The hearts of young city dwellers contain billions of toxic air pollution particles, research has revealed.
Even in the study’s youngest subject, who was three, damage could be seen in the cells of the organ’s critical pumping muscles that contained the tiny particles. The study suggests these iron-rich particles, produced by vehicles and industry, could be the underlying cause of the long-established statistical link between dirty air and heart disease.
The scientists said the abundance of the nano-particles might represent a serious public health concern and that particle air pollution must be reduced urgently. More than 90% of the world’s population lives with toxic air, according to the World Health Organization, which has declared the issue a global “public health emergency”.
The scientists acknowledged some uncertainties in their research, but Prof Barbara Maher, of Lancaster University, said: “This is a preliminary study in a way, but the findings and implications were too important not to get the information out there.”
Maher and colleagues found in 2016 that the same nano-particles werepresent in human brains and were associated with Alzheimers-like damage, another disease linked to air pollution.
While all ages were affected, Maher said she was particularly concerned about children.
“For really young people, the evidence is now of very early-stage damage both in the heart and the brain,” she said. “We have a likely candidate [particle] able to access both organs, with the pathological evidence to show damage is happening.”
The new research is the first direct evidence that iron-rich nano-particles may cause heart disease. Tiny particles were already known from laboratory tests to be seriously damaging to human cells and to be a significant component of roadside air pollution.
Maher said: “Putting an abundance of iron-rich nano-particles right into the sub-cellular components of the heart’s muscle tissue, that’s not where you want them to be sitting. They are inside the mitochondria, which are damaged and appear abnormal. Mitochondria are your energy source, making sure your heart pumps effectively.”
Mark Miller, an expert on the cardiovascular effects of air pollution, from the University of Edinburgh but not part of the research, said: “While there are some uncertainties from the study, it highlights how important it is to better understand the way particles in air pollution may cause harm to different areas of the body.
“More effort is needed to reduce particle emissions from vehicles, especially to remove the number of vehicles on the road by encouraging people to walk and cycle for short journeys.”
The research, peer reviewed and published in the journal Environmental Research, analysed heart tissue taken from 63 young people who had died in road traffic accidents but had not suffered chest trauma. They lived in Mexico City, which has high air pollution, and had an average age of 25.
The research was conducted in two main parts: calculating the number of iron-rich nano-particles present; and looking at their location within the tissue and the associated damage. The number of particles found was between 2bn and 22bn per gram of dried tissue; and their presence was two to 10 times higher in the Mexico City residents than in nine control subjects who had lived in less polluted places.
The medical scientists in the team reported that “exposure to [nano-particles] appears to be directly associated with early and significant cardiac damage”.
Maher said the results were relevant for all countries: “There is absolutely no reason to expect this would be different in any other city.” Based on previous work, she said, the particles were also likely to carry additional contaminants. “We can imagine these nano-particles come loaded with a toxic mix.”
Iron-rich nano-particles begin as molten droplets produced by the combustion of fuel and then cool rapidly into spheres with fused surfaces. The particles in the heart tissue had these characteristics, rather than small iron-rich magnetite crystals that are known to occur naturally in at least one organ, the brain.
The technique used to locate the nano-particles in the heart tissue could not be used to measure their composition. Instead, the scientists separated the particles from the tissues to determine their composition and magnetic content, and then used the average size and magnetism of the particles to estimate the total number.
They said they would like to confirm the particles’ composition in situ within the cells, but that would require the use of expensive equipment and Maher said they had received no funding for the work. “We are having to do this on a shoestring. It is madness.”
Netanyahu Dirties Up Ehud Barak Over Jeffrey Epstein Scandal So He Looks Cleaner
In the Netanyahu-Barak mudslinging over Jeffrey Epstein, the real winner is…
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Ehud Barak, Jeffrey Epstein, Benjamin Netanyahu.AP Photo/Charles Krupa; HO / Florida Department of Law Enforcement / AFP; AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner
The arrest of Jeffrey Epstein shortly after Ehud Barak announced his return to Israeli political life was a much-needed lucky break for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
After months of playing defense against the never-ending stream of details regarding the contents of the prime minister's pending indictment on corruption charges, one could practically feel the exhilaration in the Netanyahu camp at being able to finally go on the offensive — launching a full-throttle attack against Barak, leader of the new Democratic Israel party.
As the Epstein saga has exploded across the media since the financier’s arrest Saturday for the alleged sex trafficking of minors, Netanyahu and his supporters have chosen to make Barak’s ties to Epstein the focus of their campaign ahead of September’s election. Spearheading the attack is Netanyahu’s eldest son, Yair, who tweeted relentlessly about Epstein and Barak while berating the press for not covering it more intensively. “If it was my father photographed walking out of Epstein’s townhouse,” he asked, "wouldn’t it be all over the news?”
Barak is legitimately vulnerable on the Epstein question. He still has never given a satisfactory explanation for what has been documented: Receiving $2.3 million from the Wexner Foundation in 2004 for “research.” Epstein was a trustee and board member of the foundation at the time, part of the intertwined business and philanthropic relationship with his biggest client, Leslie Wexner. The Manhattan townhouse in which Epstein is accused of luring underage girls was owned by Wexner before he gave it to Epstein outright. Wexner, who cut ties with Epstein in 2008 when accusations of Epstein’s sexual transgressions began to emerge, has for decades underwritten a family foundation dedicated to cultivating Jewish leadership in Israel and the Diaspora. A countless number of Israeli government and military figures have spent time at Harvard under its auspices — but the Barak payment stands out as irregular and different from the foundation’s usual activities.
Netanyahu and his allies lost no time in taking full advantage of Barak’s weakness, posting a sinister video asserting that Epstein “managed the Wexner Foundation, which gave Barak $2.3 million, for research that never took place and never existed. Barak, till this day, refuses to discuss that research." The video cuts to a clip of Barak avoiding a journalist's questions about the funds he received in 2004. It ends with a narrator asking the insinuating question: “What else did the sex criminal give to Ehud Barak?”
On Wednesday, in an effort to keep the story in the headlines, Netanyahu’s Likud party went a step further, asking the attorney general to open a criminal investigation against Barak, “in order to expose the cover-up of his personal and business connections with the evil criminal pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.” (Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, serving 13 months in jail.
The frequency and ferocity of the attacks on Barak from the Netanyahu camp might lead one to believe the former prime minister and defense minister is Netanyahu’s chief rival for the prime ministership.
But nothing could be further from the truth. In all of the polling since he entered the fray last month, Barak’s newly formed party has been shown to win only a handful of seats, barely enough to stay above the electoral threshold.
Netanyahu’s real competition — the man who would be prime minister if the center-left bloc triumphs in September — is Benny Gantz, the former army chief who heads the centrist Kahol Lavan party, which is running neck and neck with Likud. So why is Netanyahu’s camp aiming its fire at Barak?
First and foremost, Gantz simply hasn’t provided much for them to attack. In April’s election, Likud’s attempt to throw mud on squeaky-clean Gantz by bringing up a “MeToo” allegation of sexual misconduct when he was a teenager fell flat. Poking fun at Gantz’s gaffes while speaking publicly, stuttering in a satellite newscast, and using it to label him as “unstable” came off as baseless and mean.
Netanyahu’s second nemesis, Avigdor Lieberman — whose refusal to join his governing coalition triggered the “do-over” election — also presents problems as a Netanyahu target. Much of Netanyahu and Lieberman’s political histories are intertwined. Attacking someone from within the right-wing camp is frowned upon by Likud voters, it seems Netanyahu does not want to elevate him as a potential leadership rival by giving him attention. The more Netanyahu pushes him, the higher Lieberman’s poll numbers rise. (Attempts by Netanyahu to label Lieberman as a “leftist” were literally laughed off.)
This leaves Barak as the perfect target against which to implement the central strategy in the Donald Trump playbook: If you can’t wash yourself clean, point out the dirt on everybody else — and add more if you can. When others are stained, Netanyahu can argue that everyone is filthy.
As a bonus, unlike Gantz, Barak has been around the block enough times to make enemies as bitter as Netanyahu’s own. Barak-bashers have been getting a hand from embittered former Labor Minister Haim Ramon, who has taken to right-wing outlets to besmirch Barak at every opportunity.
Barak, for his part, is the “un-Gantz” in that he seems only too enthusiastic to respond to attacks and get into a down-and-dirty battle. The Epstein-centered charges don’t seem to have deterred him in the least. He released his own accusatory video, which opens with the words “Bibi: You want to talk about criminal activities: How about this,” followed by a montage of Netanyahu’s alleged criminal associations — including a graphic of the prime minister with shekels raining on him.
While it is not clear whether this slugfest will help or hurt Barak or Netanyahu, it seems fairly clear who has the greatest potential to benefit. If Gantz and his Kahol Lavan crew manage to stay above the fray, they will attract voters who are turned off by the mudslinging, choosing the candidate who may lack political experience, but isn’t weighed down by ugly baggage either.
1. An all important central question in the respect of the recent arrest of Epstein (and the full list of extraordinarily heavy charges, suppressed during an earlier trial), is WHY and why NOW.
2. Since Epstein can be considered an important tool in the hands of security institutions like the Mossad et al. one has to ask the crucial question, why would the Mossad (be it represented by one or more of her 'commercial' subsidiaries like Black Cube or otherwise) allow such a precious asset to be removed from its international political powerhouse.
3. An important tool, for Epstein might very well have been highly useful for institutions like the Mossad in collecting leverage ("dirt") on people - like potential leaders, and/or people of high political / judicial power and/or ditto social standing - such as Clinton, Trump and Andrew Windsor, in order to be able to mold political /and judicial decisions in the USA and Europe relating to the ME for example, by outright blackmail.
4. In this scenario it is to be assumed, that Epstein himself might have been blackmailed into cooperation with the Mossad as well, although that does not necessarily have to be case.
5. Not necessarily, for in this very context namely, one has to keep in mind, that his main partner in crime those days - and carefully unnamed in this article and elsewhere - has been the daughter of the notorious Robert Maxwell, called Chislaine Maxwell.
7. In that capacity the Mossad had practically free admission to a treasure trove of free - often high quality - scientific studies that partly could have been used for "stimulating Jewish scientists" gathering international fame and honour (sometimes even accumulating into glittering Nobel prizes), thus contributing to the myth of superiority of "the Jewish race" (*).
8. Epstein - for years close friends with Woody Allen (**) - at the time of the first accusations, had been judicially supported by USA based celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz, himself an ultra zionist proponent and also accused of participating in sexually improper behavior in the premises of Epstein.
9. The fact that Epstein walked away with an exceptionally light sentence for an exceptionally minor crime - in exchange for the dropping of a list of major criminal charges in a plea bargaining procedure, while the FBI detectives capturing him have been extremely frustrated then by this totally unexpected, for totally unprecedented development - might easily have been contributed towards the use of "dirt" against the then prosecutor Alex Acosta.
10, Alex Acosta, who later on in his career has been appointed into the ministerial ranks of the Trump administration (although he meanwhile had to leave his post under public and political pressure of his handling of the a-typical Epstein prosecution).
11. Although one can easily speculate on the possibility, that the arrest of Epstein might be an effort by (parts of) the FBI, in order to seek revenge for the humiliation brought on their organisation by Trump et al., one still has to answer the question, of why the Mossad - undoubtedly having been informed in detail about the investigative activities by Julie K. Brown (Miami Herald) into Epstein, long ahead of its publication last november - would allow this arrest to happen (assuming that the Mossad does listen in on much of the key conversations of the FBI leadership and must have been aware of the planned operation).
12. After all it has been people like the famous whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds - who unfortunately later on in her career has been hijacked by the USA extreem right, that brought the popular deep state cult to a new height after sharing her shocking observations and odd experiences - that taught the world about the easy and unlimited acces by the Mossad (and security organisations of Turkey descent) to the FBI organisation and its unlimited entrance into highly classified and highly sensitive information.
13. Maybe there has been a power-struggle within the Mossad (former Mossad directors Meir Dagan and some of his predecessors often openly resisted Likudnic Netanyahu on Iran, among other subjects), and someone had decided, that Epstein had become a liability rather then an asset lately.
14. But then again : Epstein will have hidden more than enough compromising material on key figures himself - including judges and/or he will receive a window of opportunity, opening to flee the USA, once he might be set free on bail - to have his future relatively well protected.
15. Barak will have organised his own defense against unwanted intrusion by security services, so - unless some powerful figures will have decided that he might become a candidate for death by a mortal disease or a ditto accident - he will easily survive this onslaught on his reputation as well.
16. The next question of course is : why would the Mossad et al. allow Trump to be damaged beyond repair, since Trump has been parachuted into the White House by the pro-Israellobby (ie. by his super-PAC supporters Robert Mercer and Sheldon Adelson), along with an impressive range of pro zionist executives on high places in his administration, including special adviser and "ME specialist" Kushner.
17. Has Trump become too lenient on the Iran dossier by not allowing the USA and Saudi Arabia to launch a full-scale military attack on Iran already, or just the other way around.
20. All in all, I do seriously doubt whether Epstein will ever have to face a legitimate full-blown trial this time, for we simply have to fear, that Epstein either will escape towards the zionist colony in the ME (after he might be sentenced in absence, but of course will never be extradited from there) or find another way to escape punishment (for instance by a presidential pardon rendered to hem by (fellow-pedophile suspect) Trump, just to mention a possible route for Epstein to avoid life imprisonment in the USA.
(*)There is no such a thing as a Jewish race and a Jewish gene, but only people who are making the choice of following the Jewish reli-cultural belief complex, in the same way as there are people who do choose for the cultural Christian belief complex or the Islam.
A choice however, mostly forced upon them by (parental / rabbinical) religious indoctrination and the adaptation of notorious historical falsehoods such as "Jewish Bloodlines with ancient ME Peoples, Jewish Diaspora's, Birthright Israel, The chosen People and The promised Land".
People wear face masks to combat air pollution in Mexico City, where the subjects of the study had lived. Photograph: Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images
