Category: News

Op-ed: Cities are working to improve residents’ well-being with more urban green spaces. But they must be on the watch for green gentrification and its negative health consequences. By JPB Fellow VINIECE JENNINGS, ALESSANDRO RIGOLON & JPB Fellow  NA’TAKI OSBORNE JELKS It’s an undeniable fact: Green spaces are crucial to our health and wellbeing. Again and again, researchers have found that access to urban green spaces – from parks to gardens to…

Continue reading “When Green Spaces Displace Residents, Our Cities’ Health Suffers”

Overview The stories we tell about the future have the power to shape the world we eventually create. From creative scientific solutions to climate change, to an economy built on ecological restoration, to the pursuit of right relationships in social systems and inclusive design, imagination has the power to shift what we see as possible. Inspired by cutting-edge literary movements, such as Afrofuturism, hopepunk, and solarpunk, Afterglow imagines intersectional worlds in which no…

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Growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., kinesiology Associate Professor Jennifer Roberts heard stories about a magical place called Humboldt Parkway, a two-mile, tree-lined boulevard in one of the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. Roberts’ mom, uncle, aunt and grandparents spent years walking, biking and playing in the 200-foot-wide swath of green space, part of a system of parks and parkways designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and they often used the parkway…

Continue reading “A City Lost a Crown Jewel, and the Black Community Suffered”

Record-breaking heat and drought. Thick blankets of wildfire smoke. Walls of wind-driven flames. Pelting hail. Swath-cutting tornadoes. The summer of 2023 has been a constant reminder of the powerful effects of climate change. But the trying season is only one dramatic recent reminder of the changes and the toll they have taken on neighborhoods, communities, and economies in the form of air quality, water resources, food production and other factors…

Continue reading “New NIH-funded project brings public health faculty and community leaders together to seek climate justice”

As of Monday morning, nearly five thousand wildfires have burned 30.4 million acres in Canada since the beginning of 2023. Smoke from those wildfires has drifted to the eastern United States, including here in Central Pennsylvania and resulted in poor and unhealthy air quality days in June and July. In fact, researchers at Rutgers University found the smoke was at levels not seen since smoking was banned indoors 15 years…

Continue reading “Inhaling smoke from wildfires in Canada was on the level of indoor second-hand smoke”

If you’re feeling a bit brain-fogged these days, you might not be wrong to blame it on the heat. Several summers back, researchers in Boston studied young adults living in college dorm rooms during a heat wave. Some had central AC and slept at a cool 71 degrees Fahrenheit. Others slept in rooms without air-conditioning, where the temperature hovered around 80 degrees. Each morning for nearly two weeks, the students…

Continue reading “Yes, heat can affect your brain and mood. Here’s why”

Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) Conference. Baltimore, Maryland Monday, October 2, 2023, at 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM EDT REGISTER HERE JPB Fellows, founding members of SERG (Socio-Environmental Research Group), will lead the workshop titled “Strengthening Research for Action at the Intersection of Environmental & Social Determinants of Health” during the IAPHS Conference on Monday, October 2, 2023 at 8:30AM – 12:30PM EDT Session Chairs: JPB Fellow Allison Appleton, Oregon…

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Rain has improved air quality in the Philadelphia region but wildfires are expected to be a problem throughout the summer and new research says that wildfire smoke is more dangerous than other pollution sources. Scientists at Rutgers University say as that Canadian smoke travels into our area it heats up and collects toxins their new study says it’s significantly impacting air quality. Smoke from Canadian wildfires is potentially more dangerous than…

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The Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) provides independent advice on science and technical issues to assist EPA in implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act, as amended in 2016 by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Members of the SACC are appointed by the Administrator of EPA from candidates identified through a public call for nominations. Members serve staggered terms of appointment, generally of three…

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Hazy, hazardous conditions from climate change-driven Canadian wildfires have prompted researchers to examine the physicochemical and toxicological properties. Rutgers scientists have examined the physical and chemical attributes as well as the possible toxicological health effects of the Canadian wildfires that sharply impacted air quality in New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area. Using state-of-the-art instrumentation, the Nanoscience and Advanced Materials Center (NAMC) at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences…

Continue reading “Rutgers leads study of wildfire air pollution in New Jersey”