There are currently an estimated 4.5 billion people around the world exposed to levels of particulate air pollution that are at least twice what the World Health Organization considers safe. Yet the impact of sustained exposure to pollution on a person’s life expectancy has largely remained a vexingly unanswered question—until now.

As Hurricane Irma bears down on the U.S., the MIT Urban Risk Lab has launched a free, open-source platform that will help residents and government officials track flooding in Broward County, Florida. The platform, RiskMap.us, is being piloted to enable both residents and emergency managers to obtain better information on flooding conditions in near-real time.

Liver cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death and represents the fastest rising cancer worldwide. In most cases, the tumor develops in patients with chronic liver disease. Such diseases include chronic infections with hepatitis viruses or a so-called fatty liver due to nutritional or genetically caused lipometabolic disorders or an excessive consumption of alcohol.

Plastic pollution remains a major issue around the world, and now a new study suggests that microplastics have invaded our drinking water.

An investigation conducted by Orb Media and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health examined over 150 water samples from 14 countries across five continents — all in search of microfibers.

Sixteen years after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers sent a “cloud” of toxic debris across Lower Manhattan, children living nearby who likely breathed in the ash and fumes are showing early signs of risk for future heart disease.

Strontium (Sr) is an element which in the event of a nuclear accident is the one that is most released into the atmosphere. The chemical behaviour of strontium is similar to that of calcium and can accumulate in the soil, in plants and in animals (in bones, especially). It is an element with two main radioisotopes (90Sr and 89Sr) which have an effective biological life that is relatively high for human beings, and due to its fixation in the bones, ends up giving a dose of radiation over many years.

A plant-based, Mediterranean-style diet has been shown to provide the same medical benefits for treating laryngopharyngeal reflux as popular reflux medications. This is according to a study published today in JAMA Otolaryngology Head Neck Surgery by researchers from Northwell Health’s The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and New York Medical College.

Positive emotions are often seen as critical aspects of healthy living, but new researchsuggests that the link between emotion and health outcomes may vary by cultural context. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that experiencing positive emotions is linked with better cardiovascular health in the US but not in Japan.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have invented a fast, affordable way for developing communities to test their drinking water for potentially deadly E. coli.

Unlike current tests that cost about $70 and can take up to three days to get back from the lab, the Waterloo invention uses paper strips similar to those in litmus tests to produce results in less than three hours at a cost of 50 cents.

MIT and Harvard University researchers have engineered E. coli cells that can be used to study how bacteria at an infection site respond to antibiotic treatment, allowing scientists to learn more about how existing antibiotics work and potentially help them to develop new drugs.

In the new study, which appears in the Aug. 31 issue of Cell Host and Microbe, the researchers found evidence that some existing hypotheses about how bacteria respond to antibiotics are not correct.