Suchergebnisse

Abstract
The first Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) report was published in 1998 and followed by three assessment reports of human health (AMAP 2003, 2009 and 2015). The focus area of the AMAP reports was to monitor levels of environmental contaminants in the Arctic and to assess the health effects connected with detected levels in Arctic countries. This review gives an overview of temporal trends of contaminants and their health effects in humans of the Arctic based on data published by AMAP, as well as Russian scientific literature. Several time series of 31 contaminants in humans of the Arctic from different cohorts are reported. The lengths of time series and periods covered differ from each other. International restrictions have decreased the levels of most persistent organic pollutants in humans and food webs. Percentage changes for contaminants in human biological matrices (blood samples from children, mothers and males and breast milk samples) for the period of sampling showed declining trends in most of the monitored Arctic locations, with the exception of oxychlordane, hexachlorobenzene (HCB), 2,2′,4,4′,5,5′-hexabromodiphenyl ether (PBDE153) and perfluorinated compounds (PFCs).

The objective of this study was to explore, as an example of structural racism, the effects of residential school and boarding school on the self-perceived health of Indigenous peoples' in Canada and Finland. Structured interviews were conducted at Six Nations of the Grand River and Inari municipality. The individual and intergenerational negative effects included themes of vulnerability (language and cultural loss, fractured identity, and negative self-worth), and resilience (Indigenous identity, language and cultural renewal). Indigenous identity, culture, and language are intertwined and key determinants of health. Further studies about structural racism and a strong Indigenous identity as a protective factor may provide valuable insight into health disparities.

Background Occupational exposure to pesticides has been reported among general population worldwide. However, little is known about the associations between non-occupational exposure to pesticides, and biological markers of health and their response by sex. Objectives We aimed to assess the associations between non-occupational overall pesticide exposure, length of exposure and specific pesticides reported with 35 biological markers of health representing cardiometabolic, haematological, lung function, sex hormones, liver and kidney function profiles, and vitamin D in Finnish cohort. Methods 31-year cross-sectional examination of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 provided blood samples for biomarker measurements in 1997–1998. Number of subjects varied between 2361 and 5037 for given exposures and certain outcome associations. Multivariable regression analyses were performed to examine associations between overall pesticide exposure (OPE), length of pesticide exposure in months (PEM), in years (PEY), and specific pesticides use (PEU) or not with cardiometabolic [SBP, DBP, TC, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, fasting glucose, insulin, HOMA-IR, HOMA-B, HOMA-S, hs-CRP], hematological [WBC, RBC, Hb, HCT, MCV, MCH, MCHC, platelets], lung function (FVC, FEV1), sex hormones [luteinizing hormone (LH), testosterone (TT), sex-hormone binding globulin (SHBG)], liver and kidney function profiles [total protein, albumin, globulin, ALP, ALT, GGT, urea, creatinine], and vitamin D adjusting for sex, BMI, socioeconomic position (SEP) and season of pesticide use. Results This cohort study on up to 5037 adults with non-occupational OPE, PEM, PEY and PEU differed by sex and SEP. In regression analyses, all the exposures were positively associated with total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and PEU was negatively associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in females. OPE and PEM were positively associated with haematocrit in females and PEU with platelets in males. PEU was negatively associated with mean corpuscular haemoglobin. OPE and PEM were positively associated with LH in males. OPE was negatively associated with total protein and albumin in males. Discussion In Finnish young adults, non-occupational overall pesticide exposure, length of exposure and specific pesticides were associated with multiple biological markers of health. The biological markers seem to be indicative of adverse effects of pesticides and warrant for further studies to replicate the findings and determine the underlying mechanisms. ; This research was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme EDCMET (grant number 825762); Academy of Finland grant numbers 24300796, 24302031, 285547 (EGEA); the Medical Research Council (MRC) UK (grant number G0601653); Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council PREcisE (Nutrition & Epigenome, The Joint Programming Initiative a Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life (JPI HDHL/EU-H2020, grant reference: MR/S03658X/1)); Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, Päivikki and Sakari Sohlberg Foundation sr; NFBC1966 received financial support from University of Oulu Grant no. 65354, Oulu University Hospital Grant no. 2/97, 8/97, Ministry of Health and Social Affairs Grant no. 23/251/97, 160/97, 190/97, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki Grant no. 54121 and Regional Institute of Occupational Health, Oulu, Finland Grant no. 50621, 54231. The funding sources had no influence in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, writing of the report and in the decision to submit the article. ; Peer reviewed

Pregnancy, infancy, and childhood are sensitive windows for environmental exposures. Yet the health effects of exposure to nano- and microplastics (NMPs) remain largely uninvestigated or unknown. Although plastic chemicals are a well-established research topic, the impacts of plastic particles are unexplored, especially with regard to early life exposures. ; We thank D. Fatunmbi of Elementus Illustrations for creation of the illustration for Figure 2. We also acknowledge R. Etzel, M.D., Ph.D., for helpful feedback on Figure 2. K.S. acknowledges funding from the Research Council of Norway (project 288638) to the Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. T.V. acknowledges funding from the Research Council of Norway (project 303369) and SINTEF (strategic institute project on immunotherapy 102020958). M.W. acknowledges funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant (agreement 860720). ; Peer reviewed

A transformation of regulatory toxicology is underway to meet the demands of testing increasing numbers of chemicals whilst reducing reliance on in vivo models. This transformation requires a shift from chemical safety assessment largely based on direct empirical observation of apical toxicity outcomes in whole organisms to predictive approaches in which outcomes and risks are inferred from accumulated mechanistic understanding. In the last decade, Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) (Ankley et al., 2010; Ankley and Edwards, 2018) have captured the attention of regulators and researchers alike as a systematic approach for organizing knowledge that may support such inferences (Wittwehr et al., 2017). An AOP is a conceptual structured representation of existing toxicological knowledge describing the causally connected sequence of events, across different levels of biological organization, required to produce an adverse effect when an organism is exposed to a stressor. Specifically, AOPs depict a series of key events (KEs) linking a molecular initiating event (MIE, an interaction between a stressor (e.g., endogenous ligand, xenobiotic) and a biomolecule) to an adverse outcome (AO, at organism or population levels). The causal links between 2 KEs are referred to as key event relationships (KERs). AOPs provide a useful framework to connect mechanistic data to adverse effects on human health or wildlife populations as a basis for the identification of cell- or biochemical-based tests that could fit in Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATAs), identifying KEs that could be targeted for the development of New Approach Methods (NAMs), as well as investigating similarities in mechanistic pathways between species. AOPs are also particularly salient for identifying potential Endocrine Disruptors (EDs). Indeed, both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) definition and the scientific criteria adopted by the European Union in 2017 are articulated around three ...