Get On With It

March 6th, 2010

I really will get on to talking further about how much we should be afraid or not afraid that our dry cleaning (or more specifically, the perchloroethylene emissions from our dry cleaning) is going to affect our health, and whether or not we should stop taking fish oil capsules (see me in the comments) because the Manteel Justice Foundation has a bug up its ass about PCB contamination in marine fish oils.  But for now, I’m sharing this neat post about data analysis – it’s oriented towards market analytics using the Star Trek red shirt-guy-who-dies-in-each-episode trope (may all Wall Street bankers, stock traders and market analysts have unsatisfactory sexual relationships forever for ruining our economy), but is a useful tale for how to analyze data in general.

Here’s hoping that blogging resembling real environmental health science resumes soon.  My apologies for subjecting you to this.  I’m recovering from a head cold, and I’m overly preoccupied with the day job, and both seem to impede me from thinking very clearly.

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RadCon Came To Town

February 19th, 2010

RadCon was in town last week (RadCon, in the Tri-Cities, Washington. . . near where the Hanford Site is located. . . get it, RadCon. . . oh, never mind).  I hauled both of the youth over to the Red Lion in Pasco to participate.  They’re not into consplay, and didn’t show up in costume, though my daughter did buy some steampunk-themed welding goggles.  She also expressed an interest in the folks in neo-apocalyptic garb including respiratory protection.  We saw several folks wearing half-face air-purifying respirators (I started telling her that the cartridges with the magenta stripes on them meant they were for filtering radioactive substances except tritium and noble gases, but stopped when I noticed that her eyes started glazing over), and one young woman in a faux-U.S. Army helmet, World War II style and faux-World War I full-face canister respirator (what most people would call a “gas mask”).  I said she could have one for her birthday if she’d like.

The mixture of lectures, vendors, game rooms and people wandering about in costume made for a pleasant venue.  It was clear that my kids (kids, hah – they’re close to adults now) were in their element there – my son pondered attending a lecture presented by some science-fiction authors about writing about time travel; over the years we’ve had several discussions regarding the nature of time travel, after I had given him a copy of Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace.  Later, both of them sat in on a lecture on character development.  In that one, my daughter asked a question about how to make a whiny, angst-ridden, emo character interesting.  The participants struggled with that for a moment, until my son chimed in “like Anakin”, which provoked groans and chuckles from participants and the panel alike, but got the point across.

I couldn’t participate as much as I would have liked, since the whole work-life balance thing isn’t going so well right now. However, I attended a talk on protecting ourselves from collision with near-Earth asteroids. . . talk about a major environmental problem that is being almost totally ignored . . , which included on the panel Larry Niven, looking like the stereotypical grandpa of the “you kids get off my lawn” variety.  I quickly got bored and didn’t sit through the whole session, since it was focused on the cool technologies that in theory could be deployed to save the Earth from asteroid impaction.  I’m into cool technology as much as the next geek, but there’s the practical side of me who’s interested in hearing about the societal and technological changes involved in putting us on the path to achieve such a deployment (. . . boring. . .), and when are we going to pull our heads out of our asses and get on with it. . . .  Sorry, this isn’t intended to be a rant.  But the list of Manhattan Project-sized projects on the to-do list (manage climate change, achieve energy independence, preserve biodiversity, keep big rocks from dropping from orbit onto our heads) is starting to add up.

Attending a science fiction and fantasy con prompted me to think about the stories I’ve read with an environmental health theme.  There’s Norman Spinrad’s short story Carcinoma Angels, where the hero is a cancer victim who uses guided imagery to direct his own molecular and cellular defense mechanisms and save himself, but can’t wake from his drug-induced trance; John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up, with it’s unsubtle message about unsustainable lifestyles including a scene in which hallucinogenic chemical warfare agents leaching into groundwater from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal make people in Denver crazy;  Cordwainer Smith’s short story The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal, with a planet where being female is carcinogenic, a foretelling of life with endocrine disruptors including a frank description of homosexual lifestyles (you see, everyone has to become male in order to survive. . .).  While it doesn’t harp on the subject, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy does mention the problem with space travel of astronauts accumulating potentially life-shortening radiation doses, though he pulls out the plot device of anti-aging drugs to offset that problem and keep his characters into the multi-generational story.  I did enjoy the Mars Trilogy with it’s themes of ecological economics, and using the mission to Mars to give aerospace defense contractors something to do other than build implements of destruction.  Maybe this whole topic could be a workshop at next year’s con.

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Tobacco Genomics

January 26th, 2010

More than a billion people worldwide smoke tobacco.  With a 20-fold greater risk of developing lung cancer than nonsmokers, plus increased risks of other types of cancers, choosing to smoke represents the most significant carcinogenic exposure confronting public health professionals today.  A recently completed study published in Nature (se below) reports on the sequencing of DNA from a small-cell lung cancer victim.  Tobacco smoke deposits hundreds of chemicals in an individual’s airways and lungs including numerous mutagens.  The investigators have used massively parallel sequencing to illuminate the distinctive mutations associated with exposure to cigarette smoke carcinogens, as well as the signature of DNA repair activities.

The investigators didn’t speculate about the policy implications of this work, but things that come to mind for me include better early detection of pre-cancerous conditions, genomic therapies that intervene on a macromolecular level and an airtight method for denying someone health insurance coverage for lung cancer treatment because of self-inflicted tobacco carcinogenesis.

One of the worrisome statements made in the discussion section was that, on average, lung cancer develops after 50 pack-years of smoking (where a pack-year is 7,300 cigarettes, representing the number smoked in a pack a day for a year), or an average of one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked, which could potentially transform a normal cell into a cancerous one that eventually clones into a tumor.

There are a couple of epidemiological modeling papers cited for that conclusion that should be looked in on later, but the 50 pack-years assessment provoked a bit of an oh-shit moment, because if I’m understanding the number properly, 50 pack-years is around a pack a day for one year; the dose-response relationship is cumulative, so the same risk would be associated with half a pack a day for two years, and so forth.  Tobacco contains a lot of other carcinogens other than mutagens, which initiate a carcinogenic response; these other carcinogens are promoters, which accelerate the growth and development of a tumor.  So, even if you’ve only currently a “light” smoker, you’re probably still screwing yourself health-wise; even if you quit years ago, you may have macromolecular or cellular injury now, that will eventually turn into lung cancer, but it just hasn’t progressed to the that you’re experiencing adverse effects.  It’s just another reason for not smoking at all or stopping at the earliest instance possible, in order to preserve your health (and insurance).

Pleasance, E.D. et al.  2009.  A small-cell lung cancer genome with complex signatures of tobacco exposure.  Nature.  463, 184-190 (14 January 2009)   http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7278/full/nature08629.html

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Dodging the Bullet

January 10th, 2010

Huffpo is info-smack for me.  I really should dry out from it, but. . . well, what can you say?  Maybe the smack example is a little much, so perhaps it’s like Pop-Tarts, tasty and somewhat filling, if completely un-nutritious. . . .

But sometimes, I get something mildly usable from it, at least enough to keep up the blogging rate.  Today’s example is a post in Huffpo about the city in the nation with the highest home foreclosure rate, along with 16% unemployment:  Stockton, CA.

I remember Stockton.  Thirty years ago, I lived in Sacramento just about an hour north of Stockton, first working for the State of California regulating pesticides, then working for a couple of environmental consulting firms.  I passed through Stockton more times than I can remember, on the way to the Bay Area – taking I-5 to I-205 and through the Altamont Pass was longer than I-80, but I would gladly drive the extra 70 miles, if I could go 80 mph all the way and avoid being stuck in traffic.  Stockton was also a waypoint when driving south to the San Joaquin Valley, to work sites where I could observe and monitor workers using pesticides, measuring their exposure and collecting data to figure out methods for reducing those exposures.

I was just starting to see the growth in the Valley towns when we left California – tens of thousands of people who bought homes in places such as Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Patterson, and commuted two-plus hours per day one way to jobs in the Bay Area.  I don’t think I have to read further to figure out what’s happened – the jobs in the Bay Area are starting to dry up, and there’s nothing locally to replace them. . . .

I’ve managed to miss all of this.  We left California in 1995 for opportunities elsewhere, and it feels as if we dodged a bullet.  It’s difficult for me to imagine what would be so desirable in a job that would make it worth driving 60 miles, one way in heavy traffic, while living in a garden spot such as Stockton.  Don’t get me wrong, I could live there, if I had a job in town.  Driving to Hayward to work every day?  No way.  But that’s me.  In the end, I’m relieved that we got out when we did.  California – forty million people can be wrong.

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Some Thoughts on Formaldehyde

January 5th, 2010

Considered to be a probable human carcinogen through inhalation, formaldehyde for several years has been the subject of a risk assessment being conducted by EPA, as well as a candidate for development of emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.  Formaldehyde is used in manufacturing of building materials, and the offgassing from new building materials is a source of formaldehyde exposure in indoor air for potentially millions of people.

There have been several signal events related to formaldehyde which have occurred within the past few years.  Temporary housing units used by FEMA to house people rendered homeless from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were found to have concentrations of formaldehyde in air at levels that were sufficiently high that public health officials were concerned about potential health risks to the occupants.  Recently published epidemiological studies of workers indicate that exposed to formaldehyde is associated with an increased incidence of leukemia (formaldehyde is already thought to be associated with an increased risk of nasal cancers in workers).  Senator David Vitter has held up nomination of a key EPA deputy administrator over the formaldehyde risk assessment, insisting that the risk assessment undergo review by the National Academy of Sciences, a step that would delay any regulation of formaldehyde emissions by a few years.  Finally, the California Air Resources Board finalized air toxics control measures for the manufacturing of some building materials containing formaldehyde.

Beyond the fact that formaldehyde has been recognized as a human cancer risk and a widespread indoor air contaminant for over two decades, an argument can be made that the existing regulatory frameworks will not produce real reductions in formaldehyde exposure for many years.  It is not simply a matter that more information is needed to make a decision.  Collecting and analyzing more information can in certain cases create more opportunities to create doubt and distraction.  The problem then is defining the kinds of information, messaging and framework that would mobilize enough power to effect changes; in this case, reengineering the manufacturing of building materials to “green” the formaldehyde out of them.

This involves either molding the views of decision makers or creating an enormous groundswell of public opinion. . . .   [To be continued]

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Climate Change Risk Communication Sucks

January 4th, 2010

I ran across this story in Science Progress, a “progressive science blog” which comes across as earnest, involved and. . . dull.  Dull and earnest meant that I couldn’t get too worked up about this screed by Chris Mooney about climate change denialism, which mentions the Pew Center statistic that a declining fraction of the American public is concerned about climate change.

However this does raise a good question about why, with the majority of the scientific community that is knowledgeable about the topic of climate change issuing alarms, is climate change risk communication so ineffective.  I look at climate change, and see nothing but ways to make capital flow so that lots of people can make money.  There’s some kind of a lesson about how being smart and committed about a topic isn’t necessarily enough to galvanize interest and concern about it.

As always, Peter Sandman has some sensible things to say about the problem of climate change apathy and precaution advocacy.  However, I recall a few months back something on his blog about him planning to retire soon.  I wonder who’s going to be picking up the slack here.

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Maybe This Will Get Some Attention

January 2nd, 2010

Wired Magazine online just published its top scientific breakthroughs in 2009, and there are two environmental health ones in the list:  the sensor that can “smell cancer”, or in other words, can detect exhaled volatile organic compounds that are early biomarkers of potential lung tumors (blogged about earlier) and bisphenol-a.  Wired cites a report from the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, which reports on a recently published paper in Human Reproduction about evidence of adverse male reproductive effects in workers exposed to high levels of bisphenol-a (BPA).  Male factory workers at a facility in China with BPA exposure have “strikingly high rates of erectile dysfunction and impairment of ejaculation”.  The study is on my reading list, but if this proves to be a real adverse effect, maybe it will be the thing that finally stirs some action to address BPA exposure.  That or boost stocks in PDE-5 inhibitors.

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Returning to Duty

December 31st, 2009

There’s no better way to start the New Year than getting a jump on it.  I don’t know where I found this, but “Five Easy Lies” is a wonderful example of how to sow doubt and uncertainty about any set of data.  I have written before about how sowing doubt and uncertainty with environmental data is a time-honored tradition of opponents of toxic substances regulation, climate change denialists or anyone desiring to use “too much uncertainty to make a decision” as a strategy for deferring any type of economically or politically painful decision.  Stated more eloquently on SKAPP’s web site:

“Doubt is our product,” a cigarette executive once observed, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

The lesson about how to talk about data that isn’t telling your story works better with the visuals (visit the site if you’re interested), but here’s a summary of the principles:

Select your cutoffs – focus on just the piece of the trend or the piece of the data set that’s most favorable to your side of the argument.

Talk about the trend of the trend – very useful for engaging people who are bad at math.  If there is still an increasing (or decreasing) trend in the data that isn’t helpful to your side of the story, be sure to talk about the rate of the increase or decrease.  If this fails, as the post notes, “[k]eep on differentiating until you find a curve that matches your needs.”  If that fails, transform the data until is resembles something that’s helpful.

Talk about the different phases – focus on the changes in the data trends – any data set will have it’s moments when it will support your side of the story, even if the weight of evidence is against you.  Make sure that noone looks closely at the magnitude of the different data trends.

Focus on outliers – there’s always a case that is not readily explainable based on the preponderance of the data, especially if it’s a noisy data set.  This is more easily done if you ignore error bars or other measures of data uncertainty.

Sow confusion – combine any or all of the above to increase doubts about the data set.

I found this to be such a resonating statement:

Evidence is your friend. More evidence means more cutoffs to choose from, more trends to analyze, more phases to count, more outliers to discover, and more confusion to sow. Be careful to disguise the fact that you and not the data are the source of the confusion.

We’ll talk another time about how to criticize the methods use to collect environmental data, as a technique for sowing doubt.

Happy New Year.

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No Surprises Here

September 13th, 2009

Well, maybe a few.  Such as the quote from the West Virginia woman. . .

How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?

. . . after having to treat her kid for skin lesions because he’s bathed in water contaminated with nickel, or get crowns on the teeth of another kid of hers after metals-contaminated drinking water has eroded the enamel off the kid’s teeth.

How about, “because we care more about digital cable and Internet than clean water”.  How about, “because we’ve learned to not think of clean water as a right that we have to continue to fight for”.  How about “because the political will which was around 40 years ago to give us the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act is has disappeared”.  How about, “because we abrogate this responsibility for our health, leaving it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats”.

The tone of the New York Times article implies that the government should be doing more, such as more stringent enforcement, or beefing up the resources of regulatory agencies.  Helpfully, the article provides a database that allows readers to identify violations of Clean Water Act or Safe Drinking Water Act regulations in their area.  There are similar products available from EPA such as EnviroFacts and the TRI database.  However these all reflect operational and management metrics – how many permit violations have occurred or how many pounds of chemicals are emitted – which don’t really say anything about environmental conditions or the risks encountered by humans or the ecosystem.  These still reflect the “command and control” style of environmental management which some in EPA through the Unfinished Business and Reducing Risk reports were considering to be obsolete as long as 20 years ago.  Not addressed in the New York Times article is the idea that the existing command and control regulatory structure developed in the 1970s and 1980s NPDES, RCRA, Clean Air Act permitting and enforcement – is broken.

There is some recognition that a new framework for environmental protection is needed, which acknowledges that health and ecological risks are related to where a community is located, that multiple and overlapping sources of contaminant releases might affect members in that community, and that the best measure of risk is based on what types and levels of contaminants those individuals are exposed to.  EPA has developed frameworks for community-based risk assessment and cumulative risk assessment, which acknowledge:

In many cases, human health often is directly related to where one lives. Certain communities, groups, or individuals within a community may be more at risk than others from multiple exposures to chemicals based on the location of a town; the individual’s location within a town; activities, such as commuting to work or school or exercising; dietary patterns of residents; or socioeconomic status. Focusing on the community provides a rational starting point for developing, evaluating, and applying cumulative risk tools to determine the risk of chemical mixtures.

Of course, characterizing risks with this framework involves more monitoring, particularly from the locations where the people or affected wildlife are located, possibly including biomonitoring using biomarkers and genomic markers.  The current tools such as EnviroFacts and the TRI, which don’t really tell you anything about what you’re being exposed to aren’t what’s needed for community-based risk assessment.  Also, the existing regulatory and legal framework, which is source- and industry-based, becomes an impediment to this very sensible risk-based approach.  Who “owns” the liability and responsibility for what pollution?  How do you prove that my releases (says the local chemical company) are producing your body burden?  That regulatory framework is also going to become an impediment to implementing sustainable chemical production techniques (“green chemistry”), an initiative that also will revolutionize environmental protection.

Without a new paradigm in environmental protection that’s community-based, or oppressive enforcement of the current command and control regulatory framework, we’ll continue to have problems such as kids getting rashes and having their teeth fall from contaminated drinking water.

Enter data judo (to be continued).

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An Endocrine Disruption Counterpoint

September 8th, 2009

Science-Based Medicine, a physicians’ group blog takes to task a recent documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “The Disappearing Male”, which mixes endocrine disruption science with overheated rhetoric to raise the question of the decline of the human species.

The post represents informed advocacy, and can scarcely be considered a full characterization of potential endocrine disruptor risks.  While I have some minor disagreements with a few of its sources, overall it needs to be acknowledged as a welcome counterpoint in the endocrine disruption debate.

Science-Based Medicine: “The Disappearing Male – a Pinch of Science, a Pound of Speculation”.

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