Changes in Breath Trihalomethane Levels Resulting from Household Water-Use Activities-2

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Changes in Breath Trihalomethane Levels Resulting from Household Water-Use Activities"</p><p>Environmental Health Perspectives 2005;114(4):514-521.</p><p>Published online 15 Nov 2005</p><p>PMCID:PMC1440773.</p><p>This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original DOI.</p

Changes in Breath Trihalomethane Levels Resulting from Household Water-Use Activities-1

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Changes in Breath Trihalomethane Levels Resulting from Household Water-Use Activities"</p><p>Environmental Health Perspectives 2005;114(4):514-521.</p><p>Published online 15 Nov 2005</p><p>PMCID:PMC1440773.</p><p>This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original DOI.</p

Identification of New and Distinctive Exposures from Little Cigars

Little cigar mainstream smoke is less well-characterized than cigarette mainstream smoke in terms of chemical composition. This study compared four popular little cigar products against four popular cigarette products to determine compounds that are either unique to or more abundant in little cigars. These compounds are categorized as new or distinctive exposures, respectively. Total particulate matter samples collected from machine-generated mainstream smoke were extracted with methylene chloride, and the extracts were analyzed using two-dimensional gas chromatography–time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The data were evaluated using novel data-processing algorithms that account for characteristics specific to the selected analytical technique and variability associated with replicate sample analyses. Among more than 25 000 components detected across the complete data set, ambrox was confirmed as a new exposure, and 3-methylbutanenitrile and 4-methylimidazole were confirmed as distinctive exposures. Concentrations of these compounds for the little cigar mainstream smoke were estimated at approximately 0.4, 0.7, and 12 μg/rod, respectively. In achieving these results, this study has demonstrated the capability of a powerful analytical approach to identify previously uncharacterized tobacco-related exposures from little cigars. The same approach could also be applied to other samples to characterize constituents associated with tobacco product classes or specific tobacco products of interest. Such analyses are critical in identifying tobacco-related exposures that may affect public health

American Healthy Homes Survey: A National Study of Residential Pesticides Measured from Floor Wipes

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in collaboration with the United States Environmental Protection Agency conducted a survey measuring lead, allergens, and insecticides in a randomly selected nationally representative sample of residential homes. Multistage sampling with clustering was used to select the 1131 homes of which a subset of 500 randomly selected homes included the collection of hard surface floor wipes. Samples were collected by trained field technicians between June 2005 and March 2006 using isopropanol wetted wipes. Samples were analyzed for a suite of 24 compounds which included insecticides in the organochlorine, organophosphate, pyrethroid and phenylpyrazole classes, and the insecticide synergist piperonyl butoxide. The most commonly detected were permethrin (89%), chlorpyrifos (78%), chlordane (64%), piperonyl butoxide (52%), cypermethrin (46%), and fipronil (40%). Mean and geometric mean (GM) concentrations varied widely among compounds, but were highest for <i>trans</i>-permethrin (mean 2.22 ng/cm² and GM 0.14 ng/cm²) and cypermethrin (mean 2.9 ng/cm² and GM 0.03 ng/cm²). Results show that most floors in occupied homes in the U.S. have measurable levels of insecticides that may serve as sources of exposure to occupants