Half of tested caviar products from Europe are illegal, and some aren’t even caviar

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: 

A PILE OF STURGEONS BEING SOLD AT A FISH MARKED IN EASTERN EUROPE.

view more 

CREDIT: WWF GEORGE CARACAS

Wild caviar, a pricey delicacy made from sturgeon eggs, has been illegal for decades since poaching brought the fish to the brink of extinction. Today, legal, internationally tradeable caviar can only come from farmed sturgeon, and there are strict regulations in place to help protect the species. However, by conducting genetic and isotope analyses on caviar samples from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine—nations bordering the remaining wild sturgeon populations—a team of sturgeon experts found evidence that these regulations are actively being broken. Their results, publishing on November 20 in the journal Current Biology, show that half of the commercial caviar products they sampled are illegal, and some don’t even contain any trace of sturgeon.

“The conservation status of the Danube sturgeon populations renders each individual important for their survival, and the observed intensity of poaching undermines any conservation effort,” write the researchers, led by Arne Ludwig of the Leibniz-Institute for Zoo & Wildlife Research.

In Europe, there are four remaining sturgeon species, including Beluga, Russian, stellate, and sterlet, that are capable of producing caviar. The last remaining wild populations of these species in the European Union can be found in the Danube River and the Black Sea. Each species has been protected since 1998 under CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. In 2000, their CITES listing was accompanied by a strict, international labeling system for all caviar products designed to stop illegal trade. Despite these protections, it was widely known from local anecdotal accounts that illegal poaching is still happening, cites the team, even though no formal investigations had been conducted.

To find out the true source of the commercially sold caviar products being produced in native sturgeon regions, the researchers bought caviar both online and in person from a wide variety of sources including local markets, shops, restaurants, bars, and aquaculture facilities. They also included five samples that had been seized by authorities. In total, they collected and analyzed 149 samples of caviar and sturgeon meat.

After analyzing each sample’s DNA and isotope patterns, the team found that 21% of the samples came from wild-caught sturgeons and that these wild-caught fish were sold in all of the countries studied. They also found that 29% of the samples violated CITES regulations and trade laws, which included caviar that listed the wrong species of sturgeon or the wrong country of origin, and categorized another 32% of samples as “customer deception,” such as samples declared as wild products that actually originated from aquaculture.  

“Our results indicate an ongoing demand for wild sturgeon products, which is alarming, since these products endanger wild sturgeon populations,” write the researchers. “The persistent demand fuels poaching and indicates that consumers do not fully accept aquaculture products as a substitute. In addition, caviar being sold in violation of CITES and EU obligations questions the effectiveness of controls in general and the labeling system in particular.”

Three of the samples, served in Romania in a dish called “sturgeon soup,” weren’t sturgeon at all. Instead, the researchers identified the fish as European catfish and Nile perch.

The authors suggest that the large volume of illegal poaching activity could be an indicator that local seafood vendors are lacking adequate income opportunities, which might increase the pressure to engage in illegal fishing activity.  They also point to the fact that there is likely a lack of effective law enforcement in these regions, either because stopping illegal poaching isn’t a priority for local authorities or because they don’t have the tools to prove a fish’s illegal origin. But regardless of the reasons, they stress the importance of taking action, and quickly.

“Although poaching and illegal wildlife trade are often considered a problem in developing countries, these findings bear evidence that a high ratio of poached sturgeon products originates from EU and accession candidate states,” write the authors. “The control of caviar and sturgeon trade in the EU and candidate member states urgently needs improvement to ensure that Danube sturgeon populations will have a future.”

###

This research was supported by funding from an EU-LIFE project.

Current Biology, Ludwig et al. “Poaching and illegal trade of Danube sturgeons.” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01316-7

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Sturgeons being descaled for sale at an Eastern European fish market.

CREDIT

WWF George Caracas

---

JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.067 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Poaching and illegal trade of Danube sturgeons

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Nov-2023

 

Litigating the Pandemic

How COVID-19 wound up in the U.S. court system

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY

When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United States, healthcare workers faced new demands, childcare and grocery store workers became essential workers, businesses shut down, and churches and school doors closed. The pandemic also arrived amidst protests over police violence. Deep partisan divisions and record natural disasters amplified these challenges. The national government offered new funding for businesses and individuals and public health guidance, and local governments issued guidelines for gathering in public. 

Litigating the Pandemic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), a new book by Susan Sterett, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, takes a closer look at the complex world of litigation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the litigation history of issues that long predated the pandemic. The book is part of the University of Pennsylvania Press's "Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster" series, which explores how environmental, technological, and health risks are created, managed, and analyzed in different contexts. 

“This book tracks multiple fields in which pandemic measures brought litigation. They are not cases about liability for getting infected at work but cases about insurance and mitigation measures amid elections, contests over the free exercise of religion, and getting people out of prison. All have a history and a set of actors that long predate the pandemic,” Sterett writes in Litigating the Pandemic. 

“By turning to litigation, this book describes links between governing institutions and the pandemic—problems in one could amplify the other. What emerges from the legal process can be patterned differently than when one begins with the president or a leading public health official.”

Disaster cascades

Sterett draws on the work of environmental, political, and public health scientists and critical disaster studies to lay the groundwork for a broader understanding of disaster cascades rippling through our divided institutions. Insurance companies are a key example. During the pandemic, insurance companies were not ready to cover business losses under disaster policies during a pandemic, which affected business owners, employees, and customers.

Disaster cascades are not only physical events but also include the systems in place communities use to take care of each other daily. Around the world, courts govern routine and big political issues, from insurance to democracy. Courts and their priorities and ways of assessing evidence and law will continue to play roles well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and current climate change.

“Following one causal case also vastly understates the actors involved and who is responsible for what. No one causal agent is responsible for the spread of the virus among multigenerational households or the climate change health experts link it to,” writes Sterrett. “Closure orders, immigration, and state decisions about liability exemptions all include opportunities for lawsuits that attribute responsibility and advance material or ideological advantage for those suing.”

Courts and decision-making

In 2020 and 2021, the increasing partisan divide led conservatives and liberals to sue over long-fought issues. The Supreme Court and lower courts heard cases on religion and property rights. In the state courts, cases were filed to release elderly incarcerated people at risk of serious illness. Expanded voting practices, such as mail-in ballots, were also contested in court.

“The pandemic created an opportunity for groups motivated by preexisting political goals, including goals concerning religion and mass incarceration,” Sterett explains. “Some constitutional claims did go to the Supreme Court during this time period: cases on voting rules, church closures, and the moratorium on evicting people from housing during the pandemic.”

Throughout the pandemic, law firms and law professors aggregated cases people filed in state and federal courts about the pandemic. Sterett uses this data in Litigating the Pandemic to provide an in-depth, 360-degree view into how the U.S. court systems governed in the pandemic. Insurance remains a flashpoint for governing in a changing climate. The place of religion and expertise also continues to be a focus of activism for conservative litigators. 

“The Bill of Rights does not require freedom from quarantines, closures, or vaccines. The flexibility of legal standards means that officials can frame them for their own purposes,” writes Sterett. “Hijacking the meaning of freedom as something we experience individually, without common care or responsibility and involving a high tolerance for death and illness, is not a triumph of either democracy or legal rights. Moreover, it results from governance decisions that refuse to take our interconnectedness with one another and our world seriously.”

 

More than 1,100 physicians, health care professionals, and scientists boycott medical journal

Business Announcement

PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 1,100 experts have joined the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in boycotting the medical journal Nutrients until it stops publishing egregious animal experiments that could have been ethically conducted in humans.

The boycott, which also applies to Nutrients’ publisher, MDPI, comes after repeated requests to the journal’s editors asking them to institute sound editorial practices.

A letter sent to those editors today, Nov. 20, 2023, says “As a community of scientists and health care professionals, we have lost confidence in Nutrients and MDPI. We will not publish in Nutrients or other MDPI journals nor serve as reviewers until Nutrients implements a policy of publishing only studies using human participants or human data for nutrition research.”

Last year, more than 800 medical professionals and scientists contacted Nutrients saying they’d lost confidence in the journal because its animal experiments violate its own ethical guidelines, which require the “replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible.”  

A review by the Physicians Committee showed the rule is routinely ignored.

As an example, this recent Nutrients study used 50 preterm piglets to research necrotizing enterocolitis in infants. Pigs were fed different infant formulas and human milk with and without an added probiotic and had their gut microbiota analyzed. All of them were killed at the end of the experiment.

Numerous clinical trials in humans have already shown that probiotic supplements can significantly decrease this condition in infants, said Janine McCarthy, MPH, science policy program manager for the Physicians Committee. “Therefore, the experiment clearly violated the 3Rs principle of replacement, as well as Nutrients’ own ethical guidelines.”

Dr. Elizabeth Dean, a professor emeritus in the department of physical therapy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and former reviewer for Nutrients, signed the boycott letter.

“When I became aware of the extensive animal use, especially where the objectives could have been achieved using human-based approaches, I decided to investigate further because I couldn’t compromise my own ethics,” she said. Ultimately, Dean told Nutrients editors the research they publish is “sadistic, cruel, and unnecessary, and that there are superior means to conducting research, not just alternatives to using animals.” With this, she resigned. “I expressed my regrets to the editor-in-chief,” she said.

Nutrients charges authors some $3,200 to get published, which means it makes more than $16 million annually in authors’ fees. In 2018, the journals’ senior leadership quit, citing a lack of commitment to scientific integrity.

Richard Schmidt, MD, an obstetrician and gynecologist who specializes in fertility problems in Mountainview, Calif., is among those who are boycotting the journal.

“When it comes to the system Nutrients uses for increasing the flow of articles without discrimination for the types of studies it’s publishing, there is a clear lack of adherence to the journal’s own guidelines. This is morally wrong,” Dr. Schmidt said. “I absolutely think it’s setting a scary precedent for a business model that has real potential to corrupt the whole research arena.”.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.

 

Urban environmental exposures drive increased breast cancer incidence

Analysis of breast cancer incidence and stages shows differences between urban and rural rates based on environmental quality and disease stage

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

DURHAM, N.C. – A Duke Health analysis of breast cancer in North Carolina showed that the state’s urban counties had higher overall incidences of disease than rural counties, especially at early stages upon diagnosis.

 

The findings, appearing in the journal Scientific Reports, serve as a national template for assessing the impact of poor environmental quality across different stages of breast cancer, which is marked by highly diverse origins and mechanisms for spreading. North Carolina serves as a good model; it has a diverse population of 10 million spread over 100 rural and urban counties with varying environmental conditions.

 

“Individual environmental contaminants have long been associated with breast cancer, but we have limited understanding of how multiple exposures simultaneously affect this disease,” said senior author Gayathri Devi, Ph.D., a professor in Duke’s departments of Surgery and Pathology and Program Director of the Duke Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer at the Duke Cancer Institute.

 

“Our study explored the incidence of breast cancer within the context of the Environmental Quality Index (EQI) – a county-by-county assessment of air, water, land, built environment, as well as the sociodemographic environment,” Devi said. “This type of data analysis allows for a high-level look at broader environmental factors and health outcomes.”

 

Devi and colleagues -- including lead author Larisa M. Gearhart-Serna, who steered the research as a Ph.D. candidate at Duke – analyzed the EQI data alongside breast cancer incidence rates from the North Carolina Central Cancer Registry. The team further evaluated the different breast cancer stages – in situ and localized (early stages), regional and distant (later stages) -- stratified by rural–urban status.

 

“In an earlier study, we assessed how environmental conditions impact the risk of a breast cancer patient having later stage invasive disease compared to non-invasive carcinoma in-situ,” Gearhart-Serna said. “This is a continuation of that work to determine whether

environmental quality and an urban environment are related to the development of more advanced tumors in a community and, if so, what stages.”

 

In counties with poor overall environmental quality compared to those with good environmental quality, total breast cancer incidence was higher by 10.82 cases per 100,000 persons. This association was most pronounced for localized breast cancer.  

 

The researchers also found that community level effects of environmental exposures -- notably in those counties with poor land quality, especially in the urban setting -- were associated with higher rates of total breast cancer incidence. The land EQI includes exposures from sources such as pesticides, and toxic releases from industrial, agricultural and animal facilities.

 

Breast cancer incidence rates were also higher for later stage disease and total breast cancer among counties with higher populations of Black residents. This is relevant as global incidence of aggressive breast cancers is higher in Black women.

 

The analysis found that higher mammography screening rates were associated with lower regional breast cancer incidence rates, which is relevant because improved screening is thought to decrease diagnoses of later-stage disease.

 

“Our analyses indicate significant associations between environmental quality and breast cancer incidence, which differ by breast cancer stage and urbanicity, identifying a critical need to assess cumulative environmental exposures in the context of cancer stage,” Gearhart-Serna said. “This has the potential to develop measures to reduce disease incidence in vulnerable communities.”

 

The research is a result of a long-standing collaboration between Duke’s School of Medicine and Nicholas School of the Environment. 

 

In addition to Gearhart-Serna and Devi, study authors include Brittany A. Mills, Hillary Hsu,

Oluwadamilola M. Fayanju, and Kate Hoffman.

 

The study received funding support in part from the National Institutes of Health (P30-CA014236: the National Cancer Institute (3P20CA202925-04S2); and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (T32-ESO21432-05).  

 

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

 

Improved air quality could enhance natural carbon sequestration by plants

Plants capture more carbon on the weekends when industrial production is decreased, and fewer people commute

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE

Washington, DC—Reducing pollution from aerosol particles would improve air quality. It could also increase the amount of sunlight accessible to plants—enhancing their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and mitigate climate change.

New work from a Carnegie-led team including Liyin He, Lorenzo Rosa, and Joe Berry used satellites to measure both photosynthetic activity and aerosol pollution in Europe, demonstrating that plants capture more carbon on the weekends when industrial production is decreased, and fewer people commute.

Their findings are published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Plants have a special ability, called photossynthesis, by which they convert the Sun’s energy into chemical energy. To accomplish this, they take in carbon dioxide from the air and fix it into carbohydrates and fats.

This everyday process is a huge help in the fight against climate change caused by human activity. Plants pull some of our carbon pollution out of the atmosphere and retain it as a biological matter, preventing it from contributing to global warming.

“However, this can be diminished by poor air quality caused by aerosols, tiny particles that are spewed into the atmosphere when we commute and burn fossil fuels or wood,” He explained. “They have negative effects on air quality, which impacts human health. They can also scatter or absorb sunlight, which would affect a plant similarly to being stuck in the shade.”

Previous work has shown that aerosol pollution can suppress agricultural crop yields by as much as 20 percent.

The research team—which included David Lobell and Yuan Wang of Stanford University; Yi Yin, Yitong Yao, and Christian Frankenberg of Caltech; and Russell Doughty of the University of Oklahoma—used the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite to make measurements of photosynthetic activity in Europe.

Because one step of the photosynthetic process releases fluorescence, it can be seen from space and measured by satellites—a game-changing research method that Berry and Frankenberg played a central role in developing about a decade ago, along with collaborators from Caltech.  

The researchers correlated their photosynthesis findings with aerosol measurements taken by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite and used modeling to understand the relationship.

“We focused on Europe due to an established pattern of human activity throughout the week as compared to other regions,” Rosa said. “Additionally, many European ecosystems are already experiencing negative effects from climate change and European countries have set ambitious goals for cutting carbon pollution.”

Their work showed a weekly cycle of photosynthetic activity, which peaked on the weekend and diminished during the week, the exact inverse of the patterns of aerosol pollution. They also found a similar pattern during COVID-19 lockdowns when people were sheltering at home instead of commuting.

If particulate pollution could be curtailed throughout the week, maintaining weekend levels of photosynthetic activity all the time, it would remove between 40 and 60 megatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trapping it in biological matter. It would also increase agricultural productivity without increasing the amount of land used for growing crops.

“These findings have major policy implications for European governments who are working on a variety of systems to capture about 500 megatons per year of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it,” Rosa concluded. “Our work shows that improving air quality could also help meet climate goals.”

This work is part of Rosa’s overall research program, which aims to understand the agricultural challenges posed by climate change and assess various ways to improve agricultural sustainability. Rosa joined Carnegie in 2022 as a Staff Associate—a prestigious program designed to give early career scientists the freedom and independence to pursue bold and unconventional research. Since then, his efforts have included analyses of irrigation strategies, soil moisture-retention techniques, and water storage needs, as well as evaluating solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of fertilizer production and achieve net-zero emissions in agriculture.

---

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

20-Nov-2023

 

‘Woman the hunter’: Studies aim to correct history

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

 

IMAGE: 

CARA OCOBOCK, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE HUMAN ENERGETICS LABORATORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

When Cara Ocobock was a young child, she often wondered at the images in movies, books, comics and cartoons portraying prehistoric men and women as such: “man the hunter” with spear in hand, accompanied by “woman the gatherer” with a baby strapped to her back and a basket of crop seeds in hand.

“This was what everyone was used to seeing,” Ocobock said. “This was the assumption that we’ve all just had in our minds and that was carried through in our museums of natural history.”

Many years later, Ocobock, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Human Energetics Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, found herself as a human biologist studying physiology and prehistoric evidence and discovering that many of these conceptions about early women and men weren’t quite accurate. The accepted reconstruction of human evolution assumed males were biologically superior, but that interpretation wasn’t telling the whole story.

Relying on both physiological and archaeological evidence, Ocobock and her research partner, Sarah Lacy, an anthropologist with expertise in biological archaeology at the University of Delaware, recently published two studies simultaneously in the journal American Anthropologist. Their joint research, coming from these two angles, found that not only did prehistoric women engage in the practice of hunting, but their female anatomy and biology would have made them intrinsically better suited for it.

Of her and her co-author’s dual-pronged research, which was the cover story for the November issue of Scientific American, Ocobock said, “Rather than viewing it as a way of erasing or rewriting history, our studies are trying to correct the history that erased women from it.”

Female physiology and estrogen, the ‘unsung hero of life’

In their physiological study, the two researchers explained that prehistoric females were quite capable of performing the arduous physical task of hunting prey and were likely able to hunt successfully over prolonged periods of time. From a metabolic standpoint, Ocobock explained, the female body is better suited for endurance activity, “which would have been critical in early hunting because they would have had to run the animals down into exhaustion before actually going in for the kill.”

Two huge contributors to that enhanced metabolism are hormones — in this case, estrogen and adiponectin, which are typically present in higher quantities in female bodies than in male. These two hormones play a critical role in enabling the female body to modulate glucose and fat, a function that is key in athletic performance.

Estrogen, in particular, helps regulate fat metabolism by encouraging the body to use its stored fat for energy before using up its carbohydrate stores. “Since fat contains more calories than carbs do, it’s a longer, slower burn,” Ocobock explained, “which means that the same sustained energy can keep you going longer and can delay fatigue.”

Estrogen also protects the body’s cells from damage during heat exposure due to extreme physical activity. “Estrogen is really the unsung hero of life, in my mind,” Ocobock said. “It is so important for cardiovascular and metabolic health, brain development and injury recovery.”

Adiponectin also amplifies fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrate and/or protein metabolism, allowing the body to stay the course during extended periods, especially over great distances. In this way, adiponectin is able to protect the muscles from breaking down and keeps them in better condition for sustained exercise, Ocobock explained.

The female body structure itself is another element Ocobock and Lacy found to be of advantage in terms of endurance and effectiveness for prehistoric hunters. “With the typically wider hip structure of the female, they are able to rotate their hips, lengthening their steps,” Ocobock detailed. “The longer steps you can take, the ‘cheaper’ they are metabolically, and the farther you can get, faster.

“When you look at human physiology this way, you can think of women as the marathon runners versus men as the powerlifters.”

Archaeology tells more of the story of ‘woman the hunter’

Several archaeological findings indicate prehistoric women not only shared in the resulting injuries of the dangerous business of close-contact hunting, but that it was an activity held in high esteem and valued by them. “We have constructed Neandertal hunting as an up-close-and-personal style of hunting,” Ocobock said, “meaning that hunters would often have to get up underneath their prey in order to kill them. As such, we find that both males and females have the same resulting injuries when we look at their fossil records.”

Ocobock described those traumatic injuries as being similar to those received by modern-day rodeo clowns — injuries to the head and chest where they were kicked by the animal, or to the limbs where they were bitten or received a fracture. “We find these patterns and rates of wear and tear equally in both women and men,” she said. “So they were both participating in ambush-style hunting of large game animals.”

Second, Ocobock said, there is evidence of early female hunters in the Holocene period in Peru where females were buried with hunting weapons. “You don’t often get buried with something unless it was important to you or was something that you used frequently in your life.

“Furthermore, we have no reason to believe that prehistoric women abandoned their hunting while pregnant, breastfeeding or carrying children,” Ocobock added, “nor do we see in the deep past any indication that a strict sexual division of labor existed.”

The bottom line, Ocobock noted, was that “hunting belonged to everyone, not just to males,” especially in prehistoric societies where survival was an all-hands-on-deck activity. “There weren’t enough people living in groups to be specialized in different tasks. Everyone had to be a generalist to survive.”

Fighting bias

“This revelation is especially important in the current political moment of our society where sex and gender are in a spotlight,” Ocobock said. “And I want people to be able to change these ideas of female physical inferiority that have been around for so long.”

When talking about reconstructing the past in order to better understand it — and to conduct “good science” — Ocobock said scientists have to be extremely careful about how modern-day bias can seep into one’s interpretations of the past. She cautioned that researchers have to be aware of their own biases and make sure they are asking the proper questions so the questions don’t lead them down the road of looking for what it is they want to see.

“We have to change the biases we bring to the table, or at least to give pause before we assign those biases. And in a broader sense, you cannot outrightly assume somebody’s abilities based on whatever sex or gender you have assigned by looking at them,” Ocobock concluded 

---

JOURNAL

American Anthropologist

DOI

10.1111/aman.13915 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Woman the hunter: The physiological evidence

 

High temperatures may have caused over 70,000 excess deaths in Europe in 2022

New study develops theoretical framework to re-evaluate initial estimates of mortality attributable to record summer temperatures in 2022

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BARCELONA INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH (ISGLOBAL)

The burden of heat-related mortality during the summer of 2022 in Europe may have exceeded 70,000 deaths according to a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a research centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation. The authors of the study, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, revised upwards initial estimates of the mortality associated with record temperatures in 2022 on the European continent.

In an earlier study, published in Nature Medicine, the same team used epidemiological models applied to weekly temperature and mortality data in 823 regions in 35 European countries and estimated the number of heat-related premature deaths in 2022 to be 62,862. In that study, the authors acknowledged that the use of weekly data would be expected to underestimate heat-related mortality, and pointed out that daily time-series data are required to accurately estimate the impact of high temperatures on mortality.

The objective of the new study was to develop a theoretical framework capable of quantifying the errors arising from the use of aggregated data, such as weekly and monthly temperature and mortality time-series. Models based on temporally aggregated data are useful because aggregated data are available in real-time from institutions such as Eurostat, facilitating quantification of the health hazard within a few days of its emergence. To develop a theoretical framework, the research team aggregated daily temperatures and mortality records from 147 regions in 16 European countries. They then analysed and compared the estimates of heat- and cold-related mortality by different levels of aggregation: daily, weekly, 2-weekly and monthly.

Analysis revealed differences in epidemiological estimates according to the time scale of aggregation. In particular, it was found that weekly, 2-weekly and monthly models underestimated the effects of heat and cold as compared to the daily model, and that the degree of underestimation increased with the length of the aggregation period. Specifically, for the period 1998-2004, the daily model estimated an annual cold and heat-related mortality of 290,104 and 39,434 premature deaths, respectively, while the weekly model underestimated these numbers by 8.56% and 21.56%, respectively.

“It is important to note that the differences were very small during periods of extreme cold and heat, such as the summer of 2003, when the underestimation by the weekly data model was only 4.62%,” explains Joan Ballester Claramunt, the ISGlobal researcher who leads the European Research Council’s EARLY-ADAPT project.

The team used this theoretical framework to revise the mortality burden attributed to the record temperatures experienced in 2022 in their earlier study. According to the calculations made using the new methodological approach, that study underestimated the heat-related mortality by 10.28%, which would mean that the actual heat-related mortality burden in 2022, estimated using the daily data model, was 70,066 deaths, and not 62,862 deaths as originally estimated.

Using weekly data to analyse the effects of temperatures in the short term

“In general, we do not find models based on monthly aggregated data useful for estimating the short-term effects of ambient temperatures,” explains Ballester. “However, models based on weekly data do offer sufficient precision in mortality estimates to be useful in real-time practice in epidemiological surveillance and to inform public policies such as, for example, the activation of emergency plans for reducing the impact of heat waves and cold spells.”

It is an advantage in this area of research to be able to use weekly data since investigators often encounter bureaucratic obstacles that make it difficult or impossible to design large-scale epidemiological studies based on daily data. According to Ballester, when daily data is not available, the use of weekly data, which are easily accessible for Europe in real time, is a solution that can offer “a good approximation of the estimates obtained using the daily data model”.

 

Reference
Ballester J, van Daalen KR, Chen Z, Achebak H, Antó JM, Basagaña X, Robine JM, Herrmann FR, Tonne C, Semenza JC, Lowe R. The effect of temporal data aggregation to assess the impact of changing temperatures in Europe: an epidemiological modelling study. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. Nov 2023. doi: 10.1016/j.lanepe.2023.100779

---

JOURNAL

The Lancet Regional Health - Europe

DOI

10.1016/j.lanepe.2023.100779 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The effect of temporal data aggregation to assess the impact of changing temperatures in Europe: an epidemiological modelling study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

21-Nov-2023

A PREDETERMINED OUTCOME

Manning tells Conservative MPs his COVID-19 panel report could help defeat the Liberals

Alberta NDP said Manning's letter shows the panel's review of Alberta legislation was never intended to be an exercise in the public interest.

CBC
Mon, November 20, 2023 

Former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning led Alberta's COVID-19 review panel, making recommendations about better responding to future public emergencies. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press - image credit)

The chair of a panel that produced a taxpayer-funded $2-million report on Alberta's COVID-19 response suggested Conservative MPs use his findings as a political cudgel in the next federal election.

Former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning last week released more than 90 recommendations he said would improve the Alberta government's response to future public emergencies.

On Monday, Calgary Liberal MP George Chahal posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, a copy of an email Manning appears to have sent to 20 Alberta MPs on Nov. 15 to share his findings.

"If the response of the Liberal/NDP coalition to the 2020-2-23 COVID crisis should become an election issue in 2024, there may be some material in this report that could be used by the CPC [Conservative Party of Canada] to say 'What should have been done to cope with the COVID crisis and what should be done to cope with future public emergencies,'" Manning's email reads.

"Some of its content may also be useful in attacking the record of the Liberal/NDP coalition in this area."

Manning's letter also says Alberta MLAs could use the support of their federal counterparts when promoting and implementing recommendations from his panel's report.

A spokesperson for Manning confirmed on Monday that Manning sent the email.

"The Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel was a non-partisan panel tasked with providing advice to the Government of Alberta to improve Alberta's response to future public health emergencies," Manning said in an emailed statement to CBC News.

"After our work was completed, I reached out to politicians from my personal email encouraging them to review our recommendations."

Manning, who was critical of many governments' responses to COVID-19 and the effects public health restrictions had on individual freedoms, was paid $253,000 by the Alberta government for his role in chairing the six-member panel.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks about healthcare reforms during a news conference in Edmonton on Wednesday November 8, 2023. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she understands why Manning would want to share his panel's findings with federal politicians. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

At an unrelated news conference on Monday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she sees nothing wrong with Manning sending the work to like-minded contacts from his personal email address. 

"There's good information in that report," Smith said, adding she wasn't surprised he wanted to share it with decision makers in other levels of government. 

THE FEDERAL CONSERVATIVES ARE NOT THE GOVERNMENT

Smith said the panel members acted independently of her United Conservative Party government.

Opposition says email reveals panel's purpose

Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Manning's letter shows the panel's review of Alberta legislation was never intended to be an exercise in the public interest.

"This was not an objective, measured person who warranted the appointment he received to do the important work that I think many Albertans are disappointed we didn't see from him," Notley said of Manning.

The Opposition leader said many recommendations in the report, if adopted, could see a government consider options unsupported by evidence and put Albertans' safety at risk.

"It's a continuation of a pattern of Danielle Smith's belief that taxpayers dollars are there for her to do partisan political campaigning with."

Review recommendations

In its report released publicly last Wednesday, the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel recommended the government amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to strengthen individual freedoms when a public emergency is declared.

Panel members also recommended tasking the Alberta Emergency Management Agency leading government response to public emergencies, taking direction from the premier and cabinet.

Currently, the Public Health Act tasks the chief medical officer of health (CMOH) with leading the response to public health emergencies.

The government has already tabled a bill that would give politicians, not the CMOH, the final say on any public health measures in an emergency.

The panel also recommended rejecting provincewide school closures as an option during emergencies, with rare exceptions.

On Monday, the premier said her cabinet and caucus are still reviewing the report and its recommendations.

She pointed to the panel's recommendations that politicians have more say, such as MLAs debating a decision to declare an emergency, and cabinet oversight of emergency orders.

"They suggest making some changes along that vein so don't be surprised that we'll be going in that direction," Smith said.

People living in tents at Halifax's Grand Parade being encouraged to leave


CBC
Mon, November 20, 2023

Halifax Grand Parade is no longer a designated site for tents, but the municipality says it won't force anyone to leave. (Preston Mulligan/CBC - image credit)

People living in tents outside Halifax city hall at Grand Parade are being encouraged to move elsewhere because of safety concerns.

"In reviewing our winter operations for the upcoming snow season it was determined that there was, unfortunately, no way we could continue to have Grand Parade as a designated site and safely have folks shelter there," Ryan Nearing, a spokesperson for the Halifax Regional Municipality, told CBC News in an interview on Monday.

"It's just not enough room when we're doing our snow-clearing operations."

Nearing said the decision was made last week. Although people have been living in tents at Grand Parade for months, it was only made a designated site for tents a month ago. That meant the municipality provided access to services like water, a place to use the bathroom and garbage pickup.

Nearing said there is no deadline to leave and if someone decides to stay, they'll be allowed to stay.

"This isn't an eviction, this isn't a forced removal, we're just letting those folks know that for their own safety it is in their best interest to look at other alternative locations," he said. "Municipal staff will be working with those who are currently sheltering there to make sure they're aware of those options."

People will be allowed to stay

People who decide they want to stay during the winter will be able to stay put.

Staff with the downtown Halifax navigator outreach program say they helped six people move out of the Grand Parade encampment this past weekend and into a shelter.

David Vintock said he's been living at Grand Parade for a couple of months. He said it's unclear among people living there what municipal officials are planning to do.

"Last Friday they took our port-a-potty. We made a stink. They put it back. We're hearing they want us out of here due to snow removal or whatever," Vintock said. "But there's nowhere else for us to go ... they're going to have to arrest me. They're literally going to have to lock me up because I'm not moving."

There are 10 designated outdoor sheltering sites in HRM:

Barrington Street Greenway, 12 tents.


Beaufort Park, 4 tents.


Cobequid Ball Diamond, 12 tents.


Geary Street, 4 tents.


Green Road Park, 8 tents.


Lower Flinn Park, 4 tents.


Martins Park, 4 tents.


Saunders Park, 8 tents.


University Avenue, 6 tents.


Victoria Park, 12 tents.

Nearing said there will be a tree-lighting ceremony at Grand Parade, but the concert portion will be at Peace and Friendship Park. The reason for that, he said, is because the Saltwire Parade of Lights — which had to be postponed from last weekend to because of rainy weather — is now also scheduled for Nov. 25, "so that the Parade of Lights will end at Grand Parade where the tree lighting will take place."

Meanwhile the municipality said an announcement will be made soon on whether it will host its annual New Years Eve event at Grand Parade.

India grants bail to Kashmir Walla editor Fahad Shah

Mark Sappenfield
Mon, November 20, 2023 
Christian Science Monitor

After more than 21 months in jail, Fahad Shah, the Monitor’s correspondent in Kashmir, India, has been granted bail. He is expected to be released this week.

Mr. Shah, founder and editor of The Kashmir Walla newspaper, was imprisoned for publishing “anti-national content.” What he and his colleagues at The Kashmir Walla actually did was to report widely and honestly about events in Kashmir, where journalists operate in an increasingly oppressive and hostile atmosphere.

Throughout his imprisonment under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), he was repeatedly granted bail, only to be charged with a new offense and denied release. The challenges for Mr. Shah were considerable: He struggled with health challenges and isolation, and the paper he cherished has closed in the face of profound financial and professional pressure. The major charges under the UAPA have been dropped, but he will have to stand trial for three lesser charges.

The granting of bail is a crucial first step to ensuring that the rule of law prevails. We – and Mr. Shah’s colleagues – extend our great appreciation to the many readers who supported him financially and prayerfully. We also salute not only Mr. Shah but also the young staff members of The Kashmir Walla, who have stood up for journalistic integrity and commitment to their colleague despite enormous hardship.

We will report the full story of Mr. Shah’s detention and release very soon.