Feature Channels: Environmental Health

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There are several ways for a business to make a dollar, and an often illegal one is collusion among corporations. But the usual practice is an agreement to keep prices high or quantities low. Less investigated, however, is collusion on non-compliance of regulations — and in the auto industry, those often mean environmental regulations.

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A new GW study of COVID-19 shutdowns in the United States reveals pronounced disparities in air pollution — with disenfranchised, minority neighborhoods still experiencing more exposure to a harmful air pollutant compared to wealthier, white communities.

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Ten years after one of the largest nuclear accidents in history spewed radioactive contamination over the landscape in Fukushima, Japan, a University of Georgia study has shown that radioactive contamination in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone can be measured through its resident snakes.

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A coronavirus related to the virus that causes Covid-19 in humans has been found in UK horseshoe bats - according to new collaborative research from the University of East Anglia, ZSL (Zoological Society of London), and Public Health England (PHE).

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Wildfire smoke may greatly increase susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to new research from the Center for Genomic Medicine at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Washoe County Health District (WCHD), and Renown Health (Renown) in Reno, Nev.

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Low-income neighborhoods and communities with higher Black, Hispanic and Asian populations experience significantly more urban heat than wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods within a vast majority of populous U.S. counties, according new research from the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.

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• In this analysis of U.S. adults with advanced kidney disease, even low levels of lead in community drinking water had a negative effect on health. • Higher lead levels were found in the drinking water of predominantly Black communities compared with predominantly white communities.

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Army-funded research identified a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.

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A study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sampled more than 1.5 million people in 269 U.S. counties and 37 European nations. Researchers found that those who grew up in areas with higher levels of atmospheric lead had less adaptive personalities in adulthood — lower levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher levels of neuroticism.

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The city park may be an artificial ecosystem but it plays a key role in the environment and our health, the first global assessment of the microbiome in city parks has found.

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In 2015, 170 countries worldwide adopted the Paris Agreement, with the goal limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C.

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University of Rhode Island College of Engineering Professor Ali Shafqat Akanda and a team of researchers have developed an application for smartphones called CholeraMap to serve as an early warning device for cholera.

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Researchers say that government, public health agencies, and the public generally need to understand the mental health impacts of wildfire smoke as the world enters a time in which wildfire smoke events are prolonged events.

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Throughout the pandemic, air sensors watched during lockdowns as air pollution fell in residential and commercial areas, and then as pollution rose again with reopenings. The changing levels, the researchers found, which behaved differently in residential and commercial parts of the city, show where pollution is coming from and how it might change in the future under different policies.

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IIASA researchers and international colleagues are calling for immediate action to establish responsibility for carbon debt by implementing carbon removal obligations.

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As melting sea ice brings more ships through the Northwest Passage, new research shows that Canada must prepare for the costs and consequences of an Arctic oil spill

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Companies like Purple Air and IQAir, with air pollution sensors that cost under $300, have brought air quality monitoring to the masses. But when Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Tom Kirchstetter looked at Purple Air’s map last year during wildfire season, he noticed a big hole in Richmond, a city of 110,000 to the north of Berkeley.

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In a new issue of Science, devoted to the plastics problem, University of Delaware researchers LaShanda Korley and Thomas Epps, III, join collaborators in calling for new approaches to plastics design, production and use, with the goal of keeping plastics out of landfills and waterways, reusing the valuable resources they represent indefinitely in a “circular” plastics economy.

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A new project called Friendship Cabins, designed by researchers at the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, offer restaurants in NYC safer dining experiences for their customers and servers while built with environmentally friendly bottles.

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Irvine, Calif., June 29, 2021 – Fireworks are synonymous in the United States with the celebration of Independence Day and other special events, but the colorful displays have caused a growing risk to public safety in recent years, according to a study by environmental health researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

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The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) launched a new website for the Healthy Schools, Healthy People initiative, a joint effort of ACI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to promote hand hygiene and cleaning practices as a means to prevent the spread of infectious disease in schools and reduce illness-related absenteeism.

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University of Michigan researchers surveying wastewater systems for SARS-COV-2 will be able to increase testing sites and continue monitoring until 2023 after receiving more than $5 million from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

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The study, published in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, analyzed 13 years of satellite and surface to better understand how aerosols impact cloud lifecycle and precipitation during the autumn months over northern Taiwan.

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Using a diverse set of tools, the lab of Randall Martin shows how the pandemic did – or didn’t – affect levels of particulate matter during COVID lockdowns.

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A new study is the first to calculate exactly how much shaded areas in cities help lower the temperature and reduce the “urban heat island” effect.

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A new study of small Iowa towns found that vulnerable populations within those communities face significantly more public health risks than statewide averages.

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Children who were exposed to higher levels of trace minerals manganese and selenium during their mothers’ pregnancy had a lower risk of high blood pressure in childhood, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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The Oak Ridge Reservation is contaminated with acidic, high-nitrate-and high-metal substances. Microbes in this environment can use molybdenum to remove nitrate, but the low concentration of molybdenum at Oak Ridge limits how much nitrate the microbes can remove. Two studies examine why molybdenum is limited and the mechanisms some microbes use to survive these conditions.

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A new United Nations report calls for an urgent change in the way the world’s oceans are managed.

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A new paper in Scientific Reports led by researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science challenges increased salinity and seawater temperatures as the established explanation for a decades-long increase in the prevalence and deadliness of a major oyster disease in the coastal waters of the mid-Atlantic.

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S&T is studying how anhydrous ammonia behaves during a potential leak or spill, whether accidental or intentional, in order to inform planning efforts in communities across the nation.

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Bacteria from an Indian landfill could help eliminate contaminated chemicals. The focus is on pesticides such as lindane or brominated flame retardants, which accumulate in nature and in food chains. Researchers at Empa and Eawag used these bacteria to generate enzymes that can break down these dangerous chemicals.

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Makeup wearers may be absorbing and ingesting potentially toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to a new study published today in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

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Women exposed to higher levels of air pollution during pregnancy have babies who grow unusually fast in the first months after birth, putting on excess fat that puts them at risk of obesity and related diseases later in life, new CU Boulder research shows.

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Women in three Latin American countries who rely on fish for protein and live in proximity to gold mining activity have been found to have elevated mercury levels, according to a new study, Mercury Exposure of Women in Four Latin American Gold Mining Countries. The study was conducted by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) together with Biodiversity Research Institute.

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Many cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada likely contain high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a potentially toxic class of chemicals linked to a number of serious health conditions, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

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Comprehensive evaluation of source sector, fuel contributions to the PM2.5 disease burden analyzed across over 200 countries

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Plastic bottles drifting in the sea; bags in the stomachs of turtles; Covid-19 masks dancing in the surf: few images are as unpleasant to look at as those that show the contamination of our oceans.

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When nature vanishes, people of color and low-income Americans disproportionally lose critical environmental and health benefits--including air quality, crop productivity and disease control--a new study in Nature Communications finds.

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Carbon loss in Canadian peatland is projected to increase by 103 per cent under a high emission scenario, according to new research led by scientists from the University of Waterloo.

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Abby Kinchy, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will seek to learn how can people try to reduce the harms caused by lead in the soil of their communities with the support of a Scholars Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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A new report that examined soil, water, and produce from urban farms and gardens in Baltimore City found low levels of lead and other metals that pose no reason for concern at the majority of growing sites.

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Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters have conducted an extensive airborne campaign with imaging spectrometers and identified large methane sources across the Permian Basin area.

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Between 1991 and 2018, more than a third of all deaths in which heat played a role were attributable to human-induced global warming, according to a new article in Nature Climate Change.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, Johns Hopkins Medicine Media Relations is focused on disseminating current, accurate and useful information to the public via the media. As part of that effort, we are distributing our “COVID-19 Tip Sheet: Story Ideas from Johns Hopkins” every other Wednesday.

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Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have conducted two of the first studies in New England to collectively show that toxic man-made chemicals called PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances), found in everything from rugs to product packaging, end up in the environment differently after being processed through wastewater treatment facilities—making it more challenging to set acceptable screening levels.

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A new study shows that emission intensity per unit of animal protein produced has decreased globally over the past two decades due to greater production efficiency, raising questions around the extent to which methane emissions will change in the future and how we can better manage their negative impacts.

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New research from Florida State University shows that concentrations of the toxic element mercury in rivers and fjords connected to the Greenland Ice Sheet are comparable to rivers in industrial China, an unexpected finding that is raising questions about the effects of glacial melting in an area that is a major exporter of seafood. 

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The chemical bisphenol F (found in plastics) can induce changes in a gene that is vital for neurological development. This discovery was made by researchers at the universities of Uppsala and Karlstad, Sweden.