Hey there, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, where this week we are diving deep into parasites and pollution. But, with Thanksgiving now behind us, we also must be mindful of the season that is really bearing down upon us: It’s open enrollment time!
If you are still weighing your Medicare options, a reminder that you have until Dec. 7 to pick a plan. We’ve put together an expert guide on how to navigate your Medicare choices, and if you’d like more, the video from our hourlong panel discussion with Medicare experts is embedded in the story. Click here for all the info.
Meanwhile, if you are looking to purchase insurance on your own, you have until Dec. 15 to select a plan in order to have coverage that starts Jan. 1. And we have you covered there, too. Next Wednesday, Dec. 6 at 6 p.m., we are hosting a live, virtual panel discussion with state Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway, Connect for Health Colorado CEO Kevin Patterson, and health insurance broker Meagan Fearing to help people choose the coverage that is best for them.
The event is free; all you need to do is register for the event link. Go to ColoradoSun.com/events to register. And if you have questions you’d like us to ask the experts, send them to questions@coloradosun.com.
Now, let’s get to the news.
John Ingold | Reporter
TEMP CHECK
HEALTH
Are your cats trying to kill you? No, probably not, but their parasites might be.
Let me tell you a horror story.
A single-celled parasite that looks like a tiny spec of orzo pasta infects you. But it doesn’t suck your blood or siphon off some of your food and then be on its way. Instead, it burrows into your muscles and forms cysts that provide a long-term hideout.
Only, that’s not the creepiest thing it does. It also infects your brain and hunkers down in the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in regulating emotions. From that perch, it has the ability to change your behavior in ways that benefit it.
This is the story of Toxoplasma gondii, and the tale above is what happens to rats when infected by it. Studies have shown that rats infected by T. gondii lose their fear of cats, which makes them an easy meal. This is great for hungry cats, but it also works out well for the parasite, which just so happens to reproduce in the digestive tract of cats (without harming them) and is spread through cat poop.
“So there’s a couple of winners,” deadpans University of Colorado professor Christopher Lowry.
“It makes it sound like the pathogen is controlling our minds, but it’s kind of a co-evolutionary relationship.”
Neat?
The potential problem for us is that we can be collateral damage in this transmission cycle. Humans can also be infected by T. gondii and not just through contact with cat poop. Eating unwashed vegetables or undercooked pork or lamb — pigs and sheep can also be infected — can also result in an infection, though it generally doesn’t make you acutely sick or require hospital treatment.
And it turns out that this infection is shockingly common. Lowry, a professor of integrative physiology who studies the link between neural function and emotional behavior, said approximately 10% to 15% of people in the United States show evidence of a previous T. gondii infection. In other countries, it may be much higher — Lowry recently worked on a study looking at people over the age of 65 in Spain and Portugal that found past infection rates of 67%.
So that potentially makes T. gondii a major player in human health. But what does it do to us?
For starters, there’s some evidence that it does impact human behavior and possibly make people less risk-averse. One study concluded that people who had been infected by T. gondii are more likely to cause car accidents. Another says people with an infection are more entrepreneurial. (Lowry cautions that these findings are relative to all sorts of personality factors — it’s not like everyone with an infection is racing down I-25 like it’s a Formula One course.)
But Lowry and some colleagues wanted to learn about other potential consequences, which brings us back to that study on people from Spain and Portugal. Lowry and his co-authors from CU, the University of Maryland and various universities in Europe looked at measures of frailty in older people and examined whether there was a connection to a T. gondii infection.
They found — deep exhale — that there isn’t. Just looking at what is called seropositivity, which is whether someone has ever been infected, there was no correlation between an infection and frailty later in life.
But they did find an association between frailty and what is called serointensity. In other words, T. gondii may be linked with frailty in people who have been infected a lot.
Lowry said this may have to do with inflammation caused by the parasite, especially certain strains of it.
“The more often you’ve been infected, the more often you may have been exposed to a strain that produces a stronger inflammatory response,” he said.
Overall, Lowry said the takeaway from the study, which was published earlier this month in The Journals of Gerontology, is more of a be-aware kind of message than a be-afraid kind of message.
“From a very big-picture perspective, being infected is not a terrible thing, with one exception,” he said. “If infants acquire the parasite from their mothers, that can have really detrimental effects. So that’s why it’s always advised that pregnant mothers don’t change the kitty litter during pregnancy.”
Even if you are not gestating new life, you can protect yourself by changing the litter box daily and washing your hands well afterward, by avoiding stray cats and the areas they hang out, by thoroughly cooking meat, and by rinsing fruits and vegetables before eating.
John Ingold | Reporter
MORE HEALTH NEWS
ENVIRONMENT
New demands for watchdogging Suncor arrive with new reports of pollution releases
The Suncor Refinery keeps extending its record of accidental toxic air releases into the air above its Commerce City neighborhood. And an environmental group focused on air pollution cites the most recent incidents as yet more reasons to pursue a new lawsuit against the EPA for greenlighting Suncor operations.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued the EPA on Nov. 17 in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying the agency should have rejected Colorado’s operating permit renewal for the eastern portion of Suncor, called Plant 2. After demanding changes from state health regulators, the EPA approved most of the Plant 2 permit and continued its objections only on a portion of environmental groups’ petitions regarding open records.
Allowing the rest of the permit to stay in effect will worsen Front Range air pollution as Suncor dirties the air at rates above the EPA’s own limits, the lawsuit claims.
“Our expert modeling and the state’s modeling showed the permit allows violations” of EPA ambient air standards, said Ryan Maher, a CBD staff attorney. The permit allows Suncor to “approximate” emissions rather than measuring actual pollution and starting to cut it, worsening air quality for the neighborhood that already suffers disproportionate environmental impacts, Maher said.
“This is especially egregious given the long history of noncompliance at the facility, and the weak, cost-of-doing-business fines that Suncor has received in those enforcement actions that do move forward,” Maher said. In September, for example, the EPA fined Suncor $161,000 for producing gasoline with too much benzene, while also requiring the company to buy $600,000 in clean lawn equipment for nine metro-Denver counties with excess ozone.
Suncor’s western portion, Plants 1 and 3 that are awaiting a permit renewal from the state, reported air violations from malfunctions on Nov. 19, the center noted. The report says the malfunction caused exceedances of carbon monoxide releases for 14 hours, and for sulfur dioxide from flaring gas for 12 hours.
Suncor sent a statement saying, “The Commerce City North Denver Air Monitoring network of sensors within a 3-mile radius of the refinery did not detect any levels above the acute health reference guidelines during this event. In addition, data from Suncor’s fenceline monitoring system indicates that measured compounds were below detection.”
Company spokesperson Leithan Slade said they could not comment on the lawsuit.
Careful or insomniac Sun readers might recall the EPA is also under attack from the center and from other environmental groups for approving the state of Colorado’s anti-ozone plan. The groups claim the EPA cannot legally approve the plan because it fails to bring the northern Front Range counties into compliance with EPA ozone limits in coming years. That suit was also filed in the 10th Circuit, in July.
Sun readers can hear more about the Suncor lawsuit later this week at ColoradoSun.com.
Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE ENVIRONMENT NEWS
CHART OF THE WEEK
Colorado’s COVID season is still raging on — last week saw the second-highest number of people hospitalized with the virus in the state this year — but the public’s will to do something about it isn’t bringing the same intensity.
In a new poll, the latest in its series tracking public attitudes about COVID-19 and the vaccines designed to thwart it, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that half of U.S. adults aren’t taking any precautions this year to guard against infection or transmission. That means no masks, no testing and no avoiding large gatherings.
Only 20% of people polled said they had received the updated vaccine booster shot, while another roughly 28% said they definitely or probably would get the shot. That leaves the majority saying they probably or definitely won’t get the vaccine booster.
Last week, there were 280 people in Colorado who were in the hospital for a case of COVID. For reference, last year’s fall wave peaked in the last week of November at 440 cases. The state’s all-time peak for hospitalizations came in the first week of December 2021, when there were 1,847 people hospitalized.
You can read the full report on the KFF poll here.
John Ingold | Reporter
HEAT MAP
CLIMATE
HEALTH
Hey, you made it to the end of another Temperature! Since we took last week off, we are late to saying that we are thankful for YOU and your support of local journalism. May your celebrations be merry and your impulse control be unaffected by brain-burrowing parasites this holiday season.
We’ll see you back here next week.
— John & Michael
