The good news is that it makes it easier to find him in the dark
Parents find industrial chemicals in boy's blood
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Michelle Hammond and Jeremiah Holland were intrigued when a friend at the Oakland Tribune asked them and their two young children to take part in a cutting-edge study to measure the industrial chemicals in their bodies.
Rowan
"In the beginning, I wasn't worried at all; I was fascinated," Hammond, 37, recalled.
But that fascination soon changed to fear, as tests revealed that their children -- Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 -- had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.
"[Rowan's] been on this planet for 18 months, and he's loaded with a chemical I've never heard of," Holland, 37, said. "He had two to three times the level of flame retardants in his body that's been known to cause thyroid dysfunction in lab rats."
The technology to test for these flame retardants -- known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) -- and other industrial chemicals is less than 10 years old. Environmentalists call it "body burden" testing, an allusion to the chemical "burden," or legacy of toxins, running through our bloodstream. Scientists refer to this testing as "biomonitoring."
Most Americans haven't heard of body burden testing, but it's a hot topic among environmentalists and public health experts who warn that the industrial chemicals we come into contact with every day are accumulating in our bodies and endangering our health in ways we have yet to understand.
"We are the humans in a dangerous and unnatural experiment in the United States, and I think it's unconscionable," said Dr. Leo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Video Watch Anderson Cooper get his blood drawn for testing »
Dr. Trasande says that industrial toxins could be leading to more childhood disease and disorders.
"We are in an epidemic of environmentally mediated disease among American children today," he said. "Rates of asthma, childhood cancers, birth defects and developmental disorders have exponentially increased, and it can't be explained by changes in the human genome. So what has changed? All the chemicals we're being exposed to."
Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, a public health advocacy group, disagrees.
"My concern about this trend about measuring chemicals in the blood is it's leading people to believe that the mere ability to detect chemicals is the same as proving a hazard, that if you have this chemical, you are at risk of a disease, and that is false," she said. Whelan contends that trace levels of industrial chemicals in our bodies do not necessarily pose health risks.
In 2004, the Hollands became the first intact nuclear family in the United States to undergo body burden testing. Rowan, at just 11⁄2 years old, became the youngest child in the U.S. to be tested for chemical exposure with this method.
Rowan's extraordinarily high levels of PBDEs frightened his parents and left them with a looming question: If PBDEs are causing neurological damage to lab rats, could they be doing the same thing to Rowan? The answer is that no one knows for sure. In the three years since he was tested, no developmental problems have been found in Rowan's neurological system.
Dr. Trasande said children up to six years old are most at risk because their vital organs and immune system are still developing and because they depend more heavily on their environments than adults do.
"Pound for pound, they eat more food, they drink more water, they breathe in more air," he said. "And so [children] carry a higher body burden than we do."
Studies on the health effects of PBDEs are only just beginning, but many countries have heeded the warning signs they see in animal studies. Sweden banned PBDEs in 1998. The European Union banned most PBDEs in 2004. In the United States, the sole manufacturer of two kinds of PBDEs voluntarily stopped making them in 2004. A third kind, Deca, is still used in the U.S. in electrical equipment, construction material, mattresses and textiles.
Another class of chemicals that showed up in high levels in the Holland children is known as phthalates. These are plasticizers, the softening agents found in many plastic bottles, kitchenware, toys, medical devices, personal care products and cosmetics. In lab animals, phthalates have been associated with reproductive defects, obesity and early puberty. But like PBDEs, little is known about what they do to humans and specifically children.
Russ Hauser, an associate professor of environmental and occupational epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, has done some of the few human studies on low-level phthalate exposure. His preliminary research shows that phthalates may contribute to infertility in men. A study led by Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester in New York shows that prenatal exposure to phthalates in males may be associated with impaired testicular function and with a defect that shortens the space between the genitals and anus.
The Environmental Protection Agency does not require chemical manufacturers to conduct human toxicity studies before approving their chemicals for use in the market. A manufacturer simply has to submit paperwork on a chemical, all the data that exists on that chemical to date, and wait 90 days for approval.
Jennifer Wood, an EPA spokeswoman, insists the agency has the tools to ensure safe oversight.
"If during the new-chemical review process, EPA determines that it may have concerns regarding risk or exposure, the EPA has the authority to require additional testing," she said. EPA records show that of the 1,500 new chemicals submitted each year, the agency asks for additional testing roughly 10 percent of the time. The EPA has set up a voluntary testing program with the major chemical manufacturers to retroactively test some of the 3,000 most widely used chemicals.
Dr. Trasande believes that is too little, too late.
"The problem with these tests is that they are really baseline tests that don't measure for the kind of subtle health problems that we're seeing," Dr. Trasande said.
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In the three years since her family went through body burden testing, Michelle Hammond has become an activist on the issue. She's testified twice in the California legislature to support a statewide body burden testing program, a bill that passed last year. Michelle also speaks to various public health groups about her experience, taking Mikaela, now 8, and Rowan, now 5, with her. So far, her children show no health problems associated with the industrial chemicals in their bodies.
"I'm angry at my government for failing to regulate chemicals that are in mass production and in consumer products." Hammond says. "I don't think it should have to be up to me to worry about what's in my couch."
As someone who grew up across the street from a chemical plan, I can only nod both of my heads in agreement.
You mean they lied about doing their chores?
Nuclear sub crew faked inspection records
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Six Navy personnel on board the nuclear-powered submarine USS Hampton have been punished for forging inspection records for the cooling system of the ship's nuclear reactor, Navy officials said Monday.
The misconduct was discovered on September 17 but was made public after completion of an initial investigation.
One officer and five enlisted personnel received a "non-judicial punishment" after other Navy personnel discovered their actions, Navy officials said.
The crew neither maintained inspection records nor conducted the required inspection of the chemical levels associated with the cooling system, the Navy officials said. The crew then went back and falsified existing records to make it appear the work had been done, the officials added.
"There is not, and never was, any danger to the crew or the public," the Navy said in a statement.
A fact-finding investigation is under way, and further action against Navy crew members is possible, a navy official said.
In all, the $900 million vessel's crew is composed of 13 officers and 116 enlisted personnel.
It is not clear if the disciplined personnel were still on board the vessel. The Hampton remains in port in San Diego.
They also filled up dad’s liquor bottles with water so he couldn't tell they were drinking.
Breaking news—being picked last and sent to right field sucks
Playground Politics: Lack Of Athletic Skill Often Means Loneliness And Peer Rejection
ScienceDaily (Oct. 22, 2007) — In the Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown was never able to kick the football, fly a kite properly or lead a baseball team. He was also sad and often the target of ridicule from his peers. A new Canadian study looking at the connections between athletic skill and social acceptance among school children confirms that Chuck's problems were true to life: kids place a great deal of value on athletic ability, and youngsters deemed unskilled by their peers often experience sadness, isolation and social rejection at school.
In a study published in The Journal of Sport Behavior, researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton examined the relationships among perceived athletic competence, peer acceptance and loneliness in elementary school children. Their findings will likely confirm the experience of anyone who was picked last for the team in gym class: children seen as athletic by their classmates are also better liked and less likely to feel lonely, while unathletic children experience the opposite.
"For both boys and girls, we found that popular children reported less loneliness and received higher athletic ability ratings from their peers than rejected children," says lead researcher Janice Causgrove Dunn, from the Faculty of Physical & Recreation at the University of Alberta. "Conversely, the kids who reported higher levels of loneliness tended to receive lower athletic ability ratings and lower social acceptance ratings from their peers."
Past studies have found that loneliness in childhood and adolescence is associated with many psychosocial and emotional problems, and prolonged loneliness has the potential to seriously undermine an individual's psychological, emotional and physical well-being. Lonely children are often less physically active and less fit, and more likely to experience tension and anxiety than their non-lonely counterparts. In adolescence and early adulthood, loneliness has been linked to behaviors including cigarette smoking, marijuana use and alcoholism, as well as an increased risk of school drop out and depression.
"Given the proven negative impact of loneliness on a child's well being, this kind of research is an important endeavor," says Causgrove Dunn. "It's important to identify and understand the factors that might increase a child's likelihood of being accepted by the peer group, because this, in turn, decreases the likelihood of that child experiencing the destructive psychosocial and emotional problems that often come with rejection."
The conclusions of the study--believed to be the first to look at the relationship between loneliness and perceptions of athletic competence in elementary school children--are based on responses from 208 children in Grades 4 through 6 at seven different elementary schools in a western Canadian city. Ninety-nine boys and 109 girls completed questionnaires used to measure children's loneliness levels in school, as well as self-perceived athletic ability. Researchers also asked participants to rate the athletic ability of their classmates and identify the classmates who they most liked and who they least liked in order to assess peer rejection and peer acceptance.
The study appears in the Sept. 2007 issue of The Journal of Sport Behavior.
“Past studies have found that loneliness in childhood and adolescence is associated with many psychosocial and emotional problems, and prolonged loneliness has the potential to seriously undermine an individual's psychological, emotional and physical well-being.”
Really? Wow, this is ground breaking stuff. The good news is that, properly equipped, that kid can make a quick trip to the bell tower and settle a lot a problems.”
School’s out? How about, a perch on a perch?
The fish that can survive for months in a tree
By DAVID DERBYSHIRE/The Daily Mail - More by this author » Last updated at 22:20pm on 17th October 2007
It's one of the golden rules of the natural world – birds live in trees, fish live in water.
The trouble is, no one bothered to tell the mangrove killifish.
Scientists have discovered that it spends several months of every year out of the water and living inside trees.
Hidden away inside rotten branches and trunks, the remarkable creatures temporarily alter their biological makeup so they can breathe air.
Biologists studying the killifish say they astonished it can cope for so long out of its natural habitat.
The discovery, along with its ability to breed without a mate, must make the mangrove killifish, Rivulus marmoratus Poey, one of the oddest fish known to man.
Around two inches long, they normally live in muddy pools and the flooded burrows of crabs in the mangrove swamps of Florida, Latin American and Caribbean.
The latest discovery was made by biologists wading through swamps in Belize and Florida who found hundreds of killifish hiding out of the water in the rotting branches and trunks of trees.
The fish had flopped their way to their new homes when their pools of water around the roots of mangroves dried up. Inside the logs, they were lined up end to end along tracks carved out by insects.
Dr Scott Taylor of the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Programme in Florida admitted the creatures were a little odd.
"They really don't meet standard behavioural criteria for fish," he told New Scientist magazine.
Although the cracks inside logs make a perfect hiding place, conditions can be cramped. The fish – which are usually fiercely territorial – are forced to curb their aggression.
Another study, published earlier this year, revealed how they alter their bodies and metabolism to cope with life out of water.
Their gills are altered to retain water and nutrients, while they excrete nitrogen waste through their skin.
These changes are reversed as soon as they return to the water.
Previously their biggest claim to fame was that they are the only known vertebrate – animal with a backbone – to reproduce without the need for a mate.
Killifish can develop both female and male sexual organs, and fertilise their eggs while they are still in the body, laying tiny embryos into the water.
They are not the only fish able to breathe air. The walking catfish of South-east Asia has gills that allow it to breathe in air and in water.
The climbing perch of India can suffocate in water unless it can also gulp in air.
It’s the only way it can get some peace and quiet.
"...or are you just happy to see us?"
Man puts puppy in pants and slips off
By JONATHAN ABEL, Times Staff Writer
Published October 19, 2007
LARGO - In the annals of puppy theft, is there any technique more clever - or degrading - than stuffing a puppy down your pants?
Yet that's exactly what police say a man did in a Largo pet store this week - in front of a surveillance camera.
Three men, two woman and a child walked into All About Puppies pet store at 7190 Ulmerton Road on Monday.
They said they were vacationing from New York.
They hovered around the puppy-filled cages.
In the back of the store, one man grabbed hold of a fawn-colored pug puppy with a black face.
Retail value: $900.
He put it in his shirt at first, police said, but then he looked for a better place to conceal it.
The unnamed man took the unnamed puppy and tried farther south, pushing it into the front of his pants.
Then he left the store. The rest of the group followed a few minutes later.
All told, the theft took six minutes.
Store manager Amanda Julian, who was not there at the time, said the thieves were the only customers in the store.
One of the women, a grandmotherly figure with a curler in her hair, started making a fuss, according to Julian: "She was saying, 'Oh, my gosh. I can't believe you didn't tell me about the curler. I can't believe you didn't tell me about it.'"
Another woman was eyeing the employees. The other two men blocked the theft from view.
A few hours later, employees realized that they were one puppy short. They reviewed the tape and spotted the theft.
The stolen pug was among 85 puppies in the store. He was in an open-topped cage with his brother, who was sold the next day, and a Shiba Inu, Julian said.
Monday's stolen puppy was implanted with a tracking chip so next time it goes to the vet it will be recognized as stolen.
"It's a live animal," Julian stressed. "It's not a shirt that you're stealing. It's not something you can throw in the closet. It needs food. It needs medical attention."
He did mumble something about taking a bite out of crime before he left
A perfect headline
Kid Rock arrested in Waffle House brawl
Just for the record, we're fans of both the Kid and visiting a Waffle House.
Actually, if you’re in a train wreck kind of mood, find a clip of Kid Rock being interviewed by Larry King. It went something like this:
“So Kid, what was it like being married to Pam Anderson? No really, what was it like? So you and Pam Anderson. How about that. You're new album, is it about Pam Anderson?"
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