Feature Channels: Food and Water Safety

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A new study reports that chronic exposure to arsenic interferes with insulin secretion in the pancreas, which may increase the risk of diabetes.

• share
• favorite_border

Swimming, paddling, boating and fishing account for more than 90 million cases of gastrointestinal, respiratory, ear, eye and skin-related illnesses per year in the U.S. with an estimated annual cost of $2.9 billion, according to a new report by University of Illinois at Chicago researchers.This is the first time the cost associated with waterborne illnesses contracted during recreational activities in the U.

• share
• favorite_border

Providing safer drinking water to those in need may be a little easier. According to Penn State researchers, a new desalination technique is able to remove salt from water using less energy than previous methods.

• share
• favorite_border

With a $580,000 grant from Missouri Foundation for Health, a team of Saint Louis University researchers aims to lower the rate of food insecurity while connecting families to available resources by improving screening practices and follow-up care.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Strong odors are an indicator that food has gone bad, but there could soon be a new way to sniff foul smells earlier on. As reported in ACS Nano, researchers have developed a bioelectronic “nose” that can specifically detect a key decay compound at low levels, enabling people to potentially take action before the stink spreads. It can detect rotting food, as well as be used to help find victims of natural disasters or crimes.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of researchers from Environment Canada and Climate Change Canada and McMaster University have found that fish living downstream from a wastewater treatment plant showed changes to their normal behaviour—ones that made them vulnerable to predators—when exposed to elevated levels of antidepressant drugs in the water.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has come up with a novel approach to treat industrial wastewater using electricity as a reagent for purification. The method can remove up to 99 per cent of hard-to-treat organic compounds found in various types of industrial wastewater. The NUS-developed system operates on low electrical power and does not generate secondary waste, such as sludge, that requires further costly residual waste processing such as incineration.

• share
• favorite_border

The Society of Toxicology (SOT) has approved a new Issue Statement on food and feed safety related to genetically engineered (GE) crops (commonly referred to as GMOs). The Society's journal, Toxicological Sciences, also has published a new forum article that provides an in-depth review of 20+ years of GE research.

• share
• favorite_border

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year an estimated 48 million people, about one in six, contract a foodborne illness. Approximately 128,000 require hospitalization, and 3,000 cases are fatal.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Lights and decorations are a special part of the holidays, but also bring an increased potential for injury, especially to young children, according to safety experts at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

• share
• favorite_border

Cooking in a frying pan with oil can quickly become dangerous if “explosive” hot oil droplets jump out of the pan, leading to painful burns. But these droplets may be doing something even more damaging: contributing to indoor air pollution. A group of researchers exploring these “explosive droplets” will present their work to uncover the fluid dynamics behind this phenomenon during the 70th meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics, Nov. 19-21, 2017.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A tiny aquatic plant called duckweed might be a viable option for remove phosphorus, nitrates, nitrites and even heavy metals from lakes, ponds and slow-moving waterbodies.

• share
• favorite_border

For people with diabetes, planning ahead for the holidays is important, but challenging. AADE recommends the following tips to ensure a healthy and happy holiday season.

• share
• favorite_border

Here are hints to avoid food-borne illnesses from a holiday meal.

• share
• favorite_border

This holiday season, think twice before you do that late-night nibbling at the buffet table, particularly if it has been sitting out for a while. One bite of crab dip or deviled eggs gone bad, and you may be moving your holiday festivities to the bathroom — or the hospital.

• share
• favorite_border

Legionnaires disease outbreaks in New York City and toxic levels of lead in Flint, Michigan have raised questions about how to manage risks in aging water systems. Multiple studies assessing the risk of opportunistic pathogens in water systems and the institutional infrastructure failures that led to the Flint water crisis will be discussed at the 2017 Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Annual Meeting.

• share
• favorite_border

Holding the title of household chef or Thanksgiving host doesn’t bring automatic food safety knowledge – especially when transforming a several-pound piece of poultry into the centerpiece of mouthwatering meal.

• share
• favorite_border

With antibiotic resistance on the rise, bacterial contamination of food is becoming more problematic. Now in a study appearing in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, scientists report that they have developed an antibacterial “sugar-glass” coating in which viruses that destroy bacteria are embedded and are kept stable for up to three months.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists and activists alike have been looking for a solution to the problem of aquatic nutrient pollution. Now one group reports in Environmental Science & Technology that ribbed mussels are up to the clean-up challenge.

• share
• favorite_border

Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.

• share
• favorite_border

If you drink too much tea, scientists are concerned you might get sick from dental fluorosis in children or skeletal fluorosis in adults. The situation can be aggravated if water used for brewing tea contains high amounts of fluoride.

• share
• favorite_border

Sandia National Laboratories has been helping the Army’s Product Directorate Contingency Base Infrastructure identify the best equipment for temporary bases overseas since 2013. For the first time, a Sandia-designed software tool is being used to recommend the core set of equipment for bases to be built in 2020 and beyond.

• share
• favorite_border

Experts at Fresno State and Sonoma State are still assessing the impact of the recent fires. So far, winemakers at both campuses see a healthy picture for the state and wine lovers alike.

• share
• favorite_border

The California State University’s Water Resources and Policy Initiatives (WRPI) has launched a grant-funded program this fall that gives students hands-on internship experience while helping to solve water problems impacting Southern California.

• share
• favorite_border

Septic systems work 24/7 to process waste. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) November 1 Soils Matter blog explains how septic systems use soil’s underground resources to treat wastewater.

• share
• favorite_border

The discovery has the potential to drastically improve food safety and reduce losses caused by the contamination from the poisonous carcinogen, aflatoxin.

• share
• favorite_border

Eating “clean” is all about avoiding foods with additives, preservatives or other chemicals on the label. Two Iowa State University professors are warning of the consequences associated with the clean food movement in terms of food waste, safety and cost.

• share
• favorite_border

Accurate and accessible detection technologies are necessary to ensure continuous water quality control and early warning capabilities to avoid public safety catastrophes like the ongoing Flint water crisis in Michigan. During the AVS’s 64th International Symposium & Exhibition, in Tampa, Florida, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will present work about inventing a graphene-based sensing platform for real-time, low-cost detection of various water contaminants. The new sensor detects heavy metals, bacteria, nitrates and phosphates.

• share
• favorite_border

Water is the driving force of all nature, but how do people react when an area begins to run out of water? Martina Angela Caretta, assistant professor of geography at West Virginia University, seeks to answer that question in a report she co-authored for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

• share
• favorite_border

Late-breaking research on food allergies being presented at the ACAAI Annual Scientific Meeting. Data shows almost half of all food-allergic adults reported one or more adult-onset food allergies.

• share
• favorite_border

Eating large amounts of certain fish can expose consumers to methylmercury, which can potentially cause health problems. But recent research has shown that rice grown in polluted conditions can also have raised levels. Now, a study appearing in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reports that some types of infant rice cereal could also contain amounts of methylmercury that could potentially pose a health risk.

• share
• favorite_border

One of the largely unanticipated impacts of a changing climate may be a decline in sunlight's ability to disinfect lakes, rivers, and coastal waters, possibly leading to an increase in waterborne pathogens and the diseases they can cause in humans and wildlife.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The energy and climate benefits of cool roofs have been well established: By reflecting rather than absorbing the sun’s energy, light-colored roofs keep buildings, cities, and even the entire planet cooler. Now a new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that cool roofs can also save water by reducing how much is needed for urban irrigation.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved the use of a breakthrough cancer treatment — Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) — for adult patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Approval came just weeks after making the therapy available for young patients with leukemia. The University of Chicago Medicine is the first site in Illinois to be certified by both Kite Pharma Inc. and Novartis.

• share
• favorite_border

Power plants draw more freshwater than any other consumer in the United States, accounting for more than 50 percent of the nation’s freshwater use at about 500 billion gallons daily. To help save this water, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a new silica filter for power plant cooling waters that decreases the amount of freshwater power plants consume by increasing the number of times cooling tower water can be reused and recycled.

• share
• favorite_border

The Danforth Center is applying CRISPR-Cas technology to staple food crops such as cassava and sorghum to produce planting materials with improved disease resistance, nutritional value and enhanced resilience to biotic stresses.

• share
• favorite_border

World Standards Week is about the standardization process, the community, and how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in this case the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), helps connect people to make better standards, to make better products.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Physicists in France have proven theoretically that active sieving, as opposed to its passive counterpart, can improve the separation abilities of filtration systems. These new views on how active sieving could improve systems such as those used in water purification and dialysis were reported this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics. Active sieving also has the potential to filter molecules based on movement dynamics, opening up a whole new avenue in the field of membrane science based on the ability to tune osmotic pressure.

• share
• favorite_border

Polysaccharides, commonly used in food products, may be used to absorb nitrates and phosphorus—and put the nutrients back in the field.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of chemists has uncovered new ways in which frozen water responds to changes in temperature to produce novel formations. Its findings have implications for climate research as well as other processes that involve ice formation—from food preservation to agriculture.

• share
• favorite_border

A UAB Infectious Diseases physician discusses bacteria found in food-borne illnesses and why you should wash your hands.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National University of Singapore Faculty of Engineering has developed a 4-in-1 smart utilities plant that produces electricity, water, air-conditioning and heat in a more environmentally friendly and cost-effective way using a single, integrated system.