[News release] Tox Town Town neighborhood now has a new photo-realistic look



The National Library of Medicine (NLM) Tox Town Town neighborhood now has a new photo-realistic look. The location and chemical information remains the same, but the new graphics allow users to better identify with real-life locations.

The Town scene is available in HTML5, allowing it to be accessed on a variety of personal electronic devices, including cell phones (iphones and androids), ipads, ipad minis, and tablets. 

Tox Town uses color, graphics, sounds and animation to add interest to learning about connections between chemicals, the environment, and the public’s health. Visit the updated Town neighborhood and learn about possible environmental health risks in a typical town.

http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/flash/town/flash.php    

Only in America?

 

 

FOOD, FACTS and FADS

It appears that many of the major food companies have a double standard – one for exports and one for us.  They seem to think that Americans do not deserve the better quality products with less additives and chemicals sold to our European neighbors.

Is this one unbelievable?????  I would like to know why, wouldn’t you?  Maybe it’s time for us, the consumers, to inquire about this.  They only listen to consumer demands, if at all

CLICK HERE.

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Interacting Risks – endocrine effects of a compound used in many antibacterial bar soaps

Related articles

• Relative Risk, One Result at a Time -Evidence mounts for endocrine effects of a compound used in many antibacterial bar soaps by Anna Lena Phillips at American ScientistWhy are endocrine-disrupting antibacterials still on the shelves?(sfgate.com)
• Phthalates and BPA: Of Mice and Men (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
• TOXMAP: Learn about toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• New Way to Assess Risk from Chemicals (InnovationToronto.com)
• Environmental Toxins (education.com)

Related Resources

As the article notes, there are studies of the effects and hazards of single chemicals, but not many on chemical interactions

Here are a few free reputable resources on chemical hazards
— All (and more!) available at Toxnet (US National Library of Medicine)

• Household Products – This database links over 8,000 consumer brands to health effects from Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) provided by the manufacturers and allows scientists and consumers to research products based on chemical ingredients.
• Toxline – Extensive array of references to literature on biochemical, pharmacological, physiological, and toxicological effects of drugs and other chemicals.
• LactMed – A peer-reviewed and fully referenced database of drugs to which breastfeeding mothers may be exposed. Among the data included are maternal and infant levels of drugs, possible effects on breastfed infants and on lactation, and alternate drugs to consider.
• TOXMAP – Environmental Health e-Maps. Geographic representation of TRI data with links to other TOXNET resources.

Upstream

From American Scientist:

When research suggests that a single chemical may cause harm, public concern rises, as it has for the plastic additive bisphenol A (BPA) in recent years. But many more of the 83,000 or so humanmade chemicals used in the United States receive little attention. The possible effects of chemicals in combination get still less scrutiny, even though the potential that some chemicals will interact is high, given their numbers.

This may be due in part to the staggering amount of work required to discern those effects. It would be a very difficult task to keep up with research on all of these substances, much less evaluate their relative risk as new results appear. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has put considerable effort into this under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but the Act has not been updated since its passage in 1976 and excludes many substances…

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Pediatric Pros: 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act Needs Updating

From the 26 April 2011 Medical News Today article

Common household products are great disinfectants and ways to keep your habitation germ free, but there is still a high risk for children in particular who have not yet built up a solid immune system to be affected by exposure to chemicals. As a result, The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling for stronger federal regulation of chemicals in consumer products. The law in place now dates back more than three decades. …

…
Under current law, new chemicals used in consumer products are assumed to be safe until proved otherwise. Therefore, pediatricians have teamed with the American Medical Association and American Nurses Association in pushing for changes so that companies will be required to study the health effects of chemicals before marketing products that contain them.

Dr. Jerome Paulson with the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. stated:

“Under the current Toxic Substance Control Act, companies do not need to do research on the potential health impacts of the chemicals that they’re marketing before they put them out on the market.”

Dr. Kevin Osterhoudt, a board member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Environmental Health and the medical director of the poison control center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is a leader for change:

“If we want to market a drug or pharmaceutical, we have to do some studies to say that they’re safe. But companies can enter hundreds of thousands of tons of chemicals into the country and the burden isn’t on them to prove that that chemical’s safe.”

In a written statement, the AAP recommends any chemicals policy should consider the consequences on children and their families. Among the other recommendations:
The regulation of chemicals must be based on evidence, but decisions to ban chemicals should be based on reasonable levels of concern rather than demonstrated harm.
Any testing of chemicals should include the impact on women and children, including potential effects on reproduction and development.
Chemicals should meet safety standards similar to those met by pharmaceuticals or pesticide residues on food.
There should be post-marketing surveillance of chemicals, and the EPA must have the authority to remove a chemical if needed.
Federal funding should be provided for research to prevent, identify and evaluate the effects of chemicals on children’s health.

Related Resource

[Toxicology Resources] Especially for the Public (below are 2 links of 11)

• Household Products Database – Potential health effects of chemicals for common household products

          “What’s under your kitchen sink, in your garage, in your bathroom, and on the shelves in your laundry room?
Learn more about what’s in these products, about potential health effects, and about safety and handling.”

• Tox Town  —Interactive guide to potentially toxic substances and environmental health issues in everyday places

Related Articles

• HealthWatch: Children And Chemicals (newyork.cbslocal.com)
• Chemical law fails to protect kids’ health: MDs (cbc.ca)
• Pediatricians Seek Stiffer Regulation of Chemicals (webmd.com)
• Safer Chemicals Act of 2011 Introduced Today! Raise your voice…. (mooselyeco.com)
• Pediatricians: Reform TSCA to protect kids. ACC responds (a la W.C. Fields): We love kids, too (blogs.edf.org)
• US must strengthen efforts to restrict chemicals that threaten health, say researchers (eurekalert.org)

Risks of Chemical Exposure: Scientists Call for ‘Swifter and Sounder’ Testing of Chemicals

Risks of Chemical Exposure: Scientists Call for ‘Swifter and Sounder’ Testing of Chemicals

From the March 4 2011 Eureka news alert

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2011) — Scientific societies representing 40,000 researchers and clinicians are asking that federal regulators tap a broader range of expertise when evaluating the risks of chemicals to which Americans are being increasingly exposed.

Writing in a letter in the journalScience***, eight societies from the fields of genetics, reproductive medicine, endocrinology, developmental biology and others note that some 12,000 new substances are being registered with the American Chemical Society daily. Few make it into the environment, but the top federal regulators, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, often lack information about the hazards of chemicals produced in high volumes….

…

Patricia Hunt, a professor in the Washington State University School of Molecular Biosciences and corresponding author of the letter, said the FDA and EPA need to look beyond the toxicology of substances to the other ways chemicals can affect us.

“One of the problems they have is they look at some of the science and don’t know how to interpret it because it’s not done using the traditional toxicology testing paradigm,” she said. “We need geneticists, we need developmental and reproductive biologists and we need the clinical people on board to actually help interpret and evaluate some of the science.”

“As things stand now,” she added, “things get rapidly into the marketplace and the testing of them is tending to lag behind.”

Hunt said the letter was driven in particular by growing concerns about chemicals like the plasticizer bisphenol A, or BPA, subject of more than 300 studies finding adverse health effects in animals. Because such chemicals look like hormones to our body, they’re like strangers getting behind the wheels of our cars, Hunt said.

“Hormones control everything — our basic metabolism, our reproduction,” she said. “We call them endocrine disruptors. They’re like endocrine bombs to a certain extent because they can disrupt all these normal functions.”

Hunt’s testimony last year helped make Washington the fifth state to outlaw BPA in children’s food containers and drinking cups.

 

***For suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here

 

FDA Substance Registration System

This database provides access to the FDA Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII) assigned to substances by the FDA Substance Registration System.

Substances (nearly 17,000 include the following types:  (simple) chemical, protein, nucleic acid, (polydisperse) polymer, or structurally diverse.

The UNII may prove useful in searching many US govt databases, especially when common or generic terms yield poor results.