Announcing the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Posting has been very light recently while I work off some backlog. Thanks for your patience, and I’ll be back to a more reasonable frequency soon. Until then, check out the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, released yesterday.

The MEA report presents the results from a five-year research effort by 1,360 of the world’s leading scientists. It documents the role of healthy and diverse ecosystems for providing numerous services clean water, food, a stable climate, and much more. The report’s findings are that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – watersheds, forests, fisheries – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years.

In response to the MEA’s findings, eight of the world’s leading international conservation organizations – Birdlife International, Conservation International, IUCN-The World Conservation Union, Fauna & Flora International, the Nature Conservancy, Wetlands International, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) – have pledged to work together to conserve ecosystems for the improvement of human well-being. There’s nothing surprising in this group endorsing ecosystem protection. I think we can all be impressed when the Chamber of Commerce signs on.

The Ecological Society of America has published an issues paper, Ecosystem Services: Benefits Supplied to Human Societies by Natural Ecosystems (Issue 2, available here) that contains a very readable summary about ecosystem services. You also can find here the paper published in Nature in 1997 by Robert Costanza which concluded that the value of global ecosystem services reduced to dollars ($33 trillion) exceeded the value of the global gross national products ($18 trillion).

See you in a few days. I haven’t cracked open the MEA report, but will be posting something about it soon. Thanks to Bob Whitson for the tip.

Total Human Exposure Concepts – The Only Surprise Here is That People Are Surprised

Via Bob Whitson, we get introduced to a new post over at Rachel’s Environment and Health News about the concepts of total human exposure and microenvironments. It’s a nice summary of the literature. However, I guess what surprises me about the article is why, 20 years after the introduction of personal exposure research, there should be any surprise that the chemical sources closest to us (personal care products, fire retardants and plasticizers released from plastic products, dust tracked into the house, dry cleaning brought into the house) provide the largest contributions to our personal exposure.

Ever since reading about the TEAM (Total Exposure Assessment Methodology) study conducted by EPA in the mid-1980s, I’ve wondered about the effectiveness of the current regulatory strategy embodied by NESHAPs, RCRA, CERCLA, etc. in reducing exposures to pollutants associated with chronic health risks. Maybe the focus really should be on removing indoor sources, such as house dust (EPA’s work on World Trade Center restoration has produced some research on the effectiveness of cleaning methods in reducing chemical exposure), driving higher-mileage vehicles to reduce benzene exposures during refueling, modifying high-fat diets to reduce persistent organic pollutant exposures (as well as creating other health benefits), and purchasing products made with “greener”, lower toxicity materials.

Now that would be an innovative approach to reducing risks. I’m not holding my breath though, that it’s going to turn into any type of program. The existing regulatory programs are pretty entrenched, and are set up to make “progress” (reducing emissions, cleaning up contaminated sites, etc.) regardless of whether or not that progress has anything to do with actually reducing risks.

Controversies over Mercury Control Benefits

EPA came out last week with it’s rule for regulating mercury emissions from power plants. I haven’t read it yet – the draft rule plus preamble is 500 pages, double-spaced. But the WaPo noted today that the EPA was arguing that the costs of mercury controls outweighed the health benefits – at the same time an EPA-sponsored study conducted by Harvard University was coming to a different conclusion. According to the WaPo:

That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents, said a staff member who helped develop the rule. Acknowledging the Harvard study would have forced the agency to consider more stringent controls, said environmentalists and the study's author.

An EPA official said that the study was submitted to late to be considered in the rulemaking. But again according to the WaPo:

Interviews and documents, however, show that the EPA received the study results by the Jan. 3 deadline, and that officials had been briefed about its methodology as early as last August. EPA officials referred to some aspects of the Harvard study in a briefing for The Washington Post on Feb. 2.

The Harvard study concluded that mercury controls similar to those the EPA proposed could save nearly $5 billion a year through reduced neurological and cardiac harm. Last Tuesday, however, officials said the health benefits were worth no more than $50 million a year while the cost to industry would be $750 million a year.

It sounds like EPA didn’t even put the study into the docket (OAR-2002-0056). According to the WaPo, the study was sponsored by the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), which administered the EPA grant. You can find the study on their web site.

Before I had heard about this issue, I had started a post about this study by Trasande et al., 2005, coming out soon in Environmental Health Perspectives. That analysis concluded the lost productivity due to neurodevelopmental impacts of methylmercury amount to $8.7 billion per year in the US. This estimate is based on the number of children born each year with methylmercury cord blood levels greater than the RfD of 5.8 μg/L. As discussed previously here, the RfD has been developed from an estimated methylmercury dose that doubles the prevalence of young children with scores on a test of intellectual development that would fall into the clinically subnormal range – shorter version: low-level methylmercury exposure is thought to reduce IQ. Of the total $8.7 billion per year in lost productivity, $1.3 billion each year is considered attributable to mercury emissions from American power plants (you can disagree with it, but it’s a pretty slick analysis – you should check it out).

So what’s on the cost side for mercury control? According to the WaPo, EPA says “$750 million per year” (maybe it’s in the preamble somewhere). The notice of data availability provides some economic modeling which indicates $1.6 billion/year in 2010 and $1.1 billion/year in 2020. Utility industry calculations show annual costs up to 10-fold higher (of course). But before you conclude that the benefits still outweigh the costs, note that the Trasande et al., 2005 paper didn’t include the costs from cardiovascular risks (too uncertain in the minds of the authors for calculation), or other societal costs, so there’s always the possibility that the productivity losses have been underestimated.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about lack of transparency (sounds so much more polite than “distortion” or “concealment”) in information regarding mercury rulemaking. And, mercury allies in Congress seem pretty frantic to stop the even minimal regulation that the Bush Administration is imposing on the utility industry, going to the lengths of manufacturing bogus science in an effort to cloud peoples minds. I wonder what the deal is here. Has anyone summarized what is the financial impact of mercury controls on the utility industry? Is it really that significant?

This Just In

In light of the past couple of topics I’ve posted, you may want to read this, from Stanley Roach.

Thanks to James Wolcott for the tip.

A Response on Global Climate Change

Left Coaster became aware last Friday that most climate scientists are growing more certain that global climate change is occurring. The article closes with a plea, presumably to the readers, “[s]o now what do we do?” I checked the comments to find that noone rose to the bait – the progressives were too busy squabbling with the climate skeptics and blaming the President.

I suspect that lot of people are having a hard time coming to grips with “what to do”, because the changes are so big and life-changing. As you read this, absolutely everything around you took energy to make and transport to your doorstep, energy that ultimately results in greenhouse gas emissions. We’re simply not willing yet to change substantially that pattern of behavior to prevent significant adverse environmental effects that are probably two generations or more out in the future. Depending on how bad things get then, our grandchildren may judge us harshly for that choice.

At least we all could get a little better informed. The U.S. Global Climate Research Program published a few years back the National Assessment of Climate Change, which provided some scenarios that evaluated the regional implications of climate change to the U.S. Some examples can be found here. One concrete thing to consider doing is moving somewhere that isn’t going to be subjected to hurricanes or flooding. Other things may come to mind as you read the report. Tony Blair has been advocating taking action to mitigate global climate change, and the British government was a sponsor of the “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” conference, back in February. The steering committee report (16 pages) is about as tight a summary of the issues as can be found. If you want to follow things in more real time, you might click over to realclimate.org, though my brief look didn’t see a lot on mitigation or preparedness. It’s still worth checking into, if nothing else for the dummies guide to the hockey stick.

As I said before, most of the real impacts of global warming are decades out (unless you live, say, in Florida). The mitigation for those impacts also will take decades to implement and have any effect, which is the reason for the call to start now. The impacts may become more pronounced even with our best efforts at mitigation, see here. Going back to the question on Left Coaster (now what do we do), I feel that because the consequences are so far out in the future, they are unlikely to inspire too many people, and enough of the right people, to start efforts at mitigation. What might be more inspiring is resource depletion, particularly the peaking of petroleum production. If you can put a national security veneer on it, you might even get those who speak to power to develop an environmental consciousness, though we’d want to be a bit careful about what we wish for.

I recall something that Jay Hanson wrote when he signed off from Dieoff.org, along the lines of “what to do”. I’ve lost track of it, but the sense I recall from it included doing things such as move from places that are overly dependent on the technology infrastructure (such as Manhattan – remember James Burke’s Connections series?); find a career that’s resistant to resource shocks, pay off your credit card debts, get in shape and eat properly so you’re less reliant on the healthcare system, start a garden, get involved in your community, join a church (if you’re an atheist, there’s always the Unitarian-Universalists), find a job that doesn’t involve a long commute, learn how to fix your own stuff around the house, make more careful purchases and don’t buy so much stuff.

You may have noticed that I didn’t include writing letters or lobbying your Congressional representatives. However, after seeing this yesterday and watching Congress roll over on bankruptcy protection, I’m starting to wonder about the relevance of Congress in contributing to solutions to complex problems such as resource depletion or global climate change.

Hats off the Left Coaster for paying attention to this issue. Too bad more of their colleagues don’t follow along.

Peaking

The leading energy analysts who foretold Enron's demise are now claiming that the world's major oil companies are almost tapped out. This is a derivation of Hubbert’s Peak, Named after the late Dr. M. King Hubbert with Shell, who developed a model to predict oil production rates. He successfully predicted that US oil production would peak in about 1970 (and decline thereafter), and that world oil production would peak just about. . . now.

The decline in oil supplies may have potentially dire consequences:

The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.

Some argue that oil is an underlying cause of the Second Iraq War. This might also be a sign of oncoming resource wars.

The John S. Herold company has developed peak estimates for about two dozen oil companies. 2008 is expected to be a critical year, with Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Royal Dutch/Shell, and the Italian producer, Eni S.p.A., all hitting their peaks. In ChevronTexaco is expected to peak in 2009. According to Herold, each of the world's seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing production declines within the next 48 months or so.

The Herold company has its critics, but the energy companies clearly appear to be nervous. And, since we haven't initiated mitigation measures a decade in advance of peaking, as some experts say is needed, so should we.

Thanks to Howling at a Waning Moon for the tip.

The Body's Burden

Toxicologists refer to the levels of xenobiotics (chemicals foreign to our metabolic pathways) in organs as “body burden”. It’s an interesting choice of words, when considering the meaning of burden as “that which is borne with difficulty”. The term has taken on considerable emotional significance for many people, with the growing awareness that we all are carrying around in our bodies the levels of a long list of chemical substances.

The Inside Bay Area (Oakland Tribune online) recently published a story of a family who volunteered for blood and urine sampling to analyze what’s in their body burdens. You hear the family’s concern now that they know what their exposures are, but don’t know the significance for their health, or what should be done about them, if anything. The paper presents the usual speculations about autism, asthma and infertility, which I have to set aside for the moment, and stick with what’s provable about these kinds of results: the nature and significance of health effects, if any, associated with the body burden is not known.

This is our "body burden" our chemical legacy, picked up from our possessions, passed to our children and sown across the environment. It's the result, scientists say, of 50 years of increasing reliance on synthetic chemicals for every facet of our daily lives.

Only recently have regulators grasped its scope. Health officials have yet to fully comprehend its consequence.

We are all, in a sense, subjects of an experiment, with no way to buy your way out, eat your way out or exercise your way out. We are guinea pigs when it comes to the unknown long-term threat these chemicals pose in our bodies and, in particular, our children.

That’s overly dramatic, and I differ from it in certain ways (I feel that the risks can be ranked even with limited information, and there are things under your control that can be done to reduce chemical exposure) but it’s not an unreasonable assessment of the situation. It’s a story well worth reading.

A more comprehensive picture of the body burden can be found in the Centers for Disease Control National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. These reports, released approximately every two years, present CDCs activities in monitoring human exposure to chemicals or their metabolites using biological monitoring (laboratory analysis of blood or urine samples). The Oakland Tribune essentially confirmed what this report states, which is that we are all carrying around trace levels of metals, plasticizers (phthalates), combustion products (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon metabolites and dioxins/furans), chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides (DDT, hexachlorobenzene, lindane, chlordane, heptachlor epoxide), PCBs, organophosphorus insecticide metabolites, other pesticides (various herbicides, including atrazine, 2,4-D/2,4,5-T and pentachlorophenol), tobacco smoke indicators (cotinine) and phytoestrogens (the complete list examined in the CDC report is here).

The report offers the following, in order to encourage people not to take its findings out of proportion:

Just because people have an environmental chemical in their blood or urine does not mean that the chemical causes disease.

However, CDC does state that more research is needed to determine what adverse effects, if any, are associated with these body burdens.

One class of chemicals that CDC has not yet included in their survey, but will be in the future, are polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). Very limited information from one study indicates that exposures of American mothers and infants to PBDEs may be higher than corresponding exposure to Swedish mothers and infants. Concentrations of PBDEs in adipose tissue and breast milk are reported to be increasing, in contrast to dioxins and PCB exposures, which have decreased over time (I’ll be writing later about the mounting concerns associated with PBDE exposures – until then, you can read more about them here and here).

Ever since seeing this study recently in the news regarding household dust as a potential exposure pathway for PBDEs, it seems that everyone has been getting into the act (here, here and here). It’s not just a stunt – there’s science behind it, if the data are collected properly.

The Inside Bay Area has an entire series of articles on chemical body burden, including an online exposure calculator, and most interesting to me, a story on how they did the study including a model study protocol. It’s not something you’ll want to run out and do any time soon – the cost for biological sampling (blood, urine and hair) and laboratory analysis for a family of four was around $17,000.

Postscript: tip of the hat to Environmental Health News for leading me to the Oakland Tribune article.

The American Jobs Destruction Act and the Health of Workers

Left Coaster points us to an article in the Wall Street Journal that calls into question the right-wing’s claim about corporate tax breaks being good for America because they create jobs. According to the WSJ:

There is more evidence that a tax break intended to boost U.S. jobs isn't getting the job done.

Consider several major companies that say they are considering bringing home hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign profits under a tax holiday that is part of the American Jobs Creation Act passed last year. These include National Semiconductor Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. -- all of which recently cut staff. These companies' example calls into question how effective "repatriation" will be in spurring new jobs, adding to already reported concerns about the wiggle room the law gives companies in how to spend the money.

A tax attorney quoted in the WSJ’s article notes that it is "not inconsistent with the law" for companies to cut jobs at the same time they are considering repatriating funds ostensibly meant to create jobs.

Amazingly, National Semiconductor's spokesman, who used to work on Capitol Hill, is quoted as saying:

. . . repatriating earnings should be seen simply as a tax break. Calling the law "the American Jobs Creation Act" was marketing, he says. "I would not trust the title of any law and what it really says."

I typically don’t write about political topics (after all, the political blogs typically don’t write about environmental health), but the intersection with health in this case is particularly strong. Brooklyn Dodger has written recently about the health risks (particularly cardiovascular mortality) among remaining employees following downsizing. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, followed Finnish municipal employees over a 7.5 year period. Brooklyn Dodger also tells us about the linkage between depression and mortality from stroke; and it is established that job loss and the resulting financial stress can be a cause of depression.

So, there are health risks associated with corporate decisions to collect a tax windfall that was supposed to help create jobs. The companies who are laying off the employees are likely not going to be bearing the full costs of the health burden associated with the job losses. These companies also are creating additional health care costs for themselves from the stress-related diseases incurred by the remaining employees. And then, there’s this issue about health-care costs being a significant factor in personal bankruptcies.

Are all corporations this ethically color-blind? Do the voters know how badly Congress gave away the farm on this one?

TCE and PCE Stories

The persistence in the marketplace of chlorinated solvents such as TCE (trichloroethylene) and PCE (perchloroethylene) is astonishing. One would have thought that the liabilities of soil and groundwater contamination, known health risks to workers, questions about health risks to the general public, burdensome regulations related to hazardous waste, air toxics and ozone depletion and the availability of alternatives, would have been more effective in phasing these chemicals out of the market.

The notable point about TCE and PCE from the viewpoint of environmental health is that their use patterns lead to widespread human exposure. A primary use for TCE and PCE are for solvent cleaning. Half of all PCE use is for dry-cleaning clothes. This means that TCE and PCE uses cut across a large number of industry and workplaces. NIOSH has estimated that approximately 390,000 workers are potentially exposed to TCE nationwide, and that approximately 690,000 workers are potentially exposed to PCE, based on the National Occupational Exposure Survey (NOES). While the NOES was completed over 20 years ago, and there hasn’t been an update, these numbers are likely to be reasonably consistent today. Chlorinated solvent use appears to have declined over time (trends for the U.S. have been hard for me to find – if I uncover more information, I’ll post it), but it is likely that a lot of these solvents are still sold. Occupational exposure is the most significant human health concern with TCE and PCE exposure (a topic for another day – I’ll be writing a number of posts on these chemicals).

Every day, millions of people bring home clothes from the dry cleaners that are off-gassing PCE. Dry-cleaned clothes represent one of the largest sources of exposure to PCE by the general public (see “Everyday Exposure to Toxic Pollutants”, by Wayne Ott and John Roberts, February 1998 Scientific American, downloaded for a price from sciam.com). This is consistent with a wealth of studies (most recently here) indicating that a preponderance of volatile organic compound exposure occurs indoors.

According to the ATSDR, over 1,309 Superfund sites in the U.S. have soil or groundwater that is contaminated with PCE; 1,460 Superfund sites are contaminated with TCE. This does not include thousands of other sites under the jurisdiction of state agencies and undergoing cleanup as part of RCRA Corrective action, which are not listed on the National Priority List. TCE exposure at contaminated sites is of sufficient concern that ATSDR has established a TCE subregistry within its National Exposure Registry.

In many cases, people living near these sites have been exposed to these chemicals in domestic-use water, from ingestion, skin contact or inhaling chemicals that volatilize from water. However, what has become a greater concern is vapor intrusion, a pathway where these chemicals volatilize from soil or groundwater, migrate through soil near building foundations and are drawn into indoor air through egresses in foundations. This issue took regulatory officials a bit by surprise, and has been a growing issue for hazardous waste site cleanups across the U.S. In New York, state officials are going to revisit 400 sites that had cleanup decisions made before 2003 to investigate the potential for indoor exposures to volatile compounds from vapor intrusion (this comes from the TCE Blog, your source for all things related to chlorinated solvents in the environment).

As you can imagine, there’s much more to this story, beyond the fact that TCE and PCE exposures are widespread. Who needs to be concerned about potential exposures? Under what conditions could people be at significant health risks? What can they be doing to reduce their risks? What can other stakeholders, such as governments and industries, be doing to reduce health risks from these chemicals? How do the potential risks from TCE and PCE exposure compare with other chemicals in a person’s environment?

Stay tuned for more posts on this topic. Until then, check out TCE Blog.

No Fish for You

Before we get too wrapped up about methylmercury in fish, let’s start paying attention to some other matters, to make sure we continue to have fish to eat.

Thanks to Riskworld for the link to the FAO report.

Bioterrorism and Bird Flu

It appears that U.S. public health officials have had a difficult time paying attention to the oncoming bird flu epidemic (Effect Measure has been following the story closely). Maybe this report from Canada will get their attention:

The military's intelligence arm has warned the federal government that avian influenza could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism, a heavily censored report suggests. . .

. . . [t]he report, entitled Recent Human Outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Potential Biological Warfare Implications, was obtained under the Access to Information Act by The Canadian Press. . .

I suppose that it’s asking too much that we pay attention to something in this country that isn’t related to the GWOT.

Effect Measure also alerts us to an open letter sent to NIH from 750 microbiologists warning that an overemphasis on "biodefense" was threatening to harm fundamental research in public health.

A Tragic Lack of Perspective on Mercury Hair Analysis

It’s a tossup as to who made me more cranky last week – Greenpeace or The Commons Blog. From Sitemeter, I found I was getting some hits from a link from The Commons Blog. I was glad for the traffic, even if they misquoted me (it’s not like you’re reading James Wolcott or anything here).

What drew me to The Commons Blog (maybe I should put an article in front of my title – An Impact Analysis – what do you think?), other than its anti-environmentalist rantings are a tad more thoughtful than, say Greenie Watch, was a critique of Greenpeace’s hair testing program for mercury:

Does anyone know the current state of hair sample testing for mercury? It would appear that Greenpeace is still running its nationwide campaign to encourage people to pay $25 for a mercury hair testing kit.

According to a WebMd story from a few years back, there are serious concerns about how accurate hair sampling is as a testing method. So I am curious whether hair sampling has improved its reputation or whether the interim results from Greenpeace should be considered questionable.

My guess is that $25 might be better spent as part of a mammagram, prostate exam, or even a dentist appointment.

Besides purchasing a kit, Greenpeace recommends that you host a mercury testing house party. Who's in the house!!!?? Merc- merc. Who's in the house? Mercury!!!

Those folks at Greenpeace know how to have a good time, but they fail to leave enough instructions on how to really whoop it up. When I throw my mercury testing parties, I like to make it a theme night, so be sure to have something from one of the Mercury Record labels playing in the background. For instance, Bob Marley or Bon Jovi as artists of Island Records, a Mercury label, really spice things up. Then, I like to serve lots of fish. Finally, everybody takes a shower using Aveda Products, in honor of the company's sponsorship of the Greenpeace hair testing project. If you aren't having fun by that point, well, down a few bottles of Mercury Rising and call me in the morning.

I checked out this eye-opening WebMD story. It turns out that WebMD interviewed some contract toxicologist with the California Department of Health Services and Stephen Barrett (noted nutritional quackbuster) about hair testing. Hair testing is marketed by quack vendors for “diagnosing” mineral deficiencies in general as a prelude to hawking unneeded supplements. Use of hair analysis for monitoring toxic substances such as lead and mercury pretty much was mentioned in only in passing. If you were looking for information to protect yourself against hair-testing nutritional quacks, this article for you. If you were looking to become more informed about hair analysis for monitoring potential exposure to heavy metals, you would have been tragically disappointed. So much for The Commons Blog’s scholarship (did I mention to you that they misquoted me? And that they called me an environmentalist, too?).

On to Greenpeace. They’ve been sponsoring a nationwide testing program for mercury levels in hair as a political statement about the regulation, or lack thereof, of emissions from coal-fired power plants. I have no problems with political statements, but I wonder about the legitimacy of using environmental data in the service of political statements. For environmental data to have any meaning, the collection of it should be designed to answer questions, make decisions or to better inform a problem; in other words, its collection should be guided by data quality objectives (take it easy, I’m not one of them).

So, The Commons Blog: while I may question the wisdom of Greenpeace using exposure data to generate publicity, analysis of hair is considered a reliable index of methyl mercury exposure in humans (ATSDR sponsored a symposium on hair analysis for exposure assessment in 2001).

Episodes such as this are a reminder as to why I decided to start writing this blog.

How Can You Tell When a Bush Administration Official is Lying?

His lips are moving.

Endocrine Disruption Trends in Frogs

Researchers who examined specimens of cricket frogs in museum collections from Illinois over past 150 years observed an increase in sexual abnormalities in animals collected during the 1950s, when chlorinated pesticide and PCB uses were beginning to peak.

The proportion of individuals with abnormalities was highest in the heavily industrialized and urbanized portions of the state, intermediate in the intensively farmed areas, and lowest in the less intensively managed and ecologically more diverse portions of the state. A declining trend in abnormalities over time was observed from specimens collected in the urbanized/industrialized areas of the state. The investigators concluded that these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that endocrine disruption contributed to the decline of cricket frogs in Illinois.

Environmental Health Tools – PreventDisease.com

While looking for materials for an upcoming post on feng shui and indoor health (“risky dust bunnies”), I ran across a promising site – PreventDisease.com. It seems to have good news articles, such as this one about the benefits of exercise and eating properly; six weeks is all it may take for simple changes in diet and exercise to start making dramatic reductions in risk of diabetes, cancer or heart disease (you hear that, snack food industry spokespersons?). It even includes cites to the actual papers in the literature.

PreventDisease.com provides a generous helping of tools and calculators, including the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s heart attack risk calculator, the Harvard School of Public Health cancer risk calculator and a calculator for estimating your biological age. I have a biological age of 32, which is not too bad for a chronological 48 year old. While I’m working on doing better, it’s nowhere near as good as my wife, with a biological age of 22 and a chronological age of 47 (she’s the fitness and nutrition guru in the family).

Since we’re all apparently on our own with regard to protecting our environmental health, and since not protecting our health can have financial as well as personal consequences, the importance of sites such as PreventDisease.com becomes readily apparent.