Most food items contain toxins like mercury, pesticides and acrylamide that can affect children in the long run

Even healthy food like fruit, vegetables, meat and fish might be putting children’s health at risk. These food items also contain toxins like mercury, pesticides and acrylamide that can, over a long time, make children vulnerable to cancer and affect their nervous and reproductive systems. This is the finding of a study on effects of 11 such food-borne toxins on people of different age groups in the US, carried out by researchers from the University of California, Davis, and University of California, Los Angeles. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, professor and chief of the division of environmental and occupational health at University of California, Davis, says toxins in food affect children the most as their brains and other organs are still developing.

From plastics to flame retardants, the ubiquitous chemicals of our daily lives have raised public health concerns like never before. Inside the Beltway, however, data-crunching scientists are often no match for industry lobbyists and corporate lawyers. The exception, no doubt, is Linda Birnbaum, the toxicologist who leads, two little-known scientific agencies, the National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP).

Europe is set to quash a precedent-setting initiative designed to tackle a disturbing side effect of common drugs — their impact on aquatic life. Nature has learned that landmark regulations intended to clean Europe’s waterways of pharmaceuticals are likely to be dead on arrival when they reach a key vote in the European Parliament.

A panel of scientists set up on the orders of the Supreme Court has recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all genetically modified or Bt food crops.

‘Probe how Bt brinjal seed was allowed to be commercialised’

In a major setback to the proponents of genetically modified technology in farm crops, the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture on Thursday asked the government to stop all field trials and sought a bar on GM food crops (such as Bt. brinjal). The committee report, tabled in the Lok Sabha, demanded a “thorough probe” into how permission was given to commercialise Bt. brinjal seed when all evaluation tests were not carried out.

An analytical overview on state of the environment of Maldives focuses on 10 key environmental challenges and includes emerging issues like chemical and toxicology & environmental governance. It highlights changing drivers,such as population growth, economic activities and consumption patterns that have put pressure on the environment.

This report presents the results of a systematic review of evidence of the health effects of black carbon (BC).

City, Mahuva Identified Among 6 Vulture Safe Zones In The Country

Ahmedabad/Mahuva: Vulture conservation in Gujarat has got a major boost with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) selecting Mahuva and Ahmedabad among the six provisional vultures’ safe zones (VSZ) in India. Within three years, vultures successfully bred in captivity under the BNHS’s Save Asia’s Vultures from Extinction (SAVE) programme will be released in their natural environments in Mahuva.

Obesity has risen steadily in the United States over the past 150 years, with a marked uptick in recent decades. In the United States today more than 35% of adults and nearly 17% of children aged 2–19 years are obese. Obesity plagues people not just in the United States but worldwide, including, increasingly, developing countries. Even animals—pets, laboratory animals, and urban rats—have experienced increases in average body weight over the past several decades, trends not necessarily explained by diet and exercise. In the words of Robert H.

The detailed monographs in this volume summarize the technical, analytical, dietary exposure and toxicological data on a number of contaminants in food: acrylamide, arsenic, deoxydivalenol, furan, mercury and perchlorate.

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