All Stories by Ben Harder
- Health & Medicine
Moms’ POPs, Sons’ Problems: Testicular cancer tied to a fetus’ pollutant contact
Women who've had substantial exposure to certain environmental pollutants are more likely than other women to bear sons who develop testicular cancers.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee Jitters: Caffeine boosts predictor of heart problems
Whether it comes from coffee or another source, caffeine causes a troubling rise in one biological indicator of heart health.
- Health & Medicine
Sea Sickness: Despite cleaner cruises, diarrhea outbreaks persist
Improvements in vessel sanitation have apparently contributed to a gradual decline in diarrheal infections on cruise ships, but standard cleaning practices don't reliably wipe out the viruses that are behind a recent rash of outbreaks.
- Health & Medicine
Sea Sickness: Despite cleaner cruises, diarrhea outbreaks persist
Improvements in vessel sanitation have apparently contributed to a gradual decline in diarrheal infections on cruise ships, but standard cleaning practices don't reliably wipe out the viruses that are behind a recent rash of outbreaks.
- Earth
Dust Up: Office bustle launches anthrax spores
The commotion of everyday business in indoor spaces contaminated with anthrax can launch the bacterium's dangerous spores into the air.
- Health & Medicine
Cluster Bombs: Metabolic syndrome tied to heart disease deaths
Men with a certain cluster of metabolic characteristics are about three times as likely to die of heart disease as men without the traits are.
- Health & Medicine
Natural fluoride isn’t quite enough
In the absence of a public water-fluoridation program in eastern Germany, natural background concentrations of fluoride in drinking water affect children’s dental health.
- Earth
Child-care sites, health threats
Federal agencies have completed the first national study of lead, pesticides, and allergens in U.S. child-care facilities.
- Health & Medicine
Study exonerates childhood vaccine
A nationwide study in Denmark provides strong evidence that a childhood vaccine once blamed for some cases of autism plays no role in the development of that neurological disorder.
- Earth
Arsenic Agriculture? Irrigation may worsen Bangladesh’s woes
Researchers investigating an unfolding massive epidemic of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh say they have evidence that local irrigation practices may be contributing to the problem.
- Earth
Wildfire Below: Smoldering peat disgorges huge volumes of carbon
Set alight by wildfires, thick beds of decaying tropical plant matter can pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, rivaling those produced globally each year from the combustion of fossil fuels.
- Health & Medicine
Appetite-suppressing drug burns fat, too
An experimental drug seems to assail obesity through dual biological actions.
