The leading U.S. science and engineering organizations developed a list of 14 science policy questions facing the U.S. in 2012. You can read these questions–and the Presidential candidates’ answers–at ScienceDebate.org.
For each of the Science Debate 2012 questions, we’re going to provide you a selection of the authoritative and unbiased resources of the National Academies to help inform your response to the candidates’ answers. Today, we’re looking at this ScienceDebate question on Food:
Thanks to science and technology, the United States has the world’s most productive and diverse agricultural sector, yet many Americans are increasingly concerned about the health and safety of our food. The use of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides, as well as animal diseases and even terrorism pose risks. What steps would you take to ensure the health, safety and productivity of America’s food supply?
How would you respond? Download these reports for free at NAP.edu or purchase a print copy to read.
Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century598 pages | Paperback | Price: $58.50In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous… [more]
Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States270 pages | Paperback | Price: $44.10Since genetically engineered (GE) crops were introduced in 1996, their use in the United States has grown rapidly, accounting for 80-90 percent of soybean, corn, and cotton acreage in 2009. To date, crops with traits that provide resistance to some herbicides… [more]
Ensuring Safe Foods and Medical Products Through Stronger Regulatory Systems Abroad366 pages | Paperback | Price: $57.60A very high portion of the seafood we eat comes from abroad, mainly from China and Southeast Asia, and most of the active ingredients in medicines we take originate in other countries. Many low- and middle-income countries have lower labor costs and fewer and… [more]
Hunger and Obesity: Understanding a Food Insecurity Paradigm: Workshop Summary240 pages | Paperback | Price: $46.35At some point during 2009, more than 17 million households in the United States had difficulty providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources. In more than one-third of these households, the food intake of some household members… [more]
Improving Food Safety Through a One Health Approach: Workshop Summary418 pages | Paperback | Price: $66.60Globalization of the food supply has created conditions favorable for the emergence, reemergence, and spread of food-borne pathogens-compounding the challenge of anticipating, detecting, and effectively responding to food-borne threats to health. In the… [more]
I hope that those of you in the U.S. had a happy and relaxing Independence Day weekend. We welcome you back to the working week with one of the biggest lists of new books that we’ve had since we’ve started posting them once a week here on Notes From NAP. There’s sixteen of them, the vast majority of which have free PDFs available.
Because of the high number of new books this week, we’re going to present it here as a simple list. If you have any comments or questions about Notes From NAP, feel free to contact us through this form. We’d love to get any feedback you might have.
New Publications This Week
Persistent Forecasting of Disruptive Technologies–Report 2 (final)
Since genetically engineered (GE) crops were introduced in 1996, their use in the United States has grown rapidly, accounting for 80-90 percent of soybean, corn, and cotton acreage in 2009. To date, crops with traits that provide resistance to some herbicides and to specific insect pests have benefited adopting farmers by reducing crop losses to insect damage, by increasing flexibility in time management, and by facilitating the use of more environmentally friendly pesticides and tillage practices. However, excessive reliance on a single technology combined with a lack of diverse farming practices could undermine the economic and environmental gains from these GE crops. Other challenges could hinder the application of the technology to a broader spectrum of crops and uses.
Several reports from the National Research Council have addressed the effects of GE crops on the environment and on human health. However, The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States is the first comprehensive assessment of the environmental, economic, and social impacts of the GE-crop revolution on U.S. farms. It addresses how GE crops have affected U.S. farmers, both adopters and nonadopters of the technology, their incomes, agronomic practices, production decisions, environmental resources, and personal well-being. The book offers several new findings and four recommendations that could be useful to farmers, industry, science organizations, policy makers, and others in government agencies.
Friday brings us to our weekly roundup of all the publications that have been released this week. If you’d like faster notification of our new publications, subscribe to the New From NAP RSS feed or connect with us on Twitter or Facebook.
Data suggest that exposure to secondhand smoke can result in heart disease in nonsmoking adults. Recently, progress has been made in reducing involuntary exposure to secondhand smoke through legislation banning smoking in workplaces, restaurants, and other public places. The effect of legislation to ban smoking and its effects on the cardiovascular health of nonsmoking adults, however, remains a question.
Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects reviews available scientific literature to assess the relationship between secondhand smoke exposure and acute coronary events. The authors, experts in secondhand smoke exposure and toxicology, clinical cardiology, epidemiology, and statistics, find that there is about a 25 to 30 percent increase in the risk of coronary heart disease from exposure to secondhand smoke. Their findings agree with the 2006 Surgeon General’s Report conclusion that there are increased risks of coronary heart disease morbidity and mortality among men and women exposed to secondhand smoke. However, the authors note that the evidence for determining the magnitude of the relationship between chronic secondhand smoke exposure and coronary heart disease is not very strong.
Public health professionals will rely upon Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects for its survey of critical epidemiological studies on the effects of smoking bans and evidence of links between secondhand smoke exposure and cardiovascular events, as well as its findings and recommendations.
