The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposes to ban a cancer-causing chemical commonly used as a furniture cleaner and degreaser. The ban would prohibit most uses of trichloroethylene (TCE) within one year. Limited remaining commercial and industrial uses would be phased out over a longer period and would require stringent worker protections. “Today, EPA is taking a vital step in our efforts to advance President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot and protect people from cancer and other serious health risks,” said EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe. “The science is loud and clear on TCE. It is a dangerous toxic chemical and proposing to ban it will protect families, workers, and communities,” McCabe said in an agency news release. In addition to liver and kidney cancer, health risks associated with the toxin include disruption of the nervous and reproductive systems, and damage to fetal development, the EPA said. TCE is used in cleaning and furniture care products, degreasers, brake cleaners, and tire repair sealants. The EPA says safer alternatives exist. The proposal was made under the Toxic Substances Control Act. It would ban manufacturing, processing and distributing TCE for any use. “TCE has left a toxic legacy in communities across America. Today, EPA is taking a major step to protect people from exposure to this cancer-causing chemical,” said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety…  read on >  read on >

Many college kids are depressed and anxious, especially when they are a minority on campus or the first in their family to go to a university, a new study finds. These feelings may be particularly pronounced among minorities attending mostly white colleges, the researchers reported. In that setting, more than half of Black and Hispanic students reported feelings of mild depression and 17% more said they were moderately to severely depressed. “College life has its own sets of challenges — during COVID there were high rates of depression and anxiety suggesting that social support is an important part of college life,” said lead researcher Janani Thapa. She is an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s School of Public Health in Athens. “We must continue efforts on belonging, to make each and every student feel at home,” Thapa added. Interestingly, the researchers found that students at mostly white universities reported similar anxiety levels, regardless of race, with more than 3 in 5 students saying they experienced mild to severe anxiety levels. At historically Black colleges, students who weren’t Black also experienced higher rates of anxiety and depression. For the study, Thapa and her colleagues collected data on more than 3,000 students during the pandemic who answered questions about feelings of hopelessness, sleep problems and lack of energy. Thapa’s team found that students who were the…  read on >  read on >

A virtual reality program helped hoarders clear out their clutter, researchers report. Hoarding disorder, which strikes more than 2.5% of Americans, has only been defined as a mental health condition for 10 years, and it’s both debilitating and hard to treat. So, researchers at Stanford Medicine recently conducted a small pilot study to see if a newer technology — virtual reality — could help patients practice the steps they would need to take to manage their condition. In the tiny study, a majority of the patients — 7 of 9 — reported an average decrease in symptoms of about 25%. In addition, 8 of the 9 participants had less clutter in their homes after the sessions, with an average decrease of 15%. “Part of what is important in translating the promise of virtual reality into the real world is these small proof-of-concept studies to say, ‘Is it feasible? Are participants going to be able to engage with the technology?’ And that wasn’t immediately evident that it would in this population, so having the data was really important,” explained senior study author Dr. Carolyn Rodriguez. She is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine in California. Among the reasons why it was uncertain whether virtual reality (VR) would work for patients is that many people with hoarding disorder are older and may not…  read on >  read on >

While U.S. policymakers have restricted flavored vapes to make e-cigarettes less appealing to young people, that plan may be backfiring. A new study found that for every 0.7 milliliters of “e-liquid” for e-cigarettes that isn’t sold because of flavor restrictions, an additional 15 traditional cigarettes were sold. The study, supported by U.S. National Institutes of Health, uncovered evidence that these extra cigarettes were being sold in brands that are popular with people 20 and younger. Flavor restriction policies may actually magnify the harms of nicotine rather than help, the authors said. “While neither smoking nor vaping is entirely safe, current evidence indicates substantively greater health harm from smoking than vaping nicotine products,” said first author Abigail Friedman, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. “These policies’ public health costs may outweigh their benefits,” she said in a university news release. Policymakers focused on vapes because of their fruity and dessert-like flavors, which could make them appealing to young people. An outbreak of vaping-associated lung injuries in 2019 led to at least 68 deaths and thousands of hospitalizations. This led to restriction of vapes, though the primary cause of the outbreak was an additive most common in cannabis vaping products, according to the Yale School of Public Health. To study the impact of restrictions on flavored e-cigarette products, researchers evaluated sales of both…  read on >  read on >

MONDAY, Oct. 23, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Scientists have long wondered whether depression leads to less sleep or whether a lack of sleep triggers depression. A new study suggests it’s the latter: Getting less than five hours of sleep a night may raise the risk of developing depressive symptoms. “We have this chicken or egg scenario between suboptimal sleep duration and depression, they frequently co-occur, but which comes first is largely unresolved. Using genetic susceptibility to disease we determined that sleep likely precedes depressive symptoms, rather than the inverse,” said lead author Odessa Hamilton, of University College London’s (UCL) Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care. Both sleep style and depression are partly inherited from one generation to the next. Earlier twin studies have suggested depression is about 35% genetic and that these inherited differences account for 40% of the variance in sleep duration. In this latest study, the researchers analyzed genetic and health data from more than 7,000 people who were an average age of 65. The investigators found that those with a stronger genetic predisposition to short sleep were more likely to develop depressive symptoms over four to 12 years. Meanwhile, people with a greater genetic predisposition to depression did not have an increased likelihood of short sleep. “Short and long sleep durations, along with depression, are major contributors to public health burden that are…  read on >  read on >

It’s well known that mothers can suffer postpartum depression, a condition that affects not only their well-being but also their child’s development. Now, new research finds that fathers can also experience depression after the births of their babies and this doubles their children’s odds of having three or more adverse childhood experiences before the age of 5. “There’s a number of things that motivated our study. The first was that father’s depression in the first year of life has already been shown to have other kinds of adverse effects on children, such as parenting difficulties or difficulties in child behavior later in life,” said study author Dr. Kristine Schmitz. She is an assistant professor of population health, quality improvement and implementation science at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. “We also at baseline know that depression in fathers is often unrecognized and yet can be quite prevalent, so it’s an important topic to pay attention to,” Schmitz added. For this study, Schmitz wanted to explore what the association between a father’s depression early in a child’s life might have with adverse childhood experiences later in life. Those experiences can include household dysfunction and child maltreatment. They can lead to future health and mental health issues, including well into adulthood. This can include poorer mental health, poorer school performance, obesity, asthma and high…  read on >  read on >

Climate change is bringing diseases once considered tropical afflictions to the United States, and new research warns that a parasite spread by sand flies may be the latest to join this growing list. The Leishmania parasite causes several forms of the disease leishmaniasis, including cutaneous leishmaniasis, which causes skin sores. Cutaneous leishmaniasis infects up to 1 million people each year, mainly in the Middle East, central Asia, northern Africa and Latin America. Another potentially life-threatening form of the disease, visceral leishmaniasis, affects the spleen, liver and bone marrow, and a new study suggests this form may be gaining a foothold in U.S. sand flies when they feed on infected dogs brought into the country by well-meaning dog rescue organizations. The findings were presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, in Chicago. Such research is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. “As our weather gets more erratic and the planet as a whole gets warmer and wetter, it becomes a much better place for these bugs to live and create disease,” said study author Christine Petersen, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Iowa. “We need to up our game and remember these tropical diseases aren’t going to be so tropical anymore due to global warming,” she added. In addition to…  read on >  read on >

People who live alone have a greater risk of dying from cancer, a new study warns. Researchers from the American Cancer Society showed that U.S. adults who live alone had a 32% higher risk of cancer death than those who live with others. For men that was even higher, at 38% greater risk, while women living alone had a 30% higher risk. The data was particularly concerning for middle-aged adults, those ages 45 to 64, who had a 43% higher risk of cancer death than those living with others. “Previous studies have shown an association between living alone and cancer mortality, but findings by sex and race/ethnicity have generally been inconsistent, and data by socioeconomic status are sparse,” said study author Hyunjung Lee, principal scientist in cancer disparity research at the American Cancer Society. “Findings in this study underscore the significance of addressing living alone in the general population and among cancer survivors and call for interventions to reduce adverse effects of living alone and social isolation,” she said in a society news release. Researchers studied this using data from 1998 to 2019 for more than 473,000 adults from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey linked to the National Death Index. The data was followed for up to 22 years to calculate the association between living alone and cancer death. About 38 million households lived…  read on >  read on >