The discovery of potential environmental and human health effects from disposal of millions of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries each year has led scientists to recommend stronger government policies to encourage recovery, recycling and reuse of lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery materials. That's the conclusion of a new paper in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Oladele A. Ogunseitan and colleagues point out that Li-ion batteries have become mainstays for powering everything from smart phones to components in new jetliners, with global sales approaching $8 billion annually. They realized that the short life span (2-4 years) of Li-ion batteries in portable electronic devices would make a huge contribution to the electronic waste problem, which already is the fastest growing form of solid waste. So they decided to see whether potentially toxic materials leach out and become a health and environmental threat after disposal.

Using standardized leaching tests, hazard assessment models and other methods for evaluating hazardous waste, the scientists showed that Li-ion batteries from cell phones would meet federal government definitions of hazardous waste because of lead content. California standards would classify them as hazardous due to cobalt, copper and nickel content. "These findings support the need for stronger government policy at the local, national, and international levels to encourage recovery, recycling, and reuse of lithium battery materials," their report states.

Because a doctor’s advice  and assistance more than doubles the odds that a smoker will quit successfully, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is partnering with five national physician groups on the new “Talk With Your Doctor” campaign to encourage smokers to ask a doctor for help. The campaign also encourages clinicians to ask patients if they smoke and offer assistance in helping them to quit. Almost 70 percent of all smokers say they want to quit, according to the National Health Interview Survey.

The drive will be part of the “Tips From Former Smokers’’ national television and online ad campaign from May 27 through June 2. Tips From Former Smokers national television and online ads will feature a new call to action for smokers to “talk with your doctor” for help quitting.   Each ad ends with the voice-over narration, “You can quit.  Talk with your doctor for help.”

"These stories motivate smokers to try to quit, and the ‘Talk With Your Doctor’ campaign encourages smokers to get help from their doctor to quit,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “Smokers have told us that hard-hitting, emotionally powerful ads like these provide the motivation they need, and the response to the ads supports that. We believe ‘Talk With Your Doctor’ will amplify and expand the great success of Tips and offer more encouragement for smokers to quit for good.  We hope doctors will offer evidence based counseling and medications to all patients who can benefit from them."

Through partnerships, doctors will be offered training on tobacco interventions, and will receive information about the campaign through academic journals, newsletters, and digital communications. These partners include the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“Taking just a few minutes to talk to your patients about smoking can double the odds of them successfully quitting,” said Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, M.D.  “As a physician, I know that clinicians and their staff can play an incredibly important role in helping smokers move from thinking about quitting to taking real steps toward successful quitting.” 

January 2014 will mark the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report to conclude that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.  Five decades later, 43 million American adults continue to smoke, and cigarette smoking kills an estimated 440,000 Americans each year. 

As of May 5, the Tips campaign has resulted in 200,000 additional calls to 1-800-QUIT-NOW beyond what would have been expected had call volume continued at its level the week before the campaign began.

“I’ve been a practicing physician who’s helped patients quit, and treated some of the terrible diseases in those who didn’t quit in time,” said Tim McAfee, M.D., M.P.H., director of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.  “The message of the Tipscampaign and our new “Talk With Your Doctor” campaign is simple:  Quit smoking now. Or better yet — don’t start. Studies show that the sooner you quit the better.  And there is nothing you can do to add more years to your life than to quit smoking.”

Quitting smoking may be the single most effective thing you can do to improve your life expectancy, and now the Affordable Care Act gives Americans greater access to resources to help them quit. In addition to talking with a doctor, smokers who want help quitting smoking can call 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669).  For more information on the Tips campaign, including profiles of the former smokers, links to the ads, and free quit help, visit www.cdc.gov/tips. 

(Bronx, NY) — In a striking, unexpected discovery, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have determined that vitamin C kills drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in laboratory culture. The finding suggests that vitamin C added to existing TB drugs could shorten TB therapy, and it highlights a new area for drug design. The study was published today in the online journal Nature Communications.

TB is caused by infection with the bacterium M. tuberculosis. In 2011, TB sickened some 8.7 million people and took some 1.4 million lives, according to the World Health Organization. Infections that fail to respond to TB drugs are a growing problem: About 650,000 people worldwide now have multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), 9 percent of whom have extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).TB is especially acute in low and middle income countries, which account for more than 95 percent of TB-related deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

The Einstein discovery arose during research into how TB bacteria become resistant to isoniazid, a potent first-line TB drug. The lead investigator and senior author of the study was William Jacobs, Jr. Ph.D., professor of microbiology & immunology and of genetics at Einstein. Dr. Jacobs is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Jacobs and his colleagues observed that isoniazid-resistant TB bacteria were deficient in a molecule called mycothiol. "We hypothesized that TB bacteria that can't make mycothiol might contain more cysteine, an amino acid," said Dr. Jacobs. "So, we predicted that if we added isoniazid and cysteine to isoniazid-sensitive M. tuberculosis in culture, the bacteria would develop resistance. Instead, we ended up killing off the culture— something totally unexpected."

The Einstein team suspected that cysteine was helping to kill TB bacteria by acting as a "reducing agent" that triggers the production of reactive oxygen species (sometimes called free radicals), which can damage DNA.

"To test this hypothesis, we repeated the experiment using isoniazid and a different reducing agent— vitamin C," said Dr. Jacobs. "The combination of isoniazid and vitamin C sterilized the M. tuberculosis culture. We were then amazed to discover that vitamin C by itself not only sterilized the drug-susceptible TB, but also sterilized MDR-TB and XDR-TB strains."

To justify testing vitamin C in a clinical trial, Dr. Jacobs needed to find the molecular mechanism by which vitamin C exerted its lethal effect. More research produced the answer: Vitamin C induced what is known as a Fenton reaction, causing iron to react with other molecules to create reactive oxygen species that kill the TB bacteria.

"We don't know whether vitamin C will work in humans, but we now have a rational basis for doing a clinical trial," said Dr. Jacobs. "It also helps that we know vitamin C is inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use. At the very least, this work shows us a new mechanism that we can exploit to attack TB."

The paper is titled, "Mycobacterium tuberculosis is extraordinarily sensitive to killing by a vitamin C-induced Fenton reaction." The other contributors are Catherine Vilcheze, Ph.D., Travis Hartman and Brian Weinrick, Ph.D., all at Einstein.

The study was supported by a grant (AI26170) from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

About Drug-Resistant TB

Multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB): TB that does not respond to isoniazid and rifampicin, the two most potent anti-TB drugs.

Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB): TB that is resistant to rifampicin and isoniazid, as well as to any member of the quinolone family of antibiotics and at least one of four second-line injectable anti-TB drugs.

Registration is now open. The American Dental Assistants Association will be joining the American Dental Association for a Joint Conference in New Orleans, LA.  The conference is October 31 to November 2. Dental assistants should register under the "Dental Assistants" category. To learn more, click here. 

Fort Lauderdale, Fla., – Mandatory influenza (flu) vaccination, as a condition of employment, did not lead to excessive voluntary termination, according to a four-year analysis of vaccination rates at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, IL.

Flu infections result in approximately 150,000 hospital admissions and 24,000 deaths annually.¹ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all healthcare personnel (HCP) receive the annual flu vaccine, yet the national average for HCP vaccination is only 64 percent.

Infection control and prevention specialists at Loyola worked with a multidisciplinary task force to develop a facility-wide policy that made flu vaccination a condition of employment. Their successful approach will be presented on Sunday, June 9, at the 40th Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

"`First, do no harm' is our mandate as healthcare workers," said Dr. Jorge Parada, MD, MPH, FACP, FIDSA, study author and professor of medicine at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. "We should do all we can to not pass along illness to our patients."

As one of the first medical centers in the country to implement mandatory flu vaccination, Loyola began with the full backing of the hospital's senior leadership. They introduced an active declination system in 2008 – HCPs were no longer allowed to simply not bother to get influenza vaccination, instead they were required by Employee Health to state "yes" or "no" when asked to be vaccinated and to provide reasoning for why they declined the vaccine. This brought the center's overall vaccination rate up to 72 percent, well above the CDC's goal of more than 60 percent of HCPs vaccinated, but the hospital aimed higher.

"This was still well short of what we at Loyola felt we should achieve to maximize patient safety," said Dr. Parada, who led the vaccination program. "After all, this still meant more than one in four staff were not being immunized. In addition, let's not forget that as healthcare workers our staff are at greater risk than the general population for exposure to the flu virus, and we also have a fiduciary responsibility to try and protect our HCP (and by extension, their families) from becoming ill. Vaccination provides that added protection."

In 2009 Loyola chose to mandate flu vaccination as a condition of employment, and extended this mandate to students, volunteers, and contractors. To support and encourage compliance, the center's communications department developed facility-wide reminder emails and created short videos, which were displayed on flat screens throughout the hospital.

In the first year of the mandatory policy (2009-'10 season), 99.2 percent of employees received the vaccine, 0.7 percent were exempted for religious/medical reasons, and 0.1 percent refused vaccination and chose to terminate employment. The results have been sustained: In 2012, 98.7 percent were vaccinated, 1.2 percent were exempted and 0.06 percent refused vaccination.

Dr. Parada explained that in reality, their 2012 numbers were even better than that because, of the five people who refused vaccination in the mandatory period, three were unpaid volunteers, who later reconsidered, received vaccine and returned to Loyola, and the other two were part-time staff, each with only 10 percent time commitment at Loyola, truly reflecting a 0.002 percent vaccine-refusal rate. Over the course of four years, fewer than 15 HCP (including volunteers) out of approximately 8,000 total chose termination over vaccination.

"Near-universal flu immunization is achievable and sustainable with a mandatory vaccination policy," Dr. Parada said. "Our employees and associates now understand that this is the way we do business. Just as construction workers must wear steel-toed boots and hard hats on job sites, healthcare workers should get a flu shot to work in a hospital. We believe that patient and staff safety have been enhanced as a result."

OSAP's biggest fundraiser of the year is its charity auction held during the Annual Symposium. The organization uses auction proceeds to develop relevant, timely resources to support dental safety. The auction is June 14. 

Whether or not you plan to attend the symposium, you can help by donating an item or service for auction. Popular donations from previous auctions included unique jewelry, artwork, hand-knit confections, gourmet baskets, tickets to events, vacation home rentals, hot air balloon rides and favorite wines. Just click here for details.  

Please help OSAP continue its good work by donating an item or making a monetary contribution today.

Registration for the 2013 OSAP Symposium called "Charting a Course for Infection Prevention & Safety" in San Diego, Califorinia ends May 31. Recent infection control breaches provide opportunities to understand outbreak protocols, how to manage complex, rapidly changing situations and how to better assure compliance with recommended infection control recommendations. OSAP will feature a special panel presentation at this year's Symposium to address this topic.   Click here for information on the program, venue, faculty and to secure registration and room reservations.

Every year, on May 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners mark World No Tobacco Day, highlighting the health risks associated with tobacco use and advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption. Tobacco kills nearly six million people each year, of which more than 600 000 are non-smokers dying from breathing second-hand smoke. The theme of this year’s campaign is "Ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship." To learn more, click here. 

Four out of five U.S. adults report having voluntary smoke-free rules in their homes and three out of four report having voluntary smoke-free rules in their vehicles, according to a study published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The National Adult Tobacco Survey respondents were classified as having smoke-free rules if they never allow smoking inside their homes or vehicles. The study is the first to present estimates of smoke-free rules and secondhand smoke exposure in vehicles among U.S. adults.

Despite the high prevalence of voluntary smoke-free rules in homes and vehicles, the study found that almost 11 million non-smoking adults continue to be exposed to secondhand smoke in their home, and almost 17 million non-smoking adults continue to be exposed to secondhand smoke in a vehicle.  The study also contains state-by-state data showing that the highest prevalence of smoke-free rules in homes and vehicles occurred in many states with comprehensive smoke-free laws and longstanding tobacco control programs. 

“We have made tremendous progress in the last 15 years protecting people in public spaces from secondhand smoke,” said Tim McAfee, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Office on Smoking and Health at CDC. “The good news is that people are applying the same protection in their homes and vehicles. However, millions of non-smokers, many of whom are children, remain exposed to secondhand smoke in these environments.”

Additional study findings include:

• Eighty-one percent of U.S. adults report having smoke-free rules in their homes and 74 percent have smoke-free rules in their vehicles

• Eighty-nine percent of non-smokers report having smoke-free home rules, while only 48 percent of smokers have them.

• Eighty-five percent of non-smokers report having smoke-free vehicle rules, while only 27 percent of smokers have them.

• Secondhand smoke exposure among nonsmokers in homes and vehicles was greatest among men, younger adults, non-Hispanic blacks, and those with a lower level of education.

• Many of the states with the lowest prevalence of smoke-free rules in homes and vehicles are states with a high prevalence of adult smoking.

“While almost half of all U.S. residents are protected by 100 percent smoke-free policies in worksites, restaurants and bars, overall there are still an estimated 88 million non-smoking Americans over the age of three who are exposed to secondhand smoke,” said Brian King, Ph.D., an epidemiologist in the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health and lead author of this study.  “It’s important to educate people on the dangers of secondhand smoke exposure and how smoke-free homes and vehicles can reduce that exposure.”

Exposure to secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer in adult non-smokers.  In children, secondhand smoke exposure causes more severe and frequent asthma attacks, acute respiratory infections, ear infections and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).  Secondhand smoke exposure is responsible for an estimated 50,000 deaths each year in the United States.  The Surgeon General has concluded there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, and that only 100 percent smoke-free policies can protect non-smokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke.  Opening a window does not work, nor does any other ventilation system.

January 2014 will mark the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s Report, which first showed that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer.  Quitting smoking may be the single most effective thing you can do to improve your life expectancy, and now the Affordable Care Act gives Americans greater access to resources to help them quit.  Visit BeTobaccoFree.gov for additional resources on quitting. Smokers who want help quitting smoking can call 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669).  For stories of people who have quit successfully and free quit help, visit www.cdc.gov/tips.

The full study is available at https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/. 

Become part of an elite group of professionals. The American Association of Dental Office Managers (AADOM) is now accepting applications to become a Fellow of the American Association of Dental Office Managers (FAADOM). If you are looking for a professional distinction, now is your time. 

To learn more about Fellowship status, visit AADOM Fellowship site or call AADOM at 732-842-9977, ext. 4

Deadline for the Fellowship application is July 19, 2013.

The 2013 Fellowship Class will be inducted at the 9th Annual Dental Managers Conference