Adding menthol flavoring to electronic cigarettes may damage your lungs more than regular e-cigarettes do, a new study reveals. The common mint flavoring helps deliver lots more toxic microparticles, compared with e-cigarette pods that don’t contain menthol. It’s those microparticles that damage lung function, researchers say. “Beware of additives in the e-cigarettes,” said senior researcher Kambez Benam, an associate professor in the division of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. “If you vape, they can make you inhale more particles into your lungs. Don‘t assume that since menthol is a substance naturally found in mint plants and added to some food and beverages, it would be fine to inhale,” he said. “Menthol flavoring leads to a significantly higher number of particle counts that one would take into their lungs by vaping them,” he said. “E-cigarette aerosols are known to contain many harmful substances, such as nicotine and formaldehyde.” A number of studies have suggested that e-cigarette vapor can cause lung inflammation, oxidative stress, DNA damage and airway hyper-responsiveness that can trigger asthma, Benam said. Vaping these substances can cause lung damage that impairs lung function. Menthol, he added, is such a toxic substance. To look at the potential danger of menthol, Benam’s team developed a “vaping robot” that mimics the temperature, humidity, puff volume and duration of…  read on >  read on >

Jouncing along to school in a fume-spewing, rattletrap yellow bus is practically a rite of passage for most American students. But outdated buses actually wind up costing kids many days of education, thanks to the clouds of diesel exhaust left in their wake, a new study argues. School districts that upgrade to a “greener” bus fleet have higher attendance rates than those with older, dirtier-running buses, researchers report. Replacing all school buses built prior to 2000 could add more than 1.3 million additional student days of attendance each year in the United States, the study estimated. About 25 million children ride the bus to school every day, the researchers said. Older buses cough out higher levels of diesel exhaust, which can trigger asthma attacks in kids, said lead researcher Meredith Pedde, a research fellow in epidemiology with the University of Michigan. “Air pollution can even affect those without asthma,” Pedde added. “It has been linked to upper respiratory infections, pneumonia and other types of respiratory illness, so it might be impacting a larger student body than just asthmatic students.” To see whether cleaner buses cut down on student absences, Pedde and her colleagues examined data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s School Bus Rebate Program. The EPA program doled out more than $7 million annually to replace or retrofit old polluting buses between 2012 and…  read on >  read on >

You may be struggling with stomach pain and digestive distress without understanding why, thinking it might be something you ate. Can stress cause stomach pain? Stress, especially chronic stress, can indeed increase your risk for gastrointestinal (GI) problems. “Stress and anxiety are common causes of stomach pain and other GI symptoms,” Dr. Nina Gupta, a gastroenterologist at University of Chicago Medicine, said recently in an article. Stress impacts the digestive system through the nervous system, and can affect food movement and the gut’s bacterial balance. Stress can also cause people to eat poorly, smoke and/or drink too much alcohol or caffeine — all habits that can trigger stomach pain. Outside the brain, the gut has the greatest area of nerves. This component of the autonomic nervous system — known as the enteric nervous system — is sometimes referred to as the “second brain.” According to Harvard Health, “neurons lining the digestive tract signal muscle cells to initiate a series of contractions that propel food farther along, breaking it down into nutrients and waste.” The enteric nervous system communicates with the central nervous system and is known as the “brain-gut axis.” This connection explains why stress may cause digestive problems. According to the American Psychological Association, stress may increase the risk for or exacerbate symptoms of the following gut diseases or dysfunction: Bloating, burping, gas Heartburn,…  read on >  read on >

For what they say is the first time, British researchers report that they have found the spread of COVID-19 in households is linked to the presence of the virus on hands and surfaces, not just in the air. The investigators collected data from households at the height of the pandemic, finding that people were much more likely to get COVID-19 from someone in their house if virus was present on hands or frequently touched places, like refrigerator door handles or sink faucets. “There’s no doubt that if you have COVID-19, you’re emitting the virus into the air as micro-aerosols as well as large droplets that land on your hands and the surfaces around you. What hasn’t been shown, until now, is that the presence of the virus on people’s hands or household surfaces predicts transmission to contacts,” said study author Ajit Lalvani. He is director of the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Respiratory Infections. The NIHR HPRU is a research partnership between Imperial College London and the UK Health Security Agency. Researchers from University of Oxford also worked on the study. “Our real-life study in London households provides the first empirical evidence to show that the presence of SARS-CoV-2 on people’s hands and surfaces contributes significantly to spread of COVID-19. Since we didn’t systematically sample household…  read on >  read on >