Environmental Moisture,Molds, and Asthma—Emerging Fungal Risks in the Context of Climate Change

The trend toward increasing frequency and intensity of storms has exacerbated mold and other moisture-related health problems, and can be extrapolated to the future. Mold growth therefore exhibits increasing significance in the context of changing climate. The decades-old hypothesis of mold causation and/or exacerbation of asthma previously has been deemed unproven, though not rejected. The present investigation assesses the status of this hypothesis within the industrial, regulatory, scientific, medical, and legal communities. To assure accuracy, statements from these communities are quoted. Recent high-level reviews, such as by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine and the United Nations World Health Organization, have failed to consider literature that was available, and studies postdating NAS IOM and UN WHO reviews have confirmed and augmented available literature. As a result, all nine of the Hill criteria of causation in epidemiology now are satisfied. I conclude that, with exposure of sufficient intensity and duration, some molds can cause asthma and/or exacerbate preexisting asthma, and that the hypothesis indeed has been accorded broad acceptance in the communities considered.     

Telecommunications,Electromagnetic Fields,and Human Health

Telecommunication generates electromagnetic fields (EMFs) at radio and microwave frequencies. Transmitters have proliferated with siting of wireless communication networks, often co-located among other transmitters. “Cell” phones also have proliferated, representing small transmitters used in contact with human heads, and stored on human bodies. Telecommunications equipment is ubiquitous, and EMF exposure prolonged, raising the issue of possible health risks. Such risks, if any, must be managed. For example, epidemiology studies reported higher exposure to analog cell phone EMFs among brain cancer patients than among controls, but those risks were “managed” via replacement of analog phones with today’s digital phones, which have not been associated with human cancer. Challenges remain, recently from rodent bioassays that show dose-related association of lifetime exposure to cell-phone-type EMFs with heart schwannomas (cancers of Schwann cells, which insulate nerve cells) in male rats, though not in females. Human cancer risk, if any, remains to be characterized and quantified, which partly will depend upon whether EMFs indeed are non-ionizing as has been assumed, and whether a threshold or non-threshold (genotoxic) mechanism caused the cancers in the male rats. Health concerns have motivated further exposure reduction suggestions, and sometimes opposition to siting transmitters. Credible, objective explication of technical information to primarily non-technical audiences is necessary to support informed public participation and dispassionate weighing of telecommunications risks and benefits in community decision-making. Ultimately, experts and non-experts should adhere to the “precautionary principle,” requiring adoption of reasonably (but not excessively) pessimistic exposure and risk assumptions, whether or not they are likely to materialize.     

Legacy Contaminants of Emerging Concern: Lead (Pb), Flint (MI), and Human Health

Abstract

As a heavy metal industrially mined for millenia, lead (Pb) is a legacy contaminant. It is also a contaminant of emerging concern because of its persistence, toxicity, and recent discovery of its resurgence in drinking water serving homes and schools, recently and most notoriously in Flint, Michigan. Concern about lead, however, has reemerged beyond Flint, exemplifying adoption of bad science policy despite availability of relevant good science. Much is known about lead toxicity, and profiled here. Whereas adults chronically exposed to lead may experience peripheral neuropathy, infants and children are more susceptible. They constitute sensitive subpopulations because their blood-brain barriers are immature, making them susceptible to central nervous system effects, most notably reduced IQ, when lead penetrates to developing brains. Failure to protect disadvantaged populations in Flint and beyond despite availability of proven science and inexpensive technology also exemplifies instances of environmental injustice. Emerging concern about lead thus illustrates failure of social as well as science policy. A critical lesson to be learned is that vigilance must be maintained, as knowledge about lead exposure and toxic effects provided by science does not automatically result in consistent and evenhanded legal and regulatory protection provided by government.     

M. Boersma,Corruption: A Violation of Human Rights and a Crime under International Law?, Intersentia,Antwerp 2012, xxiii + 490 pp. ISBN 978-1-78068-105-4.

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Stolen Art Restitution Claims and the Exhaustion of Local Remedies: How Foreign-Based Plaintiffs are Able to Succeed Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act

Stolen art restitution claims under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (“FSIA”) present unique procedural issues that implicate the history, purpose, and objectives of the FSIA. At the forefront of these issues are how foreign-based plaintiffs are able to bring suits against foreign governments or foreign citizens in US Federal Courts. Whether these foreign-based plaintiffs must exhaust local remedies in their country of origin is another issue that these kinds of suits typically have courts resolve. This article provides answers to these issues through a historical discussion of the implementation of the FSIA and an analysis of recent case law.     

The design of rent-seeking competitions

In the standard Tullock model of rent-seeking as a noncooperative game, aggregate expenditures by seekers can equal, exceed, or fall short of total rents depending on what is assumed about the number of seekers and the marginal return to a seeker's investment. If the supply of an input into the rent-seeking process is controlled by a politician who receives payment from seekers for it, the indeterminacy of the process becomes a less serious problem. He supplies it and designs the rent-seeking game to maximize his wealth. The author derives expressions for the number of seekers and the marginal return parameter which maximize the politician's wealth in one-input and two-input rent-seeking processes.