February 2023 HEEDS News

Webinar: PFAS in the Arctic: Identifying exposure sources & health effects in Nunavik, Canada

Feb. 28
Sponsored by The Collaborative for Health and Environment (CHE)-Alaska.

Webinar: Defining "sustainable chemistry" project
Mar. 1
Sponsored by UMass Lowell Center for Sustainable Production and Beyond Benign. See the project report, Definition and criteria for sustainable chemistry to read the consensus definition.

Webinar: Promoting environmental justice with safer building materials

Mar. 1
Sponsored by CHE, BlueGreen Alliance, Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), and Healthy Building Network (HBN). Second webinar of a three-part series.

Webinar: Male reproduction and endocrine-disrupting chemicals
Mar. 8
Sponsored by the Endocrine Society's Special Interest Group on EDCs. Featuring Shanna Swan, Andrea Gore, and Jerry Heindel.

Webinar: Strengthening federal rules and resources to support healthier homes

Mar. 9
Sponsored by CHE, BlueGreen Alliance, PRHE, and HBN. Third webinar of the series.

Guidance for identifying endocrine disrupting chemicals

Mar. 7-10
Online course by Chemical Watch.

CUSP Workshop: Human health risk assessment frameworks for micro- and nanoplastics
Mar. 14
Sponsored by the POLYRISK project.

Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting
Mar. 19-23
Nashville, Tennessee

Environmental chemicals and children's health
May 6
CME course sponsored by NYU Langone Health. In person.

Plastic Health Summit 2023
May 11
Brussels, Belgium

New approach methodologies workshop: Towards an animal free regulatory system for industrial chemicals
May 31 - June 1
Helsinki, Finland
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) will invite 150 people to join this meeting; express your interest in attending by Feb 28.

Endo 2023
June 15-18
Chicago, Illinois
The Endocrine Society's annual meeting.

SHARP Training: Skills for Health And Research Professionals
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health presents hybrid or in-person trainings on dozens of topics. Summer training scholarship applications are due Mar. 7.

Fluoros 2023
Aug. 31- Sept. 1
Idstein, Germany
An international symposium on PFAS. There is also a workshop on Aug. 30. Registration will open Mar. 15.

35th Annual Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology
Sept. 17-21
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
The theme is, “Connecting the East and the West, One Health in One Planet.” Symposium proposals are due Feb. 28, and abstracts are due Mar. 13.

EU floats plan that would ban virtually every PFAS currently on the market
This article in Chemistry World describes the plan, and see more information by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). Also see PFAS under mounting scrutiny in Europe, US, by the Food Packaging Forum.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., at least REI is going PFAS-free, thanks to efforts by Toxic-Free Future.

Transition pathway for the chemical industry
Released by the European Commission, a plan to transition the EU chemical industry, including transitioning to safe chemicals.

Developing the science-policy panel on chemicals and pollution
A UN Environmental Assembly working group met to create this new panel. From the Food Packaging Forum.

New Approach Methods in the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program
The U.S. EPA is soliciting comments on a draft White Paper, due Mar. 20. Also see article, In 1996, the EPA was ordered to test pesticides for impacts on people’s hormones. They still don’t. By Nate Seltenrich in Environmental Health News.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the European Union
A new Endocrine Society Position Statement.

Significant new use rules; Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) designated as inactive on the TSCA Inventory
Rule proposed by the EPA. Comments due Mar. 27.

Draft proposed principles of cumulative risk assessment under the Toxic Substances Control Act
Released by the EPA. Also listed is a draft for cumulative risk assessment of phthalates.

Adrift: Communities on the front lines of pesticide exposure fight for change

A three-part series by Environmental Health News and palabra, a multimedia platform of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists on pesticide use in California. Articles and infographics also available in Spanish.

PFAS Guide
A guide by ChemSec to help companies identify and phase out PFAS in their products.

Report: Microplastics occurrence, health effects, and mitigation policies
Produced for the California State Legislature, by The California State Policy Evidence Consortium (CalSPEC).

NIEHS strategic plan
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is creating its 2024-2028 strategic plan, and soliciting input and comments. Due April 20.

Ohio train derailment vinyl chloride disaster is another painful reminder of PVC plastic’s toxic lifecycle
Toxic-free future blog by Mike Schade.
There are numerous other articles on the Ohio train derailment disaster and its link to plastics, including from Bloomberg, Grist, Wired (reprinted by Mother Jones), Inside Climate News, and from Beyond Plastics.

Chemistry urgently needs to develop safer materials

By Joel Tickner, Molly Jacobs, and Charlotte Brody in Scientific American.

Revealed: scale of ‘forever chemical’ pollution across UK and Europe
Map of PFAS contamination sites around Europe. Article from The Guardian based on the Forever Pollution Project.

This "climate-friendly" fuel comes with an astronomical cancer risk
Reporting by The Guardian and ProPublica.

Op-ed: The FDA needs to start protecting us from obesity-promoting food chemicals
By Jerry Heindel, published in Environmental Health News.

Individual blood concentrations of persistent organic pollutants and chemical elements, and COVID-19: A prospective cohort study in Barcelona
Porta M, Pumarega J, Gasull M, Aguilar R, Henríquez-Hernández LA, Basagaña X, Zumbado M, Villar-García J, Rius C, Mehta S, Vidal M, Jimenez A, Campi L, Lop J, Pérez Luzardo OL, Dobaño C, Moncunill G. Environ Res. 2023 Feb 4;223:115419.
See related, COVID risk linked to specific environmental pollutants.

Reduction of daily-use parabens and phthalates reverses accumulation of cancer-associated phenotypes within disease-free breast tissue of study subjects
Dairkee SH, Moore DH, Luciani MG, Anderle N, Gerona R, Ky K, Torres SM, Marshall PV, Goodson WH. Chemosphere. 2023 Feb 4:138014.

Exposure to high levels of PFAS through drinking water is associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes-findings from a register-based study in Ronneby, Sweden
Xu Y, Jakobsson K, Harari F, Andersson EM, Li Y. Environ Res. 2023 Feb 20:115525.

Metabolic signatures of youth exposure to mixtures of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances: A multi-cohort study
Goodrich JA, Walker DI, He J, Lin X, Baumert BO, Hu X, Alderete TL, Chen Z, Valvi D, Fuentes ZC, Rock S, Wang H, Berhane K, Gilliland FD, Goran MI, Jones DP, Conti DV, Chatzi L. Environ Health Perspect. 2023 Feb;131(2):27005.
See related article in USC Keck School News.

Perfluoroalkyl acids in follicular fluid and embryo quality during IVF: A prospective IVF cohort in China
Zeng XW, Bloom MS, Wei F, Liu L, Qin J, Xue L, Wang S, Huang G, Teng M, He B, Mao X, Chu C, Lin S, Dong GH, Tan W. Environ Health Perspect. 2023 Feb;131(2):27002.

Geographic and demographic variability in serum PFAS concentrations for pregnant women in the United States
DeLuca NM, Thomas K, Mullikin A, Slover R, Stanek LW, Pilant AN, Cohen Hubal EA. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2023 Jan 25.

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