News by Subject Medicine & Health

In a new study, researchers have found that working from home has negatively impacted our physical health and mental health, increased work expectations and distractions, reduced our communications with co-workers and ultimately lessened our productivity. The study finds that time spent at the workstation increased by approximately 1.5 hours. It also illustrates the differential impact of working from home for women, parents, and those with higher income

More frequent exposure to air pollution spikes were associated with reduced test scores for third graders in Salt Lake County. Schools with a higher proportion of students of color and from households experiencing poverty were exposed to more peak pollution days than were schools serving middle- to upper- class and predominately white students. The results stress the need for legislators to enact policies to reduce the number of peak pollution days.

Portland State University researchers and their collaborators at the Quinault Indian Nation and Oregon State University found microplastics in Pacific razor clams on Washington's sparsely populated Olympic Coast -- proof, they say, that even in more remote regions, coastal organisms can't escape plastic contamination.

Researchers from the Centre for Audio, Acoustics and Vibration at the University of Technology Sydney impacts for health and well-being of their 'virtual Active Noise Control/Cancellation (ANC) headphone

The proliferation of pits and ponds created in recent years by miners digging for gold in Peru's Amazon has altered the landscape and amplified the risk of mercury poisoning, a new study shows. In some watersheds, there's been a 670% increase in land area covered by abandoned mining pits that have filled in with water. Low-oxygen conditions in these ponds accelerate the conversion of submerged mercury, a leftover from the mining, into highly toxic methylmercury.