Public Health

Titanium dioxide is the most widely used whitening pigment in the world and has been linked to adverse health effects, particularly genotoxicity and intestinal inflammation. It is applied as food coloring and a whitening agent to a wide variety of foods, including chewing gum, cakes, candies, breads and ice cream.

Because of health risks, France banned titanium dioxide as a food additive in 2020. Two years later the European Union also banned titanium dioxide as a food additive.

But in the U.S., titanium dioxide is found all over the grocery shelves. Candy like Skittles, Starbursts, and Jell-O, gum like Trident White peppermint gum and Mentos Freshmint Gum, cake products like Duncan Hines Creamy Vanilla Frosting, and Nabisco Chips Ahoy! cookies are just a few of the myriad food items that contain the additive.

A significant body of research, mostly from rodent models and in vitro studies, has linked titanium dioxide with health risks related to the gut, including intestinal inflammation, alterations to the gut microbiota, and more. It is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Group 2B, as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

As a food additive, titanium dioxide and its nanoparticles in particular have been associated with DNA damage and cell mutations, which in turn, have potential to cause cancer. When used as a food coloring, it is known as E171.

With the rise of nanotechnology, research in recent years has also shown the dangers of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, and their genotoxicity, which refers to a chemical agent’s ability to harm or damage DNA in cells, thus potentially causing cancer.

Headline was from the CBC newsletter

They cited this link: https://www.cihi.ca/en/child-and-youth-mental-health/who-is-the-most-affected-by-mental-health-disorders

The rate of children and youth (aged five to 24) in Canada visiting emergency departments declined 31 per cent over the past five years according to a new report.

Hospitalizations for mental health disorders among children and youth also declined over the past five years, with a 23 per cent lower rate of hospitalizations between 2023-24 compared with 2018-19, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reported this week.

Over that same period, a larger proportion of young people in several provinces went to their physician about their mental health, and more were prescribed medications for mood and anxiety, said Cheryl Chui, director of health system analytics at CIHI.

The findings suggest that mental health has not necessarily improved in this group. Instead, there's been a shift in the places patients go to for mental health care, Chui said.

Abstract

Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration represent major sources of human suffering, yet factors influencing disease severity remain poorly understood. Sex has been implicated as one modifying factor. Here, we show that female sex is a risk factor for worsened outcomes in a model of retinal degeneration and that this susceptibility is caused by the presence of female-specific sex hormones. The adverse effect of female sex hormones was specific to diseased retinal neurons, and depletion of these hormones ameliorated this phenotypic effect, while reintroduction worsened rates of disease in females. Transcriptional analysis of retinas showed significant differences between genes involved in pyroptosis, inflammatory responses, and endoplasmic reticulum stress–induced apoptosis between males and females with retinal degeneration. These findings provide crucial insights into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases and how sex hormones can affect disease severity. These findings have far-reaching implications for clinical trial design and the use of hormonal therapy in females with certain neurodegenerative disorders.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43123056

At least 156 million Americans, about 46 percent of the population, live with unsafe levels of ozone, particulate pollution or both, according to the American Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report.

Air quality in the United States has been generally improving since the Clean Air Act was enacted in 1970, with levels of key pollutants dropping by nearly 80 percent. But millions of Americans still breathe polluted air every day, leading to both acute and chronic health conditions that, in some cases, increase the risk of early death.

Plans by the Trump administration to loosen environmental regulations and cut funding for air quality research would make matters worse, the report says.

“The biggest thing that has saved patients’ lives in regard to lung health and overall health is the Clean Air Act,” said Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and spokesman for the lung association. “Clearly, legislation is needed because that’s what dictates the air quality you breathe.”

https://archive.ph/2VxzX

In the summer of 1982, seven heroin users were admitted to a California hospital paralyzed and mute. They were in their 20s, otherwise healthy — until a synthetic drug they had manufactured in makeshift labs left them frozen inside their own bodies. Doctors quickly discovered the cause: MPTP, a neurotoxic contaminant that had destroyed a small but critical part of the brain, the substantia nigra, which controls movement.

The patients had developed symptoms of late-stage Parkinson’s, almost overnight.

The cases shocked neurologists. Until then, Parkinson’s was thought to be a disease of aging, its origins slow and mysterious. But here was proof that a single chemical could reproduce the same devastating outcome. And more disturbing still: MPTP turned out to be chemically similar to paraquat, a widely used weedkiller that, for decades, had been sprayed on farms across the United States and Europe.

For a young Dutch doctor named Bas Bloem, the story would become formative. In 1989, shortly after finishing medical school, Bloem traveled to the United States to work with William Langston, the neurologist who had uncovered the MPTP-Parkinson’s link. What he saw there reshaped his understanding of the disease — and its causes.

https://archive.ph/DgsFC