chemistry
Mystery water pollutant revealed (don't panic)
Water systems use chlorine to kill pathogens that cause disease. But chlorine reacts with bits of natural matter in water to form compounds that are associated with cancers, miscarriage, and low birth weight. So the EPA in 1998 enacted a rule that led many water systems to switch to using chloramines to disinfect water instead, avoiding those toxic byproducts.
It turns out that chloramine disinfection creates a different set of disinfection byproducts — one of which has been known to exist for 40 years, yet its identity remained a mystery. In a Science study published yesterday, a team of scientists identified Cl–N–NO2- , or chloronitramide anion, as the mystery compound. They also found it in U.S. drinking water samples at toxicologically relevant concentrations. Though the compound looks similar to others that are toxic, the exact toxicity of the compound has yet to be studied.
But do not panic: While we don't know exactly how worried we should be about chloronitramide anion's health effects, we do know that disinfecting water prevents diseases like cholera and dysentery, which are both deadly. It will take federal support to fund NIH and EPA toxicology studies that will tell us what levels of chloronitramide anion are safe, what alternatives are available, and whether household activated carbon water filters can indeed remove the compound from water, as the researchers suspect.
nutrition
Asian food as medicine
My dad has said that for my ancestors — and for him growing up — meat was simply to flavor the rice, since the inexpensive rice (and water or soup) was what could fill you up. But as the nonprofit Asian Health Services notes, when Asian immigrants fled war and poverty for the U.S., they found a "land of abundance" where meat is plentiful and daily life is more sedentary. Combined with seeing whole grains as "peasant food" and eating fewer vegetables, the combination can be a recipe for bad health.
That's where cooking classes run by Asian Health Services, based in Oakland, Calif., come in. Classes in English, Cantonese, and Vietnamese teach people how to boost flavor without relying on unhealthy additives and modify cultural dishes with "healthful swaps" that retain the "flavor of home." The program won a grant to expand the initiative from a "Food as Medicine" incubator contest at last week's Milken Summit, hosted by the National Association for Community Health Centers and medical devices company Abbott, and aims to reach more people on social media via a partnership with bilingual, James Beard Award-winning Chinese food influencer family Made With Lau.
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images
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