You are what you eat, as the saying goes, and while good dietary choices boost your own health, they also could improve the health care system and even benefit the planet. Healthier people mean not only less disease but also reduced greenhouse gas emissions from health care.

As it turns out, some relatively small diet tweaks could add up to significant inroads in addressing climate change.

Portland State University scientists have found that significant levels of cancer-causing benzene in e-cigarette vapors can form when the devices are operated at high power. 

The finding by a research team headed by chemistry professor James F. Pankow were published March 8 in the online journal PLOS ONE.   

A study published in the journal Health Communications shows that women at high risk for breast cancer who received a letter informing them of their options for additional imaging with contrast-enhanced MRI of the breast (in addition to a letter sent to their primary care physician) were more likely to return to the center for additional screening with MRI. The letter, which is included in the published paper, may help breast imaging centers navigate the complex legal, ethical and institutional landscapes in a way that increases the likelihood that women will follow through with American Cancer Society breast cancer screening recommendations for adjunct breast screening in women at elevated risk. 

The United States has managed to reduce the amount of air pollution it produces, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at and breathing in the air. That’s because pollution created in Asia is gradually making its way across the Pacific Ocean to the western hemisphere.

According to research published in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal, up to 65 percent of the newly created smog in the U.S. has actually drifted over from Asia. The country’s western states are most vulnerable to the increase in ozone due to their proximity to the continent.

WHAT: Nearly half of all deaths in the United States in 2012 that were caused by cardiometabolic diseases, including heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, have been linked to substandard eating habits, according to a study published in the March 7 issue of JAMA and funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.

The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, lists about 65 chemicals as “toxic pollutants” under the Clean Water Act, 16 of which are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. LSU Department of Environmental Sciences doctoral candidate Parichehr Saranjampour conducted research on a chemical class of PAHs that is not on the EPA’s list — Dibenzothiophene, or DBT. DBT and its three related chemical compounds contain sulfur that is found in crude oil. Saranjampour studied how these chemical compounds move and change over time, which revealed new information that has never been published before. Her findings differ from the EPA’s information about these chemical compounds. This new research was published today in the Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

Professor Andrew Johnson and Dr Monika Jürgens, Environmental Scientists at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, contributed to a recent study looking at which metal presents the greatest risk to the freshwater ecosystem in the Bohai region of China. They explain more:

Thanks to support from the Natural Environment Research Council Newton Fund, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) has been collaborating with the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, in Beijing, China since the beginning of 2016 on the topic of chemical pollution in China. 

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Marsha Campbell-Yeo has seen incredible advancements in neonatal care — developments in technology and practice that have improved outcomes for vulnerable newborns across North America and around the world.

“However, the focus of these innovations and transformations in care has been almost exclusively directed toward health care providers and technological advancements,” said Dr. Campbell Yeo, associate professor in the School of Nursing at Dal and a clinician scientist at the IWK Health Centre. “Until recently, parents have not only been underutilized in the setting of neonatal intensive care, but often excluded all together.”

In September 2015, the German Volkswagen Group, the world’s largest car producer, admitted to having installed “defeat devices” in 11 million diesel cars sold worldwide between 2008 and 2015. The devices were designed to detect and adapt to laboratory tests, making the cars appear to comply with environmental standards when, in fact, they emitted pollutants called nitric oxides, or NOx, at levels that were on average four times the applicable European test-stand limit.

Though tailpipe emissions could fall in the years ahead as more zero-emission vehicles hit the streets, one major source of highway air pollution shows no signs of abating: brake and tire dust.

Metals from brakes and other automotive systems are emitted into the air as fine particles, lingering over busy roadways. Now, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have shown how that cloud of tiny metal particles could wreak havoc on respiratory health.