latest news on bpa

A coalition of health advocates, looking to seize the momentum of a new administration, will meet with members of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team next week in Washington, D.C., to push for a ban on bisphenol A.

The fact that Obama’s team is willing to meet now – with all the other pressures facing the incoming administration – sends a strong signal that the president-elect is open to making environmental health issues a higher priority than the Bush administration.

BPA has been linked to heart disease and diabetes in humans and has been found to interfere with chemotherapy for breast cancer patients. Animal studies have linked it to prostate and breast cancer, obesity, reproductive failures and behavioral problems, even at extremely low doses.

go HERE for more on this news.

interesting…

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That’s what unhappy people do.

You can get more about this study from the New York Times

science and faith

I have, and believe in, both. Many people think the two clash. I feel the two complement.

I cam across a very interesting interview, that I want to share, to start discussion, to apply to your life, to dismiss… I think it is an interesting dialogue.

I’ve fallen in love with the idea that consciousness has something to do with being poised forever between the quantum world of possibilities, where nothing actual happens, and the transformation of that — whether it’s the collapse of the wave function or decoherence, where something actual happens in the world.

and:
I think that there’s something else. I think the creativity in nature is so stunning and so overwhelming that it’s God enough for me, and I think it’s God enough for many of us if we think about it.

from: God Enough, a conversation with Stuart Kauffman

with climate change, comes disease

This weekend there was a medical conference about the health effects of climate change.

“There is a personal responsibility that everyone has to be prepared,” Caid said.

The scientists who spoke on specific diseases, professor Andrew Comrie of the University of Arizona and Jeremy Hess, a consultant for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are backed up by many scientists worldwide in linking warming to health problems. But they acknowledge a lack of hard research documenting or predicting climate-change-disease links.

While they acknowledge that much more data needs to be gathered and evaluated, they all believe that climate change will see an increase in disease. “Climate change will likely amplify existing health problems, and problems will be linked in a way that hasn’t happened before, Hess said in an interview. While society has adequate means to deal with many of the diseases, a breakdown in public infrastructure systems from climate-related emergencies could cause severe problems, he added.”

I thought this was particularly interesting:
Diseases linked to climate change
• Valley fever: Spiked from less than 1,000 cases in 1997 to 5,000 or more cases in Arizona in 2006 and 2007. Increase causes are under study, but they’re possibly linked to drought caused or aggravated by warming. Also could be caused by better reporting, construction dust and more vulnerable elderly people moving here.
• Dengue fever: 100 million cases caused annually worldwide and generally agreed to be moving north into northern Mexico. The aedes aegypti mosquitoes that cause it already live in Tucson. Warmer weather could move the disease to Arizona. The presence of swimming pools, artificial ponds and stagnant water could also draw disease-bearing mosquitoes.
• Chronic respiratory disease: Could rise if hotter temperatures raise ozone air pollution levels.
• Allergies: Could rise if earlier growing seasons for plants generate more pollen.
• West Nile virus: Could also increase with the continued northward movement of mosquitoes due to warmer weather.
• Asthma and other respiratory diseases: Could rise due to fungus and mold growth caused by extreme variations in temperature and precipitation.
• Heat-related desert deaths of illegal immigrants: Could increase as temperatures rise.
• Heart disease, coughing and breathing problems, decreased lung function: Could be aggravated if global warming brings more drought and dust.
• Malaria: Some areas of Arizona not now suitable for malaria-carrying mosquitoes could become suitable by 2050 due to warmer, more humid weather.

I also thought this was a significant statement: “”Climate is complicated. It forces us to think through what our responsibility is to future generations. It is expensive to deal with. A lot of people don’t want to talk about it,” said Hess, from Emory University.”

I am always writing about the effects of our decisions now, on the children. The truth is that with climate change it is unlikely that you or I may develop asthma or allergies. We are conditioned and we have years of immunity due to exposure. However, children have week immune systems, they are more likely to get dehydrated, and more often outdoors. Yes. It is expensive to deal with, but not compared to the medical cost that will be force upon us if we do not start taking action.

HERE is the article.

india and diabetes, part 2

Just yesterday I posted an article about the prevalence of diabetes in India, HERE.

In another article, published today, some flaws are pointed out, that I felt were worth mentioning.

The author of the article feels that key evidence about pollution’s role in Type 2 diabetes was omitted and needed to be discussed.

No where in BBC’s coverage is there even the slightest hint of a large body of scientific literature on the possible role of contamination. As long as the media and public health officials ignore this, they won’t explore ways that reducing contamination might be used to avoid diabetes in the first place.

Multiple studies now show strong epidemiological links between pollution and type 2 diabetes.

 

For example, research by Lee et al., using data from the US Centers for Disease Control, finds dramatic increases in diabetes risk associated with exposure to a mixture of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like dioxins and PCBs.

The article is very interesting, and even mentions a possible link to Bisphenol-A and diabetes. You can find it HERE.

at least it seems to be in their adults

I have to tell you that I was extremely surprised to find this article, because I really had no idea.

India Battles Diabeties “Epidemic”, via BBC

And, yes, it is Type 2 Adult Onset Diabetes. And, yes, it is because of the food they eat and a shift to a sedentary lifestyle. But the figures are staggering… 3 million a year die from it and 250 million are affected.

What worries the health professionals is that type 2 diabetes, which is the variety that is spreading so fast, is on a seemingly unstoppable rise in villages and rural areas.

It just reminds me of a conversation I had and article I wrote once, about how the United States only export is our lifestyle and it’s what is killing all of us. We have marketed ourselves so well, that people give up their traditions and change how they live and eat and it turns around and kills them.

This disease used to exist in such small numbers. Now, it is the leading killer of many nations. All because of what people eat. It’s really quite sad.

I believe in data

I didn’t know this, but, it has been hard to prove the effects of global warming in the arctic regions, since, although we have seen melting, the overall temperature has remained unchanged or gotten cooler.

Now, a group of scientists have been able to show that there is an overall temperature increase in those zones due to mankind’s influence over global temperatures.

The scientists created four computer models, including one that included the impact of greenhouse gases and one that did not. The model with the greenhouse gases produced predictions that matched actual temperature observations up to this point in time, according to their report, “Attribution of polar warming to human influence”, in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

Taking averages across all of Antarctica produced findings of “overall warming” of a few tenths of a percent, Gillett said.

But the team found temperature increases on the Antarctic Peninsula of up to 3 degrees Celsius since the 1950s, among the largest increases on Earth, Monaghan said. Still, the average monthly temperature is 1 degree to minus -15 degrees C.

The whole article can be found HERE, via Inter Press Service news agency.

Much of what we read about climate change does feel like a broken record… global warming, blah, blah, human caused, blah, blah. However, until recently science proving what we are seeing has been limited. Science takes time. Studies that were started at the onset of the change are just now seeing hard data that proves the original hypothesis. I think what people have always known to be true in their gut, are finally able to have the scientific backing.

This study was a major step in understanding a dichotomy that allowed naysayers to stay as naysayers. They will be hard pressed to stand by their argument, now.

DOE vs. the World

The second article, not about the EPA, but a government organization dealing with the environment, so included it…

Department of Energy Tells Scientists to Cut and Run, via Huffington Post

I didn’t know this study was in place. And, it seems just as I found out about it, it will disappear.

For more than a decade, the federal government has spent millions of dollars pumping elevated levels of carbon dioxide into small groups of trees to test how forests will respond to global warming in the next 50 years.

Some scientists believe they are on the cusp of receiving key results from the time-consuming experiments.

The U.S. Department of Energy, however, which is funding the project, has told the scientists to chop down the trees, collect the data and move on to new research.

There are mixed reasons for why they want to stop the study. Apparently, they put together a group of people, with unknown backgrounds, and decided that they had enough data. But, why are the scientists in charge of the experiment considered the experts to determine this. In fact, some data is seems extremely relevant and needs to be studied further:

Results so far indicate that elevated levels of carbon dioxide make forests grow more quickly, said Ram Oren, professor of ecology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and principal investigator on the experiments there.

But unless forests are on fertile ground _ hard to come by because of development _ growth will be in leaves, needles, and fine roots, which die off and decompose in a year or two, releasing the carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere, Oren said.

I guess we will see how this develops.

oops, it did it again

I have written a LOT about Bisphenol-A (BPA) and the negative effects it has on our bodies. However, I never saw this coming. I just read something and I am unclear about the ramifications, but at first glance it doesn’t seem good.

Scientists are discovering that BPA has had a negative impact in lab experiements. The BPA is being released in their test tubes and altering biologic reactions, therefore giving bogus data.

But they JUST found this out.

Furthermore, plastic pipette tips – a one-use product that delivers small amounts of liquid for experiments – also leached chemicals that block biological reactions. And chemicals from plastic plates used in protein experiments actually made the MAO-B enzyme more active.

(For those who don’t know, pipette tips can be thought of as your measuring spoons in the kitchen. They are used in almost every application of science because they are the measuring device for small amounts of material… we’re talking microliters.)

These effects could distort experiments enough to make a big difference in research. “I think it’s inevitable that a lot of data that’s in the public domain will be skewed in some way,” Holt says, though he hasn’t yet identified papers with erroneous data or conclusions.

Obviously, right now, we have no idea how far this extends; how much data is inaccurate.

Really…. this is NOT good. From working in a lab, I can tell you that in order to address this issue would require a massive overhaul of the science industry. One that they are not in a position to do, currently.

This is something that will need to be watched for a while to see how deep this goes.

HERE is the article

if you like science, this is an article for you

I just read a fantastic opinion piece in The New Republic about the demise of science in politics and what can be done about it.

You can find the article HERE.

In the last eight years, I have watched as Bush has bastardized everything about science, from global warming, to stem cell research, to… well, even space travel. There was a time when administrations looked to our scientists with admiration; brought them into the Oval Office for council on progress in all matters. However, starting in the 70′s, their presence became less and less in the hallowed halls and they remained sequestered in their labs. Not only that, government has gone out of its way to turn science into a monster and challenges most of their research. This is where I think it gets interesting….

So why have they not spoken up. The author of the article gives his opinion. But, I want to share mine. I worked in a Biotech company for.. ahem, a few years. I observed and asked questions and this is my opinion. You see America operates in a different way then other countries in this regard: if you, as scientist, discover something amazing… we are talking Watson and Crick, DNA type stuff… all of your research belongs to the company or university footing the bill. You may get credit, but patents and data and rights, solely belong to the corporation. Those are the same corporations lobbying congress from policy and deregulation on the medical, pharmaceutical and scientific industry.

So, a scientist may write letter after letter about why they think so and so is harming us by challenging data on global warming. But that is where it stops. It is a conflict of interest for the scientists because they need money. They get the money from their employer. The same employer that is having lunch with your Congressman so their best interest is served, and not yours.

In this country, corporate interest always comes before individual interests. I think it is important to know and understand this. We need to be able to look beyond what we are told, use critical thinking, and understand the inner workings of our administrations (democrat or republican, they are unlike in this regard). That way we can make the best decisions for our families and our communities.

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