In the amoral milieu of the corporate bottom line, you can’t blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. for trying.

Tepco owns the six-reactor Fukushima complex that was wrecked by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and smashed by the resulting tsunami. It faces more than $350 billion in compensation and clean-up costs, as well as likely prosecution for withholding crucial information that may have prevented some radiation exposures and for operating the giant station after being warned about the inadequacy of its protections against disasters.

So, when the company was hauled into Tokyo District Court October 31 by the Sunfield Golf Club, which was demanding decontamination of the golf course, Tepco lawyers tried something novel. They claimed the company isn’t liable because it no longer “owned” the radioactive poisons that were spewed from its destroyed reactors.

“Radioactive materials that scattered and fell from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant belong to individual landowners there, not Tepco,” the company said. This stunned the court, the plaintiffs and the press. An attorney for the golf club said, “We are flabbergasted….”

The court rejected Tepco’s notion that its cancer-causing pollution is owned by the areas it contaminated. But you have to hand it to Tepco. For brash balderdash, there’s hardly a match in the world.

Even Union Carbide, whose toxic gas in Bhopal, India, killed 15,000 people in 1984, hasn’t tried that one. Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, is still fighting India’s demand for $1.7 billion in compensation. Perhaps Dow could try Tepco’s dodge: “The gas belongs to the breather now, since possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

Meanwhile, babies in Japan may be in for a life of debilitation and disease because radioactive cesium-137 and cesium-134 was recently found in infant milk powder. A December 6 announcement by the Meiji Holdings Company, Inc. said it was recalling 400,000 cans of its “Meiji Step,” powdered milk for babies older than nine months. The powder was packaged in April – at the height of Fukushima’s largest radiation releases – distributed mostly in May and has an October 2012 expiration date.

The amount of cesium in one serving of the milk powder was about 8 percent of the total contamination allowed by the government. But no one knows how much formula individual babies may have consumed prior to the recall. It is well known that fetuses, infants, children and women are harmed by doses of radiation below officially allowed exposures. Most exposure standards have been established in view of radiation’s projected effect on “Reference Man,” a hypothetical 20- to 30-year-old white male, rather than women and children, the most vulnerable.

Even tiny amounts of internal radioactive contamination can damage DNA, cause cancer and weaken the immune system. Fukushima’s meltdowns dispersed radioactive contamination found in vegetables, milk, seafood, water, grain, animal feed and beef. Green tea grown 250 miles from Fukushima was found contaminated. Rice harvested this fall from 154 farms in Fukushima Prefecture was found in November to be poisoned with cesium 25 percent above the allowable limit. Shipments of rice from those farms were banned, but not before many tons had been sold. Presumably, that radiation is now the property of each consumer under the inventive assertion of Tepco’s corporate attorneys.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Source:
John LaForge, Truthout, Fukushima’s Owner Adds Insult to Injury – Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn’t Theirs, Monday 16 January 2012

Related Environmental Medicine Matters articles:

• The Hanford Nuclear Reservation becomes an American Pop-Icon Amusement Park?
• Expert discovers simple method of dealing with harmful radioactive iodine
• People may eventually develop cancer as a result of the radiation exposure

Newborns of non-smoking moms exposed to secondhand smoke during pregnancy have genetic mutations that may affect long-term health, according to a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health study published online in the Open Pediatric Medicine Journal. The abnormalities, which were indistinguishable from those found in newborns of mothers who were active smokers, may affect survival, birth weight and lifelong susceptibility to diseases like cancer.

The study confirms previous research in which study author Stephen G. Grant, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental and occupational health at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, discovered evidence of abnormalities in the HPRT gene located on the X chromosome in cord blood from newborns of non-smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.

In the current study, Dr. Grant confirmed smoke-induced mutation in another gene called glycophorin A, or GPA, that is representative of oncogenes – genes that transform normal cells into cancer cells and cause solid tumors. The GPA mutation was the same level and type in newborns of mothers who were active smokers and of non-smoking mothers exposed to tobacco smoke. Likewise, the mutations were discernable in newborns of women who had stopped smoking during their pregnancies, but who did not actively avoid secondhand smoke.

“These findings back up our previous conclusion that passive, or secondary, smoke causes permanent genetic damage in newborns that is very similar to the damage caused by active smoking,” said Dr. Grant. “By using a different assay, we were able to pick up a completely distinct yet equally important type of genetic mutation that is likely to persist throughout a child’s lifetime. Pregnant women should not only stop smoking, but be aware of their exposure to tobacco smoke from other family members, work and social situations.”

Literature: University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, Exposure to secondhand smoke in the womb has lifelong impact, June 30, 2010

Related Environmental Medicine Matters Articles:

• Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Depressive Symptoms
• Second Hand Smioking results in Liver Disease, UCLA Study finds
• Male Reproductive Organs are at Risk from Environmental Hazards
• Majority of US hospitals will have smoke-free campuses by end of year
• 2009 edition of the Tobacco Atlas catalogues catastrophic toll of tobacco worldwide

Organic Trade Association (OTA) hails panel for empowering consumers with ways to reduce their cancer risk

GREENFIELD, Mass., May 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The President’s Cancer Panel Report released today exhorts consumers to choose food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, and growth hormones to help decrease their exposure to environmental chemicals that can increase their risk of contracting cancer. Organic products avoid the use of these chemicals.

“Exposure to pesticides can be decreased by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers… Similarly, exposure to antibiotics, growth hormones, and toxic run-off from livestock feed lots can be minimized by eating free-range meat raised without these medications,” according to the landmark report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” submitted to President Obama by Dr. LaSalle Leffall, Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret L. Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

“Organic production and processing is the only system that uses certification and inspection to verify that these chemicals are not used on the farm all the way to our dinner tables,” said  Christine Bushway, Executive Director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA).

Organic production is based on a system of farming without the use of toxic and persistent pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides) and synthetic fertilizers. Organically produced foods also must be produced without the use of antibiotics, synthetic hormones, genetic engineering and other excluded practices, sewage sludge, or irradiation. Organic foods are minimally processed without artificial ingredients, preservatives, or irradiation to maintain the integrity of the food. In addition, animal confinement in feedlots is prohibited.

“Consumers should know that organic foods have the least chemicals applied in their production and the least residues in the final products. Thus, those seeking to minimize their exposure to these chemicals and follow the recommendations of the President’s Cancer Panel, can look for the USDA Organic label wherever they shop,” said Bushway.

“The American people — even before they are born — are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures,” the panel wrote in a letter to President Obama. It added, “The Panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”

It added, “Many known or suspected carcinogens first identified through studies of industrial and agricultural occupational exposures have since found their way into soil, air, water and numerous consumer products… Some of these chemicals have been found in maternal blood, placental tissue, and breast milk samples from pregnant women and mothers who recently gave birth. Thus, chemical contaminants are being passed on to the next generation, both prenatally and during breastfeeding.”

“OTA is gratified to see a prestigious scientific panel recognize what the organic farmers and the organic community have realized about environmental health and organic agriculture for decades, and we applaud them for taking on this critical issue,” Bushway added.

The full report: Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk

Researchers have developed a novel animal model showing that four commonly used chemotherapy drugs disrupt the birth of new brain cells, and that the condition could be partially reversed with the growth factor IGF-1. 

Published early online in the journal Cancer Investigation, the University of Rochester Medical Center study is relevant to the legions of cancer survivors who experience a frustrating decline in cognitive function after chemotherapy treatment, known as chemo-brain. 

“It is not yet clear how our results can be generally applied to humans but we have taken a very significant step toward reproducing a debilitating condition and finding ways to treat it,” said Robert Gross, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Neurology and of Pharmacology and Physiology at URMC and principal investigator of the study. 

Chemo-brain is a newly recognized condition. The URMC team found surprising data about how the four drugs impact the brain, Gross said, and they are the first to report that the experimental insulin-like growth factor, IGF-1, may be beneficial. 

The study was funded by a Department of Defense grant to Gross and by the National Cancer Institute to co-investigator and lead author, Michelle Janelsins, Ph.D., research assistant professor of Radiation Oncology at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center. 

More than 11 million Americans are living today after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Many of them have endured chemotherapy and although the side effects during treatment are well known, the lingering neurological effects are more puzzling. Patients often report memory lapses, trouble concentrating, confusion, difficulty multi-tasking and slow thinking for weeks, months or years after treatment ends. 

The URMC team hypothesized that cognitive problems might stem from chemo destroying the ability of brain cells to regenerate in the hippocampus, which is primarily involved in memory formation and mood. They sought a way to find the mechanisms at work and to manage the adverse effects on the brain before, during and after chemotherapy treatment. 

Researchers also hypothesized that chemotherapy drugs known to cross the blood-brain barrier would be a bigger threat to brain cells than drugs that do not cross the blood-brain barrier. To test the hypothesis, they investigated the effects of routinely used doses of cyclophosphamide and fluorouracil, which do cross into the brain, against paclitaxel and doxorubicin, which do not. 

Unexpectedly, all four drugs caused a significant breakdown in brain cell proliferation in the animal model. A statistical analysis of cell regeneration showed a 15.4 percent reduction in new brain cells following fluorouracil, a 30.5 percent reduction following cyclophosphamide, a 22.4 percent reduction following doxorubicin, and a 36 percent reduction following paclitaxel. 

“It could be that all of the chemo drugs cross into the brain after all, or that they act via peripheral mechanisms, such as inflammation, that could open up the blood-brain barrier,” Gross said. 

“Neurogenesis can also be altered by stress, sleep deprivation and depression, all of which are common among cancer patients,” added Janelsins. “More thorough studies are needed to understand the interplay of these factors and the long-term effects of chemotherapy on the brain.” 

Researchers conducted a second study of a single high dose of cyclophosphamide, a mainstay of adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer, because chemo-brain is a frequent complaint of people receiving this drug. The single high dose resulted in a 40.9 percent reduction in newly divided brain cells, the study said. 

In previous studies the experimental growth hormone IGF-1 had demonstrated that it could generally promote new brain cell development within the central nervous system. Thus, investigators chose to test its effect in the animal model. 

They administered IGF-1 prior to and following a conventional cyclophosphamide multiple-dose regimen, and a single, high-dose of cyclophosphamide. The IGF-1 seemed to increase the number of new brain cells in both models, but was more effective in the high-dose model, the study concluded.

The research team plans to conduct additional studies which will allow them to further test the impact of IGF-1 and other related interventions on the molecular and behavioral consequences of chemotherapy. 

Literature: University of Rochester Medical Center, UR study reveals chemo’s toxicity to brain, possible treatment, December 17, 2009

Study shows deterioration in brain function following breast cancer therapy has negative effects on quality of life

One of the most problematic side effects of cancer treatment, chemobrain – a range of symptoms including memory loss, inability to concentrate, difficulty thinking and other subtle cognitive changes following chemotherapy – seriously diminishes women’s quality of life and daily functioning. As a result, they have to adopt a range of coping strategies to manage their restricted social and professional lives.

Breast cancer survivors tell their story in a descriptive study (1) of the effects that cognitive impairment has on women’s work, social networks and dealings with the health care profession. Dr. Saskia Subramanian from the UCLA Center for Culture and Health in the US and her colleagues have just published their work online in Springer’s Journal of Cancer Survivorship.

An increasing number of women survive breast cancer, yet survival comes at a price. Mild cognitive impairment following chemotherapy, known as “chemobrain” or “chemofog” is one of the most commonly reported post-treatment symptoms by breast cancer survivors. Dr. Subramanian and colleagues’ work shows that this deterioration in brain function has devastating effects on breast cancer survivors’ quality of life.

Through a combination of focus groups and in-depth interviews among 74 women who had completed their course of cancer treatment at least a year earlier, the researchers gathered data on patients’ medical background, treatment experience, post-treatment symptoms, reactions from medical staff and from family and friends, self-management, strength of social networks and their perceptions of themselves.

The women described a variety of cognitive changes which they found both frustrating and upsetting. Some were less able to retain material or to digest new information and recognized that they were not functioning as they once did. Others faced reduced independence, becoming limited in their ability to manage certain responsibilities or get around. These changes made women feel scared, dependent and emotionally drained. For some, coping meant having to cut back on work and social activities. Others had more or less accepted the limitations put on their lives and resigned themselves to a diminished cognitive capacity.

The majority of women complained about the lack of acknowledgement from the medical community when they mentioned their chemobrain symptoms. Many women wished they had received some warning and only a few got answers from their physicians. Some women felt that chemobrain confused their families and friends, and young children in particular.

Chemobrain also affected women’s performance at work. Because they were less able to focus, duties became more difficult and often took longer. This affected their efficiency and reduced their chances of promotion or assignment to projects.

The authors conclude: “These data underscore the very serious ways in which chemobrain can affect the life experiences of cancer survivors – emotionally, psychologically and economically. A clear understanding of the cognitive impairments experienced by survivors will aid researchers in developing targeted therapies and interventions aimed at improving or mitigating these post-treatment side effects.”

Reference:   Boykoff N, Moieni M, Subramanian S (2009). Confronting chemobrain: an in-depth look at survivors’ reports of impact on work, social networks, and health care response. Journal of Cancer Survivorship; DOI: 10.1007/s11764-009-0098-x