Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on the incidence and patterns of toxic exposures and poisoning in Jordan: a retrospective descriptive study

ObjectivesTo describe the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown in Jordan (21 March 2020–21 May 2020) on the incidence and patterns of toxic exposures and poisoning as compared with the same period from the previous year (21 March 2019–21 May 2019).DesignA retrospective descriptive study.MethodsCall data sourced from Pharmacy One Poison Center from the lockdown period (21 March 2020–21 May 2020) and the same period during 2019 (21 March 2019–21 May 2019) were revised. In addition, a database was established and analysed.ResultsWe noticed that not only did calls increased, but there was also a noticeable change in call patterns. Calls increased by 91% (544 vs 285 calls) during the lockdown period. Drugs were the most common among types of exposure, and the most prevalent route of exposure was ingestion. There was a notable increase in ocular exposure by 550% (13 vs 2 cases). The majority of exposures were at home and there were no occupational exposures. We found an increase in household cleaner exposure among males and an increase in alcohol exposure in females. Children aged below 5 years are the most affected. Even though there is an increase in the total number of cases, severe cases decreased.ConclusionThe lockdown effect on rates of toxic exposures was prominent, whether through the increase in calls or the change in patterns. As people spent more time at home, their exposure to toxic agents increased. Furthermore, cleaning recommendations led to the misuse of cleaning and disinfectant products, increasing exposures related to abating the COVID-19 infection.

Erasure, Demolition, and Violent Obsolescence in the Urban Margins

This chapter explores the lived experiences and politics of erasure, demolition, and obsolescence logics in Agbogbloshie. The author highlights how the migrant laborers who make up the majority of workers in Agbogbloshie have faced repeated rounds of eviction and forced displacement. The author shows how e-workers struggle to negotiate state-based forms of violent erasure fueled by demolition and flood control logics that paradoxically redirect and reorient the focus and politics of environmental health in Agbogbloshie. The experience of displacement and eviction in Agbogbloshie exposes intersecting logics of erasure, demolition, and obsolescence. The chapter explores how e-waste workers experience “slow violence” in the form of toxic exposures, bodily distress, and displacement. But Agbogbloshie is not simply a precarious space of destruction or an impossible place to live. As this chapter shows, e-waste workers sustain cultural life amidst dire lived experiences of erasure in Ghana’s urban margins.

Embodied Burning, E-Waste Epidemiology, and Toxic Postcolonial Corporality

This chapter introduces the ways in which e-pyropolitics are embodied by exploring the illness narratives and bodily distress experiences of several copper burners. The author draws on ethnographic narratives to explore how Agbogbloshie workers narrate, understand, and refer to their own bodily distress to make sense of the toxic exposures and environmental health risks they face. In addition to exploring how toxic embodiment and experience break down or reconfigure demarcations of body and environment, the author highlights the ways in which toxicity and corporality become the site of laudable environmental health risk mitigation efforts that ironically fail to transform or reduce toxic corporality in an enduring postcolonial context. In this way, the author explores how a solutions-based intervention in Agbogbloshie overlooks the complexity and diversity of eco-corporeal relations in a tech metal extraction zone where bodies, toxins, and economies intersect.

Mercury Exposure among E-Waste Recycling Workers in Colombia: Perceptions of Safety, Risk, and Access to Health Information

Exposures to the toxic element mercury (Hg) are exceptionally high among recycling workers globally. Recycling is a growing sector in Colombia, yet workers who directly handle e-waste are often unaware of the risks of exposure to mercury from post-consumer lighting products (e.g., fluorescent lamps). This qualitative study aimed to understand how recycling workers perceive their own risks from mercury exposure and how they find information about these risks, through interviews (n = 35) at the three largest formal recycling facilities in Colombia. Workers’ risk perception was generally disconnected from their likely actual exposure to mercury, instead often seen juxtaposed to co-workers who worked more directly with hazardous waste. Recycling workers, who were predominantly men from lower-income socioeconomic backgrounds, had limited knowledge of health risks due to mercury exposure and were more likely to receive health-related information from informal sources. Over a third of interviewees had searched online for information about occupational health risks of mercury, but these searches were perceived as unsatisfactory due to information being difficult to find, not available in Spanish, or related to mercury exposure via seafood or mining rather than recycling. Workers expressed (over)confidence in personal protective equipment and concern about frequent employee turnover. This study points to weaknesses in environmental health literacy and public health communication around toxic exposures to mercury in the workplace. Stronger regulation and enforcement are needed to prevent toxic exposures and promote worker health equity.

Chemical Agents

This article reviews interdisciplinary toxicity literature, building from Gerald E. Markowitz and David Rosner’s “deceit and denial” and Phil Brown’s “contested illnesses” to argue for a third, more critical analytic that I term “empire and empirics.” Deceit and denial pit corporate actors against antitoxins advocates, while contested illnesses highlight social movements. Empire and empirics center the role of imperialism in reproducing today’s unevenly distributed toxic exposures. I find this third path the most generative because the products and the production of science—toxicants and toxicology—are situated in their sociohistorical, politico-economic, ecological, and affective contexts. Revealing the imperialist logics embedded into dominant ontoepistemology also illuminates alternative, liberatory pathways toward more environmentally just futures. I close with examples of “undisciplined” action research, highlighting scholar-practitioners who study toxicity with care and in nonhierarchical collaboration. While undisciplining is challenging, its potential for realizing environmental justice far outweighs the difficulties of doing science differently.

Systematic Review of Human Poisoning and Toxic Exposures in Myanmar

The International Health Regulations (2005) promote national capacity in core institutions so that countries can better detect, respond to and recover from public health emergencies. In accordance with the ‘all hazards’ approach to public health risk, this systematic review examines poisoning and toxic exposures in Myanmar. A systematic literature search was undertaken to find articles pertaining to poisoning in Myanmar published between 1998 and 2020. A number of poisoning risks are identified in this review, including snakebites, heavy metals, drugs of abuse, agrochemicals and traditional medicine. Patterns of poisoning presented in the literature diverge from poisoning priorities reported in other lower-middle income countries in the region. The experience of professionals working in a Yangon-based poison treatment unit also indicate that frequently observed poisoning as a result of pharmaceuticals, methanol, and petroleum products was absent from the literature. Other notable gaps in the available research include assessments of the public health burden of poisoning through self-harm, household exposures to chemicals, paediatric risk and women’s occupational risk of poisoning. There is a limited amount of research available on poisoning outcomes and routes of exposure in Myanmar. Further investigation and research are warranted to provide a more complete assessment of poisoning risk and incidence.

The developing murine lung is susceptible to acetaminophen toxicity

Acetaminophen (N-acetyl-p-aminophenol, APAP) use in the neonatal intensive care unit is rapidly increasing. While APAP-related hepatotoxicity is rarely reported in the neonatal literature, other end-organ toxicity can occur with toxic exposures. APAP-induced lung injury has been reported with toxic exposures in adults, but whether this occurs in the developing lung is unknown. Therefore, we tested whether toxic APAP exposures would injure the developing lung. Neonatal C57BL/6 mice (PN7, early alveolar stage of lung development) were exposed to a dose of APAP known to cause hepatotoxicity in adult mice (280 mg/kg, IP). This exposure induced significant lung injury in the absence of identifiable hepatic toxicity. This injury was associated with increased pulmonary expression of Cyp2e1, the xenobiotic enzyme responsible for the toxic conversion of APAP. Exposure was associated with increased pulmonary expression of antioxidant response genes and decreased pulmonary glutathione peroxidase activity level. Furthermore, we observed an increase in pulmonary expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Lastly, we were able to demonstrate that this toxic APAP exposure was associated with a shift in pulmonary metabolism away from glycolysis with an increased oxidative phosphorylation, a finding consistent with increased mitochondrial workload, potentially leading to mitochondrial toxicity. This previously unrecognized injury and metabolic implications highlight the need to look beyond the liver and evaluate both the acute and long-term pulmonary implications of APAP exposure in the perinatal period.

Toxicity and Informal Living in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

This article follows Lety and her family, who were part of the first wave of settlers that established the 50 Casas neighborhood—a once informal community—in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, located near a petrochemical complex. From the outset, the residents of 50 Casas routinely dealt with, and continue to deal with, all the problems associated with living in an urban, informal settlement: lack of services, poor infrastructure, high poverty rates, and insecurity. However, on top of that, the 50 Casas residents also deal with the toxic exposures associated with the refinery.