While the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will still consider the health benefits of emissions regulations, it will no longer publish estimates of the economic costs of deaths, illness and disability from unsafe air pollution levels. The US EPA, whose path-finding work on air pollution’s health impacts helped set standards internationally, will no longer put […] Continue reading ->
Governments should “significantly strengthen” taxes on alcoholic and sugary drinks as these products are getting cheaper, fueling obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers and injuries. This is according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which issued two reports on taxing sugary drinks and alcohol on Tuesday, including how countries are implementing these. “In most countries, these […] Continue reading ->
Over December, the United States signed bilateral health co-operation agreements with 14 African countries, setting out the parameters for aid in exchange for speedy information about new disease outbreaks – and, in some instances, clinched alongside trade deals profitable to US companies. The fourteen countries, in order of when the agreements were signed, are: Kenya, […] Continue reading ->
Senior United Nations officials and humanitarian leaders have urged Israel to reverse plans to withhold registration from more three-dozen international NGOs providing humanitarian relief in war-torn Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank – warning that the move would severely undermine life-saving aid in a moment of acute humanitarian need. Israel said last Thursday that some […] Continue reading ->
The US Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed a recent finding that atrazine, the second most widely-used herbicide in the United States, is “probably carcinogenic to humans” by the World Health Organization’s cancer review agency.  Atrazine is used extensively in the US on crops like corn, sorghum, and sugarcane. However, over 60 countries have banned the […] Continue reading ->
The latest ten-year data shows almost no change. Can the momentum of outrage finally push officials to take high-impact measures to lower pollution this year? It’s Delhi 2026. Since 2016, there’s been near-zero improvement in the city’s air pollution during the annual peak pollution period of October to December, a new analysis by the Center […] Continue reading ->
Sudden fever, a severe cough and acute respiratory distress are the familiar onset symptoms of seasonal flu, which has affected WHO’s European Region with unusual intensity and speed this year. As the Northern Hemisphere enters winter, health systems are struggling to manage an epidemic driven by an aggressive, genetically mutated influenza strain A(H3N2) subclade K. […] Continue reading ->