Chewing Tobacco – Storehouse of Toxic Chemicals

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 11:09:12 +0000

Smokeless tobacco products like gutka and khaini are known to be cancer-causing. The Indian scientists have recently prepared a database of toxic substances which are found in various chewing tobacco products sold not only in India and South Asia but globally.

As of now, they have identified a staggering 233 unique chemical compounds from 82 types of chewing tobacco products sold in nine countries including US and Sweden. Of the 233 chemical compounds, 69 are known carcinogens as classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Among the chemical compounds, major categories present in smokeless tobacco products include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), followed by radionucleotides, metals and metalloids as well as additives.The database is called SLTChemDB and is developed at the National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (NICPR) of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). This is supposed to be the first such comprehensive database of smokeless tobacco products globally, according to scientists.

“It will function as a reliable resource for stakeholders including policymakers, scientists, researchers and tobacco control advocates globally to better understand smokeless tobacco products and the industry manufacturing the products,” explained Dr. Ravi Mehrotra, Director of NICPR, while speaking to India Science Wire.

Over 350 million people consume smokeless tobacco globally and about 0.65 million die every year due to its consumption. “The chemical profiling of these products available in a user- friendly database will help in taking a timely policy action on the prevention and control of smokeless tobacco globally and also address diseases induced by their use,” he added.

The information for the database was sourced from already published scientific literature and was curated from different chemical web servers and databases.One can search for any tobacco product and retrieve information relating to its chemical composition, pH, moisture, nicotine free and tobacco content, besides biological, toxicological and physicochemical information of chemical compounds.

India Science Wire

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Smartcity development are heat islands

InnoHEALTH Magazine — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 06:02:34 +0000

The phenomenon of urban heat islands, in which concrete and built areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas, may get accentuated with rapid urbanization. This is the conclusion of a new study of urban areas selected for development of smart cities. The study, which covered 89 of 100 areas selected for development of smart cities, has found that agriculture and irrigation are two dominant drivers of urban heat islands or UHI in India. In addition, significant presence of atmospheric aerosols – mainly pollutants – over urban areas can influence UHI.

Moisture from irrigation canals and agriculture fields play a key role in keeping rural areas surrounding cities much cooler that urban areas, resulting cities becoming heat islands. In a heat island, temperature could be 1 to 6 degrees higher than surrounding areas. Remote sensing data and climate modelling were used to evaluate UHI across the country.

When the surrounding of non-urban areas have no agriculture during summer, cities are relatively cooler during daytime. However, if the non-urban areas are under irrigated agriculture, cities are warmer than surroundings. This means UHI effect during day time is mainly driven by agriculture and irrigation. However, in the night-time, cities are significantly warmer than surroundings in both winter and summer seasons. Night time urban heat is mainly driven by the amount of heat stored in buildings and other impervious surfaces.

Urban areas located in highly irrigated regions – Indo-Gangetic Plain and north-west India (Haryana and Punjab) – show UHI intensity of 3 to 5 degrees. During summer season (April and May), when air temperature is at the peak, land surface temperature becomes is higher than that of the post monsoon season in absence of agricultural operations. Moreover, amount of moisture and vegetation in non-urban areas are also limited as crops are largely harvested by the end of March and soil moisture is depleted due to high atmospheric water demands, the study said.

“While urban areas have experienced increased number of heat waves and temperature extremes in recent past, urban heat island effect driven by rapid urbanization can further worsen extreme hot conditions in cities,” pointed out Dr Vimal Mishra, a scientist at the Water and Climate Lab of Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, which did the study. The results of the study appeared in journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday.

The development of smart cities will result in rapid growth in urban infrastructure and population, leading to increases in UHI intensity. “Our results can provide policy insights for development of smart cities,” Dr Mishra said. “Considering night-time heating which could be significant during heat waves, measures such as passive cooling should be used. Building materials that absorb less heat and are sustainable can reduce the amount of heating caused by stored heat.” The presence of water bodies and vegetation in cities can also help reduce additional nighttime heating in urban heat islands.

The study team included Rahul Kumar and Vimmal Mishra (IIT Gandhinagar); Jonathan Buzan and Matthew Huber (Purdue University, USA); Rohini Kumar (UFZ-Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany); and Drew Shindel (Duke University, USA).

(Article shared from India Science Wire)

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Chewing Tobacco – Storehouse of Toxic Chemicals

Smartcity development are heat islands