Peggy Orenstein is a regular holidaymaker in Hawaii. For several decades she returned, year after year, to swim at the same bare-bones beach of Big Island. Her recent article in the New York Times is particularly surprising and worrying: … At first I thought it was my imagination, but this summer there was no denying
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… This information will come in handy for those of us following the latest recommendation from the United Nations: Consume more insects … In fact, some two billion people eat a wide variety of insects regularly, both cooked and raw; only in Western countries does the practice retain an “ick” factor among the masses [Holland 2013]… On the one
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… he (the veterinarian) warned, “these cats back here are radioactive.” He meant that literally. The previous day, all five animals received carefully titrated doses of radioactive iodine, designed to destroy the overactive cells that had proliferated in their thyroid glands and flooded their bodies with hormones. These cats are among the millions suffering from hyperthyroidism, one
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Glyphosate has recently been the subject of a number of articles in newspapers and magazines. Three of them in particular caught my attention: “Glyphosate presence in honey raises concerns” in the Canadian weekly The Western Producer [Arnason, 09.03.2017], “Tribunal Monsanto: la firme américaine reconnue coupable d’atteinte aux droits humains (US firm found guilty of human
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What is wrong with the ubiquitous and attractive supermarket tomatoes? For many city dwellers, the delicious taste of a succulent garden tomato is little more than a distant memory. The standard grocery varieties have grown larger and blander. Indeed, the decline in flavour quality of the modern commercial tomato compared to heirloom varieties is
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Les perturbateurs endocriniens, une menace pour le développement du cerveau (Endocrine disrupters, a threat to brain development) is the striking title of an article by Ludmilla Terres that was published in the French newspaper Le Monde, on March 7th this year. I often ask myself whether exposure to chemical compounds affects our brain development; whether
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The European hamster (Cricetus cricetus) population, still very abundant in French Alsace as late as the 1960s, has been reduced to some 450 individuals today. What is the way of life of this small rodent? Why is its habitat collapsing? What challenges are to be faced to preserve Alsatian large hamster populations? The main reason
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Dioxins are harmful persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to which humans are exposed mostly via the consumption of animal products. They can enter the food chain at any stage, including crop fertilization. Fertilizers belong to several categories: synthetic chemicals providing the essential elements (mostly N, P and K) that are required by the crops but also
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Due to the large number of applications of bisphenol-A (BPA), the human exposure routes are multiple. We aimed to review shortly the food and non-food sources of BPA, and to evaluate their contribution to the human exposure. Food sources discussed here include epoxy resins, polycarbonate and other applications, such as paperboard and polyvinylchloride materials. Among
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For reasons of food safety, packaging and food contact materials must be submitted to migration tests. Testing of silicone moulds is often very laborious, since three replicate tests are required to decide about their compliancy. This paper presents a general modelling framework to predict the sample’s compliance or non-compliance using results of the first two
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