Air Pollution Increases Infants’ Risk Of Bronchiolitis

Air Pollution Increases Infants’ Risk Of Bronchiolitis (ScienceDaily.com)

Infants who are exposed to higher levels of air pollution are at increased risk for bronchiolitis, according to a new study.

The study appears in the November 15 issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“There has been very little study of the consequences of early life exposure to air pollution,” said Catherine Karr, M.D. PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the paper’s lead author. “This study is unique in that we were able to look at multiple sources including wood smoke in a region with relatively low concentrations of ambient air pollution overall.”

Much more in the article!

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine – part E. Environmental and Occupational Lung Disease of the current November 15, 2009 issue.

Registration is required to read the full article however, the abstract is available here which includes the conclusions below:

Conclusions: Air pollutants from several sources may increase infant bronchiolitis requiring clinical care. Traffic, local point source emissions, and wood smoke may contribute to this disease.

Under measurements and readings above the conclusions states:

An interquartile increase in lifetime exposure to NO2, NO, SO2, CO, wood-smoke exposure days, and point source emissions score was associated with increased risk of bronchiolitis…

What pollutants do coal plants introduce? At least a few of those listed, plus more: Power Plant Emissions Publications

Mercury in Some High Fructose Corn Syrup?!

Mercury in Some High Fructose Corn Syrup?

The new report comes from researchers including David Wallinga, MD, director of the IATP’s food and health program. They bought 55 products that list high-fructose corn syrup first or second on their list of ingredients, which means high-fructose corn syrup was a leading ingredient in those products.

Wallinga’s team sent samples of those products to a commercial lab, which checked the levels of total mercury in each sample.

“Overall, we found detectable mercury in 17 of 55 samples, or around 31%,” write Wallinga and colleagues.

On the second page,

Erickson didn’t comment specifically on Wallinga’s study. Instead, her statement focuses on a new study published online in Environmental Health, which shows mercury in some samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup tested in 2005.

“This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance,” Erickson states. “Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years.”

Wallinga agrees about the technological shift away from mercury. “If you just look within the confines of the U.S., yes, about 90% of production now is not using mercury,” says Wallinga. “The problem is that we don’t actually know where our companies are buying their high-fructose corn syrup from … it’s a global industry.”

“For me, the take-home message is really that this is a totally avoidable, unnecessary exposure to mercury,” says Wallinga. “We’ve got a safer, more efficient technology for making these chemicals that are part of the ingredients used to manufacture high-fructose corn syrup.”

Unbelievable. And the companies respond on the second page of the article as well. Must read.

Seems to me that it is time that the majority of people begin to learn the old ways of doing things and take control of their own food chain — Canning, preserving, growing our own food and livestock where possible, etc. We keep learning of more and more dangers due to the global impact on the food chain and corporate endangerment of our nation’s health and welfare. Totally unacceptable.