Science File

When the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, federal law enforcement officer Raymond Gauvin followed his training without hesitation. His office, at 26 Federal Plaza, was less than a mile from the site. He arrived to help rescue people from the rubble within minutes.

“I would have never guessed there would be consequences medically, later on,” Gauvin says.

Twenty years later, Gauvin has suffered from bladder cancer, inflammation in his nose, acid reflux, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). All of these health impacts—along with other cancers, respiratory diseases, and mental health conditions—are especially common among the first responders and survivors who worked at the World Trade Center site, both on September 11 and in the months of clean up afterward.

Through treating and studying these patients for two decades, clinicians have identified previously unknown connections between pollution exposure and numerous health conditions. Continued research will further

People around the world are witnessing firsthand how climate change can wreak havoc on the planet. Steadily rising average temperatures fuel increasingly intense wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters that are now impossible to ignore. And while the world has been plunged into a deadly pandemic, scientists are sounding the alarm once more that climate change is still the greatest threat to human health in recorded history.

As recently as August—when wildfires raged in the United States, Europe, and Siberia—World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement that “the risks posed by climate change could dwarf those of any single disease.”

On September 5, more than 200 medical journals released an unprecedented joint editorial that urged world leaders to act. “The science is unequivocal,” they write. “A global increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that

A team of undergraduate students from Columbia University and Lehman College, CUNY, used sophisticated data visualization techniques to explore the correlation between environmental factors and statistical measures of school dropout rates, income, and health disparities as part of the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality’s (BCEQ) research project, Environmental Determinants of Health, Wealth, and Education.  

Over the summer, the undergraduates applied their data science skills to projects that focus on the need to address quality of life issues for New York City residents in underserved communities. Graduate students from the Columbia Department of Statistics served as mentors during the program.

The students presented their report via Zoom at a public BCEQ meeting on September 8. The report findings include:

• The dropout rate among public school students who live near highways in the Bronx is substantially higher than among those who don’t. 
• Bronx residents who live farther from parks

Advanced analytical technologies such as next-generation sequencing have enabled unprecedented exploration of human breast milk and expanded research on its various health benefits. Nevertheless, breast milk is a complex system of bioactive components, many of which have not yet been identified, and others which have only been investigated at the preliminary level.

The current review paper, published in the journal Nutrients​, examined some of the components and the literature on their health science. The authors categorised these components in four groups: macronutrients, immunologic components, micro-organisms (or the ‘microbiome’) and exosomes and microRNA.

Macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates and fat​

Carbohydrates account for 7% (60-70g/L) of milk and 40% of the total calorie reserve. Lactose is the main carbohydrate in breast milk. It is the major contributor to the osmolality of breast milk and aids the absorption of oligosaccharides, minerals and calcium.

Protein, which accounts for 1% (8-10g/L), is composed of

While recent targets to reduce emissions and conserve biodiversity are welcome, they are not enough and are yet to be matched with credible short and longer term plans, it warns.

The editorial is published in leading titles from every continent including The BMJ, The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, the East African Medical Journal, the Chinese Science Bulletin, the National Medical Journal of India, the Medical Journal of Australia, and 50 BMJ specialist journals including BMJ Global Health and Thorax.

Never have so many journals come together to make the same statement, reflecting the severity of the climate change emergency now facing the world.

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