Assessment of inhalation exposures and potential health risks to the general population that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

In the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiated numerous air monitoring activities to better understand the ongoing impact of emissions from that disaster.

Vexatious litigants and unusually persistent complainants and petitioners: from querulous paranoia to querulous behaviour.

Querulous paranoia was once of considerable clinical and academic interest in psychiatry. Over the last 40 years, however, it has virtually disappeared from the professional landscape. This decline occurred at the very time that a proliferation of complaint organizations and agencies of accountability were drawing more and more people into asserting their individual rights through the pursuit of claims and grievances.

Dosimetric comparisons of particle deposition and retention in rats and humans.

Much of the information on the toxicity of particulate matter (PM) comes from studies in which laboratory rats were exposed to PM by inhalation or instillation. Optimal use of these toxicologic data requires extrapolation to the human scenario. Assuming that comparable doses should cause comparable effects across species and that species respond similarly to a given dose at a target site, extrapolations only require that dose be defined and then characterized.

Unusually persistent complainants.

Background: Querulous paranoia may have disappeared from the psychiatric literature, but is it flourishing in modern complaints organisations and the courts?

Aims: To investigate the unusually persistent complainants who lay waste to their own lives and place inordinate demands and stress on complaints organisations.

Method: Complaints officers completed questionnaires on both unusually persistent complainants and matched controls.

Results: Persistent complainants (distinguished by their pursuit of vindication and retribution) consumed time and resources and resorted to both direct and veiled threats.

[Establishing lead in air and water standards in the United States of America].

Lead regulations and standards have resulted in a lower exposure to lead in the general population of the United States of America. This paper highlights some of the know-how developed through lead-containing experiences, particularly regarding lead content in air and water. The availability of a solid and clear scientific knowledge is central to the success of these policies.

International expert workshop on the analysis of the economic and public health impacts of air pollution: workshop summary.

Forty-nine experts from 18 industrial and developing countries met on 6 September 2001 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, to discuss the economic and public health impacts of air pollution, particularly with respect to assessing the public health benefits from technologies and policies that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Such measures would provide immediate public health benefits, such as reduced premature mortality and chronic morbidity, through improved local air quality. These mitigation strategies also allow long-term goals--for example, reducing the buildup of GHG emissions--to be achieved alongside short-term aims, such as immediate improvements in air quality, and therefore benefits to public health.

Combined Autoradiography and Formaldehyde-induced Fluorescence Methods for Localization of Radioactively Labeled Substances in Relation to Monoamine Neurons .

A combined technique of formaldehyde-induced fluorescence (FIF) and autoradiography is described for the localization of radioactively labeled substances in relation to monoamine neurons. This method permits the simultaneous visualization of 3H-labeled steroid hormone or drug uptake sites and fluorescing monoamine neural elements (cell bodies, fiber projections, terminals) in the same tissue section. Thin frozen sections cut in a cryostat are freeze-dried, exposed to formaldehyde vapor at 80°C, and carried through dry-mount autoradiography processing steps before fluorescence microscopy screening.