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This week, a Nature paper shared a new method that can convert Teflon — and toxic “forever chemicals,” or PFAS — to harmless charcoal (and fluoride).
Remember how I mentioned a few weeks ago that my PhD was on destroying forever chemicals? The paper heavily cites my PhD research (our paper is ref. 16.) Now I know how amazing all of you academics out there feel when you advance science forward.
On to the news.
Autism, vaccines, and what’s ahead
With RFK Jr., who has falsely claimed there are links between vaccines and autism, potentially headed to Health and Human Services, STAT’s Timmy Broderick asked autism advocates about their concerns for future perceptions of autism, as well as autism research.
“The belief that vaccines cause autism isn’t just factually wrong,” said Zoe Gross, Director of Advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “If you’re saying vaccines cause autism and therefore, people shouldn’t get vaccines, you are also saying it’s worse to be autistic than to die of measles. That’s not a belief that autistic people are happy with.” Read more from Timmy here.
And in a STAT First Opinion, Caitlin Gilmet from the pro-vaccine organization SAFE Communities Coalition says that the pro-vaxx community is not just on defense but ready to play offense.
“While anti-vaccine voices make headlines, the majority of Americans continue to immunize themselves and their children. We’ve been a quiet majority, but we’re finally experiencing a surge in grassroots vaccine advocacy,” she writes. Read more here.
The growing life expectancy gap between different races and ethnicities
The life expectancy gap in the United States between those who live the longest and those who live the shortest lives has widened to 20 from 12 years in the past two decades, according to an analysis published Thursday in the Lancet.
The study, which analyzed lifespans by race and ethnicity, geographic location, and factors such as income and residential segregation found that longevity varied widely depending on these factors and that the disparities divide the country into “ten Americas.” The study “confirms the continued existence of different Americas within the USA,” wrote the authors, a team largely from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
The report found that Asian Americans lived the longest, at an average of 84 years, while American Indian Alaska Native (AIAN) populations lived the shortest lives, at an average of 63.3 years. AIAN populations were the only population to see massive declines in life expectancy before the Covid-19 pandemic, and also saw the largest drop of any group (6.6 years) between 2019-2021.
The study updates an “eight Americas” study published in 2006 by adding two additional groups that make up the U.S. Latino population. The authors said it was important to better disaggregate health data to prioritize efforts to “reduce the massive inequity in longevity in the USA.” — Usha Lee McFarling
A visit to ‘Mom and Dad’s nipple factory’
When Randi Johnson was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, her husband, Brian, often felt at a loss to help. But when he and Randi met with a surgeon to discuss reconstructing her breast, he was struck by something he could do. The Midwestern father of five, a lifelong tinkerer, decided to make his wife the best possible prosthetic nipple.
That moment led the conservative Christian couple from Eau Claire, Wis. to become the owners of naturallyimpressive.com, a prosthetic nipple company that they see as a ministry.
On the First Opinion Podcast, STAT’s Torie Bosch talked to Randi and her son Justin, who recently chronicled his parents’ work in a new documentary. They talk about how the nipple business and the documentary made the family more open with each other and brought Randi friends who have also been through breast cancer and reconstruction. Listen here, or on whatever platform you get your podcasts.
Mystery water pollutant revealed (don’t panic)
Water systems use chlorine to kill pathogens that cause disease. But chlorine reacts with bits of natural matter in water to form compounds that are associated with cancers, miscarriage, and low birth weight. So the EPA in 1998 enacted a rule that led many water systems to switch to using chloramines to disinfect water instead, avoiding those toxic byproducts.
It turns out that chloramine disinfection creates a different set of disinfection byproducts — one of which has been known to exist for 40 years, yet its identity remained a mystery. In a Science study published yesterday, a team of scientists identified Cl–N–NO2– , or chloronitramide anion, as the mystery compound. They also found it in U.S. drinking water samples at toxicologically relevant concentrations. Though the compound looks similar to others that are toxic, the exact toxicity of the compound has yet to be studied.
But do not panic: While we don’t know exactly how worried we should be about chloronitramide anion’s health effects, we do know that disinfecting water prevents diseases like cholera and dysentery, which are both deadly. It will take federal support to fund NIH and EPA toxicology studies that will tell us what levels of chloronitramide anion are safe, what alternatives are available, and whether household activated carbon water filters can indeed remove the compound from water, as the researchers suspect.
Asian food as medicine
My dad has said that for my ancestors — and for him growing up — meat was simply to flavor the rice, since the inexpensive rice (and water or soup) was what could fill you up. But as the nonprofit Asian Health Services notes, when Asian immigrants fled war and poverty for the U.S., they found a “land of abundance” where meat is plentiful and daily life is more sedentary. Combined with seeing whole grains as “peasant food” and eating fewer vegetables, the combination can be a recipe for bad health.
That’s where cooking classes run by Asian Health Services, based in Oakland, Calif., come in. Classes in English, Cantonese, and Vietnamese teach people how to boost flavor without relying on unhealthy additives and modify cultural dishes with “healthful swaps” that retain the “flavor of home.” The program won a grant to expand the initiative from a “Food as Medicine” incubator contest at last week’s Milken Summit, hosted by the National Association for Community Health Centers and medical devices company Abbott, and aims to reach more people on social media via a partnership with bilingual, James Beard Award-winning Chinese food influencer family Made With Lau.
What we’re reading
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How science lost America’s trust and surrendered health policy to skeptics, Wall Street Journal
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Why cancer advocates like me are leaving X, STAT
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There are three main reasons you are alive right now. RFK Jr. is fighting tooth and nail against one of them, Slate
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A documentary about menopause has ‘misinformation’ and shouldn’t be used to educate docs, critics say, STAT
- Only 1 percent of neuroscience faculty is Black. Kaela Singleton hopes to change that, Vox