Research from the University of Michigan reveals a connection between pollen exposure and death rates among older adults with breathing problems.
Researchers from the University of Michigan measured hormone levels in capuchin monkeys to decode how the stress response helps these monkeys weather environmental challenges.
To try to understand how harmful algal blooms might evolve in Lake Erie in a warming climate, University of Michigan scientists helped conduct a survey of cyanobacteria in a gulf of Kenya’s Lake Victoria.
Research led by the University of Michigan shows that communities of color in Texas face pronounced risks of E. coli exposure in nearby waters after intense rain.
Community program and policy interventions aimed at reducing screen time are less successful in neighborhoods that lack green space
The Mellon Foundation has awarded nearly $4 million in a first-of-its kind grant to bolster the University of Michigan’s leading work in environmental justice.
Morning glory plants that can resist the effects of glyphosate also resist damage from herbivorous insects, according to a University of Michigan study.
In a new long-term ecological experiment, researchers showed that elevated levels of carbon dioxide nearly tripled species losses in grasslands attributed to the long-term application of simulated nitrogen pollution.
Hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic animal species live in the Boca do Mamirauá Reserve, located in the upper reaches of the Amazon, at the confluence of the Solimões and Japurá rivers. It is the first destination of the U-M Pantanal Partnership students this year.
The pathway to improving the health of hundreds of thousands of residents in Michigan’s largest cities is laid out in a new information hub that provides a panoramic look at the major factors impacting the wellbeing of these individuals.
While ticks and the maladies associated with these minute vampirish insects get a lot of media attention, lurking in the not-too-distant shadows we find several other and potentially more ominous vectors of disease—the fungal pathogens.
Maples is an Anishinaabe seed keeper, educator, and community organizer who has dedicated over a decade of work to Indigenous food sovereignty and justice.
Nanoparticles delivered intravenously in mice can block the allergic reactions to red meat caused by the bite of the lone star tick, new research led by U-M shows. The condition, called alpha-gal syndrome, is on the rise in humans as climate change and other factors have led the ticks to expand their habitat.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of Michigan parents worry whether they can afford to feed their children. Increased food prices, the state’s housing crisis, and the end of COVID-era financial support have all led to more Michigan families experiencing food insecurity today than before the pandemic.
People with higher levels of metals found in their blood and urine may be more likely to be diagnosed with — and die from — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a U-M-led study suggests. Researchers have known that ALS, a rare but fatal neurodegenerative condition, is influenced by genetic and environmental factors, including exposure to pesticides and metals.
Faced with an ecological crisis, public health emergencies and socioeconomic inequities, agroecology emerges as a transdisciplinary beacon of hope.
Southeast Michigan’s Huron River abounds with picturesque natural scenes, including burbling streams, graceful trumpeter swans, towering leafy trees, and… polluted foam? More than just an eyesore, this foam—now a common sight in waterways across Michigan and much of the U.S.—often contains a group of harmful synthetic chemicals called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which have been linked to a variety of negative health effects.
Traffic pollution emerges as a lead exacerbator for ailments that come with aging.
Air pollution from traffic emerges as a key risk factor for older adults losing their ability to care for themselves without some or total assistance. Traffic-related air pollution releases fine particulate matter and gasses like nitrogen dioxide into the air that can harm the lungs, heart, brain, and other parts of the body.
A grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Integrated Ocean Observing System will establish a Great Lakes Biodiversity Observation Network to coordinate with and learn from biodiversity observation networks along the U.S. coasts and ocean waters and other BONs in ocean and freshwater habitats worldwide.
“Clarity on vulnerable subgroups more susceptible to heat-related deaths will enable policymakers to design effective intervention strategies targeted to these subgroups. Downstream, this will ensure greater climate action equity.”
Nestled by the St. Clair River, a small rural neighborhood in St. Clair Township, Michigan, is surrounded by a high concentration of hazardous crude oil and natural gas facilities. For decades, Murphy Drive residents have been exposed to unreported chemical releases, oil spills, poor air quality and harmful odors.
Great Lakes researchers at U-M have been awarded a $6.5 million, five-year federal grant to host a center for the study of links between climate change, harmful algal blooms and human health. Increased precipitation, more powerful storms and warming Great Lakes waters all encourage the proliferation of harmful algal blooms composed of cyanobacteria.
The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year, $614,000 grant to U-M and its international partners to create a new research initiative that will address the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of climate migrants in the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) and Great Lakes Region (GLR).
Changing how often a popular cancer therapy is delivered would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve environmental impact without decreasing cancer survival, according to an analysis from researchers at the U-M Health Rogel Cancer Center.
Researchers at U-M’s Rogel Cancer Center want to build a movement to understand how exposures to toxic metals, industrial pollution and “forever chemicals” called PFAS, are impacting the health and cancer risk of residents across Michigan.
Pollen allergies affect nearly one third of the global population, and climate change is set to make it worse. Rackham student Yingxiao Zhang is developing a better way to forecast allergy season to help people better navigate its headaches.
U-M is marking late March and all of April with a series of events focused on sustainability and climate action, continuing a tradition that began with the first “Teach-In on the Environment” in 1970—which grew into what is now known as Earth Day.
Melinda Su-En Lee, PharmD’21, co-founded Parcel Health in 2019, while studying at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. The company aims to solve the waste problem caused by traditional plastic prescription bottles.
The Green Anesthesia Initiative, or GAIA — an homage to the personification of Earth in Greek mythology — was established in 2022 by the Department of Anesthesiology. Its initial goal, now surpassed, was to reduce emissions from inhaled anesthesia by 80% within three years from a 2021 baseline, while ensuring patient safety.
Rice exported to Haiti—mostly from the United States—contains unhealthy levels of arsenic and cadmium, which can increase the risk of various cancers, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses, new research shows.
Middle-aged women with elevated levels of heavy metals are more likely to have depleted ovarian function and egg reserves, which may lead to earlier arrival of menopause and its negative health effects, a new U-M study shows.
"“And the warming will continue to accelerate until we halt the burning of fossil fuels. This means continued worsening extreme heat and heat waves, but also many other worsening climate extremes driven by warmer temperatures. More severe droughts, more intense rainfall, more devastating hurricanes and bigger, more widespread wildfires."
The Environmental Health Research-to-Action Academy is a community-academic partnership focused on building skills and intergenerational knowledge in environmental health, community science and policy advocacy to address cumulative environmental exposures in the nearby communities.
While Legionella bacteria can be found in natural freshwater environments, outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease are more often associated with large water systems in public buildings, cooling towers, and other places where water is stagnant or flows at a low rate.
Flint residents have learned to question everything in the decade since the city’s drinking water first began showing signs of lead contamination. Even now, after seven straight years with water meeting federal safety guidelines, the lack of trust remains for many. U-M researchers and their partners are addressing this lingering problem on multiple fronts — from continued testing to in-school education and consulting with the city.
A U-M Public Health research team will support community leaders from the Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition and the Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, who are working to develop an app that quantifies truck traffic using data from phones and other electronic devices.
Ann Arbor and other cities across the Midwest and Northeast have been referred to by climate specialists as “climate havens,” natural areas of refuge that are relatively safe from extreme weather events such as intense heat and tropical storms.
"In many parts of the world, the air pollution monitoring network is inadequate, so people just don't know how bad pollution is in their neighborhoods. And even when they have a monitor nearby, households might not be aware of the full range of health damages that they could be experiencing. So people don't always take adequate measures to protect themselves."
Each peer-reviewed factsheet presents data on patterns of use, life cycle impacts, and sustainable solutions. Updated annually by a current SEAS graduate student, the collection is a free resource to inform journalists, policymakers, business professionals, students, teachers and the public.
Agriculture can both help and hinder: It can act as an incubator of novel animal-borne microbes, facilitating their evolution into human-ready pathogens, or it can form barriers that help block their spread.
PFAS have contaminated water, food, and people through products such as Teflon pans, waterproof clothing, stain-resistant carpets and fabrics, and food packaging. They are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are resistant to breaking down and therefore last for decades in the environment.
“Water conservation and access” brings a slew of images to mind: wastewater flowing through main lines to a city treatment plant, a fisherman yanking invasive mussels off the hull of a trawler, the installation of filters in communities that lack access to safely managed drinking water.
No amount of air pollution is good for the brain, but wildfires and the emissions resulting from agriculture and farming in particular may pose especially toxic threats to cognitive health, according to new research from U-M. Increasingly, evidence shows exposure to air pollution makes the brain susceptible to dementia.
Air pollution is known to cause a host of negative effects on human health, with urban populations at particular risk. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) estimates that 9 out of 10 urban area residents are impacted by air pollution.
In Detroit in 2019, there were four times as many hospitalizations for asthma than the state of Michigan as a whole, and Detroit ranks among the 20 most challenging cities for people with asthma to live.
A new study estimates that the overall benefits to society of switching ride-hailing vehicles from gasoline to electric would be very modest—on average, a 3% gain per trip when other “costs on society” are factored in.
The transmission potential of Zika or dengue in Brazil may increase by 10% to 20% in the next 30 years due to warming temperatures linked to climate change, according to U-M researchers.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is practically everywhere. Inexpensive to produce and highly versatile, it has been employed in a host of everyday goods. Its utility, unfortunately, is matched by its toxicity.
In 1973, toxic flame retardant was mistakenly sent to Michigan farmers as livestock feed, causing an environmental health crisis. To this day, researchers continue to investigate the health effects of the contamination, and community members are active in advocating for clean-up efforts.
Scientific studies have shown that exposure to some PFAS in the environment may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals. Because there are thousands of PFAS chemicals found in many different consumer, commercial, and industrial products, it is challenging to study and assess the human health and environmental risks.
Globally, health care plastics packaging was 14.5 billion pounds in 2020 with projections up to nearly 19 billion pounds by 2025. Around 25% of all waste generated at hospitals is plastic. Moreover, 35% of all waste generated at hospitals occurs in the operating room setting, ending at a landfill due to lack of viable recycling options. To address this sizable issue, the medical plastics recycling initiative was created.
Anesthesiology is a carbon-intensive specialty, including the recurring use of inhaled agents which can lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions and global warming over an extended period. The Green Anesthesia Initiative aims to implement environmentally sound health care practices while continuing to protect public health and provide excellence in patient care.
Replacing all of the oldest school buses in the nation could lead to 1.3 million fewer daily absences annually, according to a U-M study. The suspected cause of these preventable absences is exposure to high levels of diesel exhaust fumes, which can leak into school bus cabins or enter buses through open windows. Over time, exposure can exacerbate respiratory illnesses and other conditions and lead to missed school days.
“By having access to this information, people can make informed decisions about their behavior if they have a personal concern about the levels of pathogens detected in their community.”
The risk of death rises among older adults with Alzheimer’s or other dementias in the months following exposure to a hurricane, a new U-M study shows. Their increased risk could be due to disruption of normal routine, such as access to caregiving, changes in living environment, loss in access to medications, and change in daily routines, said study first author Sue Anne Bell, assistant professor at the U-M School of Nursing.
As climate change and population growth make water scarcity increasingly common, a much larger share of the global population will be forced to reckon with the costs of urban water scarcity. A new study sheds light on how households bear the monetary and nonmonetary costs when water supply is intermittent, rather than continuous—with policy implications that could help make urban water safer, more sustainable and more equitable.
The world’s building stock is expected to double by 2060, adding the equivalent of one New York City in new construction every month. Yet construction methods and materials that dominate the building sector are carbon-intensive, unhealthy for people, destructive to the environment, and are becoming increasingly expensive, with much of the burden falling on vulnerable populations.
Classmates Cecilia Garibay and Dolores Migdalia Perales teamed up to develop the Michigan Sustainability Case, “A Tale of Two (Polluted) Cities: Latinx communities and their allies face air pollution in Southwest Detroit and Southwest Los Angeles.”
New information about an emerging technique that could track microplastics from space has been uncovered by U-M researchers. It turns out that satellites are best at spotting soapy or oily residue, and microplastics appear to tag along with that residue.
A U-M startup that helped accelerate the removal of dangerous lead pipes in Flint and many other communities has joined a White House partnership aimed at replacing all of the nation’s lead service lines in a decade. The public-private initiative aims to expedite the removal of lead in drinking water — a problem that rose to national prominence when lead was discovered in Flint’s drinking water several years ago and spurred a public health crisis.
“I think that we are at one of the most incredible moments in this movement — a movement that, yes, we are a big part of, but that you all will be leading for years to come, and I’m so excited."
"From my vantage point at a large public university, I know firsthand how activism and energy of students, with support from faculty and other university communities, has galvanized our institution to make real commitments and progress toward carbon neutrality."
The Transformative Food Systems (TFS) Fellowship was created to attract student leaders who reflect the communities that are most affected by the interrelated environmental, health and economic food systems crises. The two-year program provides selected fellows with the learning and training needed to enable them to transform food systems to be equitable, healthy, and ecologically sound.
Efforts to promote the future health of both wild bees and managed honeybee colonies need to consider specific habitat needs, such as the density of wildflowers. At the same time, improving other habitat measures—such as the amount of natural habitat surrounding croplands—may increase bee diversity while having mixed effects on overall bee health.
When an emergency causes a disruption in access to clean water, it seems reasonable to respond by providing the public with bottled water. In the short term, this can provide a safe supply of water while the problems get sorted out. But what if the emergency has lasted eight years, and counting, as it has in Flint, Michigan?
A $2.2 million, four-year grant from the CDC will fund a study examining the effects of illegal dumping interventions on the prevention of violent crime in Flint, Michigan. U-M School of Public Health researchers are partnering with Genesee County Land Bank and the Center for Community Progress to conduct the research on county-owned vacant lots to develop sustainable approaches to curb illegal dumping and community violence.
Obesity has been a major global health issue in recent decades as more people eat unhealthy diets and fail to exercise regularly. A new U-M notes that women in their late 40s and early 50s exposed long-term to air pollution—specifically, higher levels of fine particles, nitrogen dioxide and ozone—saw increases in their body size and composition measures.
"Water levels are getting lower and lower because of two big problems. First, the long agreed-upon annual allocation of water to about 40 million users in seven states (e.g., California) and Mexico exceeds the supply of water flowing in the river. Second, and ignored by many, the water flowing in the river is also dropping relentlessly, as a warmer, drier climate reduces the amount from snow and rain that reaches the river."
Projects will pursue a range of carbon neutrality pathways, including carbon capture, renewable fuels, energy storage, aircraft electrification, solar power, chemical production, and circular economies.
An online, mobile-friendly training module teaches salon owners and employees how to mitigate exposure to chemicals and volatile organic compounds that are ubiquitous in nail salon products like polishes, removers, artificial nails, adhesives, glues and hardeners.
As a board member of the nonprofit Cass Community Social Services organization in Detroit, SEAS master’s student Isabella Shehab has seen firsthand the challenges the city and its residents face: vacant buildings, aging infrastructure, flooding. Now, Shehab is using a scholarship awarded through the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) to research the impacts these challenges have on Detroit residents’ mental health and well-being—all with an eye on solutions.
People who respond less emotionally to images of damage to the environment are also less emotional and empathic in general, according to a new U-M study. Differences in political ideology can limit policy adjustments that address climate change. However, some people appear less emotionally impacted by environmental destruction—particularly those who are more ideologically conservative and less pro-environmental, the study showed.
An international team of researchers has developed a method for altering one class of antibiotics, using microscopic organisms that produce these compounds naturally. While chemists have developed methods for adding the fluorine synthetically, the process is arduous and requires the use of toxic chemical reagents. The new biosynthetic method developed by the researchers from Goethe University and U-M overcomes those challenges.
U-M will work with Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and regional and state stakeholders to craft policies that will ensure safe drinking water at low cost. Labeled the Michigan Center for Freshwater Innovation (MFIC), the partnership will work with the state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) to fulfill the promise of directives issued late last year by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on safe drinking water.
U-M researchers are partnering with the Michigan Farm Bureau to understand the unique challenges rural families face when accessing nutritious meals through food assistance. Often, these programs are designed without the user perspective in mind and are implemented in ways that many families do not find accessible or respectful.
"Our growing global warming and heat wave problem is scorching our economy in many ways, racking up a trillion-dollar-plus price tag in the U.S. alone. Impacts are often highest locally where extreme heat occurs, but global supply chains are also at increasing risk due to heat-supercharged extremes, including drought, wildfire, flooding and deadly storms."
The Michigan Farmworker Project (MFP) is a community-based participatory research initiative aimed at improving the social and environmental health of Michigan’s farmworker population, who play a critical role in the state’s food supply chain. In May 2020, the researchers shared first-of-its-kind findings that provided evidence-based approaches to better protecting Michigan’s farmworkers from COVID-19 while providing essential work during the pandemic.
Middle-aged women with higher blood concentrations of a common group of synthetic chemicals known as PFAS are at greater risk of developing high blood pressure, compared to their peers who have lower levels of these substances. Called "forever chemicals," PFAS are used in everyday household items such as shampoo, dental floss, cosmetics, nonstick cookware, food packaging, stain-resistant coatings for carpeting, upholstery and clothing.
Michigan Groundwater Table members agreed that Michigan’s groundwater is a “critical and often overlooked resource,” vital to the state’s public health, agriculture and other businesses, coldwater fisheries, stream ecology, and wetlands, and accounts for at least 25% of the total water inflow to the Great Lakes via groundwater inflow into tributaries. They also found that Michigan has underinvested in monitoring, mapping, and reporting groundwater quantity and quality.
The leading cause of death worldwide is water-borne disease. Some 3.4 million people die each year from drinking unclean water. The primary source of contamination is raw sewage intrusion into drinking-water sources due to the lack of waste-water-treatment infrastructure.
Because environmental justice screening tools will affect community members impacted by disproportionate environmental burdens, soliciting input from the environmental justice community is crucial to developing and using screening tools, according to a new study from U-M.
Pregnant women’s exposures to chemicals increased considerably in the last decade, according to a recently published study. John Meeker, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, says the study also shows that Hispanic women and other women of color and those of lower socioeconomic status and education had higher concentrations of multiple pesticides and parabens “consistent with prior evidence that chemical exposures are frequently higher among women of color.”
Three tenure track faculty positions will be hired, one each in the Ford School, the School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), and the School of Public Health (SPH), to examine the connections among racism and racial violence, environmental injustice and racialized health disparities to achieve better knowledge of the way policies and actions exacerbate or ameliorate unequal burdens of harm, according to the University’s Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative.
Math achievement for school-age children in Flint decreased and the proportion of children with special needs increased as a result of the Michigan city’s water crisis during 2014-16, according to a new U-M study.
PFAS, a group of so-called “forever chemicals,” are ubiquitous in our environment—in our rivers, in our clothes, seeping through the cooking utensils in our kitchens. And, according to a new U-M study, high concentrations of these chemicals are associated with increased risk to diabetes in midlife women—similar to the risks posed by cigarette smoking and being overweight.
A woman’s exposure to pesticides during pregnancy could lead to differences in sleep duration and timing during adolescence for her female offspring, according to a new U-M study.
A new report from the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems serves as a guide for experts and non-experts to assess the sustainability performance of emerging products, technologies, and services that can reduce plastic waste.
More than 20% of older adults in the United States will experience food insufficiency at some point in their 60s and 70s, according to a U-M study.
Allergy seasons are likely to become longer and grow more intense as a result of increasing temperatures caused by manmade climate change, according to new research. By the end of this century, pollen emissions could begin 40 days earlier in the spring than we saw between 1995 and 2014.
In a new U-M study, researchers set out to understand the air pollutant emissions impacts of electrifying motorcycle taxis in Kampala, Uganda. Findings indicate that electrified motorcycles can reduce emissions of global and some local air pollutants, yielding global and potentially local sustainability benefits.
State-level environmental justice screening tools are being supported by environmental justice advocacy groups in Michigan and across the country, according to a new U-M study. These screening tools document the communities that are hardest hit by environmental injustices.
A lack of information is an often overlooked but important cause of pollution exposure among low-income households or communities of color. U-M say the disproportionate exposure of pollution on those vulnerable groups is widely studied and known, as are such causes as income inequality, discrimination and the decision of industries to locate factories in places where their costs are lowest.
Millions of workers in coastal Africa—most of them women—spend their days preserving fish by smoking them in rudimentary, wood-fired mud ovens. U-M researchers and their colleagues looked at the air pollutant exposures and health symptoms experienced by fish smokers in two coastal cities in the West African nation of Ghana.
Headlines decrying tiny particles in our drinking water and swirling masses like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have centered plastic waste as the modern scourge of marine ecosystems. But Michiganders may be surprised to learn that this threat hits particularly close to home: recent studies show that at times, the Great Lakes contain the highest concentration of plastics anywhere on the planet.
Whether it’s a baby Yoda, a plastic building brick or a fashion doll, all toys contain chemicals that give them desired properties: the right hardiness or elasticity, bright colors and fragrances. But these chemicals could also come with health risks, says Olivier Jolliet, professor of environmental health sciences at the U-M School of Public Health.
U-M researchers have identified 55 chemicals of concern found in the walls, floors, ceilings and furniture in homes across the United States, including some that have concentrations that are 1,000 times higher than recommended. Among the worst offenders was formaldehyde, which is often included in wooden furniture, base cabinetry and wood, cork, and bamboo flooring.
The Research Museums Center on Varsity Drive houses four large museum collections – anthropological archaeology, botany, paleontology, and zoology. For animal biologists, these collections help us learn more about animal health and ecological science. And maintaining the health of animal populations is vital to maintaining healthy ecosystems in every corner of the world.
A walk in the park could soon include getting real-time measurements of pollutants in the air and updated walking routes to avoid the most toxic ones, all while wearing a gadget the size of a smart watch.
The School for Environment and Sustainability has launched the SEAS Sustainability Clinic, which aims to help the city of Detroit and nonprofits serving it address the impacts of climate change on the natural and built environment, human health and city finances, while working to enhance sustainability policy and action.
At the Clinical Learning Center, students hone their skills in a simulated environment, designed to replicate real health care scenarios. And because it is a simulated space, as opposed to one for critical care, practitioners are successfully reusing materials to reduce waste, and hoping to elevate their approach as a best practice.
A new structure at the U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens brings leading-edge fabrication research to the public space — “This outdoor structure offers new public gathering points while maintaining an open-air condition that respects the pandemic as well as people’s desire to feel part of the beautiful natural setting that surrounds them.”
Heavy metals like lead, industrial pollution from steel mills, coal-fired power plants or oil refineries, "forever chemicals" called PFAS that don't break down in the environment—how much are Michigan residents exposed to these environmental contaminants and what does this mean for their risk of developing cancer?
In a study conducted in and around the Ethiopian city of Mekelle, home to 310,000 people and 120,000 livestock animals, a U-M conservation ecologist and two colleagues found that spotted hyenas annually remove 207 tons of animal carcass waste.
In a key step toward improving the feasibility of reusing wastewater as drinking water, the EPA has granted U-M researchers $1.2 million to study how well current treatment methods remove viruses from wastewater.
Taking a walk in the park or just going outdoors could help youth feel better, and promoting public health policies that actively support time spent outside could help promote overall well-being among teens and young adults, according to a new U-M survey.
A U-M study evaluated more than 5,800 foods, ranking them by their nutritional disease burden to humans and their impact on the environment. It found that substituting 10% of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and select seafood could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and allow people to gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day.
New research used direct satellite observations of floods to reveal that the proportion of the world’s population exposed to floods has grown by 24% since the turn of the century—10 times higher than scientists previously thought—due to both increased flooding and population migration.
U-M researchers surveying wastewater systems for SARS-COV-2 will be able to increase testing sites and continue monitoring until 2023 after receiving more than $5 million from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Ensuring water access and affordability for Detroit residents is critical. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of universal access to safe and affordable water for public health, as well as the barriers and challenges to this goal created by conditions of high poverty and aging infrastructure.
Dana Dolinoy and Aubree Gordon, leading researchers in their fields from the U-M School of Public Health, have been selected as inaugural recipients of a new annual award from the U-M Biosciences Initiative. Dolinoy leads Michigan Public Health’s Environmental Epigenetics and Nutrition Laboratory, which investigates how nutritional and environmental factors interact with epigenetic gene regulation to shape health and disease.
Dolores Perales is the inaugural winner of the Young Climate Leader Award, given by the Michigan Climate Action Network. She is pursuing a dual master’s degree in urban and regional planning and environment and sustainability. Perales co-manages the Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision Project’s farms and orchard, including coordinating volunteers and working with the community to teach sustainability.
Three projects have been selected to receive funding through the Graham Sustainability Institute’s catalyst grants, which provide support for small-scale, collaborative, interdisciplinary sustainability research. The projects seek to, respectively, improve urban stream quality in Washtenaw County and beyond, convert alleys in Detroit into net-zero community spaces, and protect nail salon workers from toxic exposure.
Exposure to a chemical found in the weed killer Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides is significantly associated with preterm births, according to a new U-M study.
Researchers at U-M joined forces with community members and the Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition to evaluate the noise impact of the trucks on the neighborhood, many being rerouted as part of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge under construction.
As the fifth anniversary of the passage of major amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act approaches this June, a U-M researcher will address the impact the law has had on the regulation of industrial and commercial chemicals.
A study published by U-M researchers quantifies the air pollution that impacts Latinx communities in California due to beef production. The study focuses on Costco's beef supply chain in California and explores the environmental impacts of air pollution resulting from beef production in the San Joaquin Valley, a region that has some of the worst air quality in the United States.
Black COVID-19 survivors experience worse outcomes related to care access, recovery, and social and economic factors when compared to their white counterparts, according to research on the impact of COVID-19 on Michiganders.
The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has demonstrated that a previously unknown pathogen can emerge from wildlife species and threaten public health on a global scale within months. During spillover events, vouchered specimens in museum collections and biorepositories can help disease sleuths quickly track a pathogen to its source in the wild.
High levels of cadmium, a chemical found in cigarettes and in contaminated vegetables, are associated with higher death rates in patients with influenza or pneumonia—and may increase the severity of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses.
Diverting urine away from municipal wastewater treatment plants and recycling the nutrient-rich liquid to make crop fertilizer would result in multiple environmental benefits when used at city scale, according to a new UM-led study. Researchers found that urine diversion and recycling led to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, freshwater consumption and the potential to fuel algal blooms in lakes and other water bodies.
More older adults are hospitalized in the month following hurricanes while fewer primary care doctors, surgeons and specialists are available in some of their communities in the long term, according to a pair of U-M studies. The findings are noteworthy as the population of older adults is rapidly growing alongside increasing impacts from climate change, such as extreme weather events, the U-M researchers say.
Some Detroiters spend up to 30% of their monthly income on home energy bills, a sky-high rate that places the city among the Top 10 nationally in a category that researchers call household energy burden. The COVID-19 pandemic has only worsened the situation, adding financial challenges that make it increasingly difficult for many low- and moderate-income residents to pay their utility bills.
We’ve all heard the axiom: “Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.” That’s all well and good, says Alex Bryan, BA ’07. “But it’s a lot easier to learn to fish if you’re not really hungry at the time.”
By using a biological system to capture phosphorus from agricultural runoff, U-M researchers have created a process that would allow treatment plants to remove it from wastewater in a concentrated form that can then be reused as fertilizer.
People's exposure to environmental noise dropped nearly in half during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to U-M researchers who analyzed data from the Apple Hearing Study.
Concurrent failures of federal drinking water standards and Michigan’s emergency manager law reinforced and magnified each other, leading to the Flint water crisis, according to Sara Hughes, an assistant professor at U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability.
Women exposed to PFAS may experience menopause two years earlier than other women, according to a new U-M study. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are used in a wide variety of nonstick and waterproof products and firefighting foams. These man-made "forever chemicals" can contaminate drinking water—consumed perhaps by more than 100 million Americans.
Replacing half of all animal-based foods in the U.S. diet with plant-based alternatives could reduce climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions 1.6 billion metric tons by 2030, according to a new study by researchers at U-M and Tulane University.
Much like the Flint water disaster, the coronavirus crisis has exposed the shortcomings of government, says Peter Jacobson, U-M professor emeritus of Health Law and Policy. Jacobson and colleagues found that flaws in both the legal structure and how the laws were implemented not only failed to stop but also exacerbated the crisis in Flint.
Children whose families have access to food assistance get more education, live longer and are less likely to rely on public assistance or be incarcerated as they grow up, according to a U-M-led study.
As Detroit continues to revitalize its urban core by razing abandoned buildings, emissions of airborne asbestos during emergency demolitions have been negligible, say U-M researchers. This suggests that the asbestos-related risk to human health from these demolitions—which account for about 10% of all demolitions in the city—is virtually nonexistent.
U-M researchers have raised serious concerns with the performance of arsenic test kits commonly used in Bangladesh to monitor water contamination, finding that several commercially-available, widely-used test kits performed poorly.
As Jacon Kvasnicka of U-M’s School of Public Health learned about Hudson River Superfund cleanup project—one of the country's largest—he wondered about the health benefits and risks from such a large project that sought to remediate a site that had been contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) for over seventy years.
Members of the University of Michigan School of Public Health’s Public Health Action Support Team (PHAST) traveled to the US Virgin Islands to conduct a post-hurricane analysis of communities affected by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017.
Most of the cities in Michigan will be dealing with harsh consequences of climate change, and vulnerable groups who are disproportionately affected by it will continue to do so now and into the future, according to a new study.
Breast cancer patients who endured Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have a 15% higher mortality rate than those patients not exposed to the storm, according to a U-M researcher.
Public health practitioners are increasingly aware of the pressures climate change places on their work—from flooding, drought, and heatwaves to policy and health management to the unknown of a dynamic environment.
Scientists seeking answers to what is behind high rates of preterm birth in Puerto Rico have found an association between exposure to chemicals commonly found in many consumer products and a shorter duration of pregnancy and increased risk of preterm birth.
Most people over age 50 say they’re ready for natural disasters and emergency situations, but a new national poll shows that many haven’t taken key steps to protect their health and well-being in case of severe weather, long-term power outages or other situations.
Many hazardous chemicals that cause health issues continue to be used in industrial, commercial and private settings, despite documented harms. As the federal government implements the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, experts say some of the same problems that plagued the earlier Toxic Substances Control Act are hampering progress, despite new legal requirements that promise better protection.
As the world grows warmer and the region grows wetter, extreme heat and rain will cause more people to die or become ill—a costly burden in terms of lives lost and health care costs to the state of Michigan, a new report says.
U-M researchers collect and analyze samples from a Lake Erie cyanobacteria bloom to discover and characterize previously unknown toxins that may threaten human health, as well as compounds that could serve as sources of new medicines.
A new study by a U-M student team has identified “hot spots” of environmental injustice across the state. U.S. census tracts in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Saginaw, Lansing and Kalamazoo are among the hot spots identified in the study, which was released today.
The Flint Water Crisis prompted the state of Michigan to adopt a new Lead and Copper Rule (LCR)—the guidelines that water utilities must follow to ensure the public’s health is protected. The most proactive LCR in the country, the University of Michigan Water Center formed a project team, funded by the CS Mott Foundation, to help guide the implementation process.
In the wake of the Flint water crisis, the state of Michigan implemented the country’s most stringent lead and copper rule in 2018. To facilitate public understanding of the new regulations, the Water Center at the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute has established a multidisciplinary team of experts.
A new study examining the carbon footprint of what more than 16,000 Americans eat in a day has good news for environmentally conscious consumers: diets that are more climate-friendly are also healthier. The study, conducted by researchers at U-M and Tulane University, is the first to compare the climate impact and nutritional value of U.S. diets using real-world data about what Americans say they are eating.
The federal response to hurricanes Harvey and Irma was faster and more generous than the help sent to Puerto Rico in preparation and in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, according to U-M researchers.
U-M environmental researcher Paul Mohai and colleagues published a study in which they surveyed polluters, and found that race was the main determinant predictor of where these places were sited, Hicken said. In another study, they found that these neighborhoods were there first and the polluters came after.
Efforts to beautify vacant lots in the city of Flint have made neighborhoods more appealing but have also reduced assaults and violent crime by 40 percent, according to a new study by the U-M School of Public Health.
Seawalls higher than approximately 16 feet can effectively reduce tsunami-related damage and death, according to a study that applies big-data analytics to more than 200 years of tsunami records from the Pacific coast of Japan’s Tohoku region.
Copper or lead? U-M students and faculty, working with the City of Flint, helped answer that question with data science that predicts which homes have lead pipes.
The current global food system is inadequate to meet the needs of the current world population without compromising future wellbeing. Intensified production systems lead to undernutrition in some regions coupled with epidemics of obesity in others while compromising their underlying ecological foundations, such as creating areas of ocean hypoxia.
Minority and low-income neighborhoods and communities in transition are disproportionately targeted by industries that follow the path of least resistance when deciding where to locate hazardous waste sites and other polluting facilities.