Rising temperatures and higher CO₂ levels are fueling longer and more intense pollen seasons, negatively impacting the health of those with allergies. A medical expert and public health scientist both offer strategies to fight back.
The editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal is honoring a pair of Florida State University researchers for their 2022 study which found that childhood exposure to lead has robbed Americans an average of 2.6 IQ points per person.
The global scientific evidence of the multiple types of benefits that forests, trees and green spaces have on human health has now been assessed by an international and interdisciplinary team of scientists.
Animal agriculture is a major source of water pollution in the United States, as manure runoff carries excess nutrients into rivers and lakes. Because of their non-point source nature, most farms are not regulated under the federal Clean Water Act. This leaves pollution control up to the states, resulting in a patchwork of different approaches that are difficult to evaluate.
New study finds that found that the spread of the spotted lanternfly population is largely due to human-mediated dispersal via transportation. In other words, these expert hitchhikers are catching rides on our cars, trucks and trains.
Malaria control programs in Amazonian Peru helped reduce the incidence of the deadly parasitic disease by 78 percent. That is, until the programs ceased to operate.
Farmers in Thailand still largely use chemical herbicides, especially paraquat and atrazine, to control weeds on their farms. According to research by the Office of Agricultural Economics, in 2019, Thailand imported almost 10 million kilograms of paraquat and close to 3.5 million kilograms of atrazine. The residues of these herbicides cause harm to the environment, living creatures, and our health.
For the first time, leading researchers from the fields of healthcare, ocean science, and social science have collaborated to quantify plastic's considerable risks to all life on Earth.
When a family of five-ton elephants stomps and chomps its way through your crops, there’s only one winner. And in the central African nation of Gabon, farmers are getting fed up with the giant animals trampling their fields—and their livelihoods.
A WCS-coauthored study reveals that global mountain forests – critically important to wildlife – are vanishing at an accelerating rate with an area twice the size of Norway lost between 2001-2018.
Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridioides difficile, Candida auris, Drug-resistant Shigella. These bacteria not only have difficult names to pronounce, but they are also difficult to fight off. These bacteria may infect humans and animals, and the infections they cause are harder to treat than those caused by non-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat.
The livelihoods of millions of people who live in river deltas, among the world’s most productive lands, are at risk. Created where large rivers meet the ocean and deposit their natural sediment load, river deltas are often just a few meters above sea level.
New research shows that as wildfires are increasing in frequency, intensity and extent, and affecting air quality across the U.S., they are having a detrimental effect on people with and without skin conditions.
A new study is providing an unprecedented examination of oxygen loss on coral reefs around the globe under ocean warming. Led by researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a large team of national and international colleagues, the study captures the current state of hypoxia—or low oxygen levels—at 32 different sites, and reveals that hypoxia is already pervasive on many reefs.
It's sleep awareness week, according to the National Sleep Foundation. It’s important to understand how sleep deprivation can impact your health. Most people recognize that if they don’t get enough sleep, their mood and memory will suffer the next day.
March 17 marks World Sleep Day, an annual call to action from the World Sleep Society to spread awareness of the need to get sufficient sleep to stay healthy.
When wildfire strikes a community, it can leave a path of destruction, and a chance for renewal. During the fire and in the immediate aftermath, residents and officials focus on protection and stabilization efforts. However, the availability of resources to support community recovery and promote resilience to future fires over the longer-term is less certain.
Sandia National Laboratories engineers have developed a standardized screening method to determine the most important radioactive isotopes produced by an advanced nuclear reactor in the unlikely event of an incident.
Scientists converted post-consumer high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic products into fully recyclable and potentially biodegradable material with the same desirable properties of the starting single-use plastic.
The first evidence that exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) ozone limit is associated with substantial increases in hospital admissions for heart attack, heart failure and stroke is published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 Even ozone levels below the WHO maximum were linked with worsened health.
In the first step toward understanding how dogs – and perhaps humans – might adapt to intense environmental pressures such as exposure to radiation, heavy metals, or toxic chemicals, researchers at North Carolina State, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, and the National Institutes of Health found that two groups of dogs living within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, one at the site of the former Chornobyl reactors, and another 16.5 km away in Chornobyl City, showed significant genetic differences between them.
Tibet is known as the “Water Tower of Asia,” providing water to about 2 billion people and supporting critical ecosystems in High Mountain Asia and the Tibetan Plateau, where many of the largest Asian river systems originate. This region is also one of the areas most vulnerable to the compounding effects of climate change and human activities. Michigan State University researchers are identifying policy changes that need to happen now to prepare for the future impacts projected by climate models.
Johns Hopkins University has been selected by the U.S. Department of Transportation to lead a new University Transportation Center focused on solutions aimed at preserving the environment.
The nitrate ingested over the course of a person’s adult lifetime through the consumption of tap water and bottled water could be a risk factor for prostate cancer, particularly in the case of aggressive tumours and in younger men.
Research shows connection between hospitalization rates for cardiovascular disease and proximity to fracking, providing evidence that exposure to airborne pollutants from unconventional natural gas development may impact human health
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Most studies on the effects of heavy metals on bacteria living in these environments have only focused on one metal at a time. In this study, researchers found that exposing bacteria to a mixture of metals caused their metabolism to change and led them to act as if they were starved for iron.
A Rutgers-led team of scientists studying virus-host interactions of a globally abundant, armor-plated marine algae, Emiliania huxleyi, has found that the circular, chalk plates the algae produce can act as catalysts for viral infection, which has vast consequences for trillions of microscopic oceanic creatures and the global carbon cycle.
Sea level rise this century may disproportionately affect certain Asian megacities as well as western tropical Pacific islands and the western Indian Ocean, according to new research that looks at the effects of natural sea level fluctuations on the projected rise due to climate change.
The research team of Dr. Yong-sang Ryu at the Brain Research Institute of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) used an electro-photonic tweezer along with metal nanoparticles to concentrate ultrafine nanoplastics within a short period, and they reported the development of a real-time detection system using light.
Schools are among the most notable settings people associate with picking up viral infections such as the common cold, various types of the flu or other respiratory viruses.
Led by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), with funding from the Global Environment Facility, and executed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), the Eliminating mercury skin lightening products project will work to reduce the risk of exposure to mercury-added skin lightening products, raising awareness of the health risks associated with their use, developing model regulations to reduce their circulation, and halting production, trade, and distribution across domestic and international markets.
The Red Tide Respiratory Forecast — www.RedTideForecast.com — is a beach-level risk forecast activated during red tide conditions that tells beachgoers what red tide impacts are expected to be at individual beaches at different times of the day. The Forecast is also available in Spanish at www.PronosticoMareaRoja.com.
Sewage can provide information on potentially harmful compounds, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), that get released into the environment. Now, researchers in Environmental Science & Technology Letters report an unexpected source of these substances in wastewater — toilet paper.
In the last decade, growing numbers of researchers have studied plastic pollution, one of the world’s most pressing environmental hazards. They have made progress but still face challenges, such as the comparability of results, especially with regard to microplastic particles.
UC Davis researchers have been awarded $1.35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to study the health impacts of wildfire smoke on pregnant people and children.
Not all pollution comes from people. When global temperatures increase by 4 degrees Celsius, harmful plant emissions and dust will also increase by as much as 14 percent, according to new UC Riverside research.
What are scientists learning about long COVID? Does climate change affect our physiology? These questions and more will be addressed during eight exciting game-changer sessions at the American Physiology Summit.
Three years into a five-year pledge to completely phase out lead shot in UK game hunting, a Cambridge study finds that 94% of pheasants on sale for human consumption were killed using lead.
New research shows that a warming world is increasing human-wildlife conflicts globally: Climate shifts can drive conflicts by altering animal habitats, the timing of events, wildlife behaviors and resource availability. It also showed that people are changing their behaviors and locations in response to climate change in ways that increase conflicts.
By: Mark Blackwell Thomas | Published: February 27, 2023 | 9:33 am | SHARE: It’s been three weeks since a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio sparked an environmental disaster that is still unfolding. A federal investigators’ Feb. 22 announcement that the accident was 100% preventable, came on the same day the Ohio Department of Natural Resources announced that the deaths of 43,700 aquatic animals were tied to the disaster.