Temporal pessimism and spatial optimism in environmental assessments: An 18-nation study

The personal assessments of the current and expected future state of the environment by 3232 community respondents in 18 nations were investigated at the local, national, and global spatial levels. These assessments were compared to a ranking of each country's environmental quality by an expert panel. Temporal pessimism (“things will get worse”) was found in the assessments at all three spatial levels. Spatial optimism bias (“things are better here than there”) was found in the assessments of current environmental conditions in 15 of 18 countries, but not in the assessments of the future. All countries except one exhibited temporal pessimism, but significant differences between them were common. Evaluations of current environmental conditions also differed by country. Citizens' assessments of current conditions, and the degree of comparative optimism, were strongly correlated with the expert panel's assessments of national environmental quality. Aside from the value of understanding global trends in environmental assessments, the results have important implications for environmental policy and risk management strategies.     

Urban stress and helping behavior: Effects of environmental overload and noise on behavior

The effects of environmental overload and noise on helping behavior is assessed through a 2 × 3 experimental design including two levels of environmental overload and three conditions on each site: without roadworks, roadworks without noise, and noisy roadworks.Results are analysed in terms of the cognitive appraisal of the situation and the narrowing of attention. The subject's behavior when confronted with explicit and implicit helping requests shows that noise appears to be the most important component of overload, affecting both the subjects' attentiveness in implicit helping demands, as well as the refusal to engage in verbal interaction.     

Engineering for problem solving in future: eco-social market economy and eco-social tech.

The paper differentiates approaches in technology (end-of-pipe, cleaner production, industrial ecology, zero emission and eco-social-tech) and compares them in respect to the problem solving capacity on the ecological as well as social dimension by showing the eco-impact reduction and job creation. Eco-social-tech represents the approach with highest problem solution as it is based on "eco-social market economy", which will the replace free market economy. The deep background of these innovations is "ecosophy", the wisdom of nature, which serves as guideline for eco-restructuring the world.     

The influence of dietary concentration on the absorption and excretion of persistent lipophilic organic pollutants in the human intestinal tract

The gastrointestinal exchange of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dibenzo-p-dioxins, and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) as well as hexachlorobenzene was measured in five volunteers. The dietary intake and the fecal excretion of the chemicals were quantified and the net absorption/net excretion was calculated as the difference between these two fluxes. Experiments were conducted using an elevated dietary intake and a reduced dietary intake of chemical, and the results were compared with the absorption during normal dietary intake. The net absorption varied widely with the dietary intake for those compounds which bioaccumulate in humans; high dietary intake of chemical resulted in absorption approaching 100% of intake, while low dietary intake resulted in a net excretion several times greater than the dietary intake. In contrast to net absorption, the chemical flux in the feces was largely independent of the dietary intake of chemical for a given individual. Good agreement was found between the feces/blood distribution coefficients measured in this study and in a study with contaminated workers whose blood concentrations were several orders of magnitude higher, indicating that fecal excretion of chemical is linearly proportional to the blood concentration. The results suggest that gastrointestinal exchange can be viewed as two processes operating simultaneously: absorption of contaminant from the diet, and excretion of contaminant from the body's reservoirs via the feces. By subtracting that component of the fecal flux originating from the body, the maximum dietary absorption could be calculated. This was >95% for most of the compounds, decreasing to a minimum of 50-60% for the octachlorinated dioxins and furans. The maximum dietary absorption showed a Kow dependency consistent with the two film model of gastrointestinal absorption of persistent organic chemicals.     

Use of the partition coefficient as an indicator of bioaccumulation tendency of dyestuffs in fish

Dyestuffs generally do not readily undergo aerobic biodegradation during sewage treatment processes and for new products an assessment of their bioaccumulation in fish is a requirement under certain environmental chemicals legislation. The results presented in this paper show that the partition coefficient in n-octanol/water is a useful indicator of the bioaccumulation tendency of dyestuffs, thus supporting its use as a screening test for bioaccumulation as proposed by the OECD Chemicals Testing Programme.     

Prenatal diagnosis of rhizomelic chondrodysplasia punctata

Plasmalogen biosynthesis and phytanic acid oxidation activity were measured in cultured chorionic villus samples or amniocytes from four pregnancies at risk for the rhizomelic form of chondrodysplasia punctata (RCDP). Normal results were obtained in three of the samples and post-natal examination or fetal ultrasound studies confirmed that the fetuses were unaffected. Chorionic villus culture in one case demonstrated defective plasmalogen biosynthesis and lack of phytanic acid oxidation. Pregnancy was interrupted at 10 weeks. Immunoblot studies of post-mortem fetal tissues showed thatperoxisomal 3-oxoacyl-coenzyme A thiolase was present in the unprocessed form, a finding we had previously demonstrated in RCDP. These results establish that RCDP can be identified prenatally.     

A non-absorbable dietary fat substitute enhances elimination of persistent lipophilic contaminants in humans.

For individuals contaminated with persistent lipophilic pollutants, there is an urgent need for a therapy to enhance contaminant elimination from the body and hence reduce long term exposure. This study investigated the possibility of enhancing the excretion of native chemical via the faeces by augmenting the lipophilic properties of the faeces with the non-absorbable lipid substitute olestra. The faecal excretion of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) was measured in 3 volunteers. The excretion while eating an olestra-free diet was compared with the excretion while eating a diet supplemented wit 25 g/d of olestra. The excretion while on the olestra diet was higher by a factor of 1.5-11, depending on the compound. This resulted from higher concentrations of the contaminants in the faeces and higher excretion of faeces dry mass due to the food additive. Using 2,3,7,8-Cl4DD as an example, it was estimated that ingestion of 25 g/d of olestra would more than double the overall rate of elimination of this compound from the body. It is concluded that regular consumption of olestra may provide a therapeutic approach for reducing the body burden of persistent lipophilic contaminants.     

Concerns, dispositions and behaviors of aggressive drivers: what do self-identified aggressive drivers believe about traffic safety?

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this investigation was to identify beliefs, driving personality dispositions, and behaviors that distinguish self-defined aggressive drivers from non-aggressive drivers. METHOD: Telephone surveys were used to identify self-reported aggressive drivers (n=305) who were compared to non-aggressive drivers (n=1,715) concerning their beliefs, driving behaviors, and self-described driving dispositions. RESULTS: Aggressive drivers, compared to non-aggressive drivers, were less concerned about speeding, aggressive driving, and cell phone use while driving, yet were more likely to have had an encounter with another aggressive driver. They were also more likely to report that they had driven when they knew they had too much to drink, yet they felt less likely that they would be stopped by the police. CONCLUSION: Aggressive drivers display many dispositions that define them as high risk drivers and public information/motivational campaigns alone will likely be ineffective with this group of drivers. Strategies that combine visible enforcement with widespread publicity campaigns appear to be necessary.