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Early ‘Forever Chemicals’ Exposure Could Affect Economic Success in Adulthood – Study
Early life exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” could affect economic success in adulthood, new first-of-its-kind research suggests.
The Iowa State University and U.S. Census Bureau working paper compared the earnings, college graduation rates and birth weights of two groups of children — those raised around military installations that had firefighting training areas, and those who lived near bases with no firefighting training sites. The military began using PFAS-laden firefighting foam in the early 1970s, which frequently contaminated the drinking water supplies in and around bases.
Those who lived in regions with firefighting training areas earned about 1.7% on average less later in life, and showed a graduation rate about 1% lower. Those born between 1981 and 1988 earned about $1bn less in today’s earnings, or about $1,000 a person on average, compared with those who did not live near the firefighting training sites.
Air pollution emerges as a growing concern in risk factors linked to lung cancer deaths
Even though lung and related cancer deaths decreased in the world’s 10 most populous countries from 1990 to 2019, these positive statistics do not address trends in mortality linked to tobacco use, air pollution and asbestos exposure. Those areas need ongoing policy measures and research to further reduce deaths, according to a new study from researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and collaborating organizations.
Their study, published in eClinicalMedicine, analyzed tracheal, bronchial and lung (TBL) cancer data from the open-source Global Burden of Disease database. The results indicated an 8% overall decrease in TBL cancer deaths over the three-decade period.
While tobacco-related deaths declined, they continue to represent the majority of cases. Meanwhile, mortality linked to particulate matter air pollution has risen globally, and asbestos exposure remains a critical concern, especially in the U.S.
Why Kids Need To Take More Risks: Science Reveals the Benefits of Wild, Free Play
On a warm, sunny beach near Melbourne, Australia, Alethea Jerebine watched her daughters scrambling up a jumble of rocks. “Can they do that?” she worried about her 10-year-old and 13-year-old. The rocks were pocked with crevices and so steep that they gave Jerebine vertigo. Instinctively, she wanted to tell them to stop. At the same time, she knew her pangs of anxiety were incongruous with her own research.
What her children were doing was a kind of “risky play” — activities ranging from climbing and jumping from heights to simply leaving the watchful eye of an adult. Jerebine is a public health and psychology researcher at Deakin University in Melbourne, who studies the wide-ranging benefits of risky play. Still, she’s not immune to the pressure that many parents and guardians feel to protect their children from every possible harm.
Over the past two decades, research has emerged showing that opportunities for risky play are crucial for healthy physical, mental and emotional development. Children need these opportunities to develop spatial awareness, coordination, tolerance of uncertainty and confidence. Despite this, in many nations risky play is now more restricted than ever, thanks to misconceptions about risk and a general undervaluing of its benefits. Research shows that children know more about their own abilities than adults might think, and some environments designed for risky play point the way forward.
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United States Sees Significant Increase in Orphanhood
There has been a significant increase in orphanhood in the last two decades in the U.S., according to a new study. The research, published in Nature Medicine, estimates that in 2021, 2.9 million children in the U.S., or 4.2% of all U.S. children, had experienced the death of at least one parent or a grandparent caregiver responsible for most of the basic needs of the child.
Orphanhood is defined by the United Nations Children’s Fund as the death of one or both parents. The study estimates that there was a 56% increase in the number of children affected by orphanhood and caregiver death in the U.S. between 2000 and 2021. The research was led jointly by a team at Imperial College London in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It also found that the five states with the highest orphanhood burden were West Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky — with an estimated 1 in 25 children affected by orphanhood. These same five states also had the highest poverty ranking (U.S. Census, 2023), suggesting links between poverty and premature deaths of parents, which in turn is spawning a hidden generation of orphanhood among their bereaved children.
Study Links Gene-Regulating Brain Circuit Formation to Autism and Seizures
The gene neuropilin2 encodes a receptor involved in cell-cell interactions in the brain and plays a key role in regulating the development of neural circuits. Neuropilin2 controls the migration of inhibitory neurons as well as the formation and maintenance of synaptic connections in excitatory neurons — two crucial components of brain activity.
The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, offers a pathway for future treatments aimed at alleviating some challenging symptoms of these frequently co-occurring conditions. Previous research has linked mutations in neuropilin2 to neurological disorders like autism and epilepsy, but the mechanisms involved have remained largely unclear. In the current study, Santhakumar and her collaborators created an “inhibitory neuron selective knockout” mouse model to examine the consequences of deleting the neuropilin2 gene.
They found that the absence of neuropilin2 impairs the migration of inhibitory neurons, disrupting the delicate balance between excitatory and inhibitory signals in the brain.
“This imbalance leads to autism-like behaviors and an increased risk of seizures,” said Santhakumar, lead investigator of the study and a professor of molecular, cell and systems biology.
