Research on oil spill damage to Gulf killifish, benzene levels from hydraulic fracturing, a novel way to treat sepsis, and a connection between exposures in adolescence and effects in older age are all featured this week.
SOT Member Research
Alongside colleagues, Song Tang and Greg Mayer conducted laboratory–controlled experiments to determine if field observations of DNA damage to Gulf killifish could be related to the oil–contaminated water from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Their newly published paper in PLoS ONE shows that the lab results and field studies match up, indicating that the oil spill may have caused genetic damage to the killifish.
SOT Members in the News
A few weeks ago, I reported on research done by John Snawder and his colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) that showed how some hydraulic fracturing workers were exposed to high levels of benzene. This week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story on the research and included a quote from Dr. Snawder.SO
SOT Honorary Member Donald Ingber and colleagues think they’ve taken a first step toward a novel way to treat sepsis. As reported by Science, they’ve created a device that filters blood using magnets that collect microbes and toxins, allowing “clean” blood to reenter the veins. In a test on rats, the researchers found that the device removed 90 percent of the microbes from the blood.
“The two most vulnerable periods for the brain are early in life, when the organ is first developing, and later in life, when the body’s defenses and compensatory mechanisms begin to falter,” Bernard Weiss tells Environmental Health Perspectives. The September 2014 issue of the journal features the work of Dr. Weis and others who are researching chemical and environmental exposures in adolescence that are manifesting their effects in older age.
Science and Public Health News
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