"What surprised me is we are still seeing so many visits to emergency departments associated with very common household cleaning products," Lara McKenzie, Ph.D., stated, emphasizing the ongoing issue despite safety advancements.
Alongside the obvious nasal hairs that a few people choose to trim, all of us have cilia, or microscopic hairs in our noses that can move and sense things of their own accord. And so if anything gets trapped by the cilia, that triggers a reaction to your nerve endings that says: Right, let's get rid of this.' And that triggers a sneeze.
I was that person who only changed their HVAC filter when it looked like it had grown its own ecosystem. Richie Drew, Vice President of Operations at One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning, puts it bluntly: "Dirty filters can reduce airflow, increase dust in your home and strain your heating system." Think about it this way: your HVAC filter is like the bouncer at an exclusive club, except instead of keeping out people without the right shoes, it's blocking dust particles from circulating through your home.
When Matt Hillier was in his 20s, he went camping with a friend who was a nurse. In the morning she told him she had been shocked by the snoring coming from his tent. She basically said, For a 25-year-old non-smoker who's quite skinny, you snore pretty loudly,' says Hiller, now 32. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.
Many human activities - from improper disposal of waste to the degradation of car tyres - release small plastic particles, which have infiltrated the atmosphere, oceans and other ecosystems. These include nanoplastics - particles measuring less than 1 micrometre across - and microplastics, which range from 1 micrometre to around 5 millimetres. They've entered our bodies and brains, and scientists are still working to understand their effects on people's health.
When surgeons removed a 33-year-old woman's right lung as part of her cancer treatment in 1995, they expected a dramatic and permanent reduction in her breathing power. But that's not what happened. Instead, her remaining lung pulled off a trick that scientists had long thought impossible in humans: it grew new tissue, and lots of it. Over the next 15 years, her left lung compensated for the loss of its partner by nearly doubling in volume and growing millions of new air sacs, called alveoli.
Many other higher-income countries are grappling with rising obesity and diabetes, but the U.S. stands out for how consistently those risks translate into worse cardiovascular outcomes, and how wide the gaps are by income, race, ethnicity, and geography.
The conventional approach to evaluating the impact of air pollution is to focus on a single exposure during a fixed period of time. But evidence suggests that contaminants work together, magnifying the damage to people's lungs. Conventional studies fail to probe synergistic effects. They also ignore the cumulative effects of lifelong exposures to pollutants, known as the exposome. Researchers need to shift away from single-pollutant studies and towards those involving a broad range of exposures.
Midlife is a sensitive biological window where the body becomes more susceptible to age-related stressors, which may explain why this group responds more strongly to chemical exposure. We suspect that men may be at higher risk because the aging markers we analysed are heavily influenced by lifestyle factors such as smoking, which can compound the damaging effects of these pollutants.
The remaining question, though, was where all this methane was coming from in the first place. Throughout the pandemic, there was speculation that the surge might be caused by super-emitter events in the oil and gas sector, or perhaps a lack of maintenance on leaky infrastructure during lockdowns. But the new research suggests that the source of these emissions was not what many expected. The microbial surge
One thing that stood out was the home environment. This was the largest contributor to children's daily particle pollution exposure more than school or commuting. This was mainly due to indoor sources such as wood burning and indoor smoking. Short peaks in particle pollution were linked to home cooking and secondhand tobacco smoke. Home heating with a fire or stove was linked to longer exposures. In some cases, these persisted overnight in children's bedrooms as fires remained lit or smouldering with poor ventilation.
Smoking, being overweight, and exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun and sunbeds are the top preventable causes of cancer, experts have warned. Researchers from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and its International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) analysed 30 risk factors that cause cancer, such as smoking, drinking alcohol and air pollution. Using data from across 185 countries, they estimate that about 7.1 million of the 18.7 million new cancer cases diagnosed globally in 2022 were preventable.
If you feel like everyone you know is dealing with a cough, cold and runny nose, it's not in your head. Multiple viruses, not just the flu, are currently circulating near season-high levels in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to wastewater data. Flu tests show seasonal influenza activity continues to be elevated in the region, although it's down from the season-high peak at the end of December, according to the California Department of Public Health.
A potent neurotoxin capable of causing lifelong damage to the lungs, brain, skin and other organs, mercury is strictly regulated worldwide. Children, in particular, can suffer severe developmental impairment when exposed. A trace element that occurs naturally in rocks such as limestone, as well as in coal and crude oil, mercury remains locked underground for millions of years, largely entering the ecological cycle through human activity.
