Search results

The purpose of the study reported here was to assess the degree to which new forms of web‐based information and communication resources impact on the formal toxicology literature, and the extent of any change between 2000 and 2005.

The paper takes the form of an empirical examination of the full content of four toxicology journals for the year 2000 and for the year 2005, with analysis of the results, comparison with similar studies in other subject areas, and with a small survey of the information behaviour of practising toxicologists.

Scholarly communication in toxicology has been relatively little affected by new forms of information resource (weblogs, wikis, discussion lists, etc.). Citations in journal articles are still largely to “traditional” resources, though a significant increase in the proportion of web‐based material being cited in the toxicology literature has occurred between 2000 and 2005, from a mean of 3 per cent to a mean of 19 per cent.

The empirical research is limited to an examination of four journals in two samples of one year each.

This is the only recent study of the impact of new ICTs on toxicology communication. It adds to the literature on the citation of digital resources in scholarly publications.

The use of three databanks of chemical toxicology (RTECS, HSDB and CIS), in various implementations, is described. General conclusions about compilation, implementation and searching of chemical databanks are drawn.

The Toxicology Information Working Party (TIWP) was set up following a joint meeting of the Association of Information Officers in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AIOPI) and the UK Online User Group (UKOLUG), held at Pfizer Central Research, Sandwich, in early 1979, to discuss problems of chemical toxicology searching. A strong feeling emerged from this meeting that some co‐operative action among users to improve information provision in this area was both possible and highly desirable. The TIWP was set up, under the auspices of AIOPI and UKOLUG, to investigate this possibility, and to initiate suitable projects. We review here the activities of TIWP during its first six months of existance.

This paper describes a method for carrying out research in a multimedia environment encompassing printed, electronic and Internet based resources. The framework was used to compile a listing of toxicology information resources, as part of a larger study on the effect of new information and communication technologies on scientific communication within this field. It is likely, however, that the approach can be applied to research in any subject.

16 queries, performed on the two systems, resulted in 247 unique relevant references from EMCS and 559 from TOXLINE. The overlap varied considerably, from 6 to 50%. It is remarkable that TOXLINE, with nine subfiles specially compiled for toxicology can be supplemented by EMCS, which in the present study delivered 31% of all the unique references.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritize the key food safety practices among street food handlers that lead to microbial contamination in selected street foods of Hyderabad, India. These key food safety practices will help develop and design tailor-made training material for street food vendors in future.

It is a cross-sectional study conducted in south Indian city of Hyderabad. Stratified random sampling method was employed. A total of 463 samples of street foods were collected from five zones of Hyderabad. They included 163 salad toppings, 150 fresh fruit juices and 150 panipuri samples. Identification and enumeration of foodborne pathogens and indicator organisms (S. aureus, E. coli, Salmonella spp., Shigella spp., Bacillus cereus, Yersinia spp.) were performed as described by USFDA-BAM. Information on food safety knowledge and handling practices from street vendors were collected using a structured questionnaire. Associations between hygiene practices and bacterial pathogens were done using ANOVA. Risk estimation of food safety practices was assessed by calculating odds ratio.

Microbiological analysis indicated that a large number of carrot (98.1 percent) and onion (75.5 percent) samples were contaminated with E. coli. Peeled and cut fruits left uncovered have 13.4 times risk (OR: 2.40-74.8) of E. coli contamination compared to the covered ones. Panipuri samples picked from the vendors who did not have soap at the vending unit had significantly (p<0.001) higher contamination of fecal coliforms than those who had.

This study is the first of its kind in the study area.

Nutrient intakes form a continuum from lethal deficiencies to lethal excesses. Optimal nutrition requires that intakes of all essential nutrients meet minimal needs and that no substances be ingested in quantities large enough to be detrimental to health. For lack of a better term, nutritional toxicology may be used to describe the study of nutrient toxicities, including imbalances and antagonisms, and nutrient‐toxicant interactions.

As environmental health scientists increasingly take up genetic/genomic modes of knowledge production and translate their work for applications in biomedicine, risk assessment, and regulation, they “bring the human in” to environmental health issues in novel ways. This paper describes the efforts of environmental health scientists to use molecular technologies to focus their research inside the human body, ascertain human genetic variations in susceptibility to adverse outcomes following environmental exposures, and identify individuals who have sustained DNA damage as a consequence of exposure to chemicals in the environment. In addition to transforming laboratory research, they see in these such practices the opportunity to advance public health, through innovations in biomedical practice and refinement of environmental health risk assessment and regulation. As environmental health scientists produce and translate these new forms of knowledge, they simultaneously assume and instantiate specific notions of the human subject and its agency, possibilities, and responsibilities vis-à-vis health and illness. Because dimensions of human subjectivity remain under-theorized in bioethics, sociological approaches to understanding and situating the human subject offer an important means of elucidating the consequences of genetics/genomics in the environmental health sciences and highlighting the social structures and processes through which they are produced.We are responsible for the world in which we live not because it is an arbitrary construction of our choosing, but because it is sedimented out of particular practices that we have a role in shaping. –Barad, 1998

This study contributes to the understanding of the health effects of pesticides exposure and of how pesticides have been and should be regulated.

This study presents literature reviews for the period 2000–2013 on (i) the health effects of pesticides and on (ii) preference valuation of health risks related to pesticides, as well as a discussion of the role of benefit-cost analysis applied to pesticide regulatory measures.

This study indicates that the health literature has focused on individuals with direct exposure to pesticides, i.e. farmers, while the literature on preference valuation has focused on those with indirect exposure, i.e. consumers. The discussion highlights the need to clarify the rationale for regulating pesticides, the role of risk perceptions in benefit-cost analysis, and the importance of inter-disciplinary research in this area.

This study relates findings of different disciplines (health, economics, public policy) regarding pesticides, and identifies gaps for future research.