Pollution Kills An Astonishing Nine MILLION People Every Year

Pollution is killing up to 9 million people every single year across the planet. As grimly expected, most of these deaths – 92 percent – are in middle-to-low income countries. This makes the unnatural phenomenon, which is responsible for one-in-6 deaths worldwide, more deadly than anything else, including natural disasters, famine, and war.

Although drinking water contamination was the second most common cause of death, air pollution is by far and away the most serious issue: it accounted for two-thirds of all pollution-related deaths in 2015, according to the report in The Lancet.

In most cases, pollution doesn’t cause fatalities through infections. Its toxic and extremely fine particles usually trigger respiratory or cardiovascular conditions that cannot be effectively treated after inhaling enough of them.

Much like climate change, the less well-off, the sick, the very young, and the elderly are disproportionately affected by the planet’s inability to curb its worst excesses.

The top 10 countries experiencing these deaths are as follows:-

1 – Bangladesh

2 – Somalia

3 – Chad

4 – Niger

5 – India

6 – Nepal

7 – South Sudan

8 – Eritrea

9 – Madagascar

10 – Pakistan

Air pollution, water pollution, and pollution at the workplace are the top three leading causes of pollution-related death. Dipak Shelare/Shutterstock

In all 10 countries, at least 22 percent of deaths taking place in 2015 were linked to pollution. In Bangladesh, that number peaked at 27 percent. These figures closely match the findings of another study, whose interactive map reveals that metropolises in places like India rob residents of up to a decade of life.

Just in case you were wondering, in the UK, about 8 percent of all deaths are linked to pollution; in the US, it’s around 6 percent. The countries making up the bottom 10 on the list include Canada, New Zealand, Barbados, and much of Scandinavia.

“For decades, pollution and its harmful effects on people's health, the environment, and the planet have been neglected both by governments and the international development community,” wrote the authors of the multi-paper report.

“Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and death in the world today,” they added, explaining that, as well as causing great ecological, economic and physiological harm – is directly threatens the “survival of human societies” across the planet.

Water contamination is the second-most prolific pollution-linked cause of deaths worldwide. Marcin Balcerzak/Shutterstock

The sobering report, coordinated by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, has also been turned into an interactive map, which you can view here. Generally speaking, developed and wealthy nations suffer most from air pollution-linked deaths, whereas poorer parts of the world with fewer environmental regulations have a high incidence of water and land-based contamination.

The worst-affected places are almost always nations undergoing rapid economic development, usually at the expense of the health and wellbeing of their poorer citizens.

This sobering study is a perfect reminder of why environmental regulations and protections exist. A world without them is less equal, and far more deadly.

How Breast Milk Could Help Prevent The Antibiotic Apocalypse

Imagine a future where common infections and minor injuries such as small cuts could actually kill you. This is far from an apocalyptic fantasy made up by Hollywood scriptwriters, but a very real possibility for the 21st century according to a 2014 report by the World Health Organization (WHO). It argues that antibiotic resistance, the fact that bacteria and other microbes are becoming less and less sensitive to antimicrobial drugs, is amounting to a major global threat.

WHO recently followed up on this frightening assessment with a new report presenting 13 “global priority bacteria”, including MRSA. It suggests we need to prioritise research on these bacteria because they cause major levels of disease and mortality.

So, what is being done? Well, the pharmaceutical industry has not discovered a major new class of antibiotics since 1987 and it has little incentive to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop novel drugs. This is because whatever drugs they come up with will most likely be shelved until no other drug can treat a specific infection. Also, most infections are not chronic in nature and treatment only lasts ten days or so, which drastically reduces sales and return on the investments. Finally, once the new drug is being used, we know from experience that bacteria are inevitably going to become resistant to it quickly, making the antibiotic useless. This drastically confines the market size and profitability of new antibiotics.

But there is hope. Academic research, alliances with industry and other partnerships have, over the past decade or so, started to think outside the box. If new antibiotics are going to be developed they would need to target parts of the bacteria that find it difficult to mutate, such as the membrane. This is one possible approach – but we have yet to see a successful case

MRSA (green bacteria) interacts with a human white cell. NIAID Flickr's photostream

That said, there are other approaches to this that may well be successful. Bacteria adapt to antibiotics in different ways to become resistant. They put pumps in their membranes that actively gets rid of antibiotics – so the drug can’t reach its target. They make enzymes that directly inactivate or destroy the antibiotics. And most commonly they adapt by mutating or changing the target of the antibiotic so that it can no longer bind and kill. New therapeutic strategies may therefore not need to try to find new targets but instead try to make the bacteria more sensitive to the antibiotics we already have. Attacking pumps and enzymes is one possible way to go.

The remarkable role of breast milk

But there are others as well, and this is where breast milk and one of its components come in as an important example. Several years ago, we identified a special compound in breast milk, made from protein and fat, that we called HAMLET: Human Alpha-lactalbumin Made Lethal to Tumour cells. The HAMLET complex was found to kill cancer cells without having any effect on nearby healthy cells. HAMLET killed the cancer cells partly by entering the cells and destroying the function of the mitochondria, the “power plant” of all cells, which resulted in cell death. HAMLET could not enter healthy cells, meaning they were “insensitive” to the compound.

Interestingly, way back in evolution, mitochondria are thought to have once been a type of bacteria which formed a symbiotic relationship with another type of bacteria. We therefore tested the potential activity of HAMLET on bacteria. And indeed, HAMLET did kill some types of bacteria, but the effect was not universal. Many important bacterial species were unaffected and survived.

To kill bacteria, HAMLET bound to the bacterial membrane. This first caused the hydrogen pump in the membrane to stop, so that the hydrogen concentrations (the pH) on each side of the membrane became the same. The change in pH allowed the transport of calcium inside the cell that was necessary for the bacteria to die.

However, we have since realised that even the surviving bacteria are not unaffected. Indeed, we found that HAMLET can affect the membranes and cause transport of hydrogen and calcium ions even for tough bacteria. This made the bacteria sensitive to the antibiotics they were resistant to – reversing the resistance.

In fact, HAMLET was so effective that it made MRSA sensitive to the antibiotic methicillin again. We were not only able to show that methicillin could kill MRSA in a test tube but also that it could eradicate infection in mice. This has become a major breakthrough. It shows the great potential that strategies such as this one can prolong the usefulness of the safe and tested antibiotic arsenal that we already have.

One of the greatest strengths of this approach is that substances such as HAMLET are not as likely as new antibiotics to lead to resistance. This is because they do not actually kill the bacteria themselves. There is therefore less evolutionary pressure on the bacteria to change to survive them. We are therefore currently developing these findings in the hope that they, and others like them, will provide a new treatment strategy to combat antibiotic resistance.

We are not quite there yet, as we have to go through the usual process of testing – determining the efficiency and safety of the compound – before we can start doing clinical trials. What we are doing now is undertaking these preparatory studies. There’s every reason to be hopeful about the future.

Anders P Håkansson, Professor of Infection Medicine, Lund University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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How Alcohol Affects the Body

Samualsmith

How Alcohol Affects the Body

Drinking alcohol affects the body in many ways. These effects can lead to physical and mental changes that can put alcohol users and others at risk of injury or death. Possible dangers include falls, household accidents, and car crashes.

How Alcohol Moves Through the Body

When a person drinks beer, wine, or another alcoholic drink, the alcohol quickly enters the bloodstream and is then carried throughout the body. The alcohol gets broken down through metabolism, the process of converting substances we consume to other compounds that the body either uses or removes. Alcohol is distributed throughout the body, affecting the brain and other tissues, until it is completely metabolized.

A drink of alcohol stays in the body for about 2 hours after being consumed. This period of time can vary depending on the person’s weight, gender, and other factors. When a person drinks, the concentration of alcohol in the blood builds to a peak, and then decreases as metabolism breaks the alcohol down. At first, alcohol often makes people feel relaxed and happy. Later, it can cause drowsiness or confusion.

The small intestine and the stomach absorb most of the alcohol after drinking. A small amount leaves the body through breath and urine. Eating slows the absorption of alcohol. If people drink more alcohol than their bodies can absorb, they become drunk.

Excretory System

The excretory system is responsible for processing and eliminating waste products like alcohol from your body. As part of that process, the pancreas secretes digestive enzymes that combine with bile from the gallbladder to help digest food. The pancreas also helps regulate insulin and glucose.

Excessive alcohol use can cause the pancreas to produce toxic substances that interfere with proper functioning. The resulting inflammation is called pancreatitis, a serious problem that can destroy the pancreas. One of the most frequent causes of chronic pancreatitis is alcohol abuse.

The liver’s job is to break down harmful substances, including alcohol. Excessive drinking can cause alcoholic hepatitis which can lead to the development of jaundice (yellowing of the skin and eyes). Chronic liver inflammation can lead to severe scarring known as cirrhosis. This formation of scar tissue can destroy the liver. When the liver fails to perform, toxic substances remain in your body. Liver disease is life threatening. Women are at higher risk for alcoholic liver disease than men, because women’s bodies tend to absorb more alcohol and take longer to process it.

When the pancreas and liver don’t function properly, the risk of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) rises. A damaged pancreas can cause the body to be unable to utilize sugar due to a lack of insulin, which can lead to hyperglycemia. Unbalanced blood sugar levels can be a dangerous problem, especially for people with diabetes. Alcohol abuse also raises your risk of liver cancer.

Central Nervous System

One of the first signs of alcohol in your system is a change in behavior. Alcohol travels through the body easily. It can quickly reach many parts of your body, including your brain and other parts of your central nervous system. That can make it harder to talk, causing slurred speech, the telltale sign that someone who has had too much to drink. It can also affect coordination, interfering with balance and the ability to walk.

Drink too much, and your ability to think clearly is in trouble, as are your impulse control and ability to form memories. Over the long term, drinking can actually shrink the frontal lobes of your brain. Acute alcoholic withdrawal can lead to seizures and delirium. And severe alcoholism can progress to permanent brain damage, causing dementia.

Damage to your nervous system can result in pain, numbness, or abnormal sensations in your feet and hands. Alcoholism can cause a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency, which can result in involuntary rapid eye movements, weakness, or paralysis of the eye muscles.

Men and women metabolize alcohol differently. It generally takes less alcohol to affect women.

Over time, a heavy drinker can become physically and emotionally dependent on alcohol. It may be very difficult to gain control. Unlike most other common addictions, acute alcohol withdrawal can be life threatening. Cases of severe, chronic alcohol addiction often require medical detoxification.

When an alcoholic stops drinking abruptly, they’re likely to experience symptoms of withdrawal, such as:

• nausea
• anxiety
• nervousness
• tremors

In severe cases, it may lead to confusion, hallucinations (delirium tremens), and seizures. Detoxification can take between two and seven days. Medications can help prevent side effects of withdrawal.

Digestive System

Alcohol can wreak havoc on your digestive system, from your mouth all the way to your colon. Even a single incidence of heavy drinking can injure parts of your digestive tract.

Alcohol abuse can damage the salivary glands and irritate the mouth and tongue, leading to gum disease, tooth decay, and even tooth loss. Heavy drinking can cause ulcers in the esophagus, acid reflux, and heartburn. Stomach ulcers and inflammation of the stomach lining (gastritis) can occur.

Inflammation of the pancreas interferes with its ability to aid digestion and regulate metabolism. Damage to the digestive system can cause gassiness, abdominal fullness, and diarrhea. It can also lead to dangerous internal bleeding, which may be due to ulcers, hemorrhoids, or esophageal varices caused by cirrhosis.

Alcohol makes it harder for your digestive tract to absorb nutrients and B vitamins or control bacteria. Alcoholics often suffer from malnutrition. Heavy drinkers face higher risk of mouth, throat, and esophagus cancers. Moderate drinking in the presence of tobacco use can raise the risk of these upper-gastrointestinal cancers. Colon cancer is also a risk. Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal may include nausea and vomiting.

Circulatory System

In some cases, a single episode of heavy drinking can cause trouble for your heart. It’s even more likely your heart will suffer if you’re a chronic drinker. Women who drink are at even higher risk of heart damage than men.

Circulatory system complications include:

• poisoning of the heart muscle cells (cardiomyopathy)
• irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia)
• high blood pressure
• stroke
• heart attack
• heart failure

People with diabetes have an increased risk of low blood sugar levels, especially if they use insulin. Deficiencies in vitamin B6, vitamin B12, thiamine, and folic acid can cause lowered blood counts. A common symptom of anemia is fatigue.

Sexual and Reproductive Health

Erectile dysfunction is a common side effect of alcohol abuse in men. It can also inhibit hormone production, affect testicular function, and cause infertility.

Excessive drinking can cause a woman to stop menstruating and become infertile. It also can increase her risk of miscarriage, premature delivery, and stillbirth. Alcohol has a huge effect on fetal development. A range of problems, called fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), can occur. FASD symptoms, which include physical abnormalities, learning difficulties, and emotional problems, can last a lifetime.

For women, the risk of breast cancer rises with alcohol use.

Skeletal and Muscle Systems

Long-term alcohol use makes it harder for your body to produce new bone. Drinking puts you at increased risk of osteoporosis (thinning bones) and bone fractures. Muscles become prone to weakness, cramps, and even atrophy.

Immune System

An immune system weakened by alcohol abuse has a hard time fighting off viruses, germs, and all types of illness. Heavy drinkers are more likely to get pneumonia or tuberculosis than the general population. Chronic alcohol use increases your risk of many forms of cancer.

risks and effects on the developing baby

A woman who drinks alcohol while she is pregnant may harm her developing baby (fetus). Alcohol can pass from the mother's blood into the baby's blood. It can damage and affect the growth of the baby's cells. Brain and spinal cord cells are most likely to have damage.

Other effects of alcohol 

Say no to Alcohol 

Forget What You Heard: Jupiter Does Not Orbit The Sun

Forget What You Heard: Jupiter Does Not Orbit The Sun

Jupiter, the fifth planet from the sun, gas giant, and subject of the Juno mission, is huge. Huge.

It's so huge, in fact, that it doesn't actually orbit the sun. Not exactly. With 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined, it's big enough that the center of gravity between Jupiter and the sun doesn't actually reside inside the sun — rather, at a point in space just above the sun's surface.

Here's how that works.

When a small object orbits a big object in space, the less massive one doesn't really travel in a perfect circle around the larger one. Rather, both objects orbit a combined center of gravity.

In situations we're familiar with — like Earth orbiting the much-larger sun — the center of gravity resides so close to the center of the larger object that the impact of this phenomenon is negligible. The bigger object doesn't seem to move, and the smaller one draws a circle around it.

But reality is always more complicated.

For example: When the International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth, both the Earth and the space station orbit their combined center of gravity. But that center of gravity is so absurdly close to the center of the Earth that the planet's motion around the point is impossible to spot — and the ISS describes a near-perfect circle around the whole planet.

The same truth holds when most planets orbit the sun. Sol is just so much larger than Earth, Venus, Mercury, or even Saturn that their centers of mass with the sun all lie deep within the star itself.

Not so with Jupiter.

The gas giant is so big that its center of mass with the sun, or barycenter, actually lies 1.07 solar radii from the middle of the sun — or 7% of a sun-radius above the sun's surface. Both the Sun and Jupiter orbit around that point in space.

This not-to-scale gif from NASA illustrates the effect:

That is, in essence, how Jupiter and the sun move through space together — though the distances and sizes are far different. Jupiter is still only a fraction of the sun's size.

But next time someone asks you for a crazy space fact you'll know: Jupiter is so massive, it doesn't orbit the sun.

5 Things That Make You Attractive To Mosquitoes

There is always one. That person who, no matter what, always comes back from spending a warm summer evening sitting outside covered in mosquito bites. While there is some evidence to suggest that people are really bad at knowing whether or not they are the unlucky ones, there are things that can increase your likelihood of getting bitten. Although there is lots of anecdotal evidence from people about what influences the little critters to bite, from eating garlic to having “sweet” blood, there are some aspects that have been proven by science to genuinely increase your chances.

Blood Type

Unfortunately, not all of the causes are something you can actually do something about. Take blood type, for example. One study has found that while those who have blood type O coursing through their veins are more likely to get a less than friendly visit from a mosquito than other blood types, they’re only more attractive to the insects when compared with those with blood type A. They found that a particular sugar found in blood type O was attractive to the mosquitoes, though once a mosquito has picked its target, it's unlikely blood type will make much difference. 

Carbon Dioxide

Another thing that we all have to do is breathe, and this isn’t great if you’re trying to avoid the pesky little biters. When homing in on their target, all mosquito species will use something called a maxillary palp to sense the carbon dioxide you’re exhaling. Mixed with the host’s body odor and both molecules have been found to induce a take-off and sustained flight of the insects. It is for this reason that people who breathe out more, including larger people and adults, tend to get bitten more than those who exhale less.

Lactic acid

The pesky little insects are not only searching for carbon dioxide, they are also on the lookout for other markers too. One of these, it seems, is lactic acid. Research has shown that yellow fever mosquitoes are significantly more attracted to those who have more lactic acid on their skin, even making those who were less “attractive” to the insects more attractive. This, in addition to an increase in body temperature, could go some way to help explain why those who have just exercised seem more likely to get bitten.

Pregnancy

The previous cause could also be related to why it seems that pregnant women are more likely to receive itchy red bites. One study found that women in the late stages of pregnancy exhaled 21 percent more breath – including that crucial carbon dioxide – when compared to non-pregnant women. Another reason could be related to the fact that pregnancy increases blood flow to the skin, which means that on average they run at around 0.7°C warmer than normal, making them easier for heat-seeking insects to find.

Beer

This one is a little contentious. While a study has previously found that by drinking as little as 350ml of 5.5 percent beer the number of mosquitoes on the volunteer’s skin significantly increased, it was only a very limited study of 13 people. Not only that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the insects then went on to feed on them, and the researchers even go on to say that they found no correlation between the amount on ethanol detected in the sweat and the amount of beer actually consumed. So while it could be a factor, it is a far from settled matter.