O Say Can You See

In honor of Stars & Stripes Forever Day and Armed Forces Day (both this weekend), we're taking a look at the Smithsonian's preservation project of the Star Spangled Banner. Seeing the staff work on the massive flag was the highlight of my first visit to the National American History Museum. Keeping this national treasure in good shape for future generations takes much more than fancy stitching skills.

Some fun facts:

• Conservation specialists analyzed the flag's pH to determine the best method for cleaning it (they used dry sponges first, then an acetone solvent and blotting paper).
  
• A spectrometer was used to analyze colors - including those of stains on the fabric.
• Microscopic images helped determine where the weakest thread fibers were so that the flag could be properly supported.

If you haven't been to the Smithsonian lately, I'd definitely recommend taking a peek in at this masterpiece for both the science and the history. Our national anthem is based on the rising of this flag over Fort McHenry in 1814 (during the War of 1812).

New Voices tips our hat to the original creators of the flag, lyricist Francis Scott Key, the troops that successfully fought the British that September night, and the scientists and historians working together to preserve American history.

Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation

Image credit: Echoey13

In previous posts, I've shared how research demonstrates a link between endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and negative health effects, such as obesity. Since EDC exposures are a health concern, the government needs to identify chemicals of concern and implement policies to reduce exposures, as was done for lead. Unfortunately, U.S. chemical regulation is not a straightforward process.

Chemical regulation is split between several agencies. Two of the main agencies are the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The FDA oversees chemicals we are exposed to through certain consumer products like pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and food additives, while the EPA regulates exposures that are more environmental, such as air pollution.

Some authorities are further split, as is the case for water, with bottled water being regulated by the FDA and tap water by the EPA. As a result, individual contaminants could end having different maximum permissible amounts in bottled vs. tap water.

This fragmented regulation makes it difficult to protect public health. But there were also a large number of chemicals in commerce that were initially unregulated if they were not covered under other existing laws, such as the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act which regulates pharmaceuticals. In an attempt to close this gap, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1976, which gave EPA the authority over all unregulated chemicals.

A major flaw is that TSCA treats new chemicals differently than chemicals that existed before the act. Existing chemicals were not evaluated and were just presumed safe. At the time TSCA passed, there were already about 62,000 chemicals in commerce. Regulation of new chemicals isn’t much better and has limited requirements. Companies are only required to submit available data and don’t have to test for toxicity. It is estimated that only 15% of new chemicals have complete health and safety data.

TSCA had the potential to unify regulatory authority, by giving the EPA authority over chemicals of unreasonable risk to health or the environment. For example, BPA is approved by the FDA as an indirect food additive, but because of concerns for human health, the EPA is using its authority under TSCA to investigate BPA.

However, the phrase “unreasonable risk” created another major hurdle, because it places the burden of proof on the EPA, and requires a significant level of evidence prior to regulatory action that can take years to develop. As a result, chemicals are only regulated when proven harmful rather than requiring they are proven safe to enter the market.

TSCA was introduced over 30 years ago. Today, there are over 80,000 chemicals approved for use in the products we use, such as household cleaners, shampoo, and makeup. But to date, the EPA has only been able to regulate 5 chemicals and require testing for about 200. I feel the numbers clearly show that TSCA has failed to protect Americans.

Image credit: Abeeeer

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO), the agency that evaluates the effectiveness of government programs and policies, also believes TSCA has not given the EPA the necessary authority to protect human health and the environment. U.S. GAO put the EPA's process for "assessing and controlling toxic chemicals" on its "high-risk" list in 2009. The list includes federal programs, policies, and operations that should be a top priority for reform

Currently, Congress is considering legislation to reform TSCA. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced a bill called the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 in the Senate. Representatives Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) have released a discussion draft of the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010 in the House. Only time will tell if these bills will provide Americans with meaningful reform that will improve public health.

This is Part 7 in the Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

Getting Involved

I was recently planning an event with a group of friends, and invited someone to join our informal planning committee. Her immediate response was: "I'm on so many committees for work already. I'll come, but I don't want to get more involved than that."

I totally respected where she was coming from (having regularly succumbed to the habit of over-committing myself), and let it go. But I had this strange sense of deja vu; why did that type of response seem so familiar?

I later realized it was because I often face a similar situation in my professional life. When trying to engage scientists to become advocates or stronger communicators for science, I'm frequently told how much people want to participate, but then when it comes to actually doing things, there just isn't enough time in the day.

Advocacy and communication for and about science is my actual job, not something I do in addition to my work. When it comes to additions - like showing up to the city council meeting to defend the value of the public library or lower community center fees - I have just as much trouble scheduling it into my day as the next person.

So what is the solution? How can we make it easier to get involved with things we really care about but don't usually have the time to do?

Don't leave me hanging ... join the discussion.

Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change

Exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) are a particular concern for children. Because children are developing rapidly, hormone disruption can have a greater impact; resulting in chronic health problems or making children susceptible to the development of illnesses later in life.

Research has shown that chemicals in a mother's body are able to cross the placenta, and therefore, children are being exposed to environmental chemicals even while they are in the womb. As infants, they are exposed to chemicals at higher levels because consume more food relative to body weight, but also because their immune systems are less developed, and therefore, less able process and remove chemicals from their bodies.

For lead, proper regulation took several decades because we initially had a poor understanding of its health effects. We face the same problem today with EDCs.

The famous adage the "dose makes the poison" describes the assumption toxicologists use when determining safe chemical exposure levels. Toxicology studies currently assume that a greater dose, or exposure level, will produce a greater effect.

To determine safe exposure levels, animals are exposed to varying amounts of a chemical and a dose that does not produce observable effects is identified. Then, a series of uncertainty factors are applied to that dose in order to calculate an acceptable level for human exposure. The uncertainty factors account for different sensitivities between the animals studied and humans but also to account for varying sensitivities between humans.

So, what is wrong with the current approach?

Scientists who study the endocrine system have recognized for a while that hormones have a different relationship between dose and effect. Hormones and hormone mimicking chemicals, like EDCs, can produce opposite effects at different exposure levels. A low level exposure can turn a process on, while a high level exposure could shut the process off.

Since EDCs have a different dose-effect relationship, the current assumptions used in toxicology studies are outdated. High-dose experiments can not be effectively used to predict low-dose results for EDCs, and therefore, safety testing needs to be adapted to make sure that potential low-dose effects are investigated. In order to address our evolving understanding of endocrine disruption, the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program was established by the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a battery of tests to properly identify EDCs, information that will enable us to update the way we conduct toxicology studies.

The scientific understanding of how endocrine disruption can be identified and measured is still in the early stages, and research will be our best chance to close these knowledge gaps and identify chemicals that are a real public health threat.


This is Part 6 in the Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals

Today, obesity is the fastest rising health concern in the U.S. Obesity is a problem that people have tried to use both diet and exercise to combat, yet a growing body of research is suggesting there is another component of this problem, our exposure to environmental chemicals.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are a public health concern because they mimic natural hormones and interfere with our endocrine system. Research shows a potential link between children being exposed to EDCs during development and the increased burden of chronic health problems, such as obesity.

One EDC you may have heard about recently is Bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA has been used for years in the production of reusable water bottles and baby bottles, but now many companies are now offering BPA-free products.

The reason BPA is becoming a public health concern is that research has demonstrated a link between children's exposure to BPA during critical developmental windows - such as in the womb or as infants - and obesity. For example, Nikaido et al. exposed pregnant rats to BPA to determine the effects on fetal development [1]. The results showed that prenatal exposure to BPA at human-relevant doses accelerated weight gain of the female offspring compared to offspring of the mothers not exposed to BPA.

This study is one of many that demonstrate chemical exposures could be a factor, changing our bodies in ways that make us obese.


References
1. Nikaido, Y. et al. Reprod. Toxicol. 2004; 18: 803-811.


This is Part 5 in the Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

Something My Body Needs Anyway?

Image Source: Time Magazine

The impact of environmental chemicals on health is becoming a defining concern of this century. I’m sure you’ve seen the increasing number of articles published by the mainstream media questioning the safety of chemicals in consumer products, like plastics. Research has shown that these chemicals are getting into our bodies and can mimic our hormones.

Hormones are signals that regulate biological processes by communicating messages to cells. Hormones bind to a receptor like a key fits into a specific lock, which tells the cell to carry out a specific action.

One example is human growth hormone. As children, growth hormone is released in our body to tell limbs and organs to grow. But when we become our adult size, our body stops releasing the growth hormone, so the cells are no longer receiving the message to grow. Hormones are regulated by a group of glands called the endocrine system.

Image credit: Principles and Explorations, Teaching Transparencies.

Copyright 1996 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Certain unnatural chemicals entering our bodies can mimic our natural hormones. They are called endocrine disrupting chemicals (or EDC) because of their ability to interfere with our endocrine system.


The problem with EDCs is that they are not made by your body, and therefore, your body is not able to regulate EDCs like it regulates your natural hormones. But at the same time, EDC’s (green) can bind to the receptors (purple) of specific natural hormones (orange), initiating the same cell response. Research suggests that EDCs artificially switching processes on and off and at the wrong time is contributing to the rising burden of illness in America.

I am particularly interested in EDCs because we are just now discovering the sheer number of chemicals that have the ability to act this way, but we don’t yet know which chemicals, or at what exposure levels, are linked to which real public health threats.

The government again needs to decide if regulatory action is necessary, a decision that depends largely on whether the chemicals pose a threat to U.S. health.


This is Part 4 in the Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

How Clean is Your Air?

Yesterday, Sarah wrote about how removing lead from gasoline decreased air pollution and improved health. While lead is no longer a threat, there are still plenty of chemicals in the air. Interested to see how your city and state are doing? Check out this project by the American Lung Association, which details (and grades!) cities and counties based on ozone and particle pollution.

Based in the DC metro area, I knew New Voices probably weren't breathing the cleanest possible air, but it's interesting to compare our air to the city immediately next to ours and see notable differences. How did your city do? And if you live in a failing area (as I do), what are you going to do about it?

How about sending a note to your member of Congress about the value of research:

With continued investment in research and the work at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government agencies, we can continue to find the answers we need to improve the quality of air we breathe.

Thanks to Jennifer Chow for her help constructing this post.

Lead: A Regulatory Success Story

Research!America's former chairman, the Honorable Paul G. Rogers recognized that environmental factors played a major role in health effects and was a consistent advocate for changing environmental policy to improve public health. His work to pass the Clean Air Act is actually part of a larger story about how research played a major role in the 20th century guiding policy to successfully regulate lead.

Today, we know that lead exposure is a problem for children’s health, but this wasn’t always the case. Research evolved the scientific understanding of lead poisoning, which can be broken down into four stages [1].

1. Children assumed not to be affected by lead
2. Cases of acute lead poisoning were identified but were thought to result in either death or recovery
3. Lasting mental deficits only occur when children had clinical symptoms of lead poisoning
4. Children without clinical symptoms can still have mental deficits in language, IQ, or attention

In response to research, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adjusted its definition of a safe blood lead level for children, which prompted regulations to reduce lead exposure.

Image credit: K. Sexton, et al. "Human Biomonitoring of Environmental Chemicals." American Scientist 2004; 92: 38.

There were two major sources of lead exposure for children: leaded gasoline and lead paint.

Lead was a standard additive in gasoline, but in 1965, research demonstrated that the increased lead concentrations in the air were the direct result of human activities, like burning leaded gasoline. This clear link between air quality and health was why Paul Rogers led the fight to pass the Clean Air Act. Passage of the Clean Air Act paved the way for the phase-out of lead in gasoline by 1996.

Lead based paints were commonly used in homes in the early 1900s. Research linking lead exposure to children's health effects prompted a 1978 federal limit on the lead content in paints used in residential buildings.

Image credit: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

Together, these policy actions were extremely successful at reducing lead exposure. Banning leaded gasoline reduced the average air lead concentration by 94%. This ban, in conjunction with the limit on the lead content in paint, reduced the average blood lead level in children more than 7 times below the 1970s level.

This reduction in the United States is estimated to have resulted in an economic gain between $110 and $319 billion dollars for children born in a given year [2]. This economic gain was calculated using the increased worker productivity that will result from the improved cognitive ability of children with lower lead exposures.

Lead regulation is a great example of how research can lead to policy changes that can benefit public health and save money.


References
1. H. Needleman. Annu. Rev. Med. 2004; 55: 209-222.
2. Grosse, S.D. et al. Environ. Health Perspect. 2002; 110: 563-569.


This is Part 3 of 10 in our Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

An Environmental Health Risk

Image credit: Echoey13

How often do you think about the chemicals in products you buy and if they could affect your health? We use a number of products every day from shampoo to cleaning products and we expect that the government regulates these products to make sure they are safe.

Unfortunately, in the past, certain chemicals have been discovered to affect our health only after they reached the market, as was the case for lead paint. Today, this is happening again with a group of compounds called endocrine disrupting chemicals, which mimic our hormones.

WWII increased demand for products, resulting in the development new uses for natural chemicals, which exposed us at higher levels, and the acceleration of the production of chemicals not previously found in nature. But no one thought about potential effects on our health, until Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. Her book raised awareness that chemicals could interact with our bodies.

Image credit: Beverly & Pack

Carson published evidence that the pesticide, DDT, had put the bald eagle on a path towards extinction, and if it was hurting wildlife, it could potentially be harmful to humans as well. DDT was considered a miracle pesticide and was used for everything from combating malaria to protecting cotton. However, Carson's book spurred national action that ultimately led to a ban of DDT.

Silent Spring was the beginning of an environmental movement, which I'll share some results of in more detail tomorrow.


This is Part 2 of 10 in our Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

From Interest to Passion

As a kid, I was always vocal about my concern for the impact of pollution on the environment. Back in March, I wrote a more detailed post about my interests, but here is a recap:

I wrote a letter to President Clinton when I was eleven, on U.S. international environmental policy. In seventh grade, we were required to conduct a science fair project, and clearly my project focused on an environmental problem. I investigated the effects of chemicals in products we use, like antifreeze or detergent, on plant growth. As I expected, my research findings showed that nearly all the plants were less healthy than the unpolluted plants (I've included a photo of one of the posters as proof). Looking back, I now like to think of this project as foreshadowing.

Shortly after, I became interested in the clear connection of environmental pollution and human health. I studied chemistry to gain an understanding of how chemicals interact with our environment and our bodies. While my doctoral research was not directly environmental, I took every liberty I had to learn about current environmental problems. My graduation requirements included designing a research project outside of my field. I used that opportunity to learn about bioremediation, or using nature as a tool to remove contaminants from the environment. Specifically, I was looking to solve the problem of the estrogen from our birth control getting in the water, since research was showing it was causing developmental problems for male fish.

Here at Research!America, my policy project continued the theme and had an environmental focus. I examined the intersection of Chemical Exposures and Public Health, which is becoming a defining concern of the century. Environmental health research is on of the most direct ways the U.S. can use research and prevention to save both lives and treatment costs.

Over the next 9 posts, I will share with you my research results, tell you about the things I believe we need to be concerned about, and finally what actions we can take to make a positive change.


This is Part 1 of 10 in our Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action