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H&E – as seen in
The Journal of the San Francisco Medical Society, April 2010
Latest News and Science- Flame retardants investigation: Chemical industry distorts scienceThe chemical industry has manipulated scientific findings to promote the widespread use of flame retardants and downplay the health risks, a Chicago Tribune investigation shows, twisting research results, ignoring findings that run counter to its aims and passing off biased, industry-funded reports as rigorous science.
- Toxic roulettePart 3 of the CT's expose on flame retardants. Firemaster 550, touted as safe, is the latest in a long line of flame retardants allowed onto the market without thorough study of health risks
- Flame retardants: The role of Big TobaccoBig Tobacco campaigned to "neutralize" firefighting organizations and persuade them to promote the use of flame retardant furniture instead of fire-safe cigarettes as the best way to prevent cigarette-caused fire deaths.
- European Commission publishes REACH scope reviewThe European Commission has published the REACH Review study on the scope of REACH and other relevant EU legislation, identifying and making recommendations on 38 areas of overlap.
- Flame retardants in furniture don't work as advertised, research showsResearch is finding there are more effective ways to prevent furniture fires than treating cushion foam with chemical flame retardants — such as using specially-designed upholstery that resists smoldering cigarettes or adding fire-resistant barriers underneath the fabric.
- Flame retardants investigation: Chemical industry distorts science
Health & Environment
Health & Environment is a website and monthly free publication about how environmental contaminants affect human health.H&E is published by the Cancer Prevention and Education Society.
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Limits of genomics – the context for a new “enviromics”?
June 24, 2010 at 10:47 am | Posted in Comment | Leave a comment"Enviromics": can techniques for determining which parts of the genome are responsible for certain diseases also be applied to environmental influences? (Picture: The first printed edition of the human genome at the Wellcome Collection, London. By Russ London at en.wikipedia.org)
There is an interesting piece in the NYT about how, in the ten years since completion of the human genome, not much seems to have happened in terms of connecting common genetic variants with health outcomes. Researchers are now looking at rare variants instead.
Philosophically, it’s interesting that the move from common variants to rare variants is described by McClellan and King as a “paradigm shift” – normally, the expression is reserved for completely new ways of looking at a problem, the terms of which are more-or-less incompatible with the old approach (the classic example being the move from Newtonian physics to Relativity Theory).
In that context, simply examining uncommon variants rather than common variants in the genome seems much less revolutionary – though that’s not to say it’s not a good idea!
More radical is the “enviromics” concept, published very recently, of applying analytical methods from genomics to human/environment interactions, determining the differences, and mapping these onto health outcomes – to us, it looks not entirely unlike like turbo-charged epidemiology.
There is an article on this in the most recent H&E here (see second article).
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