Public Health

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo became the deadliest in the country’s history this week as confirmed cases continue to rise at a pace that is raising alarm around the world.

Heat stresses the body, making it more vulnerable to pesticides and other toxicants, and protective clothing worn in the heat only adds to this stress. Hotter temperatures can also lead to higher evaporation rates, increasing farmworkers’ exposure as more pesticides are applied to crops. And heat can boost rates of chemical transformation of pesticides into more toxic compounds.

Kratom use and serious health problems linked to it have risen dramatically across the United States over the past decade. Poison center reports jumped from just 19 cases in 2010 to more than 1,200 in 2023, while severe outcomes—including life-threatening complications, disability, and death—also climbed sharply. Researchers warn that kratom can trigger seizures, abnormal heart rhythms, liver damage, and breathing problems, with risks potentially increasing when it is combined with other drugs.

Demobilised former combatants are actively joining the fight against Ebola by participating in public information campaigns in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

edit: this is vintage EPA, I know seeing links to us gov websites probably instinctually raises the hairs on the backs of a lot of people right now and that is valid, but these are superb resources.

link to open access paper https://academic.oup.com/innovateage/article/10/8/igag054/8739704

The linked article under Pyroaerobiology: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.2507

More than 1,900 people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak – and most of them never made it to a treatment centre. Between 60 and 70 per cent of deaths are happening in communities far from care, a gap that is now central to the World Health Organization’s response.

This is murder

During the same period over the previous 10 years, Louisiana reported an average of seven cases and one death. All nine cases reported this year were associated with wounds exposed to seawater, and all patients had underlying health conditions,” the LDH said.

The research team’s conclusion was blunt: “No tested version of ChatGPT can reliably generate appropriate responses to psychotic content.”

The jalapenos were supplied by California-based Coast Citrus Distributors, sourced from Mexico and served at Chipotle Mexican Grill, Qdoba and other restaurants.

Australia warned on Monday against the risk of a wider spread of H5N1 bird flu after its first mass mortality episode among seabirds killed ‌about 50 greater crested terns off the coast south of Adelaide.

Far more than the flames that have engulfed southern Europe and North America in recent weeks, it is the smoke that dominates the astonishing death toll from combusting nature. Thick with toxic gases that inflame the airways and tiny particulates that breach the lungs and ride the bloodstream to hit every organ in the body, fumes from landscape fires kill 1.5 million people each year, a study in the Lancet found in 2024 – more than floods, flames, storms and heat combined.

The research, published in Neuron on Aug. 7, 2026, identifies an epigenetic mechanism that may explain why the effects of childhood trauma can remain hidden for years before emerging when a person encounters new hardships. In experiments involving mice, the scientists found that stress during a sensitive period of development altered the way DNA was packaged in the ventral tegmental area, or VTA, a brain region involved in motivation, reward and the processing of adversity.

“The results should be interpreted as evidence of preventable or manageable environmental health problems, not as immediate threat from casual contact with cats,” she said.

As much as I rail against the antivax component of MAHA, the “health freedom” component is arguably more dangerous to science-based medicine, and at the vanguard of “health freedom” is right-to-try. While some of the anti-regulation libertarians who falsely believe that the FDA is killing people through bureaucratic slowness and inefficiency and think that the “free market” can guarantee drug safety and efficacy might really believe that right-to-try is about protecting patients, I argue that it is more about taking as much power away from the FDA as possible and taking us back to the 19th century in terms of drug science, safety, and efficacy. Worse, now that the current administration is in power, right-to-try advocates might just succeed. At the very minimum, as far as drug regulation goes, Montana is looking to be a great place to set up a Hallwang-style clinic in which conventional medicine is mixed with unproven experimental therapeutics and alternative medicine.

Canada has authorized U.S. pharmaceutical giant Moderna to begin clinical trials for a vaccine against the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, the Canadian health ministry announced Tuesday.

In country after country, more women are dying from the heat than men. But researchers say biology isn’t the main reason. Age, working conditions, and unequal access to rest may drive the gap.

A new U.S. study suggests invasive mold infections may be an underappreciated threat. Researchers found about 450 cases in Atlanta-area hospitals over five years, with a third of patients dying in the hospital.

A theory dating back more than 100 years suggested that there is an optimal amount of stress for good performance, based on a study that had nothing to do with humans.

Doctors at Toronto’s SickKids hospital say serious e-scooter injuries involving children are becoming a daily occurrence, with many requiring surgery, intensive care and rehab.

The UN emergency food agency appealed for immediate funding on Wednesday, warning that deepening hunger is undermining the response to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that has now infected more than 3,200 people.

Nearly half of the items analyzed also failed to meet at least one nutritional benchmark for children set by the World Health Organization and the Promotion Profile Model.

Red Cross officials are pleading with Americans to donate blood, especially if they have O-positive blood.

Health workers at an Ebola treatment centre in eastern Congo went on strike on Saturday, demanding their pay. The walkout disrupted care for patients in the epicentre of the country’s rapidly growing outbreak.