A poster from the Department of Veterans Affairs offering help and resources to veterans exposed to Agent Orange.
(Photo courtesy of the Department of Veterans Affairs)
The US Department of Veterans
Affairs is offering new help to
Vietnam-era vets. The VA says
it can now assist vets who have
ailments related to Agent Orange
exposure. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
The US Department of Veterans
Affairs is offering new help to
Vietnam-era vets. The VA says
it can now assist vets who have
ailments related to Agent Orange
exposure. Mark Brush has more:
During the Vietnam War, the herbicide known as Agent Orange was sprayed over jungles and forests. It was used to strip the leaves from the trees and expose enemy soldiers.
Some US soldiers who were exposed to the herbicide have long complained about health problems.
Now, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it will help these veterans with disability benefits.
Exposure to Agent Orange has been tied to health problems like parkinson’s disease, cancer, and heart problems.
Allan Oates is with the US Military Veterans with Parkinson’s. He served in Vietnam. And was exposed to Agent Orange. He says his group was thrilled by the VA’s decision.
“It was just an exhilarating feeling to have these people knowing that they were going to get the help that they deserved.”
Oates says many Vietnam era veterans don’t know yet that help is available to them.
The VA estimates that 2.6 million military personnel were potentially exposed to sprayed Agent Orange.
The program is supposed to identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.
(Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:
Transcript
A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:
Organizers hope the program will help prevent the spread of diseases like avian flu, ebola, and swine flu. PREDICT researchers will work in disease ‘hotspots’ overseas.
Program director Stephen Morse is an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. He says the program will identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.
“We don’t even know how may emerging viruses, let alone other infectious organisms there are out there in nature, but the number must be large.”
The PREDICT program will also create better global disease warning systems.
“This is really essential to our survival as well as something very important to understand if we want to be able to control infections in the future.”
Morse hopes the program will help governments stop local outbreaks before they become global pandemics.
The blight hitting tomatoes is actually the same blight responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19 century. (Photo by T. A. Zitter, courtesy of Cornell University)
If you’ve been waiting all season
for that quintessential taste of
summer – a juicy, ripe tomato from
the garden – you might be disappointed.
This year a tomato blight has swept
across the Northeast and is moving
into Midwestern gardens and farms.
Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
If you’ve been waiting all season
for that quintessential taste of
summer – a juicy, ripe tomato from
the garden – you might be disappointed.
This year a tomato blight has swept
across the Northeast and is moving
into Midwestern gardens and farms.
Julie Grant reports:
Walk around this outdoor farm market in Cleveland and just say the words ‘tomato blight’ – nearly anyone in earshot has a story to tell.
Susan Myers says her home garden has given over to what she thinks is late blight.
“But it’s pretty serious. I mean, it’s like wiping out everything. I have lots of tomatoes and all the leaves are dropping. I’ve never, ever had that before.”
It doesn’t look like the farmers here are having trouble with tomato blight. Most tables are piled high with bright reds and yellows.
Skip Conant has a beautiful display of heirloom tomatoes – but he’s not sure how many more weeks he’ll have fruit to offer.
Conant: “We definitely have tomato blight. It’s been a cool, wet spring, so, yeah. There’s a fair amount tomato blight.”
Grant: “What does it look like?”
Conant: “You’ll see a yellowing and curling on the leaves and then the stem will turn brown. The plant will become a very brown. Die from basically the inside out or the bottom up.”
It’s hard to tell yet if these Midwestern growers are starting to see the same blight that decimated the northeast tomatoes.
Bill Fry is a plant pathologist at Cornell University. He’s studied late blight for 35 years. Fry says it looks like irregular shaped black spots, and can appear on the leaves or the fruit. It can destroy an entire crop in just a few days.
This is the same blight responsible for the Irish potato famine in the mid-19 century. Growers have seen late blight since then. But Fry says, not at these epidemic proportions.
“The fact that it’s just everywhere is, I think, is the major difference from previous years.”
This wasn’t the first cool, wet spring on record. So, why has the blight so bad this year?
It’s kind of ironic. Fry and his colleagues have been studying the problem and think it’s probably because so many people are gardening. Millions more than just last year. And lots of those people bought tomato plants at stores like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart.
“Infected plants were sold throughout the northeast in the box stores. They were transplanted to home gardens and from there the pathogen disbursed to other home gardens, to conventional and organic farms.”
Fry says you might not even notice at the supermarket. Commercial tomato growers spray lots of fungicide to keep away the blight. But organic tomatoes are getting harder to find.
But chefs and tomato lovers who’ve waited all season for those locally-grown heirloom – and especially organic – tomatoes aren’t finding what they want in markets in the northeast.
Back at the Cleveland market, chef and restaurant owner Karen Small has been waiting for tomato season – and it finally hit. She depends on this market for her produce and stops at just about every stand.
But as Small hears farmer after farmer describe what they think is late blight – she’s worried about the weeks to come.
“We’re accustomed to having tomatoes well into September, and maybe that’s not going to happen this year.”
Small plans to go home and rip out the tomato plants in her home garden – after hearing late blight described so many times, she’s pretty sure her tomatoes are infected.
One researcher says we need to re-engineer physical activity back into our lives. And part of that includes making communities super walk-able and bike-able. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
We hear a lot about how pollution
and contamination can hurt our health.
But an ongoing study indicates the
biggest threat to our health is a
lot simpler. Kyle Norris reports:
Transcript
We hear a lot about how pollution
and contamination can hurt our health.
But an ongoing study indicates the
biggest threat to our health is a
lot simpler. Kyle Norris reports:
Many of us have engineered physical activity out of our lives. We sit in front of the computer, we sit and drive everywhere. We don’t move much.
That’s what Steven Blair says. Blair is a professor of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. And he says, more than anything else, America’s physical in-activity will cause this century’s biggest public health problems.
“You want to stay out of the nursing home, the best insurance you can take out is regular physical activity program – three ten minute walks five days week. I’m not talking about training for the Ironman triathlon or a marathon.”
He says we need to re-engineer physical activity back into our lives. And part of that includes making communities super walk-able and bike-able.
Nitrates and nitrites are found in a lot of foods - like bacon, hot dogs, and pepperoni - as food preservatives
(Photo by Renee Comet, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
A new study in the Journal of
Alzheimer’s Disease finds a strong
link between some food preservatives
and an increased risk of death from
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
A new study in the Journal of
Alzheimer’s Disease finds a strong
link between some food preservatives
and an increased risk of death from
Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Nitrates and nitrites are found in a lot of foods we eat: bacon, hot dogs, and even cheese and beer.
The chemicals aren’t there naturally – they’re added as preservatives. And they’re also used in fertilizers.
Dr. Suzanne de la Monte is the study’s lead author.
She says they found a strong connection between higher death rates from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes and the increases in our exposures to these chemicals in our food and water since the late 1960s.
“What we’ve identified says this is certainly something I would consider very very important. Are there other things? Probably.”
She says people could be genetically predisposed to these diseases.
But she says long term exposure to nitrates and nitrites could also be playing a role in two ways: whether we get these diseases and how severe they might end up being.
While a salmonella vaccine is in the works, researchers don't think it's suited for countries like the United States (Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control)
Researchers are working on a new vaccine to prevent salmonella poisoning. But, Julie Grant reports, the researchers say it probably won’t help us when we’re faced with salmonella tainted tomatoes or alfalfa sprouts:
Transcript
Researchers are working on a new vaccine to prevent salmonella poisoning. But, Julie Grant reports, the researchers say it probably won’t help us when we’re faced with salmonella tainted tomatoes or alfalfa sprouts:
Salmonella poisoning affects about 20-million people worldwide each year and causes 200,000 deaths. A vaccine might sound like a good idea.
Arthur Thompson has been working on one at the Institute of Food Research in England. His group has found that salmonella relies on glucose for its survival. So they’re designing a vaccine to use that against the bacteria.
But Thompson thinks a salmonella vaccine should not be used to solve a problem that industrialized nations can already prevent.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate really, for something like this. I mean, I think in this case, it’s more a case of preventing the contamination in the first place, really.”
Thompson says the vaccine is better suited for people in developing nations where salmonella causes still causes typhoid fever.
Example of cyanobacteria blooms on Bow Lake in Bow, New Hampshire (Photo courtesy New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services)
There’s a kind of blue and green scum that can bloom in lakes and ponds across the nation. This scum is called cyanobacteria. For years, scientists have known that this stuff can produce dangerous toxins. Amy Quinton reports now researchers are studying whether there’s a link between cyanobacteria and Lou Gehrig’s disease:
Transcript
There’s a kind of blue and green scum that can bloom in lakes and ponds across the nation. This scum is called cyanobacteria. For years, scientists have known that this stuff can produce dangerous toxins. Amy Quinton reports now researchers are studying whether there’s a link between cyanobacteria and Lou Gehrig’s disease:
Jody Conner reaches into his refrigerator in his lab.
“This is the cyanobacteria that we’ve collected. This one comes from Harvey Lake. See how green that sample is?”
He’s the Director of New Hampshire’s Limnology Center.
Conner has been collecting samples of cyanobacteria from lakes across New Hampshire.
It looks like green scummy algae on the surface of the water that can be several inches thick.
But it’s actually bacteria.
Conner says cyanobacteria feed on nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen that can come from runoff of lawn fertilizers or sewage.
“They need sunlight, phosphorus, and they seem to like the warmer waters. So, they really grow in mass numbers when they have all three of those.”
Jim Haney is a professor of biological sciences at the University of New Hampshire.
He says, in high enough concentrations, some cyanobacteria blooms can produce more than 70 different kind of liver toxins called microcystins.
“That scum can be toxic enough that it’s been estimated that only about 17 milliliters is enough to kill a small child. 17 milliliters is just a couple of teaspoons.”
Cyanobacteria blooms can also produce neurotoxins.
Haney, and other researchers, have embarked on research to find out if there’s a connection between cyanobacteria and patient’s with Lou Gherig’s disease – also known as ALS.
The research began when Doctor Elijah Stommel began mapping hundreds of ALS patients across New Hampshire.
Stommel is a neurologist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
He noticed the incidence of ALS was 2.5 times greater than the national rate around lakes known to have had significant cyanobacteria blooms.
Stommel says he found a particularly high cluster of patients on one lake in the western part of the state.
“We were able to establish that there appeared to be about a 25 fold increase in what one would expect to see for the ALS incidence.”
But he’s not sure if cyanobacteria are the culprit.
A few scientific studies have shown a particular type of neurotoxin found in cyanobacteria is also found in patients with ALS.
The neurotoxin is known as BMAA.
But it’s not known whether BMAA can trigger ALS.
Jim Haney says more research is needed.
“We know that, in the laboratory, a wide range of different types of cyanobacteria are able to produce BMAA. So, one of our goals this summer is to determine whether there are BMAA molecules in our lakes.”
So far, researchers haven’t found BMAA, and there are still a lot of unknowns about how people could be exposed.
Do you have to drink it or can you breathe it in the air?
How long do you need to be exposed to it before it causes damage?
Again, Doctor Elijah Stommel.
“If there is a link between cyanobacteria blooms and the toxins they make, and a neurodegenerative disease like ALS, then I think we should pursue that with as much vigor as we can. And I think the neurology literature would suggest there is an environmental trigger for ALS.”
But, scientists have not yet found that link.
If they do, Stommel says that link might help find ways to prevent the dangerous toxins, or block their effects.
There are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines. (Photo by Bill Branson, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:
Transcript
Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:
Heather Waltz has a five month old daughter. Most Americans her age have already started a series of vaccinations – to prevent everything from Hepatitis B, to Diphtheria, to Polio.
But Waltz’s little girl isn’t going to get those shots. Her mom worries they could cause things like autism, juvenile diabetes and even cancer.
“I think the jury’s still out, as far as what the research says. But there is enough anecdotal sort of stuff to make me aware and decide that, really, right at this point, vaccinating wasn’t what I wanted to do.”
Waltz is among a small, but growing number of parents who are becoming skeptical of vaccines.
Lance Rodewald is director of immunization services at the Centers for Disease Control.
He says more than 90% of American children are vaccinated. But there are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines.
“And that’s getting to a rate of lack of protection of children that really can be a fertile ground for the spreading of diseases like measles. And we actually saw that last year.”
In one case last year, Rodewald says a child who wasn’t vaccinated caught the measles in Switzerland and brought it back to Arizona.
“The parents didn’t realize that the child had measles – brought him to the pediatricians office where there were babies that were too young to be vaccinated that got measles. And then that particular outbreak went through four generations of spread, from child to child to child to child before it was able to be contained.”
Measles can cause more than just a nasty rash. In rare cases, it can lead to death. Measles still causes 200,000 deaths around the world. But it’s been almost eradicated in the U.S. because of vaccines.
Rodewald says many parents are concerned about vaccines today because of a ten-year old scientific article that linked the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Rodewald says the science in that article proved to be wrong.
“The authors withdrew their names from the article. But this particular study set off a whole series of concerns about vaccines and autism that, to this day, is still talked about.”
Rodewald says many studies have been done and found no association, no cause and effect, between vaccines and autism.
It’s tough for parents to wade through all the information that’s out there these days. And there are so many vaccines to try to understand. Back in the mid-1990s, children were given 6 vaccines. Today, they’re supposed to get more than twice that many.
Mother Heather Waltz tries to keep up with it all and says she still plans to avoid vaccines.
Waltz: “For every bit of research and every article I find sort of helping me support my point, there’s a million other bits of research and articles saying that I’m a bad parent, or saying that I’m somehow damaging the health of the entire United States by not vaccinating my child. Just this idea that she could be a measles monster and just running around and infecting her classmates with measles or something like that, and that would be a terrible thing.”
Grant: “What do you think when you see that?”
Waltz: “It doesn’t make logical sense to me. Because to me, if you have 30 kids in a classroom, and my one isn’t vaccinated, wouldn’t my child be the one at risk? Not the public’s.”
But even if Waltz’s daughter doesn’t get vaccinated, she’ll probably be safe from these diseases. With so many other kids getting inoculations, most of the U.S. is not fertile ground for them to regain traction.
The statement sites urban sprawl as one of the main causes of childhood obesity because often kids can’t walk to parks or schools (Photo courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
Turns out there’s more to childhood
obesity that junk food and bad genes.
A national group of doctors places
some of the blame on urban design.
Jennifer Guerra has more:
Transcript
Turns out there’s more to childhood
obesity that junk food and bad genes.
A national group of doctors places
some of the blame on urban design.
Jennifer Guerra has more:
The American Academy of Pediatrics puts out so-called ‘policy statements’ all the time. Usually they’re for other doctors to read.
But this time, the doctors group is taking aim at lawmakers.
The group issued a statement in Pediatrics Magazine that basically says urban sprawl is one of the main causes of childhood obesity because often kids can’t walk to parks or schools.
June Tester is the lead author. She says the statement was a little controversial within the group.
“A lot of time, physicians are too busy or feel uncomfortable about being in the role of an advocate. But it’s a shame, because when physicians are actually motivated enough to speak to legislators, it can actually make a big difference.”
Tester says the response from the urban planning community has been really positive. Now she hopes lawmakers keep the research in mind when it comes time to vote for legislation that will affect a community’s design.
Airborne toxins could be causing health problems for residents near this coal ash spill (seen in the background) in Tennessee. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
A broken dam caused this cement-like sludge to spill into the Emory River in East Tennessee. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
The coal ash sludge could dry out, putting toxic dust into the air. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
The Tennessee Valley Authority has dropped straw and grass seed from helicopters and coated the ash in an acrylic mixture, attempting to keep it from drying out. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
Both The United Mountain Defense (an environmental group) and the Tennessee Valley Authority have started testing for airborne toxins. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)
Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:
Transcript
Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:
In December, the massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in East Tennessee made people aware of a hazard they’d never really considered before. And no one knows how much of a problem it’s going to be.
“We’re looking across the Emory River.”
Matt Landon is a volunteer for the environmental group United Mountain Defense. These days, he spends a lot of time near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s ash spill site. His double respirator mask, his personal video camera and his vocal criticism of the T.V.A. have all become fixtures here. It was on one of his recent rounds near the Emory River that he saw something that scared him.
“I drove around the bend here on Emory River Road and I witnessed a massive dust storm coming off the entire coal ash disaster site.”
Landon says the dust cloud was about 70-to-80 feet high and about a half mile wide. Coal ash can contain several toxic heavy metals — like arsenic, lead, and mercury. For Landon, the site of this swirling cloud was a sobering and frightening reminder that it wouldn’t take much for the toxic materials contained in the wet cement-like sludge to dry out and become airborne.
When Landon walks up to Diana Anderson’s house on the Emory River, her shih-tzus go nuts. And no wonder. Here’s this tall, lanky guy in a double-respirator mask headed their way.
Anderson has lived here for forty years now, just downwind from the plant. And she never worried about it. But since the spill, she’s begun to notice changes in her health.
“My sinuses are irritated, I have a raspy throat, and I do a lot of coughing and my head hurts and I feel very, very, very fatigued.”
Anderson has volunteered to let Matt Landon test the air near her home. So, the two head to her kitchen sink, where they wash and prepare Pyrex dishes.
They’ll set the dishes out on Anderson’s back porch to collect dust. After a while, Landon will send the dust samples off to a lab to find out what’s in the air.
The T.V.A. is also testing the air, with help from the state of Tennessee and the E.P.A. T.V.A. Spokesman Gil Francis says they’ve already collected more than 10-thousand air samples.
“We’re taking samples 24/7, the samples are coming back that the air quality is meeting the National Air Ambient Standards and we’re going to continue to work hard to make sure that’s what the case is going forward.”
That might be easier said than done. Francis says the T.V.A. has done a lot to keep the ash from drying out and blowing around. They’ve dropped straw and grass seed from helicopters and coated the ash in an acrylic mixture. But Steven Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says nobody really knows what it’s going to take to clean this mess up. Or how the people who live downwind will be affected.
“There are still a lot of unknowns about this. We’ve never had an ash spill this size and I think people ought to err on the side of caution.”
If there’s one bit of consolation for the people living near the Kingston coal ash spill, it’s this: the National Weather Service says that during the summer months this region is among the least windy and most humid in the country.
For the Environment Report, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
A poster from the Department of Veterans Affairs offering help and resources to veterans exposed to Agent Orange. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Veterans Affairs)
