::: SerTox :::

WHO recommended classification of pesticides by hazard, 2009

The WHO recommended classification of pesticides by hazard And Guidelines to Classification 2009.July 15, 2010.This publication sets out a classification system to distinguish between the more and the less hazardous forms of selected pesticides based on acute risk to human health (that is the risk of single or multiple exposures over a relatively short period of time). It takes into consideration the toxicity of the technical compound and its common formulations. See PDF

China dairy products with melamine, again

China dairy products found tainted with melamine. bbcnews. July 09, 2010. Chinese food safety officials have seized 64 tonnes of raw dairy materials contaminated with the toxic industrial chemical melamine. The Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, reported that the quality watchdog in Qinghai province took the material from a dairy plant there. Test samples showed the milk powder carried up to 500 times the maximum allowed level of the chemical. The use of melamine in milk in 2008 killed six babies and made 300,000 ill. The latest batch of contaminated powder was first found in Gansu province and traced back to the Dongyuan Dairy Factory in Minhe Country, in neighbouring Qinghai. Another 12 tonnes of finished milk powder products, also found to be tainted, were seized.[ See ]

Tackling injecting drug use in BMJ

Strict laws on the criminalisation of drug use and drug users are fuelling the spread of HIV and other serious harms associated with the criminal market and should be reviewed, say experts in this series of articles, published to coincide with the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna, which runs from 18 to 23 July 2010.Read all articles on harm reduction:

An alternative to the war on drugs

Policy resistance to harm reduction for drug users and potential effect of change

Survival and cessation in injecting drug users

How Ukraine is tackling Europe's worst HIV epidemic

Evidence based policy for illicit drugs

Knowing the score: a doctor addict tells his story

MERCOSUR health ministers' declaration, June 2010.

"Attached, translated into English, is the wonderful Declation signed last month by the health ministers of nine South American countries, calling for a ban on all forms of asbestos and products containing asbestos. It would be wonderful if there is a way to to use this Declaration and make a public request to the health ministers of other countries, such as Mexico and Colombia, to support the leadership shown by these health ministers to stop the global South from being the dumping ground of deadly asbestos, with all the health and economic disaster it brings. It is to her enormous shame that Canada's Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, continues to support asbestos use. It is an aberration that a Minister of Health would reject the position of the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Public Health Association and the 9,500 doctors in Quebec, who all have said that her position that chrysotile asbestos can be safely used is false and that Canada's mining and export of asbestos must end. It would be wonderful if people would send a short, sharp letter to Prime Minister Harper (Alukkaq has very little power) calling on him to support Canada's leading health authorities and put health ahead of politics. Ask him to let Canada's health authorities set his policy on asbestos, not the asbestos industry. Or whatever you wish to say. Harper is feeling the heat because of the demonstrations around the world and the letters they sent to him and all the media coverage at the moment. I am sure that his political advisers are chewing on this right now. So the more we do to let him know that we will not go away, he cannot bury the issue, we will expose, challenge and embarrass him, will help push them to decide the price for supporting asbestos is too high and too politically dangerous".Kathleen Ruff. Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research . Canada

From DOAJ team to RETEL: Publishing practices in general

Your views on open access publishing are needed!. June 22, 2010. The SOAP Project (*) is currently conducting an online survey to assess researcher experiences with open access publishing. This survey aims to inform the most comprehensive analysis of attitudes to open access publishing to date and is seeking views from a wide a range of interested parties. It is primarily aimed at active researchers in public and private organizations, from all fields of the research in the sciences and humanities and focuses on publication of research articles in (open access) peer-reviewed journals. If you would like to contribute to shaping the public discourse on open access, please visit http://surveymonkey.com/soap_survey_g .It should take 10-15 minutes to complete. Please share this news with your research collaborators, so that the views from your community will be properly represented.The survey outcome will be made public and openly shared with the publishers, research funding agencies and European Commission, libraries and researchers. Thanks in advance, the SOAP Project Team
(*) The SOAP consortium is funded by the European Commission and coordinated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It represents key stakeholders in open access, such as publishers BioMed Central, SAGE and Springer; funding agencies (the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council) and libraries (the Max Planck Digital Library of the Max Planck Society). The project runs for two years, from March 2009 to February 2011.

ARBs links to increased risks for Cancer

Research Links ARBs To Increased Risk Of Cancer. June 14, 2010.The AP (6/14, Cheng) reports that, "in an analysis of five previous studies following about 60,000 patients, experts found a link between people taking medicines known as angiotensin-receptor blockers, or ARBs, and cancer." Investigators "researchers found that people who took the drugs had about a one percent higher risk of getting cancer than people who weren't on the drugs. This included a whole range of cancers - prostate, breast and a noticeable spike in lung cancer." The research is published online in the Lancet Oncology.The Cleveland Plain Dealer (6/14, Townsend) reports, however, that the researchers said "We need more studies. We need more analysis to further clarify the risk."The UK's Daily Mail (6/14, Martin) reports, "The findings showed that 7.2 per cent of patients taking ARBs were diagnosed with a new cancer over a period of four years, compared with six per cent of patients not treated with the drugs." The UK's Press Association (6/14) reports that "more than 85% of the patients were taking one type of ARB, telmisartan." Bloomberg News (6/14, Matsuyama) reports, however, that "Astellas Pharma Inc. and Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH said" that "telmisartan...is safe based on patient studies, refuting" the new "finding." MedPage Today (6/13, Smith) reported that the researchers "said their analysis was prompted by the result of a 2003 trial of one of the drugs, which showed an unexpected increase in the proportion of fatal cancers among those getting the medication." BBC News (6/14, Wilkinson) reports that "it is not clear why ARBs may increase cancer risk, but some animal studies suggest there may be a link with blood vessel growth in tumours."The CNN (6/13, Falco) "Paging Dr. Gupta" blog reported that "in an accompanying editorial, Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic...suggests the results of this analysis require 'urgent regulatory review.'" But, "Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang, an expert on several cancers and spokesman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology disagrees. He says he's fairly skeptical about the study conclusion, because the only statistically significant rise was in lung cancer." The Wall Street Journal (6/14, Loftus), Reuters (6/14, Steenhuysen), HeartWire (6/13, Nainggolan), and HealthDay (6/13, Edelson) also covered the story. .

EPA is taking action to end all uses of the insecticide endosulfan in the United States

EPA Moves to Terminate All Uses of Insecticide Endosulfan to Protect Health of Farmworkers and Wildlife. yosemite.epa.gov.June 09, 2010. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking action to end all uses of the insecticide endosulfan in the United States. Endosulfan, which is used on vegetables, fruits, and cotton, can pose unacceptable neurological and reproductive risks to farmworkers and wildlife and can persist in the environment. Read more....

Trivia # 169: vodka drip therapy

Toxicological trivia from June 10, 2010: Australian doctors in October 2007, have kept an Italian tourist alive by feeding him vodka through a drip for three days, medical staff in Queensland say. The 24-year-old man, who had swallowed a poison in an apparent suicide attempt, was treated while in a coma. Doctors set up the drip after running out of medicinal alcohol, used as an antidote to the poison. Medical staff said the patient had made a full recovery, and the hangover had worn off by the time he woke up. He had been taken to hospital in the northern Queensland town of Mackay after swallowing:
a) Ethylene glycol;
b) Methanol;
c) Propilenglycol.

Trivia # 168: deadly poison to Georgi Markov

Toxicological Trivia from June 09, 2010: In September 7, 1978, while he was waiting for a bus on a sidewalk in London, Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov felt a twinge in his leg. A few hours later he had fever and went into the hospital. After three days died. Medical examiners found in his leg with a small sphere of metal debris:
a) Ricin;
b) Bacillus anthracis;
c) Ciguatoxine.

European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER)

The European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER, Publishing Date: 02/06/10 ) asks managers and workers' health and safety representatives about how health and safety risks are managed at their workplace, with a particular focus on the newer ‘psychosocial risks’, such as work-related stress, violence and harassment. This report presents an overview of the results from a first analysis of the data, which is drawn from 36,000 interviews carried out in 31 countries.Author:European Agency for Safety and Health at Work . See. PDF format.