Med Health News

Category: Environment

  • Scientists Discover That Which City You Live in Can Increase Your Risk for Developing Cancer

    Scientists Discover That Which City You Live in Can Increase Your Risk for Developing Cancer

    A review of cancer statistics from extensive sources reveals that places with poorer environmental quality can put you at greater risk for developing cancer.

    The urban life attracts many with prospects of higher incomes, busier lives, cutting-edge technology and fashion, and a more diverse, fun environment. But experts are finding that you may be trading your health for a better lifestyle by moving into busy cities. They found that poor quality environments can increase your risk for cancer.

    Researchers went through numerous statistics from many governmental health agencies, including the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the EPA, and tried to find a correlation between cancer incidence and air quality, transportation and housing safety, water quality, pesticide exposure and contamination, and exposure to crime. They found that places which are lower overall in these environmental qualities have higher incidences of cancer.

    They found that prostate and breast cancer rates were the most sensitive to environmental quality. That means that living in an area that exposes you to a lower quality environment puts you at greater risk for these two cancers.

    Sadly, they also found that the more urbanized a place is, the lower the environmental quality tends to be. Highly urbanized places, like major cities, were found to have the lowest environmental quality. But even almost unpopulated rural areas can have a lower quality environment compared with a more populated suburban area if these rural areas have more pesticide exposure from farming or some other outstanding lower environmental factor.

    How to Protect Yourself From Environmental Cancer Risks

    But often it’s not possible to choose the environment you live in. Financial situations may force you to move to more polluted cities. Also, you shouldn’t give up your life goals for better environmental quality because the increased cancer risks aren’t as significant as something on the level of smoking cigarettes or using a tanning bed. While it isn’t possible to avoid all increased risks of developing cancer coming from your environment, there are many proactive things you can do to lower these risks significantly:




    1. Test Your Water

    Water quality is one of the environmental factors used in the review. Many cities across the U.S. have outdated irrigation systems that leak lead and other pollutants into their tap water. If you remember the Flint, Michigan lead contamination crisis, then you should know that Providence, Rhode Island children recently were found to have levels of lead in their bodies that are 300 percent over dangerous levels. Recent tests also found that some homes’ tap water in Portland contain lead levels that exceed EPA’s health hazard limits.

    Besides increasing your risk for cancer, continuing to introduce contaminated water into your system has been found to lower your cognition and overall brain power. The impact is so significant that children who were exposed to lead in their drinking water ended up with such lower IQ and cognitive abilities that their socioeconomic status was lower than their parents even at age 38!

    Given these findings on lead-contaminated cities and this new review linking environmental quality and cancer risk, it’s not a coincidence that Portland, Flint, and Providence are both highly urbanized places and have notorious lead water levels. If you live in a highly or somewhat urbanized location, there’s a chance your tap water may be contaminated too.

    But no matter where you live, it’s best if you run your own tests on your tap water to see if it’s safe for consumption. Local government agencies only test a few homes’ tap water and assume nearby homes have similar results. That means you shouldn’t assume your home’s tap water has been tested and officially approved as safe for drinking.

    2. Avoid Outdoor Air Pollution and Control Indoor Air Pollution

    It’s difficult to control the air pollution you’re exposed to if you’re living in a major city. But there’s still a few things you can do to lessen your exposure.

    Try to leave before rush hours. Commuting when there’s less traffic means you’ll likely be exposed to less smog. Try to pick routes with less traffic and fewer smoke-spewing buildings (like restaurants or industrial areas). Doing these two things will greatly reduce your exposure to outdoor air pollution.

    When at home, you can minimize indoor air pollution by vacuuming more often to reduce the dust you breathe in. Don’t use scented candles or artificial air fresheners because there’s evidence they vaporize chemicals that can disrupt your endocrine system and cause cancer. Instead, use a doctor-recommended air purifier that cleans the air of odor-causing particles and dust. Remember to change your HVAC filters and air purifier filters regularly to maximize their air filtration.

    You should also cultivate houseplants, which boost your indoor oxygen supply and naturally remove harmful vaporized pollutants (like benzene and formaldehyde) emitted from electronics. These are vital for your home office, which may have higher levels of these cancer-causing pollutants coming from your printer and computers. But formaldehyde and some other dangerous pollutants are also released by a few paints, varnishes, paper products, foam insulation, and other fixtures that came with your urban rental. Thankfully, household plants have been shown to lower formaldehyde levels in the air by about 600 percent. These researchers found that ferns are the best houseplants for removing formaldehyde from indoor air.

    3. Wash or Boil Your Produce

    Pesticide exposure is another environmental factor the review took into consideration. You can lessen pesticide exposure from the air by wearing long-sleeved tops and pants. Wearing clothes that cover more of your body means less pesticides can make contact with your skin and get absorbed into your body.




    But you must also wash your fruits and vegetables to remove more pesticide residues. The National Pesticide Information Center advises to wash and rub your produce by hand under a strainer to get more pesticide residues out. If you’re eating the produce raw, then you should also wash with a diluted solution of vinegar to kill harmful microbes.

    Research shows that boiling your produce ultimately removes the most pesticide residues. They found that boiling fruits and vegetables removes between 50 to 100 percent of pesticide residues, whereas simply washing and rubbing produce only removes between 20 to 89 percent.

    Removing as much pesticides from your food as possible helps lessen your overall pesticide exposure.

    4. Be Vigilant About Your Housing and Transportation

    Not everyone follows the law, and surely you’ve gone over the speed limit at least once when driving. The same applies to landlords and transportation companies. Housing and transportation safety is another environmental factor that can increase your risk for developing cancer. Make sure where you’re staying and what you’re riding are currently following all codes and regulations.

    Also make sure your home isn’t built with asbestos, lead-based paint, and other health hazards. If during your checks you find that your housing or transportation might be exposing you to unnecessary harmful pollutants, then you should choose different providers to avoid these potential increased cancer risks.

    You can’t avoid all the health risks your environment poses. But now that you’re aware of certain aspects of your environmental that can contribute to causing cancer, you can proactively lessen their impact on your body. Although living in an ideal, safe place would be best, you shouldn’t give up on your ambitions by actively avoiding highly urbanized places. Strive for your goals and protect your health along the way!

  • Professor Invents a Method for Artificial Photosynthesis That Could Cut Carbon Dioxide Emissions

    Professor Invents a Method for Artificial Photosynthesis That Could Cut Carbon Dioxide Emissions

    Trees and other plant life boost the overall oxygen in the environment, while also clearing the air of carbon dioxide pollution. But growing trees can take years, and isn’t feasible in high-population urban areas. But what if your roof was equipped with special materials that could convert carbon dioxide into electricity?

    Cities Are Major Sources of Carbon Dioxide

    Last fall, researchers gloomily declared that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have now surpassed 400 parts per million. They say carbon dioxide levels will only continue to rise as society becomes increasingly industrialized. These record-highs for CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere only echo peak levels from millions of years ago. Since then, these levels have never reached these heights.

    Atmospheric carbon dioxide traps heat like a blanket covering the earth. The more of it in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped. Whether or not global warming exists (since the current U.S. president denies its existence), the fact is that producing more CO2 without an efficient method to prevent its buildup in the atmosphere will only lead to higher overall temperatures.

    The University of North Dakota Energy and Environmental Research Center states that mobile sources of carbon dioxide emissions only account for 26 percent of CO2 emissions from human activity. These include cars, airplanes, and other moving vehicles that emit CO2. They say the bigger percentage of human activity CO2 emissions come from stationary sources, like factories, apartments, houses, businesses, electrical plants, ice fishing houses, and etc., which contribute 65 percent.

    Since cities have a high proportion of mobile sources (think of the traffic-crowded streets) and electricity-consuming buildings and other stationary sources, they are major sources of human activity carbon dioxide emissions.

    Trees and most plant life can help combat carbon dioxide pollution because they take in CO2 and release oxygen as part of photosynthesis. But cities and other urban areas are too cramped with man-made structures for sufficient area to grow a significant amount of plant life. It’s a double jeopardy – not only are cities releasing a major amount of carbon dioxide, but they aren’t capable of cultivating plant life to counter their CO2 emissions.




    How This Artificial Photosynthetic Structure Can Bring Hope for the Battle Against Global Warming

    Chemistry professor Dr. Fernando Uribe-Romo of the University of Florida may have invented a remarkable solution to city carbon dioxide pollution. He and his team fashioned organic compounds onto titanium. The organometallic structure falls within a class called metal-organic frameworks.

    The organic compounds act like antennae that absorb the sun’s most abundant radiation – those in the visible range. In this case, Dr. Uribe-Romo selected for sunlight components within the blue wavelength range. The absorbed radiation catalyzed a reaction that transformed surrounding carbon dioxide into carbon compounds that are used in solar fuel cells.

    In other words, the invention cleans the air of CO2 and converts it into solar power! Professor Uribe-Romo hopes that this technology can be developed and fastened onto urban rooves. These would act like solar panels that can power buildings by eating carbon dioxide pollution. Unlike plant life, they can be installed virtually everywhere in a city.

    He says his team is working on adjusting the organic components such that they’ll be able to absorb other visible wavelength components of sunlight.

    Hopefully this new artificial photosynthetic structure can be the answer to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Since they require nothing but solar power and carbon dioxide to work, incorporating them into building regulations may significantly cut human activity carbon dioxide emissions before the greenhouse gas can reach the atmosphere.

  • Can a Caterpillar Help Solve Environmental Recycling Problems?

    Can a Caterpillar Help Solve Environmental Recycling Problems?

    A hobby beekeeper in Spain mistakenly stumbled upon a big win for environmentalists. Scientists are now eagerly studying her find and its wonderful applications for saving the environment.

    In Spain, a hobby beekeeper was tending to her beehives when she saw some loitering caterpillars that were eating the beeswax, some cocoons, and shed bee skins. You may be more familiar with their common name – waxworms – which are known to infest beehives. These particular ones are Galleria mellonella, the greater wax moth.

    She promptly extracted the pests into plastic bags. But to her surprise the waxworms rapidly made little holes in the plastic. Fortunately, the hobbyist is an astute researcher at the Institute of Biomedicine and Biotechnology of Cantabria who immediately recognized the remarkable implications that these caterpillars could have for the environment.

    She and other researchers found that these waxworms could break down plastic faster than other cutting-edge artificial and natural methods. They wanted to make sure the waxworms were really breaking down the plastic, rather than just rapidly chewing holes into it. To do this, and in the name of science, they then smashed the waxworms up to expose the digestive enzymes in their guts. When they applied the smashed waxworm juice to plastic, they recorded some measurements that confirmed the waxworms’ enzymes were breaking down the plastic.

    The researchers were thrilled because these findings mean that recycling plants and waste management facilities can use waxworms to breakdown plastics naturally without too much additional cost. They’re also exploring the possibility of synthetically producing the waxworms’ enzymes for mass production, which would be more costly and less environmentally friendly, but would also be exponentially more efficient at breaking down plastics.

    The Current Plastic Waste Problem

    Why are these findings newsworthy? Because the waxworms’ enzymes have been found to breakdown polyethylene, which make up a minimum of about 40 percent of plastic packaging. Before these findings, polyethylene was considered not biodegradable – which means it doesn’t naturally breakdown by itself or by nature.

    Data shows that plastic production is increasing exponentially as more products are becoming industrialized and technology is advancing. But only 26 percent of these plastics are recycled, while 38 percent end up in landfills, and the rest are combusted (which causes air pollution).

    The landfills are already becoming backed up with non-biodegradable trash, which may cause plastic waste to make their way into animal habitats. This leads to scenes like fish and dolphins getting their necks stuck around plastic waste and other heartbreaking scenarios.

    These waxworms and their enzymes can realistically rescue the environment from plastic buildup. If they can be used to break down plastics, landfills will have more space and there will be less air pollution from combusting plastics.

    What’s the best part? When they break down plastics, they make ethylene glycol, which is antifreeze! That means using these waxworms and their enzymes to treat plastic waste will actually recycle the plastic into antifreeze. It’s a win-win for the environment and for companies wanting to boost their revenue by treating their plastic wastes with these waxworms to make antifreeze they can reuse or sell.

    Hopefully scientists can discover other hidden solutions within Mother Nature for more of society’s ever-increasing self-inflicted environmental crises.