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Tag: Food and Water Safety

  • Some mosquitoes like it hot

    Some mosquitoes like it hot

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    Newswise — Certain populations of mosquitoes are more heat tolerant and better equipped to survive heat waves than others, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

    This is bad news in a world where vector-borne diseases are an increasingly global health concern. Most models that scientists use to estimate vector-borne disease risk currently assume that mosquito heat tolerances do not vary. As a result, these models may underestimate mosquitoes’ ability to spread diseases in a warming world.

    Researchers led by Katie M. Westby, a senior scientist at Tyson Research Center, Washington University’s environmental field station, conducted a new study that measured the critical thermal maximum (CTmax), an organism’s upper thermal tolerance limit, of eight populations of the globally invasive tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The tiger mosquito is a known vector for many viruses including West Nile, chikungunya and dengue.

    “We found significant differences across populations for both adults and larvae, and these differences were more pronounced for adults,” Westby said. The new study is published Jan. 8 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

    Westby’s team sampled mosquitoes from eight different populations spanning four climate zones across the eastern United States, including mosquitoes from locations in New Orleans; St. Augustine, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Stillwater, Okla.; St. Louis; Urbana, Ill.; College Park, Md.; and Allegheny County, Pa.

    The scientists collected eggs in the wild and raised larvae from the different geographic locations to adult stages in the lab, tending the mosquito populations separately as they continued to breed and grow. The scientists then used adults and larvae from subsequent generations of these captive-raised mosquitoes in trials to determine CTmax values, ramping up air and water temperatures at a rate of 1 degree Celsius per minute using established research protocols.

    The team then tested the relationship between climatic variables measured near each population source and the CTmax of adults and larvae. The scientists found significant differences among the mosquito populations.

    The differences did not appear to follow a simple latitudinal or temperature-dependent pattern, but there were some important trends. Mosquito populations from locations with higher precipitation had higher CTmax values. Overall, the results reveal that mean and maximum seasonal temperatures, relative humidity and annual precipitation may all be important climatic factors in determining CTmax.

    “Larvae had significantly higher thermal limits than adults, and this likely results from different selection pressures for terrestrial adults and aquatic larvae,” said Benjamin Orlinick, first author of the paper and a former undergraduate research fellow at Tyson Research Center. “It appears that adult Ae. albopictus are experiencing temperatures closer to their CTmax than larvae, possibly explaining why there are more differences among adult populations.”

    “The overall trend is for increased heat tolerance with increasing precipitation,” Westby said. “It could be that wetter climates allow mosquitoes to endure hotter temperatures due to decreases in desiccation, as humidity and temperature are known to interact and influence mosquito survival.”

    Little is known about how different vector populations, like those of this kind of mosquito, are adapted to their local climate, nor the potential for vectors to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. This study is one of the few to consider the upper limits of survivability in high temperatures — akin to heat waves — as opposed to the limits imposed by cold winters.

    “Standing genetic variation in heat tolerance is necessary for organisms to adapt to higher temperatures,” Westby said. “That’s why it was important for us to experimentally determine if this mosquito exhibits variation before we can begin to test how, or if, it will adapt to a warmer world.”

    Future research in the lab aims to determine the upper limits that mosquitoes will seek out hosts for blood meals in the field, where they spend the hottest parts of the day when temperatures get above those thresholds, and if they are already adapting to higher temperatures. “Determining this is key to understanding how climate change will impact disease transmission in the real world,” Westby said. “Mosquitoes in the wild experience fluctuating daily temperatures and humidity that we cannot fully replicate in the lab.”

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    Washington University in St. Louis

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  • Consumers face perplexity with food-date labels, causing confusion in decision-making.

    Consumers face perplexity with food-date labels, causing confusion in decision-making.

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    Consumers grapple with confusion over food-date labels

    Newswise — The use of food-date labels such as “use-by” and “best if used by” causes consumer confusion that results in many Americans discarding food that is safe to eat or donate, according to the November 2023 Consumer Food Insights Report.

    The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability assesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conducted and evaluated the survey, which included 1,200 consumers across the U.S. 

    The Congressional Research Service recently reported that 7% of all U.S. food waste is because of date labeling confusion. “The goal of this month’s CFI survey was to gather consumer perceptions about what these food date labels mean,” said the report’s lead author, Joseph Balagtas, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue and director of CFDAS.

    The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service defines “use-by” and “best if used by” as references to peak food quality rather than the date after which the food is no longer safe to eat. However, there is no official standard for food date labeling in the U.S., which leads to an unsurprising mix of responses as to what they mean.

    “Over half of consumers connect “best if used by” and “use-by” dates with food safety, while over 30% believe these labels are related to food quality,” Balagtas said. “This information problem is a kind of market failure and leads to waste.

    “One potential fix to misinformation is for the government to set standards for food date labels to help inform consumers what is and is not safe to eat to help reduce food waste in the U.S. The recently proposed Food Date Labeling Act is an attempt to achieve that goal.”

    The November survey also looked at consumer perceptions of foodborne illness risks. Food-risk attitudes are divided into three groups: risk-averse, risk-neutral and risk-loving. The groupings were based on respondents’ self-assessed risk tolerance for food at home (FAH) and food away from home (FAFH) on a scale from 0 (risk-averse) to 10 (fully prepared to take risks or risk-loving). The summaries broken down this way focus on CFI data from January to November 2023.

    “We found that consumers believe the risk of contracting a foodborne illness is higher when eating food at a restaurant compared to eating food they prepare at home themselves, which is consistent with data on the incidence of foodborne illness,” Balagtas said. “So it is not surprising that we also see that consumers who are more risk-averse when it comes to their food, eat home-cooked meals more frequently than consumers willing to take more risks with their food consumption.”

    A variety of store-bought goods have the potential to contain foodborne bacteria that cause illness. Even so, consumers were more likely to select raw meat items as foods that pose a high risk of foodborne illnesses.

    “We see a gap of more than 20 percentage points in the rate at which raw meats were selected compared to leafy greens, milk, flour and raw fruits and vegetables, despite the fact that some of these items that are perceived as ‘safer’ have caused foodborne illness outbreaks in the past,” Balagtas noted.

    The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration, a group tasked with monitoring the causes of foodborne illnesses in the U.S., recently reported that the contribution of fresh produce to foodborne outbreaks is comparable to that of raw meats, and in some cases, greater.

    The November survey also showed that food insecurity has dropped slightly for the fifth straight month, to 12.6%. “We do observe higher rates of food insecurity among risk-loving consumers, though this difference is likely the result of the correlation between age and food risk attitudes,” said Elijah Bryant, a survey research analyst at the center and co-author of the report.

    Generally, older consumers with more resources, on average, tend to be more food secure and less willing to take food risks, while younger people more willing to take risks tend to have fewer resources, resulting in higher rates of food insecurity.”

    Consumers also were asked to recall their food behaviors over the last month. “Those who are classified as risk-loving reported eating fruits and vegetables without washing them, eating rare or undercooked meat and eating raw dough or batter more frequently than those who are risk-averse,” Bryant said.

    Consumers less willing to take risks with their food were also less likely to agree with claims about the health benefits of non-conventional food items. These claims include organic being more nutritious than non-organic, plant-based milk is healthier than dairy milk and gluten-free food is healthier than products containing gluten.

    This may be indicative of risk-averse consumers being more resistant to alternative foods in the food system that stray from what they perceive as the norm, Bryant said.

    The Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability is part of Purdue’s Next Moves in agriculture and food systems and uses innovative data analysis shared through user-friendly platforms to improve the food system. In addition to the Consumer Food Insights Report, the center offers a portfolio of online dashboards.

    Writer: Steve Koppes

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    Purdue University

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  • Climate elevates toxin risk in Northern US lakes.

    Climate elevates toxin risk in Northern US lakes.

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    Newswise — Washington, DC— As climate change warms the Earth, higher-latitude regions will be at greater risk for toxins produced by algal blooms, according to new research led by Carnegie’s Anna Michalak, Julian Merder, and Gang Zhao. Their findings, published in Nature Water, identify water temperatures of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius (68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit) as being at the greatest risk for developing dangerous levels of a common algae-produced toxin called microcystin.  

    Harmful algal blooms result when bodies of water get overloaded with nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from agriculture and other human activities. These excess nutrients can allow blue-green algae populations to grow at an out-of-control rate.

    Some blue-green algal species produce a toxin called microcystin, which can pose a serious health hazard to people and the environment, as well as pose economic risks for fishing and tourism. Microcystin affects liver function and can cause death in wild and domestic animals, including humans in rare instances. It is also classified as a potential carcinogen in cases of chronic exposure.

    “In 2014 an algal bloom in Lake Erie led to high levels of microcystin in water intakes, and residents in Ohio and Ontario were instructed not to drink tap water due to risk of exposure,” Merder cautioned.

    Merder, Michalak, and their colleagues—Carnegie’s Gang Zhao, University of Kansas’s Ted Harris, and Dimitrios Stasinopoulos and Robert Rigby of the University of Greenwich—analyzed samples taken from 2,804 U.S. lakes between 2007 and 2017. They assessed how water temperature affects the occurrence and concentration of microcystin as part of an effort to better understand the risks to water quality posed by climate change.

    Michalak’s lab has taken a leading role in understanding the intersection of climate change and water quality impairments for more than a decade. Previous work has shown that lakes worldwide are already experiencing more severe algal blooms and that nutrient pollution is being exacerbated by changes in rainfall patterns.

    “Lakes are sentinels of climate change,” Michalak said. “They hold the vast majority, 87 percent, of the liquid freshwater on the Earth’s surface, and the warming and precipitation shifts associated with climate change pose some of the greatest threats to water quality around the world and to the health of aquatic ecosystems.”

    The surface temperatures of lakes have already been warming at 0.34 degrees Celsius (0.61 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade and Merder and Michalak set out to determine what this, as well as future warming, would mean in terms of risk for elevated toxin concentrations.

    “The abundance of blue-green algae is predicted to increase due to climate change as they outcompete other species,” Merder explained. “But previous field studies came to various conclusions about what this means for microcystin concentrations.”

    To inform land and water management strategies, it was important to quantitatively tie toxin levels to water temperature, which Merder and Michalak were able to accomplish through their extensive analysis of lake water samples, revealing that water temperatures in the 20 to 25 degrees Celsius (68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit) range were most dangerous in terms of elevated microcystin concentrations. They also found that the impact of temperature is amplified when nutrient concentrations are high.

    By incorporating information from climate models, they were able to demonstrate that areas most susceptible to high toxin concentrations will continue to move northward. In some areas, the relative risk of exceeding water quality guidelines will increase by up to 50 percent in the coming decades. Additionally, they showed that toxin hazards will decrease in a small number of regions further south, as water temperatures begin to exceed those associated with the highest risk.

    “These findings should help demonstrate the serious risk to safe water for drinking, fishing, recreation, and other societal needs in many parts of the United States and the urgency for developing management strategies to prepare,” Michalak concluded. “When we think about water sustainability in the context of global change, we need to focus on the quality of the water as much as we focus on the amount of water.”

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    Carnegie Institution for Science

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  • Rubber plumbing seals can leak additives into drinking water, study says

    Rubber plumbing seals can leak additives into drinking water, study says

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    Newswise — As drinking water flows through pipes and into a glass, it runs against the rubber seals inside some plumbing devices. These parts contain additives that contribute to their flexibility and durability, but these potentially harmful compounds can leak into drinking water, according to a small-scale study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The authors report that the released compounds, which are typically linked to tire pollution, also transformed into other unwanted byproducts.

    To enhance rubber’s strength and durability, manufacturers typically mix in additives. Scientists have shown that tire dust can transport these substances, such as 1,3 diphenylguanidine (DPG) and N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N’-phenyl-1,4-benzenediamine (6PPD), into waterways. DPG and 6PPD have also been detected in drinking water samples, though it’s unclear how the compounds got there. In previous research, Shane Snyder and Mauricius Marques dos Santos found that these rubber additives can react with disinfectants in simulated drinking water. Their lab tests generated a variety of chlorinated compounds, some of which could damage DNA. Now, the team wanted to assess whether real-world rubber plumbing fixtures can release DPG and 6PPD and form chlorinated byproducts in drinking water samples.

    In this pilot study, the team collected tap water from 20 buildings and detected polymer additives at parts per trillion levels in every sample. The researchers explain that these compounds are not currently regulated, but the measured levels are potentially concerning, based on their previous study’s results from human cell bioassays. And the samples from faucets with aerators contained the highest total amounts. All of the samples contained DPG and one of its chlorinated byproducts, whereas 6PPD and two other chlorine-containing compounds were each found in fewer than five samples. This is the first report of chlorinated DPG byproducts in drinking water, according to the researchers.

    To see if these compounds could have come from plumbing fixtures, the team tested rubber O-rings and gaskets from seven commercial devices, including faucet aerators and connection seals. In the experiment, the rings sat in water with or without chlorinated disinfectants for up to two weeks. Most of the seals, except for the silicone-based ones, released DPG and 6PPD additives. Additionally, plumbing pieces sitting in disinfectant-treated water generated chlorinated forms of DPG in amounts that were consistent with those observed in the drinking water samples. Because some of the rubber plumbing seals released DPG and 6PPD, the researchers say that drinking water, as well as tire pollution, could be a route of human exposure to these compounds.

    The authors acknowledge funding from the Merlion programme; the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs; the Nanyang Technological University; the National Research Foundation of Singapore; and the Public Utilities Board, Singapore’s National Water Agency.

    The paper’s abstract will be available on Sept. 6 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00446

    The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

    To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact [email protected].

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    American Chemical Society (ACS)

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  • Could microplastics in soil introduce drug-resistant superbugs to the food supply?

    Could microplastics in soil introduce drug-resistant superbugs to the food supply?

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    BYLINE: Lauren Quinn

    Newswise — URBANA, Ill. — Like every industry, modern farming relies heavily on plastics. Think plastic mulch lining vegetable beds, PVC pipes draining water from fields, polyethylene covering high tunnels, and plastic seed, fertilizer, and herbicide packaging, to name a few. In a new review article, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers say these plastics are now widely dispersed in agricultural soils in the form of microplastics and nanoplastics. 

    That’s not necessarily new; microplastics have been found in nearly every ecosystem and organism on Earth. The twist, according to the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) researchers, is that micro- and nanoplastics in agricultural soil could contribute to antibiotic resistant bacteria with a ready route into our food supply.

    “Plastic itself may not be very toxic, but it can act as a vector for transmitting pathogenic and antimicrobial resistant bacteria into the food chain,” said study author Jayashree Nath, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition in ACES. “This phenomenon is not very well known to people, so we wanted to raise awareness.”

    If the link between microplastics and antibiotic resistance is less than obvious, here’s how it works. First, plastics are an excellent adsorbent. That means chemical substances and microscopic organisms love to stick to plastic. Chemicals that would ordinarily move through soil quickly — things like pesticides and heavy metals — instead stick around and are concentrated when they encounter plastics. Similarly, bacteria and other microorganisms that occur naturally in soil preferentially congregate on the stable surfaces of microplastics, forming what are known as biofilms. 

    When bacteria encounter unusual chemical substances in their new home base, they activate stress response genes that incidentally help them resist other chemicals too, including, sometimes, antibiotics. And when groups of bacteria attach to the same surface, they have a habit of sharing these genes through a process called horizontal gene transfer. Nanoplastics, which can enter bacterial cells, present a different kind of stress, but that stress can have the same outcome. 

    “Bacteria have been evolving genetic mechanisms to cope with stress for millions of years. Plastic is a new material bacteria have never seen in nature, so they are now evoking these genetic tool sets to deal with that stress,” said co-author Pratik Banerjee, associate professor in FSHN and Illinois Extension specialist. “We have also shown bacteria may become more virulent in the presence of plastics, in addition to becoming more resistant to antimicrobials.”

    Gene transfer between bacteria on microplastics has been documented in other environments, particularly water. So far, the phenomenon is only hypothetical in agricultural soil, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Nath and Banerjee are currently running laboratory studies to document gene transfer.

    “Soil is an under-researched area in this field,” Banerjee said. “We have an obligation to understand what’s going on in soil, because what we suspect and what we fear is that the situation in soil could be even worse than in water. 

    “One of the technical problems is that soil is a very difficult medium to handle when it comes to fishing out microplastics. Water is so easy, because you can simply filter the microplastic out,” Banerjee added. “But we have made some good headway thanks to Jayashree and our collaboration with the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.”

    The authors point out many foodborne pathogens make it onto produce from their native home in the soil, but nanoplastics and antibiotic resistant bacteria could be small enough to enter roots and plant tissues — where they are impossible to wash away. While nanoplastics have been documented in and on crops, the field of study is still new and it’s not well known how often this occurs. Banerjee’s research group plans to tackle that question as well.

    Ultimately, microplastics are here to stay. After all, they persist in the environment for centuries or longer. The authors say it’s time to understand their impacts in the soil and our food system, raise awareness, and push toward biodegradable plastic alternatives. 

    The study, “Interaction of microbes with microplastics and nanoplastics in the agroecosystems—impact on antimicrobial resistance,” is published in Pathogens [DOI: 10.3390/pathogens12070888]. Authors include Jayashree Nath, Jayita De, Shantanu Sur, and Pratik Banerjee. The research was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the USDA.

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    College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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  • Even treated wastewater affects our rivers

    Even treated wastewater affects our rivers

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    Newswise — Effluents from wastewater treatment plants have a dual effect: Some species disappear, while others benefit. Especially certain insect orders, such as stonefly and caddisfly larvae, are decimated. Certain worms and crustaceans, by contrast, can increase in number. A team from Goethe University Frankfurt led by Daniel Enns and Dr. Jonas Jourdan has corroborated this in a comprehensive study, which has now been published in the journal Water Research. They examined 170 wastewater treatment plants in Hesse in relation to species composition.

    Wastewater treatment plants are an indispensable part of our modern infrastructure; they have made a significant contribution to improving the quality of our surface waters. However, their ability to completely remove what are known as micropollutants from wastewater is mostly limited. These substances include, for example, active ingredients from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, pesticides and other synthetic substances enter waterbodies via the treated wastewater, placing an additional burden on rivers and streams. This exacerbates the challenges faced by already vulnerable insect communities and aquatic fauna. Previous studies – which have primarily focused on single wastewater treatment plants – have already shown that invertebrate communities downstream of such effluents are generally dominated by pollution-tolerant taxa.

    Until now, however, it was unclear how ubiquitous these changes are. That is why a team of biologists from Goethe University Frankfurt has now studied extensively how wastewater from 170 wastewater treatment plants in Hesse has an impact on the species composition of invertebrates. This has prompted a change in the common conception that human-induced stressors reduce the number of species in a habitat and thus their diversity: Rather, the findings indicate that a shift in species composition can be observed. The researchers were able to identify significant shifts in the composition of the species community between sites located upstream and downstream of wastewater treatment plants. Some species were particularly affected by effluents from wastewater treatment plants – such as stonefly and caddisfly larvae, which disappear entirely in some places. Other taxa, such as certain worms and crustaceans, by contrast, benefit and are found in greater numbers. This change can be observed especially in streams and smaller rivers. Overall, wastewater treatment plants alter conditions downstream to the advantage of pollution-tolerant taxa and to the disadvantage of sensitive ones.

    How can we reduce water pollution?

    Modern treatment techniques such as ozonation or activated charcoal filtering can make water treatment in wastewater treatment plants more efficient, allowing a wider range of pollutants, including many trace substances, to be removed from the wastewater before it is released into the environment. Merging smaller wastewater treatment plants can also contribute to reducing the burden on the environment. Whatever measures are taken, it is important to make sure that upstream sections are not already degraded and are in a good chemical and structural condition.

     

    Publication: Enns D, Cunze S, Baker NJ, Oehlmann J, Jourdan J (2023) Flushing away the future: The effects of wastewater treatment plants on aquatic invertebrates. Water Research, 120388. doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.120388

     

    Picture download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/141365425

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    Goethe University Frankfurt

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  • Climate Change Exacerbates Complexity of Nitrogen Runoff Mitigation Approaches

    Climate Change Exacerbates Complexity of Nitrogen Runoff Mitigation Approaches

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    Newswise — Washington, DC— As climate change progresses, rising temperatures may impact nitrogen runoff from land to lakes and streams more than projected increases in total and extreme precipitation for most of the continental United States, according to new research from a team of Carnegie climate scientists led by Gang Zhao and Anna Michalak published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    The conditions predicted by these findings are opposite to recent decades, when increasing precipitation has outpaced warming and led to more aquatic nitrogen pollution. Understanding the relative roles of changes in temperature and rainfall is critical for designing water quality management strategies that are robust to climate change while ensuring sustainable food and water supplies.

    Human activity has completely altered how nitrogen moves through the planet’s aquatic, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems. Nitrogen from fertilizer washes into waterways and, in excess, can lead to toxin-producing algal blooms or low-oxygen dead zones called hypoxia. Over the past several summers, large algal blooms in lake and coastal regions across the United States have received extensive news coverage.

    Carnegie’s Anna Michalak and her team have spent the last decade studying how climate change will affect nitrogen runoff and the subsequent risks posed to water quality. One of the biggest questions for those working to understand and prevent serious water quality impairments is the balance between how changes in temperature and changes in precipitation will affect nitrogen pollution’s ability to get into at-risk waterways.

    “The complex soil and aquatic systems through which nitrogen travels, the chemical transformations it undergoes along the way, and the various ways in which changes in temperature and precipitation will affect these processes make nutrient management a big challenge,” Zhao explained.

    For example, average and extreme precipitation affects how much nitrogen runs off the land and into waterways, as well as how long it takes for the nitrogen to reach lakes or coastal zones, where it can eventually create dangerous conditions. Temperature also indirectly impacts how much nitrogen ends up in waterways, because warming temperatures increase evaporation, preventing it from going into streams. Temperature also affects how nitrogen interacts with microbial life in the soil and sediment, potentially trapping it there or altering its course.  

    “Although the impacts of climate change-induced shifts in precipitation patterns have been explored, the effect of temperature increases on the movement of nitrogen into rivers has not been quantified at continental scales until now due to a lack of available data,” Zhao added.

    Zhao, Michalak, and their Carnegie colleagues Julian Merder and Tristan Ballard analyzed several decades of data tracking nitrogen’s movement through river systems across the continental United States and used it to project future trajectories for nitrogen movement under climate change scenarios. They determined that rising temperatures will likely offset, or even decrease, the amount of excess nitrogen flushed into rivers for the majority of the U.S., despite a predicted uptick in precipitation.

    These findings are counter to recent decades, when precipitation was the dominant factor over temperature in determining the amount of nitrogen that built up in U.S. waterways. Zhao, Michalak, and their colleagues say that this work forms a critical baseline for future research on the interplay between the nitrogen cycle and climate change.  

    “Our research illustrates the complex, and sometimes surprising, ways that climate change affects our planet’s dynamic systems,” Michalak concluded. “Untangling the various factors that are altering the climate change impacts on water quality will help farmers, land managers, and policymakers to pursue the best possible strategies for ensuring that we safeguard water quality, while simultaneously ensuring sustainable food production and water supply.”

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    Carnegie Institution for Science

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  • Disparities in Testing and Treating Well Water Found in Low-Income, BIPOC Households in NC, Reveals New Study

    Disparities in Testing and Treating Well Water Found in Low-Income, BIPOC Households in NC, Reveals New Study

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    Newswise — North Carolina leads the nation for most households relying on private wells as a primary source of drinking water, with one in four households on private wells. These wells are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, and most are not tested for contaminants, especially in low-income areas.

    A new study published in Environmental Justice by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that private well testing and treatment levels were significantly predicted by race and income, even though high levels of contamination were equally distributed across the research areas.

    “Although we found alarming levels of well water contamination in our study, what’s most troubling is that not everyone was equally aware of the problem,” said lead author Andrew George, community engagement coordinator in the Center for Public Engagement UNC’s Institute for the Environment. “You cannot see, taste or smell toxic metals in drinking water, so only households who are testing their private wells will be able to identify and address any problems. However, we found significant differences in levels of testing and treatment between income and racial groups.”

    The research team assessed contamination levels of metals in private wells and analyzed differences in water quality and well stewardship among demographic groups. More than 67% of wells tested in the study exceeded a federal or state drinking water standard. Researchers also found white, affluent households had 10 times greater odds of testing their wells and four times greater odds of treating their water than low-income, Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) households.

    This lack of testing and treatment may lead to low-income, BIPOC households experiencing a disproportionate burden of exposure to dangerous contaminants. Over time, consuming contaminated water can harm health and has been associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease, preeclampsia, neurological disorders, elevated blood lead levels and higher instances of waterborne illness.

    The team focused their study on regions impacted by the 2018 Hurricanes Florence and Michael and began sampling after the storms in Robeson, Northampton, Chatham and New Hanover counties. With the widespread flooding that accompanied the hurricanes, many communities were concerned about coal ash and other waste contaminating their water supplies.

    Enlisting the help of community-based organizations and neighborhood leaders, the research team employed Community Engaged Research (CEnR) Strategies to improve recruitment of participants in Environmental Justice (EJ) communities—those communities who experience disproportionate levels of pollution.

    CEnR strategies are collaborative and involve community members in all stages of the research process, which helps establish a mutual trust between researchers and the people. Report back of research results, another hallmark of CEnR, ensures that researchers share the results with study participants. This approach helps the participants better understand results and can inform subsequent action to protect health while also strengthening trust between the community and researchers.

    “In working with N.C. communities to address well water quality, our overarching goal is to prevent or reduce exposure to contaminants,” said Kathleen Gray, a coauthor of the study and research associate professor in the UNC institute for the Environment. “These results suggest a need for strategic efforts to increase well testing and improve treatment efforts in communities that rely on private wells for drinking water.”

    “Without engaging EJ communities, research into private wells will continue to exclude the most marginalized, underserved populations,” added George. “We hope our findings can inform efforts to direct policy interventions and community resources where they are needed most.”

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    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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  • Bacteria in kitchen not as harmful as feared

    Bacteria in kitchen not as harmful as feared

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    Newswise — Washington, D.C. – Bacteria found in 74 kitchens spread among 5 European countries were mostly harmless according to new research published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. 

    “We have previously found considerable variations in kitchen standards, food preparation practices, and cleaning regimes between France, Norway, Portugal, Romania, and Hungary,” said Birgitte Moen, Ph.D., Scientist—Department of Food Safety and Quality, Nofima—Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Research, Ås, Norway.

    In the study, the researchers sampled bacteria populations from sinks, cutting boards, counter tops, handles and cleaning utensils—sponges and cloths—used in kitchens. 

    Despite large numbers of species and considerable differences in bacterial diversity between samples, the researchers identified 8 bacterial genera commonly associated with environmental sources in most of the kitchens they sampled, which they characterized as “core microbiota.” These included Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, Enhydrobacter, Enterobacteriaceae, Psychrobacter, Chryseobacterium, Bacillus and Staphylococcus. 

    In the report, the authors stressed that the core microbiota persisted despite considerable differences between kitchens in the study. Some kitchens lacked running water, some lacked an indoor sink and some lacked dishwashers. They also persisted despite differing food preparation methods, dietary habits and differences in hand and kitchen hygiene, both of which affect the probability of infection. 

    The study was motivated by the authors’ curiosity, said Moen. Bacteria in food, in the gut, in hospitals and in professional food production had been well researched, but little was known about the microbes that inhabit the domestic kitchen. With an already existing collaboration across countries, “we had a unique opportunity to dig into this,” Moen added.

    The team knew that harmful bacteria enter kitchens via contaminated food, and that the type of these bacteria varied across countries. For example, Salmonella is not a problem in Norway, but it is the most commonly reported cause of foodborne illness in mainland Europe. Knowledge of the bacteria inhabiting the domestic kitchen could be used to help prevent human illness, and perhaps could even lead to more hygienic kitchen designs and better cleaning utensils, said Moen.

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    American Society for Microbiology (ASM)

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  • Researchers create packaging tray that warns of contamination before food is unwrapped

    Researchers create packaging tray that warns of contamination before food is unwrapped

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    Newswise — Researchers at McMaster University have created a new packaging tray that can signal when Salmonella or other dangerous pathogens are present in packages of raw or cooked food such as chicken.

    The new technology will enable producers, retailers and consumers to tell in real time if the contents of a sealed food package are contaminated without having to open it, preventing exposure to contamination while simplifying cumbersome and expensive lab-based detection processes that today add significant time and cost to food production. 

    The prototype tray, shaped like a shallow boat, is lined with a food-safe reagent that allows a built-in sensor to detect and signal the presence of Salmonella. The technology can readily be adapted to test for other common food-borne contaminants, such as E. coli and Listeria. 

    “This is something that can benefit everyone,” says researcher Akansha Prasad, the co-lead author of a paper that describes the invention, published today in the journal Advanced Materials. “We’re hoping this technology will save lives, money and food waste.”

    “There is so much at stake with food safety,” says researcher Shadman Khan, co-lead author on the paper. “We wanted to develop a system that was reliable, quick, affordable and easy to use.”

    The sloped sides of the tray direct juices to a sensor embedded in a window at the bottom. Without the need for any additional lab work, users can scan the underside of the sealed package with a cell phone and know immediately whether the food is contaminated.

    Having easy, instant access to such information would allow public health authorities, producers and retailers to trace and isolate contamination quickly, reducing potentially serious infections while also cutting back significantly on food waste by identifying precisely which lots of food need to be recalled and destroyed, compared to today’s often broad recalls that end up wasting unspoiled foods.

    Further, the researchers say, protecting consumers from contaminated foods will create significant health-care savings. Globally, there are about 600 million cases of food-borne illness every year, largely attributed to the consumption of pathogen-contaminated food products.

    The McMaster researchers and their colleagues have been working for several years on related technologies, all aimed at creating simple, inexpensive tools to prevent and detect food contamination.

    Their work is part of McMaster’s broader Global Nexus School for Pandemic Prevention & Response.

    Co-author Tohid Didar, an associate professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering who holds the Canada Research Chair in Nano-biomaterials, says package-based sensors that measure other conditions such as humidity are already becoming common in Japan and elsewhere.

    He said the McMaster research team on the Lab-in-a-Package project – featuring 11 colleagues from the fields of biomedical, mechanical and chemical engineering, medicine and biochemistry – has worked to make the new contamination sensor as adaptable and economical as possible, knowing food producers are under pressure to keep costs low.

    “It’s really just a matter of time before technology like this becomes common all over the world,” Didar says. “Now that we’ve shown that one kind of food package can reveal contamination without even being opened, we can adapt it to other forms of packaging for other types of foods.”

    Didar and his colleagues Yingfu Li, a professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, and Carlos Filipe, McMaster’s Chair of Chemical Engineering, supervised the research.

    “Being able to combine packaging and Salmonella detection in one system is already very promising,” says Li. “It also shows that we can add sensing probes for other food-borne pathogens to the same system so the package will check for all of them at once. That’s the next step for us, and we’re already working on it.”

    The research has been supported by Toyota Tsusho Canada Inc., an indirect subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho Corporation in Japan.

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    McMaster University

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  • Sensor Alerts Food Spoilage in Real-Time

    Sensor Alerts Food Spoilage in Real-Time

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    Newswise — Food waste and food-borne diseases are among the most critical problems urban populations face today. They contribute to greenhouse emissions tremendously and amplify economic and environmental costs. Since food spoilage remains the main reason for this waste, the circumstances of processing, transporting, and preserving food still need to be improved in line with current technological advancements. Current monitoring processes are conducted in laboratories and use expensive chromatographic devices. These not only require too much time but also excessive resources and qualified personnel. So, present methods unfortunately prove to be inefficient in today’s circumstances.

    New research published in Nature Food Magazine presents a significant alternative to this process: A new user-friendly, cost-effective, and up-to-date sensor that can be applied on food directly and replace lab-monitoring. The 2 x 2 cm miniature wireless device introduced in the paper offers real-time measurement, is battery-free and smartphone-compatible. It is expected to be highly effective especially in high-protein foods such as beef, chicken, and fish.

    The research was led by Dr. Emin İstif (Molecular Biology and Genetics, Kadir Has University) and Asst. Prof. Levent Beker (Mechanical Engineering, Koç University) with the contribution of Prof. İskender Yılgör and Dr. Emel Yılgör (Chemistry, Koç University), Asst. Prof. Çağdaş Dağ (Molecular Biology and Genetics, Koç University) and Asst Prof. Hatice Ceylan Koydemir (Texas A&M University). While existing solutions focus on the change in color of food, this new device, for the first time, offers a capacitive measurement method and thus utilizes near-field communication (NFC) technology with power-free and wireless communication. The authors indicate that this eliminates major disadvantages encountered in resistive devices such as moisture sensitivity and incorrect data due to distance.

    The invention will not only provide companies the opportunity of reducing costs but also help consumers tremendously. Once widely commercialized, the device will enable continuous monitoring on shelves and allow users to control freshness right before buying a product or even before consumption at home. This opportunity of on-demand spoilage analysis via mobile phones will ultimately help preventing food waste and food-borne diseases.

    With its cost-effectiveness and accessibility, the authors hope to contribute to the greater struggle against global warming and greenhouse emissions more effectively and quickly. The following steps will be to focus on increasing the potential for commercialization of the product in the near future.

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    Koc University

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  • Expert offers safety tips for grilling beef-alternative burgers on Memorial Day

    Expert offers safety tips for grilling beef-alternative burgers on Memorial Day

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    Newswise — Hamburgers are an American classic. There are few foods that embody what a Memorial Day weekend should taste like sinking your teeth into a juicy burger hot off the grill. But with more and more Americans opting for beef-alternatives like plant-based and turkey burgers in recent years, it’s important to keep in mind that the requirements for safely cooking and enjoying a beef hamburger won’t necessarily apply to a black bean burger.

    Melissa Wright, director of the Food Producer Technical Assistance Program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Department of Food Science and Technology at Virginia Tech, has a few tips for keeping foodborne illness away from your Memorial Day cookout.

    “If you choose the classic ground beef burger, it should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160°F or 71°C,” Wright said. “There are many alternative burger options, and knowing the correct internal temperature for each type is the best way to make sure your long weekend isn’t ruined by foodborne illness.”

    Wright said the appropriate cooking temperatures for popular burger options include:

    ●      Ground chicken or turkey – 165°F (74°C)

    ●      ImpossibleTM burgers (soy protein) – 160°F (71°C), according to product packaging

    ●      Beyond® burgers (pea protein) – 165°F (74°C), according to product packaging

    ●      Morningstar Farms® burgers (chickpea protein) – 165°F (74°C), according to product packaging

    ●      Black bean burgers – 165°F (74°C)

    ●      Ground salmon – 145°F (63°C)

    ●      Ground bison – 160°F (71°C)

    ●      Ground elk – 145°F (63°C)

    “Food continues to cook after being removed from the heat source, so it’s alright to remove your burger from the grill and check its internal temperature after a couple of minutes to avoid overcooking,” said Wright.

    “Beef-alternative meats are much leaner so it’s easy to overcook them if beef is what you’re used to grilling,” she said. “Visual browning will assist in knowing it’s close to done and then the temperature can be checked to confirm.”

    Wright said that some “ready-to-eat” options — such as portobello caps and cauliflower steaks — don’t have a minimum internal temperature requirement, which makes it all the more important to avoid contamination.

    “Avoiding cross-contamination between raw proteins and ready-to-eat foods is very important,” she said. “Remember to use separate cutting boards and utensils for produce and meat. Uncooked plant-based burgers should be included in this category when prepping to grill.”

    About Wright

    Melissa Wright is director of the Food Producer Technical Assistant Network at Virginia Tech, which supports the food entrepreneur by assisting with starting a food business, nutrition label content, food safety analysis, and pertinent food regulations. The program’s goal is to help Virginia’s food-processing industry produce high-quality, safe, and innovative food products. As part of the Virginia Cooperative Extension network in the Department of Food Science and Technology under the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the program provides affordable and valuable assistance to help food entrepreneurs and businesses bring their products to market of food products produced in Virginia and beyond.

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  • Genetically Edited Eggs: Allergen-Free and Safe

    Genetically Edited Eggs: Allergen-Free and Safe

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    Newswise — Researchers have developed a chicken egg that may be safe for people with egg white allergies. Chicken egg allergies are one of the most common allergies in children. Though most children outgrow this allergy by age 16, some will still have an egg allergy into adulthood. Egg white allergies can cause a variety of symptoms, including vomiting, stomach cramps, breathing problems, hives, and swelling and some people with egg white allergies are unable to receive certain flu vaccines.

    Using genome editing technology, researchers have produced an egg without the protein that causes egg white allergies. This protein, called ovomucoid, accounts for approximately 11% of all the protein in egg whites.

    Research detailing the food safety profile of this modified egg, called the OVM-knockout, was detailed in a paper published in Food and Chemical Toxicology in April 2023.

    “To use OVM-knockout chicken eggs as food, it is important to evaluate its safety as food. In this study, we examined the presence or absence of mutant protein expression, vector sequence insertion, and off-target effects in chickens knocked out with OVM by platinum transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs),” said Ryo Ezaki, an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life at Hiroshima University in Hiroshima, Japan. TALENs are restriction enzymes that recognize specific DNA sequences and break or cut them.

    In order to develop the OVM-knockout eggs, researchers needed to detect and eliminate the ovomucoid protein in the egg whites. TALENs were engineered to target a piece of RNA called exon 1, which codes for specific proteins. The eggs produced from this technique were then tested to ensure there was no ovomucoid protein, mutant ovomucoid protein, or other off-target effects. The eggs had the desired frameshift mutation, which is a mutation created by inserting or deleting nucleotide bases in a gene, and none of them expressed mature ovomucoid proteins. Anti-ovomucoid and anti-mutant ovomucoid antibodies were used to detect any traces of the protein, but there was no evidence of ovomucoid in the eggs. This means that mutant ovomucoids could not create new allergens. This is an important step in determining the safety profile of the eggs.

    Other gene editing tools, such as CRISPR, tend to have off-target mutagenesis effects. This means that new mutations are prompted by the gene editing process. However, whole genome sequencing of the altered egg whites showed mutations, which were possibly off-target effects, were not localized to the protein-coding regions.

    “The eggs laid by homozygous OVM-knockout hens showed no evident abnormalities. The albumen contained neither the mature OVM nor the OVM-truncated variant,” said Ezaki. “The potential TALEN-induced off-target effects in OVM-knockout chickens were localized in the intergenic and intron regions. Plasmid vectors used for genome editing were only transiently present and did not integrate into the genome of edited chickens. These results indicate the importance of safety evaluations and reveal that the eggs laid by this OVM knockout chicken solve the allergy problem in food and vaccines.”

    Looking ahead, researchers will continue to verify the safety profile of the OVM-knockout eggs. Because some people are highly allergic to this specific protein, even small amounts of ovomucoid can cause a reaction. Researchers will need to perform additional immunological and clinical studies to determine the safety of the OVM-knockout eggs. At this time, researchers have determined that OVM-knockout eggs are less allergenic than standard eggs and can be safely used in heat-processed foods that patients with egg allergies can eat. “The next phase of research will be to evaluate the physical properties and processing suitability of OVM-knockout eggs, and to confirm their efficacy through clinical trials,” said Ezaki. “We will continue to conduct further research toward the practical application of allergy-reduced eggs.”

    ##

    Other contributors include Tetsushi Sakuma, Mei Matsuzaki, Takashi Yamamoto, and Hiroyuki Horiuchi of the Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life at Hiroshima University and Daisuke Kodama, Ryou Sasahara, and Taichi Shiraogawa from the R&D Division of the Institute of Technology Solution at Kewpie Corporation in Tokyo Japan.

    The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (19H03107, 19K22286) and JST COI Grant Number JPMJPF 2010 supported this research.

    About Hiroshima University

    Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 5 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan. English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en

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  • Urine use for sustainable food systems in sub-Saharan cities

    Urine use for sustainable food systems in sub-Saharan cities

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    Newswise — Installing urine collection systems in sub-Saharan city regions would make those conurbations more sustainable. This was demonstrated by a study by four researchers from CIRAD, IRD, Boubakar Bâ University of Tillaberi (Niger) and Joseph Ki-Zerbo University, Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), published on 3 May 2023 in the journal Regional Environmental Change. For their study, the researchers analysed nitrogen flows in waste in two sub-Saharan cities: Maradi (Niger) and Ouagadougou. The study was a first, and showed that urine was the main source of nitrogen losses. Collecting that urine could provide valuable fertilizer suitable for local agricultural use, and thus serve to make city region food systems more sustainable.

    Current urban development trajectories in sub-Saharan Africa are not sustainable. Fast-growing cities constitute nutrient sinks relying on nutrient-poor hinterlands. Those sinks, and the degradation and draining of nutrients in hinterlands, have significant environmental and health impacts. This runs counter to The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11, which aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.

    To give the authorities a cross-sectoral view of a city’s nutrient sink status, the researchers identified and analysed a range of waste flows. Their approach distinguished four nested spatial levels: the urban area; the potential territorial recycling system; the country and the international level. Based on that analysis, the researchers focused on the origin and fate of those nutrient-containing waste flows. The method was applied to nitrogen in Maradi and Ouagadougou, to determine whether and to what extent those city regions could progress towards sustainable urban food systems. The fact of focusing on the nitrogen in waste rather than on waste flows themselves enabled a systemic understanding useful to the local authorities.

    The study showed that Maradi was a nitrogen sink, albeit at the heart of a still relatively sustainable urban food system. However, it could well evolve towards a situation similar to that of Ouagadougou: a large nitrogen sink with no significant city-hinterland recycling. Although of contrasting size, currently around 400 000 and 2 800 000 inhabitants respectively, these two cities evolve in highly similar biophysical, climatic, agricultural and socioeconomic settings. Their respective results may thus be considered an approximate illustration of a development trajectory.

    The study provided the first overview of waste-contained nitrogen flows in sub-Saharan cities. Existing reports so far provided only partial, sectoral assessments, focusing either on waste management, on sanitation, or on agriculture, while this study showed that nitrogen losses through sanitation and waste management largely exceeded other waste-contained nitrogen flows in these cities. Urine is therefore the main source of nitrogen loss. Urine collection initiatives to enable its use as a fertilizer would make urban systems more independent and resilient. This would improve regional food provision and reduce sanitation-induced urban water pollution, making urban systems more sustainable. The researchers consider that addressing the potential for urine recycling would be a worthwhile follow-up to this study.

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    Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD)

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  • Immigration experts on Title 42, analysis of immigration policies, and other migrant news in the Immigration Channel

    Immigration experts on Title 42, analysis of immigration policies, and other migrant news in the Immigration Channel

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    Title 42, the United States pandemic rule that had been used to immediately deport hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed the border illegally over the last three years, has expired. Those migrants will have the opportunity to apply for asylum. President Biden’s new rules to replace Title 42 are facing legal challenges. The US Homeland Security Department announced a rule to make it extremely difficult for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, to qualify for asylum. Border crossings have already risen sharply, as many migrants attempted to cross before the measure expired on Thursday night. Some have said they worry about tighter controls and uncertainty ahead. Immigration is once again a major focus of the media as we examine the humanitarian, political, and public health issues migrants must face. 

    Below are some of the latest headlines in the Immigration channel on Newswise.

    Expert Commentary

    Experts Available on Ending of Title 42

    George Washington University Experts on End of Title 42

    ‘No one wins when immigrants cannot readily access healthcare’

    URI professor discusses worsening child labor in the United States

    Biden ‘between a rock and a hard place’ on immigration

    University of Notre Dame Expert Available to Comment on House Bill Regarding Immigration Legislation, Border Safety and Security Act

    American University Experts Available to Discuss President Biden’s Visit to U.S.-Mexico Border

    Title 42 termination ‘overdue’, not ‘effective’ to manage migration

    Research and Features

    Study: Survey Methodology Should Be Calibrated to Account for Negative Attitudes About Immigrants and Asylum-Seekers

    A study analyses racial discrimination in job recruitment in Europe

    DACA has not had a negative impact on the U.S. job market

    ASBMB cautions against drastic immigration fee increases

    Study compares NGO communication around migration

    Collaboration, support structures needed to address ‘polycrisis’ in the Americas

    TTUHSC El Paso Faculty Teach Students While Caring for Migrants

    Immigrants Report Declining Alcohol Use during First Two Years after Arriving in U.S.

    How asylum seeker credibility is assessed by authorities

    Speeding up and simplifying immigration claims urgently needed to help with dire situation for migrants experiencing homelessness

    Training Individuals to Work in their Communities to Reduce Health Disparities

    ‘Regulation by reputation’: Rating program can help combat migrant abuse in the Gulf

    Migration of academics: Economic development does not necessarily lead to brain drain

    How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected immigration?

    Immigrants with Darker Skin Tones Perceive More Discrimination

     

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  • Researchers study links land use changes to water quality & quantity

    Researchers study links land use changes to water quality & quantity

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    Newswise — AMHERST, Mass. – Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently published a study in the journal PLOS Water that focuses on the Sudbury-Assabet and Concord watershed in eastern Massachusetts, and which links hydrological changes, including floods, drought and runoff, to changing patterns of land use.

    “We all live in a watershed” says Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and the paper’s senior author. “We’re constantly modifying our landscape, turning what were once forests into roads, parking lots and backyards. We’re changing the landscape from one that was once hydrologically resilient to one that pushes water downstream.”

    But it can be hard to see the complex links between changes in land use and changes in the hydrological cycle. For instance, much of Massachusetts is now subject to the paradoxical situation in which summer drought follows spring flooding. Surely if there’s enough extra water to flood the streets in towns throughout the state then there should be plenty of groundwater left for drinking, lawn watering and maintaining the levels of streams and lakes?

    This is where thinking like a watershed comes in. “Every drop of rain has two pathways when it falls,” says Randhir. “It can either run off the land into a stream, or it can infiltrate the soil and slowly trickle down to the water table.” But by paving over large swaths of land, burying swamps and wetlands and channelizing rivers, we have made it far more difficult for rain to infiltrate the soil, increasing the likelihood of drought. At the same time, all that runoff pours into streams and rivers, which in turn grows into a deluge as it thunders downstream, fed by even more runoff as it progresses.

    To make the links between land use and hydrological effect visible, and to project these effects into the future, Randhir and his graduate student, first author Ammara Talib, focused on the Sudbury-Assabet and Concord watershed in eastern Massachusetts, an area that incorporates both rural areas and suburbs of Boston. The pair fed historical data describing the changing land-use into a model which projected the trends for the years 2035, 2065 and 2100. The team then fed the results of the land-use model into a hydological model called the Hydrological Simulation Program-FORTRAN.

    What they found was that, by 2100, the total forested area will decrease by 51% and impervious areas (roads and parking lots) will increase 75%. These changes will increase annual stream flow by 3%, while runoff will grow by a whopping 69% annually. All this increased runoff will mean more topsoil and other solids in the water (an increase of 54%), and 12% and 13% increases in phosphorous and nitrogen concentrations, respectively.

    But none of this need happen.

    “We can plan for the future on the watershed scale,” says Randhir, by urban planning that implements best practices for sustainable and site-specific land-use measures. These can include creating rain gardens, using permeable pavement in large parking lots and employing vegetated swales to slow the runoff.

    “The watershed is a signature of the health of the landscape,” says Randhir. “The quality of life in any particular landscape depends on how the watershed is functioning.”

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    University of Massachusetts Amherst

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  • Land O’Lakes president, CEO to deliver Heuermann Lecture

    Land O’Lakes president, CEO to deliver Heuermann Lecture

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    BYLINE: Frances Hayes | Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute

    Newswise — Beth Ford, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc., is the featured speaker at the May 8 Heuermann Lecture, part of the 2023 Water for Food Global Conference.

    The free lecture, sponsored by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, will be 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Nebraska Innovation Campus Conference Center, 2021 Transformation Drive in Lincoln, and streamed live here.

    Land O’Lakes, Inc., is a Fortune 200 food production and agribusiness company that is also a century-old farmer-owned cooperative. The company includes Land O’Lakes Dairy Foods, Purina Animal Nutrition, WinField United and Truterra and has operations in more than 60 countries.

    Ford joined Land O’Lakes in 2011 and has held a variety of roles across all businesses. She is a passionate advocate of farmers and rural America, with the goal of connecting people, particularly in urban areas, to the farmers and rural communities who grow their food. In addition, she helped launch the American Connection Project to help bridge the digital divide.

    Ford’s 35-year career spans six industries at seven companies. She is on the board of directors of Starbucks and previously served on the board of directors of Blackrock, Inc. She also serves on the board of directors for the Business Roundtable and the board of advises for Columbia Business School’s Deming Center.

    Ford was recently inducted into the Supply Chain Hall of Fame by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Iowa State University in 2022.

    The Heuermann Lecture is held in conjunction with the Water for Food Global Conference, May 8-11, which will convene leading international experts and organizations to discuss “Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for a Changing World.” The focus will be on the next generation of research, smart technology, policy development and best practices that are achieving breakthroughs in water and food security. The conference is organized by the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska and features three days of sessions, as well as site visits to a local Nebraska farm, feedlot and university research center. Registration and more information are available here.

    Heuermann Lectures are funded by a gift from B. Keith and Norma Heuermann of Phillips. The Heuermanns are longtime university supporters with a strong commitment to Nebraska’s production agriculture, natural resources, rural areas and people.

    Lectures are streamed lived on the Heuermann Lecture Series website and air live on campus channel 4. Lectures are archived after the event and are later broadcast on NET2.

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    University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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  • New wood-based technology removes 80% of dye pollutants in wastewater

    New wood-based technology removes 80% of dye pollutants in wastewater

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    Newswise — Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new method that can easily purify contaminated water using a cellulose-based material. This discovery could have implications for countries with poor water treatment technologies and combat the widespread problem of toxic dye discharge from the textile industry.

    Clean water is a prerequisite for our health and living environment, but far from a given for everyone. According to the World Health Organization, WHO, there are currently over two billion people living with limited or no access to clean water.

    This global challenge is at the centre of a research group at Chalmers University of Technology, which has developed a method to easily remove pollutants from water. The group, led by Gunnar Westman, Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry focuses on new uses for cellulose and wood-based products and is part of the Wallenberg Wood Science Center. 

    The researchers have built up solid knowledge about cellulose nanocrystals* – and this is where the key to water purification lies. These tiny nanoparticles have an outstanding adsorption capacity, which the researchers have now found a way to utilise. 

    “We have taken a unique holistic approach to these cellulose nanocrystals, examining their properties and potential applications. We have now created a biobased material, a form of cellulose powder with excellent purification properties that we can adapt and modify depending on the types of pollutants to be removed,” says Gunnar Westman. 

    Absorbs and breaks down toxins
    In a study recently published in the scientific journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the researchers show how toxic dyes can be filtered out of wastewater using the method and material developed by the group. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur in India, where dye pollutants in textile industry wastewater are a widespread problem.

    The treatment requires neither pressure nor heat and uses sunlight to catalyse the process. Gunnar Westman likens the method to pouring raspberry juice into a glass with grains of rice, which soak up the juice to make the water transparent again. 

    “Imagine a simple purification system, like a portable box connected to the sewage pipe. As the contaminated water passes through the cellulose powder filter, the pollutants are absorbed and the sunlight entering the treatment system causes them to break down quickly and efficiently. It is a cost-effective and simple system to set up and use, and we see that it could be of great benefit in countries that currently have poor or non-existent water treatment,” he says. 

    The method will be tested in India
    India is one of the developing countries in Asia with extensive textile production, where large amounts of dyes are released into lakes, rivers and streams every year. The consequences for humans and the environment are serious. Water contaminant contains dyes and heavy metals and can cause skin damage with direct contact and increase the risk of cancer and organ damage when they enter into the food chain. Additionally, nature is affected in several ways, including the impairment of photosynthesis and plant growth.

    Conducting field studies in India is an important next step, and the Chalmers researchers are now supporting their Indian colleagues in their efforts to get some of the country’s small-scale industries to test the method in reality. So far, laboratory tests with industrial water have shown that more than 80 percent of the dye pollutants are removed with the new method, and Gunnar Westman sees good opportunities to further increase the degree of purification.

    “Going from discharging completely untreated water to removing 80 percent of the pollutants is a huge improvement, and means significantly less destruction of nature and harm to humans. In addition, by optimising the pH and treatment time, we see an opportunity to further improve the process so that we can produce both irrigation and drinking water. It would be fantastic if we can help these industries to get a water treatment system that works, so that people in the surrounding area can use the water without risking their health,” he says.

    Can be used against other types of pollutants
    Gunnar Westman also sees great opportunities to use cellulose nanocrystals for the treatment of other water pollutants than dyes. In a previous study, the research group has shown that pollutants of toxic hexavalent chromium, which is common in wastewater from mining, leather and metal industries, could be successfully removed with a similar type of cellulose-based material. The group is also exploring how the research area can contribute to the purification of antibiotic residues.

    “There is great potential to find good water purification opportunities with this material, and in addition to the basic knowledge we have built up at Chalmers, an important key to success is the collective expertise available at the Wallenberg Wood Science Center,” he says.

    More about the scientific article
    Read the full article in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research: Cellulose nanocrystals derived from microcrystalline cellulose for selective removal of Janus Green Azo Dye. The authors of the article are Gunnar Westman and Amit Kumar Sonker of Chalmers University of Technology, and Ruchi Aggarwal, Anjali Kumari Garg, Deepika Saini, and Sumit Kumar Sonkar of Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur in India. The research is funded by the Wallenberg Wood Science Center, WWSC and the Indian group research is funded by Science and Engineering Research Board under Department of Science and Technology (DST-SERB) Government of India. 

    *Nanocrystals 
    Nanocrystals are nanoparticles in crystal form that are extremely small: a nanoparticle is between 1 and 100 nanometres in at least one dimension, i.e. along one axis. (one nanometre = one billionth of a metre).

    Wallenberg Wood Science Center
    •    The Wallenberg Wood Science Center, WWSC, is a research centre that aims to develop new sustainable biobased materials using raw materials from the forest. The WWSC is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Chalmers University of Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Linköping University, and is based on a donation from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
    •    The centre involves about 95 researchers and faculty members and 50 doctoral students. Eight research groups from Chalmers are part of the centre.

    About dye pollutants and access to clean water
    •    Over two billion people in the world live with limited or no access to clean water. It is estimated that over 3.5 million people die each year from lack of access to clean water and proper sanitation.
    •    The global textile industry, which is concentrated in Asia, contributes to widespread water pollution. Production often takes place in low-wage countries, where much of the technology is antiquated and environmental legislation and oversight may be lacking.
    •    Emissions contribute to eutrophication and toxic effects in water and soil. There are examples in China and India where groundwater has been contaminated by dye and processing chemicals.
    •    Producing one kilogram of new textiles requires between 7,000 and 29,000 litres of water, and between 1.5 and 6.9 kg of chemicals.
    •    In 2021, around 327 thousand tonnes of dyes and pigments were produced in India. A large proportion of the country’s dye pollutants is discharged untreated.

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    Chalmers University of Technology

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  • Tackling counterfeit seeds with “unclonable” labels

    Tackling counterfeit seeds with “unclonable” labels

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    Newswise — Average crop yields in Africa are consistently far below expected, and one significant reason is the prevalence of counterfeit seeds whose germination rates are far lower than those of the genuine ones. The World Bank estimates that as much as half of all seeds sold in some African countries are fake, which could help to account for crop production that is far below potential.

    There have been many attempts to prevent this counterfeiting through tracking labels, but none have proved effective; among other issues, such labels have been vulnerable to hacking because of the deterministic nature of their encoding systems. But now, a team of MIT researchers has come up with a kind of tiny, biodegradable tag that can be applied directly to the seeds themselves, and that provides a unique randomly created code that cannot be duplicated.

    The new system, which uses minuscule dots of silk-based material, each containing a unique combination of different chemical signatures, is described today in the journal Science Advances in a paper by MIT’s dean of engineering Anantha Chandrakasan, professor of civil and environmental engineering Benedetto Marelli, postdoc Hui Sun, and graduate student Saurav Maji.

    The problem of counterfeiting is an enormous one globally, the researchers point out, affecting everything from drugs to luxury goods, and many different systems have been developed to try to combat this. But there has been less attention to the problem in the area of agriculture, even though the consequences can be severe. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the World Bank estimates that counterfeit seeds are a significant factor in crop yields that average less than one-fifth of the potential for maize, and less than one-third for rice. 

    Marelli explains that a key to the new system is creating a randomly-produced physical object whose exact composition is virtually impossible to duplicate. The labels they create “leverage randomness and uncertainty in the process of application, to generate unique signature features that can be read, and that cannot be replicated,” he says.

    What they’re dealing with, Sun adds, “is the very old job of trying, basically, not to get your stuff stolen. And you can try as much as you can, but eventually somebody is always smart enough to figure out how to do it, so nothing is really unbreakable. But the idea is, it’s almost impossible, if not impossible, to replicate it, or it takes so much effort that it’s not worth it anymore.”

    The idea of an “unclonable” code was originally developed as a way of protecting the authenticity of computer chips, explains Chandrakasan, who is the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “In integrated circuits, individual transistors have slightly different properties coined device variations,” he explains, “and you could then use that variability and combine that variability with higher-level circuits to create a unique ID for the device. And once you have that, then you can use that unique ID as a part of a security protocol. Something like transistor variability is hard to replicate from device to device, so that’s what gives it its uniqueness, versus storing a particular fixed ID.” The concept is based on what are known as physically unclonable functions, or PUFs.

    The team decided to try to apply that PUF principle to the problem of fake seeds, and the use of silk proteins was a natural choice because the material is not only harmless to the environment but also classified by the Food and Drug Administration in the “generally recognized as safe” category, so it requires no special approval for use on food products.

    “You could coat it on top of seeds,” Maji says, “and if you synthesize silk in a certain way, it will also have natural random variations. So that’s the idea, that every seed or every bag could have a unique signature.”

    Developing effective secure system solutions have long been one of Chandrakasan’s specialties, while Marelli has spent many years developing systems for applying silk coatings to a variety of fruits, vegetables, and seeds, so their collaboration was a natural for developing such a silk-based coding system towards enhanced security. 

    “The challenge was what type of form factor to give to silk,” Sun says, “so that it can be fabricated very easily.” They developed a simple drop-casting approach that produces tags that are less than one-tenth of an inch in diameter. The second challenge was to develop “a way where we can read the uniqueness, in also a very high throughput and easy way.”

    For the unique silk-based codes, Marelli says, “eventually we found a way to add a color to these microparticles so that they assemble in random structures.” The resulting unique patterns can be read out not only by a spectrograph or a portable microscope, but even by an ordinary cellphone camera with a macro lens. This image can be processed locally to generate the PUF code and then sent to the cloud and compared with a secure database to ensure the authenticity of the product. “It’s random so that people cannot easily replicate it,” says Sun. “People cannot predict it without measuring it.”

    And the number of possible permutations that could result from the way they mix four basic types of colored silk nanoparticles is astronomical. “We were able to show that with a minimal amount of silk, we were able to generate 128 random bits of security,” Maji says. “So this gives rise to 2 to the power 128 possible combinations, which is extremely difficult to crack given the computational capabilities of the state-of-the-art computing systems.”

    Marelli says that “for us, it’s a good test bed in order to think out-of-the-box, and how we can have a path that somehow is more democratic.” In this case, that means “something that you can literally read with your phone, and you can fabricate by simply drop casting a solution, without using any advanced manufacturing technique, without going in a clean room.”

    Some additional work will be needed to make this a practical commercial product, Chandrakasan says. “There will have to be a development for at-scale reading” via smartphones. “So. that’s clearly a future opportunity.” But the principle now shows a clear path to the day when “a farmer could at least, maybe not every seed, but could maybe take some random seeds in a particular batch and verify them,” he says.

    The research was partially supported by the U.S. Office of Naval research and the National Science Foundation, Analog Devices Inc., an EECS Mathworks fellowship, and a Paul M. Cook Career Development Professorship.

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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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  • Can food banks better promote nutrition and health?

    Can food banks better promote nutrition and health?

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    Newswise — An estimated 53 million people in the U.S. turned to food banks and community programs for help putting food on the table in 2021. In recent decades, food banks have adopted policies and practices to make sure people not only have access to food but also healthy and nutritious food. 

    But until now, food banks have had few ways to evaluate those initiatives. 

    University of California, Davis, Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension Cassandra Nguyen led a team of researchers to develop the Food Bank Health and Nutrition Assessment to address that concern. Their findings were published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.

    “This tool will allow food banks to reflect on their current practices and determine whether they can adopt additional strategies to promote nutrition and health. It also serves as a benchmark, which they can use to track their progress over time,” said Nguyen, with the UC Davis Department of Nutrition.

    Nutrition policy is more than what’s on the shelf

    Food banks face some common challenges in promoting nutrition, health and equity. While food banks could assess the nutritional quality of their inventory, Nguyen said promoting nutrition requires more than knowing the types of food on the shelf.

    “Food banks can have nutrition policies that outline where they source food and which foods they prioritize when funding is available. They can also ensure that food pantry clients are either represented on advisory boards or are able to provide feedback about foods they would like to receive,” Nguyen said.

    Additionally, food banks can take steps to make sure nutrition education materials and information about federal assistance programs for health and nutrition are available in languages spoken by recipients. 

    Partnerships with outside organizations and local farmers can also increase the variety and availability of nutritious foods. Food banks with diverse connections may also adapt better to unexpected spikes in need, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    The Food Bank Health and Nutrition Assessment was designed to evaluate these and additional objectives so food banks can identify areas of success as well as potential strategies they hadn’t considered before. 

    Importance of data

    “By having data from this assessment to show that some practices to promote nutrition and health may be difficult to implement, several food banks can raise their voices to advocate for policy changes,” Nguyen said. 

    Food banks with Feeding America and the Midwest Food Bank in four Midwestern states participated in the initial development of the Food Bank Health and Nutrition Assessment. In this small initial sample, most food banks asked food recipients about their preferences or whether diet-related diseases (for example, diabetes) were common, but few had current or former charitable food recipients on advisory boards. 

    The assessment is available for free through Feeding America, the largest nonprofit organization supporting the charitable food system, and online through the University of Illinois Extension. Food bank staff and partnering community-based professionals such as extension staff can use the assessment to improve promotion of nutrition and health.

    Other authors include Caitlin Kownacki, Veronica Skaradzinski, Kaitlyn Streitmatter, Stephanie Acevedo and Jennifer McCaffrey with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Stephen D. Ericson with Feeding Illinois; and Jessica E. Hager with Feeding America.

    Funding for the research was supported by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-Education, or SNAP-Ed, in Illinois.

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    University of California, Davis

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