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Findings help decipher mechanisms through which ‘forever chemicals’ cause disease, aiding in treating health problems
New research suggests exposure to some common Pfasor “forever chemical” compounds causes changes to gene activity, and those changes are linked to health problems including multiple cancers, neurological disorders and autoimmune disease.
The findings are a major step toward determining the mechanism by which the chemicals cause disease and could help doctors identify, detect and treat health problems for those exposed to Pfas before the issues advance. The research may also point toward other diseases potentially caused by Pfas that have not yet been identified, the authors said.
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Scientists in Svalbard in race to study polar microbes as global heating threatens fragile glacial ecosystems
“It felt really scary … like being in the middle of a burning city during a night raid.” Dr Arwyn Edwards is not describing urban warfare but a recent hot and foggy day on a Svalbard glacier, where record-breaking summer heat turned his workplace into a cascade of meltwater and falling rocks.
Edwards is a leading researcher in glacier ecology – the study of life forms that live on, within and around glaciers and ice sheets. Over two decades of polar research, he has always felt “relaxed and at home” on ice. But the accelerating climate breakdown is beginning to erode that sense of security.
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NGOs say deadlock over legally binding deal to curb production and toxic chemicals is ‘blow to multilateralism’
Global talks to reach agreement on a treaty aimed at ending the growing scourge of plastic pollution have collapsed, with no deal agreed and no clear path forward.
Countries worked beyond Thursday’s deadline into the night and Friday morning, but remained deadlocked on the issue that has dogged talks since they were launched, amid fervent optimism, in 2022: whether to reduce exponential growth of plastic production and place global, legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastics.
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Exclusive: 17 sites recorded elevated levels, in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed safe limits, as experts warn of potential risk to drinking water
“Alarmingly high” levels of toxic forever chemicals have been detected at English airports – in some cases thousands of times higher than proposed EU safe levels – with experts raising concerns over the potential impact on drinking water sources.
Seventeen airports recorded elevated levels of Pfas in the ground and surface water sample on their sites, according to unpublished Environment Agency documents, obtained exclusively by the Ends Report and the Guardian via an environmental information request.
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Healthy fungal networks help trees and plants grow, making them key to successful reforestation. The only problem? Almost nothing is known about this subterranean ecology
Even in midsummer, the ancient hazelwoods on the Hebridean island of Seil are cool and quiet. Countless slanted stems of hazel support a thick canopy, which blots out the sun and blankets everything below in a sort of “fairytale darkness”, says Bethan Manley, a biologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
Moss and lichen coat branches threaded with honeysuckle, forming a great dome above you, adds David Satori, a researcher at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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The Heart of Voh is a symbol of New Caledonia’s pristine environment but its outline is changing due to the climate crisis
On the west coast of New Caledonia, Isobelle Goa searches the thick, tangled mangrove roots for mudcrabs. Goa lives on the outskirts of the archipelago’s most famous mangrove formation: a light-green, heart-shaped patch of forest known as the Heart of Voh.
“It is grandiose. It’s what God has put on the land for us,” Goa says.
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Bird lovers and business leaders await verdict on a long-fought proposal to build up to 100 turbines
More people have heard of Robbins Island than have seen it. Separated from Tasmania’s north-western tip by a stretch of water that can be navigated only at low tide, the island is nearly 10,000 hectares of heathland and woodlands, paddocks, unusual geology and wetlands, all ringed by pristine beaches.
The island has been owned by the Hammond family, who use it to run Wagyu cattle, since the 1960s. Further back it was home to the Pirilyunya people for tens of thousands of years.
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One of the longest and most intense heat stress events ever recorded is raising alarm – and a warning about the future of reefs worldwide
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When it comes to coral, the Great Barrier Reef steals the global limelight. It’s a bucket-list place for many and, when it gets hit by coral bleaching, it makes news around the world.
But Australia has another group of spectacular reefs on the west of the continent. Many of them had managed to escape the worst of global heating, until the worst marine heatwave ever recorded for this region. Even a “hope spot” for coral reefs has been decimated by the most severe heatwave on record for that part of the world.
WA’s ‘longest and most intense’ marine heatwave killed coral across 1,500km stretch
‘If the reef had a voice, it would sing’: could legal personhood help the Great Barrier Reef?
Fears for South Australia’s annual cuttlefish gathering amid deadly algal bloom
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The measure mimics the process that cools the human body in a heatwave – and explains why high humidity is harder for us to weather
The wet-bulb temperature, which is used by meteorologists to assess dangerous heat stress levels, is measured by wrapping a moist muslin wick around the bottom of a thermometer. As the water evaporates from the cloth it cools the thermometer bulb, causing the temperature reading to drop. When this process stops the wet-bulb temperature is reached.
It is exactly the same process that cools the human body during a heatwave. As sweat evaporates from the skin it takes away the heat. As anyone who has been to the tropics knows, a dry heat means humans can stand a much higher temperature than when the relative humidity or wet-bulb temperature is high. In a dry heat, drinking water and evaporation from the skin will keep you comfortable, but in higher humidity people can literally drip with sweat and suffer heat stress.
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