A new joint investigation by Unearthed, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Ecostorm has revealed that a loophole in the so-called Amazon Soya Moratorium renders supermarkets’ customer-friendly claims of ‘deforestation-free soya’ near meaningless.

Soya is a key commodity used by dairy, cattle, pig and poultry farmers in Europe and the rest of the world to feed their livestock.

The findings undermine eco-friendly claims by some global meatpackers, animal feed companies and supermarkets that soya is no longer linked to Amazon destruction.

Deforestation by the back door

The Amazon Soy Moratorium  – first agreed in 2006 – bans the sale of soya grown on Amazon land deforested after July 2008. But beef and other crops are not restricted under the soy moratorium, meaning farmers can sell their soya to traders as “deforestation-free” while destroying rainforest for cattle, corn and other commodities.

Evidence suggests that the moratorium has successfully stopped rainforest being directly converted into soya fields. However, soya farming has continued to expand in the Amazon, overwhelmingly on land that was previously cleared, usually for cattle. That expansion can still indirectly cause fresh deforestation, as ranchers sell up to farmers at a profit and move deeper into the forest, where land is cheaper.

The investigation showed that in recent years destruction of the rainforest has increased.

For example, between 2009 to 2019 in Mato Grosso state – which stretches over the southern part of the Amazon and grows more soya than anywhere else in Brazil – 1,180 sq km of rainforest was felled on soya farms in order to grow other crops or to provide pasture for cattle ranching. This is according to data analysed by the Brazilian NGO Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV) and shared with the investigation partners. The vast majority of this deforestation was illegal, lacking licenses under Brazil’s Forest Code.

That land area, according to the World Land Trust calculator, equates to an area nearly the size of Hong Kong.

Destination UK

In 2020 the UK imported more than 140,000 tonnes of soya from municipalities with at least 7 sq kms of hidden deforestation on soya farms, and about 50,000 tonnes of corn – both crops are used in the meat and dairy supply chains of major food retailers for animal feed.

According to Paul Morozzo, Senior Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace UK “Supermarkets cannot ignore the role of meat and dairy in the climate crisis. It’s time they took real action to end links to deforestation for good. That means dropping forest destroyers and reducing meat and dairy. Until they do, they may as well be handing out matches to light this years’ Amazon fires.”

Soya from the areas most at risk for this type of deforestation is regularly shipped to the UK, Spain and other European countries for use as livestock feed on factory farms by major grain traders including Bunge, which supplies soya to Spain and Cargill, a major UK supplier. Cargill’s customers include Tesco, Asda and Lidl.

The investigation established that, with trade links leading to Europe and China, certain Mato Grosso municipalities appear particularly vulnerable to this hidden deforestation. The analysis shows a strong flow of soya from these areas to the UK, suggesting that UK businesses could be turning a blind eye to deforestation in UK supply chains.

The Retail Soy Group, which represents leading retailers including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Lidl and Waitrose, acknowledged to the Guardian newspaper that there were limitations to the moratorium and said the new allegations “further highlight the need to have strengthened legal protections of these vital ecosystems”.

• Read the full investigation at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism website : https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2022-02-10/farms-touting-deforestation-free-soya-still-tearing-down-the-amazon and on the Unearthed website : https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2022/02/10/deforestation-free-soya-farmers-amazon-destruction

That’s the conclusion of a new study from the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, part of the US Food and Drug Administration.

There are two basic types of sunscreen. Mineral sunscreens sit on top of the skin and reflect the rays away. Chemical sunscreen are designed to be absorbed into the skin. Sunscreens are still considered effective as part of a multifaceted approach to sun protection that includes protective clothing sunglasses, seeking shade and staying out of the sun when it is at its most fierce. But the chemicals in many sunscreens continue to be concerning – not least of which because they are so poorly studied.

The FDA findings, published in the medical journal JAMA, build on those of a pilot study published by the agency in 2019. That study, looked at four popular chemical sunscreens – avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, and ecamsule – were absorbed from the skin into the bloodstream after a single day of use.

The new study reevaluated three of the original four (avobenzone, oxybenzone and octocrylene) and added three additional sunscreen chemicals – homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate.

And randomly assigned 48 volunteers (average age of 38.7 years; 50% women; 48% white) to apply sunscreen that contained one or more of these sunscreening chemicals via an aerosol spray, lotion, nonaerosol spray or pump spray.

High levels of absorption

Sunscreen was applied to 75% of body surface area over 4 days. It was applied in the exact same amount once on day 1 and four times during the remaining 3 days at 2-hour intervals.

The study was conducted in doors. Although conducting the study outside would be more indicative of a real-life setting, the researchers conducted the study indoors, noting that “the data would have likely been more variable because of the need to control for heat, humidity, wind and cloud cover.”

Blood samples collected and analysed over the study and found that the average plasma concentrations of all six active ingredients were greater than 0.5 ng/mL after a single application on day 1 – higher than recommended safe levels for these chemicals.

After day 1, the concentration of the six chemicals in the blood increased each day of application, and remained above FDA safety levels at day seven, well after application had ended. Two of the chemicals – homosalate and oxybenzone – remained well above safety thresholds 21 days after the first application.

No safety tests

Researchers went out of their way to stress that the fact that an ingredient is absorbed through the skin and into the body doesn’t mean it is unsafe, said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the arm of the FDA which conducted the studies.

“Rather, this finding calls for further industry testing to determine the safety and effect of systemic exposure of sunscreen ingredients, especially with chronic use,” Woodcock said.

Nevertheless these are chemicals – many of them hormone disrupting – that should not be in the body in any quantity. The fact that they remained in the body even after the trial was stopped suggests

Commenting on the study David Andrews, a senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a consumer organization which advocates for sunscreen safety, said

“What is most alarming about these findings is that chemicals are absorbing into the body in significant amounts and the ingredients have not been fully tested for safety,”

He added: “If companies want to keep these ingredients in products, they need to urgently test for potential harm to children and harm from long-term use.”

• For sunsafe tips see our article: Healthy habits in the sun

Researchers from the University of Sheffield partnered with industry to conducts a head-to-head clinical trial comparing the rate of change of vitamin D status in response to a vitamin D3 (3000IU per day) dose, in both capsule and oral spray (sublingual) methods of delivery.

Healthy volunteers took vitamin D over the course of six weeks in 2017 during the height of winter – a time when many people’s stores from the summer months are depleted.

Published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition the study concluded that the oral spray method of vitamin D was equally effective as taking a capsule and supported the same rate of improvement in vitamin D levels amongst the trial volunteers.

Dr Bernard Corfe, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Gastroenterology at the University of Sheffield and Principal Investigator for the trial, said: “All participants achieved adequate levels of vitamin D after just 21 days of using an oral spray, with those individuals who were considered severely deficient at the beginning of the trial (with levels lower than 25(OH)D) experiencing the most effective uptake of the supplement.”

A 2016 Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition report, highlighted the need for all UK adults and children to take a vitamin D supplement throughout the winter months, and the National Institute for Health Care Excellence extended this recommendation for children and young people to take a vitamin D supplement all year round.

“Vitamin D is essential to keep bones, teeth and muscles healthy, and is especially important for children’s development,” Dr Corfe added. “It’s difficult for people to get enough vitamin D through their diet, and during the winter the sun isn’t strong enough to help the body boost its levels.

“There is now more awareness of the need for people to supplement their vitamin D, but only around 40% of adults in the UK are considered to have sufficient levels. So this research is the opportunity to highlight the importance of this essential vitamin in supporting overall health, and in providing a valuable alternative source for those who may struggle to, or prefer not, to take tablets.”

Of the participants that expressed a preference, 70% said they preferred taking vitamin D by an oral spray for ease of use and better taste.

Dr Corfe said: “Often people can forget, or don’t want to take a daily supplement, especially those who take multiple medications. Children and people who have trouble swallowing due to medical conditions also can also have difficulty taking tablets, so to find that a spray is just as effective at raising people’s vitamin D levels provides a real alternative for those whose vitamin D levels are low.”

The human gut is home to bacteria that help us digest our food, produce vitamins and perform many other tasks that influence our health.

But while most research focuses on benefits from individual microbial species, new research from Kings College London, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that gut microbial species work in teams to perform different functions. This takes our understanding of the microbiome into a whole new direction, suggesting that cultivating certain groups of bacteria is more important than single species.

The researchers studied the gut bacteria, blood and stool of over a thousand twins who take part in TwinsUK. This allowed the team to run the first large study on the link between gut bacterial species, their functions and the metabolism in the gut and blood of the participants.

The team found that while unrelated people share only 43% of gut bacteria species, they still share 82% of functions carried out by groups of gut bacteria. This is because different bacterial species can contribute to the same function and so different groups can work together to can carry out similar activities.

They then measured hundreds of molecules in the gut and in the bloodstream – representative of microbial and human metabolism – and checked if their abundance was more strongly linked to the presence of particular microbial species or the microbial functions performed by microbial teams.

Again, microbial functions were found to be more important than single microbes, as they showed a larger number of associations with the molecular composition of both gut and blood environments.

A new focus

This research therefore suggests that health treatments designed to target gut bacteria – and our metabolism – should focus on groups of gut bacteria that carry out a particular function, rather than individual bacterial species.

Lead author Dr Mario Falchi, senior lecturer of Bioinformatics at King’s College London, explained:

“We can think of our gut bacteria like Lego bricks – the colour of the bricks doesn’t matter as much compared with how they fit together to make something. With gut bacteria, the individual species don’t matter as much as the group working together to carry out a function.”

“This is the first large study to explore the metabolic potential of the entire gut bacteria ecosystem. Our findings underline the importance of studying groups of bacteria and their functions overall, rather than focusing on specific species. These results add to the growing body of evidence that gut bacteria are intrinsically linked with human health.”

Falchi and colleagues suggest that an extensive dialog goes on between the gut environment and our blood and that 93% of this dialog involves microbial functions. This, they say, which may explain why gut microbes are so strongly linked to our health.

The study from Environmental Working Group is the the first to conduct a cumulative assessment of cancer risks due to 22 carcinogenic contaminants found in drinking water nationwide.

In a paper published in the journal Heliyon, EWG scientists used a novel analytical framework that calculated the combined health impacts of carcinogens in 48,363 community water systems in the US. This assessment does not include water quality information for the 13.5 million American households that rely on private wells for their drinking water.

“Drinking water contains complex mixtures of contaminants, yet government agencies currently assess the health hazards of tap water pollutants one by one,” said Sydney Evans, lead author of the paper and a science analyst at EWG. “In the real world, people are exposed to combinations of chemicals, so it is important that we start to assess health impacts by looking at the combined effects of multiple pollutants.”

This cumulative approach is common in assessing the health impacts of exposure to air pollutants but has never before been applied to a national dataset of drinking water contaminants. This model builds on a cumulative cancer risk assessment of water contaminants in the state of California and offers a deeper insight into national drinking water quality. As defined by US government agencies, the calculated cancer risk applies to a statistical lifetime, or approximately 70 years.

Most of the increased cancer risk is due to contamination with arsenic, the byproducts of chemical disinfectants and radioactive elements such as uranium and radium. Water systems with the highest risk tend to serve smaller communities and rely on groundwater. These communities often need improved infrastructure and resources to provide safe drinking water to their residents. However, large surface water systems contribute a significant share of the overall risk due to the greater population served and the consistent presence of disinfection byproducts.

The number of cancer cases from water contamination is small compared with the total number of cancer cases in the US. Nevertheless these are cancers that could be prevented with better regulation,

“The vast majority of community water systems meet legal standards,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s vice president for science investigations. “Yet the latest research shows that contaminants present in the water at those concentrations – perfectly legal – can still harm human health.”

“We need to prioritize source water protection, to make sure that these contaminants don’t get into the drinking water supplies to begin with,” Naidenko added.

Those who are concerned about chemicals in their tap water can install a water filter to help reduce their exposure to contaminants. Filters should be targeted to the specific contaminants detected in the tap water.

• For more on this topic see our article Q&A: What’s the best type of water filter? and follow the links in the ‘Related Articles’ section, above left.

A recent study from the National University of Singapore revealed that regular tea drinkers have better organised brain regions – and this is associated with healthy cognitive function – compared to non-tea drinkers.

The discovery was made after examining neuroimaging data of 36 older adults.

“Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation,” explained team leader Assistant Professor Feng Lei, who is from the Department of Psychological Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

The research was carried out together with collaborators from the University of Essex and University of Cambridge, and the findings were published in scientific journal Aging.

Effect on brain networks

Past studies have demonstrated that tea intake is beneficial to human health, and the positive effects include mood improvement, reduced risk of glaucoma and cardiovascular disease prevention. In fact, results of a longitudinal study led by Asst Prof Feng which was published in 2017 showed that daily consumption of tea can reduce the risk of cognitive decline in older persons by 50%.

Following this discovery, Asst Prof Feng and his team further explored the direct effect of tea on brain networks.

The research team recruited 36 adults aged 60 and above, and gathered data about their health, lifestyle, and psychological well-being. The elderly participants also had to undergo neuropsychological tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The study was carried out from 2015 to 2018.

Upon analysing the participants’ cognitive performance and imaging results, the research team found that individuals who consumed either green tea, oolong tea, or black tea at least four times a week for about 25 years had brain regions that were interconnected in a more efficient way.

Keeping the flow of information going

“Take the analogy of road traffic as an example – consider brain regions as destinations, while the connections between brain regions are roads. When a road system is better organised, the movement of vehicles and passengers is more efficient and uses less resources. Similarly, when the connections between brain regions are more structured, information processing can be performed more efficiently,” explained Asst Prof Feng.

He added, “We have shown in our previous studies that tea drinkers had better cognitive function as compared to non-tea drinkers. Our current results relating to brain network indirectly support our previous findings by showing that the positive effects of regular tea drinking are the result of improved brain organisation brought about by preventing disruption to interregional connections.”

This small but interesting study needs to be repeated on a larger scale. The team next plans to examine the effects of tea, as well as the bioactive compounds in tea that can have on cognitive decline.

US researchers have found that individuals with greater optimism are more likely to live longer and to achieve “exceptional longevity,” that is, living to age 85 or older.

Optimism refers to a general expectation that good things will happen, or believing that the future will be favourable because we can control important outcomes. Whereas research has identified many risk factors that increase the likelihood of diseases and premature death, much less is known about positive psychosocial factors that can promote healthy aging.

The large study, published in PNAS journal, was based on 69,744 women and 1,429 men. Both groups completed surveys to assess their level of optimism, as well as their overall health and health habits such as diet, smoking and alcohol use. Women were followed for 10 years, while the men were followed for 30 years.

When individuals were compared based on their initial levels of optimism, the researchers found that the most optimistic men and women demonstrated, on average, an 11-15% longer lifespan, and had 50-70% greater odds of reaching 85 years old compared to the least optimistic groups. The association between optimism and longevity held even after accounting for age, and other influential factors such as educational attainment, chronic diseases, depression and also health behaviours, such as alcohol use, exercise, diet and primary care visits.

The results are relevant to public health, explains co-author Lewina Lee, PhD, clinical research psychologist at the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) because they show that optimism is a “psychosocial asset that has the potential to extend the human lifespan.” She suggests also that it is a kind of learned behaviour and that  levels of optimism can be modified using relatively simple techniques or therapies.

It is still unclear how exactly optimism helps people attain longer life. “Other research suggests that more optimistic people may be able to regulate emotions and behaviour as well as bounce back from stressors and difficulties more effectively,” said co-author Laura Kubzansky, PhD, MPH, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and co-director, Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The researchers behind the current study suggest also that more optimistic people tend to have healthier habits, such as being more likely to engage in more exercise and less likely to smoke, which could extend lifespan.

The scientists also implicate the neurodegenerative condition in a higher risk of depression, anxiety and a lower mean bone mass density (BMD) of the lumbar spine and femoral neck.

“These results indicate that vitamin D deficiency may play a role in Parkinson’s Disease [PD] pathogenesis, while vitamin D supplementation may be used to treat the non‐motor symptoms of PD,”​ says the team from Soochow University in China.

Initial findings

The team began by enrolling 182 patients with PD and 185 healthy controls. Serum vitamin D [25(OH)D] levels were measured along with BMD of the lumbar spine and femoral neck. They found that:

• Parkinson’s patients had significantly lower serum 25(OH)D levels relative to healthy controls
• Those with lower vitamin D levels had a significantly higher frequency of falls and insomnia
• They also had significantly more depression and anxiety
• People with Parkinson’s also had a significantly lower mean BMD of the lumbar spine and femoral neck

These findings remained true even after adjusting for  age, sex, and body mass index.

Symptoms of deficiency

Vitamin D deficiency is widespread in people with neurodegenerative diseases; studies showing around 55% of patients with Parkinson’s , 41% of those with Alzheimer’s have low levels – compared to 36% of a control population.

Vitamin D also has a vital role in bone metabolism and a lack of vitamin D which can help explain the increased risk of falls and fractures found in this study.

Studies have also shown that vitamin D levels are associated with cognition and mood in patients with Parkinson’s as well as gastrointestinal dysfunction, mainly delayed gastric emptying time.

Regarding the increase in falls, the authors write: “The most commonly cited theory for the connection between falls and vitamin D levels is related to reduced muscle mass and strength.”​

Connections between vitamin D, mood and sleep disorders are a little less clear.

The researchers also acknowledge a limitation of the study, having only evaluated 25(OH)D levels. An assortment of different sources of vitamin D, open up possibilities that different vitamin D forms may produce other results. They note, also, that vitamin D levels decrease and can be affected by many variables including  vitamin D‐rich food intake, sunlight exposure and skin colour.  These things, they say, require more careful study.

The study appeared in the journal Acta Neurologica Scandinavica​.