Pre-Natal Exposure to Pollution Linked to Cancer

From Bloomberg (by Nicole Ostrow):

Children whose mothers have an increased exposure to air pollution from motor vehicles while pregnant may have a higher chance of developing certain cancers, a study found.

Each increase in exposure to pollution from gasoline vehicles and diesel trucks was associated with a 4 percent higher risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, as well as increased chances of developing rarer cancers of the eye and of cells that form the reproductive system, according to data presented . . . at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington.

Research in adults has shown that carbon monoxide can damage the retina and have an effect on germ cells of the reproductive system, said Julia Heck, the lead study author. Today’s findings are the first to link air pollution with rarer pediatric cancers, she said.

“With childhood cancers, there’s a lot less known about the causes,” Heck, an assistant researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health, said in an April 5 telephone interview. “My results have to be confirmed in other studies. This is the first real study to report on these rare tumors.”

She said it is unknown why exposure to pollution in utero can raise childhood cancer risks.

Read entire article here.

Vote for Peggy Shepard

Upstream Contributor, inspirational community organizer, and environmental justice advocate Peggy Shepard has been nominated for a Lady Godiva award.  Please vote for her here.  If you want to learn more about her remarkable work, view her Upstream interview here.  Below you can find the summary of her nomination.

It is startling to realize how one person’s vision can open our eyes to new vistas; how one person’s leadership can inspire others to strengthen community resilience and acknowledge our collective responsibility to each other. The environment is where we live, work, play, and go to school, and Peggy Shepard helps us understand that the environment is everyone’s challenge because our communities share a common destiny. She inspires us to believe and to organize to achieve access to clean air, clean water, healthy food, a toxic-free environment, and to improve children’s environmental health i.e. asthma and lead poisoning. She is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT For Environmental Justice (WE ACT), based in Northern Manhattan,home to over 630,000 mostly low-income African-Americans and Latinos, which has a 25-year history of combining grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy and environmental health research.

Recently a Washington DC office was opened to voice the concerns of underserved communities in developing policies. A West Harlem resident, she spent 8 years developing a grassroots organization of volunteers into a staffed organizing and advocacy non-profit which raises $1.6 million per year to assist in training over 500 parents to have healthier homes, and has conducted public education campaigns on children’s health that reached over 1 million homes citywide through workshops, radio, and bus ads. By engaging residents like me to develop and implement a common vision around commonly held values, she inspires us to embrace challenge and pursue solutions that might otherwise elude us.

When she moved to Harlem in the ‘80s and 3 senior citizens came to her and asked for her help in organizing the community around environmental exposures, she began what has been a 25-year history of commitment to a set of principles that value community knowledge and engagement in achieving a more sustainable environment, and to building community capacity through organizing, training, and partnerships with academics and scientists.

Her drive and commitment and community organizing skills achieved the retrofit of the North River Sewage Treatment Plant whose emissions were exacerbating asthma attacks in neighborhood children, and a $1.1 million community environmental benefits fund. Her work contributed to the NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) retrofitting its citywide diesel bus fleet to cleaner fuels resulting in cleaner air citywide.

View Peggy’s Upstream interview here.

Exxon Groundwater Case Goes to Jury

From the AP:

Jurors in the longest state trial in New Hampshire’s history will return to the courtroom this week after a nearly two-week hiatus to hear closing arguments in the state’s groundwater contamination case against Exxon Mobil Corp.

Lawyers for the state want jurors to hold Exxon Mobil liable to the tune of $240 million to monitor and clean up wells and public water systems contaminated by the gasoline additive MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether.

Lawyers for Exxon Mobil counter that MTBE was used to comply with federal Clean Air Act requirements to reduce smog. They also blame any lingering contamination on third parties not named in the state’s decade-old lawsuit.

* * *

The jury will be asked to determine whether MTBE is a defective product and whether Exxon Mobil failed to warn its distributors and vendors about the characteristics and care needed in handling gasoline containing it.

MTBE, experts on both sides agreed, travels farther and faster in groundwater and contaminates larger volumes of water than gasoline without the additive.

If jurors find Exxon Mobil is liable for damages, they must then determine what was the oil giant’s market share of all gasoline sold in New Hampshire between 1988 and 2005. The state contends it was 30 percent; Exxon Mobil says it’s closer to 6 percent.

The state banned MTBE in 2007.

Lawyers for Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil claim state environmental officials knew or should have known about the contaminating qualities of MTBE. * * *

Exxon Mobil is the sole remaining defendant of the 26 the state sued in 2003. Citgo was a co-defendant when the trial began, but it began settlement negotiations with the state on day two and withdrew from the trial. Citgo ultimately settled for $16 million – bringing the total the state has collected in MTBE settlement money to $136 million.

Read the entire article here.  Image from here.

Mortality Effects of Pollution

From New York Times:

Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide.

Figured another way, the researchers said, China’s toll from pollution was the loss of 25 million healthy years of life from the population.

Read article here.

BPA in Cans Linked to Asthma

From UPI:

U.S. researchers report a link between early childhood exposure to bisphenol A — a chemical used in can liners and store receipts — and higher asthma risk.

Lead author Dr. Kathleen Donohue, an assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Center for Children’s Environmental Health, and colleagues tracked 568 women enrolled in the Mothers & Newborns study of environmental exposures.

BPA exposure was determined by measuring levels of a BPA metabolite in urine samples taken during the third trimester of pregnancy and in the children at ages 3, 5 and 7.

Physicians diagnosed asthma at ages 5 to 12 based on asthma symptoms, a pulmonary function test and medical history. A validated questionnaire was used to evaluate wheeze, Donohue said.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found after adjusting for secondhand smoke and other factors known to be associated with asthma, post-natal exposure to BPA was associated with increased risk of wheeze and asthma.

BPA exposure during the third trimester of pregnancy was inversely associated with risk of wheeze at age 5, the study found.

“Asthma prevalence has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, which suggests that some as-yet-undiscovered environmental exposures may be implicated,” Donohue said in a statement. “Our study indicates that one such exposure may be BPA.”

Acidic Oceans

* * *

New research is showing that carbon dioxide is not only causing global warming, but it’s also causing sea water to become more acidic. As this ScienCentral News video explains, the implications of this on underwater life is becoming a hot topic for everyone from scientists, to IMAX filmmakers.

Leo Trasande on Environmental Health

Healthy Child Healthy World recently interviewed Upstream Contributor, Dr. Leo Trasande, about environmental health.  Here are some of the questions and answers.

So what is environmental health?

Defining our field is often the major challenge of our field! It can be all encompassing—not only exposures to synthetic chemicals, it can go as broadly as impacts of climate change to the physical environment that influences children’s physical activity, diet, and ultimately obesity as well as other health outcomes.

Are people starting to pay more attention to the link between the environment and human health?

Yes. There are multiple drivers. There has been progress in improving medical curricula and research. Second, parents are presenting these concerns to their pediatricians and asking for answers with greater frequency and consistency. The third is the power of the purse. People are acting with their wallets and buying products that don’t have environmental contaminants and reducing their exposure. This creates a significant market force.

Where should parents wanting to raise healthy kids begin?

Start with some of the Healthy Child Easy Steps. Focus on the leading environmental issues we understand he most about. Lead is terribly important. And you can reduce your intake of fish contaminated with methylmercury while still eating the good omega-3s so critical for brain development.

* * *

Does caring about environmental health mean you have to be a rich or a scientist? Or both?

You don’t need a PhD in chemistry or a millionaire’s salary to identify and protect your children from environmental hazards. There are safe and simple steps we can take, like avoiding lead and mercury exposure. You don’t have to spray pesticides in your house. You can open your windows every few days to get rid of organic chemicals and dust and mold.

Read all of the questions and responses here.

Visit Dr. Leo Trasande’s main Upstream page.

Pesticide Drift

From Earth Justice:

Each year, nearly one billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed into fields and orchards around the country. As the families who live nearby can tell you, those pesticides don’t always stay in the fields and orchards.

BPA in Mothers and Newborns

From UPI (an article about a study co-conducted by Upstream Contributor, Dr. Frederica Perera):

Bisphenol-A — a chemical found in plastics — was detected in at least 94 percent of urine samples in U.S. urban mothers and children, researchers say.

Lori Hoepner, Robin M Whyatt, Allan C. Just, Antonia M. Calafat, Frederica P. Perera and Andrew G. Rundle of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health in New York said BPA was a chemical found in certain plastics and has applications in everyday consumer products. It is found in toys, reusable water bottles, medical equipment, food and beverage can linings and glass jar tops.

Diet is the most common route of BPA exposure, but it is also in store receipts. Past research has linked BPA with health effects such as cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and metabolic disorders, the researchers said.

The study involved 568 mothers and children enrolled in the Center’s Mothers & Newborns study. Study leader Hoepner and colleagues analysed BPA concentrations found in urine samples collected prenatally and at ages 3, 5 and 7 years.

The study detected BPA in 94 percent of prenatal samples and at least 96 percent of the childhood samples, but the maternal prenatal BPA concentrations were significantly lower than those of their children.

Additionally, the study found concentrations were significantly higher among African-Americans as compared to Dominicans.

BPA concentrations were also correlated with concentrations of another chemical of concern, phthalates, used to soften plastics to increase their flexibility and found in a variety of products including enteric coatings of pharmaceutical pills and nutritional supplements, adhesives, electronics, building materials, personal care products, medical devices, detergents, children’s toys, modeling clay, waxes, paint, ink, pharmaceuticals, food products and textiles, the researchers said.

Read article here.

Visit Frederica Perera’s main Upstream page.

The Global Burden of Disease Study

Executive summary:

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) is the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors. The results show that infectious diseases, maternal and child illness, and malnutrition now cause fewer deaths and less illness than they did twenty years ago. As a result, fewer children are dying every year, but more young and middle-aged adults are dying and suffering from disease and injury, as non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, become the dominant causes of death and disability worldwide. Since 1970, men and women worldwide have gained slightly more than ten years of life expectancy overall, but they spend more years living with injury and illness.GBD 2010 consists of seven Articles, each containing a wealth of data on different aspects of the study (including data for different countries and world regions, men and women, and different age groups), while accompanying Comments include reactions to the study’s publication from WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. The study is described by Lancet Editor-in-Chief Dr Richard Horton as “a critical contribution to our understanding of present and future health priorities for countries and the global community.”

Link to the study here.

Toxic Tide

From Living On Earth (portions of radio discussion of the “the health effects of the deepwater disaster”):

GELLERMAN: . . . . It’s been more than six months since BP finally capped its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. But now come reports of a wave of illnesses and puzzling symptoms from some residents along the Gulf Coast. Their blood contains high levels of chemicals found in oil and the dispersants that were used to clean up the mess.

Many who are suffering say firm answers and adequate treatment are hard to come by, and there’s a growing sense of frustration with government agencies and the medical community. Living on Earth’s Jeff Young has the first part of our special report: “Toxic Tide – Discovering the Health Effects of the Deepwater Disaster”.

[HEARING: OIL SPILL COMMISSIONER DON BOESCH Okay, questions and comments from the floor…]

YOUNG: When the National Oil Spill Commission presented its final report in New Orleans, commissioners expected to get an earful from rig workers and fishermen worried about their jobs. Instead they heard speaker after speaker worried about something else: their health.

SPEAKER 1: I worked 60 days on the frontline for BP out here. I’m sick today, nobody wants to take care of me.

SPEAKER 2: The issue is ongoing; people are getting sick and dying.

SPEAKER 3: I have seen small children with lesions all over their body. We are very, very ill. And there’s a very good chance now that I won’t get to see my grandbabies.

YOUNG: Some had worked cleaning up the oil, others lived in or had visited places where oil washed ashore. All complained of mysterious ailments that arose after the spill.

Robin Young was one of those who spoke out. She manages vacation rental properties in Orange Beach, Alabama, where she has lived for 10 years.

When the spill started, Young helped form a citizen group called Guardians of the Gulf. At first, the group was not focused on health issues. Then, people, including Young, started getting sick.

R YOUNG: Headaches, I would get nauseous – and these are all things that I don’t normally experience at all, I’ve always been very, very, very healthy. Then the coughing – I coughed up so much nasty looking mess.

J YOUNG: Young says symptoms started after she spent a day near the water in June and she still hasn’t fully recovered. She heard from others in her community and across the Gulf coast with similar problems.

* * *

J YOUNG: Young’s group paid for more blood sampling. The Louisiana Environmental Action network asked biochemist and MacArthur grant winner Wilma Subra to analyze the results. The blood samples came from cleanup workers, crabbers, a diver who’d been in oiled water, and at least two children who live on the coast. All had reported recent health problems. Subra compared the levels of volatile organic compounds in those samples to a national database of VOC’s in blood compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics.

SUBRA: They’re as much as 5 to 10 times what you’d find in the normal population. And again, these are chemicals that relate back to chemicals in the BP crude and the dispersants.

* * *

SUBRA: I think it’s demonstrating that the chemicals they are being exposed to are showing up in their blood. We’ve briefed the federal agencies on it, tried to get them interested – they are evaluating the results. And I think there’s a lot of frustration in the community members across the coastal areas. They are really requesting answers.

* * *

YOUNG: Solid answers will take time. There’s little in the scientific literature on long term health effects of oil spills. In March the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences plans to start enrolling Gulf spill cleanup workers in a long-term health study. The principal investigator is Dale Sandler, chief of epidemiology at NIEHS. She hopes to track some 55,000 subjects for at least five years.

SANDLER: This will be by far the largest study of individuals exposed during an oil spill disaster that’s ever been conducted. So we have been moving heaven and earth to make this go quickly.

YOUNG: Sandler’s study has funding, thanks in part to BP. The study is a few months behind its original schedule. But researchers face another hurdle that may prove more difficult. Signing up tens of thousands of participants and getting people to accept results depends on credibility and trust. After the BP spill and Hurricane Katrina, trust is in low supply on the Gulf Coast. Here’s how Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kinnon sums up the attitude.

KINNON: The bottom line is very few people trust governmental agencies. They think there’s this incestuous relationship between BP and the government, and I tend to agree with them.

J YOUNG: And even as Robin Young asks the government to help her community, the plea comes with a note of deep suspicion.

RYOUNG: I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist – that’s what I’m starting to feel like. Because it’s hard to believe that something like this is going on in the United States and no one’s helping.

More . . .

Link to Living on Earth podcast.

Wilma Subra’s analysis of blood samples from sick Gulf Coast residents.

The NIEHS plan for a large-scale, long-term study of cleanup workers.

Podcast: Delayed Reaction: The Fetal Basis of Adult Disease, with Deborah Cory-Slechta

Deborah Cory-Slechta Podcast

Exposure to certain chemicals or stressors in utero can cause immediate health effects for fetuses and babies including lowered birth weight, birth defects, and impaired neurodevelopment. New lines of research are now showing that prenatal exposures may also contribute to health problems that typically arise later in life—such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Parkinson disease—via changes to DNA transcription and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. In this podcast, Deborah Cory-Slechta discusses the phenomenon known as the fetal basis of adult disease. Cory-Slechta is a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Listen to the podcast here.

Podcast Transcript

AHEARN: It’s The Researcher’s Perspective. I’m Ashley Ahearn.

When we are exposed to certain chemicals or stressors in the womb, research has shown there are certain immediate health problems that may arise—lowered birth weight, birth defects, or impaired neurodevelopment, to name a few.

But what about health problems that typically arise later in life—obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease? Could these also be the result of exposure to certain substances early in our development?

More and more research is being done to explore what’s called the “fetal basis of adult disease hypothesis.”

Joining me to talk about it is Dr. Deborah Cory-Slechta. She’s a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Dr. Cory-Slechta, thanks for being here.

CORY-SLECHTA: Glad to be with you.

AHEARN: Let’s start by laying out this hypothesis, the fetal basis of adult disease. What is it?

CORY-SLECHTA: Well, it actually started with some work done by Dr. Barker¹ back many years ago looking at victims of a Dutch famine. And what he saw in those individuals was that those who suffered under-nutrition in the womb later in life had a much higher incidence of a variety of different diseases and disorders, particularly cardiovascular disease, hypertension. There were also cognitive kinds of problems, a real assortment of different diseases, and that’s what really got this whole area of the fetal basis of adult disease off and running, so to speak—that you could have something going on early in life, this under-nutrition, and even if those children ultimately caught up nutrition-wise with children who didn’t have early under-nutrition, they still ended up having this higher episode incidence of diseases and disorders later in life.

AHEARN: But this hypothesis now stretches beyond just under-nutrition in terms of stressors. We’re looking at exposures as well, right?

CORY-SLECHTA: We’re looking at, actually, a variety of different things. Yes, it does expand beyond that. So one of the things that’s become clear is that early under-nutrition itself can cause a variety of diseases and disorders later in life, and there are multiple ways in which that seems to happen. One is through something called epigenetics where you have an influence on what’s called the transcription of DNA—not a change in the DNA itself, the structure of the DNA, but in how it gets transcribed or activated. You can have what appear to be permanent changes in something called the HPA axis, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. That’s the body’s system that controls responses to stress, and when you have early or maternal prenatal stress you can cause increases in stress hormones in the fetus that basically result in permanent changes in the HPA axis. That HPA axis change can lead, itself, to many different diseases and disorders because it controls a lot of those organ systems.

Also, now we’re beginning to look at a lot of environmental exposures that probably through these different mechanisms, like epigenetics or changing the HPA axis, among others, thereby lead to these diseases and disorders by permanently changing these mechanisms.

AHEARN: What other diseases that manifest later in life do you think could be tied to early developmental exposures?

CORY-SLECHTA: Well, let me use lead exposure as an example of that, something we know a lot about. We know that lead exposure early in life is one of the kinds of exposures that can permanently change this HPA axis function. Lead exposure early in life has been tied to later hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, schizophrenia, neurodegenerative changes, all of which may occur through these changes in the HPA axis function. That’s just one example. We haven’t studied a lot of these other chemicals, but I think we’re going to be seeing some similar kinds of things. Other examples are endocrine disruptors, things like bisphenol A or phthalates, which affect sex steroid hormones. Those two are producing permanent changes early in development, in this case in hormonal systems that basically target lots of different organs in the body. So it’s really going to be a variety of different diseases and disorders that are ultimately, I think, going to get tied back to some of these kinds of exposures.

AHEARN: Why does it take so long? When you’re looking at a disease that can crop up 65 years later, 70 years later, what’s going on in the interim?

CORY-SLECHTA: Things like epigenetics really can explain that because you’re producing changes in essentially the transcription or activation of a gene that can be lifelong kinds of changes. If they occur in the sperm or the egg, they can actually then be transmitted to the next generation so now we have the possibility not only of you having these epigenetic changes that can manifest themselves in diseases and disorders later in life, but that you could transmit to your offspring. When you change things like the HPA axis early in life it can be thought of like a thermostat that you’ve now reset and you can’t change it back again. So it never operates correctly later in life either. The brain development has to unfold; a sequence of steps has to unfold perfectly in time. If you change that early in life, then it’s broken. It never can refix itself because the time at which it goes through development has long since passed. So there’s really no way to repair some of these changes. They’re basically now set in stone for life.

And I think partly the other really important thing about this whole field of fetal basis is that those effects are extremely gender-specific.

AHEARN: Could you talk a little bit more about those gender differences? I mean, am I more vulnerable as a baby boy than a baby girl?

CORY-SLECHTA: Well, it depends on the disease that we’re talking about. So if you think about something like Parkinson’s disease we know that it has a higher prevalence in males; that is, females are protected against this disease. One of the thoughts about that is that it relates to estrogen somehow, and estrogen, of course, is something that if you modify that early in life during the differentiation of the brain, you can have permanent kinds of consequences. Or if you modify testosterone early in life, you can have permanent consequences.

If we’re talking about schizophrenia, there’s not so much of a different incidence or prevalence in males and females, but the schizophrenic syndrome manifests very differently by gender. If you think about things like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, again, something that we really don’t understand in terms of its etiology, it has a higher prevalence in boys than girls, whereas Alzheimer’s disease has a higher prevalence in women than in men; at least, most studies would say that. So you see these very, very clear gender differences, and these are things that are very likely to translate back into epigenetic changes that differ [between males and females], changes in HPA axis programming, which are different in males versus females, or hormonal changes that occur very early in life.

AHEARN: Dr. Cory-Slechta, what’s to be done with this growing body of research we have on the fetal basis of adult disease?

CORY-SLECHTA: Well, let me take it a couple directions. One, I think it will tell us a lot about what we need to do better maternal health, maternal screening, in terms of preventing these kinds of effects that might lead to later diseases and disorders in children. With respect to experimental exposures, we really haven’t had the data to be able to incorporate this kind of information into risk assessment paradigms. Once it comes there will really be policy issues about how we’re going to deal with this kind of information. What would it mean with respect to exposure levels that are safe? How much would it cost to decrease those kinds of exposures? So it can have a lot of those sorts of implications above and beyond the scientific data that comes out of these studies.

AHEARN: What makes you want to study the fetal basis of adult disease?

CORY-SLECHTA: Well, it’s a really interesting area because it’s this connection between something that happens early on and something later in life. I hope it’s, as I said before, going to really allow us to understand how environmental chemicals influence health or lead to diseases and disorders. I think without that understanding we may be underestimating the risks that are actually posed by environmental chemicals, because we don’t understand or we aren’t aware at this point of whether they are having these kinds of influences. I think it’s a really exciting area of research. It may hold a lot of answers to things that have eluded us for a long time.

AHEARN: So you’re in this for the long haul.

CORY-SLECHTA: Oh yeah, I think it’s a great area of research. It just has a lot of promise for better understanding of human diseases and disorders, and that’s why you’re in this field to begin with.

AHEARN: Dr. Cory-Slechta, thanks so much for joining me.

CORY-SLECHTA: Thank you, Ashley. Nice to be here.

AHEARN: Dr. Deborah Cory-Slechta is a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

And that’s The Researcher’s Perspective. I’m Ashley Ahearn. Thanks for downloading!

Note

1. David J.P. Barker first reported an association between impaired fetal growth and chronic disease later in life in the seminal article “Infant Mortality, Childhood Nutrition, and Ischaemic Heart Disease in England and Wales” [Lancet 327(8489):1077–1081 (1986)]. Barker’s hypothesis is sometimes called the thrifty phenotype hypothesis.

Ideology and Environment

From UC Berkeley Press:

When it comes to climate change, deforestation and toxic waste, the assumption has been that conservative views on these topics are intractable. But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that such viewpoints can be changed after all, when the messages about the need to be better stewards of the land are couched in terms of fending off threats to the “purity” and “sanctity” of Earth and our bodies.

A UC Berkeley study has found that while people who identified themselves as conservatives tend to be less concerned about the environment than their liberal counterparts, their motivation increased significantly when they read articles that stressed the need to “protect the purity of the environment” and were shown such repellant images as a person drinking dirty water, a forest filled with garbage, and a city under a cloud of smog.

Published today (Dec. 10) in the online issue of the journal Psychological Science, the findings indicate that reframing pro-environmental rhetoric according to values that resonate strongly with conservatives can reduce partisan polarization on ecological matters.

“These findings offer the prospect of pro-environmental persuasion across party lines,” said Robb Willer, a UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of the study. “Reaching out to conservatives in a respectful and persuasive way is critical, because large numbers of Americans will need to support significant environment reforms if we are going to deal effectively with climate change, in particular.”

Researchers conducted a content analysis of more than 200 op-eds published in such newspapers as The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, and found the pro-environmental arguments were most often pitched in terms of moral obligations to care about the natural environment and protect it from harm, a theme that resonates more powerfully with liberals, they added, than with conservatives.

They hypothesized that conservatives would be more responsive to environmental arguments focused on such principles as purity, patriotism and reverence for a higher authority. In their study, the authors specifically tested the effectiveness of arguments for protecting the purity of the environment. They said the results suggest they were on the right track:

“When individuals view protecting the environment as a moral issue, they are more likely to recycle and support government legislation to curb carbon emissions,” said Matthew Feinberg, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at Stanford University and lead author of the study which he conducted while at UC Berkeley.

Scientific consensus on the existence of warming global land and ocean temperatures – attributed in large part to human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions – continues to grow and influence public opinion, especially with such extreme weather events as Hurricane Sandy. A recent Rasmussen poll reported that 68 percent of Americans view climate change as a “serious problem,” compared to a 2010 Gallup poll in which 48 percent of Americans said they thought global warming was exaggerated.

In the first experiment, 187 men and women recruited via several U.S. Craigslist websites rated their political ideology on a scale of “extremely liberal” to “extremely conservative.” They then rated the morality of such activities as recycling a water bottle versus throwing it in the garbage. The results of that experiment, and a similar one conducted on 476 college undergraduates, showed that liberals are more prone to viewing sustainability as a moral issue than are conservatives.

Next, researchers conducted a content analysis of pro-environmental videos on YouTube and more than 200 op-eds in national newspapers, sorting them under the themes of “harm/care,” which they expected to resonate more with liberals, and “purity/sanctity,” which they predicted would appeal more to conservatives. They found that most pro-environmental messages leaned strongly toward liberal moral concerns.

In the last experiment, 308 men and women, again recruited via Craigslist, were randomly assigned to read one of three articles. The harm/care-themed article described the destruction wreaked on the environment by humans and pitched protection of the environment as a moral obligation. Images accompanying the text were of a forest with tree stumps, a barren coral reef and drought-cracked land, which are more typical of the visuals promoted by pro-environmental groups.

The purity/sanctity-themed article stressed how pollution has contaminated Earth and people’s bodies, and argued for cleaning up and purifying the environment. To enhance those themes and elicit disgust, the accompanying images showed a person drinking filthy water, a city under a cloud of pollution and a forest full of garbage. The neutral article talked about the history of neckties.

Participants were then asked to rate how strongly they felt certain emotions, including disgust, in response to what they’d read. Next, they reported how strongly they agreed or disagreed with such statements as “It is important to protect the environment,” “I would support government legislation aimed at protecting the environment” and ‘I believe humans are causing global warming.”

Overall, the study found that the purity-themed message inspired conservatives to feel higher levels of disgust, which in turn increased their support for protecting the environment.

Invisibly Ill

Miller-McCune: America’s hidden diseases.

Millions of poor Americans living in distressed regions of the country are chronically sick, afflicted by a host of hidden diseases that are not being monitored, diagnosed or treated, researchers say. From Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta to the segregated inner cities of the Great Lakes and Northeast, they say, and from Navajo reservations to Latino communities along the U.S.-Mexico border, more than 20 chronic diseases are promoting the cycle of poverty in conditions of inadequate sanitation, unsafe water supplies and rundown housing. “These are forgotten diseases among forgotten people,” said Peter Hotez, a microbiologist at George Washington University, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Sabin Vaccine Institute and co-founder of the institute’s Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disease Control. “If these were diseases among middle-class whites in the suburbs, we would not tolerate them. They are among America’s greatest health disparities, and they are largely unknown to the U.S. medical and health communities.”  More . . .

Mapping Mortality in Western Pennsylvania – Part 3

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently completed an amazing series of reports on the cancer clusters in Western Pennsylvania. Here is a sample from Day 3 of their 8-day series.

A more accurate and thorough air-monitoring network is necessary to assess human health risks and support enforcement of environmental regulations. And that’s especially true in rural areas where few monitors now exist.

“We do not have the kind of robust monitoring network we need nationally,” said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. “And we never have enough monitors in environmental justice areas, poorer areas, and rural areas that cannot protect themselves as well.”

State Department of Environmental Protection documents show that only seven of the 18 ambient air-quality monitors in 13 western counties measure levels of nearly invisible particulates — known as PM2.5 because they are smaller than 2.5 micrometers — that can be inhaled deeply into human lungs and cause or aggravate a variety of health problems, including asthma and cardiac and respiratory disease.

More . . .

• A PG multimedia display tells the human side of the effects of air pollution
• PG interactive maps show disease rates and major pollution sources
• See an index to the series