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Outdoor Air Pollution Linked to Higher Incidence of Breast Cancer
Oregon State University reported:
Women living in parts of the U.S. with lower air quality, especially neighborhoods with heavy emissions from motor vehicles, are more likely to develop breast cancer, according to a multiyear analysis involving more than 400,000 women and 28,000 breast cancer cases. The research, which included Veronica Irvin of the Oregon State University College of Health, was published in the American Journal of Public Health.
The project combined data from five large breast cancer studies conducted over multiple decades that tracked individuals even as they changed addresses and followed them for as long as 10 years prior to their diagnosis. The researchers overlaid outdoor air quality information from more than 2,600 monitors to look for an association between air pollution and breast cancer.
The scientists found that a 10-parts-per-billion increase in nitrogen dioxide concentrations in the air equated to a 3% increase in overall breast cancer incidence; nitrogen dioxide is a proxy for pollution from car traffic, Irvin said, and based on the estimated 316,950 cases of female breast cancer expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. this year, a 3% reduction would mean 9,500 fewer cases.
New Research Shows Everyday Exposure to Chemicals Found in Common Plastics Affects Your Heart
We’ve all heard warnings about BPA; a chemical found in plastics and personal care products. Studies show that nearly 90% of Americans have detectable levels of BPA in their bodies. Now, new research reveals this everyday exposure is tied to changes in the heart’s electrical system. You can find it in water bottles, food can linings, cash register receipts, eye glass lenses, even baby bottles and makeup. These are environmental phenols: Chemicals in products we touch every day.
“Phenols are a wide variety of chemicals. The best-known example is BPA,” Hong-Sheng Wang, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the University of Cincinnati told Ivanhoe. University of Cincinnati researchers studied 600 people. Urine tests and EKGs found higher exposure was linked to changes in heart rhythms. “The electrical conduction literally keeps us alive. If it gets altered in any way, you could die immediately,” explained Jack Rubinstein, M.D., cardiologist & professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati.
In women, BPA and BPF slowed signals between heart chambers. In men, triclocarban, once used in soaps, altered how the heart resets. “I wasn’t expecting this kind of striking sex-specific,” said Prof. Wang. The changes were small, but they add to growing evidence that everyday chemical exposures matter.
Why We Should Be Worried About the Microplastics in Chewing Gum
Every year, the British public munches through around four billion pieces of chewing gum. But what may be less well known is that a significant proportion of that gum comes from the exact same plastic materials that can be found in car tyres and shampoo bottles. It’s something that campaigners are looking to change.
The group Kids Against Plastic is now calling for the government to ban sales of all plastic-containing chewing gums to children. At the same time, a parliamentary motion based on a new policy paper, calling for all plastic-based chewing gums to be clearly labelled as such, has been signed by 41 MPs from across the House of Commons.
“The proposals are to make everything more transparent and put warning signs which say, ‘This contains plastic, you are consuming plastic,’ so consumers are informed,” says David Jones, a teaching fellow at the University of Portsmouth, and chief executive of Just One Ocean, one of the charities behind the paper. “The idea is to encourage [natural] alternatives to be used and potentially provide tax breaks or something like that, in order to help facilitate that.” But two new studies have helped raise a key question: should we really be chewing it?
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) published a paper earlier this week proving how we are ingesting microplastics. Saliva samples were taken from volunteers who chewed through 10 leading brands of commercially available gum. The result? Up to 3,000 tiny plastic particles were detected. The scientists estimated that particularly prolific gum users, who chew 160-180 small sticks of gum each year, might be ingesting up to 30,000 microplastics.
Toxic Wastewater From Oil Fields Keeps Pouring out of the Ground. Oklahoma Regulators Failed to Stop It.
In January 2020, Danny Ray started a complicated job with the Oklahoma agency that regulates oil and gas. The petroleum engineer who’d spent more than 40 years in the oil fields had been hired to help address a spreading problem, one that state regulators did not fully understand.
The year prior, toxic water had poured out of the ground — thousands of gallons per day — for months near the small town of Kingfisher, spreading across acres of farmland, killing crops and trees. Such pollution events were not new, but they were occurring with increasing frequency across the state. By the time Ray joined the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the incidents had grown common enough to earn a nickname — purges.
When oil and gas are pumped from the ground, they come up with briny fluid called “produced water,” many times saltier than the sea and laden with chemicals, including some that cause cancer. Most of this toxic water is shot back underground using what are known as injection wells.
