Particulate Deposition (DFFW) in Children's Lung Tissue and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

[NNadir]

I would hate to distract anyone from talking endlessly about tritium in Vermont - even though there are no health syndromes observed from it anywhere in Vermont, and in fact, no evidence of human contamination of the same, but - and let's drop this one quickly because we certainly wouldn't want to make Amory Lovin's contracts with Conoco, Shell, Chevron, BP etc to look bad, but it seems that the deposition of dangerous fossil fuel waste (DFFW) in children's lung tissue might be bad for them.

A recent paper from the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Surgery which can be downloaded for free http://pats.atsjournals.org/cgi/reprint/6/7/564">on line reports on particulate matter, which is identical from burning dangerous fossil fuels - despite greenwashing from Amory "coal is a great bridge fuel" Lovins (cf Lovins "The Road Not Taken, Foreign Affairs Summer 1976) - smoking cigarettes and um, um, um, burning biomass.

Quoth the paper:

There are several reasons why environmental exposures in childhood are relevant to understanding the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). First, attenuation of lung growth due to air pollution in childhood is a risk factor for adult-onset respiratory disease. Second, there may be common cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying impaired pulmonary innate host defenses in children exposed to air pollution, and the susceptibility to infection in COPD. Third, lung damage initiated in childhood may contribute to an emerging global health issue, namely, COPD due to biomass smoke exposure (1). Carbonaceous particulate matter (PM) is a common component of emissions from fossil fuel combustion (Figure 1), burning of tobacco (resulting in environmental tobacco smoke ), and biomass fuels.

The bold is mine and is explicitly raised to those giggly types here who are happy - despite their eagerness to clear cut Vermont and replace it's harmless nuclear plant with aerosol carcinogenic particulates that do injure people - about replacing plants with no health implications with those that have deadly health implications.

You can download the article by the way and get a nice micrograph of a wonderful clean sustainable biomass particle in the lung tissue of an Ethiopian.

We need to be more like Ethiopia, especially in Vermont, which is why we need to start dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste, biomass waste and other crap in Vermont. It would seem Vermont is lagging on such dumping now, and lagging on deforestation as well because of that darned old nuclear plant.

Also we need to drive trucks across Vermont's mountain ranges for the next thirty years to try to build windmills, roads to service them, in hopes that after 30 years, Vermont will be as close to Denmark on wind generation - in another 10 years Denmark will be able to produce in tens of thousands of acres strewn with lubricants and roads (and wrecked windmills) as much electricity as Vermont Yankee produces in a few acres of land.

Of course, the goal of rational energy policies should be to demand that the best energy systems are inferior to the worst energy systems, because the best energy systems are not perfect.

Later on we can prove that the most expensive and unreliable energy systems are superior to the cheapest and most reliable systems - that would be nuclear energy - because nuclear energy is "not too cheap to meter" and solar - if you are wealthy - can provide tax breaks, assuming of course one has a great job, like say wiping dust off solar cells in the desert.

Later we can produce an argument claiming that we need to listen to "Philosophers" with biology degrees working at religious universities lecture us on morality and ethics in energy, in case we have presumed to question the religious statement that "nuclear energy need be as perfect as Jesus" before it can displace dumping particulate waste into the lungs of small children.

[kristopher]

1. .

Children living in homes using biomass fuels for cooking, heating, and lighting are exposed to very much higher levels of PM than are children living in homes where parents smoke and use clean fuels (e.g., a mean indoor level of 200 mg/m3 PM per 24 h <27>). Exposure to biomass PM starts in infancy and continues during childhood. Indeed, in biomass smoke–exposed Ethiopian children, we found much higher levels of airway macrophage carbon compared with healthy children living in the United Kingdom (28)...

Particulate Matter Exposure in Children
Relevance to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, p565
Jonathan Grigg

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Volume 1181 Issue Chernobyl
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Pages 31 - 220

Chapter II. Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe for Public Health

Alexey B. Nesterenko a , Vassily B. Nesterenko a ,† and Alexey V. Yablokov b
a
Institute of Radiation Safety (BELRAD), Minsk, Belarus b Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Address for correspondence: Alexey V. Yablokov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, Office 319, 119071 Moscow,
Russia. Voice: [phone]; fax: [phone]. [e-mail]
†Deceased


ABSTRACT

Problems complicating a full assessment of the effects from Chernobyl included official secrecy and falsification of medical records by the USSR for the first 3.5 years after the catastrophe and the lack of reliable medical statistics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Official data concerning the thousands of cleanup workers (Chernobyl liquidators) who worked to control the emissions are especially difficult to reconstruct. Using criteria demanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) resulted in marked underestimates of the number of fatalities and the extent and degree of sickness among those exposed to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. Data on exposures were absent or grossly inadequate, while mounting indications of adverse effects became more and more apparent. Using objective information collected by scientists in the affected areas—comparisons of morbidity and mortality in territories characterized by identical physiography, demography, and economy, which differed only in the levels and spectra of radioactive contamination—revealed significant abnormalities associated with irradiation, unrelated to age or sex (e.g., stable chromosomal aberrations), as well as other genetic and nongenetic pathologies.

In all cases when comparing the territories heavily contaminated by Chernobyl's radionuclides with less contaminated areas that are characterized by a similar economy, demography, and environment, there is a marked increase in general morbidity in the former.

Increased numbers of sick and weak newborns were found in the heavily contaminated territories in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia.

Accelerated aging is one of the well-known consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation. This phenomenon is apparent to a greater or lesser degree in all of the populations contaminated by the Chernobyl radionuclides.

This section describes the spectrum and the scale of the nonmalignant diseases that have been found among exposed populations.

Adverse effects as a result of Chernobyl irradiation have been found in every group that has been studied. Brain damage has been found in individuals directly exposed—liquidators and those living in the contaminated territories, as well as in their offspring. Premature cataracts; tooth and mouth abnormalities; and blood, lymphatic, heart, lung, gastrointestinal, urologic, bone, and skin diseases afflict and impair people, young and old alike. Endocrine dysfunction, particularly thyroid disease, is far more common than might be expected, with some 1,000 cases of thyroid dysfunction for every case of thyroid cancer, a marked increase after the catastrophe. There are genetic damage and birth defects especially in children of liquidators and in children born in areas with high levels of radioisotope contamination.

Immunological abnormalities and increases in viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases are rife among individuals in the heavily contaminated areas. For more than 20 years, overall morbidity has remained high in those exposed to the irradiation released by Chernobyl. One cannot give credence to the explanation that these numbers are due solely to socioeconomic factors. The negative health consequences of the catastrophe are amply documented in this chapter and concern millions of people.

The most recent forecast by international agencies predicted there would be between 9,000 and 28,000 fatal cancers between 1986 and 2056, obviously underestimating the risk factors and the collective doses. On the basis of I-131 and Cs-137 radioisotope doses to which populations were exposed and a comparison of cancer mortality in the heavily and the less contaminated territories and pre- and post-Chernobyl cancer levels, a more realistic figure is 212,000 to 245,000 deaths in Europe and 19,000 in the rest of the world. High levels of Te-132, Ru-103, Ru-106, and Cs-134 persisted months after the Chernobyl catastrophe and the continuing radiation from Cs-137, Sr-90, Pu, and Am will generate new neoplasms for hundreds of years.

A detailed study reveals that 3.8–4.0% of all deaths in the contaminated territories of Ukraine and Russia from 1990 to 2004 were caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe. The lack of evidence of increased mortality in other affected countries is not proof of the absence of effects from the radioactive fallout. Since 1990, mortality among liquidators has exceeded the mortality rate in corresponding population groups.

From 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators died before 2005—that is, some 15% of the 830,000 members of the Chernobyl cleanup teams. The calculations suggest that the Chernobyl catastrophe has already killed several hundred thousand human beings in a population of several hundred million that was unfortunate enough to live in territories affected by the fallout. The number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow over many future generations.

[struggle4progress]

2. The major PM10 nonattainment areas in the US seem to be isouthern California,

where one might expect motor vehicle exhaust to be a major suspect

[Fledermaus]

3. The usual nonsense you post. People using dung to cook on a open fire inside with is not the same

thing as a modern biomass power plant in the west. You knew that already, but you keep posting the same BS.