Toxics
kkrisberg | December 16, 2014America’s petrochemical industry has spent millions trying to discredit the science on benzene, a known human carcinogen linked to leukemia and other cancers, according to an investigative piece from reporter Kristen Lombardi at the Center for Public Integrity. Lombardi begins her story with the life of John Thompson, who spent much of his life working for the petrochemical industry in Texas. She writes:
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he often encountered benzene, stored on job sites in 55-gallon drums, which he used as a cleaning solvent. He dipped hammers and cutters into buckets…
egrossman | December 9, 2014“Too many oil and gas industry workers are being hurt or killed on the job,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, David Michaels in remarks delivered to the more than 2,000 people who gathered last week in Houston for the 2014 OSHA Oil & Gas Safety and Health Conference. As part of efforts to address industry safety issues, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced a new effort to improve the safety of workers employed in the oil and gas industry.
Described as an “alliance,” the initiative involves a two-year agreement…
egrossman | November 19, 2014Often unwatched by all but policy-wonks yet key to determining policies put forth by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Boards. These boards consult with the EPA on the science that influences regulations, particularly on individual chemicals – science that’s used to protect the public from chemical hazards. On Tuesday the House passed a bill, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act of 2013 or H.R. 1422, that would change how the EPA selects Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) members. The White House, in a statement from the Office of Management and…
kkrisberg | November 12, 2014Decreased lung function, breast cancer, miscarriage, depression and neurological disease. These are just a few of the health and disease risks that salon workers disproportionately face while on the job, according to a new report on the impact of toxic chemicals within the beauty and personal care industry.
Yesterday, Women’s Voices for the Earth, a nonprofit working to eliminate toxic chemicals from workplaces, homes and communities, released “Beauty and Its Beast: Unmasking the Impact of Toxic Chemicals on Salon Workers,” which highlights decades of research on beauty care workers and…
kkrisberg | November 7, 2014In the span of just a couple years, five of Heather Buren’s colleagues at the San Francisco Fire Department were diagnosed with breast cancer. At first, Buren thought the diagnoses were part of the unfortunate toll that comes with age. Still, something felt amiss — “it just felt so disproportionate to me,” she said.
Around the same time, Buren helped a good friend and mentor within the department as she underwent a double mastectomy. Buren said it was at that moment that she decided to take decisive action.
“(The cancer) just brought her to her knees,” she told me. “Now she’s good and back in…
kkrisberg | October 31, 2014A recent study of air quality around unconventional oil and gas extraction sites — more commonly referred to as fracking — found high levels of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde, all of which pose risks to human health. But what makes this study particularly interesting is that the air samples were collected by the very people who live near the extraction sites, and the collection times were specifically triggered by the onset of health symptoms.
Published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health, the study involved residents living near 11 unconventional extraction sites in…
egrossman | October 28, 2014Despite substantial public opposition and the “grave concerns” of about 50 members of Congress and significant unanswered questions about human and environmental health impacts, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved a new herbicide called Enlist Duo for use on genetically engineered corn and soybeans in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. EPA, which says it has approved Enlist Duo “to manage the problem of resistant weeds” is now considering approving Enlist Duo for use in ten more states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi,…
egrossman | October 13, 2014"If the California Public Health Department had been able to find out that my company was using a chemical that was killing people, I might never have gotten so sick that I had to have a lung transplant," Ricardo Corona told a California Judiciary Committee last April, testifying in favor of California Senate Bill (SB) 193 that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on September 29th. The law, which amends California's Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service (HESIS), will become the first in the country to require companies that manufacture and distribute toxic chemicals to provide a…
sastyk | May 20, 2010Thanks to fellow science blogger Ed Brayton for the link to this New York Times article, which suggests that because of ties to the company, BP chose to flood the Gulf with a dispersant that is both more toxic than many of the other options and also less effective.
So far, BP has told federal agencies that it has applied more than 400,000 gallons of a dispersant sold under the trade name Corexit and manufactured by Nalco Co., whose current leadership includes executives from BP and Exxon. And another 805,000 gallons of Corexit are on order, the company said, with the possibility that…
angrytoxicologist | December 9, 2008You've probably heard that a F/A-18D jet crashed in San Diego on approach to Miramar, killing 3 on the ground (the pilot ejected and is fine). A lot of the news reports noted that ~20 homes were evacuated due to 'toxic chemicals'. What sort of chemicals would you be worried about?
First Responders and Bystanders
Beyond the physical hazards (things under pressure like hydraulics, O2 canisters,...etc), there's all kinds of stuff to worry about like fuel, oils, hydraulic fluids, beryllium, lithium, chromium, mercury, and possibly radioactive compounds. But the biggest hazard is simply the…
angrytoxicologist | December 3, 2008
Well, if MacGuire was talking about getting into toxicology research on plastics, he was right on. EHP has published a study showing that the additive BPA can cause cells to suppress adiponectin. That would cause insensitivity to insulin and may be behind "metabolic syndrome". Let's pause for a moment and think about that name. That's got to be the worst name for a syndrome ever. It could only be more vague by being called 'syndrome'. I prefer something that creates a nice visual, like bronchiolitis obliterans. Nothing like an obliterated lung to get your attention. I propose…
angrytoxicologist | August 5, 2008Read some background on PFOA and Teflon here.
A couple of years ago DuPont and other perfluorochemical industries were dismissing evidence of PFOA-caused cancer in rats, saying it was due to peroxisome proliferation in rats, which some argue isn't relevant to humans. However, PFOA may have other mechanisms of action (disrupting thyroid hormones, gap junctions, and estradiol among them). You can read more about the evidence in this EWG submission to the EPA. Well, EPA must not have payed too much attention to those other mechanisms because they basically ignored them and wanted to discount the…
angrytoxicologist | July 30, 2008Oops!
In case you didn't know, the Boulder, CO site of the National Institute of Sandards and Technology (NIST) had an accidental spill of plutonium-239 on June 9 and the initial actions taken would have an industrial hygenist pulling her hair out (read more at C&EN). Basically, a guest researcher* cracked a bottle, didn't realize it, and when he did here's what he did: He locked up the sample, moved some of his materials, and washed his hands in the sink. As you might have guessed, he wasn't trained to work with radioactive substances, which is required by the Nuclear Regulatory…
angrytoxicologist | June 30, 2008Do you ever wonder how some people can simply dismiss the risks of toxic products that they keep around them? This is a constant source of wonderment in the public health community. The reflexive answer is usually that people in question are just uninformed. Therefore we put lots of effort into education. This doesn't jibe with my experience. What usually happens is that when someone is informed about some risk, they treat the risk like it is either for other people or that the risk is overblown/not real. Think this isn't true? You should stop into a toxicology lab someday. On second thought…
angrytoxicologist | April 21, 2008A paper just published in Tox Sci shows that PFOS (the chemical that used to be the prime ingredient in Scotchgard) suppresses the immune system at levels, that didn't cause noticeable toxicity that are same as what are found in the general population. Great. So, basically, many people in the US who show no other signs may have compromised immune systems because of PFOS. And what's worse is that other compounds like PFOA, related to Teflon treatments (read more here), also have the same effects in other mouse studies.
You know this is really a toxicologist's nightmare. I'd like to think that…
angrytoxicologist | October 10, 2007Good reading for today:
Ken Sepkowitz on why we should eat more excrement. Truly, he makes an excellent point. One other thing that he doesn't mention is that as we get safer the outbreaks that exist look worse and worse. Has anyone done a study of whether eating charred foods protects against cancer? (possibly better detox mechanisms?). I'll be on the lookout for one too.
Also good reading: yesterday's WP article on the DDT - breast cancer link. It's a pretty good story so I won't bore you with summarizing.
angrytoxicologist | October 5, 2007Perhaps I should call this entry Mr Kawamura, CA secretary of the state department of Food and Agriculture, is a moron.
Background
The Monterey area has a problem with the light brown apple moth. Apparently it's been there for a while but now the state is concerned. They want to spray a pheramone to disrupt the life cycle. The EPA gave them emergency clearance to spray Checkmate from an airplane over the area both agricultural and residental. The people of the Monterey peninsula don't want to be sprayed with something that the EPA didn't give a full review to. The state did it anyway.…
angrytoxicologist | August 21, 2007So I if walked over to your house and dumped something over your fence, that's probably trespassing, unless that something happened to be a box of Krispy Kreme, then it's just tasty. If it's grass clippings, you'd be pissed off; if it's an industrial chemical, you might sue. If I came over with said chemical and spoon-fed it to your newborn, I'm pretty sure I'd be looking at a 12/12 bid in the joint.
Which leads me to a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives that is a follow up to a paper published on-line in the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology by…
angrytoxicologist | August 1, 2007Scientists took lettuce, corn, and potatoes and grew them using soil treated with hog manure that had the commonly used livestock antibiotic Sulfamethazine in it. All three plants uptook the Sulfamethazine. You know what that means: mmmmm... Wait, no, I think I meant yuk. With 9-13 million kg of livestock antibiotic used every year and the increasing use of the manure to treat crops, the risk of more antibiotic resistant bacteria goes up. The funny thing about the antibiotics and livestock is that it does nothing for the consumer (except shave a few cents of the sale price). If anything, it's…
angrytoxicologist | July 31, 2007A study in Neurology came out today ($ required) that found that those with better reading skills had 2.5 times less cognitive brain damage due to lead! Reading ability is one of the best ways to measure cognitive reserve (CR), the ability to maintain good cognitive performance despite disease or injury. It is also related to head size, education, linguistic ability, and occupational achievement but reading is really the best indicator (achievement under very controled settings is better but it's really hard to control for opportunity in medium size studies). Those in the study are…