Word: toxin
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Bush's environmental record has Al Gore licking his chops. Texas leads the country in a frightening array of toxin- and carcinogen-release statistics, and last year Houston passed Los Angeles for the dubious distinction of America's smoggiest city. Though some emission levels have declined in recent years, four metro areas are flunking EPA clean-air standards. To achieve compliance, Houston will have to reduce nitrous-oxide emissions as much as 90%. Faced with this crisis--and the presidential race--Texas officials are moving quickly to draw up new plans to reduce emissions. And Bush has asked his regulators...
...THAT HEADACHE! Remember when botulism was a bad thing? Still is, if you happen to consume the toxin from a contaminated batch of canned food. But now, years after doctors discovered the toxin's uncanny ability to smooth out wrinkles and quell tremors, a new benefit has been uncovered: botulism toxin seems to alleviate migraine headaches. In a preliminary study, half the patients whose foreheads were injected with tiny amounts of the botulism drug Botox reported that their migraine headaches disappeared--and stayed away for up to four months...
Outside China, people find it harder simply to move on. For the millions who were glued to CNN in 1989 during the weeks of hope and the night of horror, China is linked, perhaps forever, with the massacre. It is the toxin in the air that helps explain the passion of Beijing's critics in the West. The students who bombarded the American embassy in Beijing with rocks and eggs a few weeks ago have provided new images of China. But their exuberance was partly a response to years of China bashing. The bad blood, ultimately, can be traced...
...corn has become enormously popular with farmers, and now accounts for up to 25% of the U.S. corn crop, or about 20 million acres. By splicing DNA from the common soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis into the corn's genes, scientists have created a plant that turns out the same toxin as the bug. While the toxin is deadly to the corn borer, which costs U.S. growers more than $1 billion annually, it is harmless to humans--as well as to such beneficial insects as ladybugs and honeybees. Indeed, organic farmers have long used Bt sprays as a natural pesticide...
...inevitable law of nature: For every action there is some reaction. The big question is always, how good or bad is the reaction? For some time, the reaction to a genetically engineered type of corn called Bt corn was thought to be very good, since it produced a natural toxin that killed corn borers, and allowed farmers to forgo the use of insecticides. On Thursday, however, a Cornell University laboratory study published in the journal Nature announced some bad news: The corn produces a wind-borne pollen that can kill monarch butterflies if they ingest it. As for the future...