One of the most powerful typhoons ever recorded slammed into the Philippines early Friday, and one weather expert warned, "There will be catastrophic damage."
The U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center shortly before Typhoon Haiyan's landfall said its maximum sustained winds were 314 kilometers per hour (195 mph), with gusts up to 379 kilometers per hour (235 mph).
"195-mile-per-hour winds, there aren't too many buildings constructed that can withstand that kind of wind," said Jeff Masters, a former hurricane meteorologist who is meteorology director at the private firm Weather Underground.
Masters said the storm had been poised to be the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded at landfall. He warned of catastrophic damage.
Local authorities reported having troubles reaching colleagues in the landfall area.
The local weather bureau had a lower reading on the storm's power, saying its speed at landfall in Eastern Samar province's Guiuan township had sustained winds at 235 kilometers (147 miles) per hour, with gusts of 275 kph (170 mph). The bureau takes measures based on longer periods of time.
Authorities in Guiuan could not immediately be reached for word of any deaths or damage, regional civil defense chief Rey Gozon told DZBB radio. Forecaster Mario Palafox with the national weather bureau said it had lost contact with its staff in the landfall area.
The storm was not expected to directly hit the flood-prone capital, Manila, further north.
The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said more than 125,000 people had been evacuated from towns and villages in the typhoon's path.
Typhoon Haiyan's wind strength at landfall had been expected to beat out Hurricane Camille, which was 305 kilometers per hour (190 mph) at landfall in the United States 1969, Masters said.
The only tiny bright side is that it's a fast-moving storm, so flooding from heavy rain — which usually causes the most deaths from typhoons in the Philippines — may not be as bad, Masters said.
"The wind damage should be the most extreme in Phillipines history," he said.
The storm later will be a threat to both Vietnam and Laos and is likely to be among the top five natural disasters for those two countries, Masters said. The storm is forecast to barrel through the Philippines' central region Friday and Saturday before blowing toward the South China Sea over the weekend, heading toward Vietnam.
President Benigno Aquino III on Thursday warned people to leave high-risk areas, including 100 coastal communities where forecasters said the storm surge could reach up to 7 meters (23 feet). He urged seafarers to stay in port.
Aquino ordered officials to aim for zero casualties, a goal often not met in an archipelago lashed by about 20 tropical storms each year, most of them deadly and destructive. Haiyan is the 24th such storm to hit the Philippines this year.
The president also assured the public of war-like preparations: three C-130 air force cargo planes and 32 military helicopters and planes on standby, along with 20 navy ships.
"No typhoon can bring Filipinos to their knees if we'll be united," he said in a televised address.
———
Associated Press writers Oliver Teves and Teresa Cerojano in the Philippines and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
Checking some items off her to-do list, Jennifer Garner stepped out in Santa Monica on Thursday (November 7).
Accompanied by her adorable son Samuel Affleck, the "Elektra" actress rocked a casual ensemble as she ran a few errands.
Miss Garner recently wrapped up on the set of her upcoming film "Imagine."
Per the synopsis, "Imagine" is about "an old letter written to him by John Lennon and Yoko Ono inspires an aging musician to live life differently, and he sets out to reconnect with his biological son."
Starring alongside side Jennifer are A-list stars including Al Pacino, Josh Peck and Brian Smith. The film is slated to hit theaters in 2014.
NSF, with interagency and international partners, makes first round of grants to understand Arctic sustainability
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Peter West pwest@nsf.gov 703-292-7530 National Science Foundation
Arctic science, engineering, and education for sustainability grants go to 12 institutions and include 8 nations
The National Science Foundation (NSF), in cooperation with interagency and international partners, recently made the first round of awards under a program that supports multi- and interdisciplinary science important to understanding the predictability, resiliency and sustainability of the natural and living environment, built environment, natural resource development and governance of the Arctic.
Six projects have been funded as part of the Arctic Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (ArcSEES) program. The projects are located at 12 institutions, and include collaborative investigators from the United States, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. ArcSEES grants support academic, management, indigenous and industry scientists.
"Twenty years ago, the Arctic Council emphasized the need to engage science for sustainability in the high north," said Erica Key, ArcSEES program manager in the Division of Polar Programs in NSF's Geosciences Directorate. "In that time, the Arctic environment and population has changed considerably. ArcSEES is a timely approach to understanding and mitigating the impacts of environmental change on Arctic people."
NSF's Division of Polar Programs; Geosciences Directorate and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE) contributed funding to the first round of awards, as did the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), an organization within the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
"The participation of CNRS through this new partnership with NSF and other U.S. institutions saw the selection of a project that includes French teams, and I am happy with this result," said Jean-Francois Stephan, director of the National Institute of Earth Sciences and Astronomy at CNRS.
CNRS coordinates the new French Arctic Initiative in which international cooperation occupies a privileged place, he added.
BOEM, in partnership with NSF, will fund two studies in the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf:
One will measure and assess the long-term cumulative impacts of increases in the oil-and-gas-industry infrastructure in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska, with the goal of reducing the impacts of future development in the region.
The other study will examine the vulnerability and resilience of the walrus population off Alaska's North Slope. This will enhance the Bureau's understanding of the complex interplay between climate change; walrus population dynamics and structure; health, habits, feeding ecologies; foraging locations and harvesting by Native-Alaskan subsistence hunters.
"BOEM welcomes the opportunity to partner with NSF and other world-class scientific organizations looking at Arctic sustainability," said Tommy P. Beaudreau, BOEM director.
The premise of ArcSEES is that fundamental research is needed to understand the integrated Arctic system in this era of rapid change, how sustainability is defined the context of rapid change, whether necessary data and statistical techniques are available to make the desired assessment and to understand the stability and predictability of the Arctic system state.
The program recognizes that there are gaps in the scientific understanding of the rapidly changing environmental, social, economic, built and managed systems in the Arctic as well as their complex interactions and, as result, deficiencies in the science that guides policymaking.
The suite of projects supported by the first round of grants reflects the diversity of research necessary to inform sustainability science and co-develop relevant policy, mitigation and adaptation strategies with Arctic residents.
Submissions to NSF's ArcSEES solicitation program drew the interest of more than 250 scientific collaborators from 10 countries as well as management entities from local and multi-national levels.
Established by Congress through the Arctic Research and Policy Act, the U.S. Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) consists of more than 15 agencies, departments and offices across the Federal government. NSF's director chairs IARPC.
The following grants were made in the first round of ArcSEES funding:
Collaborative Research: Water, Energy, and Food Security in the North: Synergies, tradeoffs, and building community capacity for sustainable futures (Sustainable Futures North)
Principal Investigators: Philip Loring, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Henry Huntington, Huntington Consulting, Eagle River, Alaska; Lawrence Hamilton, University of New Hampshire; Shari Gearheard, University of Colorado at Boulder
The Sustainable Futures North project addresses the question of whether synergies can be found among the related goals of food security, water security, energy security and resource development in the North American Arctic. Historically, development in one or more of these areas has presented trade-offs in others.
The North Slope Arctic Scenarios Project (NASP): Envisioning desirable futures and strategizing pathways for sustainable healthy communities
Principal Investigator: Amy Lovecraft, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This proposal for the North Slope Arctic Scenarios Project (NASP) involves multiple organizations and stakeholders in collaboration to explore options for sustainable development in the North. NASP employs proven and advanced approaches to engage North Slope communities in developing and analyzing scenarios visions for the future and plausible pathways--for effective strategic planning and implementation of policy.
WALRUS--Walrus Adaptability and Long-term Responses; Using multi-proxy data to project Sustainability
Principal Investigator: Nicole Misarti, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) is one of many species affected by recent environmental change in the Arctic. This project aims to integrate several disciplines including archaeology, ethnology, biology and ecology using diverse sources of data including DNA, stable isotope, steroid and trace element analysis as well as to ascertain long-term trends of walrus feeding ecology, foraging location and stock genetics over the last two millennia. This time-frame includes large climatic anomalies such as the Medieval Warm and the Little Ice Age, thereby presenting scientists with the possibility of understanding how walruses adapt during times of stress and change. The project is jointly funded by NSF and the Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Collaborative Research: Sustainabiity of critical areas for eiders and subsistence hunters in an industrializing nearshore zone
Principal Investigators: Tuula Hollmen, Alaska SeaLife Center; Henry Huntington, Huntington Consulting, Eagle River, Alaska; James Lovvorn, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; Neesha Stellrecht, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Throughout the Arctic, indigenous people are faced with difficult choices between the cash benefits of industrialization versus potential degradation of subsistence hunting. Subsistence hunting often provides a large fraction of foods and may be more reliable in the long term than a cash economy based on nonrenewable resources. Subsistence hunting for certain species may also have cultural significance that far exceeds their dietary contribution. Researchers will model habitat requirements and map viable prey densities for formerly hunted, but now threatened species, such as Spectacled Eider and a commonly hunted species, King Eider, in the Chukchi near-shore zone and determine long-term variability in the eiders' access to those areas through the ice. They will refine the maps with traditional ecological knowledge on conditions and areas where hunting for King Eider typically occurs. They will also estimate probabilities that different eider feeding areas that are accessible through the ice and conducive to hunting would be eliminated during migration by oil spills from pipelines built along four alternative routes. They will use the information as part of structured decision-making workshops to be held in the native community. These workshops will help create a local vision for sustainability, in terms of potential risks of different pipeline routes to subsistence and cultural values of eiders, relative to cash benefits of local construction projects.
Collaborative Research: Holistic Integration for Arctic Coastal-Marine Sustainability (HIACMS)
Principal Investigators: Lawson Brigham, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Paul Arthur Berkman, University of California-Santa Barbara
This three-year research project will develop and demonstrate an international, interdisciplinatry and inclusive process to enhance the practice of governance for sustainability in Arctic coastal-marine systems, balancing: (a) national interests and common interests, (b) environmental protection, social equity and economic prosperity and (c) the needs of present and future generations. The researchers believe that the sustainability process developed and demonstrated in this project focusing on the Arctic Ocean will have implications everywhere on Earth where resources, human activities and their impacts extend across or beyond the boundaries of sovereign states. The project is jointly funded by NSF and France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
Cumulative effects of Arctic oil development--planning and designing for sustainability
Principal Investigator: Donald Walker, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This project devises a sustainable approach to assess cumulative effects of oil exploration though combining detailed ground studies, local community input, industry involvement and an international perspective. It will use a three-pronged initiative:
A case study of the cumulative effects of industrial infrastructure at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, will focus on infrastructure-related effects associated with gravel mines, roads and other areas of gravel placement.
An Arctic Infrastructure Action Group, consisting of local people who interact with development infrastructure, permafrost scientists, ecologists, hydrologists, engineers, social scientists and educators, to bring issues to greater prominence in the international Arctic research community.
An education/outreach component will train students in arctic systems and introduce them to the issues of industrial development and adaptive management approaches during an expedition along the Elliott and Dalton highways in Alaska.
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NSF, with interagency and international partners, makes first round of grants to understand Arctic sustainability
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
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Contact: Peter West pwest@nsf.gov 703-292-7530 National Science Foundation
Arctic science, engineering, and education for sustainability grants go to 12 institutions and include 8 nations
The National Science Foundation (NSF), in cooperation with interagency and international partners, recently made the first round of awards under a program that supports multi- and interdisciplinary science important to understanding the predictability, resiliency and sustainability of the natural and living environment, built environment, natural resource development and governance of the Arctic.
Six projects have been funded as part of the Arctic Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (ArcSEES) program. The projects are located at 12 institutions, and include collaborative investigators from the United States, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. ArcSEES grants support academic, management, indigenous and industry scientists.
"Twenty years ago, the Arctic Council emphasized the need to engage science for sustainability in the high north," said Erica Key, ArcSEES program manager in the Division of Polar Programs in NSF's Geosciences Directorate. "In that time, the Arctic environment and population has changed considerably. ArcSEES is a timely approach to understanding and mitigating the impacts of environmental change on Arctic people."
NSF's Division of Polar Programs; Geosciences Directorate and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE) contributed funding to the first round of awards, as did the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), an organization within the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
"The participation of CNRS through this new partnership with NSF and other U.S. institutions saw the selection of a project that includes French teams, and I am happy with this result," said Jean-Francois Stephan, director of the National Institute of Earth Sciences and Astronomy at CNRS.
CNRS coordinates the new French Arctic Initiative in which international cooperation occupies a privileged place, he added.
BOEM, in partnership with NSF, will fund two studies in the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf:
One will measure and assess the long-term cumulative impacts of increases in the oil-and-gas-industry infrastructure in the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska, with the goal of reducing the impacts of future development in the region.
The other study will examine the vulnerability and resilience of the walrus population off Alaska's North Slope. This will enhance the Bureau's understanding of the complex interplay between climate change; walrus population dynamics and structure; health, habits, feeding ecologies; foraging locations and harvesting by Native-Alaskan subsistence hunters.
"BOEM welcomes the opportunity to partner with NSF and other world-class scientific organizations looking at Arctic sustainability," said Tommy P. Beaudreau, BOEM director.
The premise of ArcSEES is that fundamental research is needed to understand the integrated Arctic system in this era of rapid change, how sustainability is defined the context of rapid change, whether necessary data and statistical techniques are available to make the desired assessment and to understand the stability and predictability of the Arctic system state.
The program recognizes that there are gaps in the scientific understanding of the rapidly changing environmental, social, economic, built and managed systems in the Arctic as well as their complex interactions and, as result, deficiencies in the science that guides policymaking.
The suite of projects supported by the first round of grants reflects the diversity of research necessary to inform sustainability science and co-develop relevant policy, mitigation and adaptation strategies with Arctic residents.
Submissions to NSF's ArcSEES solicitation program drew the interest of more than 250 scientific collaborators from 10 countries as well as management entities from local and multi-national levels.
Established by Congress through the Arctic Research and Policy Act, the U.S. Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) consists of more than 15 agencies, departments and offices across the Federal government. NSF's director chairs IARPC.
The following grants were made in the first round of ArcSEES funding:
Collaborative Research: Water, Energy, and Food Security in the North: Synergies, tradeoffs, and building community capacity for sustainable futures (Sustainable Futures North)
Principal Investigators: Philip Loring, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Henry Huntington, Huntington Consulting, Eagle River, Alaska; Lawrence Hamilton, University of New Hampshire; Shari Gearheard, University of Colorado at Boulder
The Sustainable Futures North project addresses the question of whether synergies can be found among the related goals of food security, water security, energy security and resource development in the North American Arctic. Historically, development in one or more of these areas has presented trade-offs in others.
The North Slope Arctic Scenarios Project (NASP): Envisioning desirable futures and strategizing pathways for sustainable healthy communities
Principal Investigator: Amy Lovecraft, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This proposal for the North Slope Arctic Scenarios Project (NASP) involves multiple organizations and stakeholders in collaboration to explore options for sustainable development in the North. NASP employs proven and advanced approaches to engage North Slope communities in developing and analyzing scenarios visions for the future and plausible pathways--for effective strategic planning and implementation of policy.
WALRUS--Walrus Adaptability and Long-term Responses; Using multi-proxy data to project Sustainability
Principal Investigator: Nicole Misarti, University of Alaska Fairbanks
The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) is one of many species affected by recent environmental change in the Arctic. This project aims to integrate several disciplines including archaeology, ethnology, biology and ecology using diverse sources of data including DNA, stable isotope, steroid and trace element analysis as well as to ascertain long-term trends of walrus feeding ecology, foraging location and stock genetics over the last two millennia. This time-frame includes large climatic anomalies such as the Medieval Warm and the Little Ice Age, thereby presenting scientists with the possibility of understanding how walruses adapt during times of stress and change. The project is jointly funded by NSF and the Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Collaborative Research: Sustainabiity of critical areas for eiders and subsistence hunters in an industrializing nearshore zone
Principal Investigators: Tuula Hollmen, Alaska SeaLife Center; Henry Huntington, Huntington Consulting, Eagle River, Alaska; James Lovvorn, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; Neesha Stellrecht, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Throughout the Arctic, indigenous people are faced with difficult choices between the cash benefits of industrialization versus potential degradation of subsistence hunting. Subsistence hunting often provides a large fraction of foods and may be more reliable in the long term than a cash economy based on nonrenewable resources. Subsistence hunting for certain species may also have cultural significance that far exceeds their dietary contribution. Researchers will model habitat requirements and map viable prey densities for formerly hunted, but now threatened species, such as Spectacled Eider and a commonly hunted species, King Eider, in the Chukchi near-shore zone and determine long-term variability in the eiders' access to those areas through the ice. They will refine the maps with traditional ecological knowledge on conditions and areas where hunting for King Eider typically occurs. They will also estimate probabilities that different eider feeding areas that are accessible through the ice and conducive to hunting would be eliminated during migration by oil spills from pipelines built along four alternative routes. They will use the information as part of structured decision-making workshops to be held in the native community. These workshops will help create a local vision for sustainability, in terms of potential risks of different pipeline routes to subsistence and cultural values of eiders, relative to cash benefits of local construction projects.
Collaborative Research: Holistic Integration for Arctic Coastal-Marine Sustainability (HIACMS)
Principal Investigators: Lawson Brigham, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Paul Arthur Berkman, University of California-Santa Barbara
This three-year research project will develop and demonstrate an international, interdisciplinatry and inclusive process to enhance the practice of governance for sustainability in Arctic coastal-marine systems, balancing: (a) national interests and common interests, (b) environmental protection, social equity and economic prosperity and (c) the needs of present and future generations. The researchers believe that the sustainability process developed and demonstrated in this project focusing on the Arctic Ocean will have implications everywhere on Earth where resources, human activities and their impacts extend across or beyond the boundaries of sovereign states. The project is jointly funded by NSF and France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
Cumulative effects of Arctic oil development--planning and designing for sustainability
Principal Investigator: Donald Walker, University of Alaska Fairbanks
This project devises a sustainable approach to assess cumulative effects of oil exploration though combining detailed ground studies, local community input, industry involvement and an international perspective. It will use a three-pronged initiative:
A case study of the cumulative effects of industrial infrastructure at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, will focus on infrastructure-related effects associated with gravel mines, roads and other areas of gravel placement.
An Arctic Infrastructure Action Group, consisting of local people who interact with development infrastructure, permafrost scientists, ecologists, hydrologists, engineers, social scientists and educators, to bring issues to greater prominence in the international Arctic research community.
An education/outreach component will train students in arctic systems and introduce them to the issues of industrial development and adaptive management approaches during an expedition along the Elliott and Dalton highways in Alaska.
###
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| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The human papilloma virus causes most cervical cancers. That's why HPV testing is now recommended for women ages 30 to 65.
Science Photo Library
For decades the annual Pap test was women's chief protection against cervical cancer. That all changed when a test for human papillomavirus, the cause of most cervical cancer, was approved in 2003.
With the HPV test, women don't need to get Pap tests as often. But that message hasn't gotten through to many doctors.
Just 39 percent of clinicians ordered HPV tests for women when they went in for a checkup in five Michigan clinics, researchers found. Other doctors were ordering the HPV test too often. Many still performed annual Pap tests even though women can wait for five years if they tested free of HPV.
And some doctors were prescribing annual Pap tests and HPV tests. "That is really excessive," says Dr. Mack Ruffin, a cancer prevention researcher at the University of Michigan. He is a coauthor of the report, which was published Thursday in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Most people are infected with HPV at some point in their lives; it's sexually transmitted. In most cases our bodies clear the virus, but some women can have infections that linger for years. That puts them at much higher risk of cervical cancer.
The Pap test looks for precancerous cells on the cervix, and is recommended for women starting at age 21, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the Pap returns a lot of false positives; a simple bacterial infection can make cells look abnormal. So women with an abnormal Pap have to go through a lot of retesting, and anxiety over whether they might have cancer, before finding out they're fine.
Adding in the HPV test to cervical cancer screening helps reduce the number of false positives. If a woman over age 30 tests negative for HPV, she's much less likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer. So she can wait five years until the next round of combined HPV and Pap testing, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other groups. That saves time, money and the risks of false positives.
Sounds good. But is it working? Sort of.
This study looked at the experiences of 833 women between the ages of 30 and 65 who went to five Michigan family medicine clinics from 2008 to 2011.
The good news is that the clinicians' requests for HPV tests increased over time, going up 46 percent. They were getting the message about the new protocol.
But the fact that less than half of clinicians were ordering HPV tests suggests that either word hasn't gotten out, or it's gotten garbled. Others ordered that women repeat both the Pap and HPV test annually.
Pap tests are currently recommended every three years for women in their 20s. Women ages 30 and above who don't do the HPV/Pap combo should get a Pap test every three years, too, according to the guidelines.
Mack and his colleagues figured that the younger clinicians would be better at this, since they wouldn't be stuck in their ways. But they were wrong. Older and younger clinicians were equally indifferent when it came to ordering HPV tests.
The real stars of the show were women. Female doctors were twice as likely as their male peers to properly prescribe the HPV test.
Female physicians may just be paying more attention to women's health issues, Ruffin says. Or they may be better at discussing a sensitive issue like testing for a sexually transmitted virus. "They may be more aware, more attuned," he tells Shots.
Ruffin doesn't blame his fellow doctors for doing a less than stellar job at cervical cancer screening. "We're in transition," he says. "This is just one step."
Five years from now, he says, we might be talking about women being able to do HPV tests at home, popping a swab in an envelope and mailing in their results. That method is already being explored in other countries, and may someday be expanded to include tests for other common STDs, such as chlamydia or gonorrhea. Ruffin says: "The best way to screen for cervical cancer is really going to change."
Photographer Jimmy Nelson has a beautiful new book called Before They Pass Away. It's a visual expedition into 29 of the most secluded tribes in the world and from the looks of his pictures, it's absolutely fantastic. The people that Nelson photographed live in such seclusion from the rest of the world that they're on the verge of becoming extinct.
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2012, file photo, Alexes Garcia makes cinnamon rolls for student's lunch in the kitchen at Kepner Middle School in Denver. The rolls are made using apple sauce instead of trans fats. Heart-clogging trans fats have been slowly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant menus in the last decade as nutritionists have criticized them and local governments have banned them. The Food and Drug Administration is now finishing the job as they announce Nov. 7, 2013, that it will require the food industry to gradually phase out trans fats, saying they are a threat to the health of Americans.(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 12, 2008 file photo, a rack of donuts is displayed at a Dunkin' Donuts franchise in Boston. Consumers wondering what food without trans fat will taste like, probably already know as food manufacturers began eliminating it years ago. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what's left of them for good.
Condemning artificial trans fats as a threat to public health, the FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to phase them out.
Manufacturers already have eliminated many trans fats, responding to criticism from the medical community and to local laws, Even so, the FDA said getting rid of the rest — the average American still eats around a gram of trans fat a day — could prevent 20,000 heart attacks and 7,000 deaths each year.
It won't happen right away. The agency will collect comments for two months before determining a phase-out timetable. Different foods may have different schedules, depending how easy it is to find substitutes.
"We want to do it in a way that doesn't unduly disrupt markets," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods. Still, he says, the food "industry has demonstrated that it is, by and large, feasible to do."
Indeed, so much already has changed that most people won't notice much difference, if any, in food they get at groceries or restaurants.
Scientists say there are no health benefits to trans fats. And they can raise levels of "bad" cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.
Trans fats are used both in processed food and in restaurants, often to improve the texture, shelf life or flavor of foods. Though they have been removed from many items, the fats are still found in some baked goods such as pie crusts and biscuits and in ready-to-eat frostings that use the more-solid fats to keep consistency.
They also are sometimes used by restaurants for frying. Many larger chains have phased them out, but smaller restaurants may still get food containing trans fats from suppliers.
How can the government get rid of them? The FDA said it has made a preliminary determination that trans fats no longer fall in the agency's "generally recognized as safe" category, which covers thousands of additives that manufacturers can add to foods without FDA review. Once trans fats are off the list, anyone who wants to use them would have to petition the agency for a regulation allowing it, and that would likely not be approved.
The fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it more solid, which is why they are often called partially hydrogenated oils. The FDA is not targeting small amounts of trans fats that occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, because they would be too difficult to remove and aren't considered a major public health threat on their own.
Many companies have already phased out trans fats, prompted by new nutrition labels introduced by FDA in 2006 that list trans fats and by an increasing number of local laws, like one in New York City, that have banned them. In 2011, Wal-Mart pledged to remove all artificial trans fats from the foods the company sells by 2016. Recent school lunch guidelines prevent them from being served in cafeterias.
In a statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was his city's 2008 ban that led to much of the change. "Our prohibition on trans fats was one of many bold public health measures that faced fierce initial criticism, only to gain widespread acceptance and support," he said.
But support is far from universal. A nationwide poll conducted by the Pew Research Center between Oct. 30 and Nov. 6 said that of the 996 adults surveyed, 44 percent were in favor of prohibiting restaurants from using trans fats while 52 percent opposed the idea.
Still, Americans are eating much less of the fat. According to the FDA, trans fat intake among Americans declined from 4.6 grams per day in 2003 to around one gram in 2012.
A handful of other countries have banned them, including Switzerland and Denmark. Other countries have enacted strict labeling laws.
Dr. Leon Bruner, chief scientist at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said in a statement that his group estimates that food manufacturers have voluntarily lowered the amount of trans fats in food products by 73 percent.
The group, which represents the country's largest food companies, did not speculate on a reasonable timeline or speak to how difficult a ban might be for some manufacturers. Bruner said in a statement that "consumers can be confident that their food is safe, and we look forward to working with the FDA to better understand their concerns and how our industry can better serve consumers."
Said FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg: "While consumption of potentially harmful artificial trans fat has declined over the last two decades in the United States, current intake remains a significant public health concern."
Agency officials say they have been working on trans fat issues for around 15 years and have been collecting data to justify a possible phase-out since just after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009.
The advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest first petitioned FDA to ban trans fats nine years ago. The group's director, Michael Jacobson, says the prohibition is "one of the most important lifesaving actions the FDA could take."
"Six months or a year should be more than enough time, especially considering that companies have had a decade to figure out what to do," Jacobson said.
___
Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
Chef Roy Choi was named Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chef in 2010.
Bobby Fisher/Courtesy of Harper Collins
Chef Roy Choi was named Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chef in 2010.
Bobby Fisher/Courtesy of Harper Collins
Roy Choi is a chef who's celebrated for food that isn't fancy. He's one of the founders of the food truck movement, where instead of hot dogs or ice cream, more unusual, gourmet dishes are prepared and sold. His Kogi trucks specialize in tacos filled with Korean barbeque.
Choi was born in South Korea in 1970 and moved to Los Angeles with his parents at the age of 2. His parents owned a Korean restaurant near Anaheim for a few years when he was a child. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that his mother had some serious cooking talent.
"She had flavor in her fingertips," he says. "She had this connection and this innate ability to capture flavor in the moment and people felt it. Because our lives were so based around food, when someone is good at food, everyone notices and it's a big deal."
Customers line up at one of Roy Choi's Kogi BBQ food trucks near the campus of UCLA.
Matt Sayles/AP
Customers line up at one of Roy Choi's Kogi BBQ food trucks near the campus of UCLA.
Matt Sayles/AP
Choi's new book, L.A.Son: My Life, My City, My Food, is part memoir, part cookbook.
Interview Highlights
On what Korean tacos represent for him
The Korean taco was a phenomenon. ... It just came out of us, we didn't really think about it. The flavor, in a way, didn't exist before, but it was a mash up of everything we had gone through in our lives.
It became a voice for a certain part of Los Angeles and a certain part of immigration and a certain part of life that wasn't really out there in the universe. We all knew it and we all grew up with it, and it was all around us, but the taco kind of pulled it together. It was like a lint roller; it just put everything onto one thing. And then when you ate it, it all of a sudden made sense.
As I was putting it together, it was all of the pieces of my life coming together. It was almost like an avalanche. So it was growing up; it was being around low-riding; it was growing up in Korea, the immigration, being around the American school system; all the snack food and junk food that I've eaten; all of the tacos that I've eaten. It was all of these things. Then I really wanted to make it feel like Los Angeles, so I felt like it had to be just like a street taco in L.A.
On his Hawaiian restaurant, A-Frame, which is housed in an old IHOP
It's my love for the Hawaiian Islands, but it's not a tiki restaurant: It's really taking the feeling of "aloha." So we put people together, it's all communal seating, so strangers get to sit together. ... You eat everything with your hands and it's like a backyard barbeque.
... I wasn't always the most professional looking/acting dude in the world, so I'd go into restaurants, get treated not that well, kind of like crap. So what happened was I thought, "OK, if I ever make a restaurant, as soon as anyone opens that door, no matter where you're from, I want you to feel like we've been waiting for you."
That's a real personal place. ... A lot of Asian-Americans, growing up, we kind of live double lives. We had our refrigerators at home and the way we ate at home, and then we went to school and we couldn't really show that food because it was real stinky and stuff like that.
When you're going through that whole puberty/teenage angst ... you don't want to show that. Chego was my vision to show that food, to open the refrigerator, to show it to the world, and then make these rice bowls that were under $10. So it was also a platform to create great, delicious, healthy fast food that's affordable.
On growing up in Orange County and the cultural differences between his family and his friends
I was doomed because everyone had peroxide in their hair and they were coming from ski trips on Mammoth Mountain and snorkeling trips in the Cayman Islands, listening to Depeche Mode and The Cure, and I had never seen anything like that before. It wasn't really my rhythm.
“ A lot of Asian-Americans, growing up, we kind of live double lives. We had our refrigerators at home and the way we ate at home, and then we went to school and we couldn't really show that food because it was real stinky ...
I did the best I could. I was doomed because there weren't that many Asians and girls weren't really feeling me, but I was also doomed because if we get down to the food, the food was different for me too. I was embarrassed to show the food [we were eating] because everywhere I went, it was so different. Youngsters are mean to each other sometimes so I'd bring friends over and they'd look at my food and they'd be like, "Ew, what is that?"
... When you bring a bunch of rich friends from Orange Country over to your house and your whole house is surrounded by dead salted fish, it was tough.
... I loved it at the time. When I say the word "embarrassed" it's not that I was embarrassed and that I tried to shy away from it or that I tried to put it into the dirt and hope that it never came out again; it's just I didn't have the language to really stick up for it at that time.
On his addictions
Gambling hit me at like 22, 21. And it was three years of the darkest time of my life, but it started out just all fireworks and pom-poms, you know?
It was an amazing ride for the first year, I mean tens of thousands of dollars in shoeboxes ... just ballin' crazy. ... And then I started losing. And when you start losing in gambling, then you start chasing it. ... I lost all my friends; I lost all my family; I stole from my family ... sold everything I had.
... I'm addicted to feeding people right now. It's a good thing. I don't know how long this is gonna last right now, so I'm living it up and really focusing and putting everything I got into it. I'm putting my back into it.
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