........................................................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................3 THE NATIONAL MAIZE ECONOMY.............................................................................4 GUATEMALA’S AGRICULTURE AND MAIN MAIZE PRODUC...

Breast milk is the natural and optimal food for infants. In addition to meeting nutritional needs, breast milk provides numerous immunologic, developmental, psychologic, economic, and practical advantages. It is postulated that breast-feeding may also be related to the prevention of some adult health problems such as diabetes and coronary heart disease. Malnutrition among infants and young chil...

In September 2008, melamine contamination in milk and infant formulae raised global concerns about food safety in mainland China. The contamination resulted in an epidemic of renal calculi, especially among infants and children. According to a report from the Chinese Ministry of Health, 294 000 infants had been affected by the end of November 2008. More than 50 000 infants had been hospitalised...

Contamination of groundwaters with geogenic arsenic poses a major health risk to millions of people. Although the main geochemical mechanisms of arsenic mobilization are well understood, the worldwide scale of affected regions is still unknown. In this study we used a large database of measured arsenic concentration in groundwaters (around 20,000 data points) from around the world as well as di...

Methods Following a standardized physical exam using sterile gloves and a sterile stethoscope, bacterial contamination of the following regions were assessed using contact plates: stethoscope diaphragm, stethoscope tube, fingertips, thenar region, hypothenar region and back of physician’s dominant hand. Total aerobic colony count (ACC) were determined on digital photographs using a counting tool.

INTRODUCTION Food-borne infections and intoxications remain one of the most important public health issues globally, both in developing and in developed countries. Numbers of reported outbreaks of food-borne diseases and diseased people are constantly growing. For instance, a total of 320,000 of cases of food-borne diseases, caused by only 6 most prevalent bacterial pathogens (non-typhoidal Sal...

Aflatoxins are potent mycotoxins that cause developmental and immune system suppression, cancer, and death. As a result of regulations intended to reduce human exposure, crop contamination with aflatoxins causes significant economic loss for producers, marketers, and processors of diverse susceptible crops. Aflatoxin contamination occurs when specific fungi in the genus Aspergillus infect crops...