Street Trees Really Do Make People Healthier

Jason G. Goldman

It’s easy enough to claim that being in nature makes people feel better. It certainly feels like it’s true. A weekend in the mountains, or even a few hours in a park after a long day at work, truly feels like it is somehow restorative.

There are some good reasons to believe that green space could have a causal relationship with health and happiness. For one thing, trees scrub pollution from the skies, allowing those nearby to breathe cleaner air. Exposure to nature has also been linked with reduced blood pressure and stress, and it seems to motivate folks to become more active and less sedentary. Then there’s the Japanese practice of shinrinyoku, or “forest bathing.” The Japanese believe that what essentially amounts to a nature walk promotes human health and wellbeing. Plants are also part of a complex food web that, together, provides things critical to our survival like oxygen to breathe, fresh water to drink, and food to eat. Even if all these things are true – and they probably are – that still doesn’t mean that it’s nature, per se, that’s having the apparent health benefit.

To make that claim we need real, quantifiable data. That’s where University of Chicago psychology graduate student Omid Kardan and University of Chicago professor Marc G. Berman come in. They and their colleagues looked to Toronto, Canada, a city for which there is plenty of satellite imagery (which allows them to measure green spaces) and self-reported health information through the Ontario Health Study. By using a set of common statistical techniques, the researchers were able to really see whether there’s anything to the idea that greenery makes people healthier.

But it wasn’t green spaces in general they were interested in; it was trees in particular. By leaving lawns and bushes out, the researchers hoped to zero in on what they thought was “potentially the most important component for having beneficial effects.” First, they took data on trees from two databases maintained by the city of Toronto: “Street Tree General Data” and “Forest and Land Cover.” Together, those databases provided information on street trees as well as those in parks and backyards. They chose Toronto in part to rule out the effects of health insurance; unlike in the US, Canadians are guaranteed universal publically funded healthcare, regardless of employment status or income level. Still, despite equal access, not all Canadians choose to avail themselves of healthcare in equal ways. Indeed, those with lower incomes and fewer years of schooling tend to see doctors less often, which is why the researchers made note of that sort of demographic data.

They found that those who live in areas with more street trees reported better health perception than those in neighborhoods with fewer trees. Regardless of their actual health, they felt they were healthier. But it turns out they were actually healthier too: they suffered from fewer cardio-metabolic conditions.

But that’s not all. To really drive the point home, Kardan reduced the findings to cold, hard cash.

His team found that by planting 10 more trees per city block, Toronto could improve health perception as much as if every household on that same block earned $10,000 more every year, or magically became seven years younger.

The results were even more striking for actual health. Planting just 11 more trees per city block would reduce cardio-metabolic conditions the same extent as if everybody living on that block earned $20,000 more each year or somehow became 1.4 years younger.

So what’s the secret? Kardan doesn’t know, and his study isn’t explicitly designed to get at the underlying mechanism. But a close look at the data offers up a suggestion. It wasn’t proximity to trees in a neighborhood that was the most important variable, but the number of trees on the streets. That suggests that it’s not necessarily that the trees are themselves providing important services (they do that, though that might not be what accounts for these health effects). Instead, it could be something as simple as peoples’ ability to literally see trees, and the most common place for most people to see trees is on the street. It’s also possible that street trees are disproportionately responsible for capturing street pollution, and that could be driving the team’s findings.

Maintaining a street tree for a year costs between $30 and $500, depending on where it is. In other words, planting ten or eleven trees per city block would be far cheaper than paying everyone $10,000-20,000 more each year. That should be good news for city planners.

http://conservationmagazine.org/2015/07/street-trees-really-do-make-people-healthier/

What a Park’s Design Does to Your Brain

AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

 As a student in Poland, Agnieszka Anna Olszewska was fascinated by the way that some landscapes seemed to be more contemplative than others. She wanted to research the reasons behind that calming effect, but she found little encouragement. “People told me I can write a novel, I can write a poem about the contemplativeness of landscape, but not a scientific paper.” One well-respected landscape architect told her it couldn’t be done because of the diversity of human responses: Some of us might find a garden conducive to contemplation; others might prefer the bathroom.

But Olszewska, now a doctoral candidate in landscape architecture and urban ecology at the University of Porto in Portugal, persevered. With a neuroscience professor at the university, she conducted a pilot project that culminated, earlier this year, in a conference paper titled “Urban Planning, Neurosciences and Contemplation for Improving Well-being in Our Cities.” It combined questionnaire results with measurement of brain waves in an effort “to prove that there are certain characteristics of urban parks and gardens that can induce in the visitor the pattern of brain activity that is associated with contemplative or meditative states.”

We know that cities can be hectic, stressful places. We also know that green space can have a calming effect on people. But Olszewska is seeking to take our knowledge a step further — to enable designers and planners to maximize the serenity of urban green refuges.

In the study, four design experts examined 50 photographs from three urban parks in Portugal and France. The experts were also given a checklist of design features (such as long-distance views, biodiversity, “canopied,” “panoramic”). They identified which features appeared in each photograph, and also evaluated each setting’s contemplativeness. The settings deemed most contemplative had panoramic vistas with long-distance views (more than 400 meters). They tended to include large empty spaces, natural asymmetry, clearings and stimulation to look at the sky. The least contemplative settings, by contrast, usually lacked these features, and instead had characteristics such as paths and enclosed spaces (as in small pocket gardens).

In the second part of the project, subjects were asked to look at the 15 photos of landscapes ranked highest by the experts for contemplativeness. Their brain waves were recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) during this task. The brain activity, Olszewska said, was similar to patterns known to be associated with mindfulness achieved through meditation. She stresses, though, that her research is quite preliminary; subjects weren’t shown the least contemplative spaces. (She is currently working on a study that includes this kind of control group.)

The most contemplative landscapes are not necessarily the ones that people would claim to enjoy the most. More stimulating landscapes — brightly colored flowers, numerous eye-catching elements — may be more immediately attractive. “If you imagine the French baroque gardens, they are very geometrical, very organized,” said Olszewska. But this kind of environment, however beautiful, may be less relaxing to spend time in.

This is not to say that the opposite extreme — wild landscapes — are necessarily more contemplative. Olszewska thinks we tend to find those overwhelming. Instead, she hypothesizes that the ideal is a “golden middle” between too much design and too little.

The small experiment is part of a larger, nascent movement to try to connect neuroscience to architecture and design. The movement for “evidence-based design” originated in the health care field. One famous finding was that in hospitals — historically not the most pleasant places — surgical patients whose windows faced natural outdoor scenery were discharged sooner and requested fewer painkillers than patients whose windows faced a brick wall. Inspired by this movement, others began to think that there was no reason to limit such thinking to hospitals. It spread to schools, and now, increasingly, the built environment and urban green spaces. Some researchers began to incorporate neuroscience. Much of the interest is focused on contemplativeness. Perhaps, just as hospitals need healing spaces, cities need serene oases to counteract the urban chaos.

Julio Bermudez, an associate professor of architecture and planning at the Catholic University of America, studies how the built environment can induce states of relaxation and mindfulness. In one study, which he presented last week at the second annual conference of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, architects looked at photographs of buildings designed to be contemplative, including the Salk Institute in San Diego and the Pantheon in Rome, as well as ordinary buildings. The contemplative buildings reportedly elicited “markedly distinct” responses, as measured by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Bermudez and his co-authors (including a neuroscientist at the University of Utah) concluded that contemplative buildings “allow subjects to enter into a meditative state with diminishing levels of anxiety and mind wandering.”

In an email, Bermudez speculated about some common features of contemplative design: buildings that frame nature in some way; that exhibit simplicity without being simplistic; and that offer a sense of separation from the rest of their context, among other qualities. Some “remarkable cities,” he wrote, “naturally invite contemplative states.” As examples, he cited Santiago de Compostela in Spain and Bodh Gaya in India, as well as parts of Paris, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.

It may be true that, as the landscape architect warned Olszewska, it’s hard to make blanket generalizations about what people find contemplative, and responses may vary culturally too. It’s also notoriously challenging to interpret brain waves conclusively, and this research is in its infancy. But both Olszewska and Bermudez believe there are certain common features that can broadly foster these meditative responses. And rather than write poems, they hope to prove it with the tools of fMRI and EEG.

The Science of Cities column is made possible with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is a columnist for Next City. She has also written for the New York Times, Slate and Dissent, among other publications.

 http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/city-parks-design-calming-brain

With Nature and Justice for All

Researching simulated environmental imagery to improve prison life.

Credit: Randy Lyhus

When a new inmate is booked into jail, it can be a pretty dismal experience for everyone involved. The prisoner may be angry or despondent, suffering from acute mental stress or illness, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. On-duty staff attending to prisoner intake may feel tired or threatened (or both). It’s a combustible atmosphere, to be sure, and in the early hours and days of a prisoner’s term, concepts such as “rehabilitation” and “redemption” may not take hold.

At a Northern California jail, however, a relatively simple intervention has already improved conditions for staff and inmates. Based on research that illustrates the calming effects of simulated nature views, with support from the Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) and the National Institute of Corrections, the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility now boasts a large-scale photo mural of bucolic grassland on one wall of the booking area. Just six weeks after the mural was installed, the team of researchers—led by Jay Farbstein, FAIA, Melissa Farling, AIA, and Polytechnic Institute of New York University environmental psychology professor Richard Wener, with assistance from arts and neuroscience researchers Upali Nanda and John Sollers—found measurable reductions in stress levels among both groups.

Since the 1980s, studies have shown that medical patients with views of nature—whether real (as in a garden) or simulated (as in a photographic mural)—experience accelerated recovery, lower blood pressure, and less anxiety. In the prison setting, at least one study has similarly demonstrated that prisoners with external views of nature have lower blood pressure than those who view only internal courtyards.

In October 2006, a group of architects, corrections administrators, and neuroscientists gathered to discuss the growing body of evidence that suggests that correctional environments affect inmates and staff. “We looked at several aspects of the prison environment and how they might affect the brain,” Farbstein says, “including the visual environment, the acoustic environment, the impact of light on circadian rhythms, crowding and social functions, and staff–inmate ratio.” The Sonoma County project grew out of that exercise.

Compared to most other jails, the Sonoma County detention center was already considered a next-generation facility that placed greater emphasis on human comfort. The intake space was bright and airy, with a waiting-room atmosphere in which most inmates are booked across an open counter rather than shuffled down dark corridors. “It already was a less stressful environment than 80 to 90 percent of intake areas,” Farbstein says. “There were a lot of things about it that already suggested a lower level of stress.”

It was an ideal environment in which to test their hypothesis. The team initially considered adding live houseplants to the space, which could have been a security risk (as pots and twigs could be used as weapons), and the idea was ultimately deemed less effective than a large-scale mural. Once they centered on that approach, the team chose a mural of savannah grassland that was previously used in a medical setting to positive effect. In addition to the main mural, which measures about 9 feet by 24 feet and was installed in the waiting room, an additional mural of the same image was mirrored to fill a longer and narrower 2-feet-by-38-feet space near the ceiling in the holding-cell area.

The depicted landscape has all the hallmarks of a calming nature scene, Farling says, including open views, enough trees to provide shade and shelter, and a still, nonturbulent water source. Again, the team pointed to previous research indicating humans’ primal connection to the savannah landscape. Architects may also appreciate that the mural simply represents the classic design principle of “prospect and refuge.”

To determine stress levels, the research team chose to record a particular measure of staff heart rates (inter-beat intervals), which was considered less invasive than, say, testing for levels of salivary cortisol—another stress indicator that would require users to chew on a piece of cotton. Comparing heart rates of staff pre- and post-mural showed a measurable reduction in stress at the end of their shifts after the mural was installed. There was also a marked reduction in the staff stress indicators from the beginning to end of their shifts from the pre-mural to the post-mural period.

Farbstein said they are intrigued by the implications that the research may have for the potential of such interventions to reduce stress levels in inmates and that, if stress and other factors are reduced, inmates may be better able to participate effectively in rehabilitation programs. He and his colleagues are seeking more funding to take their research further
.
“If you are in a jail that believes in rehabilitation and offers rehabilitation programs,” Farbstein says, “when you have inmates who are less stressed, getting more sleep, and are better able to learn, I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that they would ultimately have greater success.”
Learn more about the AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice at aia.org/aaj.

http://www.ecobuildingpulse.com/performance-metrics/with-nature-and-justice-for-all.aspx

Antibiotic Resistance Spreads to Birds, Other Wildlife

Antibiotic Resistant: New research, including a study of crow feces, provides evidence that antibiotic resistance has spread beyond hospitals and farms to wildlife. Image: Linda Tanner/ Flickr

New research provides evidence that antibiotic resistance has spread beyond hospitals and farms to wildlife

By Lindsey Konkel  

 

WORCESTER, Mass. – One afternoon last winter, Julie Ellis unfurled a long, white tarp under a stand of trees near Coes Pond where hundreds of crows roost. Her mission: to collect as much bird poop as possible.

 

Back in the laboratory, Ellis’ colleagues combed through the feces. Testing its bacteria, they discovered something unusual – genes that make the crows resistant to antibiotics.
Drug-resistant infections are a fast-growing threat to human health, due largely to overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and livestock production, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 2 million people each year in the United States alone are sickened by infections resistant to drugs.

Now new research, including the crow poop study conducted in four states, provides evidence that antibiotic resistance has spread beyond hospitals and farms to wildlife. Some experts worry that contaminating wildlife with such genes may hasten the spread of drug resistance. Nevertheless, the consequences for human health remain poorly understood.

“We’ve documented human-derived drug resistance where it shouldn’t be – in wildlife and the environment. But we know very little about how this may impact public health. There just isn’t that smoking gun,” said Ellis, a research scientist at Tufts University’s veterinary school. In addition to crows, resistance genes have been detected in gulls, houseflies, moths, foxes, frogs, sharks and whales, as well as in sand and coastal water samples from California and Washington. The spread to wildlife is “an indicator of the wide-reaching scale of the problem. Microbes connect the planet,” said Lance Price, a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University.

The spread to wildlife is “an indicator of the wide-reaching scale of the problem. Microbes connect the planet,” said Lance Price, a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University.

“The danger is that we enter a post-antibiotic era in which even our last-line drugs won’t work and routine infections become life-threatening,” he said. While antibiotics have revolutionized medicine in less than 100 years, antibiotic-producing bacteria have existed in nature for millions of years. Natural antibiotics likely evolved as weapons in a biological arms race between competing bacteria. But the environmental drug resistance that Ellis and others are now seeing is different – it’s manmade.

“What has changed is that we’ve placed great selective pressure on bacteria with our use of antibiotics,” said Ludek Zurek, a microbiologist at Kansas State University who participated in the crow study. Bacteria can swap genes with one another, so those that survive can pass along the genetic equipment to withstand an antibiotic assault to unrelated bacterial strains, spreading resistance across the globe, microbe by microbe.

“Those bacteria that pick up resistance genes survive better in an environment where antibiotics are being used. They can outcompete all the other bacteria,” said Price, who advocates against the use of antibiotics in livestock.

In the crow research, scientists collected nearly 600 fecal samples in four states – Massachusetts, Kansas, New York and California. Fifteen of the crows sampled, about 2.5 percent, harbored genes for resistance to vancomycin, a drug of last resort for hard-to-treat hospital-acquired infections. Crows with the resistance genes were found in all of the states except California.

“The vancomycin resistance gene is rare [in environmental samples], so the fact that they readily found it in crows is significant,” said Amy Pruden, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech who studies antibiotic resistance genes as emerging contaminants in water bodies. What’s alarming, say the researchers, is that some of the vancomycin-resistant bacteria in the crows were resistant to several other antibiotics widely used in human medicine and livestock feed. It’s very difficult to trace the resistance back to a source.

“Because birds are so mobile, it’s possible they may acquire resistance genes from multiple sources in their travels,” said Ellis. “Maybe they visit a dumpster or sewage treatment plant one day and later a farmer’s field.” The source of antibiotic-resistance cannot always be determined because many drugs are used both in human and animal medicine. However, the vancomycin resistance in the wild crows bears the signature of a human clinical source, the study authors concluded.

They speculate that waste sites may be a potential source of the crows’ bacteria. “Traditional wastewater treatment approaches may not destroy genetic material,” Pruden said. Much of the research on drug resistance has focused on hospitals and healthcare settings. The CDC estimates that 50 percent of all antibiotics prescribed to people are not needed.

More recently, researchers have begun to turn their attention to the environment as a source of drug resistance. Many more tons of antibiotics are used in U.S. livestock production – to prevent and treat disease and to promote growth – than in human medicine. An estimated 30,000 tons of antibiotics each year are sold for use in food-producing animals. “People who consume these foods can develop antibiotic-resistant infections,” according to a CDC report issued in September. It’s unclear what role, if any, crows and other wild animals may play in hastening the spread of these infections or creating new ones. “Wildlife may be an important piece of the puzzle,” Pruden said. “It’s certainly an area that warrants more research.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=flying-the-coop-antibiotic-resistance-spreads-to-birds-other-wildlife&page=2

Biophilic Cities: What Are They?

Central Park in New York City, a world landmark of biophilia and nature preservation.   Biophilia is a term popularized by Harvard University myrmecologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson to describe the extent to which humans are hard-wired to need connection with nature and other forms of life. More specifically, Wilson describes it this way: “Biophilia…is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. Innate means hereditary and hence part of ultimate human nature.” (Wilson, 1993, p.31). To Wilson biophia is really a “complex of learning rules” developed over thousands of years of evolution and human-environment interaction.

Evidence of the emotional and psychological benefits of nature is mounting and impressive (research shows its ability to reduce stress, to aid recovery from illness, to enhance cognitive skills and academic performance, to aid in moderating the effects of ADHD, autism and other child illnesses). Recent research suggests even that we are more generous in the presence of nature; all these values are in addition to the immense economic value of the ecological services provided by natural systems. Support for the practice of biophilic design has been growing and there are now many exemplary examples of buildings that seek to integrate natural features and qualities. We recognize the need for biophilic workplaces, for healing gardens and spaces in hospitals, and for homes and apartments that provide abundant daylight, natural ventilation, plants and greenery. Less attention, however, has been focused on the city or urban scale, despite the fact that the planet continues an inexorable trend in the direction of urbanization. Urban residents need nature more than ever, and much work is needed to find creative and effective means for incorporating it into urban environments. It is likely that the benefits of close contact with nature are deeper and even more profound, and the potential to make a difference by integrating nature directly into our lives, even greater than we realize. Nature ought not to be an afterthought, and ought not to only be viewed in terms of the (considerable to be sure) functional benefits typically provided (benefits of trees, green rooftops, wetlands for managing stormwater, for mediating air and water pollutants, for addressing urban heat island effects, and so on). The elements of a deeper concept of integrating nature into everyday living include a recognition of some of the following:

Important Ties to Place. There are considerable place-strengthening benefits and place-commitments that derive from knowledge of local nature; from direct personal contact; enhanced knowledge, and deeper connections = greater stewardship, and willingness to take personal actions on behalf of place and home; Connections and Connectedness. Caring for place and environment, essential for human wellbeing and in turn essential ingredient in caring for each other; A Need for Wonder and Awe in Our Lives. Nature has the potential to amaze us, stimulate us, propel us forward to want to learn more and understand more fully our world; Nature adds a kind of wonder value to our lives unlike almost anything else; Meaningful Lives Require Nature. The qualities of wonder and fascination, the ability to nurture deep personal connection and involvement, visceral engagement in something larger than and outside oneself, offer the potential for meaning in life few other things can provide;

Urbanists and city planners have special opportunities and unique obligations to advance biophilic city design, utilizing a variety of strategies and tools, applied on a number of geographical and governmental scales. The agenda is one that must extend beyond conventional urban parks, and beyond building-centric green design. It is about redefining the very essence of cities as places of wild and restorative nature, from rooftops to roadways to riverfronts. It is about understanding cities as places that already harbor much nature and places that can become, through bold vision and persistent practice, even greener and richer in the nature they contain.   What a biophilic city is or could be is an open question, and it is hoped that this website will help to stimulate discussion of this. As a tentative starting point I offer some of the following as key qualities of biophilic cities:           Biophilic cities are cities of abundant nature in close proximity to large numbers of urbanites; biophilic cities are biodiverse cities, that value, protect and actively restore this biodiversity; biophilic cities are green and growing cities, organic and natureful; In biophilic cities, residents feel a deep affinity with the unique flora, fauna and fungi found there, and with the climate, topography, and other special qualities of place and environment that serve to define the urban home; In biophilic cities citizens can easily recognize common species of trees, flowers, insects and birds (and in turn care deeply about them); Biophilic cities are cities that provide abundant opportunities to be outside and to enjoy nature through strolling, hiking, bicycling, exploring; biophilic cities nudge us to spend more time amongst the trees, birds and sunlight. Biophilic cities are rich multisensory environments, the where the sounds of nature (and other sensory experiences) are as appreciated as much as the visual or ocular experience; biophilic cities celebrate natural forms, shapes, and materials; Biophilic cities place importance on education about nature and biodiversity, and on providing many and varied opportunities to learn about and directly experience nature; In biophilic cities there are many opportunities to join with others in learning about, enjoying, deeply connecting with, and helping to steward over nature, whether though a nature club, organized hikes, camping in city parks, or volunteering for nature restoration projects. Biophilic cities invest in the social and physical infrastructure that helps to bring urbanites in closer connection and understanding of nature, whether through natural history museums, wildlife centers, school-based nature initiatives, or parks and recreation programs and projects, among many others; Biophilic cities are globally responsible cities that recognize the importance of actions to limit the impact of resource use on nature and biodiversity beyond their urban borders; biophilic cities take steps to actively support the conservation global nature; These are but a few of the ways a city might be seen as biophilic. What do you think? Are there other ways, and other important qualities or dimensions not listed above? http://biophiliccities.org/biophiliccities.html

Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops

by Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson


 
How should a regulatory agency announce they have discovered something potentially very important about the safety of products they have been approving for over twenty years?
In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial GMOs also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene. This finding has serious ramifications for crop biotechnology and its regulation, but possibly even greater ones for consumers and farmers. This is because there are clear indications that this viral gene (called Gene VI) might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.

What Podevin and du Jardin discovered is that of the 86 different transgenic events (unique insertions of foreign DNA) commercialized to-date in the United States 54 contain portions of Gene VI within them. They include any with a widely used gene regulatory sequence called the CaMV 35S promoter (from the cauliflower mosaic virus; CaMV). Among the affected transgenic events are some of the most widely grown GMOs, including Roundup Ready soybeans (40-3-2) and MON810 maize. They include the controversial NK603 maize recently reported as causing tumors in rats (Seralini et al. 2012).

The researchers themselves concluded that the presence of segments of Gene VI “might result in unintended phenotypic changes”. They reached this conclusion because similar fragments of Gene VI have already been shown to be active on their own (e.g. De Tapia et al. 1993). In other words, the EFSA researchers were unable to rule out a hazard to public health or the environment.

In general, viral genes expressed in plants raise both agronomic and human health concerns (reviewed in Latham and Wilson 2008). This is because many viral genes function to disable their host in order to facilitate pathogen invasion. Often, this is achieved by incapacitating specific anti-pathogen defenses. Incorporating such genes could clearly lead to undesirable and unexpected outcomes in agriculture. Furthermore, viruses that infect plants are often not that different from viruses that infect humans. For example, sometimes the genes of human and plant viruses are interchangeable, while on other occasions inserting plant viral fragments as transgenes has caused the genetically altered plant to become susceptible to an animal virus (Dasgupta et al. 2001). Thus, in various ways, inserting viral genes accidentally into crop plants and the food supply confers a significant potential for harm.

The Choices for Regulators

The original discovery by Podevin and du Jardin (at EFSA) of Gene VI in commercial GMO crops must have presented regulators with sharply divergent procedural alternatives. They could 1) recall all CaMV Gene VI-containing crops (in Europe that would mean revoking importation and planting approvals) or, 2) undertake a retrospective risk assessment of the CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences and hope to give it a clean bill of health.

It is easy to see the attraction for EFSA of option two. Recall would be a massive political and financial decision and would also be a huge embarrassment to the regulators themselves. It would leave very few GMO crops on the market and might even mean the end of crop biotechnology.

Regulators, in principle at least, also have a third option to gauge the seriousness of any potential GMO hazard. GMO monitoring, which is required by EU regulations, ought to allow them to find out if deaths, illnesses, or crop failures have been reported by farmers or health officials and can be correlated with the Gene VI sequence. Unfortunately, this particular avenue of enquiry is a scientific dead end. Not one country has carried through on promises to officially and scientifically monitor any hazardous consequences of GMOs (1).

Unsurprisingly, EFSA chose option two. However, their investigation resulted only in the vague and unreassuring conclusion that Gene VI “might result in unintended phenotypic changes” (Podevin and du Jardin 2012). This means literally, that changes of an unknown number, nature, or magnitude may (or may not) occur. It falls well short of the solid scientific reassurance of public safety needed to explain why EFSA has not ordered a recall.

Can the presence of a fragment of virus DNA really be that significant? Below is an independent analysis of Gene VI and its known properties and their safety implications. This analysis clearly illustrates the regulators’ dilemma.

The Many Functions of Gene VI

 Gene VI, like most plant viral genes, produces a protein that is multifunctional. It has four (so far) known roles in the viral infection cycle. The first is to participate in the assembly of virus particles. There is no current data to suggest this function has any implications for biosafety. The second known function is to suppress anti-pathogen defenses by inhibiting a general cellular system called RNA silencing (Haas et al. 2008). Thirdly, Gene VI has the highly unusual function of transactivating (described below) the long RNA (the 35S RNA) produced by CaMV (Park et al. 2001). Fourthly, unconnected to these other mechanisms, Gene VI has very recently been shown to make plants highly susceptible to a bacterial pathogen (Love et al. 2012). Gene VI does this by interfering with a common anti-pathogen defense mechanism possessed by plants. These latter three functions of Gene VI (and their risk implications) are explained further below:

1) Gene VI Is an Inhibitor of RNA Silencing

 RNA silencing is a mechanism for the control of gene expression at the level of RNA abundance (Bartel 2004). It is also an important antiviral defense mechanism in both plants and animals, and therefore most viruses have evolved genes (like Gene VI) that disable it (Dunoyer and Voinnet 2006).

Gene VI (upper left) precedes the start of the 35S RNA

This attribute of Gene VI raises two obvious biosafety concerns: 1) Gene VI will lead to aberrant gene expression in GMO crop plants, with unknown consequences and, 2) Gene VI will interfere with the ability of plants to defend themselves against viral pathogens. There are numerous experiments showing that, in general, viral proteins that disable gene silencing enhance infection by a wide spectrum of viruses (Latham and Wilson 2008).

2) Gene VI Is a Unique Transactivator of Gene Expression

 Multicellular organisms make proteins by a mechanism in which only one protein is produced by each passage of a ribosome along a messenger RNA (mRNA). Once that protein is completed the ribosome dissociates from the mRNA. However, in a CaMV-infected plant cell, or as a transgene, Gene VI intervenes in this process and directs the ribosome to get back on an mRNA (reinitiate) and produce the next protein in line on the mRNA, if there is one. This property of Gene VI enables Cauliflower Mosaic Virus to produce multiple proteins from a single long RNA (the 35S RNA). Importantly, this function of Gene VI (which is called transactivation) is not limited to the 35S RNA. Gene VI seems able to transactivate any cellular mRNA (Futterer and Hohn 1991; Ryabova et al. 2002). There are likely to be thousands of mRNA molecules having a short or long protein coding sequence following the primary one. These secondary coding sequences could be expressed in cells where Gene VI is expressed. The result will presumably be production of numerous random proteins within cells. The biosafety implications of this are difficult to assess. These proteins could be allergens, plant or human toxins, or they could be harmless. Moreover, the answer will differ for each commercial crop species into which Gene VI has been inserted.

3) Gene VI Interferes with Host Defenses

 A very recent finding, not known by Podevin and du Jardin, is that Gene VI has a second mechanism by which it interferes with plant anti-pathogen defenses (Love et al. 2012). It is too early to be sure about the mechanistic details, but the result is to make plants carrying Gene VI more susceptible to certain pathogens, and less susceptible to others. Obviously, this could impact farmers, however the discovery of an entirely new function for gene VI while EFSA’s paper was in press, also makes clear that a full appraisal of all the likely effects of Gene VI is not currently achievable.

Is There a Direct Human Toxicity Issue?

 When Gene VI is intentionally expressed in transgenic plants, it causes them to become chlorotic (yellow), to have growth deformities, and to have reduced fertility in a dose-dependent manner (Ziljstra et al 1996). Plants expressing Gene VI also show gene expression abnormalities. These results indicate that, not unexpectedly given its known functions, the protein produced by Gene VI is functioning as a toxin and is harmful to plants (Takahashi et al 1989). Since the known targets of Gene VI activity (ribosomes and gene silencing) are also found in human cells, a reasonable concern is that the protein produced by Gene VI might be a human toxin. This is a question that can only be answered by future experiments.

Is Gene VI Protein Produced in GMO Crops?

 Given that expression of Gene VI is likely to cause harm, a crucial issue is whether the actual inserted transgene sequences found in commercial GMO crops will produce any functional protein from the fragment of Gene VI present within the CaMV sequence.

There are two aspects to this question. One is the length of Gene VI accidentally introduced by developers. This appears to vary but most of the 54 approved transgenes contain the same 528 base pairs of the CaMV 35S promoter sequence. This corresponds to approximately the final third of Gene VI. Deleted fragments of Gene VI are active when expressed in plant cells and functions of Gene VI are believed to reside in this final third. Therefore, there is clear potential for unintended effects if this fragment is expressed (e.g. De Tapia et al. 1993; Ryabova et al. 2002; Kobayashi and Hohn 2003).

The second aspect of this question is what quantity of Gene VI could be produced in GMO crops? Once again, this can ultimately only be resolved by direct quantitative experiments. Nevertheless, we can theorize that the amount of Gene VI produced will be specific to each independent insertion event. This is because significant Gene VI expression probably would require specific sequences (such as the presence of a gene promoter and an ATG [a protein start codon]) to precede it and so is likely to be heavily dependent on variables such as the details of the inserted transgenic DNA and where in the plant genome the transgene inserted.

Commercial transgenic crop varieties can also contain superfluous copies of the transgene, including those that are incomplete or rearranged (Wilson et al 2006). These could be important additional sources of Gene VI protein. The decision of regulators to allow such multiple and complex insertion events was always highly questionable, but the realization that the CaMV 35S promoter contains Gene VI sequences provides yet another reason to believe that complex insertion events increase the likelihood of a biosafety problem.

Even direct quantitative measurements of Gene VI protein in individual crop authorizations would not fully resolve the scientific questions, however. No-one knows, for example, what quantity, location or timing of protein production would be of significance for risk assessment, and so answers necessary to perform science-based risk assessment are unlikely to emerge soon.

Big Lessons for Biotechnology

 It is perhaps the most basic assumption in all of risk assessment that the developer of a new product provides regulators with accurate information about what is being assessed. Perhaps the next most basic assumption is that regulators independently verify this information.  We now know, however, that for over twenty years neither of those simple expectations have been met. Major public universities, biotech multinationals, and government regulators everywhere, seemingly did not appreciate the relatively simple possibility that the DNA constructs they were responsible for encoded a viral gene.

This lapse occurred despite the fact that Gene VI was not truly hidden; the relevant information on the existence of Gene VI has been freely available in the scientific literature since well before the first biotech approval (Franck et al 1980). We ourselves have offered specific warnings that viral sequences could contain unsuspected genes (Latham and Wilson 2008). The inability of risk assessment processes to incorporate longstanding and repeated scientific findings is every bit as worrysome as the failure to intellectually anticipate the possibility of overlapping genes when manipulating viral sequences.

This sense of a generic failure is reinforced by the fact that this is not an isolated event. There exist other examples of commercially approved viral sequences having overlapping genes that were never subjected to risk assessment. These include numerous commercial GMOs containing promoter regions of the closely related virus figwort mosaic virus (FMV) which were not considered by Podevin and du Jardin. Inspection of commercial sequence data shows that the commonly used FMV promoter overlaps its own Gene VI (Richins et al 1987). A third example is the virus-resistant potato NewLeaf Plus (RBMT-22-82). This transgene contains approximately 90% of the P0 gene of potato leaf roll virus. The known function of this gene, whose existence was discovered only after US approval, is to inhibit the anti-pathogen defenses of its host (Pfeffer et al 2002). Fortunately, this potato variety was never actively marketed.

A further key point relates to the biotech industry and their campaign to secure public approval and a permissive regulatory environment. This has led them to repeatedly claim, firstly, that GMO technology is precise and predictable; and secondly, that their own competence and self-interest would prevent them from ever bringing potentially harmful products to the market; and thirdly, to assert that only well studied and fully understood transgenes are commercialized. It is hard to imagine a finding more damaging to these claims than the revelations surrounding Gene VI.

Biotechnology, it is often forgotten, is not just a technology. It is an experiment in the proposition that human institutions can perform adequate risk assessments on novel living organisms. Rather than treat that question as primarily a daunting scientific one, we should for now consider that the primary obstacle will be overcoming the much more mundane trap of human complacency and incompetence. We are not there yet, and therefore this incident will serve to reinforce the demands for GMO labeling in places where it is absent.

What Regulators Should Do Now

 This summary of the scientific risk issues shows that a segment of a poorly characterized viral gene never subjected to any risk assessment (until now) was allowed onto the market. This gene is currently present in commercial crops and growing on a large scale. It is also widespread in the food supply.

Even now that EFSA’s own researchers have belatedly considered the risk issues, no one can say whether the public has been harmed, though harm appears a clear scientific possibility. Considered from the perspective of professional and scientific risk assessment, this situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure.

But the saga of Gene VI is not yet over. There is no certainty that further scientific analysis will resolve the remaining uncertainties, or provide reassurance. Future research may in fact increase the level of concern or uncertainty, and this is a possibility that regulators should weigh heavily in their deliberations.

To return to the original choices before EFSA, these were either to recall all CaMV 35S promoter-containing GMOs, or to perform a retrospective risk assessment. This retrospective risk assessment has now been carried out and the data clearly indicate a potential for significant harm. The only course of action consistent with protecting the public and respecting the science is for EFSA, and other jurisdictions, to order a total recall. This recall should also include GMOs containing the FMV promoter and its own overlapping Gene VI.

Footnotes

 1)  EFSA regulators might now be regretting their failure to implement meaningful GMO monitoring. It would be a good question for European politicians to ask EFSA and for the board of EFSA to ask the GMO panel, whose job it is to implement monitoring.

http://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/regulators-discover-a-hidden-viral-gene-in-commercial-gmo-crops/

Detroit’s Vacant Lots Provide “Natural Laboratory” for Studying Soil Processes

By Mary Makarushka

Urban soils have long presented a challenge to the soil scientist. Many heavily urbanized sites have been repeatedly excavated, admixed, cut, filled, and graded over to the point where they look like dirt and debris mixed up in a blender and pressed with a giant trash compactor. When there’s seemingly no rhyme or reason to a site, the soils can be difficult to map and their study may call for some unconventional approaches.

In Detroit, however, soil scientist and geologist Jeffrey L. Howard is finding that some of the city’s vacant lots and demolition do provide a surprising “natural laboratory” for studying certain processes involved in soil formation, particularly the weathering of rocky and mineral objects within the soil layers.
Howard has been analyzing soil pits in the heart of the Motor City since the early 1990s, when he first dug an experimental pit on the site of a demolished building a few blocks away from his office at Wayne State University. Despite the urban setting, he was surprised to notice the similarity between the chunks of mortar and iron nails weathering there and the rocky and mineral materials that undergo oxidation, leaching, erosion, and other weathering processes in naturally occurring soils.

But unlike with natural soils, which may develop over thousands of years, Howard can date the processes in his “natural laboratory” much more narrowly by digging at sites where a dated cornerstone or other historical record can tell him exactly how long those processes have been taking place. “With an urban soil, we know what ‘time zero’ is,” Howard says. “We don’t know that as well in nature.” If he’s working on a vacant lot where the building was demolished in 1969, for example, “that’s when the soil started to form.”
Geologically, Detroit is an ancient lakebed atop 15 stories worth of glacial till, but as a city, its “time zero” begins in 1701, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac secured the area for France by building Fort Pontchartrain beside the strait joining Lakes Erie and Huron. By 1950, it was a city of 1.85 million, a world leader from the Industrial Revolution through World War II at building everything from ships to railroad cars to automobiles to B-24 bombers. Today, thanks in part to a shriveled urban job market and a robust network of freeways leading out to the suburbs, the population has become outwardly mobile, with more than 5 million living in the greater metropolitan area while the city itself has shrunk to around 700,000.
This dramatic contraction has left thousands of surplus houses, abandoned factories, empty office buildings, and crumbling landmarks in its wake. Though the downtown boasts new casinos and sports arenas, an estimated 40 square miles of city land is now vacant—nearly 30 percent of the city’s total area—and every year more buildings are marked for demolition than the city budget can absorb. Pheasants, opossums, and wild turkeys are reportedly making their homes in what once were back yards, and the current mayor has set a goal of taking down 10,000 houses during his term.

Soils Display Surprising Order

Having vast tracts of vacant land is a problem for Detroit as a city, but it does give Howard many suitable research sites. He and his team have dug soil pits in anonymous corner lots off Woodward Avenue as well as at some of Detroit’s most cherished and iconic locations, including the Michigan Central train station and the Brewster–Douglass housing complex, once home to Motown legends Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, and the Temptations.

It was here that Howard first discovered that not only could he find urban pits that weren’t chaotic, but that some pits displayed orderly sequences of distinct soil layers, just as he would expect to find in a non-urban environment. “We saw that when we dug our first pit at the Brewster projects,” Howard says. “I thought, wow, this is kind of cool.” Then it happened again and again in one pit after another: “I thought, this can’t be right. I mean, it can’t be this consistent in downtown Detroit.”

Using the alphabetical system that soil scientists use to describe soil layers, or “horizons,” Howard’s derelict building sites often display an A horizon (the dark, uppermost layer colloquially called “topsoil”), and below that, in the subsoils, a C horizon developed in the layer of fill material that was brought in to help level the site and ready it for future construction. Under that layer, Howard then typically finds another A and C horizon of the buried native soil.

Finding those orderly layers meant that Howard could develop an “urban chronosequence” for each site. A chronosequence is a series of related soils whose properties differ primarily as a result of age. This proved interesting because while the sites were consistent in terms of having soil layers, variations in other factors—such as age, location, precipitation, contaminants, and the amount and composition of the fill materials—made the layers themselves very different from site to site.

Train Station Soils Yield Interesting Results

Michigan Central Station was the city’s main railroad terminal from 1913 on. Built as a Beaux Arts triumph of marble-walled waiting rooms with grand vaulted ceilings, it was for 75 years many peoples’ first experience of Detroit. Though today its interior is stripped of every salable material and its 18-story tower is a showcase of broken windows, it still inspires tremendous civic affection and ambitious plans for its restoration.

In the summer of 2011, Jeff Howard joined Wayne State archaeologist Tom Killion on a dig in Roosevelt Park, where acres of formal gardens once spread like a welcome mat in front of the train station. Hundreds of wooden houses from the 1860s and 1870s were demolished to make way first for the station and then a few years later, for the park, and Killion’s class dug numerous test pits in search of archaeological artifacts, foundation walls, and other landmarks.

At 27 cm, the topsoil is extraordinarily thick, extremely dark in color, and dense with worm casts. More surprising, the first layer of subsoil is colored a deep red but is not clay. The mystery lessens when the archaeologists uncover a buried sprinkler system date-stamped “1916.”

“It’s like a tropical soil in terms of probably the amount of water they were putting on it,” Howard says. “That’s why it’s got this humongous A horizon.” The well-watered site was full of 19th-century wrought-iron nails, which oxidized and lent a rusty color to the subsoil. Many natural soils and subsoils have a reddish color due to the presence of iron oxides—think of the red clay of Georgia—but those iron oxides are not the result of rusting nails.

The team digs easily through the disintegrating cement and mortar that has also leached into the subsoil layers. Calcium carbonate is present in natural soils, too—particularly in dry areas, like the American West, where it tends to result from the weathering of substances like limestone or chalk, not from disintegrating cement, as at these urban sites.

As for the deep black color of the topsoil, Howard is investigating whether it could be tinted by soot from the coal that once powered the railroads and heated people’s homes and blackened the city’s stone facades. That’s why Howard calls these urban soil sites a “natural laboratory.” “We have a chance to look at weathering processes, which are natural, with a chronosequence that we can really date,” he says.
Besides being able to run a clock on natural weathering processes, Howard says, “We’re also looking at weathering reactions involving things that you don’t normally see in soils and we don’t know anything about.” A good example is some peculiar artifacts that come out of the train station site, one of which appears at first to be a lumpy rock about the size of a hand, but at the center of which they discover an iron nail—a wrought-iron nail that has undergone pedocementation. Iron leached out from it into the soil and then was oxidized, cementing the sandy soil around the nail.

The people who installed the sprinkler system and tended the garden “manipulated the conditions,” he says. “They didn’t know that’s what they were doing, but scientifically, now we’re able to see something that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. And that’s huge.”

Soil Artifacts May Have Beneficial Effect on Health

Howard’s research also suggests that some of that underground construction debris may actually be having a beneficial effect in certain polluted soils. Detroit’s industrial heritage has left its soils—like those of many cities—contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, from coal burning, smelting, lead paint, and leaded gasoline.

Although lead paint and leaded gas have been discontinued and the numbers of children with lead poisoning has been dropping since the 1960s, urban lead contamination remains a public health hazard. A 2010 report on the Detroit public school system found that nearly 60 percent of 39,199 children tested had a history of lead poisoning (lead levels of 10 micrograms/deciliter of blood or more).

One ongoing source of lead exposure is contaminated particles from windblown topsoil or demolition dust that can be tracked into homes from yards and sidewalks and be incorporated into household dust. Moreover, there is a flourishing urban farm and garden movement in Detroit, with many people eager to grow their own food. Drifting contaminated soils can settle on the leaves of vegetables and other plants.
This contamination—and research into possible soil remediation strategies—is of great concern to Howard. In a paper in Environmental Pollution in 2011 (with Dorota Olszewska), he noted that both calcium carbonate and iron oxide—by-products of the weathering of cement and iron nails, respectively—act as immobilizing agents for lead. They chemically combine with lead and prevent it from leaching into groundwater or being ingested in dust. “Lead loves carbonate. Lead loves weathered iron,” Howard says. “Maybe we should be leaving these artifacts in the soil because maybe it would be beneficial from the standpoint of immobilizing the lead.”

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=72781

Green Roof Industry Grows by 24 Percent in 2012

 

NOAA La Jolla - Southwest Fisheries Laboratory Green Roof designed by Jeffrey L. Bruce & Company

 

Washington DC Is #1 - Installing Over 1.3 Million Square Feet in 2012

Toronto, May 1, 2013 – Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC) is pleased to announce a 24 percent growth rate in installed green roofs in 2012 as part of the results of the Annual Green Roof Industry Survey.

 “On the heels of a huge 115 per cent growth rate in 2011, the green roof industry still grew by 24 per cent in 2012,” said GRHC founder & president Steven W. Peck. “Green roofs are being embraced around North America, by policy makers, designers, building owners and developers because they deliver multiple proven public and private benefits,” he added.

In 2012, the Washington DC Metropolitan Region installed the most green roofs in North America with 1,326,872 square feet. Washington DC adopted a number of public policies that support green roof investment.

 “The District is proud to lead the nation in installation of green roofs," said Mayor Vincent C. Gray. "Green infrastructure is an investment that is showing real benefits in the District and green roofs play a major part in turning the vision of a Sustainable DC into reality. Green roofs support green jobs, reduce and reuse stormwater, and create beautiful amenities that improve the quality of life and health of our residents."

“There are many factors that are leading to this remarkable growth,” said Jeffrey L. Bruce, GRP, Chair, GRHC, “but undoubtedly the almost 600 accredited Green Roof Professionals (GRPs) in the market are using their expertise to drive market growth.”

 

To obtain a copy of the Annual Green Roof Industry Survey for 2012, go to www.greenroofs.org.

New York's Green Roofs Are Crawling With Fungi

Demand for green roofs might plummet if they became known as "fungal roofs." But that is what they are, at least in New York – and contrary to what it may sound like, it's not a bad thing.

The world just became a little more aware of the hidden-but-teeming biomass of green roofs thanks to the intrepid work of researchers from Barnard College, Columbia University, Fordham and the University of Colorado. Recently, these guys found themselves wondering if the gardens in the sky might support different kinds of life than the stuff at dog-pee level. It's a realm into which few scientific minds have tread. While green roofs as heat-island dampeners and rainwater-runoff plugs have been widely discussed, the extent to which they serve as urban "biodiversity reservoirs" (in the researchers' words) is something of a mystery.

So in the summer of 2011, the team set out to test the soil composition of 10 green roofs stationed at recreation centers throughout the five boroughs: Using soil corers, they hunted for fungi, because fungal communities play a key role in a roof garden's health and longevity. For comparison's sake, they also took samples from five city parks near some of the roofs, including Central Park and the High Line. A little magic from "inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy" at Alabama's Auburn University Soil Testing Laboratory, as well as a dollop of phospholipid fatty-acid extraction and Illumina-dye sequencing, and they had their results, which were published this month in the journal PLOS ONE.

So what were the conclusions? For one, these sun-kissed carpets of gray goldenrod and smooth blue aster are absolutely crawling with fungi. The researchers logged an average of 109 types of fungi per roof, such as Glomus, Acaulospora, Rhizophagus and Funneliformis, suggesting that green roofs can indeed contribute to urban biodiversity. As they explained:

"We found that green roofs supported a diverse fungal community, with numerous taxa belonging to fungal groups capable of surviving in disturbed and polluted habitats. Across roofs, there was significant biogeographical clustering of fungal communities, indicating that community assembly of roof microbes across the greater New York City area is locally variable. Green roof fungal communities were compositionally distinct from city parks and only 54% of the green roof taxa were also found in the park soils."

In other words, the roofs are home to fungi not typically given to squelching around in normal parkland. They also seem to be better for growing stuff you might, you know, put in your mouth: While the soil in New York's parks showed a greater biomass of microbes, it also tested higher for heavy metals, a scourge of urban gardens that can be unhealthy if consumed in larger quantities.

Here's a comparison the researchers put together illustrating how the roofs stacked up against the parks, in terms of the abundance of fungal phyla:

Needless to say, this is hardly the first news of green roofs supporting life. The elevated gardens are routinely patrolled by insects and in some cases much larger fauna. In Australia, for instance, the Adelaide Zoo maintains several grassy roofs that are designed as homes for urban plants and wildlife, like reptiles, insects and bats.

And an immense green roof in the U.K., mounted on a wastewater treatment facility near Brighton, attracts seagulls and crows that pluck at its quaking grass in search of food. To fight those hungry birds, the roof's overseers have released even more animals over the roof – ferocious goshawks, a golden eagle and even a great horned owl.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/03/new-yorks-green-roofs-are-crawling-fungus/4960/

How Urban Parks Enhance Your Brain

As the authors themselves conclude, the results really demonstrate, above all else, the salutary effects of a natural environment. "In sum, we have shown that simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control. To consider the availability of nature as merely an amenity fails to recognize the vital importance of nature in effective cognitive functioning."

The second conclusion, more germane for our purposes, is that "incorporating nearby nature into urban environments may counteract" some of the cognitive strains placed on the brain by the city, the authors write. Recent research has suggested economic and crime benefits of urban greenery; now advocates can legitimately add "public health" to their list of arguments. Read more:


http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/07/how-urban-parks-enhance-your-brain/2586/