Environmental Health

Fresh WHO data shows that 9 in 10 people breathe air laced with high levels of pollutants, and a shocking 7 million people die annually because of it—the vast majority in low and middle-income countries.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued a challenge: "Reinvent the Toilet." Duke University researchers answered the call with a new system they’re testing out at a women's dormitory in Coimbatore, India.

Daily exposure to contaminated water, poor sanitation and parasites is not keeping allergies and asthma at bay in Africa, defying the "hygiene hypothesis" that exposure breeds immune response, found researchers at Egypt’s Ain Shams University. The limited data available…

Scott Pruitt made his name “fighting one regulation after another,” writes Margaret Talbot. As head of the EPA, which he has sued 14 times, he’s no different. Pruitt courts the opinion of players in industries he regulates, particularly coal, rather than environmentalists…

By his 2nd birthday, Michael’s blood lead levels were 6 times over the threshold to trigger CDC case management recommendations. He lived in one of 37 million US homes coated in poisonous lead paint. The CDC will soon lower its childhood blood lead level threshold once…

Rising temperatures and worsening droughts are increasingly dehydrating the American West. Arizona’s Zero Mass Water is trying their hand at creating new sources of drinkable water, such as hydropanels strapped to buildings.Ryan Bradley pressed Zero Mass one further,…

Northern Kenya is drying out fast—and scientists warn that they see the “fingerprints of global warming,” writes Somini Sengupta.She wrote this haunting piece after visiting northern Kenya, where pastoralists recalled the droughts of the past—when rain eventually brought…

Reducing countries’ air pollution can substantially offset the cost of achieving the Paris climate goals.In China and India, the health co-benefits alone would cover the entire cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, found Anil Markandya and colleagues. In that part of…

Heavy rains catalyzed a massive garbage landslide in Mozambique’s capital that killed 16 people last week, revealing the precarious foundations of life around Maputo’s Hulele rubbish dump.Anticipating tragedy, local environmentalists have long campaigned for the dump—home…

After decades of decline, black lung disease is back in Appalachia in a particularly lethal form.Nearly 500 coal miners—the largest cluster ever recorded—have been diagnosed with complicated black lung disease, a devastating end-stage condition. Worse, many of the patients…