Please reserve the following times on your calendar for the Harvard Chan NIEHS Center 2020-2021 Colloquium Series: Racism, Disparities, and Environmental Health. Senior Fellow Diana Hernandez will present on Oct. 14th. Read more.
We’ll Have to Learn to Live With Smoke. Here’s Why.
There’s a huge fire debt in the West that must be paid off, experts say, either through controlled burns or out-of-control blazes. Either way, that means smoke. PORTLAND, Ore. — For a full week this month, my family did not leave our house here in this famously outdoorsy city. At times, smoke from the state’s huge wildfires made it hard to see to the end of the block. Sometimes, we…
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Citizen Science Project: Analyzing Patterns of Land Loss in the Gulf
Concerned about Climate Change? Help Healthy Gulf map land loss in the Gulf and protect vital wetlands at http://cartosco.pe/landloss. If you can see it, you can change it. That’s why HealthyGulf has partnered with Cartosco.pe and Northeastern University to create Land Loss Lookout, which can train your eye to see how climate change is drowning Louisiana’s wetlands. On Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River Delta has grown into one of the…
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National Sleep Foundation Highlights New Evidence for Sleep Health Disparities
National Sleep Foundation Highlights New Evidence for Sleep Health Disparities Washington, D.C. (September 24, 2020): The latest issue of the National Sleep Foundation’s (NSF) Sleep Health Journal features a collection of new research studies that add to the evidence base for racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in sleep health. “The mission of Sleep Health is to explore sleep’s role in population health and elucidate the social science perspective on sleep and health. Sources and…
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Citizen Science Project: Land Loss Lookout
Protecting the Gulf of Mexico from pollution and wetland destruction requires constant vigilance. Often, the best way to keep an eye out is from the air. Help Healthy Gulf identify patterns by looking at aerial images of the coast. Learn more.
Smoke waves expected to intensify, continue to threaten public health across Colorado and the West
Wildfire-produced smoke waves that harmed air quality in the Roaring Fork Valley this summer may be associated with health risks for months after the fires end, while additional research shows that long stretches of smoky days are likely to become more frequent and more intense across the West as the climate warms. In mid-August, thick smoke pooled in the valley from the Grizzly Creek and Pine Gulch fires, and earlier…
Biological signs of disease examined at National Academies event
The workshop focused on biomarkers of effect, which are molecular changes that result from exposure to environmental and social stressors. Exposure to environmental and social stressors can cause molecular changes that lead to poor health outcomes, but identifying which changes are true indicators of adverse effects or potential risk is a challenge. Environmental health scientists say that more knowledge about such biological indicators — called biomarkers of effect — could shed light…
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Mobile-shred workers uniquely vulnerable to toxic metals
Researchers have discovered that shredding e-scrap materials in trucks may expose employees to as much toxic metal dust as in-plant shredding, but mobile workers may not be as protected as their plant-based counterparts. The first-of-its-kind study was conducted by Diana Ceballos from the Boston University School of Public Health and Michael Zhou and Robert Herrick, both from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Their paper was published in August in…
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Aging and the environment explored through research partnership
NIEHS and the National Institute on Aging foster scientific collaboration through their Joint Fellowship Program. NIEHS and the National Institute on Aging (NIA) have announced the 2020 NIEHS-NIA Joint Fellowship Program (JFP) grant winners. The funding opportunity supports dual research projects, with scientists from the institutes working together for two years. The financial support allows each team to hire a postdoctoral fellow to work exclusively with them. JFP began in 2018 with funding…
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Sleep well during the pandemic
JPB Fellow Chandra Jackson shared practical tips for getting adequate, restful sleep during the pandemic on the NIH #CopingWithCOVID19 livestream series. Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult under normal circumstances. But it can be even more challenging during a global pandemic, said Chandra Jackson, Ph.D., who studies the environment and sleep at NIEHS. Jackson discussed the connection between sleep and health with Marishka Brown, Ph.D., program director for sleep…