A new study finds that exposure to even very low lead levels can cause
brain damage in children. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
A new study finds that exposure to even very low lead levels can cause
brain damage in children. Rebecca Williams reports:
Children can be exposed to lead through lead-based paint in homes, or
lead in imported toys or other products.
The researchers looked at children with lead levels in their blood that
were below the level the federal government considers to be dangerous.
They studied the children over a six year period. And found that
children exposed to lead at very low levels had reduced IQ scores by 5
points.
Richard Canfield is a senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives:
“The evidence at this point is quite strong that meaningful effects on
children’s cognitive performance are due to small amounts of lead and
in fact, amounts below what the current regulations allow.”
Canfield says no one knows at this point if there is any safe level of
lead exposure.
A new report warns growing more corn for ethanol production carries some risks
for clean water. Chuck Quirmbach has details:
Transcript
A new report warns growing more corn for ethanol production carries some risks
for clean water. Chuck Quirmbach has details:
A lot more corn is going toward making ethanol, but a study by the National Research
Council says in areas with limited water supplies, adding acres of corn, or
launching water-using ethanol production plants is a major concern. The report also says increased use of fertilizers and pesticides on corn fields
could trigger more water pollution.
Study committee chairman Jerald Schnoor urges more research to help
extract energy from lower-impact perennial crops such as grasses:
“There needs to be a technology breakthrough so that enzymes and organisms
can break down the cellulose, the hemi-cellulose and lignin from plants like
switchgrass, woody biomass plants like poplar and willow.”
Schnoor says more research dollars could come from reducing federal subsidies
for corn-based ethanol.
Some researchers say global warming will impact fish habitat in the
Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Some researchers say global warming will impact fish habitat in the
Great Lakes. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Some scientists have projected that more global warming will mean less
rain and snow falling into the Great Lakes and the continuation
of low water levels.
Researcher Brian Shuter is with the Ontario Ministry of Natural
Resources. He says if the projection comes true, there will be
more stress on the millions of Great Lakes fish:
“I mean the space for fish to live in is just gonna shrink and the less
space there is, the less fish there will be.”
Shuter also anticipates higher summertime water temperatures and less
ice cover in the lakes. That’s a change that could lead to more warm
water fish like bass and fewer of the cold water fish like salmon
and trout that people like to eat.
Shuter says the change could also promote the growth of invasive
species that favor warmer water temperatures. So, he encourages tighter
controls on invasives and more water conservation programs.
A new review paper in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases finds that antibacterial soap is no better than plain soap at keeping you from getting sick. Some national studies have found that about 70% of liquid soaps on store shelves contain antibacterial ingredients.
(Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Antibacterial soaps are marketed as an extra
defense against that awful bug going around the
office or your kid’s school. But as Rebecca Williams
reports, new research finds antibacterial soap is not
any better than plain soap at keeping us from getting
sick. And some scientists and doctors worry there might
be risks to widespread use of antibacterial products:
Transcript
Antibacterial soaps are marketed as an extra
defense against that awful bug going around the
office or your kid’s school. But as Rebecca Williams
reports, new research finds antibacterial soap is not
any better than plain soap at keeping us from getting
sick. And some scientists and doctors worry there might
be risks to widespread use of antibacterial products:
Child: “Make the frosting for the carrot cake?”
“You want to make the frosting for the carrot cake? Okay, Jasmine,
bring up your chair so you can wash your hands.”
(Sound of Jasmine pulling a chair over & washing up)
Margo Lowenstein says she’s just a little extra careful about germs.
She never borrows somebody else’s ink pen during flu season. She opens
public bathroom doors with a paper towel on her way out. But her
friends call her a germ-phobe.
“You know, you go to a birthday party and some kid blows out a cake, and
you just see the spit flying on the top of the cake, that just kinda
grosses me out. So I usually take the cake but I won’t eat that top
layer of frosting. (laughs)”
Lowenstein is a soap marketer’s dream customer. Market researchers say
Americans have been getting more worried about germs. And as a result
we’ve been buying more soap and hand sanitizer and antibacterial
products.
Antibacterial soaps have been around since the late 1940s. But the
market research firm Euromonitor International says in recent years,
germ-phobia has given manufacturers a reason to ramp up the
antibacterial products in their lines.
There are some studies that estimate that about 70% of liquid soaps on
store shelves have antibacterial ingredients in them. Ingredients such
as a chemical called triclosan.
Allison Aiello teaches epidemiology at the University of Michigan
School of Public Health. Aiello is lead author of a paper in the
journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. She examined more than two dozen
studies on antibacterial soaps containing triclosan. She says
triclosan kills bacteria by going after the bacterium’s cell wall:
“The cell wall cannot be kept intact anymore; it’s not able to
survive.”
But Aiello says there’s a growing body of evidence that even though
antibacterial soap kills bacteria, it’s no better than regular soap
at preventing illness. Regular soap doesn’t kill bacteria, but Aiello
says it works just as well at getting that harmful bacteria off your
hands.
“Regular soap, is basically, it has a surfactant in it and what it does is it allows
bacteria to be dislodged from hands and then the motion that you’re using
under water helps dislodge it and make it go down the drain,
basically.”
Aiello says it’s important to note that the soap studies were done with
basically healthy people. She says more research needs to be done to
find out if antibacterial soaps could be more effective for elderly
people or people with compromised immune systems.
But Aiello says generally, for healthy people, antibacterial soaps are
no better than plain soaps at keeping you healthy.
And she says there could be risks to antibacterial products. She says
there’s evidence from lab studies that antibacterial soaps might be
adding to the emergence of super-bugs: bacteria that are resistant to
antibiotics.
“In the laboratory setting, it is clear that there are mechanisms that
can lead to antibiotic resistance when bacteria are exposed to
triclosan.”
Aiello says they haven’t seen this play out for antibacterial soaps in
the real world yet. But she says researchers need to keep an eye on it
because antibiotic resistance might take some time to develop.
The soap industry dismisses the idea that antibacterial soaps might
have something to do with antibiotic resistance.
Brian Sansoni is with the Soap and Detergent Association.
“The last thing we want to see is people discouraged from using
beneficial products. Antibacterial soaps have proven benefits, they’re
used safely and effectively by millions of people every day. Consumers
should continue to use these products with confidence.”
The Food and Drug Administration has the final word on antibacterial
soaps. But they’re still trying to figure out what to say about them.
The FDA has been trying to come up with rules for the products for more
than 30 years. Right now there are no formal rules about the levels of
antibacterial chemicals in soaps. And there aren’t any rules about how
the products can be marketed or labeled.
There’s one thing both the soap industry and doctors agree on –
Americans don’t lather up often enough with any kind of soap. A new
study found one out of every three men walk out of the bathroom without
washing their hands. Women did better than the guys, but still, about
one of every ten women didn’t wash their hands either.
Experts say the best way to avoid getting sick is to wash your hands with soap and water for 20 seconds. That’s as long as it takes to sing the happy birthday song twice.
Triclosan is an active ingredient in many products claiming antibacterial properties. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
A wastewater treatment plant which is equipped to produce sludge (or biosolids) ready for agricultural use. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Sludge will be sent through this press for dewatering and to get it ready for the farmer. This wastewater treatment plant provides Class B biosolids, or sludge for the farmers. Class A biosolids need to go through more complex treatment and screening. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
After sewage is cleaned at a wastewater treatment plant, sludge is left behind. This
sludge is often used on farms as fertilizer. But the wastewater treatment doesn’t get
rid of all the drugs and chemicals we flush down the drain. Kinna Ohman reports
researchers are finding some of these chemicals are affecting wildlife and could be
getting into our food:
Transcript
After sewage is cleaned at a wastewater treatment plant, sludge is left behind. This
sludge is often used on farms as fertilizer. But the wastewater treatment doesn’t get
rid of all the drugs and chemicals we flush down the drain. Kinna Ohman reports
researchers are finding some of these chemicals are affecting wildlife and could be
getting into our food:
Take a tour of any wastewater treatment plant and you’ll soon understand the main
objective: to separate the liquids from the solids. Until the mid 90s, most of these solids,
or sludge, used to go into landfills or were dumped in the ocean. But in 1994 the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency started a program to promote the use of sludge on farm
fields as fertilizer. The EPA thought this was the perfect solution… turning waste into a
useful product.
But scientists have found something which could turn the EPA program on its head.
Rolf Halden is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Water
and Health. He says sludge contains most of the chemicals we use:
“If you look at municipal sludge, it really is a matrix that reflects the chemical footprint
of our society.”
Halden’s focused on one chemical he’s found in sludge called Triclosan – and
there’s a lot of it out there. It’s in antibacterial soaps, and can even be in our toothpastes,
deodorants, and shampoos. Until recently, most if it was thought to break down. Now,
Halden says they found something different:
“In the work that we have done at Johns Hopkins, we have demonstrated for example that
Triclosan when it enters a wastewater treatment plant is not effectively being degraded
and half of the mass is left over.”
Halden and his colleagues found this leftover mass in sludge. And since half the sludge
produced each year in the US goes to fertilize farm fields, Halden says we might want to
think about our food supply:
“We really create a pipeline of contaminants that are first discharged into the water and
then accumulated in sludge and then applied in agriculture which opens a pathway for the
contamination of the food supply and the further distribution of these chemicals in the
environment.”
At this point, scientists are still studying levels of this chemical. They haven’t even
begun to understand Triclosan’s effects in agriculture. But there’s something they do
know about it.
Researchers found Triclosan can mimic a thyroid hormone in the North American
bullfrog and disrupt its growth. When its tadpoles were exposed to low levels of
this chemical for a short amount of time, their growth into a juvenile frog was impaired.
But this doesn’t sound like that big of a deal… the frog doesn’t die, it just doesn’t grow
properly, right? Keep in mind that this study tracked exposure to Triclosan over four
hours. Halden says by spreading wastewater sludge in agriculture, we could be exposing
wildlife to chemicals like Triclosan for their entire lives.
“When these chemicals are transported into the environment with the agricultural
fertilizer, which is the municipal sludge, then they sit there for in the soil, not only for
seconds but for days and weeks and for months and to even years and in some situations
in sediments, in aquatic sediments, they can sit there for decades and this implies that
organisms are, for their lifespan, exposed to very high levels of these contaminants.
What the outcome of that is really not fully understood right now and requires more research.”
The U.S. Geological Survey has also been looking for chemicals in sludge – or biosolids –
and they’ve found steroids, antihistamines, and antidepressants. Ed Furlong, a research chemist
with the USGS in Denver, Colorado, says they are now studying how these chemicals react in agricultural
fields:
“We’ve identified that many of the compounds are consistently present in biosolids from
across the country. We’re now trying to understand what happens after those biosolids
are applied to the soil.”
The USGS is not the only agency looking at this issue. The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting its own survey of chemicals like Triclosan in sludge. They say the results of the survey won’t be released until next
summer. Then comes the complicated process of deciding what to do with the survey
results. A decision about whether to stop using sludge with hormone disrupting
chemicals to fertilize farm fields could be years away.
The U.S. is looking for ways to depend less on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. A popular method is so-called bio-fuels. Those are fuels, such as
ethanol or bio-diesel, made from plants. Cleaner burning bio-diesel has been billed
as an environmentally-friendly replacement for our 60 billion gallon a year thirst for
diesel oil. But there aren’t enough crops or land to produce enough bio-diesel to
replace fossil fuel-based diesel. Amy Quinton reports new research is looking at
another way to make bio-diesel: using algae:
Transcript
The U.S. is looking for ways to depend less on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. A popular method is so-called bio-fuels. Those are fuels, such as
ethanol or bio-diesel, made from plants. Cleaner burning bio-diesel has been billed
as an environmentally-friendly replacement for our 60 billion gallon a year thirst for
diesel oil. But there aren’t enough crops or land to produce enough bio-diesel to
replace fossil fuel-based diesel. Amy Quinton reports new research is looking at
another way to make bio-diesel: using algae:
Bio-diesel is made primarily from plant oils: soybean, canola, rapeseed. Ihab Farag
is a chemical engineering professor at the University of New Hampshire. He climbs
up scaffolding to demonstrate a processor that turns waste oil from the University’s
cafeteria into bio-diesel. Farag says this is more environmentally-friendly than diesel:
“It’s coming from vegetable oil, so therefore it’s cleaner… it doesn’t have the sulfur in it so you
don’t get acid rain issue that you get from diesel, it doesn’t do particulates which are suspect[ed] to be cancer-
causing.”
Almost any diesel engine built in the last 15 years can use bio-diesel, but Farag says
there’s a major drawback: it takes an acre of most crops to produce only 100 gallons
of bio-diesel per year:
“I think it has been estimated that if we are using just something like soybean[s] and want to
produce bio-diesel for the whole country, we need almost an area of land that’s about
two and a half to three times the area of Texas.”
That would be an environmental nightmare because bio-fuels require a lot of fossil
fuels to plant, harvest and process them. They only produce a bit more energy than
the energy needed to make them. It also would put the nation’s fuel needs in conflict
with its food needs. That could drive the price of both sky-high.
So Farag and Master Chemical Engineering student Justin Ferrentino are looking at
another plant. One that’s capable of producing much more oil : algae.
Inside the University’s bio-diesel lab, Ferrentino holds up a glass jar filled with a sea-
green powder:
“This is freeze-dried cells that we’ve grown up in our photo-bioreactor.”
He’s testing different ways of extracting oil from these single-celled algae plants to
produce the most bio-diesel:
“People have projected with micro-algae you can grow somewhere between five and 15,000
gallons per acre per year, so it’s a big difference.”
Compared to 100 gallons per acre of soybeans, it’s a very big difference. Ferrentino
has built a contraption of two small fiberglass tanks, surrounded by florescent lights
and reflectors. It’s called a photo-bioreactor. With the right amount of light, the algae
here grows rapidly:
“When I fill these with growth medium and then add the cells to them and they just
multiply, they divide… they double every ten to 15 hours, when they’re growing
exponentially.”
The more cells, the more oil, and the more bio-diesel. Ferrentino’s photo-bioreactor
is small, producing only a tenth of a gram of bio-diesel. But build one on a larger
scale where there’s lots of sunlight, like the desert Southwest, and it could potentially
produce thousands of gallons on just an acre of land.
And Farag says because carbon is needed to fertilize algae growth, the potential
exists to remove greenhouse gases while simultaneously producing bio-diesel:
“If we can connect it with a wastewater treatment plant, where they have a lot of
waste coming in with lots of carbon in it then you can consume the carbon to grow
the algae and at the same time clean up the wastewater.”
But skeptics say one of the biggest challenges is making algae production
economical. Commercial production would initially yield fuel that could cost between
20 and 50 dollars a gallon. Ferrentino recognizes the drawbacks, but says their
research is worth pursuing:
“I think that our energy needs are not necessarily going to be solved with a magic
bullet, but I think this is certainly one part of it, being that you don’t need arable land
you have the added benefit of maybe being able to use the carbon from flue gases
from power plants, maybe being able to treat wastewater. So, it has some significant
added benefits so it could be one piece of the energy picture.”
But growing algae in the desert or anywhere else doesn’t have the kind of political
appeal that subsidizing farmers to grow soybeans for soy-diesel does. So finding
funding for a commercial-sized algae bio-reactor will face significant obstacles.
New research is helping identify chemicals in the environment that
might increase the risk of getting breast cancer. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
New research is helping identify chemicals in the environment that
might increase the risk of getting breast cancer. Mark Brush has more:
Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for US women in their late
30s to their early 50s. A new study points to 216 chemicals that might
be increasing the risks of getting the disease.
The researchers compiled data from hundreds of animal studies that have
linked environmental pollutants to increases in breast tumors. The
research is published in the journal Cancer.
Julia Brody is with the Silent Spring Institute. She’s the principal
investigator of the new study:
“There really hasn’t been adequate attention to possible environmental
factors in breast cancer. This is a relatively new field of study, so
it’s an area where there’s an enormous knowledge gap.”
Breast cancer rates have been dropping in last several years. And
Brody thinks the rates could drop even more as potential environmental
risks are identified.
Brownish-orange bumps on the backs of these bees are Varroa jacobsoni mites, a possible cause of CCD. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Honeybees devouring a new, nutrient-rich food. Without the bees, about a third of the food we eat would not be pollinated. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Millions of honeybees across the country are dying
mysteriously. Entire hives or colonies of bees are
collapsing. Scientists say it’s some new threat. They’re scrambling to find answers.
As Bob Allen reports, bees are crucial in pollinating billions of dollars worth
of crops every spring:
Transcript
Millions of honeybees across the country are dying
mysteriously. Entire hives or colonies of bees are
collapsing. Scientists say it’s some new threat. They’re scrambling to find answers.
As Bob Allen reports, bees are crucial in pollinating billions of dollars worth
of crops every spring:
That fresh crisp apple you bite into for lunch comes from
a bee pollinating an apple blossom, but honeybees in the
U.S. are under tremendous stress. A new threat is
devastating them. It can wipe out entire colonies.
There’s plenty of honey still left in the hives to feed
the bees, but the bees have vanished. Scientists are
baffled. They’re calling it “Colony Collapse Disorder.”
Dennis van Englesdorp is bee inspector for the state of
Pennsylvania. He says the disorder first showed up in his
state last fall. But it’s now threatening the entire
beekeeping industry:
“We could not sustain the level of loss we’re seeing this
year several years in a row. And there are crops that are
90 to 100% reliant on honeybees for pollination. You need
bees for apples. And if you don’t have bees you don’t have
apples.”
A research team at Penn State University has given
themselves until fall to come up with some answers.
On a hilly farm in northern Michigan, Julius Kolarik raises
apples, cherries and honeybees. It’s a sunny day with the
temperature nudging near 50 degrees:
“So, no, it’s a beautiful day for bees. Makes you feel
good when you see bees flying. Makes me feel good
(laughs).”
This is the first time Kolarik has checked his bee yard
since fall. He uses his hive tool to pry the top off each
three-foot high colony to see how the bees are doing:
“We can see that they’re alive and that’s the main thing.”
It used to be considered an embarrassment if a beekeeper lost more
than 10% or so of his bees annually, but things have
gotten a lot tougher in recent years.
Parasitic mites have infested honeybees just about
everywhere. They’ve weakened the bees and left them
vulnerable to diseases and that’s meant annual losses
double what they used to be.
Now on top of that, there’s this new disorder. But Julius
Kolarik is not so sure how new it is. He’s been
raising honeybees since he was a kid:
“We’ve seen some of the same symptoms, so uh, through the
years. Even before we finally said that we have mites, uh.
We were getting unexplained losses. But now it’s come back
again. ‘Cause other years guys have lost whole yards but
left one or two hives.”
Bee researchers say previous outbreaks of colony collapse
were isolated incidents. This time it’s spread across the
country.
Tom McCormick’s small beekeeping operation supplies honey
to local markets in western Pennsylvania. That is, it did
until two years ago. That’s when he says collapsing
disorder killed half his colonies, so he bought more bees
to replace them. They did OK last year, but this spring
he’s looking at an 80% loss:
“To me it doesn’t make sense to go buy more bees and throw
them right back into the same situation without any idea
what the cause is.”
McCormick says two of his beekeeping friends have been
totally wiped out. And they’ve been seeing more than one
thing going on in their hives:
“One, we see hives full of honey and no bees. Totally
gone. We see other situations where we have a nice large
cluster of bees with honey all surrounding them and the
bees dead.”
When he reported this two years ago, he says, state
officials ignored him. Pennsylvania state beekeeper Dennis van Englesdorp admits
he thought McCormick had a serious mite problem at first.
But now researchers at Penn
State are checking other possible
environmental stresses that could be killing honeybees.
van Englesdorp says pinpointing the cause can be just
as difficult with bees as it is with humans:
“You can get a heart attack if you don’t eat well, if you
drink too much, if you smoke, you’re genetically disposed
to a heart attack. It could be one of those factors. It
could be a lot of those factors combining together.”
For this year, he says, the disorder means the number of honeybee colonies will be lower,
but he expects there to be enough to meet pollination
demands.
Scientists warn that we’re in the middle of a mass extinction. Frogs,
toads and other amphibians are dying off at an alarming rate. Rebecca
Williams reports a group of scientists wants to build an ark to stop
the extinctions:
Transcript
Scientists warn that we’re in the middle of a mass extinction. Frogs,
toads and other amphibians are dying off at an alarming rate. Rebecca
Williams reports a group of scientists wants to build an ark to stop
the extinctions:
In the last few decades, hundreds of amphibian species have gone
extinct. And several thousand more are on the verge of extinction.
One major threat is a killer fungus that’s wiping them out. Other
threats are habitat destruction and pollution.
A group called Amphibian Ark has announced a 40 million dollar plan.
They want to build special facilities at zoos and aquariums around the
world to take in endangered amphibians and keep them alive.
Kevin Zippel is the group’s amphibian program officer:
“The amphibian extinction crisis is probably the greatest species
conservation challenge in the history of humanity in terms of the
number of species in one group that’s being impacted.”
Zippel says putting frogs and toads into zoos is not a solution. But
he says he hopes it will buy time for more research… and eventually
get the animals re-established in the wild.
After the release of a new report, the Environmental
Protection Agency is one step closer to developing new standards
for dioxin exposure. But as the GLRC’s Mark Brush reports,
some scientists say the standards have been delayed by the Bush Administration:
Transcript
After the release of a new report, the Environmental Protection Agency is one step closer
to developing new standards for dioxin exposure. But as the GLRC’s Mark Brush
reports, some scientists say the standards have been delayed by the Bush Administration:
The EPA decided to reassess the standards for dioxin exposure 15 years ago. That was
after scientists found that dioxin can alter human cells. The EPA spent nine more years
researching the chemical. And in 2000, the EPA released a draft of the new standards,
but the Bush Administration wanted more research.
Boston University’s Richard Clapp reviewed the EPA’s draft report in 2000:
“And it was, I thought, very complete and very accurate up to that point. And it was at
that point that we got a new Administration and the decision was made that this needs to
be reviewed yet again by the National Academy of Sciences.”
The authors of this new NAS report say their findings shouldn’t get in the way of
finalizing the EPA’s new dioxin standards.
