Health & WellnessS


Satellite

Medicine doesn't work properly in space

Alasdair Wilkins
British Broadcasting Corporation
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:24 UTC
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© Unknown
Here's one more unexpected challenge for space travel: drugs crucial for treating everything from a mild headache to a serious infection don't work properly in the radically different environment away from Earth...and yes, radiation might be part of the problem.

On Earth, medicine can generally remain effective for about two years, as long as it's stored correctly. Proper storage generally involves keeping it away from direct sunlight and in a cool, dry space. But there are plenty of conditions that we take for granted on Earth that are nothing like those we find in space, where "radiation, excessive vibrations, microgravity, a carbon dioxide rich environment and variations in humidity and temperature" are all potential issues.

To figure out what effect all that might have on medicine, the researchers sent up four boxes of drugs containing 35 different medications up to the International Space Station. At the same time, they kept the same set of drugs in ideal conditions at the Johnson Space Center. The space drugs came back at different times - some just a couple weeks later, some more than two years later - but they all consistently showed reduced effectiveness at much faster rates than if they had remained on Earth.
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Bizarro Earth

US: Mystery illnesses plague Louisiana oil spill crews


Agence France-Presse
Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:01 UTC
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© Agence France-PresseAccording to a key roster a total of 52,000 workers were responding to the Gulf oil spill as of August 2010
Jamie Simon worked on a barge in the oily waters for six months following the BP spill last year, cooking for the cleanup workers, washing their clothes and tidying up after them.

One year later, the 32-year-old said she still suffers from a range of debilitating health problems, including racing heartbeat, vomiting, dizziness, ear infections, swollen throat, poor sight in one eye and memory loss.

She blames toxic elements in the crude oil and the dispersants sprayed to dissolve it after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010.

"I was exposed to those chemicals, which I questioned, and they told me it was just as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid and there was nothing for me to worry about," she said of the BP bosses at the job site.

The local doctor, Mike Robichaux, said he has seen as many as 60 patients like Simon in recent weeks, as this small southern town of 10,000 bordered by swamp land and sugar cane fields grapples with a mysterious sickness that some believe is all BP's fault.

Andy LaBoeuf, 51, said he was paid $1,500 per day to use his boat to go out on the water and lay boom to contain some of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed from the bottom of the ocean after the BP well ruptured.
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Family

Unbelievable!! Toxic Chemicals Injected Into Wells, Report Says

Ian Urbina
New York Times
Sat, 16 Apr 2011 17:19 UTC
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© Matt Nager/The New York TimesA sign warns against swimming in a holding lake in Texas, where Fountain Quail Water Management separates and cleans hydrofracking water.
Washington - Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats.

The chemicals were used by companies during a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives into rock formations deep underground. The process, which is being used to tap into large reserves of natural gas around the country, opens fissures in the rock to stimulate the release of oil and gas.

Hydrofracking has attracted increased scrutiny from lawmakers and environmentalists in part because of fears that the chemicals used during the process can contaminate underground sources of drinking water.

"Questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing persist, which are compounded by the secrecy surrounding the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids," said the report, which was written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Diana DeGette of Colorado.
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Evil Rays

Dramatic increase in radiation found at German nuclear waste depot

Timothy Jones
The Associated Press
Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:13 UTC
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© unknownThe former salt mine holds some 127,000 waste containers
Increased levels of radiation have been found in the controversial Asse nuclear waste depot in the German state of Lower Saxony. The discovery has led to new calls for the depot to be emptied and closed.

German nuclear safety officials have found increased levels of radioactivity in a borehole at the Asse atomic waste depot in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony.

A spokesman from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) said its measurement of the radioactive substance cesium were 24 times over the allowed limit - the highest level recorded since nuclear waste stopped being stored in the depot in 1978.

The BfS measured a concentration of the radioactive substance cesium of 240,000 becquerels per liter. The measurement was taken 750 metres below ground level.

Comment: Two things stand out about this case:

1) It's reasonable to assume that they have above-ground radiation monitors at radioactive waste dumps. Is it possible the readings are picking up on the fallout from Fukushima and that the idea that these readings were taken underground is just disinfo?

2) Or that radiation really IS leaking from this waste dump, which - considering the timing of Japans disaster - speaks to a phenomenon which might not be easily explainable. An example that comes to mind is of the many construction cranes collapsing around the US and in other countries prior to, and at the beginning of the housing crash.

See:
Florida: Crane Collapse Blamed For Fuel Spill
Illinois: Man dies in crane collapse
Deadly crane collapse probed in Hunan, China
Crane collapse kills seven at Vietnam port

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Bizarro Earth

Radioactivity rises in sea off Japan nuclear plant

Mari Yamaguchi
Salon
Sat, 16 Apr 2011 07:45 UTC
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© The Associated PressJapanese police officers carry a body during a search and recovery operation for missing victims
Tokyo - Levels of radioactivity have risen sharply in seawater near a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant in northern Japan, signaling the possibility of new leaks at the facility, the government said Saturday.

The announcement came after a magnitude-5.9 earthquake jolted Japan on Saturday morning, hours after the country's nuclear safety agency ordered plant operators to beef up their quake preparedness systems to prevent a recurrence of the nuclear crisis.

There were no reports of damage from the earthquake, and there was no risk of a tsunami similar to the one that struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant March 11 after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake, causing Japan's worst-ever nuclear plant disaster.

Since the tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling systems, workers have been spraying massive amounts of water on the overheated reactors. Some of that water, contaminated with radiation, leaked into the Pacific. Plant officials said they plugged that leak on April 5 and radiation levels in the sea dropped.

But the government said Saturday that radioactivity in the seawater has risen again in recent days. The level of radioactive iodine-131 spiked to 6,500 times the legal limit, according to samples taken Friday, up from 1,100 times the limit in samples taken the day before. Levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 rose nearly fourfold. The increased levels are still far below those recorded earlier this month before the initial leak was plugged.
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Cards

Pain relief - it is just an illusion

Richard Alleyne
The Daily Telegraph
Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:00 UTC
It was supposed to be a trick of the mind to entertain the crowds, but a visual illusion that gives the impression your hand is being massaged could actually turn out to be an effective treatment for arthritis.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham demonstrating the trick at an open day were amazed when a number of pensioners told how it had miraculously reduced the pain in their joints.

The computer simulation was later tested on a sample of sufferers and in 85 per cent of cases it reduced their pain by 50 per cent.

The discovery was made by chance during a community open day at the university when visitors were invited to experience some of the body distortion illusions used in every day research.

A person places their hand inside a box containing a camera, which then projects the image in real-time onto a screen in front of them.

The subject then sees their fingers being apparently stretched and shrunk by someone gently pushing and pulling from the other side of the box.

It is supposed to just trick the mind into thinking your hand is being massaged - but it had the added bonus of relieving the pain of arthritis.
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Cow

Drug-Resistant Bacteria Found in 1/4 of US Meat, Poultry


Raw Story
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:15 UTC
meat @ grocery
© AFP
A sampling of grocery store meat in five US cities has shown a type of drug-resistant bacteria is contained in about one quarter of beef, chicken, pork and turkey for sale, a study said Friday.

Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that can cause skin infections, pneumonia, sepsis or endocarditis in people with weak hearts, was found in 47 percent of samples, said the study in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The study drew fire from the meat industry, which pointed to the "small sample" taken and said its findings were misleading.

More than half -- 52 percent -- of the infected samples contained a tough strain of S. aureus that was resistant to at least three types of antibiotics.

Most of the time, the bacteria would be killed off during cooking, but risks of contamination can come from handling raw meat in the kitchen and touching other utensils, or from eating meat that is not fully cooked.
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Cow Skull

Drugs, Poisons and Metals in Our Meat - USDA Needs A Major Overhaul

David Kirby
Huffington Post
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:52 UTC
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© animalwelfareapproved.org
Washington dumped some more bad news Friday afternoon when the USDA's Office of Inspector General issued a damning and unsettling report on the department's "National Residue Program for Cattle." It found gaping holes in the safety of American beef production, including residue of drugs, poisons and heavy metals in the meat we eat.

It's a stomach-turning, chilling read, even for a federal government document with the driest of titles: "Audit Report 24601-08-KC." And it's something that every omnivore in America should take the time to read.

"Based on our review, we found that the national residue program is not accomplishing its mission of monitoring the food supply for harmful residues," the USDA's oversight office wrote. The audit revealed that USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), along with the FDA and EPA, "have not established thresholds for many dangerous substances (e.g., copper or dioxin), which has resulted in meat with these substances being distributed in commerce."
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Syringe

People with diabetes have higher risk of heart disease

Gordon J. Rafool
NewsChief.com
Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:48 UTC
Diabetes is a condition in which a person's blood sugar is higher than what is accepted as normal. It is a condition that is increasing in the United States every year. It is a condition that is associated with age and increased weight. In recent years, diabetes has reached epidemic numbers in the United States. Recently published in one of the Nation's premier medical magazines was a study that looked at 5200 American men and women who participated in the on-going Framingham Heart Center. This study found that diabetic women had more than twice the risk of developing heart disease than non-diabetic women. The study went on to say that diabetic women, who already had heart disease, were more than twice as likely to die compared to non-diabetic women. Among men the researchers found that those with diabetes also had twice the risk of developing heart disease and faced a 1.7 times higher risk of dying after developing heart trouble compared with non-diabetic men. One of the most startling aspects of this study found that those 50 years and older, the diabetic men lived an average of 7.5 years less than men without diabetes.
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Ambulance

Stillbirth epidemic claims more lives each year than HIV-AIDS and malaria combined

Andre Picard
Globe and Mail
Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:17 UTC
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© Globe and Mail
When Christine Jonas-Simpson's son Ethan was born, there was an eerie quiet in the delivery room, and then a piercing wail.

"The only cry I heard was my own," she said sombrely.

Ethan was dead, "born still" in the language of grieving parents; "stillborn" in the medical vernacular. The umbilical cord was constricted, essentially suffocating the baby in the womb, a condition impossible to detect with an ultrasound.

Ms. Jonas-Simpson, who was almost 38 weeks pregnant, knew her son was dead before she went into labor. When he was born, she held Ethan in her arms, stroking his shock of curly red hair. So did her husband.

The nurses were wonderfully supportive, even explaining to Ethan's young siblings how his air tube was broken, something that could happen to an astronaut. The family was able to mourn on their terms.
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