Monthly Archive for December, 2010

Humans are More at Risk from Diseases as Biodiversity Disappears

Published on December 26, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Scientific American, John Platt, Dec 7, 2010

People often ask me, “Why should I care if a species goes extinct? It’s not essential to my daily life, is it?”

Well, according to new research published December 2 in Nature, the answer is yes—healthy biodiversity is essential to human health. As species disappear, infectious diseases rise in humans and throughout the animal kingdom, so extinctions directly affect our health and chances for survival as a species. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

“Biodiversity loss tends to increase pathogen transmission across a wide range of infectious disease systems,” the study’s first author, Bard College ecologist Felicia Keesing, said in a prepared statement.

These pathogens can include viruses, bacteria and fungi. And humans are not the only ones at risk: all manner of other animal and plant species could be affected.

The rise in diseases and other pathogens seems to occur when so-called “buffer” species disappear. Co-author Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies points to the growing number of cases of Lyme disease in humans as an example of how this happens.

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Health “Halos” Con Calorie Counters

Published on December 26, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

Scientific American, Steve Mirsky | November 19, 2010

When it comes to counting calories, a mind is a terrible thing to your waist.

Yiddish literature includes numerous stories about the mythical village of Chelm, filled with people who, well, let’s put it this way: they are not likely to graduate first in their Yeshiva class. One such tale involves befuddled carpenters who could not figure out why, no matter how many times they cut additional pieces off the ends of a board, it was still too short. Oy.

Now new research shows that when it comes to food, most people are honorary citizens of Chelm. Investigator Alexander Chernev, for one, has discovered that many people believe they can cut a meal’s calorie count by an ingenious method—adding more food! Oy.

Chernev, who investigates consumer behavior at Northwestern University’s Kellogg (snap, crackle, pop) School of Management, spends an inordinate amount of time around hamburgers for a guy who’s not managing a McDonald’s. Publishing in theJournal of Consumer Psychology, he explains that people act as if healthful foods have “halos”—their healthfulness extends to the rest of the meal. Vegetables and fruit: big halos. Angel food cake: no halo. Go figure.

Here is where the mind applies cockamamie calculus to meals. Eaters consider a food’s health fulness to be related to how “fattening” it is. “Because healthier meals are perceived to be less likely to promote weight gain,” Chernev writes, “people erroneously assume that adding a healthy item to a meal decreases its potential to promote weight gain.” More is less, more or less.

He had more than 900 subjects look at four different meals and estimate their calorie contents. The meals were a hamburger, a bacon-and-cheese waffle sandwich, chili with beef and a meatball-pepperoni cheesesteak—none of which are going to win any prizes from the American Heart Association, and all of which sound really good right now.

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Worker Wellness and Reducing the Spread of Germs

Published on December 8, 2010 in News. 1 Comment

Marianne Santangelo, EHS Today

Every year, the cold and flu season takes its toll on U.S. industry, sidelining workers and derailing production. If you control the spread of germs in the workplace, you might reduce the number of cases of flu suffered by your employees.

The flu, as well as other viruses, can lead to losses in workplace productivity due to absenteeism from workers who are themselves sick or those who must stay home to care for others.

Up to 20 percent of the population gets the seasonal flu annually, while more than 200,000 people are hospitalized with flu-related complications. Some 36,000 people in this country die from flu-related causes each year.

Flu seasons are unpredictable in a number of ways, including when they begin, how severe they are, how long they last and which viruses will spread. The emergence of the H1N1 influenza virus in 2009 caused the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years, which led to more uncertainties than usual and high levels of flu activity much earlier in the year than during most regular flu seasons.

The economic consequences of a flu pandemic are daunting. A 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that the impact of a flu pandemic would be $71.3 to $166.5 billion, excluding disruptions to commerce and society. (“The Economic Impact of Pandemic Influenza in the United States: Priorities for Intervention,” Martin I. Meltzer, Nancy J. Cox, and Keiji Fukuda, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta.)

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Cholera Rages in Rural Haiti, Overwhelming Clinics

Published on December 3, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

BEN FOX, Associated Press, Dec 3, 2010

LIMBE, Haiti – A gray-haired woman, her eyes sunken and unfocused from dehydration, stumbles up a dirt path slumped on the shoulder of a young man, heading to a rural clinic so overcrowded that plastic tarps have been strung up outside to shade dozens who can’t fit inside.

On the path to the clinic, another cholera victim lies dazed, her head bleeding because she couldn’t stay atop the motorcycle taxi that carried her along the twisting country roads to the treatment center on the front line of Haiti’s sudden battle with cholera.

Nearby, a 16-month-old girl wails as a nurse prods her with a needle, trying to find a vein for the intravenous fluids she needs to save her life.

Many feared Haiti’s growing epidemic would overwhelm a capital teeming with more than 1 million people left homeless by January’s earthquake. But, so far, it is the countryside seeing the worst of an epidemic that has killed nearly 1,900 people since erupting less than two months ago.

Rural clinics are overrun by a spectral parade of the sick, straining staff and supplies at medical outposts that could barely handle their needs before the epidemic.

At the three-room clinic near Limbe, in northern Haiti, a handful of doctors and nurses are treating 120 people packed into three rooms.

“It’s really attacking us,” Guy Valcoure, grandfather of the 16-month-old, says of the cholera. He piled on the back of a motorcycle with the baby and her mother to make a 40-minute ride in pre-dawn gloom to reach the clinic.

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