286 research outputs found
03-09 "Costs of Preventable Childhood Illness: The Price We Pay for Pollution "
A growing body of scientific literature implicates toxic exposures in childhood illnesses and developmental disorders. When these illnesses and disabilities result from environmental factors under human control, they can and should be prevented. This report documents monetary costs associated with five major areas of health problems in children that have been linked to preventable environmental exposures: cancer, asthma, lead poisoning, neurobehavioral disorders, and birth defects. We review incidence and prevalence estimates for these disorders, as well as estimates of the associated monetary costs. We apply the concept of the “environmentally attributable fraction” (EAF) of an illness, where EAF is the estimated percentage of cases of an illness that result from an environmental exposure. Preventable childhood illnesses and disabilities attributable to environmental factors are associated with large monetary costs. Our estimate of direct and indirect costs ranges from 1.6 billion annually in Massachusetts. Of course, there is no dollar measure of the full practical and emotional burden borne by these children, their families, and the communities in which they live.
Applying Cost-Benefit to Past Decisions: Was Environmental Protection Ever a Good Idea?
In this Article, however, we do not mount a critique from outside the technique of cost-benefit analysis. Instead, we examine an argument that proponents of cost-benefit analysis have offered as a linchpin of the case for cost-benefit: that this technique is neither anti- nor pro-regulatory, but rather a neutral tool for evaluating public policy. In making this argument, these proponents have often invoked the use of cost-benefit analysis to support previous regulatory decisions (their favorite example involves the phase down of lead in gasoline, which we shall shortly discuss) as a sign that this technique can be used to support as well as to undermine protective regulation. As we demonstrate, however, cost-benefit analysis would have stood as an obstacle to early regulatory successes. Before turning to the various case studies illustrating this point, we first take a brief look at previous efforts to undertake retrospective cost-benefit analyses of important regulatory achievements
06-06 “European Chemical Policy and the United States: The Impacts of REACH”
The European Union is moving toward adoption of its new Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) policy, an innovative system of chemicals regulation that will provide crucial information on the safety profile of chemicals used in industry. Chemicals produced elsewhere, such as in the United States, and exported to Europe will have to meet the same standards as chemicals produced within the European Union. What is at stake for the U.S. is substantial: we estimate that chemical exports to Europe that are subject to REACH amount to about 14 million per year. Even if, as the U.S. chemicals industry has argued, REACH is a needless mistake, it will be far more profitable to pay the modest compliance costs than to lose access to the enormous European market.
Maternal feeding practices predict weight gain and obesogenic eating behaviours in young children : a prospective study
Background Maternal feeding practices have been proposed to play an important role in early child weight gain and obesogenic eating behariours. However, to date longitudinal investigations in young children exploring these relationships have been lacking. The aim of the present study was to explore prospective relationships between maternal feeding practices, child weight gain and obesogenic eating behaviours in 2-year-old children. The competing hypothesis that child eating behaviours predict changes in maternal feeding practices was also examined.Methods A sample of 323 mother (mean age = 35 years, + 0.37) and child dyads (mean age = 2.03 years, + 0.37 at recruitment) were participants. Mothers completed a questionnaire assessing parental feeding practices and child eating behaviours at baseline and again one year later. Child BMI (predominantly objectively measured) was obtained at both time points.Results Increases in child BMI z-scores over the follow-up period were predicted by maternal instrumental feeding practices. Furthermore, restriction, emotional feeding, encouragement to eat, weight-based restriction and fat restriction were associated prospectively with the development of obesogenic eating behaviours in children including emotional eating, tendency to overeat and food approach behaviours (such as enjoyment of food and good appetite). Maternal monitoring, however, predicted decreases in food approach eating behaviours. Partial support was also observed for child eating behaviours predicting maternal feeding practices.Conclusions Maternal feeding practices play an important role in the development of weight gain and obesogenic eating behaviours in young children and are potential targets for effective prevention interventions aiming to decrease child obesity.<br /
Bacterial toxins: Offensive, defensive, or something else altogether?
The secretion of proteins that damage host tissue is well established as integral to the infectious processes of many bacterial pathogens. However, recent advances in our understanding of the activity of toxins suggest that the attributes we have assigned to them from early in vitro experimentation have misled us into thinking of them as merely destructive tools. Here, we will discuss the multifarious ways in which toxins contribute to the lifestyle of bacteria and, by considering their activity from an evolutionary perspective, demonstrate how this extends far beyond their ability to destroy host tissue
Optimising cosmic shear surveys to measure modifications to gravity on cosmic scales
We consider how upcoming photometric large scale structure surveys can be
optimized to measure the properties of dark energy and possible cosmic scale
modifications to General Relativity in light of realistic astrophysical and
instrumental systematic uncertainities. In particular we include flexible
descriptions of intrinsic alignments, galaxy bias and photometric redshift
uncertainties in a Fisher Matrix analysis of shear, position and position-shear
correlations, including complementary cosmological constraints from the CMB. We
study the impact of survey tradeoffs in depth versus breadth, and redshift
quality. We parameterise the results in terms of the Dark Energy Task Force
figure of merit, and deviations from General Relativity through an analagous
Modified Gravity figure of merit. We find that intrinsic alignments weaken the
dependence of figure of merit on area and that, for a fixed observing time, a
fiducial Stage IV survey plateaus above roughly 10,000deg2 for DE and peaks at
about 5,000deg2 as the relative importance of IAs at low redshift penalises
wide, shallow surveys. While reducing photometric redshift scatter improves
constraining power, the dependence is shallow. The variation in constraining
power is stronger once IAs are included and is slightly more pronounced for MG
constraints than for DE. The inclusion of intrinsic alignments and galaxy
position information reduces the required prior on photometric redshift
accuracy by an order of magnitude for both the fiducial Stage III and IV
surveys, equivalent to a factor of 100 reduction in the number of spectroscopic
galaxies required to calibrate the photometric sample.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Fixed an error in equation 19 which changes the
right hand panels of figures 1 and 2, and modifies conclusions on the results
for fixed observing tim
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