Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health – Page 49

Work Grows Safer

The work-related death rate fell 95% in the U.S. between 1913 & 2015.

Labor union activism is often credited with the decline, but economic expansion is what made better working conditions possible in the first place.

Read more about this trend.

All economic activity involves some degree of physical risk. Credible data on work injuries and fatalities among our agrarian ancestors are difficult to come by. Yet agricultural work must have been quite unappealing, considering that so many people in the early 19th century preferred factory work over farm work.

Even today, notes the U.S. Department of Labor, agriculture “ranks among the most dangerous industries.” In 2011, the “fatality rate for agricultural workers was 7 times higher than the fatality rate for all workers in private industry; agricultural workers had a fatality rate of 24.9 deaths per 100,000, while the fatality rate for all workers was 3.5.” Likewise, the Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Institute in Singapore found that global fatality rates per 100,000 employees in agriculture ranged from 7.8 deaths in high-income countries to 27.5 deaths in the Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions in 2014. Manufacturing deaths ranged from 3.8 in high-income countries to 21.1 in Africa.

Up in the Air: What Do We Know About Airborne Microplastics?

In this article, we examine airborne microplastics in greater detail, explore detection methods, consider what we currently know about their health risks and highlight various mitigation strategies.

Unpacking the origins of microplastics

Airborne microplastics are a growing concern due to their presence across diverse environments, from lively city centers to isolated, untouched corners of the world.

The Hidden Culprit Behind Alzheimer’s Revealed: Microglia Under the Microscope

Researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center have made a groundbreaking discovery in Alzheimer’s disease research, identifying a critical link between cellular stress in the brain and disease progression.

Their study focuses on microglia, the brain’s immune cells, which play dual roles in either protecting or harming brain health. By targeting harmful microglia through specific pathways, this research opens new avenues for potentially reversing Alzheimer’s symptoms and providing hope for effective treatments.

Key cellular mechanism driving alzheimer’s disease identified.

Scientists Found an Unexpected Lung Function — Our Lungs Make Blood

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Imagine your lungs, those essential organs responsible for getting oxygen into your blood, suddenly tasked with a new job: making blood itself. It sounds almost unbelievable, right? For centuries, we’ve been taught that bone marrow is the powerhouse of blood production. Yet, a groundbreaking discovery has just turned that conventional wisdom upside down.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have found that our lungs do far more than help us breathe—they’re also busy creating millions of platelets every hour, playing an unexpected and crucial role in our blood supply. This discovery not only challenges what we thought we knew about the body but also opens the door to new possibilities in understanding blood production and its implications for human health.

For centuries, the bone marrow has been recognized as the cornerstone of blood production. This soft, spongy tissue located within the cavities of our bones serves as a bustling factory for manufacturing the essential components of blood. It produces red blood cells, which carry oxygen to tissues; white blood cells, the immune system’s defenders against infections; and platelets, the fragments that form clots to prevent bleeding. These vital elements work together to sustain life, ensuring oxygen transport, immune defense, and wound repair. This process, called hematopoiesis, has been considered the exclusive domain of bone marrow, a belief deeply ingrained in medical science.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Survives Fiery Sun Flyby at 430,000 MPH

Racing closer to the Sun than ever before, the Parker Solar Probe is unlocking the secrets of our solar system’s fiery heart.

NASAs Parker Solar Probe has successfully transmitted a beacon signal back to Earth, confirming it is in good health and functioning normally after its record-breaking close approach to the Sun.

The mission operations team at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, received the signal just before midnight EST on December 26. During its closest approach on December 24, the spacecraft traveled at an astonishing 430,000 miles per hour and came within 3.8 million miles of the Sun’s surface, making it the closest any human-made object has ever been to our star.

Unlocking the potential of patient-derived organoids for personalized sarcoma treatment

Investigators at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed the largest collection of sarcoma patient-derived organoids to date that can help improve the understanding of the disease and better identify therapies that are most likely to work for each individual patient.

The approach, detailed in the journal Cell Stem Cell, uses patients’ own tumor cells that replicate the unique characteristics of a patient’s tumor allowing scientists to quickly screen a large number of drugs in order to identify personalized treatments that can target this rare and diverse group of cancers.

“Sarcoma is a rare and complex disease, which makes conducting clinical trials to identify effective treatments particularly challenging. Some of the rarer subtypes lack standard treatment altogether. Even when multiple therapy options are available, there is often no reliable, data-driven method to determine the best course of action for an individual patient. Choosing the most effective treatment is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack,” said Dr. Alice Soragni, the senior author of the study and assistant professor in the department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Testing drugs with patient-derived tumor organoids has potential to help predict how a patient may respond to treatment, with the goal of improving patient outcomes for diseases where treatment options are often limited.”

Study finds high levels of toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in popular smartwatch bands

Smartwatch bands from popular brands have been found to contain high concentrations of toxic for forever chemicals, also known as PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances). These synthetic chemicals do not break down easily in the environment and build in our bodies over time, hence earning them the nickname of forever chemicals.

PFAS are used in various consumer products, including non-stick cookware, water-resistant clothes, carpets, mattresses, food wraps, and more. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to serious health problems, including increased risks of certain cancers, hormone disruption, weakened immune systems, and developmental delays in children. These chemicals can leach into water, soil, and food, making them a growing public health concern worldwide.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters has found that smartwatch bands made of fluoroelastomers contain a very high concentration of a forever chemical known as perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA).

Is Artificial Intelligence The Cure For Healthcare’s Chronic Problems?

This presents another challenge: convincing patients to allow the use of their data. Some 70% of Americans have expressed concerns about data privacy, with 56% admitting they find AI in healthcare “scary.”

It isn’t helped by the growing number of data breaches in the healthcare space, with 88 million patients having had their personal health information compromised in data breaches last year alone. Undoubtedly, if AI-powered healthcare is to maintain its trajectory, the sector will need to address these cybersecurity concerns.

AI is no longer a prospect but a reality today. It’s already being deployed in doctors’ offices and hospitals to analyze patient data, handle back-office tasks and assist surgeons. Anticipated to decrease administrative costs by up to 30%, free up hundreds of thousands of hours of physicians’ time and cut surgical waiting times—for the millions of Americans currently suffering in silence, whether due to affordability or accessibility, AI will offer a lifeline.

3D-printed ‘ghost guns’, like the one Luigi Mangione allegedly used to kill a health care CEO, surge in popularity as law enforcement struggles to keep up

By November 2024, 15 U.S. states had established regulations on ghost guns, though exact requirements vary. The rules typically require a serial number, background checks for firearm component purchases and reporting to authorities that a person is producing 3D-printed guns.

For instance, in New Jersey, a 2019 law mandates that all ghost guns have a serial number and be registered. Under current New York law, possession or distribution of a 3D-printed gun is classified as a misdemeanor. However, a proposed law seeks to elevate the manufacturing of firearms using 3D-printing technology to a felony offense.

As technology advances and rules evolve, criminals who use 3D-printed firearms will continue to pose threats to public safety and security, and governments will continue playing catch-up to effectively regulate these weapons.