- CHE Partnership Call -- Tomorrow, July 12
- Working and Regional Group Updates
- Tools, Announcements and Resources for CHE Partners
- CHE Science News Headlines
- New CHE Partners
__________________________
Dear CHE Partners and Friends:
The CHE Working Group on Parkinson's Disease and the Environment held a pioneering and highly successful consensus conference on Parkinson's disease and the environment in Sunnyvale, CA on June 26-28, 2007.
Modeled on the previous CHE consensus conference on infertility and pregnancy compromise, the PD conference brought together more than 40 researchers, clinicians, representatives of patient advocacy groups and patients to examine the state of the science vis-a-vis PD and environmental factors.
The goal of the conference was to ask the scientists present to develop a working consensus on what is well-established regarding PD and the environment, what can be estimated with confidence and what requires more research.
Attendees heard presentations on a variety of relevant topics including PD and aging, smoking, caffeine, head injuries, pesticides and heavy metals. Scientists then began the process of ranking the confidence level in the science available on each topic.
In a departure from previous environmental health consensus conferences, the participants decided to use a more refined science ranking system developed by the Institute of Medicine, which offers six categories in which levels of confidence in findings can be ranked instead of three. This actually assisted the ranking process considerably, since IOM has also developed criteria for assigning findings to each category.
The meeting was also noteworthy for the collegial atmosphere that developed among leading scientists, clinicians, PD policy advocates, patient group representatives and environmental health advocates. Part of the intention of the conference was to begin to develop a community of PD leaders dedicated to preventing Parkinson's disease.
A smaller group of conference participants are currently drafting a scientific consensus statement that will then be circulated to other attendees to sign. A lay monograph is also being developed for use in educating the public and policymakers in conjunction with the scientific statement.
Jackie Hunt Christiansen, Elise Miller, Pete Myers, Ted Schettler and Michael Lerner were among the CHE Partners who helped bring this important gathering to fruition.
CHE thanks our partners from the Parkinson's Institute and the Parkinson's Action Network and all those who attended. We also thank the John Merck Fund, Barbara Smith Fund, Parkinson Association of Minnesota and an anonymous donor for support of this important gathering.
Michael Lerner, PhD
Founding CHE Partner
__________________________
1. CHE Policy Education Call Announcement - July 12
We hope you will join us for the next CHE Partnership Call scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, July 12th at 9am PST / 12noon EST.
This teleconference will focus on the evidence linking federal farm and food policies with chronic disease, especially including childhood obesity and other diet-related disease, but also environmentally-related disease to which agricultural practices contribute. The 2007 reauthorization of the omnibus Farm Bill has made these links salient. Other factors, however, also contribute: ongoing budget cuts in federal food safety inspection and other programs; recent Institute of Medicine reports on school lunch programs and media reports on the use of melamine and arsenic in the food supply. Speakers will highlight the scientific evidence on these links, as well as the relevance of the precautionary principle in issues involving the food system and children's diets.
This teleconference will last one hour, and will be recorded for documentation purposes.
The moderator of this call will be Steve Heilig, MPH, Director of Public Health and Education for CHE and the San Francisco Medical Society. We will hear a science update from Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, Science Director, Science and Environmental Health Network.
Featured Presentations:
- Dr. David Wallinga, Director, Food and Health Program, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
- Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, Director, Center for a Liveable Future, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
- Dr. Kelly Brownell, Director, Rudd Center for Child Obesity Research, Yale University
Click here to RSVP for this call. We hope you can join us!
For more information about this call, visit: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/articles/partnership_calls/1669.
TOP
2. Working and Regional Group Updates
Collaborative on Health and the Environment Alaska (CHE-AK) ~ coordinated by Pamela
Miller, Director, Alaska Community Action on Toxics (pkmiller@akaction.net)
Please join us for the next CHE-AK conference call, From the National to the Local-Perspectives on Wild Alaska Fish and the Contaminants within Them, on July 18 at 9am Alaska / 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern time.
Global contaminants have been detected in Alaska waters and Alaska fish including mercury, organochlorine pesticides, and PCB congeners. Contaminants are carried to Alaska by air and water currents from distant sources. Mercury accumulates in wildlife and people and is associated with a range of adverse health effects including birth defects and brain damage, learning disabilities, loss of vision and blindness, kidney damage, numbness, and lack of coordination. The developing brain of babies in the womb, nursing infants and children are especially vulnerable to mercury. Recently, there has been some debate over the question of whether Alaska fish is safe to eat due to the detection of mercury. Mercury levels that have been detected are low compared to those in many places throughout the continental United States, but nonetheless are present in Alaska fish. Fish are vital to the traditional diet of Alaska Native peoples.
The speakers will provide information on the implications of contaminants in Alaska fish to human health, social and cultural values, as well as commercial fisheries. Participants will learn about the State of Alaska's efforts to monitor mercury levels in humans and the environment. This teleconference briefing provides an opportunity to hear different perspectives about contaminants in Alaska fish and ways to prevent future harm. The discussion will focus on how we can determine the implications of contaminant levels for the health and well-being of people living in Alaska and throughout the world.
Featured speakers:
- Dr. Jane Hightower, Doctor of Internal Medicine at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco,
- Violet Yeaton, Tribal Environmental Planner and Environmental Planner under the IGAP (Indian General Assistance Program) with Environmental Protection Agency, and
- Lori Verbrugge, Environmental Public Health Program Manager for the Alaska Division of Public Health.
To join this call and receive dial-in instructions, please RSVP to Alaska Community Action on Toxics at the following email address: info@akaction.net or phone 907-222-7714.
________________
CHE's Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative (LDDI) Working Group ~ coordinated by Elise Miller, MEd, Executive Director, Institute for Children's Environmental Health (emiller@iceh.org)
To fulfill the educational goals of the cancelled LDDI national conference in Atlanta last May, LDDI will launch a seven-part teleconference series on Wednesday, September 12 at 2pm Eastern time. Each call in the series will include a panel of speakers who were to present in Atlanta.
LDDI's consensus statement is currently being drafted by Steve Gilbert, PhD, Founder and Director of the Institute for Neurotoxicology and Neurological Disorders, with support of almost a dozen key researchers from across the country. The statement will be further reviewed, refined, finalized and signed by as wide a circle of researchers as possible by October 2007 and presented at the International Neurotoxicology Conference to be held in Austin, Texas, November 11-15, 2007.
American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities held their regularly scheduled environmental health research teleconference call on July 10. Their guest presenter was Cynthia Bearer, MD, PhD, who spoke on "Detecting the Impact of Ethanol on the Fetus and Understanding its Underlying Mechanism." For more information and notes from Dr. Bearer's presentation as well as those from previous calls, please see: http://www.ehinitiative.org/index.htm.
The Autism Society of America opened their annual national conference today (July 11) in Scottsdale, AZ. The theme of the conference is "Together a Brighter Tomorrow" and several sessions throughout the four-day meeting will highlight environmental health concerns in relation to autism. For more information, see http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer.
________________
Collaborative on Health and the Environment Washington (CHE-WA) ~ coordinated by Aimee Boulanger, Program Director, Institute for Children's Environmental Health (aboulanger@iceh.org)
Aimee Boulanger, Program Director, Institute for Children's Environmental Health's (ICEH's), is the new coordinator for CHE-WA. Aimee has long-term experience in environmental health and collaborative initiatives. She is working closely with all the CHE-WA working groups and the CHE-WA steering committee as well as CHE-AK and CHE-OR. Elise Miller, Executive Director, ICEH and CHE-WA's Founding Coordinator, will remain very engaged with CHE-WA's state and regional efforts, though Aimee will now be the primary point person. Aimee can be reached at: aboulanger@iceh.org.
Notes from the most recent quarterly meeting on May 16, which primarily focused on pesticides, are now posted on the CHE-WA website. The next quarterly meeting will be held on September 14 at Antioch University in Seattle. Michael Lerner, PhD, Founder and President of Commonweal and Co-founder of CHE National, will be our guest speaker.
CHE-WA Working Group Updates:
a) Precautionary Principle Working Group members, led by Tracee Mayfield with Public Health - Seattle/King County, and other colleagues collectively developed and submitted a Letter of Inquiry for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop a "Primary Prevention Toolkit" which will integrate the precautionary principle into local health promotion strategies. The group is currently waiting to hear about a full proposal;
b) Climate Change Working Group members, led by Roger Rosenblatt, MD, MPH, MFR with the University of Washington Medical School, have been following-up on Governor Gregoire's Climate Change Initiative and the Climate Impacts Group at University of Washington (funded by House Bill 1303). Members' primary focus is on reviewing and providing feedback on documents related to these efforts; and
c) Environmental Justice Working Group members are currently reviewing a draft compilation of local, county and state organizations and agencies working on environmental justice efforts. Millie Piazza, the new environmental justice coordinator for the Department of Ecology developed this. The intention is to establish a central database so that those working on these issues can be better informed about which groups are undertaking what projects and how to contact them.
To better meet the needs of CHE-Washington members, the Institute for Children's Environmental Health's Special Projects Coordinator, Nancy Snow, MSc, has developed a searchable calendar of environmental health events in the Pacific Northwest on the CHE-WA website. We also plan to add a clearinghouse of existing presentations, curricula and other training materials available for use by CHE-WA members and to improve environmental health training services in Washington State.
________________
TOP
3. Tools, Announcements and Resources for CHE Partners
New on the CHE Website: Add Your Announcements and Events to the CHE Website!
Do you have an environmental health announcement or an event that you would like to announce? Now you can add both to the CHE website at: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/.
________________
Toxipedia: Connecting Science and People -- www.toxipedia.org
Toxipedia, the free toxicology encyclopedia and resource center with the vision of connecting science and people, continues to make significant advances. Toxipedia is a program of the Institute of Neurotoxicology and Neurological Disorders (INND) a nonprofit educational organization working to empower people by providing information about the health effects of chemicals and related policies. For more information, visit: http://toxipedia.org/.
________________
North Carolina Community-Based Environmental Justice Summit - Call for Research Presentations - September 7 Deadline
North Carolina's 9th Annual Community-Based Environmental Justice Summit will be held October 19-20, 2007 at the Historic Franklinton Center at Bricks, Edgecombe County, NC. Community members, government officials, environmentalists, students and researchers will participate. The Summit seeks to raise public awareness about environmental justice; connect communities in need with technical resources; support and encourage community-driven research; help communities and policy makers address problems of environmental injustice; and, bring about positive changes in public health and the environment by promoting social and environmental justice. For more information, contact Steve Wing at: steve_wing@unc.edu.
________________
Northwest Health Foundation 3rd Community-Based Participatory Research Conference
Can community-based participatory research lead to social change? What is at stake when communities are not driving research agendas? These questions and other issues related to community-based participatory research will be explored at the Northwest Health Foundation 3rd Community-Based Participatory Research Conference, which will be held July 19-20 in Portland, Oregon. This event, the theme of which is Healthier Communities through Action and Research, will provide a dynamic forum for exploring issues related to community-based research partnerships, methods, funding, project planning, and the dissemination of findings. For more information and to register, visit: http://www.nwhfevents.org.
________________
DVDs of the CHE National Conference, Environmental Public Health: Science, Medicine,
Prevention And Policy are Now Available
We are pleased to offer a limited number of DVDs from the October 2006 CHE National Conference titled, Environmental Public Health: Science, Medicine, Prevention And Policy. Each DVD set (the conference spans three DVDs) is available at cost for $15 (including shipping) and features all of the conference presentations. For more information and to place an order, visit: http://www.healthandenvironment.org/articles/announcements/1045.
________________
TOP
4. CHE Science News Headlines
Most of these articles have been gleaned from Above the Fold.
Global Climate Change And Toxic Chemicals: A Potentially Lethal Combination
Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), 1 July 2007
As temperature influences the toxic effects of chemicals, so does chemical exposure influence the temperature tolerance of an organism. The consequences of this harmful reciprocal relationship on four freshwater fish are explored in a new study published in the latest issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Continue reading...
Probe Finds NIH Official Violated Government Regulations
Washington Post, Rick Weiss, 27 June 2007
A high-powered institute director at the National Institutes of Health disregarded conflict-of-interest guidelines by making decisions affecting the university where he was a faculty member, broke government spending rules, and raised concerns with his growing involvement as an expert witness in legal cases, according to sources within NIH and Congress and hundreds of pages of confidential documents. David Schwartz, a physician and researcher recruited from Duke University to great fanfare in 2005 as chief of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, was found to have spent modest amounts of institute money for personal purposes but was cleared of other allegations of wrongdoing in a recent internal NIH ethics review obtained by The Washington Post. Continue reading...
New Rules Expected on Safety of Nanotechnology Products
New York Times, Barnaby J. Feder, 21 June 2007
DuPont and Environmental Defense, one of the nation's largest environmental groups, plan to release jointly developed guidelines today for evaluating the safety and environmental risks of nanotechnology products. The guidelines are the most extensive effort yet to address a vexing issue surrounding the rapidly expanding field of nanotechnology: the lack of information about whether materials in such minute sizes can pose novel or unexpected hazards. Continue reading (subscription required)...
Fish Study Raises Red Flag on Water Supply
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Don Hopey, 21 June 2007
Fish caught in the rivers near Allegheny County's storm sewer overflow pipes contain almost twice as much of certain estrogenic chemicals that can cause cancer, a University of Pittsburgh study has found. The link between sewage plant discharges and fish contaminated with those chemicals has been established by studies in other urban areas around the world, but the finding is particularly significant in Allegheny County, which has more than 400 sanitary and combined sewer overflows. Continue reading...
Scientist's Endorsement of Bisphenol A under Review
Toronto Globe and Mail, Martin Mittelstaedt, 20 June 2007
The head of the Health Canada scientific team studying the safety of bisphenol A has been abruptly reassigned, while the department investigates claims he is too biased in favor of the chemical to objectively analyze it. Continue reading...
Study Reignites Debate on Sweetener's Safety
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Susanne Rust, 20 June 2007
Researchers have strengthened a link between aspartame - a common sweetener in diet sodas, medicines and sugar-free candies - and cancer in rats. Continue reading...
Fired Scientist Says State Muzzled Him
Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dan Browning and Tom Meersman, 19 June 2007
A whistleblower lawsuit by an atrazine researcher prompts a legislator to seek hearings at the Capitol. The Legislature should investigate claims that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency barred a state scientist from testifying about the dangers of the farm chemical atrazine and then fired him, state Rep. Ken Tschumper said Tuesday. Continue reading (subscription required)...
Father's Day Report Notes Greater Environmental Risks to Boys; Urges Precaution and Increased Awareness
Children's Health & Environment, 15 June 2007
In a report released for Father's Day, the Canadian Partnership for Children's Health and Environment urges greater awareness among parents, especially fathers, about environmental risks to boys. "All children are at risk from exposure to environmental hazards, but boys appear to be at greater risk," said Dr. Lynn Marshall, with the Ontario College of Family Physicians. Continue reading...
TOP
5. New CHE Partners
We welcome the many new CHE Partners who have joined since the last newsletter. To see the New CHE Partners and the growing list of all CHE Partners, please visit:
http://www.healthandenvironment.org/base/partners-recent.
__________________________
Thank you for taking the time to read the latest about CHE. As always, we welcome your feedback, suggestions or questions. Please direct them to Eleni Sotos, CHE Program Director, at: Eleni@HealthandEnvironment.org.
Best wishes,
Eleni Sotos, MA, Program Director
and
Frieda Nixdorf, MA, Administrative Specialist
TOP
