Styrene is one component in styrofoam containers (Photo by Renee Comet, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
The styrene industry is suing to stop environmental officials from saying styrene could cause cancer and birth defects. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The styrene industry is suing to stop environmental officials from saying styrene could cause cancer and birth defects. Lester Graham reports:
Styrene is used in all kinds of products – containers like coffee cups, egg cartons, in construction, in cars.
The state of California wants to add it to a list of cancer-causing materials. The International Agency for Research on Cancer found styrene is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
Joe Walker is a spokesman for the Styrene Information and Research Center.
“Styrene is not a carginogen. Any listing that would categorize it as such basically would be illegal and would be erroneous and would have the potential of alarming the public unnecessarily about products that are made from styrene.”
If the court does allow California to put styrene on its cancer list, the styrene industry has a year to prove it doesn’t belong on that list.
A mechanic works on the bikes to make them as compact as possible - removing pedals, kickstands, and turning the handlebars
(Photo by Karen Kelly)
A volunteer stacks the bikes into a pile at the back of a huge shipping container
(Photo by Karen Kelly)
Bicycles from the program in Tsumeb, Namibia
(Photo courtesy of Bicycles For Humanity)
So many of us have an old bike collecting
dust in the garage. More often than not,
they end up in the garbage. But, as Karen
Kelly reports, one group has found a unique
way to recycle them:
Transcript
So many of us have an old bike collecting
dust in the garage. More often than not,
they end up in the garbage. But, as Karen
Kelly reports, one group has found a unique
way to recycle them:
(sound of banging)
“That’s a sweet ride!”
A volunteer drops a bike into a pile at the back of a huge shipping container in Ottawa, Canada.
The bikes are stacked one on top of the other.
(sound of tools)
Just outside, a mechanic is stripping the bikes down to make them as compact as possible.
“If it has a kickstand, we have to remove it. We take the pedals off and turn the handlebars.”
In a few hours, this cargo container will be jammed with hundreds of donated bicycles, bike parts, and backpacks.
The gear is collected by a group called Bicycles for Humanity.
They have 20 chapters, most of them in North America.
Each chapter raises a couple of thousand dollars to buy a shipping container.
They pack it full of donated gear, and send it off to a community in Namibia, Africa. The shipping cost – another several thousand dollars – is also raised by the group.
A volunteer group there turns the container itself into a locally-run bike shop that provides jobs and transportation.
Some of the bikes are donated to health care workers who use them to pull patients on a stretcher.
Others are piled high with stacks of food and household items that defy gravity.
Martin Sullivan points to some of the pictures on display.
“These are the bakers who are able to sell their bread. And also wood, you can stack wood. It’s just amazing what they do, how they make use of these bikes that we take for granted. We throw them out, and they can do so much with them.”
(sound of traffic)
In Namibia, cars – and even bicycles – are scarce. Sullivan says these bikes make life easier for people who are used to walking miles to get to school, work, or to find the basic necessities.
Seb Oran is the co-founder of Bicycles for Humanity in Ottawa.
This is the fourth container of bikes that she’s sent to Africa.
Each one supports a local community group.
Sometimes its a hospital, sometimes an orphanage, sometimes a women’s empowerment group.
She remembers one run by former prostitutes.
“Six of them became bicycle mechanics now. And now, they don’t have to sell their bodies to put food on their plate.”
But there are some challenges.
Michael Linke runs the Bicycle Empowerment Network.
He helps the Nambians set up the bicycle shops.
“Because this is the first time a lot of these people have had formal ongoing work, it’s often difficult to get people to understand a long-term ongoing business.”
But with some mentoring, they’ve been able to make it work.
There are now 13 successful projects, with more containers filled with bikes on the way.
The group estimates that these bikes will last another 20 or 30 years in Africa. They might be junk to us, but in Namibia, they’re a precious resource.
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.
With Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner aims to educate Americans about the realities of the food industry (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:
Transcript
A new film documentary that’s hitting theaters now looks at the underbelly of the food industry. We’ve all heard about food recalls because of E.coli bacteria contamination. There was peanut butter, hamburger, spinach – and the list goes on. Lester Graham reports the documentary, Food Inc., looks at why food gets contaminated and reveals a lot more about our industrial approach to producing food:
This documentary is disturbing. It shows some of the things that happen to our food behind the scenes.
“There is this deliberate veil, this curtain, that’s dropped between us and where are food is coming from. The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you’re eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.”
The film, Food Inc., looks at how raising animals and growing crops have been industrialized from the farm to the grocery store.
Food processors have relied more and more on technological and chemical fixes to food contamination problems and storage issues instead of questioning whether the assembly line factory, mass production approach is the best way of handling food.
It looks at how companies such as Monsanto are treating farmers who want to save their seeds to replant next year – hint — involves lawyers and lawsuits.
It looks at how companies fight against labeling that would give consumers more information on packages. They say more information might unnecessarily scare their customers.
And it uses video from hidden cameras to show how animals are treated at big factory slaughterhouses.
Robert Kenner is the film’s producer/director. He thinks most people won’t like what they see.
But, he also says things can change. If people think about it, they actually vote with their forks three times a day.
“On some level, I think it’s going to be lead by moms who don’t want their children to be eating this food that’s making them sick.”
Kenner says these massive food recalls we’ve seen over the last several years are bad enough, but there’s a greater threat to our health.
“Obviously E.coli and things like that are very frightening, but ultimately it’s the everyday stuff that we don’t see – such as the sugar, salt and fat – that are making us fat. And that’s what I think needs to be changed most. That we get food that’s healthy and that we don’t subsidize food that’s making us sick.”
Food Inc. interviews farmers and food processors and some food industry critics, including author Michael Pollan.
He says those foods subsidized by the government are the kinds of ingredients that are causing some of the leading health problems, such as early onset of diabetes and heart disease.
“All those snackfood calories are the ones that come from the commodity crops – from the wheat, from the corn, and from the soybeans. By making those calories really cheap, that’s one of the reasons the biggest predictor of obesity is income level.”
Pollan says it’s wrong when it’s cheaper to buy a cheeseburger than it is to buy broccoli.
The director and producer of Food Inc., Robert Kenner says he knows the film spends a lot of time looking at the dark side.
But he also gives some of the progressive food processors and even Wal Mart credit. He says they’re doing something about meeting the consumer demand for better, safer and more healthy foods.
“There are lots of great options out there and they are growing options.”
Such as farmers markets, grocery stores letting you know if food is grown locally, and a growing selection of organic foods.
Kenner says he hopes his film, Food Inc., not only outlines the problems with how our food is handled, but gets people to start asking questions about the choices they make when it’s time to eat.
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.
Scientists have been using tiny particles of rust to draw arsenic out of water (Source: Roger McLassus at Wikimedia Commons)
You might be surprised to hear that a lot of drinking water has arsenic in it. It’s a problem all over the globe, especially when drinking water comes from deep under the ground. Julie Grant reports that some researchers are using tiny particles – at the nano-scale – and plain old rust, to remove arsenic from the water:
Transcript
You might be surprised to hear that a lot of drinking water has arsenic in it. It’s a problem all over the globe, especially when drinking water comes from deep under the ground. Julie Grant reports that some researchers are using tiny particles – at the nano-scale – and plain old rust, to remove arsenic from the water:
You can’t see, smell, or taste arsenic – but prolonged exposure to it can lead to skin discoloration and even cancer.
Vicki Colvin studies chemistry and nanotechnology at Rice University in Houston.
She says arsenic has a chemical bond with rust – and sticks to it. So they’ve been using tiny particles of rust to draw arsenic out of water in the lab.
Now Colvin says they’re working with a city in Mexico. They’re trying to make what they call nano-rust in the field, so the city can cheaply remove arsenic from its water.
“So, we’ve developed procedures and processes that help people make nano-rust not at a major university with a nanotechnology facilty. But you know literally in a restaurant setting, more maybe in a ceramics factory.”
Colvin says they will be experimenting in Mexico over the next two years.
BPA doesn't line just baby products - it is in many canned foods and drinks (Source: Tomomarusan at Wikimedia Commons)
Food-packaging executives and
lobbyists for the makers of the
chemical bisphenol-A, often
called BPA, met in Washington
DC last week to come up with PR
strategies. Their message is:
BPA is safe. Lester Graham reports
someone took notes at that meeting
and then leaked them to reporters:
Transcript
Food-packaging executives and
lobbyists for the makers of the
chemical bisphenol-A, often
called BPA, met in Washington
DC last week to come up with PR
strategies. Their message is:
BPA is safe. Lester Graham reports
someone took notes at that meeting
and then leaked them to reporters:
Lyndsey Layton got ahold of those notes. She reports for the Washington Post.
“According to these notes, they called it the ‘holy grail’ spokesperson would be a pregnant, young mother who would be willing to speak around the country about the benefits of BPA.”
Ironic in that many studies associate BPA with birth defects.
John Rost is the Chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance.
He says the reporters got bad notes. He says it only came up because environmental activists used pregnant women to testify against BPA.
“We discussed that as an option and dismissed it and actually find it a little ironic that we are being criticized.”
Some retailers have taken toys and baby bottles made with BPA off the shelf in response to a consumer backlash.
It’s likely most consumers don’t yet realize the chemical also lines beverage and food cans.
Styrene is one component in styrofoam containers (Photo by Renee Comet, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)
