BACKGROUND The charcoal burning suicide epidemics in both Hong Kong and Taiwan have been well documented. However, little is known about the situation in Japan. AIMS To examine the impact of charcoal burning suicide on the overall and other method-specific suicide rates between 1998 and 2007 in Japan. METHOD Using data obtained from the Vital Statistics of Japan, negative binomial regressio...

Agriculture in the humid tropics is mostly limited by low soil fertility and invasion of weeds. The nutrient retention capacity of most soils is low and applied mineral fertilizers are rapidly leached into subsoil. Small farmers can not afford continuous mineral fertilizer input to compensate for the losses. Hence the dominating agricultural praxis is shifting cultivation accompanied with slash...

Diazepam ingestion along with ethanol is encountered commonly in drug overdose cases. In the present study, the effect of pH and ethanol on the adsorption of diazepam in the simulated gastric fluid and the simulated intestinal fluid onto activated charcoal was determined in vitro. The adsorption behaviors of diazepam in both simulated gastric and intestinal pH onto activated charcoal were studi...

Wardle et al. (Brevia, 2 May 2008, p. 629) reported that fire-derived charcoal can promote loss of forest humus and belowground carbon (C). However, C loss from charcoal-humus mixtures can be explained not only by accelerated loss of humus but also by loss of charcoal. It is also unclear whether such loss is related to mineralization to carbon dioxide or to physical export.

The canopy of many central African forests is dominated by light-demanding tree species that do not regenerate well under themselves. The prevalence of these species might result from ancient slash-and-burn agricultural activities that created large openings, while a decline of these activities since the colonial period could explain their deficit of regeneration. To verify this hypothesis, we ...

OBJECTIVE To analyze the efficiency of labeling impalpable breast lesions with inert charcoal suspension; to evaluate the morphological alterations associated with its use and to determine whether the use of charcoal labeling hampers the diagnostic interpretation of the pathologist. METHODS Was evaluated a total of 135 cases of impalpable breast lesions previously labeled with charcoal suspen...

Charcoal production is often accompanied with gaseous and particulate emission into the atmosphere and occupationally exposed workers could be affected. This cross sectional comparative study was carried out to assess the levels of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5) generated during the phases of charcoal prod...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Signal-to-noise index (SNI) Charcoal analysis Fire history Lake sediment Paleoecology Charcoal peaks in lake-sediment records are commonly used to reconstruct fire histories spanning thousands of years, but quantitative methods for evaluating the suitability of records for peak detection are largely lacking. We present a signal-to-noise index (SNI) that quantifie...

T he charcoal production process has been known since the Bronze Age, and was vital to metallurgy until the discovery of the conversion of coal to coke at the beginning of the 18th century. Brazil, now the largest charcoal producer of the world, with more than 12 million metric tons in year 2002, has preserved its charcoal based industries in large part because it has extensive iron deposits an...

A haemoperfusion column containing activated charcoal coated with cellulose acetate was used to treat 7 patients with barbiturate or ethchlorvynol poisoning. Six of the patients showed marked lightening of coma and all showed a significant fall in plasma drug concentration. Plasma drug clearance and platelet loss were similar to those reported for other coated charcoal columns. Cellulose acetat...