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19 December 2019
Justice
Erie coke plant shuts down amid mounting pollution concerns
ERIE — A coke plant abruptly shut down Thursday morning amid mounting regulatory pressure over its environmental record.
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triblive.com
14 October 2019
Toxics
North Carolina: DEQ, Greensboro won't ID pollution source
The release of 1,4 dioxane caused large, temporary spikes of the probable carcinogen in drinking water for Fayetteville and Pittsboro.
Read the Full Article on
www.northcarolinahealthnews.org
30 May 2019
Justice
New study details outcomes from long-term environmental justice partnership in East End
For the past 40 years, research has proven that people of color, low-income communities and ethnic minorities suffer the effects of environmental contamination more than other communities.
Read the Full Article on
phys.org
31 January 2019
Originals
Local and national experts agree: Reducing Pittsburgh pollution would cut cancer risk
Editor's Note: This is story is part of our ongoing series on cancer and air pollution in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
PITTSBURGH—Cancer experts from around the country gathered here this week to present a body of research with a weighty conclusion: Environmental exposures remain a key factor in the region's elevated cancer rates and tackling these pollutants could significantly reduce risks for residents.
<p>And, while addressing the region's notorious pollution is a steep challenge, those assembled—including local health officials, Council members and community leaders—left the event pledging their renewed focus on reducing exposures in the name of cancer prevention. </p><p>The event, "Cancer and the Environment: Priorities for Research, Clinical Practice and Policy," brought around 150 doctors, clinical researchers and community leaders to the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, where attendees had a view of both the waterfalls and palm trees of the tropical rainforest room and of snow falling over distant row houses through the windows.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image image-crop-custom">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNDEyNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MzQ2NTQ3NX0.oCURtJczyLyrGoYu9sN_mT6nSWVnbaBb8t8EHol06WI/img.jpg?width=3469&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0&height=2788" id="9eed6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fa2863f2db326e39acd76fcfcaf8ce17" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Polly Hoppin moderates. (Credit: Kristina Marusic)</small></p><p>While the setting was pleasant, the topic was difficult.</p><p>"We know that harmful chemicals in our air, our water, our food, and even the products we use are important contributors to cancer," said Dr. James Herman, a medical oncologist at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center who specializes in the treatment of lung cancer. "As medical professionals, it's critical that we include these factors in our prevention efforts."</p>
Even if no one smoked, we’d still be getting lung cancer
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNDA0NC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMDI5NDY4OX0.h02V-Rg8Lyv95xfQBplNpAlOB04KWk4bjii-A8YcBfM/img.png?width=980" id="4d909" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7cc7b5ad605a992ec4c25c5f9bcd1872" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Credit: Richard Clapp
<p>Most current cancer prevention strategies are focused on individual behavior: Diet, exercise, and smoking.</p><p>"There's no question that these are important causes of cancer," Dr. David Kriebel, a professor and director of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at the University of Massachusetts, told EHN, "but we're concerned the degree to which we focus on smoking, obesity and exercise may lead people to conclude that the solution to the cancer epidemic lies solely in individual actions and lose sight of how socioeconomic and political decisions could be made that would also help prevent cancer."</p><p>Kriebel explained the vast majority of cancer prevention resources go to smoking cessation, so he and his colleagues decided to look at what cancer rates would look like if smoking was taken out of the picture, both nationally and in Allegheny County (which encompasses Pittsburgh). </p><p>"We found that if we took smoking out of the picture entirely, rates do go down quite a bit, but more than half of the cancers blamed primarily on smoking, like lung and bladder cancer, still occur at the national level," Kriebel said. </p><p>"As for Pittsburgh, he added, "If we could eliminate smoking entirely, Allegheny County would still be in the highest 10 percent of all U.S. counties with respect to these cancers." </p><p>That's likely due to a number of factors, Kriebel said, but one probable driver is air pollution, since Allegheny County is in the <a href="https://www.ehn.org/pittsburgh-cancer-air-pollution-2623207335.html" target="_blank">top 2 percent</a> of U.S. counties for risk of cancer from carcinogens in the air.</p><p>Kriebel also noted that when you remove smoking from the picture nationally, the recent reduction in cancer rates disappears. In other words, we're not doing anything effective to curb causes of cancer other than smoking.</p><p>"If you remove the progress we've seen as a result of people quitting smoking, we've made no headway whatsoever in the so-called war on cancer," Kriebel said. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't focus on tobacco control. But it does mean it's a big mistake to stop there."</p><p>James Fabisiak, a toxicologist at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities, noted that particulate matter pollution—of which Pittsburgh has <a href="https://www.ehn.org/pittsburghs-asthma-epidemic-and-the-fight-to-stop-it-2575098934.html" target="_blank">notoriously high levels</a>—accounted for between 100,000 and 225,000 lung cancer deaths worldwide in 2010 (the most recent year for which data is available), and that living amidst air pollution <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5400105/" target="_blank">has been found to lower the rate of survival for lung cancer</a>.</p>A sense of urgency
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNDA2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzAxMzI1MX0.XofXmaKeJzSfx9fyvHoZDjxumAKKEERyV7toqGX5r4o/img.jpg?width=980" id="557e5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5aa94f5753d00417344773777f79163b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>Dr. Margaret Kripke, professor emerita of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, delivered the keynote address. In 2010, Kripke served on the President's Cancer Panel that produced a report on chemical exposures as causes of cancer, marking the first time the subject was covered in the organization's 40-year history.</p><p>The report was met with opposition at the time. Because it's difficult to trace cancer directly to environmental exposures, Kripke said, some of her colleagues believed their resources should instead be devoted exclusively to focusing on individual behaviors—which she referred to as a "blame-the-victim approach to cancer prevention."</p><p>The landscape has improved some since then, Kripke said, but research on prevention is still underfunded and undervalued. She noted that while the science to trace individual cancer cases to environmental exposures is nascent, research has shown that fewer cancer cases occur in communities where exposure to environmental carcinogens is reduced—but that can be difficult to advocate for.</p><p>"Curing someone or being cured is viewed as a personal triumph, so everyone is focused on treatment," Kripke said. "Prevention doesn't have a face. We don't know who we prevented cancer in, which is why it's easier to advocate for the fight for a cure than it is for prevention."</p><p>Dr. Ted Schettler, the science director for the Science and Environmental Health Network, expanded on the idea of reducing risk for the whole population.</p><p>"Why one person has lung cancer is a very different question from why do some populations have more lung cancer than others," he said. "But it's certainly just as important. A variety of strategies can reduce cancer incidence, so we ought to be looking at all of them."</p><p>Schettler explained that cancer isn't caused by a single event or exposure, but a set of conditions or events that produces cancer in an individual person. He explained this using a pie graph with a different cancer cause in each slice—things like inherited genetics, high body mass index, mutated genes from tobacco carcinogens or from exposure to air pollution.</p><p>"If even one component of the pie is missing," he explained, "there's no cancer. That means there are opportunities for prevention at any time until the final component is added, which often happens many years after the first one." </p><p>Dr. Mark Miller, co-investigator with the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment at the University of California at Berkeley, presented on environmental exposures that contribute to childhood leukemia, including air pollution, chemical solvents and certain pesticides. Knowing what we do about these types of exposures, he said, there's no reason to wait for more science to take action.</p><p>"If we can reduce this risk for children even a little bit by reducing exposures," he said, "that's a big thing."</p><p>He pointed to efforts to reduce deaths from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as an example. After discovering that twice as many infants died from SIDS while sleeping on their stomachs, he explained, scientists wanted to launch a public awareness campaign. Some researchers strongly opposed the idea since they didn't yet know <em>why</em> fewer infants died when sleeping on their backs. Despite their opposition, the "back to sleep" campaign was launched anyway in 1994—and there's been a more than 50 percent reduction in SIDS across the U.S. as a result. </p><p>We still don't know exactly how SIDS happens, Miller said, but that doesn't actually matter when it comes to saving lives.</p><p>"If we decide to wait until we understand exactly why things like air pollution and certain chemical exposures cause cancer to start reducing our exposures," he said, "we could be waiting a very, very long time."</p>Promises for action
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xOTEzNDA1Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NzYwNzc0MX0.rmv-0r1IJifxLxbOmr58n13PaS23-QlSlFfw8OTrtiA/img.jpg?width=980" id="1b29e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5662c2bbda6aaff9fef17e26a1a1b63e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />From left: LuAnn Brink, Matt Mehalik, Anita Prizio, Fred Brown, Linda B. Robertson, Patricia Opresko, Molly Jacobs. (Credit: Kristina Marusic)
<p>At the end of the day, attendees were invited to discuss action steps with a panel of regional leaders. </p> <p>"I learned so much today," said Anita Prizio, Allegheny County Council Representative. "Especially from the talk on taking smoking out of the picture. I wish my other Council members were here."</p> <p>She promised to take what she'd learned back to County Council, and push for more comprehensive air pollution monitoring and aggressive enforcement of the clean air regulations in the region.</p> <p>LuAnn Brink, chief epidemiologist at the Allegheny County Health Department, vowed to take what she'd learned back to the Health Department, particularly with regard to community education.</p> <p>Fred Brown, president and CEO of the Forbes Fund, urged the group to invite members of underserved communities into the conversation as equal partners at the table. </p> <p>"We could do all the research in the world," he said. "If our communities don't understand it, you're going to have false positives… We need to be thinking not about programmatic change, but about systematic change."</p> <p>Dr. Patricia Lynn Opresko, clinical researcher and professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, promised to play more of a role in changing the region's narratives, saying, "Even just by talking to people in neighborhood, I can help change this idea that we have to choose between jobs and a safe environment."</p> <p>By the end of the session, the group assembled had agreed to continue working together to advance the cause of cancer prevention in the region through ongoing communication, strategic meetings, and community engagement. </p> <p>While the enthusiasm in the room was palpable, the group also acknowledged the magnitude of the challenge ahead.</p> <p>"One thing we know from studying how systems work is that nothing changes unless the routines in those systems change," said Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Collaborative, "and it takes multiple levels of effort and exertion to shift them."</p><p><em><em><em><br></em></em></em></p><p><em><em><em>Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story stated that Allegheny County is in the top 3 percent of U.S. counties for cancer from air toxics. It is actually in the top 2 percent, according to the <a href="http://www.heinz.org/UserFiles/Library/PRETA_HAPS.pdf" target="_blank">2013 Pittsburgh Regional Environmental Threat Analysis</a>.</em></em></em></p>
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29 October 2018
Originals
Charles Benbrook: New study showing organic diets cut cancer risk is a big deal. Let’s treat it that way.
More than 1.7 million Americans will be newly diagnosed with cancer in 2018, and 35 percent of these cases will prove fatal.
<p>A little less than $150 billion was spent fighting cancer in 2017. </p><p>Imagine the excitement that would accompany the discovery of anything -- a new drug, therapy, diet, or lifestyle change -- that promises to cut overall cancer frequency by 5 percent. </p><p>Every year, such a discovery would spare 87,000 people this most-feared diagnosis, and reduce deaths by 30,000 and cancer-related health care costs by around $7 billion. </p><p>Such monumental benefits would justify major investments and significant policy change. </p><p>Well, not necessarily. </p><p>There is a new paper in <em>JAMA Internal Medicine</em> by a team of French scientists that reports a 25 percent decrease in overall cancer risk from relatively high levels of organic food consumption, compared to little or no organic food consumption, in a large, prospective epidemiological study. </p><p>Sizable reductions in prevalence were also seen for breast cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), and all lymphomas. (Check out a <a href="https://hygeia-analytics.com/2018/10/23/organic-food-consumption-lowers-overall-cancer-risks-in-large-scale-study-of-french-adults/" target="_blank">written summary</a> of the study methods or this 2-minute <a href="https://vimeo.com/297400202" target="_blank">video</a> focused on key findings).</p><p>The French scientists suspect that the reduction in pesticide dietary exposure among study participants reporting a high-level of organic food intake is the key factor driving these encouraging results. The team did all it could to control for several confounding factors. </p><p>They stressed the study's limits and the clear need for more precise measures of pesticide dietary exposures. They emphasized the need for <em>all </em>consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables, conventional and/or organic. </p>
Polarized response is a sign of the times
<p>True believers in organic food and farming systems see proof and vindication in this paper, while defenders of the pesticide-status quo are generally dismissing it, citing one or more weaknesses from a long list of widely acknowledged shortcomings in this sort of study.</p><p>Does the study prove organic food will reduce cancer rates by 25 percent? No, of course not. Epidemiology studies cannot prove cause and effect. Could the study have been improved? Yes, of course, as can any study. </p><p>But for people wondering whether to take this study's encouraging results seriously, the question that really matters is did the weaknesses of the study likely inflate the health benefits of organic food? </p><p>Weakness #1: Self-reported diets. Study participants used a validated, online form to submit detailed dietary intake data across 16 major food groups. </p><p>Yes, multiple studies report that people do not always accurately recall, or report, what they actually ate. But deviations from actual intakes across the near-70,000 people in this study were likely comparable across all participants, regardless of how frequently they reported consuming a particular type of organic food. </p><p>So, were self-reported dietary intakes a source of inaccuracy -- yes. Were they a source of major bias in results -- not likely. </p><p>Weakness #2: Self-reported organic food intake frequency across the 16 food groups. There were three responses taken into account in calculating an aggregate "organic food score" for each study participant across each of the 16 food categories: (1) Two points when a participant reported buying organic brands "most of the time", (2) One point when organic brands were "occasionally" consumed, and (3) no points for all other responses ("never" or "I don't know").</p><p>Recall that the reduction in the number of cancer cases over a four-year period post-enrollment in this study is based on comparing the quartile (i.e. 25 percent of participants) at the high-end of the distribution of organic food scores (i.e., the people who eat the most organic food), compared to the 25 percent that consumed essentially none. </p><p>A close look at the data by quartile suggests clearly that the "low-intake of organic" group reliably contained people eating essentially no organic food, while the high-intake group included all, or nearly all of the people regularly consuming organic brands across at least a few categories of the 16 foods studied. </p><p>So, regardless of some degree of over- and under-reporting of organic food intake, the comparison of new cancer cases in the high versus low-intake group amounts to a comparison of people eating some, to a lot, versus no organic food.</p><p>Weakness #3: Failure to fully take into account all confounding variables. There has never been, and will never be, an epidemiological study that meets this threshold. So, unless one is willing to dismiss the entire field of epidemiology and all insights gained from well-designed studies, dealing with confounding factors is part of the process. Major source of bias? Not likely.</p><p>The French team carried out a variety of sensitivity analyses, introducing several confounding factors into their model individually, and then in various combinations. </p><p>After adjusting as fully as possible for confounding factors, they reported their main result in the studied cohort of 70,000 French citizens -- a 25 percent reduction in the risk of being diagnosed with a new case of cancer within four years after study enrollment in the high-organic food intake group, compared to the low (and essentially no) organic food intake group. </p><p>Might the percent reduction have changed if another four years of cancer incidence data had been available? Yes, it almost certainly would. Might the differences have narrowed if people were followed until death? Again, probably yes. Might it have widened? Maybe, but not likely, because 25 percent is a large share and many other factors are known to trigger or accelerate cancer.</p><p>But are there solid reasons to expect the above weaknesses and limitations are largely responsible for the strong statistical results in this study (i.e., consistently triggered bias in one direction)? None that I know of, or have yet heard from this study's already vocal critics. </p><p>Suppose the French team had been provided unlimited funding and a magic wand, and were able to overcome all of the above limitations and weaknesses. And upon rerunning their main model, the actual reduction in overall cancer rates in the high-organic food intake group fell to <em>only</em> 5 percent. </p><p>Just imagine the excitement that would accompany such a finding, until of course those who just don't believe pesticides are hazardous, or that organic food is safer, start anew the predictable litany of criticisms, questions, and worse.</p><p>In closing, thanks to the 70,000 citizens who took the time to enter all the data requested by the research team. And thanks to the French team for a quality piece of work that had to take a great effort to carry out. </p><p>I hope you will continue your work in this area, with adequate funding and perhaps even a slightly magic wand.</p><p><em>Charles Benbrook is a Visiting Scholar in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle in the U.K.</em></p><p><em>Benbrook has served as an expert witness in several major pesticide and food-labeling related cases in which government regulatory policy has played a central role. </em><em>Visit his <a href="https://hygeia-analytics.com/" target="_blank">website</a> or contact him at </em><em>charlesbenbrook@gmail.com</em></p>
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09 November 2017
Food
Even light drinking increases your risk of cancer, doctors warn
Even one drink is too many, according to doctors.
Read the Full Article on
www.newsweek.com
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