Forever chemical pollution can now be tracked

University of Texas at Austin

 

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Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are developing ways to track forever chemical pollutants in waterways.

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Credit: Jackson School of Geosciences/University of Texas Institute for Geophysics

Organofluorine compounds — sometimes called ‘forever chemicals’ — are increasingly turning up in our drinking water, oceans and even human blood, posing a potential threat to the environment and human health.

Now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a way to fingerprint them, which could help authorities trace them to their source when they end up in aquifers, waterways or soil.

The technique involves passing samples through a strong magnetic field then reading the burst of radio waves their atoms emit. This reveals the composition of carbon isotopes in the molecule and gives the chemical its fingerprint, a feat that had not previously been achieved with forever chemicals.

The work is important because it allows scientists to track the spread of forever chemicals in the environment, said Cornelia Rasmussen, a research assistant professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics at the Jackson School of Geosciences.

“Ultimately we will be able to trace molecules and see how they move,” said Rasmussen, who co-led development of the technique. “For example, whether they just stay where they got dumped or whether they’re moving downstream.”

The new technique was described in a paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The super strong molecular bonds that give forever chemicals their handy characteristics — which are put to use in everything from fire retardants to non-stick surfaces and slow-release drugs — also keep them from breaking down in the environment, causing them to build up as pollution in soil and organic material to which they easily stick

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to regulate forever chemicals, which include PFAS, and eliminate most of them from drinking water. However, the molecular bonds of the chemicals also make them difficult to trace. That’s because conventional chemical fingerprinting involves breaking molecules apart in a mass spectrometer which doesn’t work well with the tough molecular bonds of forever chemicals.

Instead, the researchers turned to a technology called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which measures a molecule’s structure and identifies its isotopes without breaking it apart.

Isotopes refer to chemical elements with differences in the number of neutrons in its atoms. Forever chemicals are made by bonding carbon isotopes to the element fluorine, which almost never happens in nature. Once the molecular bonds form, they are virtually unbreakable.

The researchers’ technique uses the NMR instrument alongside their own computational tools to determine the mix of carbon isotopes at each position in the molecule. Because the mix of carbon isotopes bonding to each fluorine atom is unique to how the chemical was manufactured, this information can be used like a fingerprint to trace a chemical.

It’s like a built-in barcode for molecules, said coauthor, David Hoffman, an associate professor at the Department of Molecular Biosciences in UT’s College of Natural Sciences.

“Part of the reason this has worked out so well is because we’re assembling tools from different areas of science [chemistry and geosciences] that don’t normally mix and using them to do something no one’s really done before,” he said.

The researchers tested their technique on samples that included pharmaceuticals and a common pesticide. Rasmussen and Hoffman are now conducting a pilot study to see how the technique will fare on pollutants that show up in the city of Austin’s creeks and wastewater. If successful, the technique could be useful for state and federal agencies who want to track the spread of water-borne forever chemicals.

Rasmussen said that the work has opened up a new layer of isotope information in organic chemistry that could find many applications beyond tracking forever chemicals, such as detecting counterfeit drugs or astrobiology. Her ultimate goal, however, is to take the technique even further afield.

“It’s given us a whole range of possibilities to learn really interesting things about metabolism on early Earth,” she said. “It could even tell us whether organics on Mars are the last remnants of some ancient Martian life.”

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences program.

NMR fingerprinting 

An illustration of the chemical fingerprinting process at work on a common pesticide. Each peak in the graph indicates a different combination of carbon isotopes bonded to fluorine, as measured by the NMR instrument. The pattern gives the molecule its fingerprint.

Credit

Cornelia Rasmussen/Jackson School of Geosciences/University of Texas Institute for Geophysics.

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.4c02250 

Article Title

Fingerprinting Organofluorine Molecules via Position-Specific Isotope Analysis

 

When mammoths roamed Vancouver Island: SFU and Royal BC Museum delve into beasts’ history in our region

Simon Fraser University

 

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SFU archaeology researcher Laura Termes examines a specimin in her lab at Simon Fraser University.

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Credit: Simon Fraser University

Mammoths, the massive pre-historic ice age cousins of the modern-day elephant, have always been understood to have inhabited parts of British Columbia, but the question of when has always been a bit woolly.

Now, a new study from Simon Fraser University has given scientists the clearest picture yet when the giant mammals roamed Vancouver Island.
 
As part of SFU researcher Laura Termes’ PhD and published earlier this month in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, the study examined 32 suspected mammoth samples collected on Vancouver Island. Of those samples, just 16 were deemed suitable for radiocarbon dating.
 
The youngest sample was found to be around 23,000 years old and the oldest turned out to be beyond the range radiocarbon dating could measure, meaning it was older than 45,000 years.  
 
Prior to the study, only two mammoth remains found on Vancouver Island had ever been dated before. Both lived around 21,000 years ago, so the Termes’ study provides a greater understanding of when the massive mammals lived in the area.
 
“This is really exciting because it shows that mammoths have lived on Vancouver Island for a long time,” says Termes, a PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology. “We were expecting similar results [to the two samples previously dated] but what we found were mammoths that were much older. It is fantastic that they could be preserved for that long.”
 
Termes says having the curatorial support at the Royal BC Museum and the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre allowing access to their collections was invaluable to the study. 
 
“This research highlights the important role of museum collections for understanding how life has evolved and changed in British Columbia’s deep history,” says Victoria Arbour, curator of palentology at the Royal BC Museum. “It’s great to see Woolly’s relatives in the Royal BC Museum’s collections in the spotlight through this research study.”
 
The UBC ADaPT Facility (which was instrumental in helping determine if samples were indeed mammoths and not whales or other animals) also played an important role in the research, Termes says.
 
And archaeologists need all the help they can get because while mammoths were enormous, finding intact samples in British Columbia is actually quite rare.
 
“When we imagine great big giant animals of the last ice age being found, we might have imagined fully articulated and complete skeletons being systematically excavated. But in southern B.C., that simply does not happen,” says Termes. “Instead, we may get an isolated molar that's been tumbled around in the water for a long time, or maybe a piece of a tusk. And these are what everyday people are encountering.”
 
For example, one sample she examined was a piece of mammoth tooth found by a child in the gravel at a local playground.
 
“So maybe it’s a dog owner, taking their puppy for a walk on a rainy day, or a gravel pit operator at work,” says Termes, who grew up in Qualicum Beach. “I really like how these magnificent animals are finding their way into people's lives in routine and everyday ways.”
 
Termes says the study is part of a larger look at megafauna in B.C. and she plans on radiocarbon dating mammoth samples from other parts of the province.

Mammoth fossils in the palaeontology collection at the Royal BC Museum.

Credit

Royal BC Museum

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ABOUT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Who We Are
As Canada’s engaged university, SFU works with communities, organizations and partners to create, share and embrace knowledge that improves life and generates real change. We deliver a world-class education with lifelong value that shapes change-makers, visionaries and problem-solvers. We connect research and innovation to entrepreneurship and industry to deliver sustainable, relevant solutions to today’s problems. With campuses in British Columbia’s three largest cities—Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey—SFU has eight faculties that deliver 364 undergraduate degree programs and 149 graduate degree programs to more than 37,000 students. The university now boasts more than 180,000 alumni residing in 145+ countries.

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Journal

Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences

DOI

10.1139/cjes-2023-0102 

Article Title

Survival of mammoths (Mammuthus sp.) into the Late Pleistocene in Southwestern British Columbia (Vancouver Island), Canada

Researchers unlock life history secrets of Jurassic mammals using X-ray imaging

Using dental growth rings, scientists reveal dramatic differences in growth patterns between ancient and modern mammals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Queen Mary University of London

A new study published in Science Advances reveals how early mammals grew and developed during their pivotal Jurassic radiation. Using a technique called synchrotron X-ray tomography to image growth rings in fossilised tooth roots, the researchers were able to estimate lifespans, growth rates, and even the timing of sexual maturity in these ancient creatures. 

“This is the first time we've been able to reconstruct the growth patterns of these early mammals in such detail,” said Dr Elis Newham, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Queen Mary University of London and Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Bonn, first author of the study. By studying the spacing and texture of these growth rings, we can not only tell how fast they grew at different stages of life, but also make inferences about their metabolism and overall life history.” 

The findings challenge previous assumptions about the growth patterns of mammal ancestors and suggestions that these animals may have grown more similarly to modern mammals. Instead, this paper answers the question posed by similar recent studies of early mammal ancestors: “When did the modern mammal life history evolve?” 

The researchers found that the first signs of the modern mammal growth pattern (high growth rates in young animals that are arrested at puberty) originated amongst the earliest true mammals around 130 million years ago, in comparison with relatively little change through life in earlier evolving “mammaliaforms”. However, like mammaliaforms, these animals still grew more slowly and lived for much longer than living small mammals like rats and mice, reaching maximum lifespans anywhere between eight to 14 years-of-age. The timing of this growth rate change, alongside changes in the structure of growth rings, indicates when these animals underwent puberty, and potentially when they became sexually mature.  

“This data suggests that while living small-bodied mammals are sexually mature within months from birth, the earliest mammals took several years to reach sexual maturity, corroborating recent findings for one of our studied animals, Krusatodon.” Said Dr Pam Gill, co-lead of the study and Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum London and University of Bristol. We further find here that this long, drawn out life history was common amongst early mammals all the way through the Jurassic.”  

“These results suggest that the unique life history traits of mammals, like high metabolic rates and extended parental care, evolved gradually over millions of years,” explains Dr Newham. The Jurassic period appears to be a pivotal time in this evolution.” 

The research team used a technique called synchrotron X-ray tomography to image tiny growth rings in fossilized root cementum, the boney tissue attaching teeth to the jaw. These rings are similar to those found in trees, but on a microscopic scale. By counting the rings and analyzing their thickness and texture, the researchers were able to reconstruct the growth patterns and lifespans of these extinct animals. 

“This study is a great example of how new technologies are revolutionizing our understanding of the deep past,” says Professor Thomas Martin of the University of Bonn, a senior co-author of the study. By peering into these fossilised teeth, we can gain valuable insights into the lives of creatures that lived millions of years ago.” 

Dr Jen Bright, co-author of the study and Zoology programme director at the University of Hull, added “It’s been so exciting to be involved in this project. Putting Jurassic fossils into a particle accelerator (the synchrotron) and reconstructing the past from it sounds like science fiction, but we can actually do it!”. 

This study involved participation of members from Queen Mary University of London, The University of Bonn, The Natural History Museum London, the University of Helsinki, the Geological Survey of Finland, the University of Hull, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (France), the University of Southampton, the College of Osteopathic Medicine (United States), the University of Bristol, and the University of Edinburgh.  

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ado4555 

Article Title

The origins of mammal growth patterns during the Jurassic mammalian radiation

Article Publication Date

7-Aug-2024

 

Prescription painkiller misuse and addiction are widespread in chronic pain patients

Society for the Study of Addiction

A new scientific review of 148 studies enrolling over 4.3 million adult chronic pain patients treated with prescription opioid painkillers has found that nearly one in ten patients experiences opioid dependence or opioid use disorder and nearly one in three shows symptoms of dependence and opioid use disorder.  This review provides a more accurate -- and more concerning -- rate of opioid misuse than has previously been calculated.  It was conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and appears in the scientific journal Addiction.

Companies like Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma have claimed that fewer than 1% of opioid prescriptions result in problems for patients.  This new review makes clear that such claims greatly understate the risk of opioid misuse and addiction. 

The researchers divided the 148 studies into four general categories, depending on how the studies defined problematic opioid use:

1. dependence and opioid use disorder: 43 studies that identified problematic opioid use through diagnostic codes (formal diagnoses using precise definitions);
2. signs and symptoms of dependence and opioid use disorder:  44 studies that looked for behaviours indicating dependence and opioid use disorder, such as craving, tolerance, or withdrawal, without use of specific diagnostic codes; 
3. aberrant behaviour: 76 studies that looked for inappropriate or concerning behaviour, such as seeking early refills, repeated dose escalations, or frequently lost prescriptions; and
4. at risk of dependence and opioid use disorder: 8 studies that looked for characteristics that might increase the risk of developing opioid dependence or opioid use disorder in the future; however, the characteristics do not fall within previous categories of aberrant behaviour or dependence and opioid use disorder.

Some studies reported multiple results within the same participants using different measurement criteria, so the sum of the number of studies in each category equals more than 148.  The prevalence (frequency) of problematic opioid use for each category was:

1. Dependence and opioid use disorder:  9.3%, or nearly 1 in 10 patients.
2. Signs and symptoms of dependence and opioid use disorder: 29.6%, nearly 1 in 3 patients.
3. Aberrant behaviour:  22%, more than 1 in 5 patients.
4. At risk of dependence and opioid use disorder: 12.4%, nearly 1 in 8 patients.

Lead author Kyla Thomas, Professor of Public Health Medicine at the University of Bristol, explains, “Clinicians and policy makers need a more accurate estimate of the prevalence of problematic opioid use in pain patients so that they can gauge the true extent of the problem, change prescribing guidance if necessary, and develop and implement effective interventions to manage the problem.  Knowing the size of the problem is a necessary step to managing it.”

The studies in this review were predominantly from North American research and high-income countries. One hundred and six of the 148 studies were conducted between 2010 and 2021; the oldest study was from 1985.  Study size ranged from 15 to 2,304,181 patients. Due to the high heterogeneity of the studies, these findings should be interpreted with caution. 

-- Ends –

For editors:

This Open Access paper is available on the Wiley Online Library (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16616) or you may request a copy from Jean O’Reilly, Editorial Manager, Addiction, jean@addictionjournal.org.

To speak with lead author Professor Kyla Thomas (Professor of Public Health Medicine), please contact her at the University of Bristol (UK) by e-mail (Kyla.Thomas@bristol.ac.uk). 

For further information or to arrange an interview with Professor Kyla Thomas please contact Joanne Fryer [Mon to Wed], email joanne.fryer@bristol.ac.uk, mobile: +44 (0)7747 768805 or Caroline Clancy [Wed to Fri], email caroline.clancy@bristol.ac.uk, mobile: +44 (0)7776 170238 in the University of Bristol Press Office.

Full citation for article: Thomas KH, Dalili MN, Cheng H-Y, Dawson S, Donnelly N, Higgins JPT, and Hickman M.  Prevalence of problematic pharmaceutical opioid use in patients with chronic non cancer pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Addiction. 2024. DOI: 10.1111/add.16616

Primary funding: National Institute for Health and Care Research:  PDF-2017-10-068

Declaration of interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: KT reports financial support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) for this study.

Addiction (www.addictionjournal.org) is a monthly international scientific journal publishing peer-reviewed research reports on alcohol, substances, tobacco, gambling, editorials, and other debate pieces. Owned by the Society for the Study of Addiction, it has been in continuous publication since 1884.

The mission of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) (https://www.nihr.ac.uk/) is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. We do this by:

• Funding high quality, timely research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care;
• Investing in world-class expertise, facilities and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services;
• Partnering with patients, service users, carers and communities, improving the relevance, quality and impact of our research;
• Attracting, training and supporting the best researchers to tackle complex health and social care challenges;
• Collaborating with other public funders, charities and industry to help shape a cohesive and globally competitive research system;
• Funding applied global health research and training to meet the needs of the poorest people in low and middle income countries.

NIHR is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. Its work in low and middle income countries is principally funded through UK international development funding from the UK government.

Please note the following resources for chronic pain and opioids:

• NICE guidance on chronic pain (primary and secondary) in over 16s: assessment of all chronic pain and management of chronic primary pain: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng193/chapter/Recommendations#managing-chronic-primary-pain
• Opioids Aware: a resource for patients and healthcare professionals to support prescribing of opioid medicines for pain:  https://www.fpm.ac.uk/opioids-aware
• How to get NHS help for your pain:  https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/pain/how-to-get-nhs-help-for-your-pain/
• National Institute on Drug Abuse information on opioids: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/opioids
• CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain (2022): https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/rr/rr7103a1.htm

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Journal

Addiction

DOI

10.1111/add.16616 

Method of Research

Meta-analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Prevalence of problematic pharmaceutical opioid use in patients with chronic non cancer pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Article Publication Date

7-Aug-2024

COI Statement

All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: KT reports financial support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) for this study.

 

Skin-to-skin ‘kangaroo care’ found to boost neurodevelopment in preemies

Babies born very early had stronger neurodevelopmental performance at 1 year if they received more skin-to-skin care as newborns, a Stanford Medicine study found.

Stanford Medicine

Skin-to-skin cuddling with a parent has lasting cognitive benefits for premature babies, according to a new Stanford Medicine study. Preemies who received more skin-to-skin contact, also known as kangaroo care, while hospitalized as newborns were less likely to be developmentally delayed at 1 year of age, the study found.

The research, which was published online July 11 in the Journal of Pediatrics, showed that even small increases in the amount of skin-to-skin time made a measurable difference in the babies’ neurologic development during their first year.

“It’s interesting and exciting that it doesn’t take much to really improve babies’ outcomes,” said the study’s senior author, Katherine Travis, PhD, who was an assistant professor at Stanford Medicine when the study was conducted and is now an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical School and Burke Neurological Institute. The study’s first author is Molly Lazarus, a clinical research coordinator in pediatrics previously at Stanford Medicine and now at Weill Cornell Medical School.

The intervention is simple: With the baby in only a diaper, a parent holds the baby on their chest, next to their skin. But because hospitalized preemies are small and fragile, and often hooked to lots of tubes and wires, holding the baby can seem complicated. Parents may need help from their baby’s medical team to get set up. That work is worth it, the study showed.

“It didn’t matter if the baby was from a high- or low-income family; the effects we found were the same. And it didn’t matter if the baby was sicker or less sick — both responded to this treatment,” Travis said.

Neurological complications are challenging

Over the last 50 years, preemies’ survival rates have improved dramatically thanks to better treatments for many of the complications of prematurity, which is defined as being born at least three weeks early. For instance, neonatologists have developed effective approaches to help preemies breathe, even with immature lungs, while in the neonatal intensive care unit.

But premature birth still leaves babies at risk for long-term neurodevelopmental problems, including developmental delays and learning disabilities. Doctors and families have long hoped for treatments they could use during the newborn period to prevent such challenges.

“Ultimately, we want our patients to be healthy kids who can achieve the same milestones as if they didn’t come to the NICU,” said study co-author Melissa Scala, MD, clinical professor of pediatrics. Scala is a neonatologist who cares for preemies at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

“Our finding legitimizes skin-to-skin care as a vital intervention in the neonatal intensive care unit to support our goal of getting that child out of the hospital, able to learn and develop,” Scala said.

Skin-to-skin care was first used in low-income countries to boost babies’ survival, where it is often used for healthy infants born after full-term pregnancies. In rural or impoverished areas, it is an essential way to keep newborns warm, promote parent-child bonding and facilitate the start of breastfeeding.

It’s been slower to catch on in the United States, especially for premature babies, who generally receive high-tech intensive care. But a growing body of research suggests that the practice has benefits for preemies’ brains, possibly because it could offer some of the same developmental inputs they would have received if they had not been born early.

More skin-to-skin was better

The research team reviewed medical records for infants who were born very prematurely, meaning at least eight weeks early, and were cared for at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford between May 1, 2018, and June 15, 2022. Nurses in the hospital’s NICU had begun making notes in patients’ medical charts about developmental care practices, including the amount of time parents held babies skin-to-skin, shortly before the study began.

The study included 181 preemies who did not have genetic or congenital conditions known to affect neurodevelopment and who had received follow-up evaluations after they left the NICU. All very premature babies are eligible for care through California’s High Risk Infant Follow-Up program until age 3. The program provides developmental testing and connects families to appropriate therapists if their children have developmental delays.

The study used records from follow-up evaluations that the babies received at 6 and 12 months’ adjusted age, meaning their ages were corrected to account for how early they were born.

The evaluation included measures of visual-motor problem solving in standard tasks (such as dropping a cube into a cup) and expressive and receptive language skills (such as turning to see where the sound of a bell is coming from).

In addition to accounting for infants’ gestational age (how early they were born), the outcomes were adjusted for families’ socioeconomic status and for four common complications of prematurity: bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a breathing complication; brain hemorrhage, or bleeding; sepsis, an infection of the bloodstream; and necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal condition.

The infants in the study were born, on average, at about 28 weeks’ gestation, or about 12 weeks before their due dates. They stayed in the hospital for an average of about two and a half months.

Babies in the study averaged about 17 minutes a day of skin-to-skin care, usually in sessions lasting more than an hour but occurring less than two days per week. Seven percent of families did not do any skin-to-skin care, and 8% did more than 50 minutes per day.

Small increases in the amount of skin-to-skin care were linked to large differences in 12-month neurodevelopmental scores. An average of 20 minutes more per day of skin-to-skin care was associated with a 10-point increase on the scoring scale used for neurodevelopment. Similar to an IQ test, the scale has an average of 100 points; a score of 70 or less suggests significant developmental delays.

The frequency and duration of skin-to-skin contact predicted 12-month cognitive scores even after controlling for possible confounding factors, including the infant’s gestational age and medical complications, and the family’s socioeconomic status and frequency with which they visited the NICU.

How does it work?

Although the study was not set up to explore how skin-to-skin care benefits babies’ brains, the researchers have some educated guesses.

“We think of the womb as our benchmark for preterm babies. In utero, a fetus is physically contained, listening to the maternal heartbeat, hearing Mom’s voice, probably hearing her digest her sandwich,” Scala said. “In the NICU, they’re not next to anybody, and they hear the fan in the incubator; it’s a very different environment. Skin-to-skin care is probably the closest we can get to mimicking the womb.”

Parents can also benefit from skin-to-skin care, and this in turn may benefit their newborns, the research team said.

“The environment of the NICU is very stressful for parents and babies, and skin-to-skin care may buffer that,” Travis said, noting that it is not unusual for parents with a very tiny, sick baby to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

In addition, many preemies are not developmentally ready to breastfeed, and skin-to-skin care can provide an alternate way to promote bonding between parents and babies.

The researchers hope their findings will motivate medical teams to help parents provide skin-to-skin care in NICUs across the country and will encourage parents by showing them the long-term benefits of this simple but important technique.

Packard Children’s recently expanded its infant developmental care program by hiring neurodevelopmental nurse practitioners, more physical and occupational therapists, a psychologist, and child life and music therapy experts for their NICU and intermediate care nurseries. The expanded team can make customized developmental care plans for high-risk infants.

Scala hopes other hospitals will follow suit.

“I would love for people to see this as part of the medical plan, not just something nice we’re doing, but to be really intentional about it,” Scala said. “Our findings underscore the value of having parents on the intensive care unit, doing this important part of infant care.”

The study was funded by grants from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant numbers 5R00-HD84749 and 2R01-HD069150) and the National Institute of Mental Health (grant number T32-MH019908).

# # #

 

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu.

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Journal

The Journal of Pediatrics

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Inpatient Skin-to-skin Care Predicts 12-Month Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in Very Preterm Infants

 

Russian invasion of Ukraine could have lasting impacts on global economy, environment

North Carolina State University

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine stretches into its third year, international trade has felt the effects as sanctions on Russian exports have expanded. Now researchers have found that the invasion may not only have significant short-term impacts on the global timber markets but may leave lasting effects on the global economy and the environment.

These findings are detailed in a new study which projects the impact of sanctions on Russia and military disruption in Ukraine on the global wood product markets. Researchers compared two projected scenario outcomes based on the Global Forest Products Market model, one simulating a scenario with no invasion and another projecting the effects of current sanctions on wood products and trade disruption in Ukraine out to 2025. This allowed them to form their own model which predicts changes to the global wood product markets in both the near future and the long term.

Rajan Parajuli, associate professor of forest economics and policy at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the study, said that the immediate impacts of the invasion could be severe.

“In the short term, which we define as within ten years of the end of the invasion, our model predicts an increase in price up to three percent for things like industrial roundwood and finished wood products,” he said. “Russia is a top producer of forest products, and they supply all over the world, so sanctions on them are very impactful. You must also factor in the disruptions in Ukraine, where the military operations will make things like timber harvesting very difficult.”

Despite this, Russia may regain a good deal of its overall timber market share in the long term. Looking as far forward as 2050, the model predicts a lower overall level of disruption as Russian markets for industrial timber recover. Researchers set a baseline assumption that the invasion will end in 2025, and the model predicts that global markets will begin returning to pre-invasion levels within 10 to 30 years after that.

Despite the lower overall level of disruption predicted in the long term, researchers do not expect some product markets to ever return to their exact pre-invasion states. Parajuli said that some effects may last beyond the end of the conflict.

“We found that products like wood-based panels, paper and paper board will not recover in Russia or Ukraine. These are not large markets, and our model predicts that if these countries cannot produce those products for a few years, other countries will move into that space,” he said. “The sanctions will cause higher prices, which we predict would lead resource-rich countries like the United States and Canada, China and some other Asian countries to ramp up production. They will want to sell while the price is high.”

This shift in production and trade could have serious implications worldwide, both economically and environmentally. While increased production in other countries could be a significant economic driver, researchers also warn that it could lead to loosening environmental regulations and increased deforestation caused by an upswing in timber logging. Specifically, developing countries which already suffer from high levels of illegal logging may bear the brunt of increased deforestation and environmental harm.

The paper, “Projected Effects of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Global Forest Products Markets,” is available in the journal Forest Policy and Economics. Co-authors include Prakash Nepal and Austin Lamica.

-pitchford-

Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

“Projected Effects of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Global Forest Products Markets”

Authors: Prakash Nepal, Austin Lamica, Rajan Parajuli.

Published: August 8, 2024

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103301

Abstract: This study provided an insight into the projected short-term (<10 years) and long-term (next 10 to 30 years) effects of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine on global forest products trade and associated markets. The assessment was conducted by comparing the projected outcomes from the Global Forest Products Market (GFPM) model for a business-as-usual reference (no invasion) scenario and an alternate scenario representing the current trade sanctions for Russian wood products trade by several major partner countries, and the potential trade disruption in Ukraine due to their military operations, during the 2021-2025 period, and no such trade restrictions thereafter assuming the Russian invasion ends by that time. Results indicate a considerable projected short-term disruption in the Russian, Ukrainian, and the global wood products sector in terms of higher prices of industrial roundwood and finished wood products (up to 3%) and altered production, consumption and trade displacement for wood products. However, in the long run, a lower overall disruption is projected as Russian markets for industrial roundwood and sawnwood start to recover and the global markets begin to converge to pre-invasion levels. The analysis also projects that Russian markets for wood-based panels and paper and paperboard and Ukrainian markets for paper and paperboard do not recover within the next 30 years, suggesting a likely permanent structural change in markets of these wood product groups. These findings suggest several economic and environmental implications for the forest products sector in Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the world in the near- and long-term.

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Journal

Forest Policy and Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103301 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Projected Effects of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Global Forest Products Markets

Article Publication Date

8-Aug-2024