A team of university researchers has launched a planned 10-year project to examine pollution from Los Angeles' recent wildfires and study its long-term impacts on health.

The researchers, including those from UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, say they want to look at what exposure to pollution from thousands of burned structures does to people over time. Specifically, they say, they’ll look at how Angelenos’ respiratory, neurological, cardiovascular, immune and reproductive systems may be affected.

Inaccurate labels and confusing packaging lead people with serious medical conditions to get ‘glutened,’ says public health scholar Emily Abel
 

DUARTE, Calif. (AP) — Not far from where Ceci Carroll lives, a rock-mining company has polluted the air with dust across the San Gabriel Valley, she said.

Now, as crews clean charred remains from the Los Angeles wildfires, she worries about a new potential source of contamination: a site to process hazardous debris from the Eaton Fire. //

In an unprecedented collective scientific effort to understand the short- and long-term health impacts of wildfires, researchers from four universities have launched a 10-year study of the Los Angeles fires. The wildfires that began in early January 2025 killed 29 people, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, and exposed millions to toxic smoke.

The research aims to evaluate which pollutants are present, at what levels, and where, and to assess the respiratory, neurological, cardiovascular, reproductive, and immune system impacts of the wildfires.

In a special issue of the American Journal of Public Health, guest editors Vickie M. Mays and Susan D. Cochran call for a reframing and redoubling of public mental health efforts.

U.S. adults who reported feeling discriminated against at work had a higher risk for developing high blood pressure than those who reported low discrimination at work, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.

According to the 2023 American Heart Association statistics, high blood pressure, which impacts nearly half of U.S. adults, is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death among Americans.

The United States is falling behind the rest of the world in supporting fathers and caregivers of older adults, new UCLA research finds — and women’s engagement in the economy is stagnating as a result.

Today, the WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD) at UCLA, launched “Equality within Our Lifetimes,” the most comprehensive analysis to date of laws and policies related to gender equality in all 193 U.N. member states. While the U.S. performs well in some areas, it has become even more of an outlier when it comes to care.

Most studies of Alzheimer’s disease have looked at environmental exposures perhaps five to 10 years prior to onset, said Dr. Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. In Parkinson’s disease, she said, relevant exposures could occur anywhere from 5 to 20 years prior to disease onset.

California voters will decide in November whether to uphold or block a law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2020 that banned the sale of certain flavored tobacco products, an effort by anti-tobacco advocates to stop a youth vaping crisis and weaken the industry’s influence in the state.

Get your flu shot in 'sweet spot' season before mid-November: Dr. Anne Rimoin