Screening Environmental and Human Health Impacts of Natural Diamond Mining and Processing

Natural diamond, used in applications ranging from jewelry to machining tools, is the hardest material found in nature. The mining and processing of natural diamond is associated with substantial impacts on the environment as well as on human health. Large-scale diamond mining requires considerable amounts of energy and generates large amounts of tailings. About one fifth of the global diamond production originates from artisanal mining, which is associated with adverse human health impacts as the miners typically work under harsh conditions. Despite this, the environmental and human health impacts of natural diamond mining and processing have until now not been investigated to any depth. The aim of this study is to conduct a screening assessment of environmental and human health impacts of natural diamond production with an average global perspective. The method of life cycle assessment is applied, and the disability-adjusted life years indicator is used for the quantification of human health impacts. The results from this screening study shows that about 1.3 life days are lost per carat of natural diamond produced globally. This corresponds to a loss of about 490 000 life years considering the total global production at 134 million carats in 2016. The human health impact is clearly dominated by the contribution from occupational accidents in the artisanal diamond mining (97% of the total human health impact). Other sources of impacts, such as occupational accidents during the large-scale share of mining and processing, contribute with the remaining few percentages. The environmental impact results were, on the contrary, dominated by the use of electricity in large-scale mining and processing. The results from this study can be applied in future life cycle assessments of natural diamond and related end products. A sensitivity analysis identified parameters such as the number of artisanal miners and the annual fatal accident rate in artisanal mining in need of being further investigated in further studies. In addition, a more detailed assessment of large-scale mining and processing and the development of a method to include also positive human health impacts to artisanal miners are recommended

Environmental, Resource and Health Assessments of Hard Materials and Material Substitution: The Cases of Cemented Carbide and Polycrystalline Diamond

The conventional hard material used in manufacturing industry, cemented carbide (WC-Co), mainly consists of the geochemically scarce elements tungsten and cobalt. This use of scarce resources could potentially be avoided by a material substitution to the more abundant and largely carbon-based material polycrystalline diamond (PCD). The aims of this thesis are to (i) assess environmental, resource and health impacts of WC-Co, (ii) assess environmental and resource impacts of PCD and (iii) assess the environmental and resource potential of substituting WC-Co with PCD. For fulfilling these aims, life cycle assessment (LCA) and material flow analysis (MFA) are applied.Papers I-III show that WC-Co has notable environmental, resource and health impacts. LCA results for non-Chinese WC-Co production show that most environmental impacts are dominated by a limited number of inputs and outputs (e.g. kerosene, sulfidic tailings and electricity) (Paper I). MFA results for flows of tungsten in the specific product of passenger car tire studs made from WC-Co show that the recycling of tungsten in this product is non-existing (0%) and thus considerably lower than the global average (10- 25%) (Paper II). Net health impact results for tire studs in a studded Scandinavian passenger car show that the purpose of tire studs – to prevent injuries – is not justified since the negative health impacts, mainly due to emissions of road particles during use, outweigh the positive health impacts from accident reduction (Paper III).Paper IV provides LCA results for PCD production and compares WC-Co and PCD tools regarding environmental and resource impacts in the specific applications of wood working and titanium machining. The results show that PCD is preferable in wood working but not in titanium machining. In Paper V, a framework for defining functional units in comparative LCAs of materials is presented. The framework outlines three functional unit types: the reference flow, material property and product performance types. The selected functional unit greatly affects the result when comparing WC-Co to PCD. The main methodological contributions of this thesis are the inclusion of negative health impacts associated with conflict minerals in Paper III and the framework for comparative LCAs of materials in Paper V

The usefulness of information on HDL-cholesterol: potential pitfalls of conventional assumptions

Treatment decisions related to disease prevention are often based on two conventional and related assumptions. First, an intervention-induced change in a surrogate marker (such as high-density lipoprotein [HDL]-cholesterol) in the desired direction translates into health benefits (such as reduction in coronary events). Second, it is unimportant which interventions are used to alter surrogate markers, since an intervention benefit is independent of the means by which it is achieved. The scientific foundation for these assumptions has been questioned. In this commentary, the appropriateness of relying on low levels of HDL-cholesterol for treatment decisions is reviewed. The Veterans Affairs - HDL-Cholesterol Intervention Trial (VA-HIT) investigators recently reported that only 23% of the gemfibrozil-induced relative reduction in risk of coronary events observed in the trial could be explained by changes in HDL-cholesterol between baseline and the 1-year visit. Thus, 77% of the health benefit to the participants was unexplained. Other possible explanations are that gemfibrozil has multiple mechanisms of action, disease manifestations are multifactorial, and laboratory measurements of HDL-cholesterol are imprecise. The wisdom of relying on levels and changes in surrogate markers such as HDL-cholesterol to make decisions about treatment choices should questioned. It seems better to rely on direct evidence of health benefits and to prescribe specific interventions that have been shown to reduce mortality and morbidity. Since extrapolations based on surrogate markers may not be in patients' best interest, the practice of medicine ought to be evidence-based

Decisions by regulatory agencies: are they evidence-based?

Contradictory statements about the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs from the European Medicines Agency and the United States Food and Drug Administration have raised questions about whether regulatory decisions are evidence-based. For the selective COX-2 inhibitors, there are clear contraindications and warnings in Europe, but only a vaguely worded Black Box warning in the United States. All the non-selective agents are given an almost "clean bill of health" in Europe, while all of them are judged to have a similar risk-benefit ratio as celecoxib in the United States. The regulatory agencies have failed to recognize the clinical trial evidence that the risk of cardiovascular events varies substantially among the non-selective agents, with diclofenac carrying the highest risk of harm

Environmental factors, metabolic profile, hormones and breast and endometrial cancer risk

Breast cancer is the leading cancer among women in the Western world. In Norway, 2,503 cases of female breast cancer were diagnosed in 2000, which corresponds to an age-adjusted incidence rate of 72.1 per 100,000 women per year (1). The risk of breast cancer increases with age from puberty, doubling about every 10 years until the menopause, when the rate of increase slows dramatically and a flattening of the age-specific incidence curve is observed in some populations (1). In general, breast cancer spreads to distant organs and progresses to fatal disease more rapidly the younger the woman is at the time of diagnosis (2). This has made breast cancer the leading cause of death among Norwegian women aged 35-55 years in 2001 (3). Endometrial cancer is the most common type of malignant tumour in the uterine corpus. In Norway, 554 cases of corpus uteri cancer were diagnosed in 2000, which corresponds to an age-adjusted incidence rate of 14.6 per 100,000 women per year (1). In contrast to breast cancer, endometrial cancer is entirely a disease of middle-aged and elderly women

Peripheral nationhood: being Israeli in Kiryat Shemona

The thesis provides a case study for how settler colonialism intertwined with ethnonationalism to shape social identification in the Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona. Jews from Arab and Muslim lands were categorized by Zionist nation-builders as Mizrahim and disproportionally placed on the geographic and socio-economic margins of Israeli society to Judaise territory, to prevent the return of the displaced indigenous Palestinian population and to provide cheap labour for Ashkenazi settlements. They were excluded from the Ashkenazi-dominated centre of power, yet included as essential members of a militaristic frontier ethos. The thesis explores how Mizrahim negotiated Israeliness from the margins within the dynamics of ethnocratic exclusion and inclusion, in what I have termed peripheral nationhood. It examines the Israeli State’s attempt to mould loyal subjects through Hebrew education, national ceremonies and military campaigns. In everyday life, Mizrahim contested the socio-economic and cultural hegemony of the Ashkenazi through ethnic and transnational identifications and practices. Simultaneously, their support for the nation-in-arms and creative self-fashioning as ‘strong’ and ‘civilized’ reinforced the dominant logic of ethno-nationalism. Mizrahi residents redeployed stereotypes and an Oriental stigma in their descriptions of Mizrahim, Russian-speaking Israelis and Arabs to elevate their own social status and position in the ethnocracy. The nation was only intermittently salient as a category of belonging, thus challenging theories of ‘everyday nationalism’ that consider it omnipresent. During the Israeli war on Gaza in 2008/2009, sentiments of national unity were heightened, and the border Mizrahim appeared to be move and/or moved themselves from the periphery to the centre of the nation as key actors in the moral legitimization of war. The dissertation argues that the qualities that make up peripheral nationhood are coeval with construction of national unity as a colonial practice by the centre

Is low-nicotine Marlboro snus really snus?

Swedish snus is a medium/high nicotine delivery, low-nitrosamine moist smokeless tobacco product that has been estimated to be at least 90% less harmful than smoked tobacco. More men use snus than smoke cigarettes in Sweden, and a quarter of male former smokers quit by switching to snus. Leading multinational cigarette manufacturers have begun test-marketing snus-like products in the United States and other countries. The version of Philip Morris' Marlboro snus currently being marketed in the United States differs from Swedish snus in many ways; it has lower moisture content and pH, but most puzzling is its very low nicotine delivery. Philip Morris, the market-leader in United States cigarette sales, may have designed the product so that it does not satisfy nicotine cravings and fails to enable smokers to switch. In this paper we compare and contrast Swedish snus and Marlboro snus, and speculate as to why Philip Morris may have intentionally designed a product that delivers very low levels of nicotine. We recommend that Philip Morris cease using the term "snus" to refer to dry tobacco products with low nicotine delivery, so that the term be reserved for moist, low-toxin, medium/high nicotine delivery smokeless tobacco products that are qualitatively similar to the leading brands in Sweden