Background: Little is known about the environmental and public health impact of unconventional natural gas extraction activities, including hydraulic fracturing, that occur near residential areas.Objectives: Our aim was to assess the relationship between household proximity to natural gas wells and reported health symptoms.Methods: We conducted a hypothesis-generating health symptom survey of 492 persons in 180 randomly selected households with ground-fed wells in an area of active natural gas drilling. Gas well proximity for each household was compared with the prevalence and frequency of reported dermal, respiratory, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and neurological symptoms.Results: The number of reported health symptoms per person was higher among residents living < 1 km (mean ± SD, 3.27 ± 3.72) compared with > 2 km from the nearest gas well (mean ± SD, 1.60 ± 2.14; p = 0.0002). In a model that adjusted for age, sex, household education, smoking, awareness of environmental risk, work type, and animals in house, reported skin conditions were more common in households < 1 km compared with > 2 km from the nearest gas well (odds ratio = 4.1; 95% CI: 1.4, 12.3; p = 0.01). Upper respiratory symptoms were also more frequently reported in persons living in households < 1 km from gas wells (39%) compared with households 1–2 km or > 2 km from the nearest well (31 and 18%, respectively) (p = 0.004). No equivalent correlation was found between well proximity and other reported groups of respiratory, neurological, cardiovascular, or gastrointestinal conditions.Conclusion: Although these results should be viewed as hypothesis generating, and the population studied was limited to households with a ground-fed water supply, proximity of natural gas wells may be associated with the prevalence of health symptoms including dermal and respiratory conditions in residents living near natural gas extraction activities. Further study of these associations, including the role of specific air and water exposures, is warranted.Citation: Rabinowitz PM, Slizovskiy IB, Lamers V, Trufan SJ, Holford TR, Dziura JD, Peduzzi PN, Kane MJ, Reif JS, Weiss TR, Stowe MH. 2015. Proximity to natural gas wells and reported health status: results of a household survey in Washington County, Pennsylvania. Environ Health Perspect 123:21–26; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1307732

The effectiveness of surfactant formulations to remove aged metals from a field soil and their influence on soil toxicity was investigated. Batch studies were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of cationic (1-dodecylpyridinium chloride; DPC), nonionic (oleyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride; trade name Ammonyx KP), and anionic (rhamnolipid biosurfactant blend; trade name JBR-425) surfactants for extracting Zn, Cu, Pb, and Cd from a soil subjected to more than 80 years of metal deposition. All three surfactants enhanced removal of the target metals. The anionic biosurfactant JBR-425 was most effective, reducing Zn, Cu, Pb, and Cd in the soil by 39, 56, 68, and 43%, respectively, compared with less than 6% removal by water alone. Progressive acidification of the surfactants with citric acid buffer or addition of ethylenediaminetetra-acetic acid (EDTA) further improved extraction efficiency, with more than 95% extraction of all four metals by surfactants acidified to pH 3.6 and generally greater than 90% removal of all metals with addition of 0.1 M EDTA. In two species of earthworm, Eisenia fetida and Lumbricus terrestris, metal bioaccumulation was reduced by approximately 30 to 80%, total biomass was enhanced by approximately threefold to sixfold, and survival was increased to greater than 75% in surfactant-remediated soil compared with untreated soil. The data indicate that surfactant washing may be a feasible approach to treat surface soils contaminated with a variety of metals, even if those metals have been present for nearly a century, and that the toxicity and potential for metal accumulation in biota from the treated soils may be significantly reduced.

No abstract

Rationale Early graft inflammation enhances both acute and chronic rejection of heart transplants, but it is unclear how this inflammation is initiated. Objective To identify specific inflammatory modulators and determine their underlying molecular mechanisms after cardiac transplantation. Methods and Results We used a murine heterotopic cardiac transplant model to identify inflammatory modulators of early graft inflammation. Unbiased mass spectrometric analysis of cardiac tissue before and up to 72 hours after transplantation revealed that 22 proteins including haptoglobin, a known anti-oxidant, are significantly upregulated in our grafts. Through the use of haptoglobin deficient mice, we show that 80% of haptoglobin deficient recipients treated with peri-operative administration of the costimulatory blocking agent CTLA4 immunoglobulin exhibited > 100 days survival of full major histocompatibility complex mismatched allografts, whereas all similarly treated wild type recipients rejected their transplants by 21 days post transplantation. We found that haptoglobin modifies the intra-allograft inflammatory milieu by enhancing levels of the inflammatory cytokine IL-6 and the chemokine MIP-2 but impair levels of the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10. Haptoglobin also enhances dendritic cell graft recruitment and augments anti-donor T cell responses. Moreover, we confirmed that the protein is present in human cardiac allograft specimens undergoing acute graft rejection. Conclusions Our findings provide new insights into the mechanisms of inflammation after cardiac transplantation and suggest that, in contrast to its prior reported anti-oxidant function in vascular inflammation, haptoglobin is an enhancer of inflammation after cardiac transplantation. Haptoglobin may also be a key component in other sterile inflammatory conditions.

No abstract