Book Reviews

Medical Teaching in Edinburgh during the 18th and 19th centuries, Matthew H. Kaufman, The Royal College Surgeons of Edinburgh 2003Medical Microbiology – Third Edition, Cedric A Mims (Editor

Don't Drink the Water: Water in 65 Texas Communities Contains Toxic Levels of Arsenic, but State Fails to Advise Citizens to Use Alternative Water Supplies

The water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, threw a national spotlight on problems with drinking water systems that extend far beyond one state and that are more profound than just pipes. A central failure in Flint was that the state government had information about contamination of drinking water, but did not warn the public. In Texas, the pollutant of greatest concern in the 65 communites discussed in this report is different – arsenic, instead of lead -- and the source of the problem is different. In Texas, the arsenic is naturally occurring; while in Michigan, the catastrophe was man-made, with the state and city trying to save money by switching to a source of water, the Flint River, that corroded the plumbing, releasing high levels of lead from pipes and solder.But in both Michigan and Texas, the state governments compounded the water contamination problems – and allowed people's exposure to damaging toxins to continue -- by not communicating clearly with consumers.Deciding how best to explain health risks to the public is admittedly a challenging task. But there is enough evidence to reach the following conclusions:Texas should update the language in its public notices so consumers clearly know when to safeguard their health by avoiding contaminated drinking water. Citizens should be told to find alternative drinking water sources, especially when children may be exposed and when arsenic contamination has persisted for a long period of time.EPA is currently conducting a new review of arsenic toxicity, and it should conclude that work and revise its mandatory language for public notice of arsenic violations. This mandatory language should include a statement about the potential health risks of childhood exposure.Public notices should inform consumers of options for treating contaminated water at home, e.g., through filter systems that have proven to be effective. Conversely, the public should be told what doesn't work. For example, while Texas advisories warn that boiling water won't reduce nitrate concentrations, it includes no such warning for arsenic, which also cannot be boiled away.Both EPA and Texas should provide more financial and technical assistance to local governments and utilities to help them fix long-standing drinking water violations in rural and disadvantaged communities.The short-term costs of building municipal water treatment systems can be significant, but they are dwarfed by the long-term costs of higher cancer risks and brain damage. More broadly, our whole system pays a high price when silence or double-talk corrodes the basic faith of citizens in their government

Bioassessment, the Human Disturbance Gradient, and Applicability to Environmental Decisions

A recommended procedure to develop scientifically valid biological assessment tools includes these following steps: • Classify aquatic systems into meaningful units. • Sample target biota across a human disturbance gradient (to define biological expectations). • Select relevant biological attributes that provide a reliable signal about human effects. • Extract and interpret patterns in the data. • Communicate results to policy makers. We discuss a system, known as the Human Disturbance Gradient, which establishes criteria, independent from the biology, to determine which sites are impaired by humans vs. those that are not. The HDG consists of land use information, hydrologic modification scores, habitat assessment scores, and water quality data. The HDG can be used to determine which attributes of biological community structure are effective discriminators of adverse human effects. These measures, known as metrics, should: • Provide meaningful measures of ecological structure or function. • Show a strong and consistent correlation with human disturbance. • Be statistically robust, with low measurement error. • Represent multiple categories of biological organization. • Be cost-effective to measure.Show responses that are not redundant with other metrics. An example of this procedure involving the recalibration of the Stream Condition Index and BioRecon methods is presented, as well as discussion of the applicability of bioassessment to environmental decisions. (51 slides in Powerpoint presentation.

A survey on dispensing: How the public views their past experiences with how they were dispensed

A survey on dispensing: How the public views their past experiences with how they were dispense

Book Reviews

Medical Teaching in Edinburgh during the 18th and 19th centuries, Matthew H. Kaufman, The Royal College Surgeons of Edinburgh 2003Medical Microbiology – Third Edition, Cedric A Mims (Editor