Based on Boston’s rich musical history (Boston boasts one of the oldest choral companies in the United States, and one of the most acoustically exact concert halls in the world), Steppin’ Out focuses on the city’s tradition of jazz. Past headliners of the event include famed percussionist Tito Puente (2007), jazz and R&B singer Roberta Flack (2003), and contemporary R&B singer Lalah Hathaway (2008).

This year will bring as many as 20 musicians to feature the talent of local and national artists. Included with the amazing evening of music is dinner, community and corporate awards, and an evening of socializing. Last year nearly 3,000 music lovers and community supporters came out to the event for the Dimock Center.

The Dimock Center, which the Steppin’ Out event benefits, was originally founded in 1862 as the New England Hospital for Women and Children and is considered a National Historic Landmark. It holds nine acres in Roxbury in order to deliver sincere care for over 46,000 patients and clients in its Health Center alone each year. The Center offers services ranging from health screenings, immunizations, women’s health, HIV/AIDS services and more.

Steppin’ Out provides the Dimock Center with funding that is vital to maintaining the center’s outstanding service.

Ruth Ellen Fitch, President and CEO of the Dimock Center, began work at the center in August of 2004, and was previously practicing law with Palmer & Dodge LLP. There she became the first Black female partner at a large Boston law firm.

Before practicing law, Fitch was Director of the METCO program for the Brookline Public Schools and taught at University of Massachusetts, Boston. She has contributed to the community as serving as a member of the Board of the Boston Public Health Commission, Director of Health Law Advocates and as a Director of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. Now she continues to provide in the health field at the Dimock Center, whose vision is a healthy community, and whose mission is to “commit to enhance the quality of life of each individual (they) serve”.

The Dimock Center has announced this year’s Honorary Chairs for Steppin’ Out as Governor Deval L. Patrick and First Lady Diane B. Patrick, with the Gala Chair being Clayton H. W. Turnbull (The Waldwin Group, Founder and CEO).

The event will take place November 7 at The Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel.

To purchase tickets online, click here.

Tumor growth is actually relatively common; however, most tumors are benign, and do not invasively grow further outward or take up residence in other locations. That process, known as metastasis, is the true killer in cancer, as the body becomes unable to fight off the multiple new tumors that begin to disrupt normal body function.

The ACS is now telling patients that we may be over-treating the less-threatening tumors, and in the process missing more-threatening cases.  Since advocating screening, the ACS acknowledges that cancer diagnoses have increased. However, for frequent screenings to actually prove beneficial to the public health, there should have been a corresponding decrease in cancer deaths. Instead, widespread screening has only led to an increase in the discovery and treatment of tumors that would have remained harmless and wouldn’t have required any intervention.

While screening has resulted in fewer late-stage cancer cases for colon and cervical cancers, unfortunately there’s no data to show that we’ve seen fewer deaths in breast and prostate cancers, and doctors are now worried that the public has been over-promised on the benefits of some cancer screens.

However, Colin Begg, a biostatistician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York told The Times that he’s worried that the message will confuse the public who will assume that all cancer screenings are unnecessary. “I am concerned that the complex view of a changing landscape will be distilled by the public into yet another ‘screening does not work’ headline. The fact that population screening is no panacea does not mean that it is useless,” he said.

For now, it will just take time for doctors and researchers to determine which tumors should be treated, and which, counter intuitively should be left alone. In the mean time, follow the advice of your doctor, whatever that might be.

(photo via)

We could probably file this under “Obvious Science,” but officals at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate Troy, NY have warned students that the sharing of cups during games of beer pong lead to the spread of disease, and especially of the spread of H1N1 this flu season. The same officials sent out a campus-wide email detailed a group of students who had all come down the virus after a weekend game.

Area schools are reporting many cases of the swine flu; RPI, a school of about 7,000 total students has reported 21 cases this semester so far.

(photo via)

While many of these discoveries are based on shoddy science, a recent study, which was actually rather elegant in design, has found that a lack of social interaction can lead to increased breast cancer tumor growth, indicating that social environment could play a role, along with environmental and genetic factors, in the determination of the severity of a cancer.

The study used genetically similar mice that are altered so that they develop mammary tumors. Mice were either housed alone or with other mice. The mice kept alone showed greater tumor growth than the mice housed together.

Scientifically, the researchers found higher stress hormone levels in the mice housed alone before there were even measurable changes in the tumor sizes. Even though the two groups of mice were genetically very similar, the stress hormones caused measurable changes in gene expression before there was even any indication that the tumors in the two groups were growing differently.

The researches point out hat they intend to focus further research on researching the specific cell types in which these genetic changes are occurring, and then targeting the pathways that connect the stress hormones to their detrimental effects rather than to suggest that cancer patients should maintain strong social contacts.

Either way, every new thing we learn about cancer is another tool in our arsenal to conquer the disease, and this is an interesting find that gives scientists a new avenue of research.

Image courtesy Flickr/Rick in Rio.

Micrograph showing HIV fusing with a cell membrane on entry. © 2002 by Bruce Alberts et al.

Scientists in Thailand have announced the first success, though limited, of its kind in the development of an HIV vaccine last night.

AIDS is a serious disease, as we’re sure you know. In 2007, AIDS killed approximately 2.1 million people — not exactly a small population. With million of new diagnoses each year, every major worldwide health organization has declared AIDS to be a pandemic.

Currently, the only medications available are highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimens. Developed with a patient’s doctor, three or four drugs are prescribed in combination to be taken together, in which the drugs and dosing are optimized for each patient. Those without access to industrialized medicine are without the benefits of these drugs. So, the best bet we have to defeating HIV is to prevent infection from occurring in the first place.

A vaccine that prevents HIV from infecting health immune cells or from spreading beyond them is the ultimate goal of research programs, but to date, every one has failed. The most recent program even showed an increase in HIV infection in those who received the vaccine, leading to an early termination of the program. Many scientists have actually called for HIV vaccine programs to be called off entirely, assuming that none of them would ever show any promise.

The vaccine under development is a combination of two previous vaccines that did show any benefit when used singularly. However, used together, the vaccines were able to prevent about thirty percent of HIV infections over the placebo treatment, a result that surprised

The vaccine works by shuttling three genes that code for proteins on the HIV virus in side a different, benign virus in an attempt to get the body to start producing antibodies against the HIV proteins, priming the immune system to attack HIV upon entry.

Scientists were disappointed however to see that those who received the virus yet became infected did not show lower viral loads than those who did not receive the virus. Also, vaccines licensed by the FDA in the US usually show about an eighty percent efficacy rate, so it’s very doubtful that the vaccine will ever come to market.This is why scientists stress that the study is an important starting point for the further development and optimization of a better HIV vaccine.

This signifies a shift from last month when government officials were warning Americans that the swine flu vaccine could be delayed or require multiple dosing. Because the vaccine will likely only require a single dose, it is expeted that even more people will be able to receive the vaccine.

High-risk patients will be allowed to receive the H1N1 vaccine at the beginning of October, while it will be available to the general public by mid-October.

The vaccine for the general flu season is widely available now, and health officials are urging people not to wait to get it. The flu season has started earlier than usual this year, and has proven to be rather virulent, aso early and wide vaccination is the government’s first line of defense against the coming flu season.

When applying to sell a new drug in the US, companies must specify the intended use of the drug and at which dosages they will be sold. Pfizer ran afoul of drug law here by marketing the anti-inflammatory drug Bextra for off-label uses and at dosages the FDA refused to approve out of safety concerns.

Pfizer pulled Bextra from the market in 2005.

For this offense alone, Pfizer will pay a $1.195 billion fine, the single largest criminal fine ever served in the US for any matter, and forfeit another $105 million in revenue gathered from sales. “The size and seriousness of this resolution, including the huge criminal fine of $1.3 billion, reflect the seriousness and scope of Pfizer’s crimes,” said Mike Loucks, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.

Pfizer will also pay a $1 billion civil penalty under the False Claims Act to the government for alleged kickbacks to health care providers in exchange for increased prescriptions for several drugs including Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica. This civil penalty is the largest fraud settlement against a pharmaceutical company ever.

A large portion of the settlement will pay directly back into health care systems, important at a time when Medicare is underfunded and health care reform are in the news every day.  “This historic settlement will return nearly $1 billion to Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance programs,” said Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services, “securing their future for the Americans who depend on these programs.”Pfizer

Legitscript.com is the only Internet pharmacy verification organization in the United States identified by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy as adhering to its standards for certifying Internet pharmacies. KnujOn.com tracks Internet criminality and has succeeded in removing over 100,000 spam websites from the Internet.

The report, released by these companies on August 18, showed that around 80 percent of the search engine’s advertisements concerning online pharmacies reviewed by the researchers were not operating in compliance with United States federal laws. The report states the researchers were able to order and receive medication normally requiring a prescription without one — a clear violation of Drug Enforcement Administration regulation of potentially habit-forming medications. One site even imported the medications ordered from India, which is also in violation of United States Law.

The report also touches on Pharmacychecker.com, the pharmacy verification service used by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to determine the legitimacy of pharmacies in ads they display. The researchers were able to obtain drugs without a prescription from an online pharmacy listed on and approved by Pharmacychecker.com. These drugs were also imported from India.

Yahoo’s current policy mandates that an online pharmacy advertised through the search engine be “based in” the United States or Canada; however, three sites in the study which were approved based on having Canadian pharmaceutical licenses actually shipped their medications from places like India, Singapore And Barbados. A fourth site, also approved in Canada, stated it could only fill prescriptions in Canada and to do so in other countries would be illegal.

It is important to note that these issues are far from isolated, as a previous report focused on Microsoft’s search engine Bing.com and the findings were similar. Also, the American Pharmacists Association, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and the National Association on Addiction and Substance Abuse have written Google, Microsoft and Yahoo informing them that they were profiting from online pharmacies acting unlawfully.

“We’re making this a public issue because it’s time for this to stop,” KnujOn President Garth Bruen said. “If the search engines continue to knowingly facilitate illegal prescription drug sales, then we’ll continue to issue these reports. Our reports stop when the problem is fixed.”

“Yahoo needs to require that its Internet pharmacy ads adhere to US laws and National Association of Boards of Pharmacy standards,” LegitScript President John Horton said. “These are the same safeguards that govern brick-and-mortar pharmacies used throughout the US everyday. Shouldn’t American Internet users be assured of the same safeguards online?”

If you are someone who gets his or her medications from an online pharmacy, you may be putting yourself and your family in danger. If this is the case, we suggest you look further into the companies from which you choose to procure your medications.

It makes sense how keyboards are so disgusting if you think about it. Our hands touch everything we come into contact with, and we handle our keyboards more on a daily basis than anything else. People often eat at their desks, and those crumbs are like little bacteria factories. All those crevices that are impossible to clean lead to uncontrolled bacterial growth, and often times, the spread of disease.

With back to school and the flu season approaching, not to mention the constant reminders how swine flu is going to kill us all, it’s important to arm yourself with the tools that can help you stay well. Cyber Clean is an anti-bacterial, gel-like membrane that molds and conforms itself to the shapes you press it into. In doing so it can clean and disinfect hard to reach places, like those spaces between your keys, behind air vents where dirt and dust particles can harbor germs, and all those ridges on your cell phones and electronics.

Cyber Clean is safe, non-toxic, biodegradable, and supposedly reusable up to 75 times, plus you can get the kids in on the fun too. Cyber Clean is available at most stores and drug stores, and retails for less than $10. We hope to get our hands on some soon and put it to the test in our lab and let you know how it holds up.

The AHA found that more than a fifth of us with “severe congenital heart disease don’t see a cardiologist,” citing a Canadian study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

A congenital heart defect can exist for your entire life and kill you without warning.

The risk of having a heart defect is 3-times more likely in families with a genetic history — parents pass it on to children.

The AHA specifically points out that while most Americans know about acquired heart disease — the kind you get from lifestyle, diet, etc. — most don’t know about congenital heart disease. That’s the kind you’re born with and can kill you even if you have the healthiest diet and exercise plan there is.

For more on this topic, check out the website of the American Heart Association.

For advocates of guaranteed truly universal healthcare the debate over Obama’s reform efforts have been rather disappointing.

Despite the fact that a clear majority of Americans prefer joining the rest of the developed world and having a comprehensive government plan that cover everybody, President Obama and most of Congress, all of whom have received large sums of campaign donations from the drug and insurance industries, have made a government run plan that would not sell healthcare as a commodity to make profit, a non-starter. As a result, single-payer healthcare advocates, despite having overwhelming grassroots support, have been dismissed in Washington.

Now, with few other options, liberal members of congress and advocacy groups have largely focused their advocacy and money behind what appears to be the most heated battle over possible healthcare reform this summer: the fight to include a “public option” to compete with private plans in the healthcare package.

Predictably, ideologues opposed to any kind of government involvement in healthcare are fighting tooth-and-nail to oppose this option, ridiculously, calling it a step towards socialism. But as much of the left rallies to counter these shameful distortions, they may want to consider a very important question. What exactly are they fighting for?

By taking single-payer off the table at the start, Obama and his supporters may have put all of their fuel into a sputtering vehicle. To date, two state governments Massachusetts and Vermont have attempted to implement “hybrid” pseudo-public solutions to major healthcare problem. Both of these plans have been floated as possible templates for national reform; the Mass plan is often cited as a possible angle, and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, has introduced legislation for a public option that is somewhat similar to Vermont’s state-wide plan. Sadly, in both cases the results of these efforts have not been promising.
Those of us living with the new and once-highly touted Massachusetts plan, which aims to cover everyone by requiring that everyone buy insurance (and providing subsidies for those who cannot afford it), have become all-too familiar with the problems of this arrangement, which was worked out in 2006 between Mitt Romney and the Legislature.

The Boston Globe’s recent front-page article highlighting how Boston Medical Center, which provides more healthcare to the poor than any other hospital in Massachusetts, is facing major deficits largely because the 2006 healthcare legislation has bled money from the “free care pool,” is only one example of how this legislation, well-intended it may be, is not sustainable.

By June 2011 enrollment in the plan is projected to be 342,000 people at an annual expense of $1.35 billion up considerably from the original projections of covering 215,000 people at a cost of $725 million.

Moreover, because so much of the funding for the plan has come from the state’s free care pool, many low-income residents who were once able to get care, now face unaffordable co-pays, premiums and deductibles (which have already risen 9.4 percent since passage of the reform.) According to a study done by the Physicians for a National Health Program, if a middle-income person on the cheapest available state plan got sick, he or she could end up paying $9,872 in premiums, deductibles and co-insurance for the year.

“The Massachusetts reform law is not providing universal access to care even in a state with highyl favorable circumstances including previously high levels of spending on health care for the poor, high personal incomes, and low rates of uninsurance,” the report said. “It is not a model for the nation.”

A recent New York Times article, aptly titled “Massachusetts Takes a Step Back from Health Care for All,” reported problems as well. The July 14 article states, “The new state budget in Massachusetts eliminates health care coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants to help close a growing deficit, reversing progress toward universal coverage just as Congress looks to the state as a model for overhauling the nation’s health care system.”

Vermont’s Catamount Health, public-private hybrid effort to cover the state’s uninsured population now at 11 percent is also failing. Passed in 2006 as a compromise after Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed single-payer legislation, the bill, unlike the Massachusetts plan, does not mandate residents buy insurance. Instead it offers residents a chance to purchase healthcare from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont with help of government subsidies based on income. But the plan, even according to its own advocates, does little to solve the problem.

One reason: the plan is unaffordable for many working Vermonters. Even those with no income must pay a monthly premium, and someone earning $30,000 a year still must pay $160 a month for coverage, plus monthly deductibles and co-pays for prescription drugs and doctor visits. Accordingly, less than a quarter of those eligible have signed up for the plan. Catamount can also deny coverage for pre-existing condition and the recently unemployed must wait a year before they are eligible for the program.

Since Vermont, like Massachusetts and so many other states, is facing dreadful revenue forecasts, the co-pays and premiums may well be raised in the near future, or services cut. A Democratically-controled Legisalture was able to avoid cuts in the most recent state budget, but more cuts may well be needed during the year, according to Tom Kavet, Vermont’s Legislative economist.

As Peter Sterling, Catamount Health’s outreach director told Seven Days, Vermont’s largest weekly paper, “It doesn’t solve the big problem, and we know that.”

Sterling’s words, and the failure of both of these reform efforts, could serve as a warning for healthcare activists as the national debate over a public plan reaches critical mass. Putting all of our muscle and money into a potentially doomed public option something that “doesn’t solve the big problem” may yield little benefit in the fight for universal healthcare. Worse, if Congress pushes through a failed public option, neutered by congressional Republicans, it could give the concept of public healthcare an undeserved black eye in the eyes of many Americans.

In fact, a more intriguing consolation prize in Obama’s health reform bill could come from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) who has a plan to fund pilot programs for universal healthcare in five states — one of which would be a single-payer plan. This could prove to be a sterling example of the cost-effectiveness of such a program. If Sanders’ home state, Vermont, were to implement state-wide single-payer, it would save the tiny state a sizable $51 million a year, according to a study commissioned by the Vermont Legislature in 2006. Predictably, however, the Senate has not been very open to this idea, moderate as it may be, and voted it down in committee. One can only hope this idea will resurface as the debate rages on.

Despite such unceasing opposition from Washington, giving up on single-payer healthcare is not a wise move. As healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, the likelihood of a single-payer plan becoming reality in the US will only increase. The United States currently spends about 16 percent of its GDP (and rising fast) on healthcare more than any other country in the world and still has embarrassing rankings on infant mortality, life expectancy and overall healthcare rankings, according to the World Health Organization and BMJ, a peer-reviewed international medical journal. 46 million are left uninsured with many more underinsured, and an estimated 18,000 people die each year from lack of insurance.

Since nearly half of healthcare costs go towards corporate profits and administrative waste, two expenses that are virtually eliminated by implementing a single-payer system, in time some kind of not-for-profit government-run system is the only option that will make any fiscal sense. This reality should not be lost in the battle for a doomed-to-fail half measure that may or may not be attached to healthcare reform in the coming months.

Further Reading:

• PNHP Report on Massachusetts Reform Plan
• Vermont Workers’ Center: Health Care is a Human Right Report (Features information on Catamount)
• Study commissioned by VT Legislature on economic impacts of a single-payer system
• *Hasta la vista single-payer movement? (Article I wrote in 2007 on a hybrid plans vs. single-payer)

Nanotechnology makes use of minuscule objects-whose width can be 10,000 times narrower than a human hair-known as nanoparticles. Upwards of 600 products on store shelves today contain them, including transparent sunscreen, lipsticks, anti-aging creams and even food products.

Global nanotechnology sales have grown substantially in recent years, to $50 billion in 2007, according to Lux Research, author of the annual Nanotech Report. And the final tally isn’t in yet, but analysts had predicted 2008 sales to be $150 billion. The National Science Foundation says the industry could be worth $1 trillion by 2015, when it would employ two million workers directly.

What makes nanoparticles so useful is their tiny size, which allows for manipulation of color, solubility, strength, magnetic behavior and electrical conductivity. Nanoparticles do exist in nature, and they’re also created inadvertently through some industrial processes. What’s new-and potentially hazardous-is the widespread engineering of these particles for commercial purposes.

While there is no conclusive evidence that nanomaterials are either unsafe or not, health advocates worry that we’re already putting them on our bodies and ingesting them as if they’d been thoroughly tested and proven safe. Animal studies, including one with rats at the University of Rochester, have shown that some nanoparticles can cross the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from toxins in the bloodstream. And inhaled nanoparticles have also harmed the lungs of animal test subjects.

Despite these and other studies, nanomaterials are virtually unregulated in the U.S. And of $1.3 billion budgeted for research in 2006, only $38 million went to examining risks to health and to the environment.

“While the benefits of nanotechnology are widely publicized, the discussion of the potential effects of their widespread use in consumer and industrial products is just beginning to emerge,” reports the Journal of Nanobiotechnology. “Both pioneers of nanotechnology and its opponents are finding it extremely hard to argue their case as there is limited information available to support one side or the other.”

Europe’s regulators are far more wary about nanotechnology than their American counterparts. Britain’s Royal Society recommended in 2004 that nanoparticles be viewed as brand new substances, and the European Commission is examining them on a case-by-case basis. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is loosely charged with regulating nanotechnology here, but has barely dipped its toe in the water.

Taken together, the evidence suggests considerable uncertainty about the use of nano-ingredients in consumer products. It’s just not known if they’re safe, which begs the question: Why have we gone ahead and approved them for commercial use? Indeed, we may look back at our current decade and see it, for better or worse, as a time when tiny things caused big and momentous changes in our lives.

CONTACTS: EU’s REACH Law, www.ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Nanotechnology Page, www.epa.gov/ncer/nano.

Dear EarthTalk: How is the fur industry doing these days? Has it been impacted by activism from PETA and similar groups?   — Clara Andrews, Edmonds, WA

An accurate source of up-to-date numbers is hard to come by, but it’s safe to say that the fur industry has been hurt by the ongoing and very visible anti-fur campaign-sometimes featuring top supermodels-by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other animal rights groups.

Whether or not activist efforts are the cause, the governments of the United Kingdom and Austria have banned fur farming in their countries altogether, while The Netherlands has phased out fox and chinchilla farming. The U.S. has not taken any action against the industry, but the number of mink farms in the U.S. has plummeted from 1,027 in 1988 to less than 300 today, according to Weekly International Fur News.

But while the fur industry’s sales numbers may have trailed off through the 1990s, resurgence in the popularity of fur-especially among newly affluent high-fliers in Russia and China-has meant that business is booming for those furriers serving such far-flung markets.

By 2004 the industry was reporting banner sales-some $11.7 billion worldwide-despite the slumping post-9/11 economy. “Fur remains big with international designers and is set to continue as an integral part of fashion,” International Fur Trade Federation (IFTF) chairman, Andreas Lenhart, told reporters.

According to IFTF data, the vast majority of the fur industry’s pelts-upwards of 85 percent-now come from farm-raised animals. (This does mean, though, that 15 percent are still caught in the wild, often by trapping methods that are painful as well as indiscriminate, catching unintended quarry, including endangered species and domestic pets.) The most farmed such animal is the mink, followed by the fox. Chinchilla, lynx, muskrats and coyotes are also farmed for their fur. PETA reports that 73 percent of the world’s remaining fur farms are in Europe, while about 12 percent are in North America.

IFTF argues that fur farming has environmental benefits, such as providing good use for 647,000 tons of animal by-products each year from Europe’s fish and meat industries alone (they are fed to the captive animals), and generating a lot of manure, sold as organic fertilizer. Mink farming also provides fat for soaps and hair products, says IFTF.

Of course, anti-fur activists don’t see it this way. “The amount of energy needed to produce a real fur coat from ranch-raised animal skins is approximately 15 times that needed to produce a fake fur garment,” says PETA. “Nor is fur biodegradable, thanks to the chemical treatment applied to stop the fur from rotting.” PETA adds that these same chemicals contaminate groundwater near fur farms if not handled responsibly.

Activists are also concerned, of course, about the conditions animals endure on fur farms. “The animals-who are housed in unbearably small cages-live with fear, stress, disease, parasites and other physical and psychological hardships…” reports PETA. The group adds that the animals are killed in very inhumane ways-such as by electrocution, gassing or poisoning-to preserve the quality of the pelts above all else.

CONTACTS: PETA, peta.org; IFTF, iftf.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems that accumulate plant material to form layers of peat soil up to 60 feet thick. They can store, on average, 10 times more carbon dioxide (CO2), the leading greenhouse gas, than other ecosystems. As such, the world’s peat bogs represent an important “carbon sink”-a place where CO2 is stored below ground and can’t escape into the atmosphere and exacerbate global warming. When drained or burned, however, peat decomposes and the stored carbon gets released into the atmosphere.

A 2007 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) study of the role peatlands play in human-induced climate change found that the world’s estimated 988 million acres of peatland (which represent about three percent of the world’s land and freshwater surface) are capable of storing some two trillion tons of CO2-equivalent to about 100 years worth of fossil fuel emissions.

As such, the widespread conversion of peat bogs into commercial uses around the world is serious cause for alarm. In Finland, Scotland and Ireland, peat is harvested on an industrial scale for use in power stations and for heating, cooking and use in domestic fireplaces.

But the problem is most urgent in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, where economic hardships force people to drain peatlands to create farms and plantations. Marcel Silvius of the Dutch non-profit Wetlands International says that “annual peatland emissions from Southeast Asia far exceed fossil fuel contributions from major polluting countries.” He adds that Indonesia, now ranked 21st in the world in greenhouse gas emissions, would move to third place (behind the U.S. and China) if peatland losses were factored in.

Wetlands International estimates that CO2 emissions from drained or burnt Indonesian peatlands alone total some two billion tons annually, equal to about 10 percent of the emissions resulting from burning coal, oil and natural gas. Similar amounts of CO2 are likely coming out of Malaysian peatlands as well.

The problem has worsened in recent years as surging global demand for timber, pulp and biofuel speeds up the conversion of otherwise-ignored peatlands to intensively managed tree farms and palm oil plantations. Silvius says that a ton of palm oil-Indonesia’s top export and the key ingredient in biodiesel fuel-grown on drained peatlands emits 20 times more CO2 than a ton of gasoline. Yet, he says, protection of peatlands may actually be one of the least costly ways to mitigate global warming, as it would cost less than seven cents ($US) per ton of avoided CO2.

“Just like a global phase out of old, energy guzzling light bulbs or a switch to hybrid cars,” says UNEP head Achim Steiner, “protecting and restoring peatlands is perhaps another key ‘low hanging fruit’ and among the most cost-effective options for climate change mitigation.” For its part, UNEP is stressing that countries should be allowed to count protecting peatlands as among their creditable efforts to reduce their carbon footprints as the world braces for global warming.

CONTACTS: UNEP, www.unep.org; Wetlands International, www.wetlands.org.

Dear EarthTalk: Has anyone been tracking whether climate change is causing more loss of human life as it gets more pronounced? — Gordon Gould, Compton, CA

Researchers believe that global warming is already responsible for some 150,000 deaths each year around the world, and fear that the number may well double by 2030 even if we start getting serious about emissions reductions today.

A team of health and climate scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Wisconsin at Madison published these findings last year in the prestigious, peer-reviewed science journal Nature. Besides killing people, global warming also contributes to some five million human illnesses every year, the researchers found. Some of the ways global warming negatively affects human health-especially in developing nations-include: speeding the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever; creating conditions that lead to potentially fatal malnutrition and diarrhea; and increasing the frequency and severity of heat waves, floods and other weather-related disasters.

Backing up WHO’s findings is a study by Stanford civil and environmental engineer, Mark Jacobson, showing a direct link between rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and increased human mortality. He found that the added air pollution caused by each degree Celsius increase in temperature caused by CO2 leads to about 1,000 additional deaths in the U.S. and many more cases of respiratory illness and asthma. Jacobson estimates as many as 20,000 air-pollution related deaths may occur worldwide each year with each one degree Celsius increase.

“This is a cause and effect relationship, not just a correlation,” relates Jacobson. “The study was the first to specifically isolate CO2’s effect from that of other global-warming agents and to find quantitatively that chemical and meteorological changes due to CO2 itself increase mortality due to increased ozone, particles and carcinogens in the air.”

For their part, though, global warming skeptics such as atmospheric physicist Fred Singer maintain that cold weather snaps are responsible for more human deaths than warm temperatures and heat waves. “The elderly die in inadequately heated homes. People get skull fractures from falls on the ice. Men die of heart attacks while shoveling snow. People get colds, flu, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Infectious diseases proliferate. Hospital admissions rise.” Singer, founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, concludes that since global warming would raise maximum summer temperatures modestly while raising winter minimum temperatures significantly, it “should help reduce human death rates.”

A team of Harvard researchers found otherwise. Their July 2007 study, published in the peer-reviewed Occupational and Environment Medicine, found that global warming is likely to cause more deaths in summer because of higher temperatures, but not fewer deaths in milder winters. In analyzing weather data related to the deaths of 6.5 million people in 50 American cities between 1989 and 2000, the researchers found that during two-day cold snaps there was a 1.59 percent increase in deaths because of the extreme temperatures. But in similar periods of extremely hot weather, mortality rates increased 5.74 percent.

CONTACTS: WHO, www.who.int ; Science and Environmental Policy Project, www.sepp.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

According to the National Headache Foundation, more than 21 million women suffer from migraines with 50 percent reporting that their headaches started before the age of 20. But when both parents share a history of migraines, there is a 70 percent chance that their children too will be plagued with this often debilitating chronic sickness.

Girls and boys have similar migraine patterns until the age of puberty, said Dr. Anna Foster of Children’s Hospital Boston. Then rate of migraine incidence is doubled, leaving adolescent girls with a 2:1 chance of developing migraines. The female sex hormone estrogen is being studied extensively within migraine research as the culprit of this difference between boys and girls. Yet, with today’s advances in biofeedback, therapy, and the myriad of drug trials for migraine sufferers out there, suffering from migraines doesn’t have to be as painful as many parents may remember.

Doctors have the additional advantage of utilizing moms and dads as additional resources, providing insight into the world that migraines sufferers live in. The National Headache Foundation has reported that since similar migraine experiences and patterns are being seen with mother and daughter migraine sufferers, mothers may be able to offer not only advice but have a much deeper understanding into their children’s “growing pains.”

The Foundation’s “Migraine Million” fundraiser this year seeks to address the often misunderstood effects on everyday life that migraines have. From medical bills to effects on relationships, awareness surrounding sufferers is important step on the way to educating the public as well as assuring those that do, they are not alone.

“Our goal is for one million of the nearly 30 million people with migraine to donate $1 each toward headache education and research,” said Suzanne Simons, executive director of the National Headache Foundation. So instead of giving mom a headache this year, show your support for her in a different way.

Whether, you acknowledge that laugh or nose, well, that’s up to you.

You can contribute by visiting the foundation’s website at headaches.org or by calling 888-NHF-5552. You can even have an acknowledgment of the donation that can be emailed to mom, or printed and included in a card.

The Globe, citing city public health officials, said that the results are not confirmed, but that two students came down with symptoms after returning from Ireland, where apparently a mumps outbreak has occurred.

All four students had been vaccinated against the disease, which is not 100 percent effective. The Globe says 10-20 percent of those vaccinated are still vulnerable to the disease.

A Simmons College study reveals that sugar-sweetened beverages increase a woman’s risk of heart disease. Regular consumption of beverages like soda and energy drinks puts women at a higher risk for coronary heart disease, according to research findings of nutrition professor Teresa Fung

Published in the April edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study found “a significant positive association” between sugary beverages and risk of heart disease.

Women in the study who drank two more of the beverages each day had a 35 percent higher risk of heart disease than those who did not.

The study also found that women who drank sugar-sweetened beverages were fatter, engage in less physical activity, and ate fattier foods.

“We all know that drinking lots of sugary beverages is unhealthy,” said Fung. “This study looked specifically at how regular consumption of sugary beverages can lead to an increased risk of heart disease.”

The study included carbonated and non-carbonated drinks, natural and artificial flavors, and caffeinated or decaffeinated drinks.

Other studies show that consumption of these beverages has more than doubled in the last 30 years. Today, 9.2 percent of all liquids consumed by women are sugary drinks.

Now, a year after their initial release of the “Mana Energy Potion,” Szasz and Rasmussen introduced their new “Health Energy Potion,” a companion to “Mana,” at New York Comic-con.

The guys were nice enough to let me test a bottle of each of the energy drinks. Both are about a shot’s worth of liquid. “Mana” is blue and has a sour, berry flavor while “Health” is red and is flavored apple-cinnamon.

The “Mana” potion was probably the best thing that happened to me during the entire Con. Blast cohort Kellen Rice and I split a bottle after the “Up” screening and started talking about 100 miles per hour in less than five minutes. While the initial boost of energy eventually died down, we remained coherent and aware for the rest of the night after an exhausting day and little sleep the night before.

Because I cannot do justice to how the “Mana” and “Health” potions were described in their press release, I will just quote directly from it:

“While Mana Energy Potion gets you pumped up for a fight, quest or adventure, Health Energy Potion restores you after battle so you can get back into the heat of the action.”

Rasmussen described the new “Health” potion to me as a gradual boost of energy spread out over a five to eight hour period. “Mana” packs an initial burst of energy (that Zac Turgeon had to listen to while he, Kellen and I had dinner at a nearby pizza joint) and then levels out for the same length of time.

“Health” might work well for gamers, who need a continuous flow of energy to stay awake. But for a quick pick-me-up, “Health” didn’t make too much of a difference, and maybe it was just the exhausted state I was in, but I didn’t feel much more aware after the bottle of “Health” that I drank.

“Mana” combines a variety of vitamins like Vitamin C, Vitamins B1, B3, B6 and B12 and Pantothenic Acid with their own special “energy potion” and enzyme blend to come up with their drink. “Health” uses Vitamin C, Vitamins B1, B6 and B12 and adds Elderberry, ginseng, biotin and folic acid to make a constant flow of energy.

Each potion is 25 calories and contains 1.69 ounces of liquid.

The potions are $3.45 a bottle and can be purchased at Hot Topic, ThinkGeek.com or at the ManaPotions.com webstore.

PVC is used in the construction of everything from pipes to pool toys, and is easy to spot (check any plastic product for a recycling symbol with the number the three in it). Companies like Microsoft and Mattel have abolished the use of PVC in their packaging for years now, but it’s still one of the most widely used plastics in North America.

The presence of PVC in toys has been of high concern for parents over the past several years. Parents very rarely check to see if toys they purchase for their children contain PVC, and therefore many children are unknowingly exposed to phthalates, which are used to soften PVC to make it more durable, when chewing on a toy. Though the exact effect is unknown, young people would be more prone to any sort of health issue caused by phthalates.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently begun cracking down on companies that irresponsibly handle PVC. In early December, the EPA and the Justice Department came to a $12 million settlement with Shintech Inc., the largest manufacturer of PVC in the U.S., and it’s subsidiary K-Bin Inc., demanding they clean up their facilities in Freeport, Texas after determining they violated the Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Clean Water Act.

“It is imperative that business and industry do their part to minimize the possible harm their operations may cause to our environment,” said EPA Regional Administrator Richard E. Greene in the DOJ report. “This agreement will ensure corrective action is taken and provide added benefits to the environment through supplemental projects.”

The companies were fined $2.6 million and ordered to spend $4.8 million to decrease chlorofluorocarbon emissions and better hazardous waste management at their Texas plants. The remaining $4.7 million will be spent on supplemental environmental projects as well as renovations to ensure PVC emissions are reduced by 10,000 pounds, the DOJ reports.

The supplemental projects include funding the addition of at least 300 acres of wetlands and forest to the Austin Woods preserve, as well as aiding a new Houston recycling program that will help to ensure the proper disposal of appliances containing ozone-depleting refrigerant.

The EPA is committed to help reduce PVC emissions, while many companies are committed to lowering the usage of PVC in their products.

“It’s not something you want in a product,” said Greenpeace member Jack Desena. “In small doses the phthalates aren’t a big deal, we all come in contact with them on a regular basis. But the manufacturing, processing and disposal of polyvinyl chlorides is the real problem. When you process them they release so many toxins into the air.  It really rips apart the environment.”

According to a recent study published in Human Resource Executive magazine, a third of US workers spend a minimum of twenty hours per month at work complaining about their boss. The Gallup Poll estimates US corporations lose 360 billion dollars annually due to lost productivity from employees who are dissatisfied with — you guessed it — their boss. And if there’s but one hard truth the Gallup Polls have taught US Corporations in the last decade, it’s that people may join companies, but they will leave bosses.

In the days of a strong dollar, bulging tech bubble and robust housing market, people working for a bad boss had options. Careers were mobile and talent was in short supply. It was a snap to pack up and leave. But nowadays, things are decidedly different. Jobs are scarce and the prudent worker stays put, even if he or she is working under the worst type of boss imaginable–the seagull manager.

The roots of seagull management can be traced back to the days when “micromanager” was the worst non-expletive you could utter behind your boss’ back. Managers fear of this label grew so intense that they learned to keep their distance from employees, assuming a “good” boss is one who spends as little time as possible breathing down people’s necks. And most do. They give people room to breath until the moment a problem flares up. Then — instead of getting the facts straight and working alongside their staff to realize a viable solution — seagull managers come swooping in at the last minute, they squawk orders at everybody, and deposit steaming  piles of formulaic advice before abruptly taking off.

Seagull managers interact with their employees only when there’s a fire to put out. Even then, they move in and out so hastily — and put so little thought into their approach–that they make bad situations worse by frustrating and alienating those who need them the most. Today, seagull managers are breeding like wildfire. As companies flatten in response to the struggling economy, they are gutting management layers and leaving behind managers with more autonomy, greater responsibility, and more people to manage. That means they have less time and less accountability for focusing on the primary purpose of their job–managing people.

As it turns out, seagull managers aren’t just a US phenomenon. After reading a study that found employees have lower blood pressure on the days they worked for a supervisor they think is fair, researchers from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health decided to take a closer look at this phenomenon. They followed British civil servants for a period of fifteen years to see if the type of boss one works for has any impact upon long-term, physical health.

The researcher’s findings cast a grave shadow upon anyone working for a seagull manager. The team from Helsinki found that seagull-type managerial behaviors lead to a much higher incidence of employee coronary heart disease. Employees working for a seagull manager were 30% more likely to develop coronary heart disease than those who were not. What’s more, the incidence of coronary heart disease — the #1 killer in Western societies — was measured after the researchers had removed the influence of typical risk factors, such as age, ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, socio-economic position, cholesterol level, obesity, hypertension, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity.

No one influences an employee’s morale and productivity more than his or her supervisor. It’s that simple. Yet, as common as this knowledge may seem, it clearly hasn’t been enough to change the way that managers and organizations treat people. Few companies recognize the degree to which managers are the vessels of a company’s culture, and even fewer work diligently to ensure that their vessels hold the knowledge and skills that motivate employees to perform, feel satisfied, and love their jobs. The very individuals with the authority to alter the course of company culture lack the facts that would impel them to do so.

With the stoic pragmatism that one might expect from a Finnish University professor, Dr. Mika Kivimäki, the director of the study, had this to say about the study’s findings, “Most people care deeply about just treatment by authorities.”

Indeed we do, Dr. Kivimäki. Indeed we do.

Dr. Travis Bradberry is the president of think tank and consultancy TalentSmart. His new book, “Squawk! How to Stop Making Noise and Start Getting Results,” addresses the problem of seagull managers in the workplace and is published by HarperCollins.