The Environmental Impacts of the Coronavirus.

The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has resulted in global lockdowns, sharply curtailing economic activity. It is a unique experiment with substantial impacts that will form the agenda for research. There are five sets of questions: the short-term impacts on emissions, the natural environment and environmental policy, including regulations and COP26; longer-term consequences from the deployment of macroeconomic monetary and fiscal stimuli, and investment in green deals; possible further deglobalisation and its impact on climate change and nature; intergenerational environmental impacts including debt and pollution burdens on future generations; and possible behavioural changes to the environment, both positive and negative.

Assessment of environmental and socio-economic stress.

Since long, socio-economic status, often expressed as an index, is known to correlate with health outcomes like behavioural problems. We constructed a new index that encapsulated not only economic and social but also environmental stressors (ESES), using data of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents, a nation-wide representative surveillance of 17,641 participants aged between 0-17 years. Different factors were selected to account for socio-economic stress (low parental education, low household income, low occupational status of the householder), domestic stress (living in large cities, exposure to tobacco smoke at home, crowded housing, mouldy walls), and prenatal stress (maternal smoking during pregnancy, drinking alcohol during pregnancy). Prior to the calculation of ESES, the different factors were multiplied by weights which were estimated by multivariate linear regression on a number of health outcomes. ESES was then used to predict emotional and social problems (SDQ scores). The resulting ORs were compared with those obtained for an established socio-economic index (SEI). ESES was superior to SEI as it could more clearly identify children and adolescents with emotional or social problems. Different types of stressors (i.e. socio-economic stress, domestic stress and prenatal stress) contributed independently to emotional and social problems.

The German Multicentre Study on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).

In this multicentre study on multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) 291 consecutive environmental medicine (EM) outpatients were examined in several environmental medicine outpatient centres/units throughout Germany in 2000/2003. Of the EM outpatients, 89 were male (30.6%) and 202 were female (69.4%), aged 22-80 (mean 48 years, S.D.=12 years). The sample was representative for university-based environmental outpatient departments and represented a cross-sectional study design with an integrated clinical-based case-control comparison (MCS vs. non-MCS). Three classifications of MCS were used: self-reported MCS (sMCS), clinically diagnosed MCS (cMCS), and formalised computer-assisted MCS with two variants (f1MCS, f2MCS). Data were collected by means of an environmental medicine questionnaire, psychosocial questionnaires, the German version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), and a medical baseline documentation, as well as special examinations in partial projects on olfaction and genetic susceptibility markers. The hypothesis guided evaluation of the project showed that the patients' heterogenic health complaints did not indicate a characteristic set of symptoms for MCS. No systematic connection could be observed between complaints and the triggers implicated, nor was there any evidence for a genetic predisposition, or obvious disturbances of the olfactory system. The standardised psychiatric diagnostics applying CIDI demonstrated that the EM patients in general and the subgroup with MCS in particular suffered more often from mental disorders compared to an age and gender matched sample of the general population and that in most patients these disorders commenced many years before environment-related health complaints. Our results do not support the assumption of a toxicogenic-somatic basis of the MCS phenomenon. In contrast, numerous indicators for the relevance of behavioural accentuations, psychic alterations or psychosomatic impairments were found in the group of EM-outpatients with subjective "environmental illness".

Correlation between production amounts of DEHP and daily intake.

It is shown that the daily intake of DEHP in German university students is strictly and almost perfectly correlated with the industrial production of DEHP in Germany yielding a correlation coefficient of >0.9.

Subgrouping outpatients of an environmental medicine unit using SCL-90-R and cluster analysis.

Between 1999 and 2003 all consecutive outpatients of the environmental medicine unit of the Charité hospital in Berlin were invited to participate in a study on environmentally related disorders. One hundred and sixty-nine of the patients completed a psychosocial questionnaire which comprised SCL-90-R and 14 other tests. When compared with clinical controls, SCL-90-R mean scores of the environmental patients (EP) were found to lie in between those of inpatients of a psychosomatic clinic and melanoma aftercare patients; but they were, with exception of the somatisation dimension, much closer to the latter. Application of the TwoStep Cluster component of SPSS resulted in three subgroups with high, moderate and low scores which were significantly different (p<0.001) although separation was incomplete (87% correct identification; cross-validated discriminant analysis). With all subgroups, scores for somatisation, depression and obsessive compulsion were highest and those for phobic anxiety and psychoticism were lowest. SCL-90-R scores correlated well with results of the Freiburg Personality Inventory, Whiteley Index of hypochondriasis, the short form health questionnaire (SF-36), and the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). Hierarchical grouping (average linkage between groups), performed with involvement of SCL-90-R data from literature, resulted in a dendrogram with three distinct groups and three outliers. EP with low SCL-90-R scores were assigned to a group which comprised also general populations (USA, Germany), allergy patients, and melanoma controls. Those with moderate SCL-90-R scores were placed in a group together with chronic pain patients, and 26 'environmentally ill' subjects. The third subgroup of EP formed a cluster with our psychosomatic controls, psychosomatic patients from another study, depressed people, and patients undergoing psychotherapy. The three outliers of the dendrogram, however, were SCL-90-R profiles obtained from persons with toxic waste exposure, neurotoxic workplace exposure or with solvent-induced chronic toxic encephalopathy.

Association between palladium urinary concentrations and diseases of the thyroid and the immune system.

The German Environmental Specimen Bank found that students suffering from diseases of the thyroid or the immune system had increased palladium urinary values compared to healthy individuals. Since the immunotoxic features of palladium are well known, there may be a causal relationship. Sources of palladium were identified as dental alloys, the chemical industry, oil- or coal-driven power plants and the consumption of meat products.