ISDE Italia News
A cura dell'Associazione Medici per l'Ambiente
Numero 151 (16 novembre 2006)
ENGAGING FOR HEALTH. A GLOBAL HEALTH AGENDA
WHO’s eleventh General Programme of Work 2006-2015.
WHO’s new 10 years strategy document represents the outcome of work and engagement across all regions of the world and sectors including government ministries, civil society, United Nations agencies, non governmental organizations, academia and private sector. The Health Assembly unanimously approved this key strategic direction. This is now the new global health agenda for WHO, its Member States and the international community for the period 2006 to 2015. The title, “Engaging for Health”, describe what we have to do now. The seven-point agenda stems from an analysis of the current global health situation and includes priority areas such as poverty, security, and the determinants of health, among others. All stakeholders will see their own role within the agenda and identify how they might organize their work individually and in partnership, to maximize their impact on these areas of global concern. The broad participation in its preparation must be the starting point for a broader involvement in health across the globe. No single entity can do it alone.
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REDUCING THE HEALTH RISKS FOR CHILDREN FROM OZONE LAYER DEPLETION
New Ozone Education Pack Targets Primary Schools.
Fonte: WHO, UNEP and UNESCO Joint News Release WHO/51.
Looking at your shadow and covering up with hats, sunglasses and sunscreen are among the practical tips for children container in a new guide on the ozone layer for primary school teachers. The “OzonAction Education Pack”, launched globally today in English, French and Spanish, contains an entire teaching and learning programme, based on basic knowledge, practical skills and participation, to enable children to learn about simple solutions to protect the ozone layer and safely enjoy the sun. the pack, produced jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), has been released to co-incide with the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer on the 16th of September. This year’s theme is “Protect the Ozone Layer, Safe Life on Earth”.
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CHEMICAL DUMP IN CÔTE D'IVOIRE. WHO PROVIDING PUBLIC HEALTH SUPPORT
Fonte: Note for the Media WHO/26.
A World Health Organization international team is in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, to support the Ministry of Health in dealing with an environmental health emergency caused by toxic chemical waste. A clinical toxicologist arrived last week to make an initial evaluation of the situation, particularly with respect to the severity and extent of ill health caused by the chemicals. There is now an environmental health specialist and an emergency operations manager in the field and a further technical specialist will join the team. This team is being supported by additional chemical, food safety, water and sanitation, and crisis management specialists at WHO HQ and the WHO Regional Office for Africa. The WHO team is assisting the WHO country office in several tasks, including coordinating response to the public health consequences of the crisis; carrying out an initial risk assessment and proposing measures to prevent further exposure of the population to the chemicals, and working with partners to accelerate the removal of the waste; working on clear messages for the general public on prevention of exposure; advising on the organization of medical care, including developing a clinical management protocol, and initiating basic epidemiological surveillance; helping identify and deliver much-needed supplies for the healthcare system. WHO has sent personal protection equipment and toxicological information. In addition WHO is collaborating with other UN agencies and international teams in Abidjan that are dealing with this emergency. WHO is in regular contact with hospitals and health centres to evaluate the burden being placed upon the health care system by this emergency. The large number of medical consultations connected with the chemical waste has resulted in a doubling of the usual workload and almost all of the personnel of the hospitals and clinics have been diverted to receive these patients, such that regular consultations have all-but-ceased. This is hampering people's access to primary and emergency health care.
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EMBARGO. WHO GIVES INDOOR USE OF DDT A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH FOR CONTROLLING MALARIA Fonte: News Release WHO/50.
WHO Promotes Indoor Spraying with Insecticides as One of Three Main Interventions to Fight Malaria.
Nearly thirty years after phasing out the widespread use of indoor spraying with DDT and other insecticides to control malaria, WHO today announced that this intervention will once again play a major role in its efforts to fight the disease. WHO is now recommending the use of indoor residual spraying (IRS) not only in epidemic areas but also in areas with constant and high malaria transmission, including throughout Africa. WHO actively promoted indoor residual spraying for malaria control until the early 80s when increased health and environmental concerns surrounding DDT caused the organization to stop promoting its use and to focus instead on other means of prevention. Extensive research and testing has since demonstrated that well-managed indoor residual spraying programmes using DDT pose no harm to wildlife or to humans. Indoor residual spraying is the application of long-acting insecticides on the walls and roofs of houses and domestic animal shelters in order to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes that land on these surfaces. Views about the use of insecticides for indoor protection from malaria have been changing in recent years. The recently-launched President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) announced last year that it would also fund DDT spraying on the inside walls of households to prevent the disease. Programmatic evidence shows that correct and timely use of indoor residual spraying can reduce malaria transmission by up to 90%. At today’s news conference, the World Health Organization also called on all malaria control programmes around the world to develop and issue a clear statement outlining their position on indoor spraying with long-lasting insecticides such as DDT, specifying where and how spraying will be implemented in accordance with WHO guidelines, and how they will provide all possible support to accelerate and manage this intervention effectively. Indoor residual spraying is one of the main interventions WHO is now promoting to control and eliminate malaria globally.
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WATER, SANITATION AND HEALTH ELECTRONIC LIBRARY (WSH CD-ROM) – IV EDITION
The Water, Sanitation and Health electronic library, Fourth edition, includes more than 220 documents of new and current publications. The documents provide information on progress towards achieving the MDG target on access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, and on the public health dimensions of water supply and sanitation, recreational bathing waters, drinking-water quality, wastewater use, water resources development and management and health care waste management. The CD ROM is intended to assist all those interested in water, sanitation and health with comprehensive up-to-date information. Users include public health specialists, scientists, policy makers, practitioners, academics, and non-governmental organizations in developing and developed countries. By assisting these and other user groups the electronic library is intended to contribute towards the International Decade for Action, Water for Life: 2005-2015. The CD ROM is periodically supplemented and update. The next edition is scheduled in 2008.
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NUCLEAR POWER
In January 2003, the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), a Brussels based group of independent scientists headed by Dr Chris Busby, adviser to the UK Ministry of Defence, using a risk assessment model developed over the previous five years, released a report detailing estimated mortality from ionising radiation from fission material produced by the international nuclear weapons development program and nuclear power plants. The report states that radioactive releases up to 1989 have caused or will eventually cause 65 million deaths world wide. It challenges the conventional view of risk assessment by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, which has often been criticised as being biased in favour of the nuclear industry, and postulates that a portion of the increased incidence of certain cancers globally could be accounted for by the acknowledged increase in ionising radiation. Nuclear power protagonists claim that it can substitute for a substantial portion of the energy deficit in the wake of decreasing fossil fuel supplies. This is a myth, for the following reasons: the share of electricity generation world-wide by the nuclear industry is repeatedly and constantly overstated; it is not the answer to climate change; like fossil fuels, uranium is a finite reserve; nuclear waste from power stations is highly toxic and it will contaminate the earth for hundreds of thousands of years; nuclear fission in a reactor produces the raw material required for bomb manufacture; an accident could occur in any nuclear power station; job creation is much greater and more widely distributed in the sustainable energy industry. Nuclear energy makes no sense, scientifically, economically, environmentally or socially. A sustainable future demands: restriction in growth of energy requirement, or even overall reduction; a mix of solar thermal and electricity power stations, wind farms, hydroelectric and biomass is required; the prevention of war due to the diminishing supplies of fossil fuels and uranium.
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DIOXIN AND DIOXIN-LIKE PCB EXPOSURE OF NON-BREASTFED DUTCH INFANTS by P.J.M. Weijsa, M.I. Bakkerb, K.R. Korvera, K. van Goor Ghanaviztchia and J.H. van Wijnenc.
The exposure of humans to PCDD/Fs (polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans) and dioxin-like PCBs (dl-PCBs, i.e. polychlorinated non-ortho and mono-ortho biphenyls) occurs predominantly via the intake of food. Young children have a relatively high intake of these substances, due to their high food consumption per kilogram body weight. As the exposure of non-breastfed infants to these compounds has not been assessed before in The Netherlands, we studied the dietary intake of 17 PCDD/Fs and 11 dioxin-like PCBs in 188 Dutch non-breastfed infants between 4 and 13 months. The food intake of the infants was assessed by a 2-d food record. From these data PCDD/F and dioxin-like PCB intake was calculated using PCDD/F and dioxin-like PCB concentrations of food products sampled in 1998/1999 in The Netherlands. The long-term PCDD/F and dioxin-like PCB exposure of the infants was calculated using the statistical exposure model (STEM).
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TRACKING POPS ACROSS THE PLANET
A team of scientists from North America and Europe is publishing the most comprehensive analysis yet of global concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in air in this issue of ES&T. Although some of the data have been presented at scientific conferences, this is the first time the information is being published in a peer-reviewed journal. The new data on persistent organic pollutants in air were collected at 42 passive sampling stations on 7 continents, including ones at Iceland’s Vestmann Islands and Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. The researchers present information about levels of POPs in the air at 42 sites on 7 continents. In addition to the “dirty dozen” POPs targeted by the Stockholm Convention, they provide data about some emerging contaminants under consideration for inclusion in the treaty, including the polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants and the pesticide endosulfan.
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INHALATION OF AIRBORNE FINE AND ULTRAFINE PM ASSOCIATED WITH COMBUSTION
Inhalation of airborne fine and ultrafine PM has been identified as a major route of exposure to toxic combustion by-products; research should address this poorly understood area. From a combustion and environmental chemistry perspective, key research issues include the following: how are combustion-generated fine PM and ultrafine PM formed? How do their chemical properties differ from larger PM? What is the nature of association of chemicals with these particles? How is the chemical and biological reactivity of these chemicals changed by association with the particles? What is the role of PM-associated persistent free radicals in the environmental impacts of fine and ultrafine PM?
From a health effects perspective, key research issues associated with combustion-generated fine and ultrafine PM include the following: what is the role of PM on cell/organ functioning at initial sites of exposure? What is the bioavailability of these particles to other tissues? How are these particles translocated to these secondary sites, and do their chemical properties change en route? How does acute/chronic exposure lead to adverse organ pathophysiology? Is developmental timing of exposure important? What effect does exposure have on predisposing to disease states or on disease progression? Most important, what are the specific cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with airborne exposures?
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FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT: DEPRESSION AND RELEVANT PSYCHIATRIC CONDITION IN PRIMARY CARE
The World Psychiatric Association will present in Granada (Spain) on 19-21 June 2008 at the Conferences and Exhibitions Centre “Depression and relevant psychiatric condition in primary care”. Depression will be second to cardiovascular disease as a global cause of disability by 2020. It occurs in up to a quarter of general practice attendees, relapse is frequent five to 10 years from first presentation and residual disability is common. PREDICT (Prediction of future episodes of depression in primary medical care: evaluation of a risk factor profil) is an European Commission Vth Framework study of the predictors of depression in general practise attendees in six European and one Latin American country. Two associated studies (PREDICT-GEN and PREDICT-Spain) are financed by the Spanish agencies PN i+D and FIS. The results of this ground-breaking research will form the basis of this Thematic International Conference with the following key objectives: to present new data on predictors of depression; to debate their significance for health promotion and prevention of depression in family practice; to promote inter-professional exchange between mental health and primary care professionals on management of depression and other common mental disorders in family practice.
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IMMUNOTOXIC EFFECTS OF SHORT-TERM ATRAZINE EXPOSURE IN YOUNG MALE C57BL/6 MICE of Nikolay M. Filipov, Lesya M. Pinchuk, Bobbie L. Boyd and Patrick L. Crittenden.
Fonte: Toxicological Sciences.
The herbicide atrazine (ATR) is a very widely used pesticide; yet the immunotoxicological potential of ATR has not been studied extensively. The objective was to examine the effect of ATR on selected immune parameters in juvenile mice. ATR (up to 250 mg/kg) was administered by oral gavage for 14 days to one-month-old male C57BL/6 mice. One day, one week, and seven weeks after the last ATR dose, mice were sacrificed, and blood, spleens, and thymuses were collected and processed for cell counting and flow cytometry. Thymus and spleen weights were decreased by ATR, with the thymus being more sensitive than the spleen; this effect was still present at seven days, but not at seven weeks after the last ATR dose. Similarly, organ cellularity was persistently decreased in the thymus and in the spleen, with the splenic, but not thymic cellularity still being depressed at seven weeks post ATR. Peripheral blood leukocyte counts were not affected by ATR. There were also alterations in the cell phenotypes in that ATR exposure decreased all phenotypes in the thymus. ATR exposure appears to be detrimental to the immune system of juvenile mice by decreasing cellularity and affecting lymphocyte distribution, with certain effects persisting long after exposure has been terminated.
PESTICIDE USE AND MENSTRUAL CYCLE CHARACTERISTICS AMONG PREMENOPAUSAL WOMEN IN THE AGRICULTURAL HEALTH STUDY of S. L. Farr, G. S. Cooper, J. Cai, D. A. Savitz and D. P. Sandler.
Fonte: American Journal of Epidemiology.
Menstrual cycle characteristics may have implications for women’s fecundability and risk of hormonally related diseases. Certain pesticides disrupt the estrous cycle in animals. The authors investigated the cross-sectional association between pesticide use and menstrual function among 3103 women living on farms in Iowa and North Carolina. Women were aged 21–40 years, premenopausal, not pregnant or breastfeeding and not taking oral contraceptives. At study enrollment (1993–1997), women completed two self-administered questionnaires on pesticide use and reproductive health. Exposures of interest were lifetime use of any pesticide and hormonally active pesticides. Menstrual cycle characteristics of interest included cycle length, missed periods, and intermenstrual bleeding. The authors used generalized estimating equations to assess the association between pesticide use and menstrual cycle characteristics, controlling for age, body mass index, and current smoking status. Women who used pesticides experienced longer menstrual cycles and increased odds of missed periods compared with women who never used pesticides. Women who used probable hormonally active pesticides had a 60–100% increased odds of experiencing long cycles, missed periods, and intermenstrual bleeding compared with women who had never used pesticides. Associations remained after control for occupational physical activity. The menstrual cycle is a hormonally controlled process, although several factors may influence its length and regularity. Certain pesticides are known or suspected to have hormonal or ovotoxic properties with consequent adverse reproductive effects on animals and humans, but little is known about the effect of pesticides on women’s menstrual function. Menstrual cycle characteristics have implications for women’s fecundability and risk of chronic diseases such as osteoporosis and cancers associated with reproductive hormones.