A non-toxic mixture of chitin-rich crab shell powder and nanosized silver particles could be an environmentally friendly way of curbing the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes, and malaria in particular. This is according to a series of experiments led by Jiang-Shiou Hwang of the National Taiwan Ocean University. The findings are published in Springer’s journal Hydrobiologia.

More children could wind up in hospital emergency rooms suffering from allergy-induced asthma if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and cause longer oak pollen seasons, according to a new study.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future today asked the Environmental Protection Agency to reject a pesticide company’s request to permanently approve the use of a medically important antibiotic called oxytetracycline as a herbicide on citrus crops.

In medical emergencies, time is of the essence. So is the quality of communication. A team of researchers from York University, University Health Network (UHN) and Trillium Health Partners studied text messages sent between nurses and physicians in deteriorating internal medicine patients requiring escalation to intensive care unit (ICU) to identify issues in failures to rescue. Looking at records from 2012 to 2014 at the Toronto General Hospital, the team found that message quality was positively linked to survival.

The Polyphagous shot hole borer, a brown-black beetle from southeast Asia, never gets bigger than a tenth of an inch. It breeds inside trees; pregnant females drill into trunks to create networks of tunnels where they lay their eggs. The beetles also carry a fungus called Fusarium; it infects the tunnels, and when the eggs hatch, the borer larvae eat the fungus.

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).