Personal exposure of dairy workers to dust, endotoxin, muramic acid, ergosterol, and ammonia on large-scale dairies in the high plains Western United States.

Dairy workers experience a high degree of bioaerosol exposure, composed of an array of biological and chemical constituents, which have been tied to adverse health effects. A better understanding of the variation in the magnitude and composition of exposures by task is needed to inform worker protection strategies. To characterize the levels and types of exposures, 115 dairy workers grouped into three task categories on nine farms in the high plains Western United States underwent personal monitoring for inhalable dust, endotoxin, 3-hydroxy fatty acids (3-OHFA), muramic acid, ergosterol, and ammonia through one work shift.

Renewable energy and occupational health and safety research directions: a white paper from the Energy Summit, Denver Colorado, April 11-13, 2011.

Renewable energy production may offer advantages to human health by way of less pollution and fewer climate-change associated ill-health effects. Limited data suggests that renewable energy will also offer benefits to workers in the form of reduced occupational injury, illness and deaths. However, studies of worker safety and health in the industry are limited.

Pulmonary function reductions among potentially susceptible subgroups of agricultural workers in Colorado and Nebraska.

Objective: Organic dust inhalation has been associated with adverse respiratory responses among agricultural workers. We evaluated factors that may confer increased susceptibility to these health effects.

Methods: We quantified personal work shift exposures to inhalable dust, endotoxin, and its 3-hydroxy fatty acid constituents, and evaluated changes in pulmonary function among 137 grain elevator, cattle feedlot, dairy, and corn farm workers.

Paracingulate sulcus asymmetry; sex difference, correlation with semantic fluency and change over time in adolescent onset psychosis.

The left paracingulate sulcus (PCS) is longer than the right and the adjacent cortex is activated by the generation of words. In adult patients with chronic schizophrenia the anatomical asymmetry is reduced. In 35 controls and 38 adolescents with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (mean age = 16 years) we found that semantic verbal fluency correlated with leftward PCS asymmetry in controls but not in patients.

Pelviureteric peristaltic contractions in diabetic rats.

The effects of strepozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes on the spontaneous peristaltic contractions in the upper urinary tract (UUT) of the rat were examined by simultaneously recording the tension in the proximal and distal regions of the renal pelvis and the proximal ureter. All regions of the UUT of diabetic rats contracted at a frequency similar to the contraction frequency of age-matched control rats. In contrast, contraction amplitudes in the proximal and distal renal pelvis and ureter of diabetic rats were 36%, 135% and 121% larger than the equivalent contractions recorded in control rats resulting in a significant increases in the motility index (MI amplitude x frequency) in all 3 regions.