For how we live.
A proposed rule would push several compliance dates under the 2024 trichloroethylene risk rule to 31 December 2027, giving processors and refrigerant makers more time to drop the solvent. Comments close 13 November.
A notice sets out how the agency intends to designate every US area for the 9.0 microgram 2024 fine-particle standard. Comments close 5 November; a court has ordered final designations by 6 February 2027.
A final action moves the Serious-area deadline for the Los Angeles-South Coast fine-particle area from December 2025 to December 2030, after California showed on-time attainment was impracticable. Effective 2 November.
A 21,442-person trial of cocoa flavanol extract missed its main heart target. The blood-pressure effect is real but small — and nearly half of dark chocolate products exceeded a strict lead limit.
Colder days track with more heart attacks in nationwide data, and the sharpest signal is the day after heavy snowfall — a rise seen in men but not women, pointing to the shovel as much as the temperature.
The agency is repealing the carbon-capture-based standards at the heart of the 2024 rule, saying compliance-cost savings outweigh the emission cuts. It takes effect on 16 November 2026.
In UK Biobank participants tracked with wrist light sensors, high nighttime light exposure was tied to thickened, weaker heart muscle and 24–33% higher risks of heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
Twenty-five years of cohort data show the alkaline dust caused an acute cough syndrome and a real, largely permanent drop in lung function, graded by how much each person breathed.
Registries show a real but narrow signal: a few cancers, led by prostate and thyroid, run high in 9/11 responders, while overall cancer incidence sits at or below the rate expected.
Exposure is real and universal. One human study links plastics in artery plaque to worse outcomes. No causal harm is established, and the measurements are still maturing.
When researchers screened 101 human studies against basic quality criteria, none met all of them. The field's core difficulty is telling real particles from contamination.
Animal studies show plastic particles disturbing the gut and triggering inflammation. Human evidence is mostly detection, with cause and effect still unresolved.
Particles turn up across the food supply, and plastic tea bags shed billions per cup. The counts are real; whether these amounts affect health is unestablished.
A tyre-wear chemical that kills coho salmon at trace levels is now measured in most people's urine. What that means for human health is only beginning to be studied.
A 2024 imaging method found roughly a quarter-million plastic particles per litre of bottled water, most of them nanoplastics — far more than older counts, and mostly unstudied.
Microwaving food in some plastic containers releases far more particles than cold storage. What that means for health is still an open question of dose.
Studies have found plastic particles in human blood, placenta and brain tissue. Detecting a particle establishes exposure — not that it is doing harm.
In a draft TSCA evaluation open for comment until 3 November, EPA preliminarily found the industrial solvent poses unreasonable risk to health. IARC classifies it as a Group 1 human carcinogen.
In 5,520 children across 34 states, prenatal exposure to regulated public-water fluoride showed no association with emotional or behavioural problems overall — with one caveat in a secondary model.
A case-crossover study in Kern County found the odds of coccidioidomycosis were about 12.5% higher in the 90 days after a new well was developed within 5 km of home.
Five grams a week is the top of a wide range in one 2020 analysis. A mechanistic model put the mass humans actually ingest at micrograms, not grams.
In 53,100 California women, higher trihalomethanes in drinking water tracked with modestly higher uterine cancer risk. Nitrate, arsenic and uranium showed no link.
A single word on a label can stand for dozens of unlisted compounds. A few, like formaldehyde, are established hazards; the claim that everyday scented products make the general public ill rests mostly on self-report.
Most childhood lead exposure traces to deteriorating paint in pre-1978 housing and the dust it sheds. The damage to a child's developing brain is steepest at the lowest measured levels.
Health agencies conclude there is enough evidence to tie indoor dampness and mould to respiratory symptoms and asthma. Controlling the water source, not identifying the species, is what the evidence points to.
In 30,446 Malmö residents followed for decades, each step up in soot exposure was tied to 15% higher cardiovascular mortality — a stronger, steadier signal than total fine particles or traffic gases.
Cooking with gas emits nitrogen dioxide indoors, and pooled studies tie it to a higher risk of childhood asthma. One US analysis attributes about one in eight cases to gas stove use — an association, not a proven cause.
Vibrio vulnificus wound infections rose eightfold along the Eastern US between 1988 and 2018, and a 2026 model projects recreational-water infection risk climbing up to a thousandfold by 2100.
A colourless gas that seeps from soil into homes accounts for a large share of lung cancers in never-smokers. The evidence for testing is strong; the risk rises smoothly with concentration, with no clear safe level.
The gas is colourless, odourless and produced by any fuel-burning appliance. Because the early symptoms mimic flu, a working CO alarm is the one defence public-health data support.