Nationwide, counties with the poorest quality across five domains – air, water, land, the built environment and sociodemographic – had the highest incidence of cancer, according to a new study published in the journal Cancer.

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and Peking University have found that Chinese families are willing to invest up to 6 percent of their annual income in efforts to improve air quality.

Published in Ecological Economics on March 7, the study aimed to determine the amount people are willing to pay for efforts to reduce air pollution, such as environmental policies to introduce more electric cars and natural gas heating. The researchers found that on average, families with children under the age of 6 are willing to invest 5.9 percent of their annual income, while families without children under 6 years old are willing to pay 3.3 percent.

A commitment to reducing global emissions of short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) such as methane and black carbon could slow global warming while boosting public health and agricultural yields, aligning the Paris Climate Agreement with global sustainable development goals, a new analysis by an international research panel shows.

Methane and black carbon – or soot – are the second and third most powerful climate-warming agents after carbon dioxide. They also contribute to air pollution that harms the health of billions of people worldwide and reduces agricultural yields.

As temperatures rise with climate change, mosquito season extends past the summer months in many parts of the world. The question has been how this lengthened season influences the risk of being infected with mosquito-born diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

Now, in a paper published on April 27 in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Stanford researchers modeled how rising temperatures might influence mosquito behavior and disease risk around the world. The researchers also calibrated their model with field data on human infections of mosquito-borne diseases.

When summer temperatures rise and people turn to their air conditioners to stay cool, something else also increases: air pollution.

A new study published Wednesday (May 3, 2017) in the journal Environmental Science & Technology shows that the electricity production associated with air conditioning causes emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide to increase by hundreds to thousands of metric tons, or 3 to 4 percent per degree Celsius (or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

Even a relatively mild Zika outbreak in the United States could cost more than $183 million in medical costs and productivity losses, suggests a computational analysis led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers, while a more severe one could result in $1.2 billion or more in medical costs and productivity losses.

Smog from cars and trucks is an expected health hazard in big cities, but researchers from the University of Cincinnati found pollution from truck exhaust on one of the most remote mountain roads in the world.
 

James Thuch Madhier fled South Sudan as a teenager, escaping the ravages of civil war and famine.

Next fall, the U of T undergrad and his social entrepreneurship team will be testing out their solar-powered crop irrigation system on 20 acres of land they've acquired in South Sudan.

Two immune responses are important for recovery after a heart attack — an acute inflammatory response that attracts leukocyte immune cells to remove dead tissue, followed by a resolving response that allows healing.

Frequent occurrence of both anthropogenic pollution and natural dust in East Asian imposes great impact on regional air quality, human health and climate. Till now, their interaction and consequent effect on the dust morphology remain statistically unclear because even though traditional filter-based bulk sampling method can provide accurate chemical compounds, it cannot distinguish the mixing state of chemicals with dust particles.