Steaks and burgers could be killing thousands of Americans each year, but in a way most people wouldn’t expect — via air pollution. That’s the conclusion of a new study estimating that airborne particles generated by food production kill nearly 16,000 Americans each year. Pollution related to animal products — most notably beef — accounts…  read on >  read on >

Maintaining adequate social distance from strangers — a key COVID-19 preventive measure — can be tough when you’re drinking alcohol, researchers say. In a new study, the researchers put more than 200 young social drinkers in different social situations in laboratory settings. They drank either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages. In half of the cases, participants…  read on >  read on >

When young women land in the emergency room with chest pain, they wait longer and get less treatment than their male counterparts, a preliminary study finds. Using a federal survey of U.S. hospitals, researchers found that younger women with chest pain were treated less urgently than men their age. That included a lower likelihood of…  read on >  read on >

Could having heart disease risk factors in childhood sow the seeds of thinking declines in middle-age? It looks like it might, new research claims. “I think it was not so big of a surprise for us, but maybe for the scientific community who have been focusing mainly on the midlife risk factors and old-age cognition,”…  read on >  read on >

There’s more evidence that a switch away from meat in your diet could cut levels of unhealthy “biomarkers” that encourage disease, researchers say. A new study reported Saturday at the virtual European Congress on Obesity (ECO) found that people on vegetarian diets have lower blood levels of disease-linked biomarkers, such as “bad” (LDL) cholesterol and…  read on >  read on >

Enough COVID-19 vaccine doses are available in the United States that many Americans may now have the freedom of choice. Unvaccinated folks going to their local clinic or pharmacy could choose between the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines that have been approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for emergency use. Picking…  read on >  read on >

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday opened the door to the possibility of relaxing indoor masking rules as more Americans are vaccinated against the coronavirus. As immunizations climb, “we do need to start being more liberal” in terms of rules for wearing masks indoors, though the nation is still averaging about 43,000 cases of the virus…  read on >  read on >