Vegetables irrigated with treated waste water expose consumers to drugs.

A new study by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Hadassah Medical Center shows that eating vegetables and fruits grown in soils irrigated with reclaimed waste water exposes consumers to minute quantities of carbamazepine, an anti-epileptic drug commonly detected in waste water effluents. Fresh water scarcity worldwide has led to increased use of reclaimed waste water, as an alternative source for crop irrigation. But the abundance of pharmaceuticals in treated effluents has raised concerns over the potential exposure for consumers to drug contaminants via treated waste water. The study is the first to directly address exposure to such pharmaceutical contaminants in healthy humans. It was recently published in Environmental Science and Technology. "In a randomized controlled trial we have demonstrated that healthy individuals consuming reclaimed wastewater-irrigated produce excreted carbamazepine and its metabolites in their urine, while subjects consuming fresh water-irrigated produce excreted undetectable or significantly lower levels of carbamazepine," said Prof. Ora Paltiel, Director of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, who led the research. The study followed 34 men and women divided into two groups. The first group was given reclaimed wastewater-irrigated produce for the first week, and freshwater-irrigated vegetables in the following week. The second group consumed the produce in reverse order. The volunteers consumed the produce, which included tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuce, according to their normal diet and drank bottled water throughout the study to neutralize water contamination. The researchers measured carbamazepine levels in the fresh produce and in the participants' urine. To begin with, the urinary levels of carbamazepine differed in their quantifiable concentration, with some participants having undetectable levels. Following seven days of consuming reclaimed water-irrigated produce, all members of the first group exhibited quantifiable levels of carbamazepine, while in the second group the distribution remained unchanged from baseline. Levels of carbamazepine excretion were markedly higher in the first group versus the second. It is evident that those who consume produce grown in soil irrigated with treated waste water increase their exposure to the drug. Though the levels detected were much lower than in patients who consume the drug, it is important to assess the exposure in commercially available produce. Materials from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The snails spreading fever across Africa.

Freshwater snails are spreading chronic disease across sub-Saharan Africa,the snails harbor parasitic schistomosoma worms that burrow into human skin.All it takes is a snail, a worm and some freshwater to become infected. Once you are, the disease could persist for decades -- and prove fatal. The culprits come as a pair: freshwater snails harboring parasitic worms. Once released from the snails, the worms can burrow into the skin and deep inside the body of any human daring to enter its waters The infection at hand is schistosomiasis -- also known as bilharzia -- a chronic infection caused by parasitic Schistomosa worms that can live inside blood vessels for years on end causing fever, chills and inflammation . "Any freshwater which has these snails in them could be the cause of infection," says Alan Fenwick, Professor of Tropical Parasitology at Imperial College London. The majority of infected waters are found in Africa, particularly the continent's largest lake -- Lake Victoria -- where risk of infection is high. The challenge in controlling the disease is that people often don't develop symptoms for years, but can continue to transmit the infection. Inside the human body, female worms grow into adults and lay eggs that migrate through the body for release in faeces. If released into freshwater -- through defecation in the water -- they hatch and become ready to infect any freshwater snails in their path. Once inside the snails, the young worms transform into versions of themselves now capable of burrowing back into human skin. On release back into the water they swim ready to, again, infect humans in their vicinity. It's a perpetual cycle in which the parasites use both snails and humans to their advantage, manipulating both, to ensure the survival of their species. The eggs of the parasites travel primarily to the intestine when inside humans, for release, but along this journey can become trapped in organs and intestinal lining to cause inflammation. The characteristic symptom of the disease is a swollen abdomen. More than 61 million people were treated for schistosomiasis in 2014, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and more than 258 million required preventative treatment . The majority of cases are in Africa and outweigh numbers affected by other diseases in the region. The problem that sub Saharan Africa has is a lack of fresh water, safe water, and adequate sanitation .People who need to urinate and defecate tend to do so on the open ground, and their excreta can be washed into water where the eggs will then infect snails. According to WHO, 90% of those requiring treatment for schistosomiasis live in Africa, but most of them live around lake and river regions. The factor helping the disease persist, is poor sanitation. Infections primarily affect young children, but symptoms can take years to appear, making finding and treating those infected a challenge. The team has to proactively go out and find children who are infected and treat them so that we protect them from an early grave. The main control strategy to date has been mass treatment using the drug praziquantil. read more at http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/09/health/snails-spread-schistosomiasis-in-africa/index.html

HOW TO HANDLE HEAT STRESS IN PIGS.

Heat stress affects the pig industry in tropical climates as well as temperate regions. Losses due to heat stress include nonproductive days for sows and economic losses in growing-finishing pigs. Even in mild climate conditions such as the Netherlands pigs have problems in the summer with performance losses due heat stress .This problem can be dealt with by improved nutrition. Pigs are much more sensitive to hot weather than other livestock animals – largely due to the fact that pigs hardly sweat and their lungs are relatively small compared to their body size. When pigs are exposed to heat stress, their respiration rate increases, pulse rate falls, they start panting heavily and they stop eating because this contributes to further heat production. The fact that bigger pigs are more sensitive to heat stress can be clearly seen in growth performance. Investigation of different weight classes (75, 80 and 28 kg body weight) showed a direct negative correlation on average daily gain (ADG) with increasing room temperature. While 75 kg pigs start to decrease their ADG at around 23°C, pigs weighing 25 kg can compensate up to 27°C (Langridge, Western Australia, 2014). A commonly accepted temperature range for sows in the farrowing house typically spans between 21°C and 25°C - though this is too big of a range. Nursery sows begin to show signs of heat stress starting at 22°C . The feed intake drops almost 0.5 kg/day as temperature increases to 25°C. Technical solutions to reduce heat stress are often time 
consuming and can be highly expensive, e.g. building cooled stables. A nutritional approach can prove more adaptable and quicker to implement. Based on current knowledge there are some measures we can take to improve the swine productivity during periods of heat stress. The nutritional intervention include; 1) Smaller, more frequent meals per day and/or night feeding. 2)A sufficient supply of fresh, clean water. 3)Wet the feed with water. 4)Use pelleted feed instead of mash. 5)Lower crude protein. 6) Replace starch with fat as an energy source. 7) Use less fiber. Story from materials from pig progress.

HOW TO FORMULATE FISH FEED WITH WATER HYACINTH.

Water hyacinth: how to use it as fish feed. The need to find alternative protein sources to formulate non-traditional fish diets to overcome the high fish meal prices has resulted in many attempts to replace fish meal partially or completely with various plant protein sources.

 Water hyacinth has been discovered as a viable option according to study carried out by Dr. S. A. Vhanalakar and Dr. D. V. Muley, Department of Zoology, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, India showing the benefits of water hyacinth as fish feed ingredient. 

 Water hyacinth is one of the most highly productive plants filling up a small area within a short time span as is considered the world's worst aquatic weed. It forms dense mats that interfere with navigation, recreation, irrigation and power generation. These mats competitively exclude native submerged and floating-leaved plants. 

 The rising cost and scarcity of fish meal has prompted studies to find alternatives to the fish meal by using locally available and cheaper ingredients of either animal or plant origin. The success of the aquaculture industry depends worldwide on the availability of low cost, high quality feeds to break even. In the past several studies were carried out to look for substitutes for fish meal in the fish feed. 

Fish nutritionists have evaluated alternative sources of plant origin protein in fish diets as partial or total fish meal replacement. Water hyacinth has been found suitable among other options,as it was found to replace the fish meal at various levels of inclusion without any side effects but rather an increase in fish productivity. . 

 The study carried out using the common carp fed for 120 days. : fresh water hyacinth leaves were collected from local water bodies, these were washed thoroughly with water to remove dirt and debris and drained properly before sun drying. 

The dried leaves of water hyacinth were milled , packed in airtight polyethylene bags and kept in the freezer before use. The inclusion of the dried leaves in the feed was at different rates ranging from (0-70%), groundnut cake, rice bran, fish meal, guar gum binder and mineral/vitamin mixture were all added to formulate the feed. 

 Ingredients were mixed until an homogeneous mass was obtained and with the mincer 0.6 mm pellets were prepared, which were immediately sun dried. The dried pellets were broken up by hand into convenient pellet sizes and frozen before feeding the fish. The water hyacinth diet showed the great usefulness as fish feed ingredient and for cost effectiveness. 

The feed with 40% water hyacinth incorporated diet showed best growth performance over all the other inclusion rates, although all the diets containing the water hyacinth leaf powder showed effectiveness as an economic fish feed . 

 Water hyacinth does not have the capacity to replace the traditional fish meal,therefore, it is used as a supplementary fish feed ingredient along with the traditional ingredients; but the incorporation level of traditional ingredients like fish meal, groundnut cake, rice bran etc. was kept at lowest inclusion level. 

 

Water hyacinth can  play an important role in fish feed formulation to overcome high feed prices.