He estado en conferencias!!!
Tainted heparin seized from Ohio company
Federal drug regulators have seized batches of the tainted blood thinner heparin from a Cincinnati manufacturer that used a Chinese-made ingredient linked to 81 U.S. deaths earlier this year.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday that it took 11 lots of heparin from Celsus Laboratories that was contaminated with over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS), a chemical used only to make fake blood thinner. The ingredient mimics heparin's anti-clotting properties but can cause severe allergic reactions and dangerously low blood pressure, according to reports the agency received beginning in January. http://tinyurl.com/5ccunh
Mexican "water monster" threatens to vanish
The axolotl—a foot-long amphibian reputed by the Aztecs to be a transformed god (but eaten anyway)—is in danger of disappearing for good, like so many of its fellow amphibians. http://tinyurl.com/5zqwek
Pet food making people sick
Some 79 people in 21 states have been sickened with a bacterial infection linked to contaminated pet food — the first time human Salmonella enterica illness has been traced to a contaminated animal food plant. In the past three years, companies have recalled at least 135 pet products, including food and supplements, because of Salmonella contamination. http://tinyurl.com/5g8bgb
Postal Anthrax Aftermath
Keith Rhodes, the Government Accountability Office’s chief technologist, told a congressional hearing in October 2007 that “we are at greater risk today” than before of an infectious disease epidemic because of the great increase in biolaboratories and the absence of oversight they receive. In the past six years, says Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright, “the Bush administration has driven a 20- to 30-fold increase in the number of institutions and individuals with access to live, virulent bioweapons agents,” to about 400 institutions and 15,000 people. Every one of them, he claims, “is a potential source of an attack like the 2001 attack. http://tinyurl.com/6b8a9n
Levels of the greenhouse gas methane begin to increase again
Since early 2007 the balance has been upset, according to a paper on the new findings being published this week in Geophysical Review Letters. The paper's lead authors, postdoctoral researcher Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, say this imbalance has resulted in several million metric tons of additional methane in the atmosphere. Methane is produced by wetlands, rice paddies, cattle, and the gas and coal industries, and is destroyed by reaction with the hydroxyl free radical (OH), often referred to as the atmosphere's "cleanser." Pound for pound, methane is 25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the situation will require careful monitoring in the near future. http://tinyurl.com/6by2kr
Indian temperature rise 'will exceed projected rainfall'
(NEW DELHI) One of India's leading climate change scientists says the country needs to address the impact of climate change on its agriculture, water resources and health "right away", as projected temperature rise will far exceed the increase in rainfall by the end of the century. "Studies have shown that even a one degree rise in temperature can cause a ten per cent reduction in [crop] yield. And we are talking about three degrees change expected in future in India," http://tinyurl.com/6om7g8
Mercury pollution and the Northeast states
In the Northeast, elevated levels of mercury in certain fish species have resulted in statewide fish consumption advisories covering more than 10,000 lakes, ponds, and reservoirs, and over 46,000 river miles in the region. The persistent need for these advisories comes despite nearly a decade of work within the Northeast that substantially reduced regional mercury emissions and discharges. Multiple research studies have shown that the majority of mercury in the states’ waters now comes from out-of-region sources such as coal-fired power plants, whose mercury emissions drift to the region on air currents and then fall directly into waterways or get carried by runoff into them. http://tinyurl.com/68rouk
