• What Plagues of the Past Have to Tell Us About Current Crises

    One expert says that event system theory (EST) helps us understand Albert Camus’s classic 1947 novel The Plague; the Black Death of the 14th century and the lethal waves that followed; and societal response to disruptions like COVID. EST reframes societal disruptions from isolated events to being the result of slowly unfolding chains of connected events.

  • Hurricane Ian Shows That Coastal Hospitals Aren’t Ready for Climate Change

    As rapidly intensifying storms and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Texas to the tip of Maine, Hurricane Ian has just demonstrated what researchers have warned: Hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. are not ready for climate change.

  • Extreme Heat Could Make Parts of Asia, Africa Uninhabitable

    Extreme heat events foreshadow a less habitable world. In the coming decades, heatwaves are predicted to meet and exceed human physiological and social limits in regions such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and South and South-West Asia.

  • Hundreds of Hospitals on Atlantic and Gulf Coasts at Risk of Flooding from Hurricanes

    Researchers identified 682 acute care hospitals in 78 metropolitan statistical areas located within 10 miles of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States, covering a population just under 85 million people, or about 1 in 4 Americans. They found that 25 of the 78 metro areas studied have half or more of their hospitals at risk of flooding from a Category 2 storm.

  • 9/11 Survivors’ Exposure to Toxic Dust and the Chronic Health Conditions That Followed Offer Lessons That Are Still Too Often Unheeded

    After the 9/11 attack, more than 100,000 responders and recovery workers from every U.S. state – along with some 400,000 residents and other workers around ground zero – were exposed to a toxic cloud of dust that fell as a ghostly, thick layer of ash and then hung in the air for more than three months. The World Trade Center dust plume consisted of a dangerous mixture of cement dust and particles, asbestos and a class of chemicals called persistent organic pollutants. The dust also contained heavy metals that are known to be poisonous to the human body and brain, such as lead and mercury, and PCB.

  • Summer 2022 Saw Thousands of Excess Deaths in England and Wales – Here’s Why That Might Be

    The difference between the actual and expected number of deaths recorded, from any cause, is known as the excess deaths. During the first eight weeks of 2022, despite there being 9,110 deaths documented with COVID mentioned on the death certificate in England and Wales, there were 8,001 fewer total deaths than anticipated. However, since April this has flipped. Between April 2 and August 19 (granted, a longer period) there were 12,321 deaths registered with COVID on the death certificate but notably, 21,475 excess deaths. So if COVID accounts for only a little over half of these excess deaths, what may be driving the rest?

  • Chronic Lack of Investment in Public Health Puts Americans’ Lives, Livelihoods at Risk

    COVID-19 emergency funding was critical to initial pandemic response but did not address nation’s long-standing underinvestment in public health; $4.5 billion in annual infrastructure funding is needed.

  • New Test May Predict Covid-19 Immunity

    The paper test measures the level of neutralizing antibodies in a blood sample and could help people decide what protections they should take against infection.

  • How Polio Crept Back into the U.S.

    U.S. public health agencies generally don’t test wastewater for signs of polio. That may have given the virus time to circulate silently before it paralyzed a New York man.

  • Origins of Unconventional War

    Flamethrowers, poison gases, incendiary bombs, the large-scale spreading of disease: are these terrifying agents of warfare modern inventions? Not by a long shot. Societies around the world have used biological and chemical weapons for thousands of years. “One sobering result of writing this book is the realization that there was no time or place when biological weapons were unthinkable,” says Adrienne Mayor, the author of a new book on the subject.

  • Study Highlights Community Spread of Superbugs

    New US surveillance data indicate that infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens are moving beyond the healthcare setting.

  • Researchers Launch Global Dashboard to Track Invasive Mosquitoes Carrying Deadly Diseases

    To combat the ongoing threat of mosquito-borne diseases worldwide, researchers have launched a mosquito-tracking dashboard driven by citizen science – a scalable solution proven effective in a recent study.

  • Flood Maps Show U.S. Vastly Underestimates Contamination Risk at Old Industrial Sites

    Floodwaters are a growing risk for many American cities, threatening to displace not only people and housing but also the land-based pollution left behind by earlier industrial activities. For communities near these sites, the flooding of contaminated land is worrisome because it threatens to compromise common pollution containment methods, such as capping contaminated land with clean soil. It can also transport legacy contaminants into surrounding soils and waterways, putting the health and safety of urban ecosystems and residents at risk.

  • Regenerate: Biotechnology and U.S. Industrial Policy

    A revolution in biotechnology is dawning at the precise moment the world needs it most. Amid an ongoing climate crisis, fast-paced technological maturation, and a global pandemic, humans must find new ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve food security, develop new vaccines and therapeutics, recycle waste, synthesize new materials, and adapt to a changing world. The United States needs some form of industrial policy to promote its bioeconomy—one that is enshrined in democratic values and focused on improving access to four key drivers of bioeconomic growth: equipment, personnel, information, and capital.

  • U.S. Launches Heat.gov with Tools for Communities Facing Extreme Heat

    The administration launched Heat.gov, a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.