This may surprise you: They grow tobacco in Connecticut. It doesn’t surprise me. I grew up in the Nutmeg State and though I’ve been away for quite some time, I still can remember those fields of green, leafy plants carefully covered with the white, gauze-like netting. I’ve never been a smoker –– I don’t count the year between my 10^th and 11^th birthdays when my friends and I would borrow an occasional smoke from our parents and sneak off somewhere to practice our coughing.

I’ve never liked the odor of cigarettes, though they are preferable to cigars, of course. And then there are those health hazards connected to this habit. So you could say I’ve really had no use for tobacco until I read a very intriguing news release one of my colleagues contributed to this week’s ACS Weekly Press Pac. Check this tidbit out:...

I have a kind of funny relationship with fish. So far, I’ve never met one I didn’t like for dinner. On the other hand, I have never had much patience to spend the day on the water, trying to catch one. Until I was about 13, though, I tried.  In the summer my uncle and my cousin and I would rent a small boat and set off for the ocean off Niantic, Conn.  I caught a few fish –– mainly small flounder –– and had them for dinner, but I never was as into it as my two companions. Millions of people do enjoy the sport, of course, and I‘m happy I gave it a try.

Years later, my cousin got married and moved to San Francisco and, as it turns out, his father-in-law was a major fisherman, who not only caught tons of salmon, but smoked them.  Nothing like smoked salmon. I’ve had his and they were good. He fished until he was 100, even driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito to fish the pier when he was 98.

He died a few years ago at 101, but if he were alive today I’m pretty sure he would read with interest what I’m about to write based on an item in this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac even though it doesn’t pertain to the waters near the City by the Bay.

Mercury levels in a popular species of game fish in Lake Erie are increasing after two decades of steady decline, scientists are reporting. The study, the most comprehensive to date on mercury levels in Great Lakes fish, is in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Satyendra Bhavsar and colleagues note that the Great Lakes is the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world. The lakes are of significant economic importance to the United States and Canada due to the area’s $7 billion fishing industry. High levels of mercury in fish can potentially cause adverse health effects in people. Although government regulations and improved emissions control technologies have greatly reduced mercury emissions in the environment, their impact on mercury levels in Great Lakes fish is unclear.

The scientists studied mercury levels in 5,807 fish samples collected from the lakes between the 1970s and 2007. The samples included lake trout and walleye, two of the most common species of game fish caught in the region.

The researchers found that mercury levels in the fish steadily declined from the mid-1970s to 2007 in the upper Great Lakes (Superior and Huron). In recent years (between 1990 and 2007), however, the mercury concentrations leveled-off in Lake Ontario walleye but appear to be increasing in Lake Erie walleye. The mercury increases in Lake Erie walleye are likely caused by a combination of factors, including modifications in Lake Erie’s foodweb due to invasions of dreissenid mussels and round goby, the scientists suggest. 

To read the study, go to this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac at mercury.

You probably have guessed the photo in this item is NOT Lake Erie. I took this shot while on vacation this month in Maine and it was such a peaceful scene I wanted to share it.

My first memory of eating eggs as a child is not a happy one: I clearly remember gagging on them. To persuade me to eat soft-boiled eggs, my parents would add some pieces of toast and serve the mixture to me in a brightly-colored egg cup. I don’t know if they sell these cups today, but we still have one at home, though we never use it. I forced myself to eat some of this concoction, but it was never a favorite of mine.

Fortunately, as I tried more foods as a teen, I found better scrambled eggs and Western omelets and quiches and, my favorite –– egg salad sandwiches. Here’s a tip: put some of that sweet, yellow Jamaican curry in the egg salad. Yum.

But now comes a new finding from a group of scientists in Asia that raises a question about the newest kind of eggs.…

Contrary to popular belief, paying a premium price for free-range eggs may not be healthier than eating regular eggs, a new study reports. Scientists found that free-range eggs in Taiwan contain at least five times higher levels of certain pollutants than regular eggs. Their findings appear in ACS’ bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

In the new study, Pao-Chi Liao and colleagues note that free-range chickens are those that have continuous access to fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, in contrast to chickens that are confined to cages. Demand for eggs from free-range chickens has increased steadily due to their supposed better nutrition qualities, including higher levels of certain healthy fats. But scientists suspect that free-range chickens may risk getting higher levels of exposure to environmental pollutants, particularly PCDDs and PCDFs, potentially toxic substances that are produced as by-products of burning waste. Also known as dioxins, these substances may cause a wide range of health problems in humans, including reproductive and developmental problems and cancer.

The scientists collected six free-range eggs and 12 regular eggs from farms and markets in Taiwan and analyzed the eggs for their content of dioxins. Taiwan, they note, is a heavily populated, industrialized island with many of the municipal incinerators that release PCDDs and PCDFs. They found that the free-range eggs contained 5.7 times higher levels of PCDDs and PCDFs than the regular eggs. The scientists suggest that the findings raise concern about the safety of eating free-range chicken eggs.

To read more about the study, go to this week’s ACS Weekly PressPac, eggs.

Image courtesy of iStock

Some years ago, goaded on by some of my high school buddies, I wrote a letter to the editor at the National Enquirer in response to a story about a clothing store owner in Canada named Stanley Plomish, who claimed he was from the planet Venus. In a nutshell, my letter said this man was a fraud because I was from Venus and, to quote myself, “I never heard of any Plomish family.”  Well, they printed my letter and when you read the next sentence you probably will be convinced I knew what I was talking about. I can live without coffee.

With the number of coffee corners around this country in particular, I have the feeling I must be one of five people on the planet who can take or leave this ubiquitous beverage. Now, I do appreciate a good cup of Joe, but I have never craved it or needed it to wake up in the morning as so many people do. Not that there’s anything wrong with a wake-up jolt. It’s just that I can’t really identify with coffee-lovers in general. I can, however, appreciate what yesterday’s ACS Weekly PressPac had to say about what some imaginative chemists in Brazil have been doing with unroasted coffee beans.

The scientists are reporting for the first time that these beans contain proteins that can kill insects and might be developed into new insecticides for protecting food crops against destructive pests. Their study, which suggests a new use for one of the most important tropical crops in the world, appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Peas, beans and some other plant seeds contain proteins, called globulins, which ward off insects. Coffee beans contain large amounts of globulins, and Paulo Mazzafera and colleagues wondered whether those coffee proteins might also have an insecticidal effect. The high heat of roasting destroys globulins, so that they do not appear in brewed coffee.

Their tests against cowpea weevil larva, insects used as models for studying the insecticidal activity of proteins, showed that tiny amounts of the coffee proteins quickly killed up to half of the insects. In the future, scientists could insert genes for these insect-killing proteins into important food crops, such as grains, so that plants produce their own insecticides, the researchers suggest. The proteins appear harmless to people.

To read more about this innovation, go to beans. 

Image courtesy of Fernando Rebelo, Wikimedia Commons

It’s uncommon for research to emerge that instantly connects to everyday people while also challenging conventional wisdom. A new study in ACS’ bi-weekly Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research has a surprising use for cigarette butts: they could prevent steel corrosion that costs oil producers millions of dollars each year.

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When I was a child, my mother used to frequently remind me to wash my hands before eating dinner. Sometimes I ignored her advice. It seemed hard for me to believe at the time that there were “invisible” germs that lived on my hands that could potentially make me sick. My mother was a school nurse and was always giving me advice about my health that bordered on nagging. Today, I know that Mother was not only right about handwashing, but that her advice may have saved my life.

A recent article in the American Chemical Society’s PressPac reinforced this motherly advice. It describes a new scientific study showing a connection between fecal bacteria contamination on hands, fecal contamination of stored drinking water, and health in households in a developing country in Africa. The bottom line of the article is that handwashing can prevent the spread of waterborne diseases. That’s big news for the almost half of the world’s population — over three  billion people — who have no access to municipal drinking water supply systems. They obtain drinking water from wells, springs, and other sources, and store it in jugs and other containers in their homes. Past research showed that this stored water can have higher levels of bacterial contamination than its source.  

Although most people in the United States are fortunate to have access to fresh, decontaminated drinking water, handwashing is an important practice for preventing the spread of dangerous germs. So science proves that Mother was right after all!

 Image courtest of iStock

Growing up in West Hartford, Conn., I lived about halfway between Boston and New York City. The drive was about an hour and 45 minutes to Boston and two and half-hours to Manhattan. About 90 percent of the time I chose the longer trip because I loved New York. I loved Broadway and the New York rye bread and the excitement.

Then, many years later I attended a meeting in Boston and by the second day, I realized what a mistake I had made. Boston, too, is a great town! As we start work for the American Chemical Society’s 240th National Meeting in Boston, some neat memories come back to me… 

First, of course, there’s the fresh lobster. Then, there are the historical sites:  The Freedom Trail, The North Church, Paul Revere’s House, and many more attractions. And then there’s Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox, and one of the world’s most beautiful library buildings. I visit the Boston Public Library, McKim Building, at Copley Square every time I’m in town. It’s like walking into an architectural museum. You can spend an hour in that building without reading a book.
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