| New Eurosif Reports Identify ESG Challenges in the European Food and ...
Eurosif's raises awareness of social and environmental issues across European companies in a series of sector-by-sector reports, the two newest covering the insurance and food production sectors. SocialFunds.com -- Consumer health and nutrition is just one of the key challenges pinpointed by the European Social Investment Forum's (Eurosif) new report on the European food production sector. With 1 billion adults worldwide overweight, the report points to the risks and opportunities food producers face in providing healthier foods. Reports on the food production and insurance sectors released last week by Eurosif join their earlier reports on the hotel and tourism, chemical and automobile sectors.
Eurosif is a broad coalition of European groups whose mission is "to address sustainability through financial markets." Members include non-profit pension funds, financial service providers, academic institutions, research associations, and NGOs.
Older Smokers More Likely to Deny Habit
THURSDAY, Feb. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Older smokers are more likely than younger ones to deny they smoke when asked about it by doctors and others. That's the conclusion of a study that analyzed data on 15,182 self-reported "nonsmokers" in the United States who took part in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The researchers found that 8 percent of those self-reported nonsmokers actually were smokers and that smoking denial increased with age. .
The association of urinary cadmium with sex steroid hormone ...
Studies investigating the association of cadmium and sex steroid hormones in men have been inconsistent, but previous studies were relatively small. Methods In a nationally representative sample of 1,262 men participating in the morning examination session of phase I (1998-1991) of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, creatinine corrected urinary cadmium and serum concentrations of sex steroid hormones were measured following a standardized protocol. Results After adjustment for age and race-ethnicity, higher cadmium levels were associated with higher levels of total testosterone, total estradiol, sex hormone-binding globulin, estimated free testosterone, and estimated free estradiol (each p-trend <0.05). After additionally adjusting for smoking status and serum cotinine, none of the hormones maintained an association with urinary cadmium (each p-trend >0.05).
Stroke Increase And Obesity Linked Among Middle-Aged Women
Middle-aged women's waists aren't the only thing that increased in the last decade. So did their chance of stroke. In a new study reported at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2008, rising obesity rates have been linked to more strokes among women aged 35 to 54.
A previous analysis of stroke prevalence rates in the United States from 1999 to 2004 revealed that women in their midlife years were more than twice as likely as men of similar age to report having had a stroke, said Amytis Towfighi, M.D., an assistant professor in the Neurology Department at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Ca.
To determine if this was a new phenomenon and to explore the potential contributions of vascular risk factors to stroke prevalence rates, researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Surveys 1988 - 1994 (NHANES III) and 1999 - 2004.
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