Microplastics are everywhere. These tiny polymers, shed by the 400 million-some metric tons of plastic that humans produce each year, are in the food we eat and the water we drink—and therefore our body. While microplastics’ impacts on human health have not yet been fully established, evidence suggests chemicals in some plastics can disrupt hormone signaling, potentially leading to a wide array of health effects.
You go to the gym, eat healthy and walk as much as possible. You wash your hands and get vaccinated. You control your health. This is a common story we tell ourselves. Unfortunately, it’s not quite true.
The influential Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE) at the University of California San Francisco is attacking EPA’s final TSCA “framework” rule governing risk evaluations of existing chemicals over what the group says are its lacking protections for vulnerable populations and low bar for agency science, in a preview of possible litigation.
When you bite into a piece of celery, there’s a fair chance that it will be coated with a thin film of a toxic pesticide called acephate. The bug killer — also used on tomatoes, cranberries, Brussels sprouts and other fruits and vegetables — belongs to a class of compounds linked to autism, hyperactivity and reduced scores on intelligence tests in children.
To mark Earth Day, the FIGO Committee on Climate Change and Toxic Environmental Exposures (C2TE2) invites you to listen to a new episode of the FIGO podcast. Join Committee Chair Dr Nate DeNicola as he takes us on a world tour exploring environmental drivers of global women's health in interviews with committee members and expert liaisons.
The Biden administration is designating two “forever chemicals,” man-made compounds that are linked to serious health risks, as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, shifting responsibility for their cleanup to polluters from taxpayers.
Humans and animals are often exposed to microplastics because they are present in many substances. As researchers seek to understand the impact of microplastics, evidence is building about the effects of exposure to these substances and how that may influence health outcomes.
If you were to create a recipe for plastics, you’d need a very big cookbook. In addition to fossil fuel-based building blocks like ethylene and propylene, this ubiquitous material is made from a dizzying amalgam of more than 16,000 chemicals — colorants, flame retardants, stabilizers, lubricants, plasticizers, and other substances, many of whose exact functions, structures, and toxicity are poorly understood.
Use of petroleum-based chemicals skyrocketed during the postwar era, most of them entering the market with little concern for safety. Now, mounting evidence links petrochemicals to the rapidly rising prevalence of a slew of chronic and deadly conditions, a review published in the New England Journal of Medicine warned earlier this month.
EPA has released its long-awaited final rule setting tougher limits on emissions of the solvent ethylene oxide (EtO) from commercial sterilizers, tightening existing limits, setting new limits, eliminating exemptions for facility startup and shutdown -- but also offering a two-year compliance extension, and finalizing “site-wide” flexible compliance options.
Add one more likely culprit to the long list of known cardiovascular risk factors including red meat, butter, smoking and stress: microplastics. In a study released Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of physicians and researchers showed that surgical patients who had a build-up of micro and nanoplastics in their arterial plaque had a 2.1 times greater risk of nonfatal heart attack, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause in the three years post surgery than those who did not.
People who live near major roadways in California continue to be at risk of developing respiratory, cardiovascular and reproductive health problems, despite the state’s push for clean energy policies, UC Davis Health researchers told the state Legislature in a new report.
March 06, 2024Press Release
A byproduct of fossil fuel production, petrochemicals are on the rise and exposures to these chemicals contribute to health problems, including cancer, according to an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine, published March 6, 2024.
Chemical pollution tied to fossil fuel operations is not only driving harmful climate change but is also posing dire risks to human health at levels that require aggressive private and public efforts to limit exposures, warns a new analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
People with artery plaques containing microplastics are more likely to have a heart attack or stroke than those with plastic-free plaques, suggesting microplastics may contribute to heart disease.