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Thursday, July 29, 2010
Diet drinks boost risk of premature birth
Pregnant women who drink beverages with artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, are more likely to give birth prematurely, according to a study conducted in Denmark and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The research found a link between consumption of one or more artificially sweetened soft drinks per day and a higher risk of premature birth. The risk rose with the number of drinks consumed and did not correlate with the women's weight.
Aspartame has also been linked to preterm delivery in animal studies.
Researcher Thorhallur I. Halldorsson also noted that soft drinks sweetened either by sugar or by artificial sweeteners have been linked to high blood pressure, which increases the chances of preterm delivery.
Although the study's authors insist their findings shouldn't scare pregnant women, they do seem to make the obvious point that diet soft drinks aren't a healthier alternative to sugary soft drinks. And it seems just as logical for pregnant women to avoid chemical sweeteners as it is for them to avoid alcohol, caffeine, sushi, cookie dough and all of the other no-no's on the list.
| Jul 29 at 10:41 AM
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Climate change will exacerbate immigration woes
If severe heat waves and impending public health fiascoes aren't enough to get Americans to get serious about climate change, how about immigration?
A new study — conducted by researchers at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — concludes that climate change will drive down crop yields in Mexico, causing between 1.4 and 6.7 million Mexican adults to emigrate by 2080. Although the study didn't address where the climate refugees would go, empirical data suggests most would come to the United States.
If you believe uncontrolled immigration hurts the U.S., you should, it would seem, support immediate action to control greenhouse gas emissions.
| Jul 28 at 11:03 AM
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
L.A. mayor a radical cyclist?
Sometimes it takes a famous person to call attention to an issue. But, chances are, L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wishes it had happened differently. Last Saturday night, he hopped on his bike to cruise down to the beach near his house. As he rode along Venice Boulevard in the bike lane, a taxi pulled into the lane and stopped abruptly. The mayor braked, swerved and fell, breaking his elbow.
A glamorous spokesman for making the roads safer for cyclists he is not, but Villaraigosa is leveraging his fall to lobby for a more cycle-friendly City of Angels. Ironically, though, his plans rest on more bike lanes, when clearly dedicated lanes aren't protection enough from the slings and arrows of distracted driving.
To wit: A friend of mine was also cut very short by a cab pulling into the bike lane. When he crashed his bike into the cab, injuring himself and damaging his bicycle, not only did the company refuse to pay; it repeatedly threatened to sue him for damages.
Villaraigosa's accident also calls attention to another oft-forgotten issue: Not all cyclists are fixie-riding messengers with a death drive that's equal parts suicide and homicide. Actually, most aren't. Sure, bikers run the occasional red light and even sometimes veer too close to pedestrians. They shouldn't, but drivers make the same "me first" moves, and they do so despite a very real possibility of causing serious injury to somebody else.
It's time to stop defending bad driving based on stereotypes of cyclists and start slapping drivers who endanger bikers and pedestrians with criminal charges. And sure, a few more bike lanes would be great.
| Jul 27 at 06:32 AM
Friday, July 23, 2010
Cleaning products linked to breast cancer
One in eight American women will get breast cancer, giving the United States the dubious honor of the highest rates in the world. It's hard not to associate that high risk with our disinclination to regulate chemicals.
Shutterstock
A new study in Environmental Health magazine suggests that using conventional cleaning products may increase a woman's risk of breast cancer. The study surveyed 1,500 women, half who'd been diagnosed with cancer and half who had not. The women who reported heavy use of cleaning products — particularly air fresheners and mold and mildew control products — had twice the risk of having cancer as those with lowest reported use.
Sounds like a great excuse to skip the cleaning this weekend — and another reason to use green cleaning products, like vinegar and salt, and essential oils as air fresheners.
Because the survey relied on women to describe their own exposure, its results are limited by some reporting biases. For example, women who have been diagnosed with cancer are more likely to recall all the chemicals they've been exposed to.
What's sad is that this is the only kind of data we have on the issue — another symptom of our dysfunctional chemical romance.
| Jul 23 at 11:15 AM
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Big Ag blames pesticide critics for U.S. health problems
This spring, TGL shared the findings of the Environmental Working Group's annual tally of the fruits and vegetables that contain the most pesticide at the time they're eaten.
Samuell via Wikimedia Commons
Since then, the report has come under fire from the Watsonville-based Alliance for Food and Farming. The group, an industry front group, claims that the so-called Dirty Dozen list "is an impediment to public health because it discourages consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and that there is no scientific evidence that pesticide levels found on produce pose any risk."
"We have a real problem in the United States. People are not eating enough fruits and vegetables," said Dr. Carl Keen, Professor of Nutrition & Internal Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the panel that reviewed the Dirty Dozen report. "We are supposed to have 5 to 7 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and right now most people are only eating a couple."
I'd say the problems with our food and agricultural system are a little bigger than people not eating enough fruits and vegetables. And who's to blame for that but the giant companies that collect huge subsidies to grow corn, allowing them to sell junk for a quarter the price of fruit? I don't see them lobbying for a change in those subsidy programs.
| Jul 22 at 06:36 AM
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Sewage-eating robot generates its own energy
The premise of any science fiction movie worth its salt is robots operating in the back of beyond without human supervision for long stretches of time. (Those pesky robots do get into trouble, don't they?) Researchers at the UK's Bristol Robotics Laboratory have brought us a step closer to that prospect with the Ecobot III, the first robot capable of powering itself by consuming and excreting biomass and can run unsupervised for a full week. (H/T PhysOrg)
The bot uses microbial fuel cells to break down its food, extracting electrons from the metabolic process to run ultra low-power circuitry.
So what exactly does it eat? Why, partially processed sewage of course! It navigates toward a trough and "eats" what it needs, generating electricity by metabolizing its, err, meal with bacteria in the fuel cells. The waste is, shall we say, "purged" every 24 hours with a colon-like pump that uses pressure waves to expel it into a litter tray.
Chris Melhuish, director of the lab, said the robot was called Ecobot III, but admitted "diarrhea-bot would be more appropriate, as it's not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets." Well, as they say: Garbage in, garbage out.
This tasty little system is C02-neutral, but, as it stands now, the machine gets just 1 percent of the energy available from its "food." Its efficiency will likely improve in later versions, though, and the Bristol team sees value in powering such release-and-forget robots with a wider range of — again the scare quotes — "foodstuffs" than would work in robots that burn, rather than digest, biomass, like the one the U.S. military is developing.
But you might want to bring a match along just in case if you'll be spending any time with this R2D2.
| Jul 21 at 06:45 AM
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Secret BP hotline doles out event tickets to lawmakers
BP operates an unpublished hotline that exists solely for lawmakers and regulators to request free tickets to events at BP's Arco Arena, according to Mother Jones. In the last 10 years, everybody's least favorite oil company has handed out more than $300,000 worth of tickets to Sacto pols, for everything from Sacramento Kings games to Britney Spears concerts and Disney on Ice shows.
The politicians join BP employees in the company's suite. In 2004, a BP spokesman told the LA Times that employees "don't tend to talk business with them."
In March 2002, when the Sacramento Kings were battling the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA playoffs, 9 state senators and 12 state assembly members, including speaker Herb Wesson, scored free seats from BP.
In 2006 — when state lawmakers were voting on AB 32 — BP gave away 321 tickets, more than in any year since.
According to Mother Jones, BP also provided Kings tickets to Dan Pellissier when he was deputy secretary for energy policy at the state environmental protection agency. Pellissier later joined the governor's office as a deputy cabinet secretary advising Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on energy and environmental policy. This March, Schwarzenegger sent a letter to CARB urging it to embrace carbon offsets and free emissions credits under AB 32 — something environmental groups oppose but BP's lobbyists support. (Rachel Arrezola, a spokeswoman for the governor, declined to say whether Pellissier had helped the governor draft the letter.)
BP claims in its corporate code, very questionably at best, that it "will make no political contributions, whether in cash or in-kind, anywhere in the world."
| Jul 20 at 11:16 AM
Monday, July 19, 2010
Climate change is bad for your health
While we've been "enjoying" a foggy summer here in San Francisco, the East Coast has been sweltering under some record breaking heat waves. And climate change models show such heat waves will occur more often and last longer, according David Easterling, a climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center.
Heat waves are just one of the ways climate change impairs public health. Michael McGeehin, director of the Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects at the CDC, calls them "a public health disaster." Heat waves, he says, "kill the most vulnerable members of our society. The fact that climate change is going to increase the number and intensity of heat waves is something we need to prepare for."
On the other hand, taking steps to check climate change would improve public health. Research from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found that simply reducing the number of miles driven by about 20 percent would save hundreds of lives, avoid hundreds of thousands of hospital admissions, and save billions of dollars in health care costs in the Midwest alone.
And if we do nothing about climate change, the question won't be simply of well being, but of survival. Climate change could even make regions of the Earth uninhabitable, according to Matthew Huber, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Purdue University, who recently calculated the highest temperature-humidity combination that humans can withstand. According to his findings, if emissions from burning fossil fuels continue unabated, temperatures could rise by as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Australia, many Mediterranean countries, and parts of Africa, Brazil, China, India and the United States would be so hot and humid that people could only survive outdoors for a few hours during hot weather.
So did that get your attention?
Research has also found that framing climate change as a public health problem makes it more important and understandable to members of the public, even some who don't generally believe climate change is happening.
| Jul 19 at 10:17 AM
Friday, July 16, 2010
Should food dyes be banned?
A new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest argues that synthetic dyes should be banned because they pose "A Rainbow of Risks" without any real benefits.
Every year, manufactures pour about 15 million pounds of eight common synthetic dyes into Americans' food. Yet, tests have shown that a number of these compounds have health risks ranging from powerful allergic reactions and hyperactivity in children to cancer.
Shutterstock
Evidence suggests, but does not prove, that Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 40, and Yellow 6 cause cancer in animals. The three most widely used dyes — Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 — are contaminated with known carcinogens.
The granddaddy of them all, Red 3, is recognized by the Food and Drug Administration as a carcinogen. The law requires it to be illegal, but pressure from Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Agriculture, John R. Block, scuttled the required ban. About 200,000 pounds annually of Red 3 go into foods including Betty Crocker's Fruit Roll-Ups and ConAgra's Kid Cuisine frozen meals.
CSPI suggests that synthetic dyes be banned outright because, well, why not? But barring that, they are demanding that the cancer-causing dyes be banned, as required by law, and that all dyed foods be considered "adulterated" under the law because the dyes make a food "appear better or of greater value than it is," the legal standard.
The EU will begin requiring next week that dyed foods carry a warning. But banning fake foods in the U.S. seems a long way off.
| Jul 16 at 10:37 AM
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Commercial buildings are a huge energy suck
A new apolitical analysis finds a major shortcoming in California's green credentials: commercial buildings. The state has no energy efficiency standards for existing buildings, and, according to the study, requirements for new buildings fall far below what's possible.
Commercial buildings in the Golden State account for more than a third of energy usage. But energy-efficiency improvements could cut their usage by 80 percent. Indeed, an average building's energy use can be cut by half just with low-cost, low-tech improvements to lighting and insulation.
Remember, too, that many of these buildings are owned by the State of California, which is in a nasty financial situation.
As for new buildings, if requirements were made that tacked on a 2-percent increase in construction costs, they could use one-third to one-half less energy than they use today.
Not only do efficiency savings save money, they also bring in higher rents. LEED- and Energy Star-certified buildings bring in rents 6 percent higher.
One major hurdle to making the improvements: split incentives between tenants and property owners (owners pay for upgrades; tenants reap rewards in energy bills).
The analysis was conducted by Next 10 and Collaborative Economics.
| Jul 15 at 06:37 AM
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