Enviromental pollution

The chemical risk in service stations may be due to toxic compounds present in fuel (particularly benzene and additives) and to the emission of exhausts and fine particulate from vehicles. Owing to the elimination of lead (Pb) from fuel and to the necessity of lowering CO emission, several oxygenated additives have been added to fuel, in particular methyl-tert-butyl-ether (MTBE), whose toxic properties are at present under investigation. The introduction of reformulated gasoline (RFG) and the use of catalytic converters (with possible release of platinum (Pt) in the environment) may have modified the risks for workers employed in service stations...

As part of the European Research Council's Fourth Framework Programme, the EURADOS Action Group on Monitoring of External Exposures held an intercomparison of national network systems. This took place during May/June 1999 at the Risø Natural Enviromental Radiation Measurement Station in Denmark and at the Underground Laboratory for Dosimetry and Spectrometry (UDO) of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Germany. The network systems are used continuously to monitor radiation levels throughout a country in order to give early warning of nuclear accidents having transboundary implications...

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The concentrations of the enviromental pollutant 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin were measured in the blood of 44 infertile women with endometriosis (study group), and in 35 age-matched women with tubal infertility (control group). Eight women with endometriosis (18%) were dioxin positive as compared to one woman (3%) in the controls (P = 0.04). Although the concentrations of dioxin did not seem to be directly correlated with the severity of endometriosis, these observations contribute to the accumulating data linking dioxin to endometriosis in humans...

The authors examined 47 lungs obtained at post mortem in Papua New Gunea. These were inflated with formalin, fixed under pressure, sliced and examined for emphysema using a "point-counting" method. There was no emphysema before the age of 30 years. The pathological types encountered were similar to those in the United Kingdom. In patients over 50 years of age there appeared to be little difference between the amount of emphysema present in Paua New Guinea and in the United Kingdom. Enviromental air pollution seemed to be relatively unimportant in the pathogenesis...

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.