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.
Extreme weather events, global pandemics, gaps in infrastructure, and other environmental determinants of health manifest differently; often harming historically discriminated communities and those with the least ability to respond adequately. U-M experts, representing an array of fields, are working to identify and pursue interventions that put justice, public health, and environmental wellbeing at the center. Initiatives like the Michigan Center on Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Disease and the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy are leading new approaches alongside local partners.
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.
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.
"“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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.