Latest American Chemical Society podcast: New water filter kills disease-causing bacteria

From a November 18, 2010 Eureka news alert

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2010 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) award-winning podcast series, “Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions,” focuses on development and successful initial tests of an inexpensive new filtering technology that kills up to 98 percent of disease-causing bacteria in water in just seconds without clogging.

The technology could aid many of the almost one billion people lacking access to clean, safe drinking water. A report on the work appears in the American Chemical Society’s monthly journal Nano Letters.

Most water purifiers do their jobs by trapping bacteria in tiny pores of filter material. Pushing water through those filters, however, requires electric pumps and demands lots of energy. The filters also can get clogged, so they often have to be replaced. A new material developed by Yi Cui, Ph.D., of Stanford University could avoid many deficiencies of traditional filters. For starters, it does not trap bacteria like most technologies. It kills them outright.

“The removal of bacteria and other organisms from water is very important, not only for drinking and sanitation but also in industry as there’s a frequent need to replace filters due to clogging,” Cui says in the podcast. “The product we’ve developed could dramatically lower the cost of many filtration technologies for water as well as food, air, and pharmaceuticals, where the need to replace filters is common and very challenging.”

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This podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from ACS’ Web site at www.acs.org/globalchallenges.

Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions is a series of podcasts describing some of the 21st Century’s most daunting problems, and how cutting-edge research in chemistry matters in the quest for solutions. Global Challenges is the centerpiece in an alliance on sustainability between ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry. Global Challenges is a sweeping panorama of global challenges includes dilemmas such as providing a hungry, thirsty world with ample supplies of safe food and clean water; developing alternatives to petroleum to fuel society; preserving the environment and assuring a sustainable future for our children; and improving human health.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Editor’s note: I spent two years boiling water while a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, West Africa…Something like this would have been useful! Boiling water was effective for me. (I “came down” with quite a few things…but nothing related to my drinking water.  However,  boiling water can be time consuming for households…

Medicare finalizes new rules to require equal visitation rights for all hospital patients

From the November 17, 2010 US Department of Health and Human Services news release (http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/11/20101117a.html)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today issued new rules for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals that protect patients’ right to choose their own visitors during a hospital stay, including a visitor who is a same-sex domestic partner.

“Basic human rights—such as your ability to choose your own support system in a time of need—must not be checked at the door of America’s hospitals,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  “Today’s rules help give ‘full and equal’ rights to all of us to choose whom we want by our bedside when we are sick, and override any objection by a hospital or staffer who may disagree with us for any non-clinical reason.”

The new rules follow from an April 15, 2010 Presidential Memorandum, in which President Obama tasked HHS with developing standards for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals (including critical access hospitals) that would require them to respect the right of all patients to choose who may visit them when they are an inpatient of a hospital.  The President’s memorandum instructed HHS to develop rules that would prohibit hospitals from denying visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.  It also directed that the rules take into account the need for a hospital to restrict visitation in medically appropriate circumstances.

The rules require hospitals to have written policies and procedures detailing patients’ visitation rights, as well as the circumstances under which the hospitals may restrict patient access to visitors based on reasonable clinical needs.

A key provision of the rules specifies that all visitors chosen by the patient (or his or her representative) must be able to enjoy “full and equal” visitation privileges consistent with the wishes of the patient (or his or her representative).

The rules update the Conditions of Participation (CoPs), which are the health and safety standards all Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals and critical access hospitals must meet, and are applicable to all patients of those hospitals regardless of payer source.

Among other things, the rules impose new requirements on hospitals to explain to all patients their right to choose who may visit them during their inpatient stay, regardless of whether the visitor is a family member, a spouse, a domestic partner (including a same-sex domestic partner), or other type of visitor, as well as their right to withdraw such consent to visitation at any time.

“These rules put non-clinical decisions about who can visit a patient out of the hands of those who deliver care and into the hands of those who receive it,” said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, MPP.  “While we still have miles to go in making care more patient-centered, these rules make it easier for hospitals to deliver on some of the fundamental tenets of patient-centered care—care that recognizes and respects the patient as an individual with unique needs, who treated with dignity and granted the power of informed choice.”

CMS finalized the rules based on thousands of comments from patient advocates, the hospital community, and other stakeholders.  The rules will be effective 60 days after publication.  More information about the rules is available on CMS’ website at http://www.cms.gov/CFCsAndCoPs/06_Hospitals.asp and http://www.cms.gov/CFCsAndCoPs/03_CAHs.asp.

 

Free range and other meat and poultry terms

From the Mayo Clinic article

“Free range,” “natural” and “antibiotic-free” are among the common terms on meat, poultry and egg packages today. Do these terms guide your purchases either because of concerns about food quality or animal welfare? Then you should know that terms such as free range, antibiotic-free, natural and others may not actually mean what you think they do. In some cases, terms you find on packages are regulated under federal organic rules, while others are standard regardless of organic status. Other terms aren’t regulated at all, and some may have no relevance to animal welfare even if they sound like they do. Take a closer look.

The article goes on to define terms as antibiotic-free, cage-free, certified humane, chemical free, free-range or free roaming, grain fed, grass fed, hormone free, naturally raised, pasture raised, vegetarian fed

Some related Mayo Clinic articles

• What is BPA? Should I be worried about it?
• Vegetable juice: As good as whole vegetables
• Nutrition labels: Deciphering health claims
• Fast food: 5 ways to healthier meals
• Organic foods: Are they safer? More nutritious?
• Sodium nitrate in meat: Heart disease risk factor?
• Nutrition rating system: What’s behind the new food labels?

A sampling of organic food Web sites (via Internet Public Library)

• National Organic Program (US Department of Agriculture)

Information about the organic standards program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Explains the “USDA Organic” labels found on food and beverage packaging, marketing phrases (such as “organic,” which “must consist of at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients (excluding water and salt)”), news and updates, and material for producers and retailers.

• Organic Center

This advocacy site for organic farming features articles and reports on subjects such as pesticides in foods, nutritional quality, antioxidants, and food safety. Also find links to related sites. From an organization whose mission is “to generate credible, peer reviewed scientific information and communicate the verifiable benefits of organic farming and products to society.”

• Organic Consumers Association

A “national consumer advocacy organization committed to educating, uniting, and organizing organic consumers. We will actively work to protect the integrity of organic food, and dramatically increase its accessibility to the point where sustainable agriculture becomes the dominant form of food and fiber production in the US and across the world.” Provides news, calendar of events, book reviews, links to other resources.