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Coordinated nationally by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health |
To join the Partnership for Children's Health and the Environment (PCHE), please contact Elise Miller at emiller@iceh.org.
February 15, 2006
Seattle, Washington
at Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue (at Seneca Street)
Plastics permeate our lives -- from CDs and cell phone casings to baby bottles and incubators for premature infants. Mounting evidence suggests that exposures to certain chemicals found in hard plastics may contribute to a variety of lifelong human health problems. Frederick vom Saal, PhD, is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia and has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, such as Neurotoxicology and Teratology and Environmental Health Perspectives. Dr. vom Saal will present his seminal research on the health effects of low dose exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, specifically bisphenol A. Bisphenol A, found in many household, medical and baby products, is now associated with compromised uterine function, thwarted fetal development, decreased sperm production, neurological problems, prostate and other cancers, aggressive behaviors, and more. He will also discuss how this research may catalyze the plastics industry to develop less toxic materials.
This lecture is part of an annual environmental health lecture series, "Our Health, Our Environment: Making the Link" sponsored by the Seattle Biotech Legacy Foundation and organized by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health (http://www.iceh.org).
Website: http://washington.chenw.org/lectures.html
February 16, 2006
9:00 - 10:00 a.m. EST
The University at Albany School of Public Health Continuing Education Program is pleased to announce its Third Thursday Breakfast Broadcast, featuring Christina Zarcadoolas, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Environmental problems, conservation and planning are often not about nature as much as they are about humans and human behavior. Environmental literacy is the range of skills and abilities that enable people to understand the information needed to lessen environmental risk and take positive individual and corrective actions. Dr. Zarcadoolas will how environmental literacy enhances the ability of citizens to participate in environmental decision making. For the location of the nearest T2B2 downlink site, to register for a free satellite downlink, or to obtain online Nursing Contact Hours, CHES and CME credits for participation, visit the website below.
Website: http://www.t2b2.org
February 22, 2006
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EST
Due to the high interest expressed for this lecture, the American Association for Mental Retardation (AAMR) is pleased to announce that we will again have Dr. Slotkin give his presentation for us on February 22, 2006. Stay tuned for details as we get closer to February.
Contact: Michele Gagnon, 202-387-1968 X201 mgagnon@aamr.org
February 22 - 26, 2006
Washington, DC
at the Washington Convention Center
The World Parkinson Congress, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an international forum for the best scientific discoveries, medical practices and caregiver initiatives related to Parkinson's disease. By bringing physicians, scientists, allied health professionals, caregivers and people with Parkinson's disease together, we hope to create a worldwide dialogue that will help expedite the discovery of a cure and best treatment practices for this devastating disease.
Website: http://www.worldpdcongress.org/
Contact: info@worldpdcongress.org
February 24 - 25, 2006
St. Paul, Minnesota
at Weyerhauser Memorial Chapel, Macalester College
This presentation introduces the audience to the problem of environmental injustice/racism and links it to the issues of human rights abuses and ecological destruction around the globe. After laying out in some detail the contours of these problems, the presentation then considers the various ways that social activists are tackling the problems of ecocide and environmental racism. Examples may include New Orleans neighborhoods left wounded by Hurricane Katrina, communities in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands battling the US military and various corporations' environmentally and socially unjust polluting practices, and the efforts of Roma communities in Central and Eastern Europe to address environmental racism and human rights abuses in that part of the world. The main points are 1) to challenge our common wisdom about racism by connecting race to ecological destruction and human rights; and 2) to demonstrate the comparative and interrelated nature of environmental justice movements across racial, ethnic, and national boundaries.
Website: http://www.macalester.edu/americanstudies/afamconf7.html
Contact: scott@macalester.edu
February 24-26, 2006
Denver, Colorado
at the Adam's Mark Hotel
Living Beyond Breast Cancer and the Young Survival Coalition have created this conference for young women affected by breast cancer and those who support them. The conference offers 1) the latest medical, psychosocial and practical information from nationally acclaimed breast cancer experts; 2) workshops relevant to recently diagnosed young women, those who have completed treatment, those living with advanced or metastatic breast cancer and caregivers; and 3) opportunities to network and explore issues of concern with other women like you.
Website: http://www.youngsurvivorsconference.org/2006.html
Contact: mail@lbbc.org
February 28, 2006
London, England
at the Society of Chemical Industry, 14/15 Belgrave Square
Following the enthusiastic response to previous symposia, the Green Chemistry Network is holding its third Green Chemistry and the Consumer symposium 'Greener Products: Opportunities and Challenges'. This symposium will highlight the key opportunities and challenges facing the creation of greener products with a particular focus on the area of surfactants, which have a diverse range of applications from cosmetic and personal care products, detergents, paints, coatings, inks to pharmaceuticals and foods. This one-day symposium marks the beginning of a series of annual symposia, which will each year address a different cross-sectorial theme appropriate to greener products. Through a series of presentations, breakout sessions, case studies and current research, the symposium will provide an insight into understanding key challenges and drivers and identifying potential solutions and ways forward for the creation of greener products. This event presents a unique opportunity for academics, industry, retail, government, NGOs and other relevant organisations to come together for mutual learning and technology transfer, as well as providing an invaluable opportunity for networking.
Website: http://www.chemsoc.org/networks/gcn/events.htm
Contact: Louise Summerton, Green Chemistry Networks Assistant, 01904 434546
April 1 - 2, 2006
New Haven, Connecticut
at Yale University's Linsly Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street
This conference will convene more than 600 people from throughout the world who are interested in international service, global health, public health and medicine. This conference brings together student leaders and activists, doctors, public health professionals, nurses, Peace Corp volunteers and others. The conference's goal is to inform the public about health divides and empower them to develop solutions to improve access to care for the medically underserved. The keynote address will be "Environment, Behavior and Health: Societies Matter" by Al Sommer, MD, MHS.
Early Bird Registration Rate ($38 For Students/Residents and $55 For All Others) Until February 15th.
Website: http://www.uniteforsight.org/2006_annual_conference.php
From Alliance for Healthy Homes
A draft EPA publication, *Air Quality Criteria for Lead*, published December 1, 2005, summarizes scientific studies that document harmful physical and neurological effects of low-level lead exposure. The document, which was developed to define the most harmful level of lead, will have many uses in future federal deliberations about lead. The publication notes that harmful effects have been shown at blood lead levels about one-tenth of the widely recognized "level of concern" (10 ug/dL) and concludes that there is no safe blood lead level. It's a very long, two-volume document, available for download at http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=141779. EPA is seeking comments from the public on this draft document by February 15, 2006. It is very important for EPA to hear from as many people as possible who care about reducing lead exposure -- from parents to researchers, from organizers to public health officials -- encouraging the agency to retain this scientific finding when they finalize this publication. To date, EPA has received mostly comments that support its "no safe level" finding, but industry groups will probably comment before the deadline.
Here's how to do submit comments electronically in three easy steps:
In addition to making your own persuasive points based on your experiences or involvement with lead poisoning, you should consider emphasizing the following in your comments:
from Margaret Honti, Director of Development
Safe Tables Our Priority S.T.O.P.
On March 30, 2006, S.T.O.P. will be having its second Safe Tables Summit Call. The call will feature Dr. David Acheson, director of food safety and security for the FDA. He will address many of the conflicting issues surrounding the safety of our fish.
Please reply to communitytours@safetables.org and list any and all questions you have regarding this topic. The deadline for questions is February 17th.
We will compile the list of questions and use it for our Summit Call. Sample questions include:
Please stay tuned for the announcement of the time and phone in number for the call.
bY Robert Cohen, the Star-Ledger
February 13, 2006
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1139809009201740.xml&coll=1#continue
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration wants to exempt thousands of industrial plants from providing the public with detailed reports on the toxic chemicals those companies release into the environment. A pending proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would alter rules established under the nation's 20-year-old Right to Know Act, which was designed to inform communities about hazardous substances used at and discharged from industrial plants.
The change would reduce the financial burden on business and free more than 3,800 industrial plants from disclosing the specific quantities of chemicals they release into the environment. Reporting requirements for another 4,000 facilities would be reduced. Under the plan, companies would not be required to provide detailed reports on emissions of certain substances, including arsenic, mercury and other carcinogens, until discharges reach 5,000 pounds per year. The current rules cover plants that release as little as 500 pounds a year.
In New Jersey, the state Department of Environmental Protection estimates that more than 100 industrial facilities would no longer have to file comprehensive federal reports. That is about 20 percent of the companies in the state that currently do so. EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said the "streamlined" reporting requirements will help smaller companies save time and money, and ensure continued public reporting for 99 percent of the toxic releases now being filed. She said the proposal sets "a very high environmental bar" while helping to "reduce red tape and paperwork."
Mike Walls, managing director of regulatory affairs for the American Chemistry Council, said the plan will reduce some of the $650 million a year in costs paid by industry. "We are not talking about cutting the legs out from under the program. We are talking about a change that makes sense and creates some efficiencies for some facilities," said Walls, whose lobbying group represents major chemical companies.
In addition to the chemical industry, the proposed EPA policy is supported by the electronics, petroleum and plastic industries, metal fabricators, foam manufacturers, food processors and utilities. New Jersey, 11 other states, a number of Democratic congressmen and senators and various environmental groups maintain the EPA plan would make it more difficult to protect human health and the environment. Although the state has its own reporting requirements, officials said the federal changes would undercut New Jersey's program. "We will lose a lot of information about toxic releases from specific locations, and we will also lose a lot of information about specific pollutants," said Sam Wolfe, an assistant DEP commissioner in Trenton.
The EPA first proposed changing the reporting rules in September, and received some 60,000 public comments through January. It expects to make a final decision this year. The agency has said it might propose a second change to allow companies to file their reports every other year instead of annually. The reporting requirements were set up by the EPA under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, passed by Congress in 1986. The law was prompted by public concern over two incidents -- a 1984 toxic release from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, that caused some 3,800 deaths and thousands of injuries, and a smaller 1985 leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Institute, W.Va., that injured six workers and sent more than 100 residents to the hospital. In both instances, the local communities had been unaware of the deadly chemicals being used at the plants.
Current rules require companies that generate 500 pounds or more of any of 650 potentially hazardous chemicals to annually detail how much of each substance is released into the air, dumped into landfills or discharged into waterways. Under the proposed rules, companies discharging less than 5,000 pounds of a particular chemical would simply have to list the name of the toxin on a short form, without stating how much was released into the environment or where it went.
The EPA said that about one-third of the 24,000 facilities now reporting would get some relief from the proposal. An analysis by the National Environmental Trust of 2003 data, the most recent available, found that 3,849 of the industrial plants would be fully exempted from filing detailed reports under the EPA plan. "This is a significant environmental rollback," said Tom Natan of the National Environmental Trust, a public interest group. "It undermines the intent of the law, which is to give people information."
Hal Bozarth of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, an industry trade and lobby group, said the changes would not undermine the law but relieve a "financial and paperwork burden" for many businesses. While major companies have full-time staff to deal with environmental reporting to the government, Bozarth said smaller firms must hire outside contractors. He said they typically pay $80 to $125 an hour for consultants to do the calculations and provide the "excruciating details" on every chemical brought into a facility, how it is used and where it goes.
Bozarth said the law has been quite successful in reducing emissions -- by 81 percent in New Jersey since 1988 -- and the changes "will help a lot of the smaller folks." New Jersey has used the federal data over the years to help identify risks and protect public health. The state said this includes eliminating emissions of hydrazine, a carcinogen, from a Newark industrial plant; identifying a health threat from a boat manufacturer and reducing emissions of benzene from a refinery.
The DEP said that if the proposed changes had been in effect from 1995 to 2004, more than one million pounds of cancer-causing compounds discharged into the environment would not have been documented by industry in New Jersey. The DEP's Wolfe noted that even small releases of substances like dioxin and mercury can be harmful. "That's the kind of thing we will miss if EPA goes ahead with changes in the reporting threshold," Wolfe said.
Robert Cohen covers the federal government. He may be reached at rcohen@starledger.com or (202) 383-7800.
by Jon Neale and Jonathan Thompson, the Independent
February 12, 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article344959.ece
Bottled water, the designer-look drink that has become a near-universal accessory of modern life, may be refreshing but it certainly isn't clean. A major new study has concluded that its production is seriously damaging the environment. It costs 10,000 times more to create the bottled version than it does to produce tap water, say scientists. Huge resources are needed to draw it from the ground, add largely irrelevant minerals, and package and distribute it -- sometimes half-way around the world. The plastic bottles it comes in take 1,000 years to biodegrade, and in industrialised countries, bottled water is no more pure and healthy than what comes out of the tap.
The new study comes from the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington-based environmental group which has previously alerted the world to melting ice caps, expanding deserts and the environmental threats of a rapidly industrialising China. It points out that the world consumed a staggering 154 billion litres of bottled water in 2004 -- an increase of 57 per cent in just half a decade.
Emily Arnold, the report's author, said: "Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing -- producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy." Leading activists and high profile environmentalists yesterday voiced their approval of the study, and concern over the effect our seemingly insatiable appetite for bottled water is having. Bob Geldof said: "Bottled water is bollocks. It is the great irony of the 21st century that the most basic things in the supermarket, such as water and bread, are among the most expensive. Getting water from the other side of the world and transporting it to sell here is ridiculous. It is all to do with lifestyle."
Dr Michael Warhurst, Friends of the Earth's senior waste campaigner, said: "It is another product we do not need. Bottled water companies are wasting resources and exacerbating climate change. "Transport is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and transporting water adds to that. We could help reduce these damaging effects if we all simply drank water straight from the tap."
According to the EPI report, tap water is delivered through an "energy-efficient infrastructure", whereas bottled water is often shipped halfway across the world, burning huge amounts of fossil fuels and accelerating global warming. In 2004, for example, Finnish company Nord Water sent 1.4 million bottles of Helsinki tap water to a client in Saudi Arabia. In the same year, producing the plastic bottles that delivered 26 billion litres of water to Americans required more than 1.5 million barrels of oil -- enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.
Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Secretary of State for Environment,said: "It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to work out that they're on to something here. It is obvious that there are big environmental issues around bottled water, and people need to be made more aware of them." The UK is by no means the biggest consumer of bottled water -- the average Briton drank 33 litres in 2004, a sixth of the amount drunk by the typical Italian -- but sales are rocketing. Coca-Cola bought the Malvern brand in 1999, seeing it as a remedy to falling sales of soft drinks.
The US's second most imported brand, Fiji, which is shipped around the world from the middle of the South Pacific, has been gaining ground in the UK. Fashionable London restaurant Nobu charges 5 pounds for small bottles, and is even rumoured to boil its rice in it. It has been featured in popular TV series such as Sex and the City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is rumoured to be the choice of Tom Cruise, Ozzy Osbourne, Heather Graham, Jennifer Aniston and Renee Zellweger.
by John Heilprin, Associated Press
February 10, 2006
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/13837985.html
WASHINGTON -- Grants to state and local governments for land and water conservation would be cut 40 percent, and money for the Environmental Protection Agency's network of libraries for scientists would be slashed severely under President Bush's proposed budget. By contrast, Bush next year would spend $322 million for "cooperative conservation" -- up from $312 million the Congress approved last year -- to encourage more private landowners to protect endangered species, conserve wildlife habitats and do other nature work traditionally done by government.
Other proposed increases are $50 million more for cleaner-burning diesel engines and $5 million more for drinking water improvements. Cuts and proposals to sell some of the government's vast land holdings have upset environmentalists.
Early in his presidency, Bush called for restoring the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to the full $900 million authorized by Congress. Last year, it was approved at $142 million. For 2007, he wants just $85 million in grants for creating and preserving non-federal parks, forest land and wildlife refuges, a 40 percent cut. "This is the most troubling budget we've seen from this White House," said Heather Taylor, deputy legislative director for Natural Resources Defense Council. The proposal sent to Congress this week would trim EPA's budget by nearly 5 percent, down to $7.2 billion, and the Interior Department's budget by 2.4 percent, to $9.1 billion.
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., said it shows the environment isn't a Bush administration priority. "We cannot allow this dangerous trend to continue," said Jeffords, a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said their budgets represent, within the context of reducing the federal deficit, a responsible allocation of resources that will still lead to environmental improvements.
One potential hole in the Interior budget is $312 million for an Office of Surface Mining program to reclaim abandoned mines. The money comes from coal mining fees set to expire in June. The Bush administration is asking Congress to reauthorize the fees. "Nobody wants to see the program come to a halt," Norton said. The budget also would cut $89 million from the National Park Service's nearly $2.6 billion budget.
Environmentalists contend a bigger danger is the administration's plan to raise $250 million over five years by selling 125,000 acres of the Bureau of Land Management's 261 million acres. The lands are typically part of a "checkerboard" pattern of small parcels surrounded by suburban or urban areas, Interior officials say, and have been identified as holding little natural, historic, cultural or energy value. The administration anticipates selling them for $2,000 an acre. The Forest Service plans to sell 170,000-200,000 acres in 41 states, according to The Wilderness Society.
Another proposal affects EPA's electronic catalog that keeps track of tens of thousands of agency documents and research studies, according to EPA internal memos. The agency would cut four-fifths of its library budget -- from $2.5 million to $500,000. It pays for a network of dozens of libraries and reading rooms nationally. "How are EPA scientists supposed to engage in cutting edge research when they cannot find what the agency has already done?" said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which obtained the EPA memos. EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said materials will still be available. "EPA is working to modernize our antiquated system by streamlining our physical collections and making them available online to provide more information to a wider group of people, including scientists," she said.
Low-interest loans to states for treating wastewater, cutting other water pollution and managing watersheds would be cut by 22 percent, to $688 million. Bush has requested $184 million for EPA's homeland security programs -- including monitoring water supplies against terrorists and decontaminating buildings after chemical or biological attacks -- and more than $100 million for its energy-related programs.
By Marla Cone, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 9, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mercury9feb09,0,7054908.story?page=1
Californians who volunteered for a nationwide study of mercury contamination had among the worst levels, with nearly one-third of those tested having concentrations in their tissues that exceeded safe levels. The study, organized by two national environmental groups, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, does not provide information about Californians in general because the volunteers were not a random sample. Nonetheless, the tests of more than 6,000 people who sent hair samples to researchers provide insights into the extent and causes of mercury contamination. Details of the study were released in a report Wednesday.
Experts say that mercury exposure has little to do with proximity to pollution sources. Instead, it is determined by diet. Mercury concentrations in the study were strongly linked to how frequently the volunteers ate fish and other seafood, a finding that has been documented in other studies worldwide. For volunteers who ate no fish, the average mercury level in hair was 0.06 parts per million, while those who consumed eight or more servings per month averaged 0.90, just below the federal government's health guideline of 1 part per million. No link was found to dental fillings or vaccines. "We saw a direct relationship between people's mercury levels and the amount of store-bought fish, canned tuna fish or locally caught fish people consumed," said Steve Patch, co-director of the Environmental Quality Institute at University of North Carolina-Asheville, which conducted the hair tests for the environmental groups.
Among those who volunteered for the tests, New Yorkers were the most highly contaminated. But residents of California were not far behind, with mercury levels substantially above the study's national average. Midwesterners were the least contaminated. Asian Americans who volunteered had average levels more than twice as high as African Americans and 75% to 82% higher than whites and Latinos.
A majority of the volunteers did not exceed the 1 part per million concentration that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for pregnant women and children. But one out of every five women of childbearing age who volunteered for the study nationally, and one of every three in California, exceeded it. Pregnant women are the population of greatest concern for experts, because a fetus is susceptible to mercury's toxic effects on the brain. Children exposed prenatally to levels above the EPA guideline show subtle declines in intelligence.
The reasons for the disparate geographic patterns reported were not clear. Californians consumed seafood as often as Illinois residents, but their mercury levels were twice as high, tests showed. Seattle residents had lower mercury levels than San Franciscans, even though they ate seafood nearly twice as often. Data for Southern California was not available. Of the 1,090 Californians tested, 122 were from San Francisco, home base of the Sierra Club. The regional variations may be somewhat artificial, determined by who chose to participate, said Dr. Michael Gochfeld, professor of environmental medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
The types of fish eaten could also be a factor, experts said. Fish contain different amounts of mercury, based on their size, where they are on food chains and, to some extent, the waters they inhabit. Fish caught in New York state and San Francisco Bay commonly are much more contaminated than fish from the Midwest. The study, which is continuing, is the largest test of mercury exposure in the nation, organizers said. Participants were volunteers who joined the study by visiting the greenpeaceusa.org or sierraclub.org websites and sending $25 with each sample.
People who often eat fish are probably overrepresented. As a result, the mercury levels in the volunteers are higher than those of the general population. About 10% of U.S. women in a study by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded the EPA's mercury guideline, compared with 23% in the Greenpeace/Sierra Club study. EPA officials said they will continue to use the more scientific data from the Centers for Disease Control. "As the authors emphasize, this is not a representative sample of the U.S. People volunteered to participate; presumably many felt they might be at risk because of fish consumption," said Gochfeld, who led New Jersey's Mercury Task Force. "Actually, I am a little surprised that they didn't find even higher mercury levels in people who consumed fish eight times a month," Gochfeld said.
EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said it is generally understood that people living on the coasts have more exposure, because they eat more fish than those who are landlocked. Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have been conducting the mercury survey because they are advocating stronger federal regulations for coal-fired power plants, the leading U.S. source of mercury. California has no major sources of mercury because it has no power plants that burn coal or chlorine factories. San Francisco Bay is highly contaminated with mercury, primarily from abandoned gold mines in the Sierra Nevada.
The EPA has reported that mercury from U.S. industry is responsible for very little of that contained in the nation's waters. Asia is the global leader in emissions. Fish and shellfish, which are high in omega-3 fatty acids and protein, are considered important to a healthful diet.
But because of mercury, women of childbearing age and children should eat no swordfish, shark, tilefish or king mackerel, and limit all other fish to two 6-ounce servings a week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says. Relatively high mercury levels are found in canned white tuna, albacore, orange roughy, yellowfin and marlin, according to a January FDA report. Among fish and shellfish with low levels are salmon, shrimp, catfish, cod, flounder, tilapia and trout. Small fish, including anchovies, herring and sardines, are especially nutritious and safe for pregnant women.
Mercury levels
A study of hair samples sent in by volunteers found that these states had the highest percentage of participants with mercury levels exceeding one part per million. The EPA considers mercury exposure at those levels unsafe for pregnant women and children.
Percentage of participants with at least 1.0 ppm of mercury
New York: 40.2%
Florida: 33.4%
Colorado: 30.4%
California: 30.0%
Washington: 28.8%
Virginia: 27.5%
Massachusetts: 27.1%
New Jersey: 27.1%
Oregon: 26.2%
Michigan: 20.9%
The study was based on hair samples sent in by more than 6,000 volunteers. The states listed above are the top 10 among 20 states that had at least 100 participants.
Sources: Environmental Quality Institute, University of North Carolina-Asheville
by Elizabeth Shogren, National Public Radio
February 8, 2006
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5196751
The Bush administration has canceled funding for the most ambitious study of children's health ever designed -- prompting outrage among scientists and public health officials. The study was to investigate the causes of widespread obesity and asthma, among other childrens' health problems.
Listen to the full story at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5196751.
by Lois M. Collins, Deseret Morning News
February 8, 2006
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635182690,00.html
The National Children's Study, with Salt Lake City as one of its "vanguard" sites, may be dead before the first child is enrolled. The president's FY2007 budget doesn't contain a penny for the study, which would be the first large-scale longitudinal study of children's health issues in the nation's history. The budget proposal goes a step beyond simply defunding, directing the study be closed down.
Now children's advocates are vowing to lobby Congress to obtain the money to keep the study alive. Congress created the study in 2000. More than $50 million has been "cobbled together" to design the study and to prepare for its implementation since then, said Dr. Edward B. Clark, medical director at Primary Children's Medical Center, head of pediatrics at the University of Utah and the Utah study center's principal investigator.
The study was to enroll about 100,000 children from before birth to age 21, tracking psychological, social, environmental and genetic factors that impact wellbeing, with an emphasis on what happens in pregnancy, birth defects, asthma, obesity, diabetes and autism, among others. But the Office of Management and this week announced that "The National Children's Study planning activities that are ongoing in FY2006 will be brought to a close by the end of the fiscal year. There are no plans for the NIH to continue the full-scale study in FY2007."
"We've been given no explanation for it.. . .To pull the plug on it is inexcusable," Clark said. Most surprising was the directive to stop the study, said Dr. Alan R. Fleischman, chairman of the study's federal advisory committee. "Mothers and fathers of America are asking doctors every day questions that we cannot answer," he said, adding the study promises to provide some of those answers.
Clark said he has not been told directly to stop study-preparation activities, and he is moving forward with work in Utah. He's just started hiring staff for the study. He also plans to join other principal investigators to lobby Congress. "I'm counting on members of Congress to recognize and put this relatively small amount of money back into the budget so we can move forward with the most bold and innovative initiative for children's health that has ever occurred. "I'm going to move ahead until I'm told in no uncertain terms by Congress that they don't want it. I view the president's budget as a suggestion," said Clark, who added he hopes a public outcry will put children's long-term health issues back among the nation's priorities.
Long-term study of children's health has been largely ignored, said Dr. Scott Williams, a pediatrician who works for HealthInsight and is not directly involved in the National Children's Study. For many years, even clinical trials of potential treatments that might be used on children only enrolled adult participants, as if children were just small-scale adults. Now drugs and other treatments that might be used by children must have a child component to the testing. And while there have been many short-term studies focused on treating diseases in children, Williams said, a longitudinal study like the planned study provides long-term, cause-and-effect information that is difficult to piece together any other way. "We have this concern: There are things in our environment that may contribute to diseases long-term," Williams said. Such a study could provide some answers; it could perhaps even help sort out questions of nature v. nurture. "I'm very disappointed this was defunded," Williams said.
Clark said the expected cost -- about $70 million this coming year to get going and another $150 million a year to carry it out, seems like a small amount compared to the billions that are spent each year on children's health problems. "I really think a country that fails to invest in its children is morally bankrupt," he said. Fleischman acknowledged unusual financial challenges this year, such as hurricanes like Katrina that have dramatically impacted the federal deficit. "But this was really an outrageous directive," he said. And there is apparently some money available for research. A study to be conducted by the Human Genome Institute appears in the president's budget with an allocation of $68 million -- an allocation almost identical to the amount previously expected for the children's study.
"That is not a study about children," said Fleischman. "It's about adults. Children are again being ignored, and it's short-sighted to ignore children who, of course, become adults. Our study could answer questions about predisposition to disease by managing factors that impact on future health." The genetic study, proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, says it will look at genetic and environmental factors of diseases, with only a small component concerning children, Fleischman said.
By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 8, 2006
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06039/651687.stm
More than a decade ago, gasoline began to leak from underground storage tanks at four service stations in the Hazleton area of eastern Pennsylvania. An underground plume of at least 50,000 gallons of gasoline spread beneath more than 350 homes in the middle-class subdivision of Laurel Gardens, sending fumes into the houses through the sewer system. So far, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has spent about $25 million to clean up the site, and continues to filter groundwater and vapors in the soil to get rid of stubborn traces of gasoline. Now, a newstudy by the University of Pittsburgh says there are excess leukemia cases in the spill area, and that benzene in the gasoline may be the cause.
The study in the Archives of Environmental Health by Ami Patel and colleagues at the Graduate School of Public Health found that while the overall cancer rate for residents in the spill area is slightly lower than the state average, the leukemia rate is at least 4 1/2 times higher than would be expected. There were four leukemia cases during the study period among the 663 residents studied, and since then, three more cases have been found, said two of the Pitt researchers, epidemiology professor Evelyn Talbott and senior research specialist Jeanne Zborowski. That may sound like a small number, but an outside benzene expert, Martyn Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, said it's the proportion that matters.
Dr. Smith noted the study found two cases of acute myelogenous leukemia, the type most closely linked to benzene exposure. The general risk of someone getting that kind of leukemia is 1 in 25,000, he said, so to have two cases in a group of fewer than 700 residents is significant, especially since the people who got leukemia lived close to the highest concentration of spilled gasoline. The study highlights a chronic problem in the United States -- leaking underground tanks, particularly at service stations.
Even though Congress set up a trust fund 20 years ago to fix leaky tanks, financed by a 0.1 cent tax on each gallon of motor fuel, there is still a huge number of sites that haven't been cleaned up. Federal figures showed a backlog of nearly 120,000 sites nationwide last year, including more than 4,000 in Pennsylvania, which has the seventh highest number of uncleaned tank leaks in the country. The study also adds fuel to the continuing debate over how dangerous benzene actually is.
Benzene is a common organic hydrocarbon. It is found in tiny amounts in some foods and in smoke from wood fires and cigarettes. It makes up 1 to 2 percent of gasoline, and more than 15 billion pounds of it is produced each year as an industrial chemical. There is no doubt that benzene can cause cancer in humans, particularly acute myelogenous leukemia. The question is what level and length of exposure are needed to trigger a malignancy.
Christopher Borgert, head of Applied Pharmacology and Toxicology Inc. in Gainesville, Fla., said the evidence should be interpreted cautiously. "Just because you have a case of acute myelogenous leukemia and a person exposed to benzene doesn't necessarily mean benzene caused the disease. As a scientist I see it as my duty to remain skeptical about everything -- in God we trust; all others bring data."
But Berkeley's Dr. Smith and his colleagues have shown in studies of thousands of Chinese shoe factory workers exposed to benzene that even low levels of the chemical can cause a drop in white blood cell counts and other harmful biological changes. Because damage from benzene is a gradual process, the Pitt researchers have urged continued monitoring of the health of the residents in the Hazleton spill area. Pennsylvania Department of Health officials will keep track of cancer cases in the area and continue to offer some blood testing to residents who want it, a department spokesman said.
But it's not clear who might pay for more extensive testing. Attorney Jonathan Miller of Philadelphia recently tried to file a class-action lawsuit that would have required the tank owners to pay for medical monitoring of residents, but a judge ruled that the residents' exposures varied too much to certify them as a class. There are more than 200 individual lawsuits pending against the tank companies that will take years to resolve, Mr. Miller said.
Dr. Smith thinks that anyone living over a gasoline spill has some risk of health problems from benzene, but he doesn't think more common exposures, such as pumping your own gasoline, are much to worry about. Others aren't so sure. Devra Davis, director of the Pitt Cancer Institute's Center for Environmental Oncology, said she remains wary. "I don't want to create the impression that everyone's going to die of cancer from pumping their own gas," she said. "It's just that it is a risk and people should be aware of that and should stand upwind rather than downwind. You can reduce your exposure 100- to 1,000-fold that way."
The Laurel Gardens residents appear to face a more serious health threat, Dr. Talbott said. "Even though the federal cleanup may have prevented future exposures," she said, "that won't have changed anything for the people who were exposed in the past." Only long-term health surveillance, she said, will be able to show the ultimate effects of the gasoline spill.
by Douglas Fischer, the Oakland Tribune
February 7, 2006
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_3485124
Twice the Legislature has spiked it. Once the governor has vetoed it. But the push to create the nation's only statewide system for tracking our bodies' levels of environmental pollutants such as plastic and flame retardants won't die. Tuesday, Sens. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, vowed to introduce for the fourth time a bill creating a California-specific biomonitoring program, calling it a top legislative priority. "I'm at the point in my life where it seems one out of two people I know has cancer," he said in a statement.
He's not far off: Today half of all men and one out of three women will develop some kind of cancer in their lifetime. Public health officials alarmed by rising rates of cancer and other ailments consider biomonitoring -- the use of sophisticated tests to detect trace amounts of specific chemicals in people's blood, hair or urine -- a powerful tool in their quest to understand why.
But industry and others have long fought such efforts. Technological advances allow scientists to see trace contaminants in our blood at fantastically small levels, akin to sniffing out a single drop of gin mixed with enough tonic to fill a line of railroad tank cars a mile long. But researchers cannot yet say for certain that pollutants at such concentrations impair our health. And without that information, critics contend, biomonitoring programs unnecessarily scare the public and improperly taint the benefits of modern synthetic chemicals.
Proponents contend information about our so-called "body burden" is crucial for educating the public and regulators. Indeed, a year-long investigation by this paper of a Berkeley family's body burden prompted the family, which had information unavailable to the wider public about contaminants in their blood, to make some lifestyle changes and start lobbying the Legislature on this issue.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the most recent version of this bill in October, saying he supported the idea but had concerns about the bill and preferred to work within his administration to develop a program. "We haven't seen any of that happen," said Perata spokeswoman Alicia Dlugosh on Tuesday. "We want to keep the issue at the forefront."
The new version, to be introduced next week, contains what Dlugosh described as "a few tweaks" from the previous: The deletion of a controversial idea to test women's breast milk for contaminants; and the doubling in size of the advisory panel tasked with overseeing the program, from eight members to 16.
This newspaper's investigation of our chemical body burden is available online at http://www.insidebayarea.com Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.
from the Washington Post
by Lauran Neergaard, the Associated Press
February 7, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/Search?keywords=Budget%20Cuts%20Take%20Aim%20at%20Medical%20Programs
WASHINGTON -- From screening newborns for hearing problems to efforts to fight heart disease and find causes of premature birth, some innovative medical programs demanded by families are on the government chopping block. President Bush's proposed budget for 2007 contains what his health secretary called "hard choices" when it came to devising how much to spend on a host of competing ailments. Even the usually favored National Institutes of Health -- the nation's lead agency in the hunt for the causes, treatments and ways to prevent diseases -- didn't get a raise, receiving flat funding of $28.6 billion.
Account for inflation, and that's really a cut, argued Dr. Robert Eckel, president of the American Heart Association. In inflation-adjusted terms, Bush's budget would cause a nearly 10 percent drop in spending in medical research since 2003. Some NIH divisions will lose money: $40 million from the National Cancer Institute, and $11 million from the diabetes institute, at a time when Type 2 diabetes is skyrocketing. The NIH this year will spend $8 per American researching heart disease, the nation's leading killer, an amount the heart association decried even before spotting a planned $21 million cut for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Some programs proposed for elimination are those that families have intensely lobbied Congress to enact:
But NIH budget documents direct researchers instead to close the program down by year's end. "This is an affront to America's children. It will really hurt children today and for decades to come," said Dr. Alan Fleischman of the New York Academy of Medicine, who chairs the study's federal advisory committee. NIH Director Elias Zerhouni defended the budget, saying his agency retained enough flexibility to direct money to the most promising research avenues. "I think it's very clear that what you call cuts ... what we have to recognize is that you have to do prioritization," he said.
from the Myrtle Beach Sun News
by Jacob Jordan, Associated Press
Februar 6, 2006
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/13806297.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A pellet-size piece of mercury that helps light the inside of many car trunks and hoods has caused quite a stir at the Statehouse this legislative session. While the mercury switch is helpful when getting out the groceries, it can become harmful if left there when the vehicle is no longer needed. Mercury is often released into the air where it can contaminate waterways when a vehicle is crushed, shredded and melted as it is recycled.
That's why lawmakers, the steel industry, dismantlers and automobile makers are working on legislation to get the mercury switches out of the vehicles. A House subcommittee is set to talk about issue Tuesday. The committee and those involved haven't yet agreed on exactly how it should be done or who should be held responsible. One of the proposals involves a small tax credit for salvage yards or dismantlers who would collect the switches. Another group would then pick up the mercury switches and dispose of them.
Corresponding bills in the House and Senate create a Mercury Switch Removal Act, but details are still being worked out in subcommittees. American automobile manufacturers stopped using the mercury switches a couple of years ago, and had been phasing them out over the past two decades, said Dan Adsit, of the Ford Motor Co., who previously testified before the subcommittee. But some vehicles recycled over the next 10 years still may have the switches. "We are passed [sic] the bulk in mercury switches in automobiles," Adsit said. "We did this voluntarily, well in advance of any regulations or requirements."
Some dispute the health and environmental impact of the mercury switches. Coal-burning power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, but disposing of products or wastes containing mercury can also release it into the environment. Though some argue over the impact of mercury switches, most agree the switches should be removed before the vehicles are recycled. And currently, no one is removing the switches in South Carolina, according to Colin Davis, president of the South Carolina Auto Recyclers Association. "This bill alone will clean a total of over a ton of mercury from the air in South Carolina over the next several years," Nucor Steel's environmental manager Mike Gipko said recently. It could also save Nucor and other steel makers millions.
New rules to reduce mercury emissions are being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency. If the switches aren't removed on the front-end, the industry will be held responsible. "If these requirements are imposed on the steel industry at the stack, the cost of attempting to remove mercury will be prohibitive and would require major expenditures on technology, which has not proven to be effective," Gipko said. That's why Nucor proposed legislation that would offer incentives. One incentive might be $2.50 tax break for dismantlers or salvage yards. "There may be some concern that the taxpayers would pick it up," said state Sen. Bill Mescher, a bill sponsor. "But your doing the environment a favor by doing this and it's a relatively minor amount."
