Phthalate and novel plasticizer concentrations in food items from U.S. fast food chains: a preliminary analysis.

BACKGROUND: Fast food consumption is associated with biomarkers of ortho-phthalates exposures. However, the chemical content of fast food is unknown; certain ortho-phthalates (i.e., di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP) and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP)) have been phased out and replaced with other plasticizers (e.g., dioctyl terephthalate (DEHT)). OBJECTIVE: We conducted a preliminary study to examine ortho-phthalate and replacement plasticizer concentrations in foods and food handling gloves from U.S. fast food restaurants. METHODS: We obtained hamburgers, fries, chicken nuggets, chicken burritos, cheese pizza (n = 64 food samples) and gloves (n = 3) from restaurants and analyzed them for 11 chemicals using gas chromatography mass spectrometry. RESULTS: We found DEHT at the highest concentrations in both foods (n = 19; median = 2510 µg/kg; max = 12,400 µg/kg) and gloves (n = 3; range: 28-37% by weight). We detected DnBP and DEHP in 81% and 70% of food samples, respectively. Median DEHT concentrations were significantly higher in burritos than hamburgers (6000 µg/kg vs. 2200 µg/kg; p < 0.0001); DEHT was not detected in fries. Cheese pizza had the lowest levels of most chemicals. SIGNIFICANCE: To our knowledge, these are the first measurements of DEHT in food. Our preliminary findings suggest that ortho-phthalates remain ubiquitous and replacement plasticizers may be abundant in fast food meals. IMPACT STATEMENT: A selection of popular fast food items sampled in this study contain detectable levels of replacement plasticizers and concerning ortho-phthalates. In addition, food handling gloves contain replacement plasticizers, which may be a source of food contamination. These results, if confirmed, may inform individual and regulatory exposure reduction strategies.

Pervasive structural racism in environmental epidemiology.

BACKGROUND: Epistemological biases in environmental epidemiology prevent the full understanding of how racism's societal impacts directly influence health outcomes. With the ability to focus on "place" and the totality of environmental exposures, environmental epidemiologists have an important opportunity to advance the field by proactively investigating the structural racist forces that drive disparities in health. OBJECTIVE: This commentary illustrates how environmental epidemiology has ignored racism for too long. Some examples from environmental health and male infertility are used to illustrate how failing to address racism neglects the health of entire populations. DISCUSSION: While research on environmental justice has attended to the structural sources of environmental racism, this work has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of environmental epidemiology. Epidemiology's dominant paradigm that reduces race to a mere data point avoids the social dimensions of health and thus fails to improve population health for all. Failing to include populations who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in health research means researchers actually know very little about the effect of environmental contaminants on a range of population health outcomes. This commentary offers different practical solutions, such as naming racism in research, including BIPOC in leadership positions, mandating requirements for discussing "race", conducting far more holistic analyses, increasing community participation in research, and improving racism training, to address the myriad of ways in which structural racism permeates environmental epidemiology questions, methods, results and impacts.

Dysuria, heat stress, and muscle injury among Nicaraguan sugarcane workers at risk for Mesoamerican nephropathy.

OBJECTIVES: Nicaraguan sugarcane workers, particularly cane cutters, have an elevated prevalence of chronic kidney disease of unknown origin, also referred to as Mesoamerican nephropathy (MeN). The pathogenesis of MeN may include recurrent heat stress, crystalluria, and muscle injury with subsequent kidney injury. Yet, studies examining the frequency of such events in long-term, longitudinal studies are limited. METHODS: Using employment and medical data for male workers at a Nicaraguan sugarcane company, we classified months of active work as either work as a cane cutter or other sugarcane job and determined occurrence of dysuria, heat events and muscle events. Work months and events occurred January 1997 to June 2010. Associations between cane cutting and each outcome were analyzed using logistic regression based on generalized estimating equations for repeated events, controlling for age. RESULTS: Among 242 workers with 7257 active work months, 19.5% of person-months were as a cane cutter. There were 160, 21, and 16 episodes of dysuria, heat events, and muscle events, respectively. Compared with work months in other jobs, cane cutting was associated with an elevated odds of dysuria [odds ratio 2.40 (95% confidence interval 1.56-3.68)]. The number of heat and muscle events by cane cutter and other job were limited. CONCLUSIONS: Working as a cane cutter compared with other jobs in the sugarcane industry was associated with increased dysuria, supporting the hypothesis that cane cutters are at increased risk of events suspected of inducing or presaging clinically evident kidney injury.

The Association Between Race, Obesity, and Sperm Quality Among Men Attending a University Physician Practice in Washington, DC.

A decades-long decline in sperm counts in Western countries has coincided with an increase in obesity rates, prompting study into their association. Few of these studies have incorporated men of color, the sperm health of whom is relatively unknown. The present exploratory study evaluated the association between body mass index (BMI), race, ethnicity, and sperm parameters among a diverse sample of U.S. men attending a Washington, DC physician practice. Semen samples were collected and processed at a single laboratory and sperm concentration, motility, morphology, and count were evaluated according to World Health Organization (WHO) 5th edition criteria. Multivariate models accounted for covariates related to sperm health. The study population (n = 128) was largely obese (45.3%) or overweight (34.4%), and 36.0% were black or Hispanic. Black men had lower adjusted sperm concentration compared to white men (75.0 million/mL to 107.4 million/mL, p = .01) and were more likely to have oligozoospermia (p = .01), asthenozoospermia (p = .004), and low sperm count (p < .0001). Hispanic men had higher adjusted sperm concentration compared to non-Hispanic men (124.5 million/mL to 62.1 million/mL, p = .007) and were less likely to have teratozoospermia (p = .001). Obesity and BMI were associated with lower sperm motility and count in crude models only. Given the study's sample size its findings should be interpreted with caution but align with the limited epidemiological literature to date that has evaluated racial and ethnic differences in semen quality. Heightened clinical research attention is needed to ensure men of color are included in representative numbers in studies of urologic and andrologic health.

Talking About Public Health With African American Men: Perceptions of Environmental Health and Infertility.

While the past two decades have seen rapid advances in research demonstrating links between environmental health and reproductive capacity, African American men have largely been overlooked as study participants. To give voice to the perceptions of urban African American men, the present qualitative study conducted focus groups of men recruited from street- and internet-based advertisements in Washington, DC. Participants were asked for their perspectives on their environment, reproductive health and fertility, and factors that would influence their participation in public health research. Participants expressed concern about ubiquitous environmental exposures characteristic of their living environments, which they attributed in part to gentrification and urban development. Infertility was seen as a threat to masculinity and a taboo subject in the African American community and several participants shared personal stories describing a general code of silence about the subject. Each group offered multiple suggestions for recruiting African American men into research studies; facilitators for study participation included cultural relevance, incentives, transparent communication, internet- and community-based recruitment, and use of African Americans and/or recruiters of color as part of the research team. When asked whether participants would participate in a hypothetical study on fertility that involved providing a sperm sample, there was a mixed reaction, with some expressing concern about how such a sample would be used and others describing a few facilitators for participation in such a study. These are unique perspectives that are largely missing from current-day evidence on the inclusion of African American men in environmental health and reproductive health research.

Semi-automated scoring of triple-probe FISH in human sperm using confocal microscopy.

Structural and numerical sperm chromosomal aberrations result from abnormal meiosis and are directly linked to infertility. Any live births that arise from aneuploid conceptuses can result in syndromes such as Kleinfelter, Turners, XYY and Edwards. Multi-probe fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is commonly used to study sperm aneuploidy, however manual FISH scoring in sperm samples is labor-intensive and introduces errors. Automated scoring methods are continuously evolving. One challenging aspect for optimizing automated sperm FISH scoring has been the overlap in excitation and emission of the fluorescent probes used to enumerate the chromosomes of interest. Our objective was to demonstrate the feasibility of combining confocal microscopy and spectral imaging with high-throughput methods for accurately measuring sperm aneuploidy. Our approach used confocal microscopy to analyze numerical chromosomal abnormalities in human sperm using enhanced slide preparation and rigorous semi-automated scoring methods. FISH for chromosomes X, Y, and 18 was conducted to determine sex chromosome disomy in sperm nuclei. Application of online spectral linear unmixing was used for effective separation of four fluorochromes while decreasing data acquisition time. Semi-automated image processing, segmentation, classification, and scoring were performed on 10 slides using custom image processing and analysis software and results were compared with manual methods. No significant differences in disomy frequencies were seen between the semi automated and manual methods. Samples treated with pepsin were observed to have reduced background autofluorescence and more uniform distribution of cells. These results demonstrate that semi-automated methods using spectral imaging on a confocal platform are a feasible approach for analyzing numerical chromosomal aberrations in sperm, and are comparable to manual methods. © 2017 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry.