Chemistry

Everyone agrees the health of bees is a concern but there is confusion about why different governments have reacted. Scientific experts note any acute problems are due to a combination of bee keeping practices, Varroa destructor mites (which vector roughly a dozen different diseases into beehives) and the widely prevalent gut fungus Nosema ceranae. Environmental activists, on the other side, insist bees are dying and it's due to neonicotinoid pesticides. Evidence-based regulatory agencies have sided with science over activism. The Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of…

The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris-Sorbonne, must be a dangerous place to work, because scholars there have found that almost everything is a so-called "endocrine disruptor". They may be correct. If you drink a cup of coffee while reading this, your hormones changed, they were disrupted. If you got angry knowing that the most anti-science country in the developed world, France, put out yet another article that has gone essentially unchallenged by anyone in their whole school much less a co-author with some common sense, your hormones changed. And because they…

By Karin Heineman, Inside Science - The 2017 California wildfire season was one of the most destructive on record. By the end of December, an area three times the size of Chicago had gone up in flames. Fire retardant used to smother fires -- also called slurry -- is a mixture of water, fertilizer and chemicals. It’s dropped from planes and is usually a bright red color, so air crews can track what they’ve used. But this powerful way to help slow down fires also comes with a big price tag and some environmental concerns. The damage to lives and land from the California wildfires this…

It's been well-established by now but owing to a discredited International Agency for Research on Cancer claim, which environmental groups insist remains valid despite finding that a member of the Working Group had financial conflicts of interest (consulting for environmental groups) and signed an agreement with a litigation attorney before the claims were made public, concern has persisted. Using data from the Agricultural Health Study (AHS), scholars debunked claims of links between applications of plant protection products containing glyphosate and the occurrence of cancer. This…

Glyphosate, a component of the popular herbicide commonly known as Roundup in the United States, has been placed on California's Proposition 65 list, which requires a cancer warning label on it, despite the fact no regulatory body can find evidence it harms anyone or anything other than what it is supposed to harm, much less that it causes any cancer. Why is a system designed to protect California citizens getting a simple health issue so wrong? The short answer is that the state of California abdicated its ability to regulate products when Proposition 65 was passed by voter…

A new study has found that found that flavonoid levels and antioxidant activity in organic onions are higher than in conventional onions, which disputes a meta-analysis which debunked claims by discredited industry-funded economist Dr. Chuck Benbrook and colleagues who asserted that the organic process led to higher nutritional quality. The new paper did find just that, though the benefit may be meaningless. Antioxidants and flavonoids have yet to show any measurable health benefit, but the demographic that buys organic food is more likely to buy those kinds of supplements touting benefits of…

Formaldehyde sounds scary because it is for dead bodies. But it is also produced in our natural cellular respiration. Clearly "the dose makes the embalming fluid" but groups who want to scare people about diet soda whisper about its presence. And it is present, in levels that will be carcinogenic if you drink 7,000 sodas per day. More recently its presence in nicotine vaping liquid was being touted. Given the medical marijuana fad, not to mention the rush for recreational use, it was only a matter of time before someone noted the presence of formaldehyde in it. What's the real story? There is…

A new paper reports the development of nanoparticles that mimic the behavior of natural melanosomes, melanin-producing cell structures that protect our skin, eyes and other tissues from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation. Defects in melanin production in humans can cause diseases such as vitiligo and albinism that lack effective treatments, while too much sun is a risk factor for cancers like melanoma. Vitiligo develops when the immune system wrongly attempts to clear normal melanocytes from the skin, effectively stopping the production of melanocytes. Albinism is due to…

Thiamethoxam is a compound in the class of targeted pesticides known as "neonicotinoids", because they are chemically similar to nicotine, which has natural insect repellent properties. Neonicotinoids are used in crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton and have been controversial because of environmental campaigns claiming a "colony collapse disorder" was caused by them. Yet bee numbers have not declined so concern has migrated to wild bee populations and sub-lethal effects - bees not killed but changed. These two arguments are easier to maintain because there is no way to count wild bees,…

In the late 2000s, after natural gas uptake caused American carbon dioxide emissions to plummet, panicked environmentalists began to scramble for new ways to campaign on ending so-called fossil fuels. Methane, with 23X the warming power of CO2, was ideal, but they had just spent a decade insisting methane could explain increased warming, because it did not persist long enough. And it would have started long before then, if the methane were linked to global warming by frozen tundra melting and releasing its methane. But it wasn't detected. A team in England has found a way to bring those…