A team of researchers, led by Sheela Sathyanarayana, MD, MPH, of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, have created a guide outlining exposure risks and reduction tips (see below) for some of the most common environmental toxins. The clinical opinion, “Environmental exposures: how to counsel preconception and prenatal patients in the clinical setting,” was published in advance online in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

“Reproductive health providers have an important role to play in counseling women on environmental health risks,” said Dr. Sathyanarayana of Seattle Children’s Research Institute and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. “Providers can be knowledgeable about these issues and empower patients to make positive decisions to reduce exposure and to prevent adverse health impacts to both mother and fetus.”

Reproductive health care providers should share these tips and more scientific information with women who want to become pregnant or who are pregnant.

• Remove your shoes at the door of your home to avoid tracking in pollutants.

• Decrease consumption of processed and canned foods.

• Avoid the use of plastics with recycling codes #3, #4 and #7.

• Don’t use chemical tick and flea collars or dips for pets.

The guidelines include evidence-based recommendations on how to talk with patients about environmental toxins like lead, mercury, pesticides and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA), which is used in a variety of products including canned food linings and cash register receipts. It also includes resources for each toxin area, outlining an easy and consistent way to deliver these important messages to women and their partners.

The guidelines contain helpful information for patients, too. “Women and their partners should be aware that pregnancy is an important time for development, that environmental chemicals can cause harm to a developing fetus, and that this topic is important to discuss with health care providers,” said Dr. Sathyanarayana. “There are simple ways to reduce exposures to lead, mercury, pesticides and endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as BPA by following the guidelines we have outlined,” she said.

Dr. Sathyanarayana’s co-authors include: Susan Buchanan, MD, MPH, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health; Tanya Dailey, MD, Alpert Medical School of Brown University; and Judith Focareta, MED, RN, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC.

Additional Resources

“Environmental exposures: how to counsel preconception and prenatal patients in the clinical setting”: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937812001512?v=s5(The uncorrected, original manuscript is currently available for reference).
See the Environmental exposures slideshow

Environmental Exposures: Tips for Reproductive Health Care Providers, Preconception and Prenatal Women

Mercury
Risk factors: Exposure can come from eating fish, contact with quicksilver, and use of skin-lightening creams. Exposure during pregnancy can lead to adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes that include lower IQ, poor language and motor development.
Reducing exposure: Pregnant, preconception and breastfeeding women should follow U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state-specific fish consumption guidelines. Avoid shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tile fish and large tuna.
Resources: http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/oehas/fish/fishchart.htm, http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/guide.asp

Lead
Risk factors: Risk factors for exposure include recent immigration to the U.S., occupational exposure, imported cosmetics, and renovating or remodeling a home built before 1970. Lead is neurotoxic to a developing fetus.
Reducing exposure: Never eat nonfood items (clay, soil, pottery or paint chips); avoid jobs or hobbies that may involve lead exposure; stay away from repair, repainting, renovation and remodeling work conducted in homes built before 1978; eat a balanced diet with adequate intakes of iron and calcium; avoid cosmetics, food additives and medicines imported from overseas; and remove shoes at the door to prevent tracking in lead and other pollutants.
Resources: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/publications/leadandpregnancy2010.pdf, http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/AAPCC/FindLocalPoisonCenters.aspx

Pesticides
Risk factors: Exposure can come from eating some produce and from using pesticides in your home or on your pets. Exposure to pesticides in pregnancy has been shown to increase risk of intrauterine growth retardation, congenital anomalies, leukemia and poor performance on neurodevelopmental testing.
Reducing exposure: Do not use chemical tick and flea collars or dips; avoid application of pesticides indoors and outdoors; consider buying organic produce when possible; wash all fruits and vegetables before eating; and remove shoes at the door.
Resources: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews (focus on the “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the 12 most contaminated products published by the Environmental Working Group, http://www.spcpweb.org/resources/#factsheets

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals
Risk factors: Human prenatal phthalate exposure is associated with changes in male reproductive anatomy and behavioral changes primarily in young girls. Animal studies suggest prenatal exposure to BPA is associated with obesity, reproductive abnormalities and neurodevelopmental abnormalities in offspring. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals mimic or antagonize the effects of hormones in the endocrine system and can cause adverse health effects that can be passed on to future generations.
Reducing exposure: Decrease consumption of processed foods; increase fresh and/or frozen foods; reduce consumption of canned foods; avoid use of plastics with recycled codes #3, #4 and #7; be careful when removing old carpet because padding may contain chemicals; and use a vacuum machine fitted with a HEPA filter to get rid of dust that may contain chemicals.
Resources: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/sya/sya-bpa, http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp9-c1-b.pdf, http://www.epa.gov/oppt/pbde/

At the forefront of pediatric medical research, Seattle Children’s Research Institute is setting new standards in pediatric care and finding new cures for childhood diseases. Internationally recognized scientists and physicians at the Research Institute are advancing new discoveries in cancer, genetics, immunology, pathology, infectious disease, injury prevention and bioethics. With Seattle Children’s Hospital and Seattle Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Research Institute brings together the best minds in pediatric research to provide patients with the best care possible. Children’s serves as the primary teaching, clinical and research site for the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, which consistently ranks as one of the best pediatric departments in the country. For more information, visit http://www.seattlechildrens.org/research.

The bones play a key role in a world-first study, led by University of Adelaide researchers, which analyses special genetic modifications that turn genes on and off, without altering the DNA sequence itself. These ‘epigenetic’ changes can occur rapidly between generations – without requiring the time for standard evolutionary processes.

Such epigenetic modifications could explain how animal species are able to respond to rapid climate change.

In a collaboration between the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) and Sydney’s Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, researchers have shown that it is possible to accurately measure epigenetic modifications in extinct animals and populations.

The team of researchers measured epigenetic modifications in 30,000-year-old permafrost bones from the Yukon region in Canada, and compared them to those in modern-day cattle, and a 30-year-old mummified cow from New Zealand.

“Epigenetics is challenging some of our standard views of evolutionary adaptation, and the way we think about how animals use and inherit their DNA. In theory, such systems would be invaluable for a wide range of rapid evolutionary adaptation but it has not been possible to measure how or whether they are used in nature, or over evolutionary timescales.” -  Alan Cooper Project leader  and Director of ACAD

Epigenetics specialist and co-investigator Dr Catherine Suter, from the Victor Chang Institute, has been studying the role of epigenetics in adaptation in laboratory animals. She jumped at the chance to test epigenetic methods in ancient DNA, which had never previously been attempted.

“This is the first step towards testing the idea that epigenetics has driven evolution in natural populations,” Suter says.

“The climate record shows that very rapid change has been a persistent feature of the recent past, and organisms would need to adapt to these changes in their environment equally quickly. Standard mutation and selection processes are likely to be too slow in many of these situations,” Cooper added.

“Standard genetic tests do not detect epigenetic changes, because the actual DNA sequence is the same.” – Bastien Llamas Lead Author and Senior Researcher Australian Research Council

“There is growing interest in the potential evolutionary role of epigenetic changes, but to truly demonstrate this will require studies of past populations as they experience major environmental changes,” he says.

This work has been published in the online peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.

Source: NewsWise

The Italian vessel is currently half-submerged on the rocks in the international Pelagos marine sanctuary off the Tuscan coast of Italy.

Greene says, “When the cruise liner Costa Concordia ran aground last week, it was a disaster on so many levels. In addition to the humans killed and injured, the stricken ship’s leakage of fuel oil could be disastrous for the local marine life.”

“While not close to the scale of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Concordia’s grounding off the Italian island of Giglio falls within the Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals,” he added.

Created a decade ago by France, Italy and Monaco and located between Corsica and the Italian mainland, the sanctuary was set aside to protect many marine species including fin whales, sperm whales, dolphins, tuna, billfish and sharks.

The Sanctuary is especially important to the protection of fin whales, which spend their summers feeding there.

“Fuel oil is particularly nasty stuff, much worse than diesel, and those responsible for cleaning up the 2,300 tons of it carried aboard the ship will have a difficult job on their hands if significant leakage occurs,” Greene explained.

This satellite re-entry underscores the importance of space situational awareness and the need for data sharing, as well as the role of international cooperation to minimize the threat posed by large re-entering space objects.

Phobos-Grunt was hurled into space last Nov. 8 (Nov. 9 in Moscow) by the Russian space agency. The spacecraft was built to land on Phobos, one of two moons circling Mars, then snare samples for return to Earth in 2014.

However, the spacecraft failed to boost itself out of Earth orbit and onto an interplanetary trajectory. Since that time, the orbit of Phobos-Grunt has been slowly decaying.

There is a convergence of tracking predictions that indicates Phobos-Grunt will likely re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in the January 15-16 time period.

Although there is a large amount of toxic fuel onboard, the aluminum construction of its fuel tanks makes it highly likely that they will rupture with that supply of fuel dissipating harmlessly in the atmosphere.

Some fragments of Phobos-Grunt are expected to survive atmospheric re-entry and reach the Earth’s surface, but they are unlikely to pose any threat. The Russian government is working with the European Space Agency and the U.S. military to track Phobos-Grunt. Procedures are in place to notify the appropriate authorities in the event that the spacecraft re-enters over a populated area.

Secure World Foundation experts are available to discuss orbital debris, space situational awareness, space traffic management, space sustainability, and associated topics.

The artificial streams are called flumes, and U-M’s new $ 1 million “Flume Room” is in Dana Building, home to the School of Natural Resources and Environment.

The U-M flume lab is the largest facility of its kind in North America, and possibly the world.

U-M paid for construction of the lab, which began in earnest in January. Shortly after he arrived in Ann Arbor, Cardinale was awarded a $ 2 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to study how environmental changes affect water quality throughout North America. The U-M flumes will be one of the primary research tools used in the study, which involves collaborators at two other universities.

“We’re taking little pieces of the Huron River – the water, the rocks, the bacteria, the algae, the insects and other small invertebrates that inhabit the stream – and we’re placing them into these 150 small flumes. We try to mimic all the river conditions we possibly can.” – Bradley Cardinale Assistant Professor School of Natural Resources and Environment/Principal Investigator Flume Project

Running an experiment 150 times in 150 identical flumes provides what researchers call high replication, which enables them to precisely estimate how different environmental stresses – such as pollution, species invasions and extinctions, climate change and erosion – affect the river’s health.

“I call it environmental triage,” Cardinale said. “Basically, we’re trying to figure out what forms of environmental change are having the biggest impacts on streams,” he added.

“The rationale for doing this is that the world’s rivers and streams are being exposed to all sorts of human-induced stresses, and we can’t possibly address them all – we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough people and we don’t have enough time,” Cardinale said. 

Each of the artificial streams in the flume lab is completely enclosed and re-circulating, which makes it possible to examine how each form of environmental stress impacts the production of oxygen, the removal of pollutants from water, and the decomposition and recycling of wastes in a closed system.

The flumes run around the clock every day and water temperature is maintained at 65 degrees Fahrenheit to simulate fall temperatures in the Huron.

The construction work was completed in August. The first experiment began in September and is expected to end this year. A second project will begin at the start of next semester.

The stream channel in each flume is 19.5 inches long and 4.7 inch wide, a clear, gravel-bottomed Plexiglas box that resembles a narrow aquarium. A large C-shaped piece of PVC plastic pipe runs under each stream channel, connecting at each end of the box.

An electric motor drives a propeller inside the pipe that pushes 17 quarts of water through the system at 8.6 inches per second to approximate the Huron River’s flow rate. Each stream channel is fitted on top with an aquarium light to promote growth of the organisms within.

Dr. Jialai Wang, a University of Alabama associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, is working on a solution to these environmental problems by finding an alternative to cement use in concrete.

Wang received a $ 450,000 collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an inexpensive and eco-friendly construction material with fly ash. While the material is like cement, it eliminates many of its environmental concerns, Wang said.

Fly ash is a fine powder derived from burning coal. Use of these coal waste products conserves space in landfills, in which they would otherwise be dumped. Fly ash can be used to create a stronger and more durable form of concrete.

The production of cement releases a large amount of greenhouse gases, which account for 7 percent of the nation’s total carbon-dioxide emissions. The achieved emissions reduction is equivalent to eliminating 25 percent of the world’s vehicle emissions.

Secondly, fly ash use eliminates the deterioration issues of cement. Cement tends to be highly brittle and weak, Wang said, in comparison to fly-ash materials. Roads and structures built with fly ash last longer and require less maintenance. Additionally, unlike cement, the material is easy to recycle.

Wang’s three-year study is focused on perfecting fly-ash materials and developing methods for large-scale production. Fly-ash materials tend to be strong with compression, but brittle with tension. To combat this issue, Wang is experimenting with adding carbon nanotubes to the fly ash.

By adding CNTs, fly ash materials become electrically conductive. Electric conductivity can be used to enhance melting ice on structures, such as bridges and airport runways, eliminating possible winter hazards.

The conductivity also changes with applied force. As applied force changes, the electric resistance changes. A change in conductivity often indicates damage or increased load to a material.

“Civil structures are just like the human body,” Wang said. “They can be ‘sick.’ If no action is taken, there can be serious consequences. Materials with self-sensing abilities can let you know promptly where there is a problem in a structure and catastrophic failure, like the collapse of a bridge, can be avoided.”

Wang has received a patent for the technology he developed to combine CNTs with fly ash. The nanotube technology, nicknamed “Pop Tube technology,” uses microwave radiation to initiate nanotube formation. The microwaves cause nanotubes to pop out, like popcorn.

Wang has partnered with Dr. Shanlin Pan, UA assistant professor of chemistry, and Dr. Xingyu Zhang, an assistant professor of fiber and textile engineering at Auburn University.

This important decision ensures that ERCs will be funded in 2012 at the same level as 2011 – including millions of dollars in funding that will be used to help train tomorrow’s specialists in occupational and environmental medicine.

Earlier this year, when policy makers in Washington D.C. proposed terminating this program, ACOEM contacted congressional leaders to urge them to protect funding for ERCs. We applaud the final decision of the House and the Senate to retain ERC funding – a vital source of support for residency programs that train OEM physicians. It was the right thing to do.

The ERCs were established to support academic institutions to develop or expand occupational health and safety training programs and promote occupational safety and health research. Unlike almost every other major medical specialty, OEM does not receive residency funding support from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That makes NIOSH funding critically important.

While it is good news that NIOSH funding has been extended for 2012, it is important to note that overall funding for OEM residencies is still inadequate and uncertain. OEM specialists are needed today more than ever before, but residency funding is not keeping pace.

At a time of increasing rates of chronic disease and spiraling health-cost expenditures in the workplace, the presence of OEM physicians is vital. OEM physicians work with employers of all sizes and types to develop and implement strategies that lower health risks, reduce the burden of illness, improve wellness and human performance, reduce workplace illness and injury, and enhance the quality of life for both workers and their families, while reducing total health-related costs. It is important to protect residency funding to ensure that there are enough OEM physicians.

Likewise, there is a need to advocate forcefully for federal educational funding needed to support and expand the nation’s OEM specialists. The health and productivity of our national workforce depends on it.

The research published in the online journal PLoS One will  probe the salamander’s declining health and habitat. It could provide a baseline how changing ecosystems are affecting the rapid decline of amphibians worldwide.

“Scientists and biologists view amphibians as kind of a canary in the coal mine and their health is often used as a barometer for overall ecosystem health, including potential problems that may affect humans.” – Max Nickerson Herpetology Curator Florida Museum of Natural History 

The two-feet long Ozark Hellbender is the one of largest salamander species in the United States. Its unusual biological characteristics include the ability to regenerate injured or missing body parts.

In the new study, lead author Cheryl Nickerson, a professor at Arizona State University, along with NASA and UF scientists, cultured and identified microorganisms from abnormal and injured tissue on the salamanders searching for pathogens that may be causing the lack of regeneration and population decline.

The researchers found several potentially dangerous pathogens, including Aeromonas hydrophila, a bacterium scientists believe is associated with disease and death in both amphibians and fish.

While many different pathogens were found in the injured tissue, no single organism was found to be responsible for the lack of regeneration. Researchers believe the occurrence of abnormalities and injury in the Ozark Hellbender may have many contributing factors, including disease and habitat degradation, and say further study is needed

Scientists have known about the remarkable powers of salamander regeneration for more than 200 years, but beginning in the 1980s, researchers noticed a sharp decline in the Ozark Hellbender population. They also found a specific population from the North Fork of Missouri’s White River was declining dramatically and losing the ability to regenerate.

“We were finding animals with no legs that were still alive with flesh wounds or bones sticking out of limbs,” Nickerson said.

“Looking at the microorganisms on their skin can help us understand why these animals aren’t regenerating at the rate we’re used to seeing, and may lead to conclusions about population declines,” he said.

In November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the Ozark Hellbender to the federal endangered species list. Its species name is Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi.

Stanley Trauth, curator of amphibians and reptiles in the department of biological sciences at Arkansas State University, said public awareness of the species is increasing, and Hellbenders have recently been successfully bred for the first time in captivity at the St. Louis Zoo.

“There has been a dramatic decrease in the population and there are a number of factors that contribute to that.” Trauth said. 

“In the last 20 years we have been finding a tremendous number of injuries on these animals and those injuries are not healing,” Nickerson said. “Now the population is down to almost nothing and we are very worried about the species and the environmental changes around them,” he added.

The Ozark Hellbender’s fossil record goes back 161 million years and it represents one of the most ancient lines of amphibian life.

Their findings, published today in the journal PLoS Genetics, plot the evolutionary relationships of 150 different species of plants based on advanced genome-wide analysis of gene structure and function. This new approach, called “functional phylogenomics,” allows scientists to reconstruct the pattern of events that led to the vast number of plant species and could help identify genes used to improve seed quality for agriculture.

“Ever since Darwin first described the ‘abominable mystery’ behind the rapid explosion of flowering plants in the fossil record, evolutionary biologists have been trying to understand the genetic and genomic basis of the astounding diversity of plant species.“- Rob DeSalle Sackler Institute Comparative Genomics

“Having the architecture of this plant tree of life allows us to start to decipher some of the interesting aspects of evolutionary innovations that have occurred in this group,” he added.

The research, performed by members of the New York Plant Genomics Consortium, was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Plant Genome Program to identify the genes that caused the evolution of seeds, a trait of important economic interest. The group selected 150 representative species from all of the major seed plant groups to include in the study.

The species span from the flowering variety – peanuts and dandelions, for example – to non-flowering cone plants like spruce and pine. The sequences of the plants’ genomes – all of the biological information needed to build and maintain an organism, encoded in DNA – were either culled from pre-existing databases or generated, in the field and at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, from live specimens.

“Previously, phylogenetic trees were constructed from standard sets of genes and were used to identify the relationships of species.” – Gloria Coruzzi Professor New York University

“In our novel approach, we create the phylogeny based on all the genes in a genome, and then use the phylogeny to identify which genes provide positive support for the divergence of species,” he added.

With new algorithms developed at the Museum and NYU and the processing power of supercomputers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and overseas, the sequences – nearly 23,000 sets of genes (specific sections of DNA that code for certain proteins) – were grouped, ordered, and organized in a tree according to their evolutionary relationships. Algorithms that determine similarities of biological processes were used to identify the genes underlying species diversity.

The results support major hypotheses about evolutionary relationships in seed plants. The most interesting finding is that gnetophytes, a group that consists mostly of shrubs and woody vines, are the most primitive living non-flowering seed plants – present since the late Mesozoic era, the “age of dinosaurs.” They are situated at the base of the evolutionary tree of seed plants.

“Genes required for the production of small RNA in seeds were at the very top of the list of genes responsible for the evolution of flowering plants from cone plants.” – Rob Martienssen Professor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

The data and software resources generated by the researchers are publicly available and will allow other comparative genomic researchers to exploit plant diversity to identify genes associated with a trait of interest or agronomic value. These studies could have implications for improving the quality of seeds and, in turn, agricultural products ranging from food to clothing.

Using data from a nationwide mental health survey, the researchers analyzed psychiatric symptoms among 272 U.S. adults who reported working in a war zone as a combat soldier, peacekeeper, and/or relief worker.

Some subjects reported both combat and peacekeeping experience. The lead author was Ellen Connorton of the  Harvard School of Public Health.

Respondents exposed to combat were more likely to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with a possible increase in problems with alcohol and drug abuse. There was no evidence of increased mental health problems among people exposed to peacekeeping or relief work only, without combat exposure.

“PTSD from combat seems to occur quickly, while most of the effects of combat exposure on drug and alcohol dependence are delayed,” the report said.

They noted that some respondents were diagnosed with depression or other psychiatric disorders were diagnosed before exposure to combat and or peacekeeping/relief work.

Military personnel, peacekeepers, and relief workers are increasingly used to respond to armed conflicts, natural disasters, and other international emergencies.

Some studies have suggested an increased risk of PTSD among peacekeepers, but few studies have looked at the possible mental health impact of relief work.

The new study confirms that combat exposure can have a significant mental health impact. However, in the absence of combat exposure, peacekeeping and relief work were not associated with mental illness.  They believe that future studies should account for previous psychiatric diagnoses and exposure to other types of trauma.