Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Is Radiation Actually Good For Some of Us?

February 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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Meet Reference Man, a kind of hypothetical Ken Doll: a 20-something white male, fit and hearty, out in the park doing a hundred one-armed pushups every morning at 5:30. He’s the guy most radiation exposure standards are designed to protect. But as a stand-in, he’s passé. Reference Man was born when most of the evidence about the health effects of radiation came from high-dose exposures such as nuclear bombs. But the landscape has changed. Exposure now comes from low and often chronic levels of radiation such as medical technologies, which are the fastest-growing source of radiation ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, March-April 2012, Science
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Bacteria ‘R’ Us

December 2, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Prokaryotes

Today’s revelation in the journal Science that researchers have found a bacterium in California’s Mono Lake that can thrive on arsenic — usually implicated in killing life, not sustaining it — is quickly revolutionizing our conception of what is life and where it might be found. To help in deciphering the direct contribution bacteria make to human life, we’re reposting this story which originally debuted on Oct. 18. A few scientists noticed in the late 1960s that the marine bacteria Vibrio fischeri appeared to coordinate among themselves the production of chemicals that ... Read More

More like this: Magazine Feature Story, MUST READ, November-December 2010, Science
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Strengthening the Link Between Pollution, Cancer

May 6, 2010 • By • 3 Comments

A new report from a presidential advisory group represents a major advance in the struggle to protect people from exposure to carcinogenic chemicals. "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now," issued today by the President's Cancer Panel, announces a shift in emphasis from merely treating cancer to preventing it, and from seeking the roots of cancer in individual DNA to recognizing environmental contaminants as important causes. Two distinguished cancer doctors appointed by President George W. Bush, LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., professor of surgery at Howard University College ... Read More

More like this: Health
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This Just In: More Research Needed

December 31, 2009 • By • 1 Comment

The question of whether prenatal environmental influences can affect patterns of disease throughout life — and whether the influence affects genes themselves or their epigenetics (the complex structures that package and protect the DNA in every cell) — continues to vex scientists, parents and regulators. In the last few years, there has been an explosion of research confirming the broad principle that events such as maternal stress, nutritional deficits and chemical exposures in the womb can spell trouble for an organism, sometimes many years into adulthood. But how much is passed on to ... Read More

More like this: January-February 2010, News and Options, Science, Science & Environment
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Scientists Say They Can’t Replicate Pioneering Epigenetic Results

September 25, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Last year, Miller-McCune reported on the striking research of Washington State University researcher Michael Skinner, who found that exposing rats prenatally to a widely used fungicide resulted in male reproductive malformations and malfunctions for four generations. Skinner believes the transgenerational nature of the effects occurred via epigenetic changes in gene expression during gestation — that is, the genes themselves weren't changed, but altered chemistry of the DNA scaffolding made the changes heritable. Now Skinner's breakthrough 2005 study is being challenged by industry and ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Science, Science & Environment
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An Iodine Chaser

August 19, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

The health risks of radiation exposure are notoriously difficult to measure, but the link between radioactive iodine and thyroid cancer is among the strongest for any radiation-induced disease. The thyroid gland uses iodine to make hormones that are important to development and metabolism. From the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine and the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan in World War II, there is good evidence that the ingestion or inhalation of iodine-131 causes genetic damage that in turn can lead to thyroid cancer. In addition to iodine-131, nuclear fission reactions produce other ... Read More

More like this: Profile, Science, Science & Environment, September-October 2009
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The Ecologist and the Prisoners

February 24, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

The Cedar Creek Corrections Center is in the woods — the Capitol Forest, to be exact, about half an hour southwest of Olympia, Wash. The minimum-security facility is near the ghost town of Bordeaux, where a utopian settlement was founded in 1880. Most of its enthusiasts departed after the first winter. It's no wonder; here on the fringe of the Olympic Peninsula, rainfall totals 30 to 40 inches a year, and the peninsula itself soaks up as much as 180 inches annually. If you don't like rain, you'll go nuts here. On a foggy November day, the Bordeaux woods ooze primeval mystery. At each ... Read More

More like this: Environment, March-April 2009, Profile, Science & Environment
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The Danger of Fat-Think

August 31, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

Obesity causes severe health problems. It's also a source of severe shame. Just perceiving oneself as fat, in fact, may produce greater emotional damage than actually being overweight. A German study by Bärbel-Maria Kurth and Ute Ellert in the June Deutsches Ärzteblatt International finds that young people who think they're fat suffer a poorer quality of life than truly fat people. In their study — "Perceived or True Obesity: Which Causes More Suffering in Adolescents?" — Kurth and Ellert asked 6,654 German boys and girls, aged 11 to 17, questions about six aspects of their quality of ... Read More

More like this: Health, September 2008, Small Victories
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No Weighting

August 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment

If an alien were to tune in to an Earth television broadcast, it would gain an impression of humans as very thin yet very muscular, with prominent cheekbones and jaw lines, sculpted torsos and long, shapely legs. If the alien then landed on the street of nearly any American city, it would be in for the shock of loose clothing and guts peeking out from under T-shirt hems. This extreme discrepancy — between the norm of form and figure and what our culture and media offer up as the ideal — is the source of much emotional pain and huge social costs. Related story: The Danger of ... Read More

More like this: Health, September 2008, Small Victories
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Environment Becomes Heredity

July 14, 2008 • By • 1 Comment

Let's say, just for the fun of it, that rats engage in speed dating, and we have a hidden camera. Rat A — let’s call her Betsy — is ready and willing to select a mate from a pool of males who are milling around in a separate room, downing too many cocktails. One by one, the male rats visit Betsy as she sits, nervous and inquisitive, at a little round table, toying with her bar napkin. Rats routinely identify each other and maintain relationships via a lot of sniffing, nosing and general snorfling, and when they’re in the mood for love, they do it even more. Alas, all the snorfling ... Read More

More like this: August 2008, Environment, Magazine Feature Story, Science, Science & Environment
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