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Red Cross Announces Emergency Blood Shortage, Calls For Donations
1:20 PM – Monday, January 8, 2024
On Monday, the Red Cross declared in a release that it is facing an emergency blood shortage as it is currently encountering the lowest amount of people giving blood over the last 20 years.
According to the nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., which gathers and distributes roughly 40% of all blood donations made in the United States, the blood shortage is so serious that it is unable to provide an adequate amount of blood to certain hospitals that need it for their patients.
The emergency shortage could result in some patients receiving less blood than they require or hospitals may find it difficult to find compatible donors for patients with rarer blood types.
The release also stated that hospitals are currently needing blood products, including whole blood, red blood cells, plasma and platelets, quicker than donations are being received.
“One of the most distressing situations for a doctor is to have a hospital full of patients and an empty refrigerator without any blood products,” said Dr. Pampee Young, chief medical officer of the Red Cross. “A person needs lifesaving blood every two seconds in our country — and its availability can be the difference between life and death, however, blood is only available thanks to the generosity of those who roll up a sleeve to donate.”
As a result, the Red Cross has been forced to restrict distributions of some of the most transfused blood types to hospitals.
According to Dr. Eric Gehrie, medical director of the American Red Cross, hospitals without a fully stocked blood bank may postpone procedures, delay transfusions for patients in need, and make it more difficult for patients with rare blood types to find compatible donors.
“There is more need for blood at hospitals than we are able to provide at current donation levels and this is an issue that is really … a long-term problem,” Gehrie told the press.
Gehrie additionally mentioned that since the COVID-19 pandemic started in January 2020, there has been a significant reduction in blood donors, dropping by 300,000.
“To put the numbers in perspective, we need an additional 8,000 donations every week in January in order to meet current hospital needs,” he said.
Gehrie announced that there are several possible factors as to why there is a significant fall in blood donation over the past few years. He said that one of these factors may include the pandemic, which resulted in many people staying at home, making it difficult to host blood drives.
“In the past, the American Red Cross worked with a lot of businesses and schools who would host blood drives on site and where it was possible for a lot of people to donate blood,” Gehrie stated. “As the way that we learn and work has changed, it’s been harder and harder to attract as many donors to an employer or school-related blood drive.”
He added that some donors are sometimes rejected for factors including iron levels, hemoglobin levels or travel restrictions. Those donors may not understand that they may have the opportunity to donate at a future time.
Only 3% of age-eligible individuals, or about 6.8 million Americans, donate blood each year, according to the Red Cross.
https://www.oann.com/newsroom/red-cross-announces-emergency-blood-shortage-calls-for-donations/
Average bottle of water contains 240,000 pieces of cancer-causing nanoplastics - 100 times more than previously thought
UPDATED: 16:40 EST, 8 January 2024
Bottles of plastic water contain hundreds of thousands of toxic microscopic plastic particles, new research has found.
The findings are likely to shock anyone who has swapped from tap to bottled water, believing it was better for their health.
Drinking water from a bottle could mean you are contaminating your body with tiny bits of plastic, which scientists fear can accumulate in your vital organs with unknown health implications.
Nanoplastics have already been linked to cancer, fertility problems and birth defects.
Scientists using the most advanced laser scanning techniques found an average of 240,000 plastic particles in a one-liter bottle of water, compared to 5.5 per one liter of tap water.
University of Columbia researchers tested three popular brands of bottled water sold in the United States – and, using lasers, analyzed the plastic particles they contained down to just 100 nanometers in size.
The particles – nanoplastics - are much smaller than the microplastics previously detected in bottled water.
However, the particles are considered potentially toxic because they are so small that they can enter directly into blood cells and the brain.
These microscopic particles carry phthalates — chemicals that make plastics more durable, flexible, and lasting longer.
Phthalate exposure is attributed to 100,000 premature deaths in the US each year. The chemicals are known to interfere with hormone production in the body.
They are 'linked with developmental, reproductive, brain, immune, and other problems', according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
The highest estimates found 370,000 particles.
Nanoplastics had been too difficult to detect using conventional techniques, which could only find microplastics ranging from 5mm down to 1 micrometer – a millionth of a meter, or 1/25,000th of an inch. Nanoplastic particles are less than 1 micrometer across.
Groundbreaking research in 2018 found around 300 microplastic particles in a liter of bottled water – but researchers were limited by their measurement techniques at the time.
Research is now underway across the world to assess the potentially harmful effects.
The team used a new technique called Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy, which was recently invented by one of the paper's co-authors.
The method probes bottles with two lasers tuned to make specific molecules resonate, and a computer algorithm determines their origin.
The results showed that nanoparticles made up 90 percent of these molecules, and 10 percent were microplastics.
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12940249/Average-bottle-water-contains-240-000-pieces-cancer-causing-nanoplastics-100-times-previously-thought.html