, those corporations have employees that give lots of money to that same Congressional leader that is letting them sell their processed, sugary, salty, so-good-but-oh-so-bad foods. If you don’t think that your favorite snack food is from a major corporation, check out the website. Look around for the parent company, usually at the bottom of the page, next to a year and a copyright symbol or trademark. Better yet, go to the corporate websites for Kraft, Nabisco, or even Kelloggs. You will see how many brands are owned by the same company. Even seemingly competing brands, like the so-called healthy brands like Snackwells and the far-from-healthy Oreos, are being marketed by the same company (in this case, Nabisco) or for another example, Hormel not only sells Hormel Chili, but also Stagg Chili. For goodness sake, look at the cola wars. Coke and Pepsi are great examples of corporate-power-gone-wrong.

I remember in high school when a soda vending machine was installed in our cafeteria. And then I read that soda machines went into elementary schools. Soda? Soda is so far-from-healthy that no one should drink it, much less little kids.

Now, don’t get me wrong, every little kid wants soda, and it is not going to kill anybody sparingly or at least in moderation, but we are seeing the effects of children and processed, sugary foods. This nation is fat and our kids are going to suffer for it. And rather than reign in the companies that are pitching their goods at little kids, the Government is putting its head in the sand.

Kind of like with global warming. Will an 8 year absence of reason be too long to rectify when saner heads prevail in our nation’s capital? Will saner heads ever prevail in Washington, or will we, as a people, reject the constant bombardment of advertising at our kids and show that rejection by passing on the high fructrose corn syrup?

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