Danger Dust

The evidence for acute effects of air pollution on mortality in India is scarce, despite the extreme concentrations of air pollution observed. This is the first multi-city study in India that examines the association between short-term exposure to PM2·5 and daily mortality using causal methods that highlight the importance of locally generated air pollution.

Interpretation

Short-term PM2·5 exposure was associated with a high risk of death in India, even at concentrations well below the current Indian PM2·5 standard. These associations were stronger for locally generated air pollutants quantified through causal modelling methods than conventional time-series analysis, further supporting a plausible causal link.

Highlights

•A comprehensive meta-analysis of glyphosate concentration patterns in rivers revealed new sources.

•European river concentration patterns cannot be explained by herbicide application.

•Seasonal concentration patterns resemble those of wastewater markers.

•Glyphosate enters European rivers dominantly via wastewater.

•Glyphosate may be a transformation product of European laundry additives.

Our large meta-analysis clearly shows that for more than a decade, municipal wastewater was a very important source of glyphosate. In addition, European river water data show rather high and constant base mass fluxes of glyphosate all over the year, not expected from herbicide application.

From our meta-analysis, we define criteria for a source of glyphosate, which was hidden so far.

AMPA is known to be a transformation product not only of glyphosate but also of aminopolyphosphonates used as antiscalants in many applications.

As they are used in laundry detergents in Europe but not in the USA, we hypothesize that glyphosate may also be a transformation product of aminopolyphosphonates.

Tick larvae feed on small rodents, from which they pick up disease, then they molt to the nymph stage, get another blood meal from another host, and molt to the adult stage. As adults, they mate, and then the female must have another blood meal [likely on a deer] before laying eggs.

A tick that bites a human at any one of these stages could pass on the bacteria, viruses, or parasites that cause the tick-related diseases, he explained.

That means it's not just the ticks that require study, but rather how they interact with other animals and the whole ecosystem around them.

You are invited to our Support Group!

We're really looking forward to having you join us and other members of the Edinburgh Support Group at The Marriott Hotel on Edinburgh Road at 2:30 pm on Saturday, August 17, 2024. We're lucky to have Rob Hunter from ERI sharing some of his latest research with us. After the presentation, we'll have sandwiches, tea, coffee, and a great chance to chat and learn from each other. Just a friendly reminder to take note of the venue and time for the event.

If you haven't already registered, please feel free to do so by pressing the Book Now button below, which will take you to our Eventbrite page.

Can't wait to see you there!

Kind Regards,

The Lauren Currie Twilight Foundation

Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America. But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall—and potentially more destruction—from landfalling storms, according to a study in Science Advances.

The research shows a previously unknown relationship between hurricane rainfall and Saharan dust plumes.

"Surprisingly, the leading factor controlling hurricane precipitation is not, as traditionally thought, sea surface temperature or humidity in the atmosphere. Instead, it's Sahara dust."

Previous studies have found that Saharan dust transport may decline dramatically in the coming decades and hurricane rainfall will likely increase due to human-caused climate change.

Leading role of Saharan dust on tropical cyclone rainfall in the Atlantic Basin

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn6106

Environmental contamination by fluorinated chemicals, in particular chemicals from the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) class, has raised concerns around the globe because of documented adverse impacts on human health, wildlife, and ecosystem quality.

Recent studies have indicated that pesticide products may contain a variety of chemicals that meet the PFAS definition, including the active pesticide ingredients themselves.Given that pesticides are some of the most widely distributed pollutants across the world, the legacy impacts of PFAS addition into pesticide products could be widespread and have wide-ranging implications on agriculture and food and water contamination, as well as the presence of PFAS in rural environments.

We believe these data indicate that some pesticide products contain complex mixtures of ultrashort-chain to long-chain PFAS that are present in parts-per-billion concentrations for some of the long- and short-chain PFAS and up to parts-per-hundred concentrations for some of the ultrashort-chain PFAS active ingredients.

The long-term impacts of using mixtures of extremely persistent chemicals on potentially hundreds of millions of acres of US land every year is, to us, a cause for concern.

Most, if not all, PFAS in pesticide products or their degradates are going to be chronic persistent pollutants for the foreseeable future of humanity, and their ultimate impact on human and environmental health are largely unknown.

Here we have identified steps the US government can take to mitigate potential impacts of fluorinated components in pesticides with the ultimate goal of eliminating or reducing their use altogether.

Scientists have discovered that some cancer cells pretend to be "super fit" to fool normal healthy cells into giving them their nutrients, allowing them to expand and spread around the body.

The ICR team discovered that differing levels of extracellular glutamate, a crucial building block and messenger molecule in the body, regulates competition between cells. They found that cells with a lower secretion of glutamate are earmarked as losers when surrounded by normal healthy cells.

When this happens, the loser cell starts to donate its nutrients to its fitter neighbors. In doing this, it actively contributes to the growth of the winner cells and consequently dies in an altruistic fashion.

Importantly, they also found that the process can be exploited by cancer cells, which cheat the system by pretending to be super-fit and increasing their glutamate production. This allows them to expand and spread at the expense of surrounding normal cells.

A drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is a remote-controlled flying machine often equipped with a video camera or sensors. In construction, drones can monitor site progress, conduct safety inspections and even lift heavy materials, with some models capable of lifting over 20kg.

This makes them a viable, cheaper and safer alternative to human construction workers for certain tasks. For instance, drones could reduce the incidence of workers falling from heights, the leading cause of fatalities in the construction industry. They can also lower the cost of site monitoring at night and perform safety inspections over large areas of land, aiding in the maintenance of energy pipelines and other infrastructure projects.

Despite these advantages, the UK’s drone policy is a patchwork of local bylaws, national legislation, and retained European Union (EU) rules, creating a confusing landscape for companies to navigate.

For example, to operate a 250g drone in a busy urban area, a company must register the drone, undergo pilot training, secure insurance, and obtain operational approval from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). This involves designating a flight plan, conducting risk assessments and completing other administrative steps.

Companies must then consider legislation on privacy, data, harassment (for drones that use cameras), noise and human rights, including the potential redundancy (or reskilling) of human workers.

Welders in Australia face serious health problems from inhaling a high level of dangerous fumes, a new study says, but an industry body says workers are already aware of the issue.

Approximately 90 per cent of welders are being exposed to a mixture of carcinogenic particles and gases called “welding fumes”, according to a survey by Curtin University, and three quarters (76 per cent) are inhaling them at a “high level”.

But Geoff Crittenden, chief executive of industry body Weld Australia, told AAP the organisation is already aware of the health issues and has been working on it nationally “for over 30 years”.

“(The study) doesn’t add anything either to the body of knowledge that has been researched globally or what we do in Australia,” he said.

“We’re fully aware of the dangers of fumes.”

The study revealed two thirds or 66.2 per cent of workers weld in restricted spaces and 86.3 per cent weld while leaning over a work site.

Just under a fifth, or 18.9 per cent, say they use a welding booth or exhaust hood.

But Crittenden said he didn’t know anybody in Australia who would work in a confined space without protection, saying: “It would just be totally against the law and you’d have to be pretty stupid to do it.”

The construction industry is not on track to decarbonise by 2050 and uses more resources than most. In 2020, the UK produced a staggering 59.1 million tonnes of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste. Despite most of this material (92.6%) being recycled, much of it was crushed for use in roads and building foundations.

Why is this a problem? Downcycling, as opposed to upcycling, turns high-quality materials into lower-quality products by crushing and mixing them, preventing future use in their original form.

Deconstruction over demolition

Think of buildings as material banks filled with reusable components for future construction. Deconstructing buildings instead of demolishing them – carefully disassembling and salvaging their materials for reuse – can repurpose much of what would otherwise be waste.

Existing buildings are treasures

Imagine if each material in a building had an ID: a material passport consisting of a physical label linked to a database. For example, a glass panel might have a product passport composed of different material passports relating to the materials used to make it (sand, soda ash an limestone).

A door without a material passport might go to waste. The same door with an ID has its physical dimensions, materials, manufacturer information and product details documented. Such a system could prevent these valuable materials being lost or wasted and enable their reuse as a valuable item.

A California company says it has developed a novel way of making concrete that doesn’t contribute to global warming

Its trick is twofold.

The first has to do with ingredients. The production of traditional Portland cement — concrete's main ingredient — requires manufacturers to break down limestone into usable calcium oxide. That typically emits carbon dioxide.

What C-Crete Technologies does instead is to use naturally occurring, abundant rocks — such as zeolite — whose processing does not produce carbon dioxide.

The second step has to do with heat: C-Crete Technologies can manufacture its cement substitute at room temperature. That makes a huge difference, given that cement is typically produced in kilns that reach a scorching 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which requires a massive amount of energy.

Rather than kilns, C-Crete Technologies uses industrial milling to pulverize rock ingredients into fine dust for final mixing.

From then on, it’s just normal concrete chemistry. As it cures, calcium oxide from the concrete catches carbon dioxide from the air and merges with it to become calcite.

Water purification is a big business on Earth. Companies offer everything from desalination to providing just the right pH level for drinking water. But on the Moon, there won’t be a similar technical infrastructure to support the astronauts attempting to make a permanent base there. And there’s one particular material that will make water purification even harder – Moon dust. 

We’ve reported plenty of times about the health problems caused by the lunar regolith, so it seems apparent that you don’t want to drink it. Even more so, the abrasive dust can cause issues with seals, such as those used in electrolyzers to create rocket fuel out of in-situ water resources. It can even adversely affect water purification equipment itself. 

Unfortunately, this contamination is inevitable. Lunar dust is far too adhesive and electrostatically charged to be kept completely separate from the machinery that would recycle or purify the water. So, a group of researchers from DLR in Germany decided to test what would happen if you intentionally dissolved lunar regolith.

The short answer is, unsurprisingly, nothing good. Dissolved lunar regolith causes pH, turbidity, and aluminum concentrations all exceed World Health Organization benchmarks for safe drinking water. This happened even with short exposure times (2 minutes) and static pH values, as they used a 5.5 pH buffer in part of the experiments. 

Experimental study to characterize water contaminated by lunar dust

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/space-technologies/articles/10.3389/frspt.2024.1366591/full

Occupational exposure to silica, one of the most common minerals in the earth’s crust, may lead to microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) — a type of ANCA-associated vasculitis — particularly in individuals with a genetic predisposition to autoimmune diseases, a case report suggests.

Silica, found in sand and rocks, is known to stimulate inflammatory reactions. In fact, silicosis is an occupational lung disease common among those exposed to the mineral that can cause kidney injury and lead to more autoimmune conditions.

In a recent report, a team of researchers in Turkey detailed the case of a 29-year-old man with kidney dysfunction linked to silica exposure who was diagnosed with MPA associated with silicosis.

“Considering that the use and therefore frequency of exposure to silica is increasing with industrial development, awareness should be raised of not only the pulmonary effects of silicosis but also the renal [kidney] damage,” the researchers wrote.

The world makes four billion tonnes of Portland cement, the main ingredient of concrete, every year. This has an enormous carbon footprint — up to 8% of humanity’s yearly production of CO2 comes from this process.

At the moment, low-carbon alternatives aren’t as durable as Portland cement, which hardens fast and strong. The goal of my PhD is to determine how this cement forms so that we might be able to develop materials with a lower carbon footprint.

Research on thousands of proteins measured from a drop of blood demonstrates the ability of proteins to predict the onset of many diverse diseases.

The protein data is linked to the participants' electronic health records. The authors used advanced analytical techniques to pinpoint, for each disease, a 'signature' of between the five and 20 proteins most important for prediction.

The researchers report the ability of protein 'signatures' to predict the onset of 67 diseases including multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, motor neuron disease, pulmonary fibrosis, and dilated cardiomyopathy.

The protein prediction models out-performed models based on standard, clinically recorded information. Prediction based on blood cell counts, cholesterol, kidney function and diabetes tests (glycated hemoglobin) performed less well than the protein prediction models for most examples.

"We are therefore extremely excited about the opportunities that our protein signatures may have for earlier detection and ultimately improved prognosis for many diseases, including severe conditions such as multiple myeloma and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. We identified so many promising examples, the next step is to select high priority diseases and evaluate their proteomic prediction in a clinical setting."

Proteomic signatures improve risk prediction for common and rare diseases

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03142-z

Published Sep 2016

Silica exposure has been associated with several autoimmune diseases, most notably scleroderma and rheumatoid arthritis. Crystalline silica is a well-known adjuvant which induces the transcription of pro-inflammatory cytokines, stimulates T cell responses and decreases number of regulatory T cells, increases oxidative stress, and induces apoptosis.

Particulate air pollution has been linked to the development of systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARD), a term which includes systemic lupus, Sjögren’s syndrome, scleroderma, polymyositis, dermatomyositis, or undifferentiated connective tissue disease in an urban Canadian cohort .

Significant epidemiologic literature exists to support the association between silica, cigarette smoking, oral contraceptives, postmenopausal hormone therapy, and endometriosis with increased risk of incident SLE. Recently, moderate alcohol consumption has been demonstrated to reduce incident SLE risk

For decades, scientists warned that continued burning of oil, gas, and coal would have devastating climate impacts. Those impacts are being felt around the world.

The science of what is happening is clear. For more than 100 years, scientists have known that large quantities of greenhouse gases, released from the burning of fossil fuels, go up into the atmosphere and heat the planet. That heating leads to frequent and more extreme alterations in weather patterns. In that sense, climate change can be thought of as the Great Accelerator.

Climate impacts are felt everywhere, but not felt equally

No place on Earth is immune to the extremes of climate change, but those extremes are not experienced equally.

The overall picture is grim, but there are solutions.

SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus that found its way into humans through mundane contact with infected wildlife that went on to cause the most consequential pandemic for over a century. While it is scholarly to entertain alternative hypotheses, particularly when evidence is scarce, these alternative hypotheses have been implausible for a long time and have only become more-so with increasing scrutiny. Those who eagerly peddle suggestions of laboratory involvement have consistently failed to present credible arguments to support their positions.

Take the time to reflect on the paragraph above and how many words were expended to make the simple point that COVID-19 had a natural origin. This is because there are many people, most notably in the USA, with disproportionate influence who are poised to seize on less explicit statements to undermine a simple, and pretty straightforward, truth.

Across the world, over 800 million people spend their days hungry. More than 2 billion have limited access to food. Yet today’s global food system produces enough to feed every person on the planet.

To account for these trends, we need to look at market concentration, and how a small number of very big companies have come to dominate the production and supply of the food we all eat.

For the global food system has become much more concentrated in recent years, partly through an increase in mergers and acquisitions, where large firms buy up rival companies until they completely dominate key areas.

High levels of market concentration mean less transparency, weaker competition, and more power in the hands of fewer firms. And our research reveals that a rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions is taking place at all stages of the global food system – from seeds and fertilisers to machinery and manufacturing.

This is all part of food being increasingly seen as a source not only of human sustenance, but as a profitable investment – or what is known as the “financialisation of food”.

And while people have been buying and selling food for a very long time, the global system has seen a major incursion of big finance in recent decades. Pension funds, private equity and asset management firms have invested heavily in the sector.

Conclusions

This study provides direct evidence that granite workers with long-term exposure to ≤0.10 mg/m3 respirable crystalline silica are at risk of developing silicosis, particularly if they are employed as stone cutters and carvers.

Although many of the detected cases had simple silicosis with a profusion category of 1 or 2, corresponding to low or moderate radiographic severity, they had an increased prevalence of dyspnea compared to workers with similar smoking histories and no classifiable parenchymal abnormalities.

These results reinforce the importance of regulating and monitoring occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica and justify the periodic radiographic screening of all exposed employees to identify early parenchymal changes indicative of silicosis.

China is installing the wind and solar equivalent of five large nuclear power stations per week

In short:

China is installing record amounts of solar and wind, while scaling back once-ambitious plans for nuclear.

While Australia is falling behind its renewables installation targets, China may meet its end-of-2030 target by the end of this month, according to a report.

What's next?

Energy experts are looking to China, the world's largest emitter and once a climate villain, for lessons on how to rapidly decarbonise.

Farming is a uniquely stressful vocation. Farmers work long hours performing labor-intensive, repetitive and often dangerous tasks. In fact, farming is among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the U.S., according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In her previous work interviewing farmers about their experiences handling stress, many of them expressed a fear that seeking mental health care would be interpreted by fellow farmers or the companies paying them to produce that they can't handle their operation.

"It's much easier for them to turn inward and just consume alcohol," she said. "And it's also more acceptable in rural areas to do that than it is to go to a mental health care facility."

Knowing the stigma that exists within rural farming populations about seeking care and then looking at death by suicide numbers, it really is a public health issue because there are drastic, traumatic outcomes associated with not being able to ask for that care, using alcohol to cope and then feeling hopeless

The future of farmers' well-being—and our global food supply—depends on taking action now.

How do B cells become antibody-producing cells?

Antibodies are one of the key components of the adaptive (or acquired) immune system and target foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses. B cells play a vital role in antibody production and in immune memory that protects us from reinfection.

B cells become activated when an antigen [a substance that triggers the body's immune response] binds to its receptors. Once activated, B cells form what are called "germinal centers."

"We think of germinal centers as factories for B cells to become optimal antibody secreters and choose cell fates to support that function," says Lucas.

B cells have multiple potential fates, including becoming memory cells or antibody-secreting cells (ASC). The role of memory cells is to "remember" specific antigens so that the body can more rapidly initiate an immune response if the antigen returns.

In turn, ASCs begin releasing very large amounts of antibodies that target the intruder into the blood.

The immune system is always on alert, detecting and eliminating pathogens and cancer cells. Cellular control mechanisms cause diseased cells to present antigens on their surface like signs for the immune system.

For analysis of the necessary complex antigen processing and transport processes in real time, a German team has developed a "cage" that is opened with light to release trapped antigens at a specific place and time.

In our cells, both endogenous and foreign proteins are constantly broken into tiny pieces and transported into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a branched system of channels enclosed by a membrane, by the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP). There, the supramolecular peptide loading complex PLC controls the loading of MHC I (major histocompatibility complex class I) with antigenic peptides.

Certain peptides are preferentially loaded onto MHC I, further processed for immune surveillance (antigen processing) and presented on the cell surface. Peptides that come from normal endogenous proteins remain immunologically inconspicuous (barring misdirected autoimmune reactions).

Antigen Delivery Controlled by an On-Demand Photorelease

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202405035

Find could offer lessons for conserving key species in other places

Vultures have long been associated with death, and perhaps for good reason. With their hunched shoulders, hooked beaks, and signature bald heads, they fly around looking for dead and decaying animals to scavenge. But they also serve an important role in protecting human life, a new study finds.

The near-extinction of the birds across India in the 1990s led to the spread of disease-carrying pathogens from an excess of dead animals, killing more than a half-million people from 2000 to 2005. 

Vultures are a keystone species in India, essential to the functioning of many of the country’s ecosystems. The birds of prey don’t just clean up disease-ridden carcasses; by removing food, they reduce the populations of other scavengers, such as feral dogs that can transmit rabies. What’s more, without vultures, farmers dispose their dead livestock in waterways, further spreading disease.

And that’s exactly what happened. In 1994, farmers began giving a drug called diclofenac to cattle and other livestock for pain, inflammation, and other conditions. But it was poisonous to the vultures that fed on these animals, destroying their kidneys. In just a decade, Indian vulture populations fell dramatically, from 50 million individuals to just a couple thousand.

Anant Sudarshan saw the impacts firsthand. As an adolescent in India, Sudarshan—now an environmental economist at the University of Warwick—says the bodies of cattle accumulated outside tanneries and city limits, where fields became carcass dumps for feral dogs and other less efficient scavengers such as rats to feed on. When the remains piled up, the Indian government required tanneries to use chemicals to dispose of the waste, causing toxic substances to leech into waterways used by people.