In the 1950s, when the world seemed a safer place, a parent might send a young child on an overnight train to a relative in a distant city. Marilyn Huestis was five years old and her sister was three when they made the journey from Hyattsville, Maryland, to Jacksonville, Florida, to see their grandparents. As it sped along, the train hit and killed a man who had wandered onto the tracks, which ...

Disruption of the metabolic system during critical windows of development, including the prenatal period, may predispose individuals to obesity and related diseases later in life. Certain chemicals, including some persistent organic pollutants (POPs), may mimic or block the actions of hormones involved in the development of fat tissue and energy homeostasis in animals and humans; these chemical...

Although previous research has suggested that prenatal exposures to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) may be harmful to a child’s developing immune system, few studies have investigated long-term outcomes in this regard. Findings reported in this issue of EHP provide evidence that exposure to certain POPs in the womb may be associated with an increased risk of developing asthma that persists...

1. Ashby J. a2p-Globulin nephropathy in white ravens [letter]. Environ Health Perspect 104 (12):1264 (1996). 2. Baserga R The cell cycle: myths and realities. Cancer Res 50:6769-6771 (1990). 3. Barrett JC, Huff JE. Cellular and molecular mechanisms of chemically induced renal carcinogenesis. In: Nephrotoxicity. Mechanisms, early diagnosis, & therapeutic management (Bach PH, Gregg NJ, Wiks MF, D...

The Consortium to Perform Human Biomonitoring on a European Scale (COPHES) was launched to collect population-representative data on environmental exposures for the European Union (EU) as a whole. In this issue of EHP, investigators describe results from DEMOCOPHES, the demonstration project that proved the feasibility of a harmonized approach across 17 EU nations. “We have shown that working t...

Toxicology has emerged from relative obscurity to a place of prominence in the fields of human and environmental health. No longer is toxicology an esoteric discipline only of interest to and understood by the toxicologist. Chemists, who face potential health effects from materials they work with in laboratories and industrial settings, have become increasingly interested and involved in such s...

Prenatal bisphenol A (BPA) exposure has been shown to alter the development of reproductive organs in animal models, although the impacts on development of other organ systems remain largely unknown. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, now report in EHP that BPA exposure late in gestation alters airway cell development in rhesus macaques. Previous studies have associated BPA exp...

Crude mitochondrial synaptosomal (Pz) fractions were used to measure L-glutamate l-decarboxylase (GAD) activity, and crude synaptic membranes were isolated from rat brains and used to determine y-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentration and postsynaptic GABA receptor binding characteristics in rats with cobalt, copper, or glass implanted in right and left cerebral cortices. Copper was employed as...

Amiodarone (AM) is an efficacious antidysrhythmic agent that can cause numerous adverse effects, including potentially lifethreatening pulmonary fibrosis. The current study was undertaken to investigate potential protective mechanisms of vitamin E against AM-induced pulmonary toxicity (AIPT) in the hamster. Three weeks after intratracheal administration of AM (1.83 mol), increased pulmonary hyd...

ors S. M. Komartt Ordway Hiltontt P. J. Cardosill P. L. Callaghan C. R. Turcotte, Jr,** Chloride Determination of Heart Blood-Irvin L. Fisher, Journal of Forensic Medicine, 14(3): 108-112 (July-September 1967). A study by the author indicates that chlorides present in heart blood plasma offer a definite means of the identification of deaths caused by drowning. Putrifaction does not always cause...