Fish consumption is associated with both health benefits from high-quality proteins, minerals, vitamins, and fatty acids and risks from contaminants in fish. Fish consumption advisories are issued by many government agencies to keep exposure to contaminants at a safe level. Such advisories are typically based on fillets and neglect consumption of other fish parts such as eggs by certain subpopu...

Numerous halogenated organic compounds have been identified as pollutants of concern. Those with high persistence and hydrophobicity may concentrate in biota, sediments, and wastewater sludge. Nonetheless, the release to the environment of many remains largely unrecognized. Stabilized sewage sludge (biosolids) is increasingly being land-applied as a soil amendment. However, understanding the ri...

The assement of chemical persistence is an important part of legislative protection of the environment and human health. Of the vast number of chemicals on the market today few have been properly assessed. The coordination between testing guidelines from different frameworks is limited and especially the methods for determination of biodegradation show poor reproducibility because of their high...

Numerous halogenated organic compounds have been identified as pollutants of concern. Those with high persistence and hydrophobicity may concentrate in biota, sediments, and wastewater sludge. Nonetheless, the release to the environment of many remains largely unrecognized. Stabilized sewage sludge (biosolids) is increasingly being land-applied as a soil amendment. However, understanding the ri...

The discovery of mutated palynomorphs in end-Permian rocks led to the hypothesis that the eruption of the Siberian Traps through older organic-rich sediments synthesized and released massive quantities of organohalogens, which caused widespread O3 depletion and allowed increased terrestrial incidence of harmful ultraviolet-B radiation (UV-B, 280-315nm; Visscher et al. 2004 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci....

A well-documented fact for a group of persistent, bioaccumulating organohalogens contaminants, namely polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), is that appropriate regulation was delayed, on average, up to 50 years. Some of the delay may be attributed to the fact that the science of toxicology was in its infancy when PCBs were introduced in 1920's. Nevertheless, even following the development of modern...

Brazilian bees of the species Eufriesea purpurata are known to tolerate very high concentrations of DDT. As reported in the literature, these bees have suffered no harm from as much as 2 mg/bee, which is in the per-cent range of the body weight. In 1979, individuals of E. purpurata were captured as they collected DDT from walls of remote, rural houses in Brazil. Reported herein are quantities a...

Baby formulas are foods designed and marketed for feeding babies. The use of baby is increasing worldwide due to various reasons. In parallel, there concern about endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in formulas. EDCs cover a large class able interact with the system. can disrupt many different hormones, so they linked numerous adverse outcomes human health. Babies more sensitive environmental...

Accidental contamination of the Michigan food chain with polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) led to the exposure of more than 4,000 individuals in 1973. Because PBB exposure is suspected to disrupt endocrine function, we assessed pubertal development in females 5-24 years of age (N = 327) who were exposed to PBB in utero and, in many cases, through breastfeeding. We estimated in utero PBB exposure ...

Dehalogenases are environmentally important enzymes that detoxify organohalogens by cleaving their carbon-halogen bonds. Many microbial genomes harbour enzyme families containing dehalogenases, but a sequence-based identification of genuine dehalogenases with high confidence is challenging because of the low sequence conservation among these enzymes. Furthermore, these protein families harbour ...