Crow Talk

Send your name to space!

You can have your name recorded on a microchip that will be sent on the DAWN spacecraft. The spacecraft will travel to the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Simply type in your name and print out the certificate as proof that your name will be traveling to the Asteroid Belt.

Send your name to space here:
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/DawnCommunity/Sendname2asteroid/index_asteroid_blt.aspx

Learn more about NASA's DAWN mission here:
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/index.asp

A look at gene-environment interactions.

1. The Human Journey
The Genographic Project
National Geographic
A landmark study of the human journey.
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/

2. Obesity
Can genes explain rising obesity?
6/27/06 BBC News
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to people in Western countries who eat bad diets and are not very active. Could the study of epigenetics help us better understand obesity?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5117752.stm

Obesity top risk to moms, newborns
Research shows wide range of perinatal problems in fat women
6/27/06 Vancouver Sun
Obesity has bumped smoking as the top perinatal health concern, and new Canadian research shows a dizzying number of pregnancy and delivery complications in fat women, delegates to a national meeting of obstetricians and gynecologists, being held in Vancouver, heard Monday.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=b8619eb1-f563-49d6-8814-2e53e54cae72&k=61631

CDC's Overweight and Obesity Website
During the past 20 years, obesity among adults has risen significantly in the United States. The latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics show that 30 percent of U.S. adults 20 years of age and older--over 60 million people--are obese. This increase is not limited to adults. The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Among children and teens aged 6-19 years, 16 percent (over 9 million young people) are considered overweight.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/

3. Women's Health
Maternal smoking linked with severe tic disorder
6/26/06 Reuters
Women who smoke during pregnancy appear to have a very strong risk of having a child with severe symptoms of Tourette's syndrome and the risk of having obsessive-compulsive disorder is also increased in these children. The condition is believed be to associated with many genetic and environmental factors, Dr. Carol A. Mathews and her associates note.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-06-26T193646Z_01_COL670543_RTRUKOC_0_US-MATERNAL-SMOKING.xml&archived=False

X-rays raise breast cancer risk in some women: study
6/26/06 Reuters
X-rays may greatly raise the risk of breast cancer in women who are genetically susceptible to the disease, researchers reported on Monday.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2006-06-26T232418Z_01_N26110028_RTRUKOC_0_US-CANCER-XRAY.xml

EH Headlines are reprinted from the University of Washington's Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health

The Pirates of Illiopolis
Why You Kitchen Floor May Pose a Threat to National Security
May/June 2005 Orion Magazine
An essay on the dangers of PVC.
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-3om/Steingraber.html

NYC councilman proposes limiting fast food
6/21/06 Seattle PI
NEW YORK -- In a town where you can get a slice of pizza or a hot dog on nearly every block, one city councilman wants to limit the number of fast food restaurants as a way to fight obesity. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/1500AP_Fast_Food_Order.html

Report links suburban sprawl with health woes
6/21/06 Seattle PI
People who can walk to shops and services in their neighborhoods are more fit and less likely to die in car crashes. That's the finding of a new report released today by the Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Environment Watch) on sprawl and health in the Pacific Northwest. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/274720_sprawl21.html

Dirty rats have healthier immune systems, study says
Scientists find clean living may make us sicker
6/17/06 Seattle PI
Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and on farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate. The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/274301_dirtyrats17.html

More stores adopt warnings of mercury in some fish
6/22/06 Swampscott Reporter
What started with the Swampscott Board of Health is spreading. Advocates and consumers gathered Tuesday at Wild Oats in Medford to applaud the store for posting warning signs informing customers that certain fish may contain toxic levels of mercury. A new "Green List," a directory of stores across the country that are posting signs at seafood counters, compiled by Clean Water Action and Oceana, will encourage shoppers to patronize the stores owned by companies that are protecting their customers' health. http://www2.townonline.com/swampscott/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=520578

Thousands claim exposure in 9/11 aftermath
6/22/06 Journal News
David Worby is now at the helm of what he calls the largest and most important class-action lawsuit in U.S. history, representing thousands of people he says are dying at an accelerated pace from exposure to toxins at Ground Zero. http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060622/NEWS02/606220379/1027/NEWS11

EH Headlines is a production of the University of Washington's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.

GRAVITY LEAVES NOTHING UNTOUCHED. Everything is in motion downstream, downhill, searching for somewhere darker and less than where it was before. A sand grain cemented deep within a seaside cliff wants nothing more (by the governing laws of physics) than for the climactic moment that it is no longer a part of that cliff. The moment comes when its neighbors crumble away and leave the sand grain exposed to sea spray and sharp winds, waiting, waiting for days, weeks or months before gravity has its way. With a soft tinkle, one last whisper of wind sends the grain tumbling down to the beach, where thousands of like-minded grains lay in ecstatic lowness. Ultimate satisfaction. It has reached baseness, coreness; the years of heavy pulling and tugging gone with that three second spiral through the air. At least until the tide reaches out. Gravity gives in to the powers of friction, which send the grain grinding against its neighbors--finer, smoother, less ordered and more chaotic. Entropy.

The sand grains piled along the pebbly beach encouraged me to shift my glance from my barefoot wanderings to a cliff face that was no more. The winter storm had bit a mouthful out of the cliff, sand and sea foam dripping out the corners of its salty, sweaty mouth. One old, willful tree, fighting a long tired fight against gravity, dug its nails into what remained of the cliff, and held on.

Curling and turning out of the cliff face, the roots of the tree twisted through the soil like snakes. The roots had pushed through the sandy cliff, twisting around rocks and clutching onto them, thirsty for water and solitude. The roots were crowded though, bumping into each other, holding onto their own twisted dirty hands that rubbed intimately within the soil. Each root tip a nose, sniffing out the dank, dark smell of sand wetted by last night's rainstorm. Each root a mouth, sucking water from rocks and licking, squeezing them dry.

When the tree was small, the roots held firm through the blasts of winter storms from the ocean. The sea threw handfuls of ice crystals at the cliff face, chewed away at its foot with its hungry, foaming waves, and blew its cutting breath at the small sapling. Each year, the same wild, whipping storms bent the tree's trunk and twisted its limbs, the memory of each event tucked secretly within its wood. Each year, the roots pushed deeper into the soil and found solid handholds. The rains came to wet the soil; the water ran over the cliff face in muddy trickles. The sun baked the sandy soil dry, and with each slight puff of wind, the tinkling of sand grains as they were swept off of the cliff face and scattered onto the beach below.

I found the tree naked to the wind. It spanned a semi-circular indentation that had been cut-back into the face of the cliff over the years. The roots held the tree from one side of the cut to the other, like a trapeze rope suspended high in the air. Except for the last few roots still holding up the tree, the others were puckered and dry from a diet of salty sea air. I walked underneath the tree and looked up, through its roots, to its limbs, and through them to patches of sky. I stood where once the cliff had been, now empty space holding this levitating tree. It looked upside down, like a garden weed pulled up, the dirt shaken off, and then tossed aside. Some roots still held rocks in their arthritic knuckles, high above me, threatening any minute to let loose a shower of stones held too long by tired hands.

In time, here measured sand grain by sand grain, the last of the roots will be uncovered and the tree will sink down to the beach, pulling with it still more of the cliff. Then the tree will be gone, long ago tossed upon some other shore, its trunk polished and its limbs since lost to friction. The same hungry waves and sharp winds that worked on the sand grain continue their work on the tree. The tides lift it off the beach and begin digesting it. First, the arms and legs of the tree--its limbs--are snapped off with predatory strength as the tree is smashed against sea rocks, leaving only fibrous shreds at the sockets. Then the bark is gnawed away, grinding it against the sand grains and water molecules in perpetual, dizzying motion. Friction. To finish it off, the sea belches up a dripping, foamy mouthful and leaves the tree trunk beached like a translucent fish bone. The tree's limbs become world travelers, bobbing their way to broad, sandy California beaches or a distant, rocky Japanese coast, bringing with them the memory of a landscape far away. One battered limb is testimony to a particular climate, ecosystem, species, to one winter storm followed by another, to a sand grain spiraling off of a cliff. Each strip of bark or twist of driftwood piled on the beach holds the story of not only a voyage at sea, but a lifetime spent dearly rooted to a place. The stories are there if only you are willing to listen.

A person exploring this stretch of coast will find a deep indentation into the line of the cliff, cave-like. This person will pause at the cold, damp cut-back and scan the old roots, tree bones, protruding out of the cliff. She will bend down and pick up a flat, round stone from the hundreds of smooth oval stones that floor the cave. Then she will walk away, turning the rock over in her palm, and continue toward the sandpipers and surf. The pile of stones and the old tree bones will be all that holds the memory of the willful tree.

Just in time for strawberry season...a new website packed with bushels of information about local farms, farmer's markets, and farm-fresh recipes.

Puget Sound Fresh: Working to open a large market for local farmers to serve better produce for Puget Sound residents

http://www.pugetsoundfresh.org/

A weekly look at environmental health in the news.

Lawsuit claims welding fumes hit nerves
6/12/06 Star Telegram
CLEVELAND - In a closely watched case unfolding in federal court, a jury is being asked to take up an intriguing question that has confounded many medical researchers: Can welding fumes cause neurological diseases such as Parkinson's? http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/breaking_news/14801281.htm

Breast-Feed or Else
6/13/06 NY Times
Warning: Public health officials have determined that not breast-feeding may be hazardous to your baby's health. There is no black-box label like that affixed to cans of infant formula or tucked into the corner of magazine advertisements, at least not yet. (Registration required) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/health/13brea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Green tea may help explain 'Asian paradox'
Could beverage be responsible for lower cancer rate, better heart health?
6/12/06 MSNBC.com
While smoking is a well-known cause of heart disease and lung cancer, the rates of these diseases have remained inexplicably low in Asian countries where smoking is common. But researchers say there is growing evidence that green tea is one piece of the puzzle. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13282722/

Genetic Engineering
5/18/06 The Why Files
Genetically modified foods after ten years; is this stuff safe to eat? http://whyfiles.org/241GM_2/

The Science of Soy: What Do We Really Know?
June 2006 Issue of Environmental Health Perspectives
Good for your heart! Prevents breast cancer! In recent years, soy has been touted as a virtual wonder food with extensive health benefits. But some data have scientists concerned that all the news about soy may not be good, particularly for the very young. This month's Focus looks at what we really know about both the potential benefits and the potential hazards of consuming soy products.
http://www.ehponline.org/

EH Headlines are reprinted from the UW's Department of Environmental Health EH Voices listserve.

A look at the toxic burden we carry in our bodies.

1. REPORTS AND STUDIES
Washingtonians Test Positive for Toxic Chemicals
5/23/06 Washington Toxics Coalition
Today a diverse group of Washingtonians gathered together for the first time to react to results from recent lab testing of their blood, hair, and urine, which detected from 26 to 39 toxic chemicals in each of their bodies. According to Pollution in People, a study commissioned by the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition, all of the study participants tested positive for multiple toxic chemicals.
To view the press release: http://www.pollutioninpeople.org/press/media_advisory
To view the report: http://www.pollutioninpeople.org/

Toxic Chemicals and Children's Health in North America: A Call for Efforts to Determine the Sources, Levels of Exposure, and Risks that Industrial Chemicals Pose to Children's Health
5/17/06 Commission for Environmental Cooperation
A new report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation profiles childrens health and the relative risk of industrial chemicals. Using pollution data from Canada and the United States, the report focuses on chemicals associated with cancer, neurological and developmental damage, as well as learning and behavioral changes. The report utilizes a toxicity weighting methodology to highlight the relative risk of these chemicals compared to standard volume information.
To view the press release: http://www.cec.org/news/details/index.cfm?varlan=english&ID=2704
To view the report: http://www.cec.org/pubs_docs/documents/index.cfm?varlan=english&ID=1965

2. NEWS ARTICLES
Toxic Shock series
May 2006 Toronto Globe and Mail
Part 1: A review by federal regulators has determined that chemicals once thought to be benign are potentially dangerous for the physical health of Canadians.
Part 2: Coming to terms with perils of non-stick products
Part 3: Ottawa plans to snuff out flame retardants
Part 4: Are plastic products coated in peril? Even in low doses, common chemical has adverse effects on research animals http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060527.wxchemicals27/BNStory

Chemical in Plastics Is Tied to Prostate Cancer
6/1/06 LA Times
Bisphenol A, found in baby bottles and microwave cookware, permanently altered genes in newborn lab rats, a study finds.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-prostate1jun01,1,7742836.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true


EH Headlines are reprinted from the UW's Department of Environmental Health EH Voices listserve.