Perfluorooctane sulfonate in oysters, Crassostrea virginica, from the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, USA.

Concentrations of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), a metabolite of several sulfonated perfluoroorganic compounds, were measured in oysters collected from 77 locations in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay of the United States. PFOS was detected in oysters collected from 51 of the 77 locations at concentrations ranging from < 42 to 1,225 ng/g on a dry weight basis. This study provides baseline data for future monitoring programs to examine long-term trends in concentrations of PFOS.

The effects of trawling on the benthic fauna of the Gulf of Nicoya, Costa Rica.

Four van Veen grab replicates where collected to sample macrofauna (organism retained on a 500 micron mesh sieve) at four stations in the Gulf of Nicoya, during October 24, 1997, January 16 and April 30, 1998. This information was used to search for any effects of trawling on the benthic fauna. Two stations where located in a trawled area, and two stations where in a protected area. Diversity (H') varied from 2.01 to 3.52 in the trawled area and from 2.13 to 2.78 in the protected area. Diversity was generally higher in the trawled area, and this was in contradiction to what we would have expected from other studies where the trend has been that trawling reduces diversity. Brittlestars and lancelets seemed to be the groups mostly harmed by the trawling, while amphipods where more abundant in trawled areas. The multivariate analyses did not reveal the patterns of faunal change as well as we hoped. This is surely because of our lack of more replicate samples. The multivariate analyses are easily confounded when few sites are analyzed. We have found differences in the type of fauna found in trawled and protected areas and, considering the differences in environmental variables in our stations and our lack of replication, this indicates that there are differences and a larger investigation is in order to reveal its magnitude.

Do the Framingham Safety Surveys improve injury prevention counseling during pediatric health supervision visits?

BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggest that injury prevention counseling by pediatricians is effective but accomplished infrequently. The Framingham Safety Surveys (FSS) are brief questionnaires designed to facilitate physician education of parents regarding injury prevention. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the FSS improve pediatricians' injury prevention counseling. DESIGN: Nonrandomized comparison of a 4-week baseline period and subsequent intervention periods. SETTINGS: Private practice; university hospital clinic. PATIENTS: Patients coming for health supervision visits. INTERVENTION: Provision to the physician of one of the FSS, completed by the parent just before the health supervision visit. OUTCOME MEASURES: (1) After each visit parents completed a checklist of safety issues discussed by the pediatrician. Injury prevention was compared for the two periods by means of three criteria: number of issues discussed (quantity), identification and discussion of specific high-risk behaviors (efficiency), and recognition of high-risk families (targeting). (2) Each physician's assessment of the value of the FSS was obtained by questionnaire. RESULTS: A total of 144 parents (50 from the private practice, 94 from the clinic) completed checklists during the baseline period, and 168 (38 from the private practice, 130 from the clinic) during the intervention period. Use of the FSS produced no detectable improvement in any of the three measures. Seventy-seven percent of the physicians indicated that the FSS were helpful in educating families about safety, 38% thought that the FSS helped identify high-risk families, and 54% said they would use it again. CONCLUSIONS: Although most physicians believed the FSS were useful, introduction of the surveys as employed in this study did not improve injury prevention counseling.