Danger Dust

We show that the impact of agropastoral societies on terrestrial ecosystems was locally confined during the Bronze and Iron Ages (5200–2750 years ago), although we record an onset of Pb pollution already at 5200 cal. years BP and thus about 1200 years earlier than previous archeological evidence. 

Our data demonstrate a marked increase in Pb pollution at 2150 cal. years BP that left an imprint across terrestrial and marine settings of the Aegean region. This first manifestation of marine pollution coincides with maximum deforestation and agricultural expansion, signaling pervasive human impact on ecosystems connected to the advanced monetized societies during the Hellenistic and Roman periods in Ancient Greece.

Rumored to have killed the Roman emperor Augustus, nightshade's berries are notoriously deadly. Tomatoes belong to the same plant family, Solanaceae, and produce toxic steroidal glycoalkaloids too.

Solanaceae make use of steroidal glycoalkaloids as a natural defense against pests. These molecules are thought to mess with animal cell membranes, damaging them and eventually causing cell death.

Potatoes, another member of this toxic family, have been cultivated to have safe levels of these compounds, though they can pump them out when damaged or exposed to large amounts of light.

Bai and team discovered that in tomatoes, the chemicals that make the fruits redder, softer, and sweeter also coordinate the breakdown of the toxic glycoalkaloid into a less toxic compound called esculeoside A.

"[This helps] ensure that high levels of toxic steroidal glycoalkaloids remain in immature fruits to maintain resistance against herbivory attacks, guaranteeing that the fruits reach the seed maturation stage," the team explains in their paper.

Source:

Removal of toxic steroidal glycoalkaloids and bitterness in tomato is controlled by a complex epigenetic and genetic network

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads9601

France's parliament on Thursday voted to limit the production and sale of some items containing polluting and health-threatening "forever chemicals" including cosmetics, most clothing and ski wax in the Alpine nation.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are human-made chemicals used since the late 1940s to mass produce the non-stick, waterproof and stain-resistant treatments that coat everything from frying pans to umbrellas, carpets, dental floss and ski wax.

Because PFAS take an extremely long time to break down—earning them their "forever" nickname—they have seeped into the soil and groundwater, and from there into the food chain and drinking water.

These chemicals have been detected virtually everywhere on Earth, from the top of Mount Everest to inside human blood and brains.

Chronic exposure to even low levels of the chemicals has been linked to liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses, low birthweights and several kinds of cancer.

Respiratory diseases are a challenging problem to treat. Inhalable medicines are a promising solution that depends on the ability to deliver tiny particles known as aerosols to the correct location in the lungs at the correct dosage.

How effectively this works can get complicated, depending on the drug, delivery method and patient. This is because it is difficult to predict just how much medicine gets in and where it goes in the lung. Similar challenges exist when thinking about measuring an inhaled environmental exposure, say to particles of asbestos or a toxin like smoke. If it's something environmental and toxic that we're worried about, knowing how far and how deep in the lung it goes is important.

Fromen and her team demonstrate how their new 3D lung model can advance the understanding of how inhalable medications behave in the upper airways and deeper areas of the lung.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-3d-lung-bar.html

A new study, published in The Lancet Public Health, reveals that the food we eat, physical inactivity and obesity are largely to blame, as well as the COVID pandemic.

Of all the countries studied, England experienced the biggest slowdown in life expectancy.

It means that rather than looking forward to living longer than our parents or grandparents, we may find that we are dying sooner.

Countries studied included Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

What is Indigenous futures thinking and who does it?

Futures thinking involves imagining and describing different possible futures. It asks us to consider what we want society, the environment and the world to look like in 50 or even 500 years from now. The future we think up can then be used as the basis for strategies to achieve those visions.

Futures thinking has helped people from diverse backgrounds to reach a common understanding of important issues and their underlying causes. It helps people find ways to work towards a future they prefer.

An important emerging area within this field is Indigenous futures thinking. This brings unique Indigenous perspectives into how people view the future. Indigenous perspectives emphasise the need to look after the land for the well-being of future generations.

Indigenous people consistently express their responsibilities for the past, present, and future of their societies and their traditional lands, built on centuries, sometimes millennia, of knowledge.

Some forms of blood cancer, such as multiple myeloma and lymphoma, are malignant diseases that originate from immune cells, specifically lymphocytes. In recent years, CAR-T cell therapies have become an essential part of the treatment of patients whose lymphoma or multiple myeloma has relapsed. This involves genetically modifying the patient’s own T lymphocytes (T cells) in order to specifically recognise and eliminate the cancer cells using a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR).

A special case is the subject of the current scientific publication. A 63-year-old patient with multiple myeloma developed T cell lymphoma in the blood, skin and intestine nine months after undergoing CAR-T cell therapy at the University Hospital of Cologne. The tumour developed from the genetically modified T cells that were used in the treatment.

We often forget how wonderful it is that life exists, and what a special and unique phenomenon it is. As far as we know, ours is the only planet capable of supporting life, and it seems to have arisen in the form of something like today’s single-celled prokaryotic organisms.

However, scientists have not given up hope of finding what they call LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor, the ancestral cell from which all living things we know are descended) beyond the confines of our planet.

Martians in your stomach

In the 1980s, two Australian doctors, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, began studying gastroduodenal ulcers. Until then, the condition had been attributed to stress or excess gastric acid secretion, which did little to help cure the condition.

In 2005, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastric diseases, a discovery that revolutionised the field of gastroenterology.

https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/phossy-jaw-and-the-matchgirls/

A new research study highlights the significant health risks associated with dust storms, revealing an increase in emergency department (ED) visits for respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, as well as motor vehicle accidents, in three Southwestern U.S. states.

Dust storms are expected to become more frequent due to climate change, so it's crucial that we understand their immediate and long-term health impacts.

Poisoning

Operations on a construction site can produce extremely fine dust particles invisible to the eye. These particles can clog the lungs and may also cause poisoning, depending on the material.

Lead paint, for example, can be a factor in older homes. About 87 percent of homes built before 1940 are likely to have at least some lead paint. This is also true of an estimated 24 percent of homes built between 1960 and 1978. Lead in the dust and debris can cause anemia and damage the brain and nervous system.

Key Points

• Mineral dust concentrations from the MERRA-2 atmospheric reanalysis product are investigated at Hawaii's ocean Station ALOHA back to 1980

• Two semi-annual dust pulses at the site are described and little evidence is seen for long-term shifts in total dust or pulse timing

• Dust concentrations exhibit different periodicities and relationships with precipitation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation index

Plain Language Summary

Dust blown from Earth's continents fertilizes the oceans with iron and other nutrients needed for plants to grow. This affects ocean ecosystems and is an important control on Earth's climate. Modern models for the atmosphere report dust very precisely in time and space but rarely address how it affects specific ocean sites over time. We examine these best-available model outputs for a well-studied site at Hawaii to improve our understanding of how dust has varied over the many decades this region has been studied by oceanographic and atmospheric researchers.

Consider the examples of siding contractors cutting cementitious cladding materials for 8 hours a day, five days a week. Or trades that work with tile or granite countertops, as well as those cutting clay roof tiles or concrete slabs.

All of them, and others in similar roles, are at risk, including others working nearby, as silica dust can remain airborne for hours, posing risks even after the immediate task is completed.

Moreover, the development of silicosis can take years, particularly with chronic silicosis, which typically arises after a decade or more of low-level silica exposure. Inhalation of these small crystalline particles can lead to multiple health conditions, including the incurable lung disease silicosis, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and kidney disease.

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes—a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials—or SCMs—by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Due to declining coal production, traditional SCMs like coal-based fly ashes are in short supply. One promising alternative is newer SCMs like calcined clays, which can partially replace ordinary Portland cement and result in durable, low-cost concrete that produces less carbon dioxide during production.

Reduced requirements

Policy announcements from the current government have cemented this shift. They include the removal of the need for English and maths qualifications for adult apprentices, and the reduced minimum time period for an apprenticeship from 12 months to eight.

Three Rs requirement for apprentices scrapped

Basic education requirements for apprenticeships are being scrapped in a bid to boost uptake.

Apprentices will no longer be required to complete a level 2 English and maths qualification (equivalent to GCSE) in order to qualify.

The minimum duration of an apprenticeship is also being be reduced to eight months, down from the current minimum of 12 months.

https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/three-rs-requirement-for-apprentices-scrapped

Exposure to air pollution is associated with around seven million premature deaths per year across the world. When we think of urban air pollution, diesel exhaust emissions are often portrayed as a key culprit – rightly so, given previous research findings. However, our latest research shows that dust from brake pads could be more harmful to our lungs.

Even as the country chases its goal of eliminating tuberculosis (TB), a particular complexity — silico-TB, a condition when patients suffer from both TB and silicosis or lung scarring because of exposure to silica dust — is posing challenges. A new study that tracked 137 silico-tuberculosis and 2,605 TB-only patients in Gujarat’s Khambhat found that the former group’s chances of survival was 2.75 times lesser than those suffering from just TB.

Invisible, omnipresent "forever chemicals" have been linked to a wide range of serious effects on human health, prompting growing calls for them to be banned.

While there is firm evidence that at least one of the more than 4,000 human-made chemicals called PFAS causes cancer, researchers are still attempting to fully understand their broader health impacts.

Other linked diseases

More broadly, observational studies have suggested that exposure to PFAS chemicals is associated with increased rates of cancer, obesity, thyroid, liver and kidney disease, higher cholesterol, low birthweight, infertility and even weaker responses to vaccines.

Pesticides affect a diverse range of non-target species and may be linked to global biodiversity loss. The magnitude of this hazard remains only partially understood.

We present a synthesis of pesticide (insecticide, herbicide and fungicide) impacts on multiple non-target organisms across trophic levels based on 20,212 effect sizes from 1,705 studies.

For non-target plants, animals (invertebrate and vertebrates) and microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), we show negative responses of the growth, reproduction, behaviour and other physiological biomarkers within terrestrial and aquatic systems.

Pesticides formulated for specific taxa negatively affected non-target groups, e.g. insecticidal neonicotinoids affecting amphibians. Negative effects were more pronounced in temperate than tropical regions but were consistent between aquatic and terrestrial environments, even after correcting for field-realistic terrestrial and environmentally relevant exposure scenarios.

Our results question the sustainability of current pesticide use and support the need for enhanced risk assessments to reduce risks to biodiversity and ecosystems.

Managers of a chemical plant accused of knowingly contaminating the water of hundreds of thousands of people are on trial in Italy, in one of Europe's biggest environmental disaster lawsuits.

The now-shuttered Miteni factory near the northeastern city of Vicenza is alleged to have polluted one of Europe's largest groundwater basins with PFAS, dubbed "forever chemicals" because they never break down.

A team of researchers from the Sant Pau Research Institute (IR Sant Pau) has published a study in the Journal of Neuroinflammation that, for the first time, examines in depth the role of the peripheral immune system in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the single-cell level.

Their findings suggest that immune system cells—particularly two subpopulations of natural killer (NK) cells—may play a crucial part in the development and progression of this neurodegenerative disease.

ALS is a condition that causes the progressive degeneration of motor neurons, leading to a loss of muscle function and, eventually, affecting vital functions such as breathing.

Thursday, 13 February 2025, 10:23 am

Press Release: New Zealand Government

"I’m keen to hear from all industries in which respirable crystalline silica is generated including/such as mining, quarrying, tunnelling, roading, foundries, construction, manufacturing of concrete, bricks and tiles, abrasive blasting, monumental masonry work, concrete drilling, grinding, fettling, mixing, handling and dry shovelling,” says Ms van Velden.

“You still have time to make a submission by going to MBIE’s website. The consultation closes at 5pm on 18 March 2025.”

Lung cancer cases are increasing in people who have never smoked, especially in women, a new study by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency has found.

The findings, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, reveal that lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer among non-smokers, accounts for nearly 60% of lung cancer cases in women compared to 45% in men.

About 2.5 million new lung cancer cases were diagnosed worldwide in 2022 – an increase of 300,000 since 2020. The study suggests that environmental factors, particularly air pollution, along with genetic predisposition and immune responses, may be driving this rise in non-smoking-related lung cancer.

Like the stent I mentioned earlier, 4D printing raises the possibility of creating implants and prosthetics that adapt to patients’ needs in real time. Research teams working on these innovations include the Biomet4D project, coordinated by the IMDEA Materials Institute in Madrid, which is developing smart, biodegradable metallic implants for people with seriously damaged or defective bones. The implants can change shape and expand as the bone grows, supporting it much more effectively than a static implant.

Another area of focus is smarter ways to give patients drugs. For example, a team of researchers based at China’s Jilin University have created 4D-printed hydrogel capsules whose outer structure stays intact inside a patient’s body until it reaches a particular temperature, such as when there is an infection, meaning the drug only takes effect when it’s required. This could be useful in situations where it’s beneficial to release a drug into a patient’s body at exactly the right time and location.

We’re also developing materials for boat fenders and car bumpers whose shape can be restored by adding heat, as a way of removing dents, as well as shape-adaptive finger splints for broken bones, and self-assembling, extra-comfortable furniture.

So, the next time you marvel at the capabilities of 3D printing, remember: the future lies in 4D printing, where materials come alive and redefine the possibilities of tomorrow.

Everyone loves a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, too often our air is anything but fresh.

While air quality varies dramatically from place to place and day to day, nearly the entire world—about 99% of the global population—is exposed to air at some point that doesn't meet the strict standards set by the World Health Organization. Polluted air, laden with noxious gasses or tiny, invisible particles that burrow into human bodies, kills 7 million people prematurely every year, the U.N. health agency estimates.

And for the millions living in some of the world's smoggiest cities—many of them in Asia like New Delhi; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Bangkok; and Jakarta, Indonesia—bad air might seem inescapable.

But there are things that people can do, starting with understanding that the air isn't only polluted when it looks smoggy.