Archive for September, 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).
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”.
This is something that sounds so cool as an exposure monitoring technology that I hope it pans out experimentally and can be deployed.
Lung cancer cells may exude volatile organic compounds different than normal cells, principally as the byproducts of oxidative stress and byproducts of reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced processes. The differences may be detectable in breath samples. A monitoring tool is being investigated as a non-invasive way to identify non-small-cell lung cancer. The objective for this tool would be to increase the odds of starting treatment while the disease is in its early stages and still localized. The analytical method involves an array of gold nanoparticle sensors in combination with pattern recognition methods; this level of description is what has been found in the press coverage, and having written it I realize I know as much now as I did before hearing about this technique, which is zip. I’m reading the paper trying out the methodology with headspace samples of tumor cell lines, published in the journal Small and realizing I have a lot of catching up to do on analytical methods. . . .
The sensor can discriminate the breath of normal individuals from lung cancer patients, overcoming the problem of high humidity in the breath samples (a problem with the prior method using carbon nanotubules) and without requiring preconcentration of the breath samples (which would require more complex laboratory techniques). Hossam Haick, the lead investigator estimates this method could become available as a diagnostic tool in about three to five years.