When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands as a Category 4 storm this past month, it immediately brought devastation from winds, flooding, and storm surge to many Americans. The entire island lost electricity. While there’s been some recovery to the power grid and shorter gas lines, the next…
Extreme rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Harvey has left thousands in Houston and surrounding communities stranded. Some parts of the city have experienced over 40 inches of rain, and forecasters say that number is expected to rise over the coming days. Currently, the storm has repositioned itself in the Gulf of…
From 1347 to 1351, a nightmare disease ravaged Europe, afflicting victims with putrid black boils, fevers, vomiting, and in short order, death. Daily life ground to a halt as the Black Death spread along medieval trade routes, claiming an estimated 20 million lives with ruthless efficiency. Now, a team of researchers…
After a wave of public outcry, yesterday, the GOP’s controversial American Health Care Act narrowly passed in the House of Representatives. While a horde of Republicans were toasting in the Rose Garden afterward, millions of Americans struggled to make sense of the calamity they had just witnessed. For many women and…
As the White House was preparing to implement deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month, Mustafa Ali, head of the Office on Environmental Justice, resigned. A week later, his motivation for departing became clear, when President Trump released a hardline budget draft that called for slashing…
Chicken farmers in Tennessee are about to shed a lot of blood. After noticing an unusually high death rate in a flock, some Tyson Foods-suppliers discovered that they were dealing with a new bird flu outbreak. Don’t worry too much, though: The USDA says humans should be safe.
Dietary supplements don’t need to do anything, by definition. Tons of them don’t. That might sound strange, since half of Americans take a vitamin or mineral supplement daily. But there are in fact, reasons to take some of them. Let’s say you eat nothing but ground beef, Cheerios and Dr. Pepper every day. My…
On his first Monday in office, President Trump reinstated the Global Gag Rule, a policy that blocks international health organizations from receiving any U.S. federal funding if they provide, advocate for or discuss abortion as a reproductive health option.
For 15 years, pickle makers from across the East Coast have gathered to celebrate brined vegetables at New York City’s Lower East Side Pickle Day. Last year, thirty thousand people squeezed in lines beside white tents that stretched over a quarter mile. A word appeared on some of the sauerkraut tents: “probiotic.”…
On Thursday night, federal regulators announced that they were extending the midnight deadline to sign up for health insurance starting January 1, 2017 through the Affordable Care Act on Healthcare.gov.
As Haiti reels from the immediate devastation of Hurricane Matthew, which plowed through the impoverished nation at Category 4 intensity last week, aid groups fear that the worst is yet to come. According to experts on the ground, massive disease outbreaks and famine are in Haiti’s future.
And why not? Doctors are, after all, on the front lines of a pitched battle against an invisible enemy most of us are powerless to stop. Without them, our teeth would be falling out and we’d be losing limbs over minor scrapes. We’re so accustomed to the wonders of modern medicine we take for granted how wondrous it…
This time last year, tens of thousands of fires were raging across Indonesia’s peat forests, spewing carbon like coal plants and sending smoke halfway around the planet. But those fires weren’t just bad for our atmosphere: they were awful for the people who breathe it.
Peeing in the public pool is gross, immature, but basically harmless, right? A quick fix when you’ve really gotta go? Not exactly. In advance of the its annual summer meeting, the American Chemical Society has just released a video explaining, in gory scientific detail, why peeing in the pool makes it a more unhealthy…
Earlier this month, a frightening report warned of an antibiotic-resistant superbug which might kill as many as 10 million people worldwide by 2050. Now it looks like the first case of that superbug has been documented in the US.
The largest source of deadly air pollution in many parts of the world isn’t cars or power plants—it’s farms. That’s the unsettling conclusion of a study conducted by researchers at Columbia University, who found that agricultural nitrogen emissions are a major contributor to fine particulate matter, tiny particles…
In an effort to curb the dangerous trend of vaccine avoidance, the Liberal government in Ontario wants parents seeking vaccine exemptions for their kids to attend a mandatory education session. It’s a good idea, but getting anti-vaxxers to change their opinions will probably require more than that.
The leading cause of death worldwide isn’t an infectious disease or cancer. It’s air pollution. And despite our best efforts to control it, smog is still increasing at an alarming rate worldwide, posing a health risk to over 80 percent of all city dwellers.
In a big win for public health advocates, the city of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved raising the legal smoking age to 21. That includes not only cigarettes, but e-cigs as well.
Just as Flint residents began to realize the severity of their water crisis, public health officials became alarmed about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, which ended up killing nine people in the city. Emails just made public show that Michigan leaders were made aware of the connection almost a year ago, but did…
