Climate Change News and Research

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BIDMC and Harvard launch first-of-its-kind Climate and Human Health Fellowship

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard C-CHANGE), have launched a first-of-its-kind Climate and Human Health Fellowship.

22 Nov 2019

Researchers develop breakthrough in marine sponge cell culture

Vertebrate, insect, and plant cell lines are important tools for research in many disciplines, including human health, evolutionary and developmental biology, agriculture and toxicology. Cell lines have been established for many organisms, including freshwater and terrestrial invertebrates.

21 Nov 2019

Increase in drug-resistant infections could put 10 million lives in the UK at risk

Antimicrobial resistance should be taken more seriously, yet more than 99% of the population are not fully aware of its impact. This is despite the outgoing UK Chief Medical Officer saying earlier this year that Superbugs “could kill us before climate change does”.

18 Nov 2019

Access to mobile phone location data can help understand spread of vector-borne diseases

Researchers from EPFL and MIT have shown that human mobility is a major factor in the spread of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue even over short intra-city distances. In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the team compares different mobility models and concludes that having access to mobile phone location data can prove crucial in understanding disease transmission dynamics - and, ultimately, in stopping an outbreak from evolving into an epidemic.

15 Nov 2019

Climate change poses unprecedented threat to children's health

A report warns that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to children and will have lifelong impacts on human health.

14 Nov 2019

More adolescents seek medical care for mental health issues

Less than a decade ago, the emergency department at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego would see maybe one or two young psychiatric patients per day, said Dr. Benjamin Maxwell, the hospital's interim director of child and adolescent psychiatry.

12 Nov 2019

Lupus flare-ups could be linked to environmental factors

Researchers have found that alteration in the environment and atomospheric factors could be associated with organ specific flare-ups of lupus among patients diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erethematosus (SLE). The study results were presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting. The abstract was titled, “Environmental and Atmospheric Factors in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Regression Analysis.”

11 Nov 2019

Climate change spreading deadly virus in marine mammals

A deadly virus that kills thousands of European harbour seals in the northern Atlantic Ocean has now begun affecting seals, otters and sea lions in the northern Pacific Ocean. This virus is called the phocine distemper virus (PDV) that affects animals alone and does not affect humans.

10 Nov 2019

Atmospheric and environmental changes linked to organ-specific lupus flares

New research findings presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting found a strong association between changes in atmospheric and environmental variables 10 days before a clinic visit and organ-specific lupus flares in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

10 Nov 2019

The first locally transmitted cases of Zika have been confirmed in Europe

The first native cases of Zika virus have been confirmed in Europe. Experts are calling it a wake-up call as warming global temperatures could lead to more cases across the continent.

8 Nov 2019

Study: 28 countries in Africa could face water scarcity by 2050

Twenty-eight countries in Africa could face water stress or scarcity by 2050, according to research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

7 Nov 2019

APHA adopts 14 new public health policy statements at 2019 Annual Meeting

The American Public Health Association's Governing Council adopted 14 new policy statements at its 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo in Philadelphia today, covering topics such as environmental justice, drinking water safety and attacks on health workers.

6 Nov 2019

Americans report significant stress due to health care, mass shootings, 2020 elections

A year before the 2020 presidential election, Americans report various issues in the news as significant sources of stress, including health care, mass shootings and the upcoming election, according to this year's Stress in America survey by the American Psychological Association.

5 Nov 2019

Record number of Legionnaires’ cases in 2018 risk lives, cause cleanup headaches

Cases of Legionnaires' disease reached a record high in 2018 — a more than eight-fold increase since the numbers began to climb nearly two decades ago.

5 Nov 2019

Switching to greener asthma inhalers would reduce carbon footprint

Environmentalists now have a new cause to take up – the metered dose inhalers (MDIs) used by asthmatic patients to control their airway spasm.

31 Oct 2019

NJIT biologist explores ant colonies to better understand human mass migrations

Can ants help predict the complex dynamics of future humanitarian crises, such as when and where large populations might move during disease outbreaks or armed conflicts?

31 Oct 2019

NTU study: Microorganisms show a precise daily rhythm in tropical air

Scientists from the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore have found that the air in the tropics is teeming with a rich and diverse range of at least 725 different microorganisms.

30 Oct 2019

Global warming predicted to increase undernutrition

Global warming may increase undernutrition through the effects of heat exposure on people, according to a new study published this week in PLOS Medicine by Yuming Guo of Monash University, Australia, and colleagues.

29 Oct 2019

Landmark study pinpoints the birthplace of modern humans

A landmark study led by Sydney researchers pinpoints the birthplace of modern humans in southern Africa and suggests how climate change may have driven the first migrations.

29 Oct 2019

Some plant foods causing paralysis, death, in malnourished populations

There are a lot of plants eaten for food that may also contain toxins that harm the brain and the nervous system, when present in amounts that cross the limit of individual tolerance. This happens when such toxin-containing foods are the chief or only source of nutrition.

26 Oct 2019