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The use of biomonitoring data as an indicator of national levels of human exposure to environmental chemicals has grown in importance and prevalence. Nationally representative urinary bisphenol A (BPA) data are now available for Canada, the United States and Korea. Here we address the following questions: Are urinary BPA data from these countries comparable? What can be discerned regarding geographic and/or temporal similarities or differences? Are there generalizable lessons to be learned regarding comparison of biomonitoring results from different countries? We examined underlying methods and resultant urinary BPA data from national surveys of three countries: Canada (Canadian Health Measures Survey, CHMS, 2009-2015); United States (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES, 2009–2014); and Korea (Korean National Environmental Health Survey, KoNEHS, 2009–2014). We estimated BPA daily intakes on both a volume- and creatinine-adjusted basis. The three countries use similar methods for analyzing urine samples for BPA and participate in external proficiency testing with acceptable results. Field blanks are only used in the CHMS program. There were program-specific differences in fasting times of participants. Median urinary BPA levels in Canada remained relatively constant over the three cycles (1.1–1.2 ng/ml), while US levels decreased (from 1.9 to 1.3 ng/ml) and Korean levels increased (from 0.7 to 1.1 ng/ml) over similar time periods. The most recent survey year data indicate that levels do not differ substantially across countries. Canadian urinary BPA levels have been stable; the subtle, non-significant decrease in intakes may be due to higher body weight in the more recent Canadian surveys. In contrast, the decrease in intakes in the US appears to be due to decreases in urinary BPA as body weights in the US have been stable. Estimated 95th percentile intakes are over an order of magnitude below current health-based guidance values. Our assessment of urinary BPA data from Canada, the US and Korea indicates that methodological differences, methods for dilution adjustment, and population characteristics should be carefully considered when interpreting biomonitoring data. Despite the plethora of publications describing issues with use of creatinine levels for urinary dilution adjustment, there have been no major methodological advances that would assist in interpreting urinary chemical data. A combination of biomonitoring and traditional exposure assessment approaches may be needed to fully assess human exposures to BPA and other chemicals. National biomonitoring surveys provide important information on population levels of chemicals such as BPA and can assist in understanding temporal and geographic similarities, differences, and trends. However, caution must be exercised when using these data to draw anything but broad conclusions, due to both intercountry methodological differences and factors affecting urinary chemical levels that are still poorly understood. While the issues raised in this paper do not appear to be a major concern specifically for the national-scale monitoring of BPA described here, they must be considered when comparing data for other chemicals measured as part of both national and smaller-scale biomonitoring-based research as well as for BPA data from other studies. Image 1 • Urine BPA levels were compared for Canada, US, Korea populations with national data. • Geographic and temporal trends were explored for the 3 countries from 2009 to 2014. • Methodological differences and population characteristics were examined. • Similar BPA concentrations and intakes were observed among the three countries. • Estimated intakes are over an order of magnitude below health-based guidance values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article examines how theories of Aryanism influenced geographic theories of race and environmental influence. The argument is made that the entanglements between Aryanism and geographic theories of race provide a new site in assessing the history of geographic thought. It begins by illuminating the rise of Aryanism in colonial India. As it moved across time and space, Aryanism became a foundational element in racial science, and informed a number of disciplines, including geography. The majority of the article is devoted to exposing the influence of Aryanism in American geography from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The paper finds that the influential geographers Arnold Guyot, Nathaniel Shaler, Friedrich Ratzel, Ellen Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington were all indebted to Aryanism in the production of their theories of race and the environment. Highlights • Uncovers the relationship between the discipline of Geography and Orientalism in colonial India. • Emphasizes the intersection of Aryanism and environmentalism in theories of race. • Reevaluates canonical American geographic scholarship. • Identifies the geography of Aryan ideologies across space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally acknowledged that willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates for environmental goods exhibit some degree of spatial variation. In a policy context, spatial variation in threatened and endangered species values is important to understand, as the benefit stream from policies affecting threatened and endangered species may vary locally, regionally, or among certain population segments. In this paper we present WTP estimates for eight different threatened and endangered marine species estimated from a stated preference choice experiment. WTP is estimated at two different spatial scales: (a) a random sample of over 5000 U.S. households and (b) geographically embedded samples (relative to the U.S. household sample) of nine U.S. Census regions. We conduct region-to-region and region-to-nation statistical comparisons to determine whether species values differ among regions and between each region and the entire U.S. Our results show limited spatial variation between national values and values estimated from regionally embedded samples, and differences are only found for three of the eight species. More variation exists between regions, and for all species there is a significant difference in at least one region-to-region comparison. Given that policy analyses involving threatened and endangered marine species can often be regional in scope (e.g., ecosystem management) or may disparately affect different regions, our results should be of high interest to the marine management community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationally representative data on urinary levels of BPA and its metabolites in the United States from the 2003–2004 to 2011–2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) were used to estimate daily BPA intakes and examine temporal trends. Additionally, NHANES data on lifestyle/demographic/dietary factors previously reported to be associated with BPA exposures were examined to assess the resiliency of the reported associations (whether the association is maintained across the five surveys). Finally, various approaches for addressing issues with the use of BPA concentration data from spot urine samples were examined for their effect on trends and associations. Three approaches were assessed here: (i) use of generic literature-based 24-h urine excretion volumes, (ii) use of creatinine adjustments, and (iii) use of individual urine flow rate data from NHANES. Based on 2011–2012 NHANES urinary BPA data and assumptions described in this paper, the median daily intake for the overall population is approximately 25 ng/kg day; median intake estimates were approximately two to three orders of magnitude below current health-based guidance values. Estimates of daily BPA intake have decreased significantly compared to those from the 2003–2004 NHANES. Estimates of associations between lifestyle/demographic/dietary factors and BPA exposure revealed inconsistencies related to both NHANES survey year and the three approaches listed above; these results demonstrate the difficulties in interpreting urinary BPA data, despite efforts to account for urine dilution and translation of spot sample data to 24-h data. The results further underscore the importance of continued research on how to best utilize urinary measures of environmental chemicals in exposure research. Until a consensus is achieved regarding the best biomonitoring approaches for assessing exposures to short-lived chemicals using urine samples, research on factors associated with BPA exposures should include – and report results from - assessments using both volume-based urinary BPA and creatinine-adjusted urinary BPA data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the likelihood and timing of housing tenure choice dynamics including both the initial transition to homeownership, and possible transitions back to rental tenure and to an additional owned home. This is done across the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Further, housing price data is added for both countries. For the US, data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and Census data were used construct measures of house price appreciation and the relative cost of owning to renting. For Germany, proprietary data from BulwienGesa AG was used to construct comparable indices. Observed differentials in tenure transitions appear to be consistent with the differences in housing and mortgage market conditions, as well as the tax treatment of owned homes across the two nations. In particular, while there is substantial house price appreciation in the US, on average house prices fall over the same period in Germany. In addition, mortgage interest is not tax deductible in Germany, alternative mortgage options available in the US are not prevalent there, and down payment requirements are much greater. Consequently, German households have a much lower probability of homeownership and there is only a small likelihood of those who initially achieve homeownership returning to rental tenure or moving to another owned home. In contrast, households in the United States have a very high likelihood of homeownership, but the housing market appears much more volatile with a high likelihood that households will return to rental tenure, and subsequently achieve homeownership for a second time during the period of observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: Following cigarette excise tax increases, smokers may use cigarette price minimization strategies to continue their usual cigarette consumption rather than reducing consumption or quitting. This reduces the public health benefits of the tax increase. This paper estimates the price reductions for a wide-range of strategies, compensating for overlapping strategies. Method: We performed regression analysis on the 2009–2010 National Adult Tobacco Survey (N=13,394) to explore price reductions that smokers in the United States obtained from purchasing cigarettes. We examined five cigarette price minimization strategies: 1) purchasing discount brand cigarettes, 2) using price promotions, 3) purchasing cartons, 4) purchasing on Indian reservations, and 5) purchasing online. Price reductions from these strategies were estimated jointly to compensate for overlapping strategies. Results: Each strategy provided price reductions between 26 and 99cents per pack. Combined price reductions were possible. Additionally, price promotions were used with regular brands to obtain larger price reductions than when price promotions were used with generic brands. Conclusion: Smokers can realize large price reductions from price minimization strategies, and there are many strategies available. Policymakers and public health officials should be aware of the extent that these strategies can reduce cigarette prices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The regulation of American cinema during the Progressive era was an exercise in governmentality with multiple spatial rationalities operating through networks at multiple scales. Although produced and distributed nationally, moving pictures were consumed locally. The National Board of Censorship governed movie content from New York, where most major film producers were headquartered at that time, yet it was dependent upon the activities of social reformers and officials in cities across the country in monitoring manufacturers' compliance with its decisions. But as those correspondents often regarded the image on the screen as intimately associated with other aspects of the movie-going experience, local efforts to regulate film often went further, depending upon local concerns about spectators. This paper explores how cinema was problematized in Atlanta and Minneapolis, two regional centers with different sexual and racial politics. It does so by building on recent discussions of spatial rationalities of moral reform efforts, and in this case, how tensions between generative and vitalist spatial rationalities conspired to produce a variable geography of cinema regulation that was networked and multi-scalar, and how these experiments in regulating a new medium of visual communication began to articulate a distinctive perceptual rationality of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the issue of using infant and childhood mortality as an indicator of inequality. The case is that of the United States in the 20th century. Using microdata from the 1900 and 1910 Integrated Public Use Microsamples (IPUMS), published data from the Birth Registration Area in the 1920s, results from a number of surveys, and the Linked Birth & Infant Death Files from the National Center for Health Statistics for 1991, infant and child mortality can be related to such other variables as occupation of father or mother, education of father or mother, family income, race, ethnicity, and residence. The evidence shows that, although there have been large absolute reductions in the level of infant and child mortality rates and also a reduction in the absolute levels of differences across socioeconomic groups, relative inequality has not diminished over the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze how the association between Mexico¿U.S. migration and marriage varies across socioeconomic settings in origins. Using Mexican Migration Project data and employing bilevel survival analysis with controls for socioeconomic, migrant network, and marriage market characteristics and family size, I find that single people are most likely to migrate relative to those married in areas of recent industrialization, where the Mexican patriarchal system is weaker and economic opportunities for both men and women make post-marital migration less attractive. Marital status is not significant in agriculture-dependent areas, where the bargaining power of husbands might be higher relative to other settings; their age-profiles of earnings flatter; and remunerated female work scarcer, making migration attractive later in the life course. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Agricultural policy in the United States is often structured around conflicts and relationships within particular production regions. These regional solutions may evolve into national policies. This paper explores a historical example of this, the development of fluid milk policy and the fluid milk economy in the Chicago milkshed between 1900 and the New Deal. This example is particularly interesting because it was part of the rise of the post-World War II modern food system. Both urban and rural groups were important in this development. Urban groups took a particular interest in milk production and regulation due to its importance as a nutritious but highly perishable staple. Rural groups responded to urban attempts to control production practices by organizing cooperatives. Negotiations and strikes resulted in an agreement in 1929 that was positive for farmers, the Chicago Department of Health, and other major entities in the milkshed. It attempted to place regulatory barriers around the milkshed. However, it soon failed due to improvements in transportation technology and new distribution systems that allowed for cheaper retail prices. The group then proposed a marketing plan to the USDA, which became the ancestor of the federal milk marketing order program. This story sheds light on the manner in which local interest groups and internal politics within the U.S. Department of Agriculture combined to shape New Deal agricultural legislation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: By relating strike outcomes and durations to the value of the disputed wage change and to the cost to each side of continuing the strike, this paper tests the hypothesis that the war of attrition with asymmetric information model of strikes accurately describes the characteristics of strikes over wages in the United States in the early to middle part of the 1880s. That hypothesis is not rejected by linear, probit, or nonparametric kernel estimation. Specifically, variables that decrease a side’s cost of striking or increase its opponent’s cost are shown to increase its maximum holdout time, and vice versa, and strike duration increases with the value of the prize in dispute and with uncertainty about the outcome. Alternative game theoretic models of strikes—signaling and screening models, and models with ongoing negotiations—do not fit the data as well. We also explore why the strikes took the form of wars of attrition, and why later strikes did not. Our results have implications for modern union behavior in the face of globalization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The relatively high marital fertility of the Irish in the United States in the 19th century has long been interpreted as evidence for the persistence of a distinctive Irish culture in the United States. This claim echoes a similar view of Irish-American marriage patterns. Recent work has shown that the marriage patterns of the Irish in the United States were similar to native-born whites with similar occupational and other characteristics. This paper studies the reasons for the high fertility of Irish-Americans in 1910. Irish-born women in that year had much larger families than the typical native-born woman, and little of the difference can be attributed to other characteristics. Second-generation Irishwomen were less distinctive in this regard, although even they differed from the natives primarily because of a different proclivity to have a large family. Our results signal the complexity of immigrant adjustment to a new environment; the Irish largely abandoned one aspect of Irish demographic behavior while clinging to another. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Background. : Estimates that smoking contributes 38–72% of the United States (US) Black male cancer death rate leave a wide range of uncertainty. This paper uses additional and regional data, and refined methods, to reassess that range. Methods. : This study uses lung cancer rates as an exposure index, linear regression, age adjusted US 1950–2001 and US regional 1969–2001 death rates (rates), and the formula: smoking-attributable fraction (SAF)=(1−((rate in the unexposed) / (rate in the exposed))). Estimated lung cancer rates in the unexposed range between rates predicted for a population with no smoking-attributable lung cancers to rates seen in “nonsmokers.” Results. : Lung cancer death rates predicted 99.9% and 99.8% of the variances in non-lung non-stomach cancer death rates from 1950–1980 and 1950–1988, respectively (each P <0.0001). That suggests 2001 all-sites cancer death SAFs of 63% (sensitivity range 60–66%) nationally and from 43% in the Northeast to 67% in the South. Conclusions. : Smoking may cause most premature cancer deaths and temporal and regional cancer death rate disparities in Black men. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reviewed the provincial, territorial, and state guidelines for the retention of treed riparian buffers after timber harvest in Canada and the United States. Comparisons amongst jurisdictions were facilitated through the use of a standardized template for the classification of waterbodies. Mean buffer widths varied from 15.1 to 29.0 m for different waterbody types when both countries were combined. However, Canadian jurisdictions had wider buffers (except for intermittent streams). In part, this was due to the high percentage of Boreal jurisdictions in Canada and Southeast jurisdictions in the United States. The Boreal region had the widest buffers while Southeastern jurisdictions had the narrowest buffers. Just under half (∼44%) of the jurisdictions investigated had three or more modifying factors in the guidelines. Of these, waterbody type, shoreline slope, waterbody size, and presence of fish were the most common. Boreal and Pacific jurisdictions tended to have a more diverse set of waterbody size classes, waterbody types, and other modifying factors. Jurisdictions from the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast maintained relatively simple ‘one-size-fits-all’ guidelines. Jurisdictions without modifying factors for slope or presence of fish applied wider baseline buffers than jurisdictions with these factors. A large percentage of jurisdictions (∼80%) allowed some selective harvest in buffers. However, these were often accompanied by relatively restrictive prescriptions. In comparison to the ecological recommendations, buffer widths for most jurisdictions were adequate to protect the aquatic biota and habitats but were, generally, less than recommended widths for terrestrial communities. In the future, two management trends are likely to continue, the shift towards more complicated guidelines and the expansion to larger-scale, watershed planning of riparian areas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper shows that conditional cash transfers under Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), a main program of the 1935 Social Security Act, reduced infant, children and adult mortality. I take advantage of the transition from mothers' pensions to ADC and the large differences in ADC payments and eligibility across 104 cities, 2,260 counties, and 49 states to estimate the impacts of cash transfers on mortality rates, by age, sex, race, and cause between 1929 and 1944. I find that ADC's expansion reduced infant and adult mortality by between 10 and 20 percent. This finding, based on an event-study design, is robust to a range of specifications, difference-and-differences, an instrumental variable strategy, a range of fixed effects, placebo tests and a border-pair policy discontinuity design. The largest mortality reductions came from drops in communicable and infectious diseases, such as influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]