Health News

Hundreds of abandoned open-pit coal mines pockmark the landscape of East Kalimantan Province in Indonesian Borneo. Indonesian law requires mining companies to fill in pits that are no longer in…

Humans make quite a racket, and all of the excessive noise we make is not just a problem in urban areas. About 14 percent of the land mass in the…

“I’m a dentist by training,” says Monica Nirmala, executive director of Indonesian non-profit Alam Sehat Lestari. The name translates to “Healthy Nature Everlasting,” and the organization, known by its acronym…

Until recently, scientists hadn’t systematically compared the levels to which different groups of people across the tropics depend on nearby forests for food. New research shows that, though forest usage…

Nutella lovers can continue to indulge in the chocolate-hazelnut spread without fear of health risks from the palm oil it contains, according to the product’s manufacturer, Ferrero. In October, the…

Plans for a huge power plant situated near the world's largest mangrove forest in Bangladesh has incited outrage from many Bangladeshi conservationists and citizens. This weekend, those in other countries…

Sixty-nine million people were exposed to toxic haze as a result of last year’s devastating wildfires in Indonesia, a new study has found. Little is known about the health impacts…

It was a sunny afternoon in North Sumatra when Muhamad Syahrial, a worker on a rubber estate in the Indonesian province, spotted a slithering snake among the children at play in…

t’s a diver’s bane: beautiful and interesting sites, but low visibility. This year, Indonesia’s anomalously wet dry season overlapped its stormy rain season. Yet, while Jakarta proper was inundated, the…

The health ministries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have played down a study by Harvard and Columbia universities estimating a mean of more than 100,000 premature deaths resulting from the…

Preoccupied with snipping a saliva-soaked plant part with a scalpel and placing it in a little tube of viral transport media, veterinary epidemiologist Tierra Smiley Evans thought she was alone,…

Harmful ozone-causing emissions are on the rise again, a new study has found. Naturally occurring ozone in the upper atmosphere is good, protecting us from the sun’s ultra-violet rays. But…

The United States and China have made an official, joint statement to sign Paris Agreement [BBC] This Thursday, the U.S. and China issued a joint statement regarding their commitment to…

The environment you live in could be killing you. Nearly one in every four deaths can be attributed to polluted air or water, climate change, chemical exposures, or other environmental…

amily planning can prevent unwanted pregnancies, increase birth spacing, and improve women’s reproductive rights. All of this can reduce human populations, theoretically taking pressure off local environments. In recent years,…

Morocco has flipped the switch on the world’s largest solar power plant [NPR] This week, Morocco’s king had the privilege of powering up the first phase of the country’s massive…

Helicopter over a forest supplanted by a mature oil palm plantation and it will look verdant from the sky. The ocean surface over a bombed-out reef still glimmers aquamarine. But…

This year’s El Niño weather event has intensified dry conditions in both Indonesia and Brazil, providing ideal conditions in the normally wet tropics for fires to burn unchecked.

Pesticides are ubiquitous and important; but how safe are they, and who answers this crucial question? According to a paper published in the journal Bioscience, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s…

Pedestrians and bicyclists in Asian metropolises like Beijing, Delhi or Jakarta often wear face masks as shields against the smog and polluted haze engulfing them. But they risk more than…

The number of wildfires across Indonesia continued to decline on Tuesday following the arrival of rain in Sumatra and Kalimantan last week. Data for the last 24 hours from Global…

Hundreds of dead bottlenose dolphins continue to wash ashore, five years after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Of the dolphins that have managed to…

New research indicates that a dip in deforestation rates may have prevented the deaths of 1,700 people per year.

Brazil’s rate of deforestation has declined dramatically over the past decade, an undeniable boon for wildlife, forest-dependent communities and the global climate. Now researchers at the University of Leeds have…

They say you get what you pay for — but in today’s global marketplace, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to know exactly what it is you are actually paying for…

Countless lives have been saved by antibiotics since the middle of the 20th century. But their life giving potency is fading fast as bacterial resistance surges. Last year the United…

Google Earth image showing the Surui tribe's territory (right) and unprotected areas (left) in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. Strictly protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon are associated with lower…

During February, the 14th World Congress on Public Health in Kolkata, India, revealed a new "ground-breaking" report entitled, Connecting Global Priorities: Biodiversity and Human Health, which demonstrates human health benefits…

Aztec drawing showing smallpox victims after first contact with Europeans in the 16th Century. Estimates vary but many scholar believe disease wiped out around 95 percent of the pre-Columbian population…

Pregnant mothers, children, and even adults could face health problems from gold mining pollution in Amazonian Peru An aerial view of artisinal open pit gold mining in the Amazon. Photo…